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Barack Obama made a stop in Dover, NH this morning at the McConnell Center to talk about taxes. I took a walk downtown at 11am to see if I could grab a photo of the democratic candidate. A few hundred people were outside the McConnell Center awaiting his arrival. I was stood out front at first but a few minutes before he was due to arrive we were ushered round to the back of the building in time to see his motorcade arrive. Unfortunately one of his buses obstructed the view of the entrance and about 10 minutes later we were moved back to the front of the building! By this time it was past noon and his speech was supposed to have begun but to our surprise he had not left his vehicle yet and before entering the building he came right over to greet the crown where I was standing. After a frantic change of lens from my 70-300mm to my 17-85mm I was able to get a number of good photos of the possible future president, I even got to shake his hand!

Here are some of the photos I captured:

Yesterday marked one month since I entered the U.S. to get married and live. The wedding is still three weeks away but plenty has happened in the first four weeks. Because I have been a little slack updating my blog (in favour of twittering every few hours!), I thought I would include a few events in the one blog posting.

Moving Apartment
We moved into our new apartment on August 20th. The new apartment is a lovely spacious two bedroom in the seacoast area of New Hampshire. We rented a U-Haul to move our stuff to the new apartment and managed to get everything moved in the one day, thus avoiding charges for a second day!

In the weeks that followed we bought a lovely Laura Ashley mattress, a bed, Samsung HDTV and most recently a sofa bed and a love seat. Our cable/Internet is being activated on Wednesday so I can then stop leaching Internet access off of our neighbours open wireless router!

Wedding Preparation
As far as the wedding is concerned we have got our marriage licence, met a couple of times with the priest, met with the florist and the owner of our reception venue. I have also been fitted for a lovely Ralph Lauren tuxedo and rented the same for the rest of the wedding party. Yesterday we met with the pianist at the church and the DJ. We have also chosen, ordered and engraved our wedding rings. I am travelling down to Boston tomorrow to pick them up.

Immigration
I have applied for and received my social security number! The next stage is to apply for AOS ‘Adjustment of Status’ to permanent resident (green card) and my EOD ‘Employment Authorization Document’. This will happen after we are married at the end of the month.

York Beach/Harbour
Last Saturday we went to York Beach, Maine for Labor Day weekend. We spent most of the day on the beach. The weather was amazing. We spent 7 hours in total lying in the sun and swimming in the ocean. All in all a very relaxing day. I unfortunately forgot to reapply sun cream to my feet and ended up with a very sore pair of feet for about 5 days!