"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

I'll post at more length later on, but we're finally home (with the cats wreathing themselves around us). We're physically and emotionally exhausted--thank heavens tomorrow is a holiday (for both of us, at least). Thanks again to everyone who came to the wedding, and thanks to to Bryan for hanging out with us during the ensuing week--I think things might have come completely unglued if he hadn't. Thanks also to Perdita and her humans for a nice evening in Fife--I'm sorry we didn't have a chance to visit with more people. Hopefully we will do that next time.

I'd kind of missed this news from last week

Actually, I think I hadn't as much missed it as heard that they had voted for two days of strike action and assumed that this meant there would be a two day strike...in late December.

Instead, one of the strike days is the day before we're leaving. Ugh.

At least there's one bright spot: we're flying into Manchester on BMI, so maybe this won't affect us too badly, since BAA doesn't run Manchester Airport. They do run Edinburgh, but if it's totally impossible to get through, we can always take a train. Trains do NOT run across the Atlantic.

Got an email five minutes ago saying that my visa has been issued and my papers are on their way back. Neta got the same message! Super--we can actually legally *go* to the UK.

Now to square things with the registrar...

OK, we've gotten most of the paperwork done for our marriage visas. Of course, nothing with the Home Office goes smoothly. The passport photo specifications on the British Consulate website are different from the specifications on the printed visa application (since the latter are smaller, we're sending the larger, on the assumption that they can cut it down if needed). The online application says that you need to schedule a visa application appointment, which seemed odd, since (a) they have stopped accepting in-person visa applications and (b) we had already paid by that point for postal application. But, when we actually made the appointment, it became clear that this was just for the biometric scans that are now required for UK visas, and that we would then *post* our applications afterwards. We get scanned on Saturday and can then send the papers of (I HATE things that require you to mail them your passport...) Then it's on to the marriage license...

It's snowing here, but it looks to be about to tail off after giving us maybe 1/4"...