In a galaxy far, far away

I’ve been neglecting this poor blog for a while. There are always excuses, of course, but the nice thing is that if you’re too busy to write stuff on the blog, it often means that you’re doing interesting things that you can eventually write about.

I’ve spent the past week in Seattle. This city is beautiful, and about as far (both geographically and culturally) as you can get from Miami. I’ve never flown from one corner of the US to the other, and I hope I won’t often have to do it. There came a point on the trip, when I had already flown five hours, and yet I still had two and a half hours left, when I thought, “How can I still be in the same country?” Wikipedia claims that they are, respectively, the northern-most and southern-most major cities in the Continental U.S., and that doesn’t include the fact that you also have to travel east across three time zones.

Seattle has presented a great contrast to Miami. Here in Seattle, someone thought that my sandals, which have a low heel, might prevent me from walking to lunch. After all, most everyone else is wearing clogs or Teva-style shoes. In Miami, my clothes are two understated: my heels are too low and my skirts are too long. I definitely don’t wear enough jewelry. Seattle also reminds me that Miami is really, really flat. It’s not just Mount Rainier, which rises majestically in the distance (at least, it does on the days when it’s not raining), it’s also that most roads wind around, up and down over the hills. They all seem happy about the warm weather here, because it recently topped 75 degrees, after nine months of cooler weather. I don’t think we go below 80F in Miami in June.

The more alternative attitudes shouldn’t catch me by surprise, and yet they do. I went to a street fair yesterday and bought some kettle corn. They explained that they had salted popcorn and a sweet and salt corn. I said I was in the mood for salted popcorn, and the seller replied, “Isn’t it great how our body just knows what it needs.” They just don’t talk like that on the East Coast – we don’t get in touch with our bodies. We just take them to the gym. On the other hand, it’s nice to be in a place where eating vegetarian doesn’t get you weird looks. (Yes, it really is proving harder to be a vegetarian in Miami that it was in Germany.)

I’m here to work on a project for work. Due to unforeseen circumstances, it’s not been as rewarding as I hoped. Still, it’s great to have a week of cool weather, and to spend time with my former advisor, who’s working on this project. Plus, I get to take a field trip to a wind farm at the end, and that just sounds like science nerd nirvana.

The marvels and mysteries of Miami

A marvel: the beaches

I grew up in the Midwest. Sure, we had beaches. We had the Great Lakes, which provided us with sand dunes and waves and a place to splash around. But the beaches here amaze me. I'm used to water that is green, or maybe brown. And, unlike the water that comes out of the faucet, the water in the Great Lakes (or any of the 10,000 in Minnesota) is opaque. In Miami, the water is turquoise, right up until you walk into it, at which point it is clear. This blows my mind. I feel like I'm in some version of a Hollywood beach, because I didn't know until now that it was possible to see your feet when you're chest-deep in the water. And fish! You can see little schools of fish swimming around your feet. Too cool.

A mystery: They sell a lot of stuff at intersections here.

That is, when you pull up to a red light, people walk through the stopped cars, offering cold water, flowers, and shrimp. The other things they sell are bags of citrus fruit - limes and lemons. The lemons, though, appear to have all the zest removed. I've been puzzled by this, and have discussed it with many people. Removing the zest makes fruit go bad more quickly, and lemon zest is a pretty useful ingredient. I know now what's going on, though. Any guesses? (Answer at the bottom.)

A marvel: the dragonflies

Around campus, I can walk through what can only be called swarms of dragonflies. I'm not a big fan of bugs (as almost everyone knows) but dragonflies might be my favorite bug. They're beautiful, they don't bite you, and they don't give you the plague. The combination of palm trees and dragonflies makes me feel like I've stepped back into the Paleozoic era.

A mystery: why more people don't die in car accidents here

The columnist Dave Barry always joked about the terrible drivers in Miami. I know that lots of people claim they have bad drivers in their city, so I've been busy comparing this to DC. I can't yet tell if there are more bad drivers here, but they do seem to be bad for a different reason. In DC, aggressive driving is the norm. There was a lot of honking and a lot of tailgating. People were bad drivers because they were important and they had somewhere to be. Here, people are bad drivers because they're just not paying attention too much. So the car drifts in the lane a bit, or they pull out in front of you - they're not trying to be mean, they just aren't too worried about their driving. I'm still working on adapting to this new attitude. I honked at someone the other day, and somehow felt like I had been extremely rude. The guy hurriedly backed up out of the lane, and I realized that car honks are quite rare here. I'm still adapting.

***The secret is, they're not actually lemons. They're oranges, and they've been peeled by a machine, and then bagged. This makes them easy to eat, although I think it also means that you have to eat a huge bag of oranges before they spoil.

Vacation retrospective, the UK version

When we were on vacation last month, I didn't have much Internet access and so I couldn't put record quite as much as I had hoped to. Here's the first in a series of posts to remedy that.

Andrew's family's favorite place to vacation is in Wales. It's only a few hours' drive from their house, but offers a very different landscape compared to the Midlands, where they live. My previous visit occurred in December, so I tend to think of Wales as a cold, empty place. In the spring and summer, though, it fills up with vacationers, and the shops and various attractions are open. For us, the principle attractions were the beach (although it was still cold enough that I wore a hat and gloves) and fish and chip shops. The fish and chip shops provide all things deep fried, so I believe my options included a veggie burger or pineapple rings, both battered and fried.

One of our day trips included a trip to Puffin Island. In the picture below, Andrew's father gazes hopefully (but fruitlessly) toward Puffin Island, which appeared to have no puffins on the day we visited.

We had extraordinarily good weather for the UK. It was generally warm and sunny, and we all enjoyed it immensely. I especially appreciated this when we got to Germany, where it was unseasonably cool.
The crowning event of our week was a trip to the opera with Andrew's parents. The tickets were a gift from them, and I found it quite a novel experience to attend opera with parents. My parents, although they did their best to introduce me to many types of music when I was a child, had no special love for opera. In fact, I believe my father offered to pay for my voice lessons only on the condition that I promised never to sing opera. So, it was a great gift. Thanks, G & F!

My new campus

The campus where I now work is very, very pretty. My previous campus had great columned brick buildings, lots of green space, and trees galore. It felt like exactly what a campus should be: elegant, serious, and a bit ponderous. The feeling at my new campus can be summed up in one word: lush. There are a dozen small ponds, many with fountains. There are gazebos and winding paths, shaded study areas and plant life everywhere.
It's also filled with wildlife. Ducks and ducklings are most noticeable right now, but I've also seen turtles, dragonflies, geckos, and birds of all sorts.
Sometimes, as the golf carts zip by me, I think this must be what it feels like when you stay at a tropical resort. But hopefully such resorts have a few more slushy drinks and a few fewer meetings.

Miami

Yesterday it was really hammered home to me that I no longer live in DC. We were running around to thrift stores looking for furniture, when we stopped at a random Greek place for lunch. (My current eating-out rule is "No Cuban." This eliminates half of the options, but I haven't yet figured out which Cuban places, if any, are going to have vegetarian menu choices.) In spite of the fact that half the restaurant was filled up with a private party, we still had a nice lunch while looking out over the river that ran along the back of the restaurant. The two-for-one drink special helped a bit too. (A second, free glass of prosecco? Why, yes, I think I will.) Then the birthday party started getting going, and that's when we realized that the guests really were Greek. The cranked up the music and started yelling "Opa." There was a group dance, a la "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and dishes were smashed on the tile floor. The waitress helped lead the dancing and smashing, so I assume the restaurant didn't mind. It was an unforgettable lunch.

This may be stating the obvious, but Miami feels like a foreign country sometimes. Our neighborhood, built in the 1920's, is filled with small-ish houses set close together. Most have an enclosed yard, and the plant life is verdant. It feels very green here. When I step outside, I always disturb geckos, which seem to have a prolific population here. Our neighborhood is known for two things: great restaurants and art galleries that are so posh that you might need an appointment to get in. I won't need any of those appointments, as my postdoc salary does not cover the purchase of $4000 vases. If you walk a few blocks in the other direction, though, it's a wasteland where boarded-up buildings and convenience stores proliferate. As we drive around, I notice that it's common for the atmosphere to cycle rapidly from yuppie-ish to not-quite-ghetto and back again. There are huge numbers of boarded-up businesses around. I don't know if this is due to the current economic crisis, which hit Florida especially hard, or if it's always been like this.

The cat thinks she has died and gone to heaven. She's a little old lady who has retired and moved to Florida, and it's everything she ever wanted. She'd happily spend all day in the garden, sitting under a bush and napping. She watches the geckos, and the big tropical plants provide some protection from the regular rainstorms.

My commute to work is longer than I'd like: Google maps predicted a 20 minute drive, which I thought would realistically take 30. It's taking closer to 45 minutes, which is mostly done on freeways with four or five lanes of traffic in each direction. For someone who dislikes driving it's quite exhausting, but I'm hoping it'll get better. I need to experiment with different routes and different timing. Unfortunately, buses aren't an option at this university - only one route goes from downtown Miami to the university, and it would take me over an hour each way. The whole university is really geared towards commuters, whether those commuters are faculty or students.

Andrew will be here staying here in Miami for five more days, so we're using that time setting up the house. He can put up pictures and curtain rods faster than I can, so I'd like to get that all done before he leaves. Then I'll start exploring Miami. I can tell there's a lot to see here, as soon as I get settled.

A week in the UK

Our new apartment is full up to the top with boxes. Clearly some stuff will have to go. While I deal with all the unpacking, I have a guest post of sorts: my mother-in-law chronicled our week in England and Wales. Check out the pictures and excellent commentary at The Stochastic Gardener. Note how many pictures show me I walking in the great outdoors. Even my mother-in-law knows what a rare event this is, so documentary evidence was collected.

Coming and going

I'm typing this post in an empty house: it contains a computer, the few boxes of things Andrew will be keeping in Maryland, and an unsuspecting cat who will soon be inside a pillowcase, riding on my lap for three days. The upcoming trip seems straight forward enough. We get on I-95 in DC, and then we just keep driving on I-95 until it deadends at the bottom of Florida. Then we're there.

I'm happy (and pleasantly surprised) that everything has gone so smoothly up to this point. Sunday night we were returning from a day trip to see castles in the Alps foothills (the tourist must-see Neuschwanstein, for those who know your castles) when I read a message board at the central train station announcing the closure of the Munich airport. The volcano again. My heart sunk and I immediately started mapping out all the things we would need to do if we were stuck in Munich for the next week. Luckily, the airport reopened the next morning. Airplanes were flying, but much of the airspace over the Atlantic had been closed, so our flight was rerouted to go up over Iceland and then down Canada. This lengthened our trip considerably, so we arrived in DC six hours later than expected. I will forever have a special place in my heart for the friend (aka Mr D. the pig butcherer) who drove up to the airport twice - once for the flight we weren't on, and once to pick us up on the midnight flight.

The last two days in Munich were perfect. We had sunny afternoons, and we took full advantage of them. The first day we rented bikes, which allowed us to cycle to a palace for a tour and then to the English Gardens, Munich's version of Central Park. We had lunch in a huge Biergarten, where Andrew discovered that a liter mug of beer really is a great deal of beer. The next day we took the train two hours south to visit Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, the castles inhabited and built by Mad King Ludwig. These castles are visited by every tourist that enters Germany, and thus I have now visited them three times. I hope and pray that was my last time. But they are an interesting part of history, Neuschwanstein is the fairytale version of a castle (it's the one copied by Walt Disney) and the surroundings, in the foothills of the Alps, are gorgeous. Plus, it was an excuse to eat apple strudel and drink beer while enjoying the sunshine in the mountains, so I can't complain too much.

Now, the next trip begins. Next stop, Miami.