I forgot to mention something yesterday. Our trip to Winkies on Tuesday brought something to my attention. Winkies only accepts cash or checks (both in local currency, of course). I didn't have quite enough cash on me. It dawned on me that there are absolutely no drive up ATM's around here, or anywhere near here. There isn't even anywhere you can drive up, park, jump out of the car, get cash, jump back in, and drive off. There are plenty of ATM's you can walk to. However, there are only a very few that will accept American ATM cards. If I had wanted to get cash out that morning, I would have had to have walked about twenty minutes one way to the nearest American-ATM-card-friendly cash machine. The weather was crappy, which was the main reason I was going to Winkies in the first place, so I really didn't want to spend about 40 minutes walking around in bad weather, just to get cash to go somewhere Ryan could play OUT of the weather! There was one other option: ASDA (the local WalMart equivalent) has an ATM outside. IF you can get parking near it, you can withdraw cash. However, parking costs one pound, which is redeemable inside the store. That day, there was no parking near the ATM, AND the parking patrol was walking around enforcing the permits. I didn't want to pay one pound just to use the ATM (and I didn't want to go inside just to get my pound back). Also, I didn't want to leave Ryan in the car, but I also didn't want to get him out and put him back in just to get cash. Soooooo, I said to myself, "Forget it," and drove to Winkies, still low on cash. I always carry around a blank check from our sterling account (which we only use to shunt money into for local bills that require direct debit). Until Tuesday, I'd never written a British check before. The check I used had been floating around in my purse for about a year and a half!

So the moral of this story is please appreciate having drive up ATM's, because they are a luxury we don't have here! :)