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Across from our hotel, a herd of cows graze in a field. In the mornings they’re out and around, just a mere few feet from a major street, and in the evenings they retire to a nearby forest. The first picture from my camera phone didn’t do them justice, so I swung back around with my digital camera and shot a better picture.

At some point, they’re going to have to start making camera phones that actually take decent pictures, or make it easier to get decent pictures from my camera to my phone. Both my camera and my phone are Sony devices – lately, every time I’ve gone to buy a consumer piece of electronics, Sony has had the features I wanted most. My phone has Bluetooth, which enables wireless data transfer, but cameras don’t. My camera has a memory stick to store files, but phones don’t. Both devices connect to computers via USB, but neither device can connect to the other via USB. What a pain in the rear.

Speaking of pains in the rear, yes, I’m still down with food poisoning. My weekend ritual of coffee and the paper was sacrificed in the name of good health, and instead wound up as tea and the paper. It ain’t the same. I’m not a big tea fan.

We finally saw our first South Beach apartment yesterday and left with mixed emotions. It was just a little outside of our price range, but it met almost all of our requirements, including a better location than I’d have expected. We’re thinking it over.

Things have gotten a little better, but I can’t stray too far from the hotel for more than a couple of hours at a time. I kept a banana and an English muffin down this morning. Best tasting English muffin I’ve ever had.

We moved our stuff into a storage unit with the help of movers from Emove.com. Local movers sign up for Emove accounts with their prices listed, and you can see reviews from the people who have used them in the past. Great idea, and very convenient. I found ‘em via ads on the sides of U-Haul trucks – when you’re driving cross-country in a U-Haul, you tend to notice every single U-Haul truck that passes by in either direction.

Erika’s all signed up for school. She couldn’t get into the flight classes that she wanted this semester, but on the plus side, almost all of her credits are transferring, so we should still be out of Miami within 2 years.

Me, I just want to be able to hold down solid food within 2 days.

No webcam at the moment in the hotel, and I haven’t been doing too many camera phone photos just because I’ve been – well, bed-bound. I drove around South Beach this morning looking at apartments, and I’ll definitely go back with the camera.

Looks like I’ve come down with a case of food poisoning. The ironic part is that since we got to Miami, Erika and I were eating only from chain restaurants like Denny’s and Bennigan’s because we didn’t know enough about the local joints yet. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there, but right now I’m not quite in the mood to figure out what it is.

We tried unloading the U-Haul truck yesterday, but I couldn’t do it. Between the muscle pain, the shallow breathing, and the trips to the bathroom, it wasn’t happening. I delayed the unloading by a day and called in some movers. I feel guilty paying people to unload a truck into a storage unit, but I’m in bad shape.

We’re liking the thought of a South Beach apartment more and more, but we’ll see how it goes.

Erika and I went through South Beach yesterday and saw the ocean for the first time – well, the first time in Miami. Just drove around, nothing too exciting.

Today, my entire body hurts. All of it. I didn’t get much sleep last night: I kept waking up hearing Alanis Morrissette, seeing images of South Beach apartments. I can explain both: I spent yesterday (like today) working at Starbucks, where they keep hammering Alanis’s new CD into your eardrums. I need to find an independent internet cafe. Bad.

We’re heeeere! We got into town on Monday after a long three-day drive. We had to split it up into three days because the U-Haul truck’s right rear turn signal didn’t work, and we didn’t particularly want to get pulled over at night and get a ticket. I tried replacing the bulb, but that didn’t work, and I knew that if I complained to U-Haul they’d just give me a different truck. No way was I going to unload one truck and transfer everything into another, so we took our time and drove during the daylight instead.

Setting up shop here in town tried both of our nerves, especially since I didn’t have the foresight to print out everything I needed to set up shop. I had seen a ton of apartments on Craigslist that I wanted to see, and I just figured I’d boot up the laptop and surf when we got to Miami. The hotel’s wireless wasn’t reliable, and we couldn’t find a wireless cafe. I thought I’d found the perfect apartment Tuesday morning, but then found out they’d just started converting to condos and were no longer leasing out. Dang. We both got stressed out driving around trying to find apartments, and just about had a breakdown – and I don’t mean mechanical.

We’re much better off now that we’re in an appopriate extended-stay hotel, we’ve swapped out swanky Miami Beach for suburban Doral, and we can take our time to find the perfect place. The new hotel’s wireless still doesn’t quite work reliably – I’m never using wireless at a hotel again – and so I’m camped out at a nearby Starbucks to work today, and probably all of this week.

We made it to Ocala, Florida around 7pm Eastern time and decided to call it a night. The first hotel I walked into was a Quality Inn that accepted pets, had a dedicated pet-walking area, had high-speed internet access, and had a restaurant with room service. Hooah. One stop shopping.

Well, not QUITE one stop shopping – Erika wanted to go shopping all day, and she’s now off to the nearest Wal-Mart to pick up some odds and ends.

Man talking on cell phone: “…but I have to find a bus that’ll take me from here to over there. Yeah. I’m not sure where I am.” (turns to coffee shop guy) “Hey, you – what’s the name of this place?”

Coffee shop worker: “Kaveh Kanes.”

Man on phone: “What?”

Coffee shop worker: “Kaveh Kanes.”

Man on phone: “What?”

Coffee shop worker: “Kaveh…Kanes…”

Man on phone: (pauses, then talks into the phone again) “It’s some coffee shop downtown.”

CNN says Uganda is planning on offering free university tuition to virgins.

We already have that here in the States, of course. It’s called a National Merit Finalist scholarship.

(rimshot)

Thanks, folks. I’ll be here all week.

“I love fake stuff. I love fake Rolexes. I love it. I love it! Did you know when somebody patents something, they immediately fax it over to China and they start making knockoffs? It’s true. They make Rolexes for like seventy-five cents.”

“I don’t like that kind of thing.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a commercial artist. I don’t like people knocking off my work.”

(silence)

Yesterday’s admittedly cryptic entry indicated the post-power-outage failure of our home air conditioner. I’ve reset every circuit breaker I can find, but the thermometer display stayed blank.

I would never say that I’m handy around the house, but I’ve got a pretty good grasp of how things work. I think I even understand the most primitive basics of air conditioning. However, when I open the furnace cover, the only thing I’m looking for is a big red button marked “Reset”. (“Reboot” is probably asking for too much.) Not having found one, I’ll leave this to the pros. Everywhere on the Internet says it’s probably a blown fuse somewhere that only costs $2 to replace, but no fuses jump out at me, only big scary wires.

Electricity is pretty much where I draw the line on any kind of repair – cars, computers, houses, etc. I have no problem plugging and unplugging stuff in. I’m quite comfortable working inside a computer case while it’s running and powered up – although yesterday at Gene’s, a CPU fan decided one of my fingers looked appetizing. But when I can’t look at the wire and say exactly what voltage it carries and where both ends of it end up, I steer far far away.

Weekend calls to our air conditioning guys are considered “emergencies” at a cost of $135 per pop, as opposed to weekday calls where the labor is free because we’re still under warranty. Erika and I decided we’d rather sweat it out for a couple of nights and call ‘em on Monday, so I’m at Kaveh Kanes this morning for the air conditioning and the wireless network.

I’m not IN Kaveh Kanes, mind you, I’m just AT Kaveh Kanes. It’s 7:23 AM and they haven’t opened yet, so I’m biding my time in the Jeep.