Snow, doctors, credit cards and rubbish

We had about 2 inches of snow yesterday! It was the very nice packing kind of snow, as opposed to icy or pure fluff, so snowballs were easy to make. I had heard that "one inch of snow shuts everything down" but in fact everything was open. School had a note that said "remember your wellies" (boots). There didn't even seem to be an expectation that things would be shutdown, I think those few inches would have shut down schools back at home. 

Our youngest daughter has had a slight cold for about 2 weeks now. It's just now getting to the point where we think maybe she should see a doctor. Most likely the doctor will say "it's a cold, virus, treat the symptoms", but good to be safe, right? 

We called up our provider to see what they recommend. We were able to easily use their website to find doctors, but actually all we found were hospitals. I was quite confused about our coverage, and public versus private doctors. It turns out that we don't have external instance anymore, we're covered by UK National Health Services (NHS). It's social medicine, so basically we pay our taxes and all health costs are covered, as we understand it. We'll let you know how it goes!

Even though most healthcare costs are covered, you still have to pay for other stuff, so I've been using a UK credit card. It took some work to get one, but they're great to have because they work with a chip and pin. And I even have a "contactless" one, which means I don't have to enter a PIN number or anything, I just tap the till (cash register) and walk away, nice! 

Paying the monthly credit card bill, or at the least the first month, has proven to be a bit tricky. My bank and my credit card are two different banks, so I can't pay direct through a single online service. But that's ok, they do have online banking here and it's quite secure. They send you a little device that reads your debit card. You pop your card in, enter a few numbers and then you can pay new people online. The numbers are "account code" and "sort code". Similar to routing and account numbers in the US, I suppose. Hopefully our credit card is successfully paid now and all following months are now direct debit, easy.

You'd think it's simple to put out your trash, right? Well it takes a bit of understanding. First, as opposed to coming twice a week, they come once every two weeks (fortnight as they call it). There's a blue bin for recycling and a black bin for rubbish. You start with a small black bin (140 litre) and a matching blue bin. You can call the city council and ask for more, but you'll have to pay money and be approved to have more. They'll give you lots of recycling for not too much money or hassle, but rubbish is a bit like dealing with classified materials - lots of rationale and road blocks :)  oh we also have not 1 or 2, but FOUR massive black bins in our backyard, sorry, garden. They're for grass clippings, food, and I haven't even dared to open the other two. I notice most neighbours only have 1 or 2 of these stationary bins. I think we'll figure it all out eventually, but hmm, lots to think about (what kind of trash do we have, what kind of trash should we have, how do we handle it better, how does it all work out in the big picture, what's it worth financially, etc). 

I suppose those are decent questions for just about anything we do.