Day 4: Living in College Station begins

Weight loss: 2lbs! 

Monday 4th March

Today life in College Station began to take shape.  I drove Peter to the university with a packed lunch!  He phoned me three times during the day with progress reports.  It was a day of shuffling paper, getting IT sorted out, obtaining a campus card and beginning to work out the shuttle bus service.  He now knows that a shuttle runs from virtually the end of the road to the campus and it's free!   Can't say that about taking the bus to the university in Norwich!

I spent some time this morning setting up the new wifi printer on the wireless network here.  The software wasn't compatible with my version of Mac OS and downloading more software didn't do the trick, so I searched for the online manual for the router and low and behold I could talk to the router and got it to accept a new 'client' within minutes and without the need to drive down the road to buy a cable.  I was pleased with myself! 

Then I went to investigate Readfields Meats and Deli as a potential source of better looking meat than you can find in some grocery stores (maybe it's just the lighting but it looks mighty bright red to me! Horse?).   I'm not sure Readfields was a great improvement but I bought some lamb mince, some beef mince and some tuna steaks.  The beef mince made a delicious meat loaf for this evening.  I'm not sure how the lamb is going to be as there's no labelling to tell you what the proportion of meat to fat is.   We shall see.  

Then I drove back down S. Texas Ave - the main artery running through College Station - and tried another branch of the grocery store HEB.  This turned out to be a great improvement on the one further north on Texas Ave - vast, clean, tidy, well stocked and staffed by polite and helpful students.   There was a British section (with Marmite, Branston Pickle, custard powder, tea etc) and right next to it the Jewish section, so we were well catered for!!  I bought Marmite and Matzos! 

During the day I suddenly remembered that I could get Radio 4 online.  Amazingly I can listen to real time programmes - however, as they are real UK time I get the afternoon play in the morning etc.  Still, if nostalgia overcomes me (which it is doing now and again) I can tune in to some familiar programmes.  It will be interesting to see at what point it no longer becomes necessary to plug in in this way. 

Had two Skype conversations today!  Marvellous how someone so far away suddenly pops into your kitchen for a chat!  Crystal clear connections to Norwich and London. 

Now I'm going to get the TV remote control and try again to find something worth watching!