The search for a sofa or is it bigger than that?

Why is it that spending big sums of money is so hard when I can dribble it away like a champion. I can go from store to store (or use to, I'm trying really really hard to be better these days) and spend $50 here or $100 in Target.... but when it comes to buying a sofa I am petrified that the minute I buy one... I'll find a better one somewhere else.

I am looking for a loveseat. a full size sofa is really too big for my apt. So its a loveseat. A tad harder to find a comfortable one but certainly not impossible. When Elliott was here we went a looking. First there are the ones that are uncomfortable. Okay, they're out. then there are the ones that are too small for two non-intimate people to share the same space. They're out. There are ones that suck you into the great beyond of cushions, ones where the arms are so high I feel like Edith Ann, ones that are so spare you feel like you're participating on a panel discussion. Ugh. This is hard. Then there's the placement. My living room is a large square. I think its too big to have everything again the walls... but may not be big enough to pull the sofa far enough away from the wall to walk behind it. These are pressing issues, people. I guess first I find the sofa I like the I figure out where it goes. I found one I liked, comfy -- because really, that's the bottom line. when its just me, I need to be able to spread out and read or watch tv or something horizontal and slug like. Okay, back to the one I found. I like it. Its comfy. Its chenille. Kind of paprika colored. Not horrid by any means but not necessarily Max friendly. Good price. today I found one that is leather. red leather. Fun. I want something in the red family. I think it will be a good pop of color in the room. Too many choices. This is when I hate living alone. Maybe when I get back from thanksgiving, someone else will have decided. Hmmmm....

Vistors are good

Yeah for visitors who connect me to my world that seems farther away than just a phone call or email away. Elliott was here for just under a week. We did lots of work. locked away in our separate working environments but did lots of playing too. Much still to be explored but we did make it to the Miami Book Fair. Wow. It is freaking huge. Elliott went off to hear some leader in the field of graphic novels while Suzanne and I wandered aimlessly through the endless tables of booksellers. It was kind of like being, well, a book addict in the midst of a million books. My endless unpacking of many too many things I have put myself on restriction of buying new things. I actually had imposed the moratorium on books way back in DC when I packed up that house. Libraries are good things. Sharing books is good. Buying books is bad. So of course we go to the book fair. I finally fed the beast by buying a couple of Chanukah presents. It was hot that day but it was a wonderful event.

We explored a bit in the search for a sofa. While I have really too many chairs... I don't have a sofa. remember that you friends who convinced me that I should get rid of the futon and buy myself a "grown-up" sofa? Yeah well, its time. The panel discussion set up of my living room is getting a little old. Now that there's actually space, its time for something comfy. I am ever mindful of Loretta's "scale" rules. Its so tempting to buy something that would just fill up the room but it would be wrong and it would hate it once it got here. Loveseats or apartment size sofa's are hard to come by and still be affordable. Actually, they're just hard to come by. We went to Hialeah to a clearance center but nothing was quite right. when I told someone I'd been to Hialeah they were surprised we could find our way. Supposedly its a notoriously confusing area. Oh well. When everything is confusing and new what difference does it make? We had fast food on the way home -- why tell you that? Because it was Pollo Tropical. Yum. Its grilled chicken or pork, sides like plaintains, black beans and rice. Just good and different from home.

Tonight was my first book club. I just found out about it so I didn't read the book but it was fun anyway. It was steps from my apt so you can't beat that. Its a women's book club and the women were diverse and interesting. I'm going to like it.

This Friday I have a day long meeting with Nancy and am looking forward to it. It is hard not to have hard and fast assignments and duties. Oddly hard not to have someone looking over your shoulder. So it will be good to have a good solid "base-touching" session. We also have interview with two potential doctors for the clinic-that-is-yet-to-be. That's a good thing. That's concrete. So, until then...

Its hot here!

Its hot. Now I'm not complaining. Okay, only a little bit. Its hot here. Its 9 am and its about a million degrees on my balcony. The locals are all in an uproar over the weather. Its acting more like summer rather than winter. The humidity has been high, temperature high etc. Now tomorrow we're supposed to get a cold front. The evening news weather map even had one of those graphics I'd be used to seeing at home. It said CHILLY in cold little letters on the day. That means a high of only 77 degrees and down into the 60s at night. They tickle me here.

Elliott is visiting. Yeah for visitor number two. She's a workhorse. We, okay it was all her with me looking like I was helping, got a ton of broken down boxes down the freight elevator and to the dumpster. that added another 10 square feet of living space. I still have plenty of boxes to unload but we're getting places.

We finally went into my pool. doesn't appear to be heated at the moment. It was beautiful but slightly chilly. I'll have to ask about that. We're checking out the local restaurants. We had dinner at a nice little place right in my mall down the block. On the way we had a great find. It seems that just one block behind my apartment building is a small 100 seat theatre called The New Theatre. They do only new works. they premiered Anna and the Tropics. The funny thing is that I even have a postcard from them in my apt but had no idea that Laguna St was the one right behind me. Anyway, we were walking along, saw the theatre and actually bumped into the Managing Director who chatted with us for a while. Good find!!!

Last night we had dinner at another neighborhood place, Havana Harry's. Pretty good Cuban food.

We've had great technological achievements in the last few days. My apt is now wireless for internet... so come visit and we can all work! And, Elliott set me up with Skype complete with camera and all. So if anyone out there is on Skype. Give me a holler and we can chat that way too. All this technology is making my head swim.... we might need to go the beach today just to reconnect with nature.

Actually we're heading out to the Book Fair today. Miami has a MONSTROUSLY HUGE book fair each year. Just amazing authors, speakers, all sorts of publishers, etc. Salman Rushdie, Cornell West, Nikki Giovanni, Dave Barry, Sandra Cisneros and about 10 million I haven't heard of. So off we go into the hot with money to spend. You have a good weekend too!

I cooked!

Yes, its true. I cooked vegetables on a stove, with a pot, a wooden spoon and even ate on a plate not made of paper. its a good day. I had to cut the vegetables with a regular table knife but that's okay. I remember seeing a box marked with knives somewhere. Its here somewhere...

Having Mira here was great for getting the living room remotely useful for living. We set the shelves and put the TV on them. It was in the middle of the floor before. I pushed everything back towards the wall and set up a little seating area. Its so not done, but its liveable and presentable for a guest. Elliott comes this week. She can help me to the next level.

Tonight, I am ushering at the Actors' Playhouse in Coral Gables. They are having a 24 hr. 10 minute play festival. Playwrights are given a topic and have to write a play in 24 hours. Then a director takes that play and casts, stages and rehearses it in one day. Tonight is the performance of those plays. It looked interesting and I was thinking that if there's ever an edgy under 80 crowd at the theatre, tonight would be it. (no offense of course to my over 80 yr. old readers!). I'll keep you posted. Hopefully I'm not too much of a theatre snob to enjoy myself.

Keep those cards, letter, phone calls and emails coming. I love them! Now back to work!

Miami explorations...

Here's a link of some photos from our day....



http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=947185&l=5faa7&id=750473969





My friend Mira came to visit. Yeah for my first visitor! Who's next? Just off the successful Obama campaign here in FL-- Orlando and Tampa area -- she came to Miami for a meeting and bit of R and R. We went exploring. First stop -- the Biltmore Hotel. A Coral Gables landmark. An amazing old hotel with the biggest pool of any hotel in the country. Really.

Next up..... Mira really wanted to go to Little Havana so off we went. Armed with a map, I'm trying not to get addicted to GPS but rather to find my way and really focus... we headed off to Calle Ocho as 8th Street is called down here. Mira directing from her Lonely Planet book took us to Maximo Gomez Park. That's where the old men would sit around in the old days, smoke cigars, play dominoes and talk about the revolution. They still play -- just no smoking in the park any more. A sign of the times, I guess. There were even a few women there, which I bet didn't used to happen. Interestingly enough there was a little tourist information booth. Mira asked if there was a map. No. A brochure, no. Know of anywhere we could get one? No. Okay then. And it wasn't a language barrier. Her spanish is pretty good. We hung around the park for a bit just people watching which was excellent. At first I was a bit embarrassed to be intruding on their world, but by the time we left there were a couple of other tourist groups passing through. When we passed the park again later, a tour bus of Europeans of some sort had just unloaded. How funny.

Down the street, window shopping along the way.... we went to the street of the monuments. Four or five monuments to the martyrs of the liberation of Cuba through the ages... we met some guy who insisted we take his picture. Okay... but check out the trees. Very cool stuff.

Mira wanted a Guyabera (the traditional shirt all the Cuban men wear or wore...) for a gift. So we did a bit of shopping, visited a very stinky cigar store and generally enjoyed ourselves. Then, despite a few clouds we headed off to the beach. We ended up going to Bill Baggs State Park at the end of Key Biscayne. There's a lighthouse there and an added bonus was a beautiful sunset and a wedding provided for our enjoyment.

They were funny. It was very informal and came together in just a matter of minutes. We met the father of the groom and got the dirt on all the players. It was his son's third wedding and the bride's first. They were all from Indiana in town because the groom was running a half triathalon the next day. Before we met him, I had said to Mira.. imagine what the parents must feel like when their child announces they are getting married on the beach in Miami. When we met the father of the groom I asked him what his response was when he heard where the wedding was. He said he couldn't repeat it. It was a fun cap to a beautiful day in my new city of Miami. We stayed on the beach watching the sites until the park closed when we went around the point to come upon a divine sunset. I wonder if I'll ever get over the beauty of a sunset -- be it at the Bay Beach on Long Beach Island, NJ or at Key Biscayne?

Just to top off an already fun filled day, we went to a movie at CoCo Walk in Coconut Grove. Thank goodness for Mira's sense of direction or I would have been wandering the streets for days. My GPS refused to recognize Coconut Grove for some reason which left me only to those old fashioned methods. The mall was teeming with humanity, and the movie was more than a little violent (much time spent with my shirt over my eyes) but Coconut Grove definitely looks like a place for future exploration. Filled with tons of restaurants, little shops and more. All this in one day!


Then, yesterday, in a last minute change of plans... I headed out to the Ritz Carlton in Key Biscayne for brunch with our clinic funders. After getting a bit lost and a few open drawbridges... I found my way. What a hotel... on the beach. How the other half lives... the meeting went extraordinarily well but I have a ton of work to do. Off i go...

I'm not in DC anymore...

Okay, I guess the culture shock that I was poo-pooing is starting to set in. I knew that a whole lot of people would speak Spanish. I didn't realize that EVERYONE would speak Spanish. I have got to get on that learning thing. ...

The commercials on the radio are different too. Really different. There's some sex enhancer thing you put under your tongue.... huh? the commercial starts out... "okay, guys size does matter. Want better sex? Want it to last longer, harder?" what? What the heck radio station am I listening to? Scarily its some easy listening station. Oy. Then comes some commercial for a lawyer. I wasn't paying any attention until the end when the web page is something like your jewish lawyer.com. What did he just say? Oh my god.

Today was a bit of a hard day. As much as I always thought I'd want the freedom and easygoing ways of working at home. Its lonely. Really lonely. I have to change my mindset from doing all my chores at once at night in an efficient manner... to saving up something to do during the day. An outing everyday to mingle with humanity and get me away from the computer.

Mom, if you're reading this, I am much more sympathetic now to how you get lonely in your apartment. I keep talking to Max and while he sometimes talks back to me, we're not exactly onthe same wavelength.

I've been googling away to find a lesbian community here but so far no luck. Oh there are plenty of boys to be found down in South Beach... club after club. And in good Miamia style they really get going at 11 or midnight and have drink specials from 1:30 am to 4 am. Ay carrumba, I didn't do that when I was young. I went over to the independent bookstore in Coral Gables today and picked up some publications. Maybe that will help me find some activities to meet folks. A spanish class for beginners would be good. Maybe yoga. That so amused me when I took it in DC. No gay bowling close by either. I have emailed a couple of the small theatres to see if they have volunteer ushers but no word back yet. As far as I can tell... there is no Food and Friends, no Mautner Project, etc. Okay, this is olay. Challenging but doable. I gotta get this clinic up and running and that will make the world of difference. Remind me that I was lonely when I'm surrounded by sick people.

Did I tell you all about the mall right by my house? I finally walked over there one day. Wow. And wow again. I live right by Rodeo Drive. Those stores are so high end and expensive I've never heard of most of them. But of course, that's just me. There are at least two nice little restaurants over there that look affordable. And of course, the Borders, but I'm going to first of all, NOT BUY ANY MORE BOOKS and second, patronize Books and Books, the independent book store. But did I mention that I'm not buying any more books? Not only do I have too many but those boxes are freaking heavy!

I have my first visitor for the weekend, so that makes me very happy. Come visit me. Bring some of that northern charm I'm missing! I promise there's a path between all the important locations in the apartment!

Okay, off I go. One more box...

Election Day plus one

Wow. How exciting. the world is indeed changing. Oh, sunny and cool, by Miami standands, but heading to a high of low 80's. Someone suggested that I start each blog with a weather report! So be it.

Anyway, back to the world changing. Yesterday was certainly exciting. I admit to a bit of numbness to it all. I voted more than a week ago and didn't get to feel any of that election day excitement. I have been so out of touch with media since before the move that I felt a little removed from it all. So many of you know that my candidate didn't make it out of the primary but as I reminded a friend last night and I am often reminded, this is huge progress in and of itself. I am excited. We picked up a few more women in the Senate last night as well. I thnk we're up to 17 women out of 100 now. That's just crazy stuff. what will happen next, a black president? Oh wait!!!!! but I do think that Obama's departure from the Senate could send it back to being all white again. Let me think on that to see if that's accurate.

Locally, however, there are these two guys called the Diaz-Belart brothers. there were reelected. Don't think they're good guys but don't think they're evil either. I love the whole family dynasty thing. Then there's the one everyone keeps referring to as "sort of a crook." Can't remember if he was reelected. the sad news is that the so-called Marriage Protection referendum won big here. that's a constitution amendment to the FL constitution defining marriage as between only one man and only one woman. sheesh how narrow can you get. Now its not that I'm a huge proponent of marriage of any kind, but tell me I can't have one of those darn American rights and I want them.

I went to a fabulously catered election party last night Ellie, who is very successfully attending the famed Cordon Bleu made an election feast. Let's see we had Chicago style hot dogs with all the trimmings, Delaware crab cakes, Baked Alaska ellie style (choc brownie on the bottom, mint choc chip ice cream and meringue on top! YUM!), Vietnamese spring rolls, then panning through the years... Quayle eggs and potatos, Gore green salad, and the most amazing homage to the electorate as a whole was Filet on toast. as in we're all toast, no matter who wins. Black and white cookies and a pitcher of Sangria rounded out the evening. It was seriously delicious. I know who my Miami caterer is, hands down.

The apartment is starting to get close to the idea of coming together possibly. I can see floor in theliving room, that's progress. My bedroom is nice and big, so no problems there, but I had a tad too much furniture for the rest of the place. but I'm working it. I am actually sitting at my beautiful wood desk you might remember.. and using it as a desk. what a novel idea. max is less enamored of the place full of boxes, bins, bags and stuff. But I think he'll like it once we settle it. I found his patch of sunshine for him agan today (it was blocked or gray outside for a day or so) so he should be happier. as long as there's food, max is pretty easy going. Just when I thought he hadn't had a seizure in a day or two he had one this morning. Gosh they're awful. I can so relate to why my poor housesitter was going crazy this summer when it first started. I wish I could do more for him that just hold him, but it seems to comfort him or at least make me think that.

Yes, I did start work. Nancy and I met on Monday before vigil for the movers. I have a good sized to-do list with another meeting this afternoon for which the sole purpose is to extend that list. Nancy, believing in me as she does, is leaving town for a week tomorrow. So week one of new employment, I'm on my own already. No problem. Medical billing here I come!

Some one asked me last night if I had any regrets on the big move. I said it was too early to tell yet. But I have to admit, watching the news of the new Obama presidency... I had a bit of twinge. What an exciting time to be in Washington. I came to DC during the Reagan years (oy, I'm old) but despite a Bush or two I did have the Clinton years. Washington is such a unique place... its hard to compare it to anything else. In many ways, that's what so interesting about Miami. It is soooo very different from anything I've ever remotely known. So here's to change for all of us! Good luck, Obama. You're going to need it. I think I have the easier transition, but wish me luck too!

Yeah! I have furniture, tv and internet all in the same apartment. Now this is progress. I have way way too much furniture but its fixable. I'm trying not to think about tThe movhe fact that I've been paying to store and move all this over stuffing but its only money, right? I'm making my way through. It all arrived at about 5:30 last night which meant it was 9:30 before they were done unloading. To help speed things along I was helping by unwrapping the many blankets and boxes that had been wrapped around furniture, breakables, etc. By the end of the night I was ready to amputate my back. Damn that's a touch way to make a living and I was merely unwrapping and rearranging a box or three. I've got a good bit of the kitchen unpacked. Not sure about this cute place. Looks good but with all my dishes, pots and pans -- there's no room for food. Hmmm. Maybe this is a message.

The movers put the extra bed together, which was very nice as this crowd didn't disassemble... but there's something slightly askew with how they did it. As in its WAY too high for any normal sleeper. I didn't hae th eheart to make them or me fix it last night. I'll find a way ...

Its exciting to have tv today since it is election day. I feel very out of touch and today would be a terrible day to be clueless! I'm still trying to figure out how to add photos. If anyone knows, please feel free to let me know!!!

back to my boxes... A successful election day to everyone!
Hannah

The beach!

After a fun evening of pumpkin carving last night with the young uns... today we went to the beach. How fun! Nancy and Ellie and I made a pilgrimage to Bicayne Bay and Crandon Park. Wow, how amazingly beautiful. We went into the water, although the Floridians claimed it was cold. sure, it was cool, but it warmed up. So then we went for a walk. They tried to kill me, I swear they did. It was so lovely and we saw tons of birds, jelly fish a new kind of windsurfer I'd never seen... and it was a glorious day. What ever this city may lack culturally, for a while the beauty will take its place. My legs are killing me but it was worth it. Now if I can just get out and do that every weekend or so... I'll be a beach beauty in no time... okay, well, Let's get realistic here.

Tonight we went to see the movie W. I wasn't impressed. It just wasn't compelling. Josh Brolin was great, a good cast, but when a topic is so familiar... ya really got to keep me attention or, well, I didn't nap but I could have!

Furniture supposedly comes in the next few days. Yeah for furniture. As my friend Gary said, college milk crates and cinder blocks with shelves would be a step up right now. Air beds are great things, but they're just not beds. Janet and Nancy keep offering for me to sleep at their house... but my boy, my apartment,.... I don't know, maybe its my weird pride.

Work starts Monday. I have a feeling that I have quite a bit to do. Big honking items on the to do list.... find a location, find a doctor, figure out insurance and medical billing. Ahhh, no problem.

Must go to sleep, a bit too much of paradise today.