Our house, and all the other obvious ones

So, back in Miami for the new year, and a lot of things are just as startling as the first time. The palm trees, the lizards, the early, sudden nightfalls; I'm being surprised by it all over again. The night I got here, I was greeted by heavy rain. Two days later, an enormous thunderstorm. I'd forgotten just how damn enormous they are.

One thing that isn't striking me so much is the temperature. Though it's undeniably hot, and humid, it feels more like a duvet than a blast furnace. I noticed whilst in the UK that I was feeling the heat less. Perhaps I'm setting myself up for a lifetime wrapped in blankets as soon as autumn rolls round.

I've moved into a new house with three others (two yet to return from summer holidays). No longer a lodger. If you want the address, email me. It's a one storey place, built in 1939, so ancient by Miami standards (the oldest building here was built in 1877). The garden is huge, with a fairly parched lawn, plenty of trees - oak, palms, mango, avocado - and a jacuzzi. Yes, really. The interior is sizable, in generally good nick, but at the moment it all still feels a little provisional. The place came unfurnished, like most houses here, and though the landlord has donated a miscellany of old furniture, there's some way to go till it feels like a home. Interesting how priorities can vary so much; one of my housemates has been here for two or three weeks now, and has sorted out all the things he needs to work from home, but has managed quite happily without a saucepan.

So I've been spending some time trying to acquire a fair range of household goods. This is harder than it sounds. I'm much better located than I was last year, closer to one of the main shopping areas of the city, but that's 'shopping' in the leisure sense. Coconut Grove is not the place to buy kitchenware or coffee tables. Annoyingly, the place I lived in last year was; it was the day-to-day stuff that was maddeningly hard to get hold of there.

Choosing what to buy involves a bit of a delicate decision making. I'm normally of the mindset that it's worth spending a bit more on things you're going to use often, like pans, to get something that's going to last. But I'm well aware that (hopefully) I'm not going to be here longer than four more years, and there's no way I'm going to be shipping stuff like that back to the UK. So I'm trying to pick out the items that will last the distance, but not much more, and save some money by doing so. Mind, there's still things that I'm sorely tempted to pay top dollar for. Kitchen knives, for example. I mean, they're portable, right? I could bring them back...

All in all, I think that once I'm settled, nested, this is going to be a great place to live. I went for a walk around the area earlier today to remind myself what was here, looking with a resident's eyes - I've only ever been here to go for a drink or to the cinema. Everything's much handier than last year; closer to the metro, to a supermarket, to bars, to interesting and useful places to shop. And of course, I'm much better set up to accommodate guests. I've spent a fair bit of the summer sleeping in various spare rooms or on sofas, and someday, I hope that I can reciprocate some of that hospitality (though you're not disqualified from visiting if I haven't graced your home with my comatose presence).

Anyway, I must go; I need to check how high the bidding's gone on a secondhand set of Globals...