The girls left Panama City after some night of partying and spent the better part of the following day traveling to a little village on the Pacific Coast. Not just any little village though, Santa Catalina has one of the top 10 surfing beaches in the world! Not that I know the first thing about surfing, but Romeo´s brother sure does.

The guys were supposed to meet us there with a boat and take us to that very private and special island hosting the Liquid Jungle Labs. The romantic meeting only happened the next day and was not all that romantic at first given how much work the guys had to do on the way to the island. Anyway, in the meantime, the girls continued their partying, went to the cantina to get beer and drank it on the beach with a cool surfer that was also waiting for a boat pick-up by a girlfriend on her sailing trip around the world. No cooking for the party junkies that night and we went out to dinner. The guys´ racket we had been longing for woke us up from our beauty sleep the next morning around 11 !

The boat ride was amazing. In addition to the sensors mounted on a metal towfish (a bunch of metal bars and flat panels built in the shape of a fish and designed to carry a bunch of electronics), the guys had attached a multi-beam sonar to the side of the boat, and according to Romeo, that sonar is like a disco party for dolphins, so guess who showed up? A party of dolphins swam right by, and followed us for a little while. We also got to see manta and eagle rays jumping out of the water, fish of all sizes jumping out of the water presumably to avoid being eaten by bigger fish, and flying fish. There is a true difference between fish jumping, and flying fish: the distance they travel. The flying fish are unbelievable, they can actually stay suspended in mid-air for quite some distance. I had never seen that before, and it was quite amazing.

Romeo and his brother have a research project going on in Panama, looking at nutrients, temperature, salinity, and other signs of human and development impact on oceans and coral reefs. The two of them have some really cool research going on near a billionaire´s private island set up with a research lab. Given the pretty sweet location, it did not take much persuasion on Romeo´s part for me to use a few vacation days and meet up with him.

His sister-in-law and I flew down together to Panamá City, hoping the guys would be done with their work and that we could kidnap them away from their exciting research. Except that´s not how it works in the research world, instruments fail, boats don´t run and data is not collected quite as planned. Data is the Holy Grail for many research scientists so our little romantic take-over was going to have to wait, and the girls decided to stay in Panama City and see what Carnaval was all about!

Well, in a few words, we had a blast. Panamanians sure know how to party: live music, food, beer and some good body moves. We experienced the night-time version of Carnaval because we had been too busy sight-seeing during the day, so we missed out on the parades and costumes, but it was still quite an experience.

I used to love flying. Not any more. It has nothing to do with increased security, long lines at ticket counters, delayed flights, or anything. It is more of a bug issue. On the flight back from the Phillie wedding, we waited on the tarmac for quite a while, it got hot, and I opened up the little fan thingy that started blowing fresh air into my face. The problem with that air, is that ”fresh” is the wrong word for it. “Recycled”, ”cooled”, or “bugged” may be more appropriate. To keep the story short, someone on that plane that day was sick, really sick, and the recycled air was blowing for quite a while before it hit me: I was getting sick too. From that very same air that was keeping me cool. 

Romeo’s sister got married in Pennsylvania last week-end, so we got to see another Indian wedding. It was not nearly as long as the last one, and I did not get Mendi (hennae tattoos) on my hands this time around, but it was beautiful anyway. We took off from Logan Thursday night, met up with his brother and sister-in-law at the Philadelphia airport where we picked up a car and drove to a very romantic bed-and-breakfast in town. Romeo had made reservations there the night before and was very excited to share his find. It was all very nice and romantic, but I was hungry and grumpy, so we went back out to fill our bellies with tasty Phillie-cheese steaks.

The rooms were very quaint, with old furniture, and breakfast was served by the time we got up. Only glitch, when we walked out with all our bags after having checked out, the car was gone. For a split second, I thought it had been stolen, then I saw IT. Not the car, but a tiny tow-sign, that had seemed to blend in the night before. That’s when I started praying that the car had been stolen, not towed. But it was useless, some guy told us that they start towing at 7:01 and don’t stop until 9am as that street is a main artery for morning commuters driving into town, and that we’d have to go to court, pay for our ticket, before we could hope to get the car back. We were going to be very late…

Some new car rental, $150 and a few hours later, Romeo and his brother were back with the towed car and we were ready to go to the wedding and got there just in time for the bride’s cleansing ceremony at her parents’ house. It was nice to see where Romeo had spent some time growing up. The rest of the wedding the next day was beautiful, and we got to hang out with Romeo’s family for a while before we flew back to Logan, with his brother and sister-in-law packed in our suitcases.

Christmas is over, but I sure hope you had a great one. Romeo and I had some thoughts of distant destinations for a merry X’Mas but none worked out. Australia/New Zealand was too expensive last minute, Panama would have been great except that his brother who lives there was in Woods Hole visiting, and Jackson Hole was really cold and snowless, so we spent a wonderful family X’Mas close-by in Connecticut altogether and postponed the distant X’Mas vacation for later.

We were expecting snow and ice, and maybe some skiing, but the weather was balmy and we were able to go for walks with barely a coat on. Let’s hope next year will bring more snow: my sister and brother-in-law hope to come over this side of the pond to spend Christmas and some snow would make it picture-perfect in our little New England village.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all, and see you next.. I mean this year!

I have been contemplating getting an electric kettle for a while. The primary concern being to avoid burning the house down. It may be unlikely, but it was close to happening before. The concept is simple, you (1) feel like drinking a warm water-based beverage, (2) fill the kettle with water, (3) place the kettle on the stove, (4) turn on the stove, and (5) forget about it. Most stove-top kettles will be screaming their heads off by the time you get to (5), but if you have somehow already left the house before then, the water will evaporate, the kettle will stop screaming and start burning on your stove. Whether that goes all the way to burning down your house depends on how soon you come home.

The simplest solution to the problem is to remember to turn the ketlle off, or to come home early on a regular basis. But this is America, land of consumerism, so the next best solution, is to buy another kettle… that turns off automatically. After some debating, last week-end I purchased an electric kettle at Wal-Mart.

Except that I had made the assumption that all electric kettles have the auto-off-when-the-water-boils feature built in. To me, that is the only reason to own an electric kettle: without it, we’re back to worrying about burning down the house again. Well, it turns out that the $14.99-kettle at Wal-Mart does not have that feature. As Romeo kindly pointed out, there is no mis-information here, the box the kettle came in did not list the auto-off sensor as a feature, under the clear-plastic-that-shows-the-water-level feature. Good thing this is America: I will just return the fully-functional kettle for a refund on my credit card!

Winter is definitely here, most boats have left their moorings in Woods Hole’s Little Harbor, either for warmer climates, or perhaps, for dry docks where they will spend the winter, but an intriguing floating item has made an appearance that an empty harbor did not leave unnoticed. Close up, the item looks like a Christmas Tree on an iceberg, and at night, the tree lights up! It creates a nice warm, fuzzy feeling every time I drive by it.

The other cool Christmas-y decoration to have appeared in our neck of the woods, is a large Christmas wreath on Nobska Lighthouse. That would be the lighthouse that everybody goes to when in Woods Hole, the pretty, Cape-Cod-like, lighhouse that makes it into every tourist’s photo-album and postcard collection. If I have a chance, I’ll post the shot we took last week-end on this site.

The last decoration worth stopping by is our own dressed up dwarf X’Mas tree. If you’re nice, you may even get invited inside for some hot chocolate

They say New England has an Indian summer and for 2006, well, it was true! The temperatures had been unbelievably mild lately, and I had been adding quite a few miles to my bike on week-ends… Until this week-end that is. For those like me, who had nurtured the secret hope that maybe winter was going to forget us this year, I will have to break it out loud and clear: Winter is here, and all that goes with it.

It started with lower than usual temperatures: from afternoons in the mid 50’s last week, we had dropped to the low 40’s by the week-end. Then it was the crazy wind storm Friday night. Winds were so strong that the sailing boat on its trailer in our back-yard litterally flew off its trailer and was sitting by the side of it the next morning. Finally, this morning, it was the snow!

The cold, the wind and the snow seem to indicate beyond doubt that winter is here. On the bright side of things, if winter is here, Christmas can’t be that far. Time to get merry!

My original secret plans for Thanksgiving were to stay home for 4 days with Romeo and play the couch potato, but with his delayed return, the plans had turned out to be 4 days home alone. It may sound great to some of you, but not really to me. Coming from France where there is no such thing as a celebration to give Thanks and eat turkey and cranberry sauce, I don’t particularly see this holiday as a family celebration so I didn’t mind missing out on the turkey event. I did, however want to volunteer my time to help out others. I haven’t done that in a while and it’s good for the soul, particularly on a very wet, lonely day. The idea sounded great, but thanks to some twisted laws in this state, the implementation turned out to be a lot more difficult.

After some 20 unreturned phone calls to local churches and other organizations, I was told that the Hyannis Salvation Army already had too many volunteers, that Falmouth was not hosting a soup kitchen, that most of the non-profits caring for kids had already had their Thanksgiving dinners, and that I should try nursing homes. Nursing home number 1 could not accept my time because I needed to go through some background checks, shots, etc. as a wannabe volunteer and that would take weeks. Nursing home number 2 did not pick up the phone and nursing home number 3 had the nicest activities director, Brad, who was really happy to see some volunteer help come his way.

Well, this was all great until yesterday, when I got a call back from a very disappointed Brad to let me know it would not work out because Massachusetts LAW requires background checks and training for volunteers in nursing homes. I found the legal roadblocks to volunteering rather mindblowing but what was I going to do? Become an illegal volunteer? Back to square 1, except that after kindly making his own 20 calls, Brad had found a camp in Sandwich that would need help. It turned out to be in Mashpee, where I just spent my morning around a bunch of great volunteers, peeling potatoes, carving a Turkey and dishing out meals to be delivered to shelters around the Cape by more volunteers. Why is Massachusetts less worried about my criminal background when I help homeless people than when I help the elderly? Isn’t that some type of discrimination? What if those are elderly homeless people? Shouldn’t MA lawmakers be worried about them too?

I guess, the short story is: if you want to volunteer for Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, plan ahead of time (too many volunteers may secure their spots before you) and make sure your background is clean. Speaking of which, would I pass the background check being from France and all?

Last Friday, Romeo was supposed to fly back from California and after some 3 weeks without seeing him, I had decided I would take the trip all the way to the Big City, namely Boston to pick him up at the airport. With a flight scheduled to arrive around midnight, it would leave me some time to have dinner and catch up with friends. Fate decided otherwise and Romeo would not fly into Boston for another week..

All the excitement of going back to the Big City had been building up and by the time I found out about Romeo, I was just craving Ethiopian food, which is very difficult to find in the bustling metropolis of Woods Hole! Anyway, I wasn’t going to abandon my friends and so I drove up, had a great dinner, some drinks and was invited to stay overnight in the South End, on the same block as Addis Red Sea, the Ethiopian restaurant. Breakfast with friends on a beautiful crisp Saturday morning was great and I decided to spend the day in the city. I went to all my usual places: the Common, Haymarket, Trader Joe’s, Copley Flair (the best place to get cards) and stopped by my old office building to say hi to Mary, the sweetest security guard. Somehow sweet and security don’t feel like they should be in the same sentence, but that’s Mary for you. She is not usually in on Saturdays but that was my lucky day, and I even got to see some of my former colleagues. Some things just never change

I expected the drive back down to my hole/neck of the woods to be rather lonely, but I got a phone call all the way from France. Thanks to my new fancy phone, I got to drive home with Mom and Dad on the speakerphone; not as great as a face-to-face conversation, but you take what you can get.

I am now back in the Hole as people seem to call my new home village, patiently waiting for Romeo to make it back… unless… I drive back to Boston to pick him up? This time, I won’t make any plans… just in case they need to be cancelled… again!