Laura Banana

If you are looking for a nice beach vacation, I highly recommend St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.  It is easy to get to, not crowded, very laid-back and very, very gorgeous.  Most of the time we were there, Howard and I camped out on the beach pictured above, hanging out, watching the ocean, and going for a swim or snorkel when we felt like it.  It was just the vacation I wanted.

The hotel we stayed in, “The Palms at Pelican Cove” was also really nice.  When we first arrived in our room, we were greeted by this:

A complimentary bottle of Cruzan rum, which is made on the island.  Cruzan rum made MANY appearances during our vacation.  We drank so much of it elsewhere, we didn’t actually end up drinking this bottle, but we brought it home for a little taste of the Carribean during the Ithaca winter.  Anyway, more importantly, this view also greeted us when we walked into our room:

I probably could have stayed in the room the whole time and been happy, but as it turned out, we spent very little time there.  Other than going to the beach, we also did a lot of eating and drinking.  We had several beach-front breakfasts:

At night, we generally went into the nearby town, Christiansted, to have dinner and sit on the boardwalk, watching the boats in the harbor, meeting interesting people, and drinking Cruzan rum:

I was somewhat sad that the fruity drinks on St. Croix generally don’t come with umbrellas, and styrofoam containers seem to be the container of choice.  But what they lack in classiness, they make up for in quantity.  When you order a drink in St. Croix, it often comes in a 16 oz. container:

One day, we tore ourselves away from the beach to take a tour of the Island, including a trip to the rum factory and a sugar plantation:

The above picture shows an old sugar mill… animals of some sort were hooked to the chains and walked in a circle, causing the cylinders to turn and crush sugar cane.  Poor animals!

We also, of course, took many walks on the beach.  St. Croix seems to have a pretty big stray-dog problem.  We ran into several strays:

who kinda freaked me out at first, but they turned out to be sweet doggies.

All in all, it was a really good vacation.  Here we are on our last day there:

Notice I’m already layered-up for the trip back to Ithaca!

Look what came in the mail today:

It’s all done and printed up!  But something seems off.  Let’s take a closer look:

Why did they underline the D?  It’s not supposed to be underlined.  It looks dumb that way!

Well, underlined D or no, I’m still off to the carribean tomorrow to sit on the beach and drink fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.  And to facilitate not thinking about particle physics, I’m not taking my laptop.  Have a good week, everybody!

It has been almost a year and a half since Oliver came to live with us.  When he first arrived, he couldn’t look at either of the cats without going batshit crazy (aside: I don’t know where that phrase came from, but it is awesome).  Literally, it took both me and Howard to restrain him from flying at the cats.  So for a long time, I had to spend time with either my cats or my dog.  Which was sad.  But I think those days are behind us.  Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

And Exhibit C:

Hooray

Last Thursday was a very bad day for Continental Airlines. I was supposed to fly to Arkansas around 5 PM, but my flight was canceled and Continental claimed the soonest they could get me out again was four days later. Since I didn’t want to trade a seven-day vacation for a three-day vacation, I just canceled the trip and will go another time. I am very angry at Continental, but as we all know now, their already very bad customer service day got a whole lot worse that night, when another commuter flight involving Newark and upstate New York crashed. So, although I’m sad to be at work this week rather than chillin’ with my family, I’m grateful that this is the worst thing I have to complain about.

And my weekend turned out to be really nice. Howard got me the perfect Valentines day present, sold by our local SPCA: a shiny red travel coffee mug that says “Tompkins County SPCA” filled with hershey kisses and a raffle ticket. That already combines three things I love: coffee, chocolate and being nice to animals. And it turns out that I won something in the raffle — a $100 gift certificate to the local unpainted furniture store. It’s kind of bizarre that I won that, since Howard and I had been planning to go there this weekend to look for a bookcase to house the miles of books I cleared out of my old graduate student office. Buying my first real-wood shelving seems like an appropriate way to celebrate not being a student anymore.

My new job and my new addiction to Facebook have been keeping this blog quiet.  Sorry!  I know I’m the only one in the world who cares about this, but my cats and dog have been getting along phenomenally well lately, and I have pictures to prove it.  Unfortunately, my camera is holding them hostage until I provide it will a charged  battery, so I offer you this random cute picture instead:

Oliver was on his way to a bath when this was snapped.  He was not happy.

In other news, the job is going okay.  I already have to give a presentation tomorrow to a bunch of people I don’t know about a subject I don’t really know anything about yet.  But happily, thursday is the start of a 2 week vacation that will take me to Arkansas and the Virgin Islands!