Cleaning House

Yeah, too much meming (memeing? yargh, that was hard to type) lately - Drew's right. (And I was tempted to link to Drew, but that would be particularly ironical given the latest statements from him and others on that regard, so I'll abstain. And yes, I do know that "ironical" is not a word, but I like it, so I'll use it. Consider it - like "prehaps" - the flag I'm plantin' in blogworld.) However, there are some things that need to be shared. I'll get that out in this first paragraph and then move on to the more informative bit. First, the Color Test. It's short and interesting, and I did better at it than anyone else in my family. Next, Kitty Clothes. It's Japanese, and you must see to believe (but if you're not a "cat person" you won't likely care a whit, or you'll just find it really fucked up). Finally, a rerun because I loved it, the Dishonest Dubya doll, complete with Pretzel Horking technology.

Now, day 2 of the Miami Experience.

Thursday, 15 April 2004
Woke up very late. Nearly 10:30. T.O. hadn't been awake for long before I awoke, which is surprising since she's more of a morning person and less of a slugabed than I am. It took quite a while for us to prepare for the day, over coffee for her and tea for me via the in-room coffee pot. We finally dragged ourselves down to the hotel lobby by 11:10. Breakfast from the Starbucks cart. Apple danish and milk for me, banana nut muffin and milk for her. We people-watched as we ate and I realized the date, thinking that it was J.K.'s birthday. 34 today. (Later remembered that it was the 5th, not the 15th. Not bad for someone I haven't seen since '88 or so.)

Our plan was to walk from the hotel to "someplace interesting." Not much of a plan, really. We had 2 guidebooks - Frommer's South Florida and Top 10 Miami & the Keys. Lacking any real sense of drive, though, we just eavesdropped on a couple of women who were speaking with the concierge and decided to follow them to Bayfront Park and the Bayside Marketplace. After a moment of confusion outside the hotel (surrounded by a hell of a lot of really tall buildings and streets numbered both NS and EW!), we headed in the correct direction. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and Birkies. T.O. was dressed more grown-uppish but less tropical vacationish in short-cropped pants and a mid-sleeve shirt. And sunglasses for both of us, because it was gorgeously bright & sunny and perfectly warm, about 70°.

The park was only about 6 blocks from the hotel, through a fairly busy chunk of the downtown/Little Havana section of Miami. It was glorious to be out in the middle of the day and have nowhere to be, no worries, just to be wandering around. And there's no one on earth I'd have rather been there with. T.O.'s the perfect person for me to travel with - her organization is the perfect counterpoint to my slack-assedness, while my blase' response to the stranger element gets her to do some things she might not have done before. More about that on a later day.

We got to the park around 12:00, I'd guess. The ocean: beautiful. Cornflower-blue and quite still there, protected by the barrier islands. The park is nice, too, but nothing spectacular in comparison to the water (at least for a Midwesterner who'd only seen the ocean once before that. How sad is that to admit?). T.O. took some pictures; I'd left my camera at the hotel for no good reason. There was a tiny beach but we didn't take off our shoes and walk on it. We discussed the merits of cruise ships. There was a gambling boat moored there, which offered no appeal to either of us (as far as I could tell).

The Bayside Marketplace. If I recall correctly, the guidebook referred to it as "tacky and touristy". That it was. The first establishment I could see was Hooters. We wandered the shops. The first thing I looked at in the first store we entered, I should have purchased, but I didn't want to start a flood of buying that I couldn't stop. Regrets.... It was a store that sold mostly cotton clothes. Males reading this are probably thinking, "Lame." Or, perhaps, "What?" Women are nodding. Anyway, cotton clothes, chunky bead jewelry, large floppy hats. We tried on hats. My chipmunk cheeks swelled to mump proportions with the addition of those damned hats, which is too bad 'cause I really liked a couple of them. Damned hats. The thing that I wanted was a tiny box, about 3" square, covered with shiny purple and amber beads. I don't think I've written before about my box collection and I'm not going to get into it in detail now, but suffice it to say, I like tiny boxes for no purpose other than that they're cute. There's a shelf on the wall over my head right now that holds 13 of them. The purple one would have been perfect. But like I said, I didn't want to just spend all my time in Miami buying stuff, so I didn't get it. It was a significant decision.

Some of the shops at Bayside are regular walls-and-doors stores, and some are carts set up on a sort of patio. We wandered through a large number of them before coming to a cart of typical tacky tourist stuff. I bought some postcards and an extremely tasteless but still somehow appealing shotglass in the shape of a sort of totem, creamy beige with a lavender overlay. The brand-name is "Chiki Tiki." The price, with tax, was $4.27, and I handed the clerk a five-dollar bill. It was 12:30 or so, so it wasn't as if she'd been making change for hours and could have been out, but she said, "Do you have the 27 cents?" At times like that, I'm always tempted to say, "It's legal tender. Accept it. Make change - it's your job." But that would incredibly rude and I couldn't do it, and I do understand why she asked, so I looked, but I only had quarters. T.O. had a couple of pennies, though, and we made the change. So I'd given her $5.27. The clerk then, no more than a minute after having asked for exact change, gave me $.98 in return. Before I could even open my mouth, but after she'd put the change in my hand, she said, "Oh, you gave me $.27, right." She handed me a dollar and took the change out of my hand. I just nodded, took my bag, and walked away. Weird. Too much sun on a daily basis?

Lunchtime. Hooters? As if. There was an Italian place, but it looked too upscale (read: expensive) for our needs at that time. There was a Spanish place, but they advertised paella. Seemed somehow wrong, particularly since T.O. and I have previous issues with paella (and the "whipping up" thereof). I'm tensing now, preparing for the beatings, when I admit that we went to...the Hard Rock Cafe. Hey, I've never been to one before, so it was a new experience. Right? Oh, forget it, I'm not even going to try and make excuses. But we were hungry and it was there. The place was ginormous. T.O. got a non-alcy drink, but I had a Heineken. She had a Cobb salad, but I had the Pig Sandwich. That's pulled pork with vinegar BBQ sauce, with fries. Sides of BBQ beans and cole slaw. The waitress tried to cajole me into jazzing it up into the Dirty Pig by adding grilled onions and cheese, but I prefer a clean pig, thanks.

T.O.'s salad was easily enough for four people to eat as a meal. It was huge. And frozen! The lettuce was frozen! My sandwich probably weighed 2 pounds, but it was hot and tasty. I prefer non-vinegar BBQ sauce (does that make me more Memphis than Texas, or the other way around?), but I was in hog heaven. Pun intended. The beer was perfect with it, too. The overall experience of the restaurant was not overly positive, though. It was insanely loud, to the point that we had our fingers in our ears as we ran out after we paid. Our waitress was one of those overly-chipper Pollyanna freaks who wants to make your experience tres fun, so she delivered many meals on her own head. Yes, she'd bring out a plate of food on her head. And she wouldn't just pull it off and set it on the table - she'd make the victim take it off her head themselves! Had she done it to me, I'd have just picked up a fry and started eating with it on her head. No wonder she didn't try it with us.... Weirdo. There as an extremely odd, er, painted ceiling in the place, too. Sort of stylized cupids and dogs in a dome, surrounded by dogs and robot heads. At least one of the cupids had a sprinkler-head for a belly-button. (Although, each time I've talked about this, it's sounded like a dream. Can it be possible that it was true? I can't have made this up. And I only had 1 beer.) I'd vaguely planned to get a shot glass and the typical Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, but I decided after we'd paid and peed that it was just time to go.

A leisurely walk back to the hotel took us past a horrifying bookstore. Horrifying? A bookstore? Yes - the bookstore that would make any librarian (or book lover, really) cringe. It was mayhem - books in no particular order, Spanish mixed with English, on end and on their sides, some back-to-front, and even a bunch of them upside down. T.O. suggested that we offer our services in shelving for a couple of hours. It hurt too much to stay there, even to browse; we left after about 3 minutes.

Back to the hotel, where I discovered...3 blisters. Yes, I had blisters all over my feet, on what was essentially the first real day of the trip. I felt like a stupid little fuck, although really the most salient feeling was pain - they hurt, since my feet were all Midwest-winter soft. I had brought along a shitload of bandaids and I commenced applying them immediately. Unfortunately, they rolled off almost as quickly. We determined that we'd passed a Walgreen's after leaving the bookstore - we would return in the morning.

We sat on the Riverwalk outside in the late afternoon, reading our books and watching the Miami River go by. We talked a little, but it was mostly silent contemplation and enjoyment of the sun, the water, the heat, the company, and the novelty of no requirements.

Dinner in the hotel bar, called "Currents". Very swankish, but with a Cuban flair. T.O. was drinking Mojitos, also called "Cuban Temptation" in the menu - Bacardi, fresh mint, brown sugar and limes. I, unfortunately, was stricken with a headache after all the day's sun exposure, so I couldn't drink. I had Coke, with lime since the waitress thought I needed to dress it up. Dinner was quesadillas. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm not a fan of any cheese except the fake ones, Velveeta and Cheez Whiz, and mozzarella. So voluntarily having a meal that's mostly pepper jack (I think) was a step in the right direction. They had chicken in them and were served with a fresh pico de gallo.

A bit more reading, and to bed fairly early - around midnight. South Beach tomorrow!