Well, that sucks...

Josh, hard at work...

This evening Josh and I were participating in Josh's favorite pastime...making lists.  These events are not as exciting for me, so I usually grudgingly participate.  While crossing some "to do's" off our lists, Josh discovered that there were some odd charges on our credit card.  It seems that someone was able to use our credit card number to make two cash advances of 100 pounds.  Ugghh.  The picture above is of Josh, during the one hour conversation with Capital One.  Having fraudulent charges on a credit card sucks under normal circumstances, but having you only source of payment/cash canceled three days before your UK bank account goes into effect really sucks.  Basically, we have 40 pounds cash between the two of us until at least Friday...if not longer.  Josh's new CC will hopefully be arriving on Friday...mine will be mailed to the States for some reason (mom, I'm going to need you to mail that to me!)  Transferring money from our US bank account is an option, but it also takes a few days.  Luckily, Josh is scheduled to be paid on Friday, so we should have access to that right away.  The whole situation isn't completely terrible, but it is completely inconvenient!

Since I am writing about sucky experiences, I'll talk about my bad tube experience from yesterday.  I had an appointment with a career counselor on Monday at 4:00.  My counselor, Sharon, thought that it would only take about 30 minutes to reach  the Royal Festival Hall (which is down by the Thames and London Eye).  I left around 3:00 with a written detailed plan on what tubes to take and where to transfer.  I'm not sure exactly what happened, but somehow I ended up a tube train going the opposite direction from where I needed to go.  Luckily I figured this out pretty quickly, but I was still delayed.  I ended up being 30 minutes late to my appointment and completely frustrated (almost to the point of tears!)  Thankfully, Sharon was very kind and understanding and our meeting went well.

I feel like being pouty, so I'm going to complain about our washer/dryer too.  The company that runs our corporate housing left us a vague description of how to use the washer/dryer (it is an all in one machine).  There are nobs and buttons and weird squiggly lines I just haven't figured out yet.  It literally takes all day to do a load of laundry.  The dryer seems to be my biggest nemesis...I have been using what I think is the dryer setting, but it takes FOREVER to dry anything.  I basically think it is air drying it with no heat, while it tumbles around.  Luckily, someone is stopping by tomorrow to leave better instructions for me.  Fingers crossed I can get it figured out. 

In better news, during my flat hunting I've found a very serious contender. There are a few downsides, but it has almost everything we were looking for.  First of all, the building is beautiful, it is in an old water works building.  The best part is that it is only a four minute walk to Josh's office. 

Rosebery Avenue Flat

Reception Room

The building is very secure, with a keypad to gain entrance and a concierge in the lobby (which is huge, it looks like a ballroom, but dang, I didn't get a picture!)  There are two bedrooms, that are small (eek) and two bathrooms.  The kitchen is also pretty little, but has everything we need; a large fridge, storage, washer/dryer combo, and a dishwasher (yay!)  The reception (living) room is a good size and the whole flat is hardwood, which I love.  I still have a few flats to see on Wednesday, but this just might be the winner!

Tiny little kitchen (there is more that you can't see though)

I hope that our days get a little easier this week.  We really don't need anything else to go wrong, it makes it hard to enjoy this new city we are in!