Another Update!

I'm going to try to do more spurr of the moment shorter blog posts for a while and see how it works out. I keep thinking of/coming across things to put up here, but never seem to have the time to type out everything I want to say. So, I give you the less edited, less coherent, more frequent blog!
Well, we're in immigration paperwork hell right now, but it'll all come out in the wash. We have to get a ton of paperwork completed, need several documents from Canada, and need to find a "Civil Surgeon" to do our medical checks. Then we submit and wait for our interview, where we get interviewed (duh!), photographed and fingerprinted. Then we're allowed to stay! Until we find the surgeon, we won't know how much the testing will cost, but it shouldn't be too bad (fingers crossed).
We're in medical billing hell right now too. Brian had to go for some (expensive) tests. We checked with the lab that they take our insurance. They do. The lab gets a preapproval from our insurance to do the testing. No problem. He has the tests. No problems (on the tests either, so that's good news!). Now, weeks later, our insurance company is trying to claim that the lab is out of network (doesn't accept the insurance) and saying we're going to have to pay $675 of the bill. This sucks. It doesn't help that the only lady in the billing department doesn't seem to speak clearly understandable english. Fluent spanish, but that doesn't help me! I'm about ready to read them both the riot act. But it'll get sorted out.
Gaming is busy as always. We ended up hosting over 20 hours of gaming last weekend though, so Brian's in a bit of trouble over that. I really don't mind one day a week (Saturday), and enjoy when I get to actually play. But two long days is beyond pushing it. Sundays are supposed to be NO GAMING days. {shrug} But what's done is done, and the players had a fun, if overly challenging time.
Since I didn't get to do much else last weekend, I got lots of stitching done. There's an update at www.xvart.com/xsprojects.html And I got more done last night (the five smallest birds), so I'm getting really close to being on the last page. I can't wait to work on something for me for a change. I was bad and bought Dracolair's Phoenix (as I think I mentioned before). I've been good and not worked on it since the day I bought it though as I'm trying very hard to get Noah's Sub finished by Christmas. The chart for the Phoenix sucks (since you asked Joanna) because the 1/4 stitches are done by showing 4 reduced symbols in each stitch box and are hard to read. They're also so small that if I try to blow it up with a photocopier, all I get are vaguely symbol like smears. So I keep having to refer back to the original. Defeating the purpose of having a photocopy! The backstiting isn't shown on the main chart, but instead on the back of the chart page over a very light copy of the pattern. There are parts where it's really hard to tell where the stiches actually go. And the print on the chart itself isn't clearly printed, so it's all slightly smudgy.
That's all for now, I should get back to work. There's lots more news, but it'll have to wait.