Back in Bloomington, Back to Work

So we made it back to Bloomington at a reasonable hour on Saturday night. We left London, Ontario Saturday morning and drove along the Ontario Peninsula across into Michigan at Sarnia/Port Huron and then south to Indiana. Before leaving Canada I made sure to stop at a supermarket to buy some HP sauce and look for Cadbury Chocolate, which can't be found in the USA. I only found little chocolate bars but I got 1L of sauce for only about C$5.50, much cheaper than buying it from the British section here. Best of all, I noticed a little green tin in the chocolate milk section. Yes, it was Milo! I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure whether it's the real thing but it appears not to be that Singaporean stuff that tastes like Ovaltine.

I've been slow in posting because my computer is still dead. Today Cindy bought a new Macbook, something she'd been planning to do for months. So I'll be sharing this one for a while.

Niagara Falls

On our way to Toroto we had two choices of route, through Michigan or through Ohio and New York. We decided to do both and make it a round trip. So first we drove east through Ohio, stopping for lunch at Springfield. That night we stayed at Erie, Pennsylvania, on Lake Erie.

The next morning it was raining buckets but we made it through New York state and across the border into Canada in just a couple of hours. Once across we made a short detour to Niagara Falls. Once we found a park and started walking around, the weather cleared up dramatically and the light became much better for photos.

Conference

A little while ago I submitted an abstract of a paper for a conference. It was accepted, so I'll be speaking at this conference in Toronto. One of my prefoessor's has been advising me and a couple of weeks ago arranged for me to give a practice talk to a few dept members who were still around in the dead of summer. There were some helpful suggestions that I'm just finishing incorporating now.

The conference is on Friday but I've decided to drive up to Toronto, which means leaving tomorrow. Cindy's coming too, so we can share the driving. Still, it's 2 000 km round trip, which with will drive in 4 days. We'll be hiring a car, because Fenry has no air-conditioning (and might not make such a long trip).

Everything was all planned out. But then, this afternoon my computer died. Not a little hard-disk failure like last time but a complete and utter disaster. Luckily I learnt from last time and I've been backing up my documents far more regularly, on both my external hard drive and my iPod. I am now bringing my files up to date so I can print everything out and give my presentation off hard copies.

Something to Contemplate

A comment by Baden on Cameron's blog recently has reminded me of something I've been meaning to write down before I forget. Baden mentioned that he liked asking people how they described animal noises in different languages. This reminded me of my mother's ongoing quest to learn how to say "belly-button" in as many languages as possible. I must admit that I've been known to help out at times.

So far we have:

English: navel
French: nombril (or, more formally, ombilic)
German: Bauchnabel
Greek: ὀμϕαλός (omphalos)
Hindi: sundi
Indonesian: pusar
Italian: ombelico
Javanese: udel
Latin: umbilicus
Malayalam: pokkil

I guess a straightforward word like that would be easy to look up in dictionaries, unlike Baden's onomatopoeia, but that would be cheating.

Unpacking

The unpacking isn't too much of a chore, because of the air-conditioning. But moving the last of my stuff out of the old place hard and cleaning it will be worse. Just a few minutes in the humidity is enough for me to be soaked in sweat.

I think I underestimated the bits and pieces I'd left there yesterday. I brought a full car load by myself today and I think there'll be another half a load for me to get tomorrow when I go to clean the place.

Living in Sin

Cindy and I moved into the new apartment today.

We had spent the evening packing stuff into boxes and plastic shopping bags. Then this morning we got up early (well, 8 is early for us) to collect the keys and start moving stuff to the new place. We did two car loads of small things ourselves in the morning. Then Cindy went and borrowed a van from her department, and a few friends turned up to help us with the big things. My desk was the biggest and heaviest so we did that first. Everything was much easier after that.

Americans don't move fridges. They belong to the house or apartment so there's always one there when you arrive. You don't get as much choice but there's certainly a lot less work this way. Because Bloomington is a college town, everyone is moving right now - you see a U-Haul truck every couple of blocks. In fact, people are leaving in so much of a hurry that they often don't have time to try to sell off their old furniture and you can find perfectly good stuff just sitting out on the street. A few weeks ago I got an old sturdy book-case and today we were lucky enough to find a very clean-looking sofa in front of my building, right when we have the van to move it. So now there's a bit more furniture to help fill this much bigger apartment.

We stopped at around 2 pm after we got all the big things and the heavy things like books. That's almost everything now; I have just a few bits and pieces to collect when I go back to clean up.

The new apartment is not just bigger than the old one, it's much nicer. There's a lot more windows, tons more cupboard space in the kitchen. The best part is that there is a dishwasher and central heating and cooling (that the landlord pays for)!

If I haven't already emailed you my new address and you need it, let me know.

I'll have to buy myself something cotton

Today's my second anniversary of living in the USA. Just like last year, it does feel like I've been here for a long time, but it's hard to believe that I haven't been back for two years!

The biggest thing on my mind at the moment is how much stuff I've accumulated in that time. When I came here I had only my suitcases (albeit the maximum the airline would allow) and a small box of books I shipped over. It's hard to believe how much stuff I now have. Slowly but surely I bought various pieces of furniture, most of it necessary to live comfortably; and millions of books, most of them necessary for my classes.

Preparing to Move

After two years living on Lincoln St (such an American name!) I'm moving to a new apartment later this week. At the moment my apartment is full of Cindy's junk, so I'll be glad to be moving into a two-bedroom with a much bigger living room, so we can spread out a little.

We're having to move in a little earlier than expected because Cindy has to go on a work trip, so now we're hurriedly phoning everyone to make arrangements to get in to the place earlier, turn on the electricity etc.

I've already helped some friends move so I've got them and others coming to help carry some of the heavy stuff. The worst part is, though, that the forecast for Thursday is 37˙C. And in Bloomington you can be sure it won't be a dry 37, it'll be like a sauna!