Bloggogriff

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...