A New Beginning

With much more sadness and uncertainty than expected, I said goodbye to the United States... again... and headed to a new job and a new life in Cardiff. For those of you who are a little iffy on British history and geography, google maps is extremely helpful: Cardiff is the capital of Wales (independent from England but not quite, like England's high school age child that asks for stupid tattoos but got a full-ride scholarship to university), and it is dusting off a long history as a busy or not-busy-enough coal exporting port and emerging as a shiny cultural epicentre.

Most of  my life was packed up into lots of small boxes and plastic tubs and delivered to a freight forwarding service in Newark.  What remained  was snugly stuffed into two suitcases, one carry-on, and one personal item, and was delivered back to Newark two days later for a direct Continental flight to London Heathrow.  What would come after landing was fuzzy... maybe a painfully long and expensive bus.  maybe an equally painful bus plus train.  a first night in a hotel, hopefully followed by the extra bedroom of a nice person I found online.  maybe.

Then, everything righted itself.  Dave, being his classy understatedly exceptional self, showed up at Heathrow unannounced.  Well, he showed up at the wrong terminal, so we met near a bus depot instead of at the arrivals gate.  But nothing looked better than to see him on the sidewalk, ready to help with the obese luggage and the half-awake me.  He donated four hours of his life to take the bus to Cardiff with me, which didn't feel long at all :)  He headed back to Oxford the next day, but at that point I had my feet slightly more firmly planted and a new place to stay lined up.  My new hostess even picked me up in her car, so I was spared solo suitcase-battling.  Things are definitely going more smoothly than I could have expected!

My temporary flat is close to the Cardiff Bay area, which has been transformed from a decaying working harbor to a bubbling hub for chain restaurants with water views, the Millenium Centre (above, left) that houses opera, musicals, orchestras, etc., their Assembly/Senate building, and swanky new apartments.

One of the few remaining original buildings from the bustling Cardiff port.  It is actually quite small in person, but very attractive.  In the foreground is the skeleton of a weekend continental market (that I am about to visit after posting this), full of food vendors hawking paella, breads, french cookies, kangaroo burgers, bratwursts, curries, garlicky potatoes and skewers of jumbo shrimp.  I'm hungry.

View from Mermaid Quay (pronounced 'Key', which always gets me) at Cardiff Bay.  I didn't realize how nice it would be for me to live near water again... I even adore the sound of seagulls, until they divebomb people in the busy shopping high street.

A month for family

The last month or so has been a surprising mix of the terrible, the hard, the wonderful, and the relaxed.  I finally left my job at the NIH... I have had "going away parties" on numerous occasions for each extended trip I took over to Oxford, but this was the big last goodbye.  Dr. Bright packed up all her earthly belongings, put them in the brave little minivan, and headed precariously home to New York.  In the end, I think that I will sincerely miss my lab at the NIH; despite some tough times, I came to really appreciate the people and the place more than I expected, and I left Bethesda on very good terms, with an NIH sweatshirt, a card signed by all my colleagues, and a rather large gift certificate for John Lewis (a UK department store).

At the same time, my family was coping with a tragedy.  My grandmother suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, spent a few challenging days in the hospital, and was eventually brought home to Lake George for home hospice care.  About the time I arrived in Indiana, she was coming home.  My mom was amazing.  My whole family was amazing.  Somehow, a tragic event was almost beautiful, and my grandma passed away in her own bedroom with all her children holding hands around her.

After the funeral, I drove the little mini cooper up to my brother's house in Ann Arbor, where I proceeded to do very little.  I initially intended to stay for the weekend.  Then I stayed for a week.  Then 10 days.  Whoops!  But I had much needed downtime, and puttered about the garden between walks into town for posh coffee.  Pansies, espresso drinks, cooking with Andy... no surprise I stayed so long :)

Andy completely remade the front porch of his house, and I was fortunate enough to watch it all come together.  With no  help from me (but at least without my clumsiness ruining too much), Andy put up the finished railings.  As a finishing touch, he created a trellis for the north side, in the same style as the trellis on our grandparent's porch that we found in old black and white photographs.

The handyman himself, relaxing on the porch swing he refurbished.

I had been worried about the pansies, since when I left they looked like this.

Andy recently emailed me this updated photo of our pansy project... "resplendent" indeed :)

When I finally started to be bored with my life of leisure, I took the little mini home to Long Island.  For kicks, I opted to drive via Canada instead of Ohio (although they are equally boring stretches of North America), and spend the night in the very, erm, bizarre town of Niagara Falls.  Although the falls are rather impressive, the budget hotel I picked out of my data-roaming-charged-smartphone was in the middle of an off-season theme-park/freak-show/fun-house/wax-museum neighborhood that was rather Norman-Bates creepy without the throngs of whiny eight-year-olds that I assume flood the streets in the summertime.  But, I survived the night, passed through customs, and took fun two-lane twisty roads most of the way back to the NY metropolitan area.  Like the commercial says, "Mini cooper... handles like a go-cart."

The falls.  At night, they are lit up by big spotlights that change colors.

After getting some wanderlust out of my system, I settled into a cozy routine back at Casa Gallogly-Bright.  The newest addition to the family fleet, two banana yellow pedal kayaks, were a highly enjoyable addition to the weeks at home.  Good work mom and dad!  After a little foray up to Montreal (for another post), I hunkered down to pack up my entire life into boxes to be shipped in a container ship over to Cardiff.  I will only post about that process when/if I get all those boxes delivered in 4-6 weeks time!  And, simply because it wouldn't be a blog entry without entirely random pictures, here is one from a trip to the North Fork with Mom and Barbara to see alpacas.  Yes, alpacas. 

Yup, Mom and Barbara and alpacas.  They were both doing their best to convince the other to buy them.  "Never need to cut grass again!"

Equally random pic of my dad, preemptively celebrating our stuffed bell peppers :)