Me and My Meg :-D

This picture was taken in Ireland, when we went on our coach trip around the Antrim Coast.

I'm so grateful to God for letting me meet and propose to this beautiful, intelligent, fun joy-filled woman.

She's everything I want and I'm still amazed she said yes!

I can't wait to see her on Boxing Day, and to marry her in August.

:D

Those of you who pray, do it!!

I've just found out:

The interviews for the job Im applying for are on 13th december...

Eeeeeek!!

Changes!!

Well, life is speeding along at an incredible pace at the moment, and I don't just mean because it's approaching Christmas!

I've just got engaged in the last month to a stunningly beautiful girl who's also my best friend, (yeh, yeh I know get the sick bags out!!) and I'm also applying for a new role in work...

My boss has given in his notice for New years eve as his last day, and so I've just applied for the Managers job at the shop. I reckon the interviews will be early December, so I should know by Christmas whether I've got it or not hopefully. I think I've got a good chance, having been with the company for ten years, and having worked as Senior Sales, Branch Supervisor and then Deputy Manager. We'll have to wait and see, I'll keep you posted! Obviously because I'm getting married, it would be great to get a new job and to have a rise in wages...

The other change is that at some point next year BEFORE the wedding, I'm gonna have to move out, and get a flat that both me and Meg are happy with, which is gonna be interesting since she's 4,000 miles away at the moment!! I'll have to have had my own adress for about two months I reckon, so that I have utility bills and a rental agreement to use as document evidence that I intend to travel back to the UK and not stay in the states after the wedding. Also, I'll need them so that Meg can apply for a Spouse Visa after we're married.

The good news is that apparently because I'm not applying to reside in the states after the wedding, I don't need to have a Fiance visa, but can simply go to the States on a normal tourist one I usually use, e.g. the Visa Waiver Program. So that's a big relief out of the way!

The biggest change for me obviously will be to get married and end my days as a single man. This is a huge thing for me, not just for the obvious sharing my life with meg, but also the fact that I have to knuckle down and start being responsible now, as I have to think of someone other than myself from then on. It's a huge commitment to make, proising to share your whole life until death with someone, but I'm confident that as long as we keep God at the centre we'll be fine. Besides, I've a feeling that marriage is going to be a very exciting adventure for both of us!! ;) :p

Anyway, off to work!!.....

Well, here it is...

It's not a very good picture 'cos it's a bit blurry... but that's it!!

Oh and the date I quoted previously was a Sunday in 2008... D'oh! So the actual date will be the 16th August lol

The Date Of Doom!!!!!!

It's been set.

No more excuses, no more days of spending money without thinking, no more hours of day-dreaming and wishing my life away....

The Date Of Doom has been set....

17th August 2008.

(I'm overjoyed really, viewers!! :p)

:D

*Sigh*

Meg has gone home.

I kissed her goodbye at the airport very early this morning, and felt that a part of me just crumpled up right there on the floor.

I'm having a bad day in work and I know it's partly because I'm missing her already.

I know that we're getting married, and we both love each other, but this is the hardest thing I've had to face, being this far apart, that a webcam is the only option.

It'll be a long journey for her today; she left manchester at 9:30 and will be flying for 6 and a half hours till 4-40pm our time, and then an eight hour layover for her flight to Bangor tonight. it means she'll have been travelling for nearly 24 hours, so I guess she'll be sleeping for a while when she gets home!!

Off to work...

Anglo-American Relations!!

No, I'm not going to start a lengthy discourse on the subtleties of the American Right, or the nuances of Brownite Britain...

This is just a short note from me to say that Meg and I got engaged on Tuesday night!!!!!

A photo of the ring will be posted as soon as we get back from Northern Ireland, which is where we are at the moment, visiting family. For those who are interested, a brief description follows:

The ring is a nine carat white gold ring, with a dazzling blue topaz stone in the middle (9mm diameter apparently!) It has small diamonds all around the band.

We're both very happy, and we hope to get married next summer, though the exact date is unknown as yet, as we have the nasty and long drawn out process of visa applications, etc!!

Anyway, I'm off for a coach tour of the Antrim Coast now, I'll blog soon!!

Thursday: Penobscot Narrows Bridge & Observatory

Ok, on the Thursday, (30th August) which also happenned to be my birthday, Meg took me to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge & Observatory, and one of her favourite places just next to it, Fort Knox. (not THE Fort Knox with all the gold unfortunately, that's somewhere else in the States!!)

The Penobscot refers to the River it crosses, and is a Native American name meaning "where the river widens" or "where the white rocks are". The word "Penobscot" is actually a mis-pronunciation of their original tribal name which was "Penawapskewi". Even though this was a mistake by the English colonialists in pronunciation, they have adopted the name as the name of their Native American nation, or tribal group. Apparently there are 2400 Penobscot native americans in the States today officially registered.

If you want to know more, please go here, it's very interesting, and it gives you an idea of the original culture and history of this part of Maine!

Anyway, here are some pictures from The penobscot Narrows Observatory, 442 feet above the River! The picture below was taken from the Penobscot Bay side. In the distance you can see the Bay, and parts of Belfast I think. I think that might be Mount Kahatdin in the background, but I'm not sure!!

Below you can see just how high we were!! I took this picture looking straight down when we were in the Observation Tower. It's so high that you have to get a lift up to the top that would rival any Evil Genius's Secret Headquarters, as it whooshed up very fast and we were there in no time!! I think I made a comment that I was a little claustrophobic at one point, but the left wasn't actually that small, I think there were about 6-8 people in it with us, and it didn't feel too crushed. The guide at the bottom of the Lift gave me a funny look, I think because he heard my accent, or maybe he overheard the claustrophobia comment!! lol

If you look carefully, the bright blue car parked just to the right of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, (which was built in the 1930's and was the original Bridge spanning the River) is actually Meg's car!! Fort Knox which I'll post about next, was just around the corner of the coast on the top left of the picture...

Here below you can see the green of the coast around Belfast and Penobscot Bay. This was taken looking to the right of the mouth of the river.

This next photo below I took next, and is slightly to the left of the earlier photo. You can see the wideness of the mouth of the River, and why a Fort was built a little further down the Coast to defend Maine against a seaward attack of the English!!!

Below, you can see the coast before you reach the Bay and Belfast, taken again from the opposite side to the mouth of the river. Look at all the forested areas!!

Taken again turning round to the Mouth of the River where it opens into the Atlantic. I think the Interstate you can see winding it's way along the coast is the one we came on.

Below is the same area but taken using the zoom, so you can see a little bit more of the detail of that house I really liked in the bottom slightly off centre!! It seemed to be on it's own and I liked that lol

Another photo more to the left of the head of Penobscot River, and you can see where it joins the Atlantic...

I tried to take a picture of Meg standing against the windows of the Observation Tower, but because it was very sunny that day it didn't turn out so well, as it's mainly a sillhouette. I still like the picture obviously though!! ;) :p

For those of you who are interested in Engineering, it's a fascinating Bridge, and the way it was built is amazing!! the white housings that surround the bacle stays of the bridge are filled with nitrogen gas to prevent corrosion and the bridge is made of cast cement which was poured in place by specially made equipment. It's built on the head of the Penobscot River, where it enters Penobscot Bay, and then flows into the Atlantic. The river's original source is in Mount Kahatdin.

Ok, so we'd done the Narrows Observatory, next was Fort Knox....

Thankful

I am going to blog more photos and stories about my visit to Meg, but have not found enough time to do it with being back at work and then chatting to Meg in the evenings...

I am off tommorrow, so after a hearty unhealthy fry up breakfast tomorrow, I'm going to blog alot!

I'd just like to say that I'm very happy at the moment. Not in a sugar-coated sickly way, but genuinely happy and grateful to God for what He's done in my life lately, and the ways He's proved His love to me. So many little ways that I could go on all night.

But I won't!!

There's lot's of things materially that I want and I could have eventually, but most of all I want to know Jesus more, and know more the depth of His love, for me and others. I've been increasingly aware of how much he paid for me lately, and how the ways in which I live life in an almost blinded defeatist way, waking up and waiting for "fate" or something. But God isn't like that.

Really, when you look at the heart of the message of the Bible, God is Good, and he loves.

he loves me, and He loves you and wants us to know that great love.

That's worth living for!!

Moose-Sighting Adventure Part IV!!!

We finally drove a bit further from Misery Pond, and looked for places to stop that would be good for a sighting. Meg's Dad told me that Moose come out at dusk, and they come near bodies of water so they can drink.

They're notoriously shy of human contact and are rumoured to be very hard to see, so Jim didn't promise anything!! We found a place that looked promising, as it was near a large-ish lake/pond, and it was a little off the beaten track, in fact the van we were in barely had enough space to get down as it was a single track road.

We found a place that was part marsh part pond and pulled in to the side of the road, and climbed out of the van and each chose a perch near the bank to sit still and be quiet. Nat & Phoebe being the adventurers that they are, climbed into a nearby tree whose branches were overhanging the lake, and wound together into a cool almost tree house naturally.

I wasn't as confident as Meg on my tree climbing or balancing skills, so I let her climb in beside Nat and took a picture!! After that, Meg climbed down again and we sat on a stray limb that was near the ground, watching the other side of the pond for any sign of moose...

Here you can see through the trees to the other side of the pond that we were watching in total silence, all you could hear was the angry buzz of insects flying about and the crickets and grasshoppers chirping. It was so silent there that I got a fit of the gigles, and meg had to poke me to be quiet! lol!

It was at about this point that I felt a strange sensation on my forearms and then realized that a Mosquito army had come in force to place it's claim on Brit flesh!! I was covered with the things, both large and small, and for the next two weeks I kept noticing new and bigger itchy bumps that appeared randomly all over my body! I'm not sure if they just got everywhere, or whether it was the case that I just reacted to the bites, but from that night on (the Tuesday!) I kept applying myself with generous amounts of moisturising cream in the evenings, which is when it seemed to be at it's burning and irritating worst!

This again was a really beautiful and unspoilt quiet place, and I didn't see any other people around at all, and it was nice to sit there in the undisturbed silence, even though I was bitten to death by midges and mozzies!!

Moose-Sighting Adventure Part III!!!

These are all photos of a place called "Misery Pond", although I've no idea why it's called that. It was so beautiful, and I got carried away taking lots of pictures.

Above and below, you can see the sillhouettes of Jim (Meg's Dad), Meg, and her sister Page.

It wasn't actually sunset, though it looks that way. What happenned was I didn't realise I was looking towards the sunlight, so the lens was over-exposed!!

Here you can see how sunny it was, with Page's head accidentally in the corner of the shot!

The water was like glass in this lake... It was amazing.

In the far centre of the picture, you can barely mnake out Nat & Phoebe, who both decided to go climbing... (apparently they did that last time!)

They're next to the big boulder in roughly the centre of the picture...

Here they are coming back to us...

My favourite picture in this set. I love the way the sunlight is reflecting off the water and off my lens. :)

Another almost identical one... I love the cloudy sky in this one as well.

You can see the pines growing on the edge of the lake here... I'd love to go back and spend more time here, possibly with my tripod so I could use the digital zoom more...

Sorry... another one lol

and yet another corner shot...

You can see the sun has moved since I took the last few shots, as it's higher up in the sky!!

I don't know what to say. I love the peacefulness and serenity of this scene. There were no other people there except a guy further up the bank who was waiting for three of his hunting buddies to come back with their catch, which they hoped would be a bear!! Meg's Dad chatted to him for a while while we looked round and I took lot's of photos!! these are my favourite scenery ones of the whole trip I think.

Moose Sighting Adventure part II!!

This was our first "photo stop-off point". I'm a bit annoyed because I can't remeber the name of the place or the lake, perhaps Meg will leave a comment to tell us.

I just kept taking pictures of it because it was so beautiful and the colours were so vibrant; all the blues and greens...

The water also had this serene peacefulness about it that I just fell in love with. (ok now I'm sounding like an emotional american lol)

Maybe someone can answer this?! What type of trees are they? I was told but I can't remember now.

I think we must have stopped here for about ten minutes and I'd been told it was just a quick stop as we had a ways to go, so I just snapped and snapped and snapped pictures nineteen to the dozen!! i wish I could remember the name of this place...

As you can see, it was a lake surrounded ny Forest, like most of Maine seemed to be, or certainly the area of Maine I was in anyway...

Do you recognise the islands in the middle Meg? can you remember where this is?! it was definitely on the way up to "Misery Pond" which is anything but miserable and which I'll show you in my next post tomorrow...

I love trees next to water. It makes me think of the verse in revelation that talks about various trees (including the Tree Of Life) being next to a grand River that sweeps through the Heavenly City where God dwells with His people. I hope it'll be like this, I imagine it will be...

last picture. I zoomed into the islands to see what they were like close up. they were still a distance away though! And the best photo of my whole holiday was to come next at Misery pond, little did I know...

Tuesday: Car Photos On A Moose-Hunting Adventure!!

All of the following pictures were taken from inside the car while travelling, which explains the streaks/reflections/general messiness of them!! On Tuesday, Meg's dad got all excited and decided that because he was off work, he should take his family and the "british person" to go see if we could find a Moose...

These were some of the views along the interstate as we drove past... Notice the very fashionable streaks...

Nearly sall of the interstates were like this as we drove... mile after mile of forest...

And this view I loved!! Coming down a big mountain and seeing the other side of the canyon... :p

I even took one out of the front of the car, it at least gives you an idea of how green maine tends to be! All the way there, meg's Dad was telling me where I could expect to find a Moose, and how it would react if we met one...

And here was me thinbking that a moose lived in the fridge!! D'oh!!

In the photo above you can see the typical mode of transport of the average Mainer... A pickup.

Again, by the side of the road... more forest, apparently this particular bit we drove past looked ideal to see a Moose, apart from the fact there was no way into it...

More forests and rivers pass us by as I start to get more and more excited as the landscape seems to be getting wilder and wilder... I wonder if we're going to end up in the middle of nowhere pushing the van...

Again, I can't resist taking more pictures out of the window as we speed past...

A valley of trees separates to reveal another river...

And then I go and wreck it all by mis-timing pressing the button and get a picture of a fence!! A fence I tell you!!! D'oh!!