Any Mayo with that?

Strangely enough the things of note in these few days are all by some body of water. I guess living by the beach technically means most things could, but that aside, it's rather an appropriate title.

Thursday night we went for what was supposed to be a lab dinner to say goodbye to a visitor from a collaborating group, but turned out to only be a handful of us. It was down at a beautifully set restaurant called Caps on the Water, which is situated on the intracoastal waterway that runs from Virginia(?) down to the bottom of Florida. True natives of the area call it "the ditch" and us beach-residents have to cross one of 4 bridges to get off San Pablo Island in order to rejoin the land lubbers over the other side and go to work. I guess it makes the geography easier to understand as there isn't much of a choice on how to leave! Anyway, the restaurant was all the way down at the other end of the island so I actually didn't have to cross any bridge but instead got to experience an amazing drive down through the countryside (if you can call anything but England the countryside - sounds weird over here) with only the dunes separating me from the beach and the ocean. I guess if I ever need to just get out and go for a drive that would be where I would choose to go. The restaurant was pretty good food, but it's the location that you pay for really. It was also lots of fun getting to spend time with the guys from work outside of the lab.

I had never truly experienced a dawn or sunrise. I am a night owl and can stay up until late but have never been up for sunrise. On the few occasions when I have been up before the dawn I've never been in a good place to actually see it. But all that changed... I got an email from Labor-Day-Weekend-David with a request to be the photographer while he proposed to his girlfriend! He managed to weave enough of a web to convince her to come to the beach where he then proposed to her in the water, with me lying in the dunes camera in hand and as disguised as I could manage (sandy coloured coat and hat with sunglasses!!). I got up Friday morning to suss out the situation and see my first dawn. I've got some nice pics up on my wall now  as they turned out pretty well. Saturday morning rolled around and I managed to get to the beach and see where they were. I got some snaps and then the special moment arrived and they moved into a better location where I could get some really good ones to remember it by. But after one of the many excited hugs that Laura gave to David she turned her head and looked right at me! I was busted! I legged it out of there as fast as I could go hoping that she didn't know who it was, or that the surprise was spoiled. Turns out she had spotted me a while earlier (I'm not really that good at hiding when I didn't want to get right into the sea oats amongst the ants in the dunes!) but hadn't said anything. They both came over a little later and I gave them the photos which they got to show their family. The pictures were a great memory for them - they got some official engagement ones later but I guess nothing can replace the moment a boy proposes to his girl.

So what else is water related? Well despite getting up early and not having a lie-in I went off down to Orlando to the Temple with the other YSA (Young Single Adults - 18-30 years old at church) to perform baptisms for the dead. But unlike the above, this involved me getting wet! We had a great time as usual. If you don't know anything about Temples or what we do there, have a read of this article - it's really good and explains it well:
http://www.lds.org/temples/purpose/why/0,11581,1953-1,00.html

In Orlando we also saw an interestingly named street... seems a little quick to be naming roads like this!!

Normally I would expect that following Labor Day the only disappointment to my week should be the sad cessation of the Beaches Trolley bus service along 3rd St in Atlantic/Neptune/Jacksonville Beaches. And maybe if I was at home I would expect that the weather would begin to become more autumnal. However here after a wonderful weekend away in Gainesville things took a turn for the worse... Don't let me come across as negative though, there were plenty of good things too to remember.

I suppose the main thing was that after spending the weekend with survivors of the swine flu, I picked up something and felt progressively worse on the Tuesday when I got back to work. After forcing myself to get done what was urgent, I took the rest of the day off from lunchtime. I guess most of it was dealt with on that day itself, but my supervisor didn't want me coming in to give them anything so I was quarantined at home for the rest of the week. Add to that the psychological pressure of thinking I had swine flu that although I wasn't bothered for myself (I felt ok really) I felt like a walking bomb around everyone else. The other Brits didn't seem bothered so I spent some time with them still (like 2 meals out celebrating the arrival of a couple of guests that week!!) but only time can tell and they were all fine. Of course I tried my hardest throughout the whole time not to cough on people at all and kept conversation to a minimum for fear of coughing fits (which were pretty frequent - they got pretty bad but at least other than that I felt fine).

One of the guests was a friend of Oli's who dropped in for several days unexpectedly which was actually great timing because it helped to have someone to talk to and do stuff with during the day when everyone else was slogging away. He also reminded me that I wanted to start on reading some of the great American literature while I'm here, so we started with a trip to the library and a good perusal of the school reading list shelves. In those few days I read The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. I admit that since then I haven't read any more... I started on Catch-22 but got bored of it not too long in, and have been trying to finish the Harry Potter series in French - I was in the middle of book 5 when I arrived and am now into book 7 - I don't make time to read very often so it is very sporadic.

On Saturday we went to a baseball game - again I still wasn't fully better but figured that the outside air was the safest option in terms of minimising my (self-assumed) contagiousness! Turned out to be the second stroke of bad luck that week. It was the final of the baseball season - if the Jax Suns won it would have been the last game, but if not then it would have spilled into another game on Sunday. The bad luck came from the skies - in the 1st inning during the Barons' turn the rain descended and never stopped. We waited and waited and waited and then after a couple of hours decided to leave as it wasn't letting up. The game was replayed on the Sunday but I couldn't go... they won though! Baseball season starts again in March I think... can't wait.

Labor Day (Mon 6th Sep) I was still down with David and Laura for most of the day. We came up to Laura's family's house (where I spent my first day in Florida) and enjoyed the river. I went fishing for the first time since childhood and did surprisingly well. I caught 4 fish, all Brims, which have spiky fins that get you if they are annoyed... I decided to let David take hold of them and take the hook out! You have to let them relax their fins then you can hold them. Apparently they were the biggest of that kind that they had seen! David admitted he didn't have a lot of patience and kept taking the line out and moving to different spots, so he only managed to get 1, though it was a big one when it came.

Sunday afternoon we took a walk by Lake Alice on UF campus and saw loads of turtles and even a baby Gator! It was a really nice lake and a nice afternoon for some other photos too.

That is one of the songs that was sung at the Gators game at the University of Florida. "Elder Graham" that I went to stay with down in Gainesville managed to get me a ticket to the game on Labor Day weekend (Sep 5th). College football was a lot more fun that I had expected. There's a huge band at every game that plays bits of music between each play, usually in response to how it went... e.g. "Gator Bait", where the whole stadium raises and snaps their arms like a gator's jaw because the Gators "ate up" the other team in that play. The crowd gets pretty involved in it but in a much more fun and unified way than football back home. With the band there are of course cheerleaders too, who lead the cheers (self-explanatory).

I also got a glimpse into the world of tailgating. I'm not sure how far across the US this practice is observed, but certainly it is down here in the south. Here's how it goes:
1) Take your flatbed truck if you have one (most people do).
2) Park it on some stretch of grass or side of the road.
3) Open down the tailgate (the back part of the truck).
4) Sit around on chairs.
5) Have a barbeque on the tailgate and some beers.
This starts at the beginning of the afternoon when the game is an evening one. This game didn't start until 7pm but there were tailgaters there by 1pm just off campus parked up and starting the grill. We also saw a truck on the road in front of us as we were driving that had a barbeque permanently fixed to the back of the truck on a kind of arm that swings out - they get serious about this down here! Every patch of grass on campus that they wanted to preserve had to have a special "No tailgating allowed" sign on it!

Instead of indulging in this Southern delight, we had a barbeque at David's girlfriend's apartment, though David's truck would have worked fine if we'd have all been up for the full experience! I think watching the afternoon's games on ESPN were more David's motives for us going to the apartment...
The Gators won 62-3! It wasn't ever supposed to be a difficult game... David explained the rules to me before we went, and then I kept asking questions throughout the game but at least I knew what was going on most of the time. The most difficult thing is just to keep track of where the ball is! I think I may have become a Gators fan.

Eugh! I woke up Saturday morning filled with excitement for the long weekend due to Labor Day, full of anticipation for going to Gainesville to see David and Laura and go to a Gators game. But when I opened the bathroom door what did I see? A HUGE cockroach on it's back next to the toilet! I was the only one in as everyone else had already arrived in Miami for their weekend trip away, so I had no backup! It was still alive and twitching every now and then. I rushed for the Raid from under the kitchen sink and let him have it for about 20 seconds! It kept writhing about but then finally stopped - I would have freaked out if it was on its legs when I sprayed because it's not quite as quick a method of death as a thwack with a shoe sole! It was pretty disgusting to clear up and the air was probably at toxic levels of Raid, but I survived and set off on my way to Gainesville.

Today was my driving test. Getting a licence has been a pretty crazy ordeal here overall. I called up to find out how to get a Florida licence and was told that we would have to simply go to one of the two major drivers licence centres, bring my UK driving licence, passport and I-94 card and they would give me a Florida licence for $5.50. I even called another time to confirm that it was really all that I needed to do. This was a couple of weeks ago. We all turned up at the office, which is about 35 mins drive from Mayo, and all our hopes were dashed! Instead of being so simple, our British licence only meant that we didn't have to do the 4 hours of drink and drugs awareness training (still a blessing, but not quite what we hoped!). We still had to do the whole written test, without having read the drivers handbook at all. We could only get 5 questions wrong and still pass it. I got 4 wrong, two of the others got 5 wrong, and one got 6 wrong so failed it! The written test qualified us for a learner's permit so we went ahead and booked the practical test, the slots being more than a week's wait away. Hege and I had the first appointments.

When we turned up for our practical test (another afternoon off work) our car managed to fail the safety test because we had one brake light out! So we had to rebook for today, a week later. That evening we discovered that the light had only fallen out of the socket and was jangling about in the light box!

The other two boys had their tests in the meantime. They told us that they failed because of hitting a cone when reversing out, and not stopping for long enough at the stop sign. This was a whole load of rubbish which we didn't find out until yesterday evening when they admitted that they had passed and were just having us on!

Today's test was really easy. The only difficult bit was pulling into a parking space in our big 7-seater minivan without hitting the cones. I had to try it a couple of times but it was still ok for the test's standards. So Krispy Kreme doughnuts all round to celebrate!