St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

As I mentioned before, St. Patrick's Day is one of the most celebrated holidays in Savannah. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but at some point a rather large Irish population took up residence in Savannah, and they've been celebrating ever since.

Some facts about the celebration:

• The parade has been run 186 times since its' inception.
• They have a grand marshal of the parade, who is selected by the St. Patrick's Day parade committee.
• A majority of the schools in the area close as there are quite a few students that are in the parade.
• Many of the more well-known Irish families will march in the parade as a group.
• The parade's planning and organization goes on for nearly the entire year through.

St. Patrick's Day coverage on the TV started with the Catholic Mass at St. John the Baptist church in downtown Savannah, which also is the starting point for the parade afterward. This year, they also had some church members who were attending from a parish in Ireland. The father giving the service was making jokes about the difficulty they were having in getting there due to inclement weather and flights.

Once the service was over, the parade started about 15 minutes later. I decided to watch it on television instead of going down there, as it would have been a huge hassle to get down there and find parking since almost all of the main streets were blocked off for the parade itself.

The channel I was watching had two commentators, both of whom have been attending the parade for quite a long time. They were actually set up with their booth right on the parade route, so that they could converse back and forth with the marchers as they went by.  The weather was overcast for most of the parade, but the rain didn't come until after the parade had long been over.

Some of the highlights of the parade itself:

• There was a man marching in his 80th parade. He is 96 years old.
• There were marching bands from all over Georgia, Florida, and even one from Virginia.
• There was a float for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who were in uniform as well.
• A majority of the Rangers stationed at Hunter Army Air Field marched, along with both their outgoing and incoming commanding officers.
• Wells Fargo had their stagecoach, along with Clydesdale horses pulling it.
• Based on the commentary, it seemed like the broadcasters had already started drinking despite the early hour.

Once the parade was over, the party pretty much continued the rest of the evening in downtown, with nearly all the main streets remaining closed until the following morning. For a lot of people in the town, it really seemed like St. Patrick's Day was the start to their weekend, despite it being on a Wednesday. It was a very interesting experience, and maybe someday I will have to go to the parade itself.

Weekend Thoughts for 1/9/2010

I had hoped to go out and explore Murray and its surrounding areas this week, since we're back from the holidays and there was not going to be any rain or snow until Thursday. Well, cold is officially a weather condition in my book now. All week, the temperature has not gone above 25 degrees, dropping below 10 on numerous occasions.

When we read that the average weather for Murray was going to be similar to California's for winter, we were looking forward to the fact that we weren't going to be in an area that was super cold, or that would get a ton of snow. This nice Arctic front has decided otherwise. On to some thoughts...

• I am amazed at how much money I save at Walmart. I've written before how I know understand why people like it so much, but it is still a surprise to me when I go shopping.
• I just finished reading a really good book about the history of In-n-Out Burger. An excellent read, both for the topic and in general. You can find it here. 
• It snowed here on Thursday, as a part of that wonderful Arctic front. We got about 1-2", at most. In Kentucky, this causes the cancellation of schools everywhere. And the ice related to it on the following day does the same thing. It was an interesting process to watch. But they were definitely ready for it. 
• RC Cola is much more popular down here than anywhere else I have ever lived. Which is wonderful. And Walmart had another version: Cherry RC. Which is also wonderful.
• We had Kentucky Fried Chicken a few days ago. Which tastes pretty much the same here in Kentucky that it does anywhere else we have been. And no, the sign does not say "Fried Chicken" outside the place.
  

Part of the way I've been staying busy since arriving in Kentucky is to write. Since there hasn't really been a whole lot to write about here yet due to this lovely weather, I've actually been writing a second blog about baseball. You can find it here if you're interested.

Weekend Thoughts for 12/20/09

We've been in Murray for about a week now, and we've just begun to explore.

• There is no Starbucks here. Which is excellent. Fidalgo Bay Coffee is better. The locals all swear by it, to the point where they actually have a setup in the hospital Brynn's working at.
• Hardee's IS NOT the same as Carl's Jr. It was truly disappointing when we went in and found no Western Bacon Cheeseburger to order. A Thickburger is not the same thing. Period.
• They are not kidding about Southern Hospitality. Everyone we have met has been extremely nice and welcoming. 
• The city, while highly intertwined with the university, almost has a feel like the college is hardly there. It remains to be seen if this is related to the fact that they are not in session right now.
• We are less than 20 minutes to Tennessee, we found. And we've even had wine in Tennessee as well already.
• If I haven't mentioned it before, Murray is situated in a dry county. That means only alcohol can be served at restaurants larger than 100 seating capacity, in this case.
• As a result of being a dry county, when you cross into Tennessee, and the non-dry county that is the first over the border, they know you can't get alcohol in Kentucky, and advertise that they are the first stop for alcohol on that side of the line.

We are both looking forward to being home next week for Christmas, and spending time with our family and friends back home.

Our Time in South Haven

As our time in South Haven has drawn to a close, I thought it would be a good time to recap some of what we've seen and done here in Michigan.

Good food knows no single location.

• We found excellent Mexican food in Michigan, which I never would have expected.
• We also found some really good Chinese food in Mattawan, which was also a bit of a surprise.

Neither does poor food.

• We definitely found some "interesting" definitions of what passed for Chinese food.

We have really seen some of the small-town experience.

• High school football here is not only prevalent, but an experience which dominates the local towns.
• This was the first place we had lived where we had a really large group of trick-or-treaters.
• We saw some of the emptiest shops ever for a Black Friday. Whether or not it was related to the economy, or to it being Michigan remains to be seen.

Hitting a deer is apparently not as unusual of an occurrence as it should be.

• You would think that this would be a very unusual occurrence, since there are towns all over this area. Apparently not so much.
• Also it is amazing how much dead deer can really continue to smell. The car will still smell like it even now, almost 2 months later.

People are different elsewhere, but not in a good or bad way.

• We have met some of the nicest, most welcoming people we have ever seen.
• People are generally just expecting to be treated the way that they want to be treated.

So what have we learned so far?

• IT is truly amazing how much free time you have when you are not planning a wedding or a cross-country move.
• It is also amazing how little there can be to do in a town when you don't have a built-in social structure there.
• Travel is as interesting as the next place to explore.
• When we went exploring the areas around South Haven, we really enjoyed what we found.
• Once we had explored the majority of the areas within a reasonable distance, we quickly found ourselves borde and not really feeling too much adventure out of it.

I think that one of the biggest things we have learned is that we have lived in large cities for far too long at this point to be able to live in a small town for very long. Or at least a small town that is not very close to a larger city. I am hopeful that we will find out some more things when we get to Kentucky.

Black Friday Shopping

It has been a tradition that every year, I seem to go out into the masses on Black Friday, and take my life in my hands in search of a great deal and an interesting story. This one was no different than the others; stories to be found everywhere.

The Chicago news stations were covering the traffic outside the mall in Schaumburg. This is a HUGE mall, with tons of shopping on the surrounding streets as well. The place was literally causing traffic problems onto the freeways nearby, and this was a normal occurrence. Needless to say, we won't ever being going there for Black Friday shopping.

We started at the Walmart in South Haven. It's a 24 hour Wal-Mart, so when we were there last night around 9ish, they had begun to put out all of their doorbusters. However, they managed to keep people from buying them by having them shrink wrapped onto pallets, and with paper signs that said "Cannot be purchased until 5 am". I am sure that there was at least one customer who tried it, hoping to get the great price early.

We wandered in there around 8 am, as we were not getting up early just to look around. There really weren't any deals we were looking for, and figured that would let some of the more insane crowd do their thing, and allow us to look around a little easier. We were right.

This Wal-mart was different. As we walked around, there were still a lot of the door-busters in stock, sitting in the aisles. The customer load was heavier than usual for this particular store, but still much quieter than we were accustomed to for a Black Friday-type holiday. When we got to the front, there were cashiers waiting to help people, actively looking in fact. A very unusual sight.

After we finished at Wal-Mart, we headed for Kalamazoo. Almost every major shop is there, and along one street (Westnedge Ave). We wanted to get an electric frying pan, similar to the one we have been using here in our rental, and knew that we had gift cards to Bed, Bath and Beyond leftover from the wedding. They were fairly busy, but definitely a manageable crowd. We got our items there, and moved onto Kohl's.

Kohl's must have been having some of the best sales around, because the place was insanely busy. The line to purchase things wrapped from the registers, down the aisle, took a left turn toward the back of the store, and went all the way down that aisle as well. Realistically, there were probably about 100-150 people in line just on this one side of the store. And another line almost as long was on the other side of the store as well. Crazy.

We went to the Toys'R'Us across the street, and found them to be picked clean. They literally had areas of their store that looked like they had been robbed. There was nothing on the shelves in these areas. 

We also went to the mall, where they had a Sears (not super busy), a JCPenney (which was just a sea of people), and a Macy's (which appeared busy as well). Not really finding much there as well, we went to Best Buy.

Best Buy was super busy, and had also taken a couple of tricks out of the Disney guide to hiding how long the line is. They had cordoned off a portion of their appliance department, and had the line running through the refrigerators, where it couldn't easily be seen. It appeared, as you walked into the store, that there was hardly anyone in line at all. Very sneaky.

Target was one of our last stops, and it was interesting to see the difference location makes. I had talked to my sister earlier, who had been shopping back home in California. Apparently she had bought a dvd player for a co-worker, that she had to nearly fight to keep once she had grabbed it. Meanwhile, back in Michigan, almost 7 hours after they had opened, there were about 10 of the same dvd player still sitting on the counter, unpurchased.

We did manage to find a couple of items we were looking for (both for ourselves and as gifts), and are no worse for the wear. And also we didn't get up as early as some of the crazy people!

Weekend Thoughts for 11/1/09

So, among the number of things that I figured I would experience while here in Michigan, I did not include large dead animals in the road. While coming home on Friday night, we were driving on a 2 lane road. As we crossed over the top of a small hill, shortly on the other side was a full sized deer carcass in the middle of our lane. At this point, we have three choices, none of which were particularly good: Swerve to the right, and potentially go into a ditch. Swerve to the left, and possibly get into a head-on collision. Try to pass over the carcass straight on, and hope nothing too bad happens. We chose option #3. The car is fine (or so it seems anyway), we are fine. The car is going to be checked out later this week to be sure, but other than the fact that even after a wash (with a full undercarriage), it still smells like dead deer at times. Hopefully when we take it in, they will find nothing wrong or potentially to happen later either.

Some other observations from this week...

• We had our fair share of trick-or-treaters last night, and went through 7 bags of candy! At one point, we had gone through 5 bags in a little over an hour, so we had to get 2 more. I think it's possible we may have needed more, but since it was dark and we turned off the light.
• Best costumes from last night: A family dressed as Mario (Dad), The Princess (Mom), and Luigi (Son).
  
• It was refreshing to see only children trick-or-treating. As I've gotten older, I have come to have more of a problem with teenagers (or older) doing a lot of trick-or-treating. But that probably stems from the most common costumes I get from teenagers: "I'm a high school student", "I'm a teenager", etc. It's one thing to go around with your younger brother/sister/cousin, etc. But if you're 16 or 17, running around without even attempting a costume, and collecting candy because you want free candy, that doesn't fly with me.
• The other thing which I hadn't really seen before was this: Most of the parents were following their kids around in their cars. When the kids would reach the end of the street, they would get back in the car and drive to the next street. I'm not sure if this is because it was fairly cold here, or if it was because there were distinct possibilities that a majority of houses would not be passing out candy, but it was different for sure.
  
• When we gave candy to one group of kids, Brynn noticed that they had toothbrushes in their bags. Apparently one of the local dentists was giving out candy AND tootbrushes to all his trick-or-treaters. Awesome.
• We went to Kalamazoo on Friday night to try out a brewery with one of Brynn's co-worker. We went to the Olde Peninsula Brewpub, which unfortunately does not have a website of their own. So here's their group on Facebook, for those that are interested. The food was excellent, and their beers weren't bad, but it was hard to tell since the one we really wanted to try was not available at this time.
• It was surprising how enjoyable it is to just walk around and browse in a bookstore. We were in Barnes and Noble, and actually didn't buy anything. But it is a lot more fulfilling to browse in a bookstore than it is to look online. Although the prices are better online to be sure.
• We enjoyed half-price pizza night here at Maria's. We'd been there before, and the food had been good, so we couldn't pass up an $8 16" pizza with 2 toppings. And good quality pizza too. Seems somewhat unlikely to be found some of the other places we've lived before.
• We carved our pumpkins this week (and they'll disappear at the end of this week as well). It was actually the first time I had carved a pumpkin that I could remember. I'm told that I carved one before, but that I wasn't very appreciative of all the goop and mess that goes with it. I found that my opinion on that part of it hasn't changed, but that it was still a lot of fun.
• We were also told that we "did our pumpkins the old-fashioned way" by one of the trick-or-treaters. Apparently stencils are considered to be required to carve a pumpkin. At least according to 5th graders (my best guess).
  
• The Bears won today, which is good, because they needed to beat Cleveland, and beat them severely. They can't lose to bad teams if they want to do anything in January.
• Getting ready to watch the Packers/Vikings game, and Brynn's take pretty much summed up my opinion of it: "Brett Favre blah blah, Brett Favre blah blah blah..." Looks like he may win though, which is also not great. This would be a game where we would both love to have both teams get a loss, but alas, not possible...

Weekend Thoughts for 10/24/09

I am still adjusting to the concept of "weather". On Friday we had a blistering rain storm, with 20-30 mph winds. At least in the morning. Until it got sunny around 11 or so. At which point it stayed sunny for about 1-2 hours, before the rain returned (without the wind). Then around 3 or 4 the wind kicked back up too. Until about 5:30 when we went out and it had gone back to a sprinkle at most. I've lived in areas with storms before, but obviously nothing quite like these.

• It is amazing how much you take it for granted that you have access to services when you live in a city. Something as simple as getting a passport photo. When you're in a small town, it becomes much more clear that there are not necessarily a lot of places to get things done like this.
• Watching TV earlier, there was a commercial for a "breakthrough deodorant replacement". Never need to buy deodorant again, it claimed. And while it may or may not work, I find it a little unusual that the doctor who was speaking on behalf of it was Dr. Dave E. David. Can't make this stuff up.
• We went out exploring this morning, and decided to stop for breakfast in a restaurant in Douglas (about 20 minutes north). Our main reason for this choice at the time was that the parking lot seemed full. Well worth the stop. They had a breakfast buffet on weekends for $10 a person, with some of the best bacon we've ever had.
• From the placement advertising (a surprisingly good idea it seems), we found that there was an indoor flea market in Saugatuck, not far away. It was actually very interesting to go through. They had a large building (I think in this case it was a barn), in which they rented out small areas on a permanent basis to local people with stuff to sell. While it was interesting to see what some people valued things at (a lot of them a little too much), there wasn't a whole lot we thought would be worth buying.
• Also back in Douglas was the Saugatuck Brewing Company. They had some excellent beers and one of the best environments inside their bar that I've ever seen. Very cool place it seemed.
• Next door was an antique mall, and a rather large one at that. It is a bit unnerving to see things from your own childhood for sale in an antique mall. But some of the other cool things we saw included a Rand McNally map book with maps (or the book itself) from 1890, quite a few copies of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, and a surprisingly large amount of stained glass. It was interesting, but it seems that some people had literally called old crap from their house as "antique". But if someone buys the stuff, then it doesn't really matter.
• The Bears play the Bengals tomorrow, and hopefully they're going to not suck like they did last week. I can handle them losing to teams that are better than them. What I can't handle is when they do stupid stuff that costs them during the game (like penalties and red-zone interceptions)

Related Posts:
Weekend Thoughts for 10/18/09
Weekend Thoughts for 10/5/09
Weekend Thoughts for 9/28/09

Wine Tasting in Southwest Michigan

This weekend is the first full weekend we have really had to just explore the area. All of the previous three, we have either been out of town, or had to do things to get situated here in South Haven. Brynn had mentioned that she really wanted to go wine tasting, so we decided that we would go ahead and explore the area.

There had been quite a few signs on the side of the road for different wineries, so I set out to find some information about the local wineries. Since wineries tend to rely on some form of marketing, we figured there would be a fair amount of information online. I was not disappointed.

After looking at the map, we decided to head for Baroda. Baroda is a small town about 30-40 minutes southeast of South Haven. We didn't have any specific wineries in mind to go to, but noticed that the map had about 4 or 5 of them in the area. So we plugged the downtown area of Baroda into the GPS, and figured we would find wineries in the GPS after we got there. We drove across some of the most scenic areas we have seen yet. Rolling hills, farm houses, it was all very pretty. Until we got to downtown Baroda.

Baroda, has been hit REALLY hard by the downturn in the economy. The downtown was only about 2 or 3 blocks long to start with, and in that space, was probably about 3 businesses that appeared to still be open. We quickly plugged in the wineries, and headed for the first one.

• Domaine Berrien: We were extremely surprised to find that the parking lot was almost completely full. The tasting room was no different. Not having seen very many people since we had gotten into town, this was more than a small shock.
• Lemon Creek Winery: As we drove up to this tasting room, the crowds were just as large. Apparently wine tasting is one of the most popular things to do in southwest Michigan.
  
• Our favorite, by far, was Round Barn Winery/Brewery/Distillery. We had tasted back at Free Run Cellars, which is owned by the same group, so we could try them for free. Great choice. Not only do they make a few solid wines, but they also make a very smooth vodka, and some very good beers as well.
  

We knew coming into our day that we would need to check our pre-conceived notions about wine if we were to enjoy this at all. We'd lived and worked in the Sonoma Valley, and drank more than our fair share of wine. That said, the wines we tried were fair, but not great overall. The scenery we saw while driving definitely made the trip that much better. We're looking forward to doing some more exploring soon.

Local Cuisine of South Haven

We've been here for 3 full weeks, and have had time to get a feel for our dining options here in Michigan.

• Italian, not surprisingly, is HUGE here. There are only about 40 or so places to get food here in South Haven (which includes places like McDonald's and Taco Bell), and around 10 of them are Italian restaurants. We ate at one of the Italian restaurants near our house, and it was excellent. We would definitely go back there again, and they also offer gelato as well!
• Feeling a bit more ambitious, we tried the only Mexican restaurant in town. We've lived in a few different areas where Mexican is one of the dominant cuisines, so we feel pretty good that we can tell good Mexican food from bad. This was really, really good Mexican food.
• After having such a good experience with the Mexican food, I figured it was time to try what passed for Chinese food. MISTAKE. It's a good thing we didn't try this before the Mexican food. It was, quite honestly, the worst Chinese food we have ever had. The only food that was tasty at all, unfortunately, was the fried foods. Ugh.
• We also had pizza this week, and could definitely tell we were near Chicago. On one side of the pizza, sausage and mushrooms. On the other, pepperoni and green olives, my wife's favorite. Throw in that the pizza was cut into squares rather than slices, and it definitely reminded me of my favorite pizzeria in Chicago.

I think what we've learned is that we need to remember where we are. Certain foods are just not very likely to be good in certain areas. We still will have to be ambitious from time to time, but also wary as well.

Weekend Thoughts

We spent the weekend in California for Dave and Audrey's wedding. It was a whirlwind weekend, and congrats to both of them on their marriage.

• Having lived in the Bay Area my whole life, it is a bit annoying having to drive 2+ hours to go to the airport. Yes, there are closer ones than Chicago-Midway, but if I have to fly from that airport to Chicago-Midway, why bother?
• We received our wedding photos over the weekend. It's going to take a while to get through all of them, since there is over 1500 of them. But Brynn posted some to Facebook, and I'm hoping to post a few in a future post here as well.
• I can't decide whether the toll roads in Illinois and Indiana are nice or annoying. They are very empty, very little traffic because of the tolls. But the majority of them have speed limits of either 45 or 55 mph, as opposed to freeways which may have up to 70 mph. Then the fact that the tolls are $.50, $1, and $.60 in some places, just seems really strange.
• I have only been gone from California driving for 2 weeks, and I can tell you I don't miss it. The drivers in general are unbelievably bad. I don't know how I put up with it for that long.
• While waiting in the airport in Oakland, this guy was hanging out waiting for his flight. Talk about a flashback. If you're not sure, this is why he's famous.
• It was a bit strange being in the office at work, especially since I'm fairly certain that will most likely be the last trip into the office as an employee. It was definitely good to see everyone though.
  

Adjusting to Working at Home

I have been working remotely from outside my office for the past couple of weeks. I have never had a job where I could do this, so I figured that there would be some adjustments I would need to make mentally to work from home every day. Definitely hit that one on the nose.

• I have created a computer set up which is similar to the layout in my cubicle back at home. I'm using a 26" LCD TV, connected to my laptop computer. My laptop is a Mac, so it is setup with a trackpad for a mouse and a smaller keyboard. Since I work in accounting, I am used to using a full size keyboard with keypad, and a 2-button mouse to do a lot of my work.I was able to get a keyboard (with keypad) from my father-in-law, and a 2 button mouse to connect to it. I had tried using the laptop keyboard and mouse the first couple of days, and realized just how much I needed those features. My printer is connected as well in case I need to print something here.
• While this helps that I don't have to take time to "get" to my office, it has blurred the dividing line between my work and my home quite a bit. It has helped that I have to login to the network for my company to have any access to my work, but it is still different.
  
• Working from a home office causes another issue I had not expected. By not being in the office with my co-workers, there is very little inter-personal interaction during my day. While a lot of the conversations I was having with my co-workers were not always particularly intense or necessarily even work-related, there's something to be said about the day-to-day pleasantries that happen when you see someone 5 days a week. This I expected. The part I didn't was how fast it would become noticeable to me.
• The thing I have found most interesting is the fact that, in spite of all the distractions that exist at home that are not available at an office, I find that my productivity doesn't seem to suffer particularly. I am still getting the same amount of work done, and in the same timeframe as before. If anything, I actually feel like I am more aware of lapses in productivity, and work through them sooner. It's been rather strange.

We will have to see how these adjustments go as more time progresses.

TV and Other Thoughts

We are headed back to California for a friend's wedding this morning, so just some quick thoughts today....

• The house phone in our rented home keeps ringing every few hours. When I answer it, there's no one on the line. Or it's a telemarketer. I'm not sure why I keep answering the phone, since I don't even know what the phone number is. Probably better stop.
• Saw this on Monday, and the best description I came up with was that Vanilla Ice is now the mayor of Munchkinland. Once the music hit, I was convinced that I must be hallucinating.
• I was watching some TV today, and they were advertising the upcoming Chicago Bulls basketball season. Which made me realize that I will probably be seeing a lot of this guy if I watch any basketball this year. Which seems to me like a good reason to not watch basketball this year.
• I also saw a commercial for a promotion that US Cellular is doing out here. It's called BatterySwap, and it is actually a very interesting promotion. The basics are that if your cell phone battery is dead, just go into one of their stores, and swap it for a new one. No cost. I wonder if anyone else is going to do this soon.

There's a post scheduled for Friday morning, but probably nothing until Tuesday after that one.

The Weather

I said I was likely to see some real weather at some point here in Michigan, and today I was definitely not disappointed. Last night we had some thunderstorms, and today the wind (along with some rain earlier) are definitely kicking up.

Apparently, we are at the end of this cell, but there are more coming in the next day as well.


Those are the waves we can see from the shore of Lake Michigan. Let me repeat. Those are the waves ON A LAKE. Realistically, the wind is probably blowing about 40-50 mph at this point.






The same lighthouse I took a picture of a few days ago. At one point, the waves were hiding the majority of lighthouse from our view.







Even the seagulls refuse to fly. Never a good sign.







More of the waves. Surreal actually.






When we decided to come to Michigan, I figured we would get some poor weather, including some snow. What I was not expecting was 40+ mph winds. Something new every day here...

Saturday Thoughts

It is amazing to me how fast a person can adapt to their new surroundings. We have been in South Haven for slightly more than a week now, and there are little things that I am already taking for granted.

• When we came back in from running errands today, I forgot to lock the car. My hands were full of bags from the errands, and it must have slipped my mind. About 2 hours later, I was walking by the door to the car, and wondered if I had locked it. I checked, and then locked the car. In our last apartment, I would have been concerned about 2 minutes after I got out of the car, if not sooner. Apparently I feel safer in this house than I did in the last one. (Not a huge surprise there).
• I am watching a San Francisco Giants home game on tv today, which started at 1 PM local. Which is 4 PM here. Yet in my brain I am convinced that it is still early afternoon, and that I should be hungry for lunch, and not dinner. I assume this has more to do with the outside light level than anything.
  
• We ventured down to the mall in Benton Harbor earlier today. This was a tad bit depressing. About every 3rd store front was either closed, or vacated entirely. I think we are getting a better idea of how the downturned economy is affecting people. We were in a bit of a bubble living in the Bay Area, as I cannot honestly remember seeing very many empty stores at our nearby malls there.
• As we drove through other parts of Benton Harbor, we came to the conclusion that the town had been hit very hard by the economy. I haven't really ever seen houses boarded up and abandoned. But here they were, every few blocks or so. As we continued through town, we determined it was time to leave. Just did not feel very safe in the part of town we were in.
• I am very interested to see what South Haven is going to be like come November. Nearly every sign we have passed for a tourist-type attraction has stated that it closes on October 30th, and will reopen on April 15th.
• I had this theory when we arrived that if we had a few of the premium movie channels on our satellite TV, that we wouldn't need or want Netflix because the movie channels would offer us so many recent movies. They appear to have been offering them, but the thing I forgot is that there's no accounting for taste necessarily. While it appears to be an interesting movie, I am not really in the mood to see Wanted, but that's my option tonight.
  

Ruminations and Observations

Not too much today, since I worked....

• I have slowly started to learn about this "weather" that I had always heard about in California. During today, it went from foggy to partly cloudy, then overcast and then rainy, and finished up humid and overcast. The humidity reminded me of Hawaii.
  
• Having scoped out the competition, I can really see how it is that Walmart comes in and blows the doors off of local grocery stores. Nearly everything we priced out was 50 cents to a dollar cheaper. While there's something to be said about how they run their business, they aren't kidding about being the best prices around.
• There's something very satisfying about going into a used book store and just looking around. I walked to downtown and made it to Black River Books, the used book store here. The store is very nice, and I am looking forward to spending some more time there.

Around South Haven

We walked around South Haven tonight, and came away with a lot of observations...

• It is so amazing that the beach and the lake are only 3 blocks from our house. Walking on the beach here, I can see us going to the beach quite a bit until the weather turns.
• We walked up through the harbor area, and it looks like it was built recently. Although I am guessing it was not. Very well maintained. I guess it is a bit sad that I expect things to be in disarray.
  
• The downtown area is so quaint. Even though the majority of the stores were closed when we were there, you can tell that they will be interesting to explore on a different day.
• The movie theater is a definite throwback. Three screens, we are hoping to go see a movie tomorrow. Probably Inglourious Basterds.
  
• It is a bit surreal coming from a highly populated area to being here now. We walked home from downtown South Haven (about 6 blocks or so), and we were the only people on the streets once we left the main street in downtown. Reminded me of walking around at 3 in the morning, except that it was 8 pm.
• There is a rather unique store not far from downtown, that appears to sell all sorts of unusual items. In the window were: a gas pump, and a pedestrian walk signal, among other things.
  
• Just another reminder that we are in the Eastern time zone: When a television show states that it is live, it actually IS live. Unlike on the West Coast, Dancing with the Stars was live. We are rooting for this guy, since one of my co-workers knows his mom. And he seems pretty cool too.

I don't assume to think that all the assignments we take will be like this, but this is a great start, and gives me confidence that it will be good.

A Full Day in Southwest Michigan

So after a full day here in Southwest Michigan, here's what I've found.



This is the view from our driveway. In the distance, that's Lake Michigan, not the skyline. It is approximately a 1/2 mile walk to the beach, and also about a 1 mile walk to the downtown area of South Haven. Pretty sweet.





This is the view from said beach. Should be interesting when the cold weather shows up starting sometime in October/November, but it should be very nice in the meantime.








This, apparently, will be my arch nemesis at some point. For those that are not familiar (which I was not when I got here), this is a snow stick. It's main uses are: 1) to mark where the fire hydrant is for snow plows, and 2) to tell you how high the snow is currently. Guess I'll find out how well it works at some point.





Other observations from today:

1. We really are in a very sparsely populated area. We went to Target this morning around 11, and the place felt deserted. Granted, I am used to the mass insanity that is any retail store in the Bay Area, but even still it seemed odd.
2. Super Walmart is growing on me. Again, granted that I would not ever go back into the one in Mountain View because it is so busy, but out here, the place is huge and wide open, clean, and not very busy.
3. I'm not sure it would matter if it was growing on me, since there are really only 2 places I can get groceries here in South Haven: Super Walmart, and the Village Market Food Center. I will have to check out the latter at some point, but the prices at Super Walmart are so much cheaper it shocked me.
4. Today was one of the few times in recent months that I have been able to just sit and relax on a weekend day. I had forgotten how nice it was.
5. Being on Eastern Standard time is a bit of a change. I have lived my whole life in Pacific Standard, and as such you take for granted certain things. Like being able to watch football on Sunday at 10 am, 1 pm, and 5:30 pm. Not out East. It's at 1 pm, 4 pm, and 8:30 pm here. I found myself during the 1/4 pm game wondering why I was hungry, as I thought it was too early. Except it wasn't. It was already approaching dinner time.
6. It was nice being able to run errands in the morning, and get back in time to watch the games right after lunch.
   
7. I am going to have to get used to seeing "weather", as in real weather. That picture above was taken this afternoon around 2 pm, and by 7:30 it was raining. Not too heavily, but enough to wet the ground for sure.

Tomorrow will be my first day in Michigan working from home, and my wife's first day at her new hospital. Should be interesting, since it is a much smaller hospital than she's worked in previously.

Travel Observations - Day 3

From the road to Cedar Rapids, Iowa...

• Nebraska looks surprisingly similar from one end of the state to the other. I spent about an hour and a half reading, looking up from my book about every 15 minutes or so. It really didn't matter when, because it was usually some version of corn fields.
• Cue Eric to make a joke about this.
  
• Apparently, the Conoco in North Platte is trying all things to get some extra business. Picture to follow, but on the giant neon sign out front, they advertise that they have "the best looking cashiers". Didn't go in to find out if there was truth in advertising. I'm guessing it may be better that way.
  
• Football is HUGE in the Midwest. While this was not a surprise, it was a bit unusual to see 4 different sports writers picks for Friday night's High School football games. (All 10 of them).
• Iowa is much more scenic than I was expecting. I was essentially expecting more of Nebraska, and was pleasantly surprised to find miles and miles of rolling hills, and generally more people settled along the highway.
• Iowa also has two versions of a highway rest area: A standard rest area, and a "modern" rest area. The key differences: "Modern" rest areas have new amenities such as restrooms, a visitor information kiosk, and Wi-Fi. Standard rest areas are pretty much just a larger shoulder to pull off and stop the car in. There are no bathrooms, or really anything for that matter.
  
• Cedar Rapids seems to be a very nice city. The only thing that is a bit confusing is that, while they follow a standard grid plan for laying out their downtown streets, they use numbered streets in both directions. That's correct, this accurately shows the intersection of 1st st., and 1st ave. Strange.

Tomorrow is the last day of driving (thankfully), and we will be in Michigan by the end of the day.