Bloggogriff

Day 5, Saturday. One of my American-style indulgences last night was a vanilla Coke. In retrospect, this was a Bad Idea. Eric and Owen both slept all night for the first time since our arrival, as I can testify because, well, I didn’t. I had thought that Owen might get less attention in Beijing, but so far that seems not to be the case. Yesterday a young woman checking in at the same time as us asked for a picture with him, and this morning at breakfast the waitresses are cooing over him like mad. He is not at all ready to deal with the attention so early in the day, and sits very stiffly with his eyes averted until they leave him alone. Eric’s brother Kevin had warned us that on his trip to China, the “Western breakfast” at his hotel seemed to have been created by people who knew of some American foods but had no clue which ones were eaten at breakfast, so we are pleasantly surprised by the non-random nature of the hotel buffet, which has both Chinese and Western options. Owen is ...

Day 4, Friday. I wake in the night with a fever and sleepily try to calculate how much of Owen’s kiddie Tylenol will make an adult dose. Several teaspoons of grape-flavored syrup later, I stop shivering and fall asleep. Luckily, I feel fine in the morning, though a little annoyed when Eric tells me he had regular acetaminophen in his bag the whole time. Jun takes us to the Tianjin Museum, whose major exhibit concerns the history of the city. Tianjin was a center of colonial power in the early twentieth century, which made its political and economic history quite remarkable. I wish I could give more details, but since I mainly spent the visit trying to keep Owen under some kind of minimal control as he careened around the halls, I didn’t get to read much of the signage. What I did see was amusingly heavy-handed in tone (though unusually correct in its English): “The courageous people of Tianjin fought a mighty and tragic battle to resist the imperialist aggressors,” and so on. Or lat...

Day 3, Thursday. Our sleep, particularly Owen’s, is about what you might expect with an eight-hour time difference. I awake in the morning with an upset stomach of weirdly ill-defined symptoms: am I feeling nausea? Indigestion? Sore abdominal muscles from stair-climbing? Maybe a little of each. So Eric goes to breakfast alone and I nibble gingerly at Nutri-Grain bars in the room. Eric leaves for the lab, and Jun’s wife Minh arrives to keep me and Owen entertained for the morning. In the interest of time, Eric has suggested using the hotel’s valet laundry service to finish up the washing (or more importantly, the drying). Given the earlier towel episode, I ask Minh to handle the call to housekeeping for me. What unfolds next reminds me of the scene in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent jams up the spaceship’s entire computer system with his request for tea. After an oddly long phone conversation, Minh reports: the laundry service, though listed in...

Hope everyone had a lovely day. We did.

Day 2: Coda. The trip would surely not be complete without some misadventures with the language barrier, and we get our first one after returning to the room that night. While bathing Owen, Eric notices that we only have two towels and sends me down to ask the front desk for a third. Unfortunately, the girl at the desk clearly does not know the word “towel” (don’t ask me how you manage a hotel without that one; I’m still not sure). I try pantomiming along with the request – “washing,” “two towels, three people” – but leave with a feeling that this has not been successful. Sure enough, five minutes later she appears at our door with an American woman in tow to facilitate the conversation. I show her a towel. Aha! “I call housekeeping,” says the desk clerk, and departs. The other woman, another professor in residence at the guest house, clucks in amused sympathy, “and she’s the one with the good English.” Five minutes after that we get a phone call: Sorry, not possible now, housekeepi...

Day 2: Wednesday, November 11. As the plane descends, I can see a definite yellow-brown smog cloud, and I recall all the media stories about Beijing’s air pollution during the Olympics. The Englishman sitting to my right asks if it is our first trip to China, informs me that Beijing has an excellent metro system, and warns me about the cold weather. Somehow, coming from darkest Scotland, I am not worried. Beijing Airport is quite a sight. The ceiling curves and soars fifty feet above our heads, held up by massive pillars. Abundant skylights and plate-glass walls let in so much sunlight that artificial lighting hardly seems necessary. Everything appears very new. At passport control, the line moves slowly but Owen is apparently a Fastpass; an official riding a Segway pulls us out of line and directs us to a station marked “business permits only,” where there is no waiting. Score one for travel with a two-year-old. When we reach the pre-security section of the airport, with the shops...

Day 1: Tuesday, November 10. Owen has been repeating “We go China now!” at intervals for the past 36 hours when Davey, the usual driver for Eric’s department, arrives at 9:30 a.m. to collect us. It’s an hour-long drive to Edinburgh. Davey, as per normal, talks for nearly the entire trip. He is a sixty-something man with a serious Dundonian accent, and I only understand about two-thirds of what he says. This, however, is not a problem, as one rarely has to do much in a conversation with Davey other than smile and nod. On arrival, I find myself impressed as usual by the general efficient cheeriness of Edinburgh Airport. It’s compact and uncrowded and yet seems to have all the amenities one wants in an airport, particularly including excellent baby care facilities. The flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow only takes an hour. We come in at Terminal 5, which, as you will know if you have ever been there, is the exact opposite of compact and uncrowded. After four months in Scotland, the array...

Hm, I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post. Well, here's a video of Owen to make up for it. He's about to wake up from his nap, so I can't do more right now (and that is basically the story of the last six weeks of non-blogging).

Owen and I have gradually been exploring the museums around Dundee. Today we went on our second visit to the McManus Galleries . The McManus is an incredible mishmash of a museum - some old art, some contemporary art, some natural history, some cultural history, and some fairly random collections of stuff that various colonizers brought back from across the globe during the Age of Empire (shrunken heads! seriously!). One of the "stars" of the collection is the complete skeleton of a humpback whale that swam up the River Tay in 1883. "The Famous Tay Whale," it is called. Or would you rather look at artifacts from the Roman period? Maybe an authentic Dundee Football Club uniform from the 1950s, or is Victorian portraiture more to your taste? (Dante Rossetti was the biggest name I noticed among the permanent collection, although I'll admit to being less than expert on Scottish painters.) The big draw right now is Titian's "Diana and Actaeon," which t...

A number of people have been asking me lately when I would get around to posting something new. Pictures of the apartment? Tales of adventure? Vicarious experiences of an exciting kind? The truth is, life's been a bit tough the last few weeks, and I haven't had the mental energy to post. Our stuff still hasn't arrived, so the apartment has about as much visual interest as a room at the Holiday Inn. We don't have a car yet, so there haven't been many trips further than the fifteen-minute bus ride to the city center (and I keep forgetting to take the camera when we do go out). But more fundamentally, I've just been wretchedly, woefully homesick. Homesickness, as my mother would undoubtedly attest, is not a condition to which I have often been subject. High school summers away at GHP and TASP only convinced me that a good thousand miles or so from home would be an excellent location for college. A junior semester at Oxford not only cured the depression I had often ...

1. Ubiquity of pork products 2. Proportion of smokers 3. Proportion of obese people (possible connection to #1) 4. Friendliness of locals 5. Degree of antipathy between fans of opposing football teams (it's the other kind of football, but still.)

... for our tenancy application to be approved. After a week of looking at flats, we put in our application on Friday for a 2-bedroom place in Broughty Ferry (the same town we are currently staying in). It's got a beautiful view of the river, it's on the ground floor, and the master bedroom has "en-suite" (that is, a bathroom). Annoyingly, the rental agency claims it routinely takes them two weeks to approve the application for tenancy, which is not really acceptable now that the owners of our temporary digs are back from Austria. They are very kind hosts, but it's all a bit crowded. Eric is going to try to put some University bigwig pressure on the agency to speed it up. For more on Broughty Ferry, click here or here . 5 Things About Dundee That Are A Lot Like San Francisco: 1. The temperature 2. The hill climbs 3. The view to the east: water, with land rising on the other side. (Less urban than the view from our old apartment but geographically very similar.) ...

(Sorry this is late and not all that thorough… I haven’t had a computer at home until now. See earlier entry about my Mac becoming a paperweight.) Finally, after a full month on the road, it was time for the big journey across the pond. United was on time, and that’s about all the good that I can say about it (wretchedly miniscule legroom, looped films instead of on-demand, and NO FREE BOOZE). We had time to get some breakfast in Heathrow (Owen learned a new phrase: “chocolate croissant”) before the uneventful second flight to Edinburgh and hour-long drive to Dundee. Our hostess Ullie was at work but had left us a map showing the way to the nearest corner store, so we were able to find some lunch and then begin to unpack. Ullie made us a spaghetti dinner when she got home that night, and we finally crashed. Since then, we’ve been finding our way around. Ullie left to join her husband Tony on vacation on the Continent, so we’re basically house-sitting in their lovely home in Broug...

Now I understand why my folks had an ironclad rule of no more than 6 hours a day in the car when we were little. We only had to do about 5 hours each day, and Owen was almost unbelievably good about the whole thing, but it was still a long two days. Chapel Hill: Barbecue, swimming in the hotel pool, and a Whole Foods for snack refills and breakfast the next morning. A quiet sort of win. We arrived in DC too late yesterday to do anything but eat dinner and relax, but we had big plans for the 4th of July. Plans involving dinosaurs. You have to understand that for the last two days we had been hearing a near-constant refrain of "Dinosaur bones! Dinosaur bones!" Owen even made up his first joke yesterday in the car: "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Dinosaur." "Dinosaur who?" "ROAAAARRRR!!!" (This is even funnier when repeated twenty times by someone who can't actually pronounce "dinosaur" properly.) I was frankl...

Folly Beach is a small town, really almost a hamlet, outside of Charleston. It has one commercial strip, about six blocks long, populated by burger/seafood/pizza/taco joints and the sort of beach town shops that specialize in shell jewelry, souvenir shot glasses, and t-shirts celebrating the virtues of public intoxication and sexual harassment. The strip terminates in a beachfront Holiday Inn with an absurdly stylish lobby and restaurant. The condo we have called home for the past week is a half mile or so off the strip, facing the marshes, hence its name, Marsh Winds. Those of you who actually live near wetlands (Mom and Dad, if no one else) will understand why I found the name somewhat foreboding, but in fact it has turned out to be a very restful and well-appointed location for the Mega Griffis Family Reunion, the full participation in which looked something like this: Myself, Eric, Owen, and Pat: staying for the whole week, Friday to Friday. Darren, Kate, and Bryson: Friday to Tues...

After a week in Brunswick, we drove to Atlanta to stay with Eric's family for a quick visit-filled five days. We spent Monday afternoon with Jill and Robert Vonhagen, where Owen had a blast playing with five year old Sarah Jane. Tuesday was an epic odyssey to the southwestern exurbs, as we had lunch with Eric's grandpa in Palmetto, then visited my aunt Kim in outer Newnan, and finally hit downtown Newnan for cocktails with Dale and Jenny Lyles and Bill and Jerrie McCullough. It was great to finally see Dale's backyard labyrinth IRL. Wednesday Eric spent all day at Emory, where he was giving a talk; and I got to see my best friend from high school, Erin Gaston. That night Eric's PhD mentor Maureen threw a lab reunion party at her house. Thursday we had a bit of a break because Eric, who had been increasingly under the weather, needed to go to the doctor in the morning. They diagnosed a sinus infection, ear infection, and possible bronchitis, so it was good that he went w...

From this point forward, things become more relaxed. Friday concluded at my grandmother's house in Sebastian, Florida, which is a little coastal town just south of Melbourne. After dinner Friday night, it was time for Patrick to head home to his cats in Miami. He had plans to meet a Greek friend of his for the early World Cup game first thing in the morning, so we had to say farewell. We stayed at my grandmother's place for two nights. There were two big attractions there for Owen: the local splash fountains at the riverfront park, and David's Lionel trains. We also ate at a restaurant on the water that had a live two-man band (piano and bass). Owen dug the band and also feeding the gulls our leftover bread. On Sunday we drove up to Brunswick to my folks' place, where we are now. It's been a surprisingly busy visit so far (that is, surprising if you are familiar with Brunswick and the general pace of life around here). We've been to Jekyll for the beach and the ...

[Same warning to anti-Disneyites as last time.] Friday: For our last day at the park, we went back to the Magic Kingdom. There were still quite a few rides we thought Owen would enjoy that we hadn't gotten to on Wednesday, plus we had missed Splash Mountain. This time, we were up early and got there for the park opening with all the characters arriving on the train. Owen loved it. Once the gates opened, we promptly boarded the train to Frontierland. We got to Splash Mountain so fast the line was still reading ten minutes, so Mom, Patrick and I rode first, then took Owen to play on the little Laughing Place tots playground under the train station while Dad and Eric rode. I have to say that is one of the best ideas Disney has had - a toddler play space adjacent to the ride they can't go on! - and they really need to find a spot to put one by Space Mountain too. He was thoroughly entertained for the 15 minutes we had to kill while Dad and Eric were on the ride. After that, Eric ha...

[Note: same as the last post. If you don't want to read about Disney World, just skip it and enjoying feeling culturally superior. Pbbbt.] On to Thursday, in slightly less detail. The plan was as follows: Get to Animal Kingdom around opening time (9:00), do Expedition: Everest, the Safari Tour, Dinosaur, and the Finding Nemo live show, and then head back to the hotel for lunch, naps, and a relaxing afternoon by the pool. The plan did not include Owen and Eric sleeping until almost 8:30. Suffice it to say that that rather modest list of attractions (even with Fastpasses for Everest and Dinosaur), plus lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, took us until almost 4:00. In 100-degree heat. I will say that (1) Everest is seriously good; (2) the safari tour delivered spectacularly on the promised animal sightings; (3) the Nemo show was very cool; and (4) I had forgotten how much fun Dinosaur was (Eric and I had only been to Animal Kingdom once, way back in 2001). So there was a pretty high satisfa...

Tuesday: Nico kindly volunteered to drive us to the airport at Ungodly O'Clock on Tuesday morning to catch a six a.m. flight to Orlando. We somehow fit our six bags and stroller into the car with the four of us and dropped the three large bags and car seat at ticketing without incident (hooray for being Skymiles members - no charge for the luggage). We were towards the end of the line boarding the plane, so they ended up gate-checking our carry-on bags as well. Flying was uneventful; Owen slept for about two hours. With a one-hour connection in Atlanta, we just had time to grab Chik-fil-A for lunch before the short flight to Orlando. Then we found the Disney transportation center in the airport (which includes luggage service, yay) and it was off to Owen's first visit to the House of Mouse. [Please note: from this point forward I was be assuming both a familiarity with and an interest in reading about Disney World on the reader's part. If this does not apply to you, you...

I reckon I should record this trip in some detail, since it is not only a vacation but a Major Life Change that we will, I hope, want to remember in years to come. We've been on the road for about a week now, although it seems like much longer, and I finally have some quality time with the internet to spend writing. This post will cover the three days of moving out. In a word: exhausting. In more words: The whole week starting with Memorial Day was pretty much a blur of packing, combined with trips to school to clean out my classroom and attend various end-of-the-year functions. Stress built throughout the week and manifested itself as ever-worsening insomnia for me. My awesome colleague Virg volunteered to take Owen for an all-day playdate with her kids, his friends from day care whom he adores. When I showed up at her house on Saturday morning, I was so tired that she immediately put me to bed for the next hour and a half. After that, she gave me coffee and crumb cake and offered...

I'm moving in less than three weeks, I have a giant stack of papers to grade, and how am I using my class time? To test my skill with iambic pentameter, of course. Sonnet: Against Damnation The foulest libel spread against the gods Is that of the existence of Inferno. A deity who merits love and lauds Would never torture us with holy Sterno. Aside from scientific problems such As its location, form, and composition, Unceasing torment without end is much More evil than mankind’s worst Inquisition. Still worse: to think that the Immortal Blessed Would care what name we loved it by, so long As we did right, I call an awful jest. And if, against all reason, I am wrong, I’ll stand amid the shrieking fires and tell The psychopathic Brute to go to hell.

Well...Owen turns two on Thursday. His spoken vocabulary includes probably a hundred words, the most recent major addition being "paci" (which replaced smacking his lips together to mime using said comfort object). His obsessions are pirates, Wallace & Gromit, and trains. He's still trying to coordinate a two-footed jump, but he's great at spinning in circles, and although he's generally right-handed, we think he may turn out to be a southpaw pitcher. We're starting The Big Move in six weeks. Our UK residency visas are in our possession, and all we have to do now is sell the car and most of our furniture, pack up the rest of the stuff, and clean the apartment. And then travel for a month, arrive in Scotland, find a place to live and buy a new car and learn to drive on the left-hand side of the road and reinvent myself as a stay-at-home-mom and... if I think too much about it, my head will explode, so I'll just leave it to your imagination.

So, as you may know if you’ve been following my status updates, I recently read Stephanie Meyer’s megahit novel Twilight . I did so despite multiple warnings from friends who had trodden the path before me. And I made it to the end. Below you will find my thoughts on the experience, should you care to read them. I have attempted to avoid major spoilers in case anyone reading this actually decides to pick up the book and experience the awfulness for herself. Why did I read Twilight ? Mainly because, as a high school teacher, I’ve been listening to my students gush about it for years now. Not that that means I expected it to be any good; I have also endured similar gushing about direct-to-video Olsen twin films and the various iterations of High School Musical. But hey, it’s a pop culture phenomenon, and plenty of people put down J.K. Rowling too. I will say this much: It was not the worst book I have ever read in my life. The V.C. Andrews novels my friends and I passed from hand to hand...

It's been a big week for motor skills. Owen can catch a ball now. We discovered that he can go up and down stairs, at least shallow ones, without holding on to anything. Yesterday he climbed up onto one of the counter stools and seated himself. And he's been practicing somersaults all week.