House guest

In and around Miami there are dozens of places are dedicated for people to come to so they can see all kinds of wildlife. I’m thinking about opening my own park in my backyard. Oh, I’m sure there’s the usual fare for most South Florida homes near water: ducks, egrets, mosquitoes. But yesterday, wandering around in my backyard was some iguana-like creature. Based on the pictures I've looked up online so far, I'm fairly sure it was an iguana. He was pretty docile, just walking around snacking on grass mostly, and he let me walk around him to take pictures. But when I got a little too close once he took off running toward the water and dove in and swam off somewhere. Today, another iguana-like creature was back. I'm pretty sure it was a different one because he was a different color and his markings were different.



Anyway, short post today, but it's better than what I normally do--not updating for weeks at a time.

Miami Vice

And the first week has passed.

Work at The Miami Herald has gone well. The computer system we use here looks something like you might run on an old DOS operating system, and it's full of all sorts of keyboard commands that I haven't quite mastered. I'm signed up for a training session on the system next week, but some of the copy editors have already worked with me on figuring the most important things out. My first day, they just had me observe, play around on the system learning for myself and reading proofs as they were printed. Friday, my third day, I was finally assigned a couple of stories to edit. It was slow going still trying to figure out the system, but I got them done.

As for my second day, well, I probably wasn't going to be too useful yet anyway, so I was sent with the reporters to Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals with the Miami Heat vs. the Detroit Pistons. We watched the game from about halfway up in the first level and then walked around in the bowels of the arena where the press conference rooms, locker rooms and media rooms are. After watching the postgame press conference with the coachers and some players, I went back to the newsroom to see it all get put together. I know, a really tough day. It's funny--you might think that the sports people would be all excited about getting to cover the Heat while they make their playoff run, but quite a few of them dread playoff game nights because of all the extra work and money that have to go into putting out the special coverage.

A typical shift is from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., and I just plan for it to take me an hour to get to and from work. It's been a bit strange getting used to my free time being from 10 a.m. (about the time I've been waking up) to 4 p.m. But, if I'm going to live in a beach town, there's really no better time to have free time than the middle of the day. And it appears my off days will fluctuate from week to week. My first weekend is Saturday and Sunday--I don't know how a first-week intern managed to actually get a real weekend off. Then I go back to work two days and am off Wednesday and Thursday. Then, I'm off Tuesday and Thursday. So I guess it'll just be a surprise each week.

Miami itself has been an exciting place to be so far. It's been particularly rainy the last few days, but the sun truly came out for several hours this afternoon, so … a trip to the beach was in order for my first weekend then. With my dad and sister here until today, we've done quite a few of the touristy things like walking around South Beach and driving through the Everglades. At the Everglades, I got to stand just feet away from I think six alligators with not much in between us, so that was pretty exciting.

And I couldn't ask for anything better as far as accommodations go. A man at the Sunset Church of Christ here in Miami offered to let me stay in a three-bedroom house all to myself. He's housing a missionary family here beginning mid-July, so I'll be moving into an extra room in his house for my last three weeks or so, but until then, I've got this place to myself. I've posted pictures of it on my account at www.shutterfly.com (if you want to see them and can't remember my login name and password, just ask me and I'll give it to you instead of posting it on here), but just to give you a taste, here's basically what I have to deal with:





Not a bad deal if you ask me.

My address for the summer if you are interested will be:

14051 SW 74th Terrace
Miami, FL 33183

Even when I move to the other house, which is just next door, I think I'll probably still pick up my mail at this address should I get any.

As for my Internet capabilities throughout the summer, I can use it some at work, but I don't really do that unless it's before work starts or after it finishes. I don't have any access at the house, so I'm using this Internet cafe-type place near my house for the time being. Actually it's more like a place where lots of foul-mouthed 15-year-olds have their parents drop them off so they can play online games and feel like they have done something worthwhile with their lives. Between the cafe and my off times at work, I should have enough access to check and send e-mails regularly as well as update this thing when I have something interesting to say.

Things look to pick up during week 2. I'll know more of what I'm doing, so I guess I can expect a full workload for the most part. It's definitely looking like it's going to be a good summer though. We shall see.