Living in Two Worlds / Viviendo en Dos Mundos

That is what I wrote about for my last OLLI Spanish class of the fall season:

Estoy viviendo en dos mundos. Una parte está en EE.UU. , donde assisto a las últimas clases de OLLI, buscamos una casa para comprar, trabajo con mi empresa en Connecticut, y visito a mi familia alrededor en Cincinnati. Otra parte planea nuestro viaje a España el domingo que viene, arreglando citas con amigos americanos allí para el Día de Dar Gracias, reuniones con el club de lectores, juegos de petanca con los daneses, visitas a mis amigos y a mi profesora de español, y las tareas de preparar a vender la casa. Es dificil vivir en dos lugares cuando ambos son tan atractivos.

I am living in two worlds. One part of me is in the United States, where I am attending the final OLLI classes, we are looking for a house to buy, I work with my job in Connecticut, and visit my family around Cincinnati. The other part is planning our trip to Spain this coming Sunday, arranging appointments with American friends there for Thanksgiving, meetings with my book group, petanca games with the Danes, visits to friends and my Spanish teacher, and the tasks involved in getting the house ready to sell. It is difficult to live in two places when both are so attractive.

Now as I write this on Saturday, "this coming Sunday" is tomorrow and the balance has shifted to the other side. We have done our final purchases of gifts and supplies to take with us, I have done the final laundry--not that we are taking many clothes--we have kitty-proofed the house and talked with my sister who will become Guapa's best friend for the next four weeks, I have done a good job of using up those items in the freezer and refrigerator that I do not want to face again when I come back, I have finished reading the book for book club next week and arranged for its return to the library, and we have picked up the rental car that we will use to drive to the airport and drop there tomorrow morning. All that remains is packing the suitcases and making sure I have everything I need for the trip. It should be simple, since we have a full house over there and are taking little, and I have been collecting things and making notes for a couple weeks. But it's the part of the job that I always hate. So I had better get to it.

If time and mind permit in the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts at my original blog, Sundays in Spain.

Playing Pètanque in Ohio

Pètanque Court in Zanesfield, Ohio

I've been dealing all week with a nasty cold I picked up by being outside for two hours in the brisk air last Sunday in Zanesfield, Ohio. It's worth it, though, because after a break of more than four months, I was playing pètanque again. Readers of Sundays in Spain, my earlier blog, know that I used to spend a lot of time playing petanca, as it is known in Spanish, when living in the Alicante region in southeast Spain. It doesn't take a lot of resources to play this game: the court can be just a field or sandy area, the game is centered around one ping-pong sized ball, and each player needs three metal balls. No special equipment, though a sun visor helps.

We had looked high and low for other players of pètanque in the Cincinnati area, checking out parks and sports stores, and searching for notices in the newspaper and on the Internet. Finally we came across the Zanesfield Pètanque Club. So last Sunday we made a two-hour trip north from Cincinnati to Zanesfield, a small town that I had not heard of, even though, I discovered during the course of the drive, it is located only a half hour's drive from the town in which I grew up! The Zanesfield club is very active and enthusiastic about the sport, and has corralled support from many organizations in the community to set up the best-equipped pètanque courts I have ever seen.  The members were welcoming and we had a great time, even though I lost two games. And caught a cold.

That Time Again

Readers of my previous blog Sundays in Spain know about my obsession with the biannual changing of the clocks. I am not so much opposed to the changing of time once in the spring and again in the fall as I am frustrated by the inability of Europe and the United States to do it at the same time each year. They both do it at 2:00 AM on a Sunday morning; it's just that the particular Sunday they choose to do it is not the same Sunday.

This year Europe changed from what I know of as "summer time" to "winter time" a week before the U.S. changed from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. I got my first inkling about ten days ago, when I registered in advance for a webinar that was being hosted in London this past week. The registration website had a button that I could click to find out the timing of the webinar in my local time zone. I know that there are normally five hours' difference between the U.K. and U.S. Eastern time but that the U.K. does not change to summer time (I guess Greenwich Mean Time is Greenwich Mean Time, is GMT, is GMT forever.) The website showed four hours' difference between webinar origin time and my point of reception. Oh dear! I should check that, I said to myself, but there is time to do it closer to the webinar date. I wrote it down on my calendar for the earliest possible start time.

Then later I got emails from friends in Spain and Denmark commenting on the impending dark evenings because the clocks were changing, and I knew I should be changing my mental calculation of the normal six hours' difference between Europe and here to the odd five hours' difference. I tried to explain this week to a group of people (those in my Spanish class, as it happens) that I get a little unsettled every year when this happens because it upsets the normal symmetry of my life: it is so much easier to calculate the time difference when one slides the hour hand on a primitive non-digital clock face straight across from 9:00 to 3:00, for example, or 12:00 to 6:00, or 1:00 to 7:00 than it is to move at the oblique angle that represents five hours' difference. Not to mention the change to my very deeply internalized body clock that I think adjusted to U.S. Eastern time when I was born in Ohio and, in spite of many layered adjustments through the years, still reacts to Eastern time as "real time." I don't think I was very successful at conveying this illogical but very deep-seated feeling to the other students, except for one fellow student who I believe is from Germany, who told me after the class that she understood perfectly, and shared my frustration that both continents do not change at the same time.

Happily for me, North American clocks changed from Daylight Savings to Standard time early this morning--one of us was awake to watch the time jump from 1:59 to 1:00 on the iPad. For the first time in ten years--maybe twelve--I experienced the change from EDT to EST in person. My internal clock is once again based in the right zone, and in symmetry.

Cool Cat!

Scooter, the neutered cat. "Hip spectacles. No testicles."
Created by Northlich.

Our public television station, WCET, has GiveThemTen.org as a sponsor of the PBS Newshour. Ten is a project that is fighting the problem of over-population of cats--it claims that a cat is put to death in a "kill shelter" every twenty minutes! We watch the Newshour most evenings and are therefore quite familiar with hearing that "Cool cats are spayed and neutered cats" after we hear other important views of the world. The tagline is part of a stellar eye- and ear-catching PR campaign that I believe has gone nationwide on much media--and worldwide through the Internet--but which I was proud to discover was created here in Cincinnati at Northlich marketing and advertising firm.

We had been reminding our little Guapa that "cool cats are spayed" every time we heard this or saw a picture of Scooter, the neutered cat, in his cool sunglasses and black turtleneck during the past couple of weeks. That's because she was approaching her six month birthday and had a date to keep to be spayed herself. Not surprisingly, she failed to appreciate the warning or the benefit.

 Cool Cat Guapa. ©Johannes Bjorner 2014

But spayed she was this past Wednesday morning. Both she and we survived. After we picked her up Wednesday afternoon and returned her to the house, she slept most of the remainder of the day, waking only to sip a little water drained from a can of tuna and lap up a few morsels of crushed chunk albacore. Then she slept again, and we watched her constantly to make sure she didn't lick her wound. She probably got more sleep than we did that night. Thursday she was ready to eat again, and had recovered enough so that we had to watch that she didn't jump too high and split open her internal sutures.

She is still much quieter than before the operation, but we are astonished at how quickly she seems to have returned to comfort, and without the pain medicine we had prepared. She still occupies much of our attention, and we are continually surprised--and only a little apprehensive--at seeing where she will appear next. She's one cool cat.

Open House

There was sun shining in through our balcony door and down through the living room skylights this morning. There has been precious little sunlight this past week, so we decided to do what we have been doing for the last several Sundays: drive out to a few open houses. Viewing real estate on the market without an appointment or a commitment seems to be an activity largely limited to Sundays in Cincinnati, and it is fast becoming as much a part of our Sunday traditions as watching CBS Sunday Morning from 9:00 to 10:30.

We scoured the Internet listings and came up with four new possibilities. One was in an attractive condo development where we had viewed before but which we had largely discarded because the two-bedroom condos were too small, and the four-bedroom one we had seen was a bit too large and even more too expensive. This was a three-bedroom, and it was much more to our liking. In fact, it was so much to our liking that one of us was ready to move in tomorrow. There had already been another condo that we had viewed two weeks ago which was very much to our liking: three bedrooms and in the same area where we are currently living, thereby close to stores and public transport. Alas, that one is now under contract to someone else, but I am keeping my eyes wide open for similar models in that development.

The fact is that we are reluctant to commit to a new property before we sell our house in Spain. And though we are returning to Spain next month to ready that house for the market, it would be very dumb to expect action too soon, and foolhardy to act on that expectation. On the other hand, we are living in a rental and will have to decide by next April whether we intend to renew our lease or not. So even though we are not ready to make a commitment in the next few months, we are spending our Sunday afternoons exploring different parts of the region and different styles of living.

We have driven to the east and to the west. We have driven north, though I am reluctant to go very much farther north than where we are already situated; we have not explored very much to the south, so that may come next. But the longer we stay in this area, the more we see its advantages: we had one agent last week rave about the wonderful community center in this town and the modest cost for seniors--and we have yet to darken its door. This week another agent explained that we have one of the most reasonable tax rates of any of the surrounding communities, because of some industrial properties (which we generally bypass) and lots of commercial properties (which we have taken great advantage of).

Time is on our side, so we will continue to explore and examine and think about what we need and what we don't at this particular point in our lives. Can we really find a smaller house with an open feeling that still allows enough space for each of us to have our private area?  A place with at least one bedroom and full bath accessible without steps, and a laundry room on the same level as the primary bedroom? With a low-maintenance but attractive yard? With walking and public transportation close by?

Time is on our side. While we watch and hope and let one or two get away, we are also peeking into a lot of closets and garages and observing the state of many properties on the market. All of which gives us a good idea of what and how much we need to do when we get back to our house in Spain in November.

Go Metro

We had to chase the bus around Tri-County Mall to find the bus stop. Fortunately, there was a very polite driver who rolled down his window during his rest stop between runs at this end point and advised us where to drive to (at the other end of the mall parking lot) to park our car and get on at the official start of the downtown route.

Yesterday morning arrived with sun and warmer weather than we had had during most of the week, and we had heard that there was a book festival in downtown Cincinnati--Books by the Banks, though it was held in the Duke Energy Convention Center rather than at The Banks, the trendy new area fronting the Ohio River where I would have expected it to be by virtue of its name. We had been thinking of trying out the Cincinnati Metro public transportation from our northern suburb to the city, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

The first thing we noticed after we got on the bus and it started its route was that there were two other stops for this and two other lines closer to our house than the one we had found at the mall--one within walking distance. We were familiar with the route for the first half of the tour--this was all area that we drive through for shopping and general days out. We had also driven down the lower part of Winton Road just a week ago to go to an evening dinner and auction in Clifton. Then we passed Findlay Market and the area leading up to Music Hall, and then, suddenly we were in what I would term "downtown." The driver had promised to tell us when we should get off so that we would have only a couple blocks to walk to the convention center. We noted the "end point" of the route at Government Square, but we didn't get off there--we continued on the "return" journey, which seemed to criss-cross over many of the downtown streets, partially to facilitate downtown transit, but also due to the inconvenience of road construction for a new trolley.

The book festival was a noisy to-do. We visited several of the tables staffed by representatives from the various libraries and arts organizations throughout the Greater Cincinnati region. I replenished my pen and pencil, post-it note, and bookmark collections and picked up a lot of information about the organizations that contribute to cultural life in the area. We also wandered though the new book displays and chatted with some of the authors, but we did not manage to hear any of the scheduled talks and panel discussions. W left the convention center and went looking for a place for lunch. We soon found ourselves headed toward Fountain Square but ran into a detour at the 5th Street Gallery and discussed art with this month's guest artist Tom Pope, an interesting photographer.

After a light lunch at Potbelly's, we decided to head back to the bus stop but first happened upon an office of Cincinnati's tourist bureau, where we picked up some good maps and brochures and chatted with a woman who remembered a couple places that we knew from our limited time in Cincinnati eons ago: Avco Electronics, where Johannes worked, and Wiggins Restaurant, where we went on our first date. Both exist only in memory now.

We discovered that Government Square, that end point terminal of the bus line that we had passed through on our trip down, was just behind Fountain Square, and we only had to wait seven minutes before the next bus came. The trip back seemed longer than the one-hour trip down, for we were tired now, but we still watched carefully and observed the route, thinking that there may be times when we want to take in an event downtown and leave the driving to someone else.

Music, Music, Music

Fountains in Washington Park across from the Music Hall on a summer evening
©2014 Johannes Bjorner

Though the weather turned suddenly cold last week, it was technically still summer when we made our first 2014 trip to Cincinnati's venerable Music Hall. We drove into the city guided by Gladys Philips Smith, found parking easily right beside Music Hall and across from Washington Park, and walked down 14th Street to Race to find a bite to eat before the 8:00 PM performance. We were attracted to the outdoor seating at a place called The Anchor, and we were able to snag a table on the patio and next to the sidewalk, so we could observe the other diners and the passers-by on a Friday evening. There was a large party of younger people in the center of the patio--maybe a work gathering to celebrate a special event for one of their colleagues, an upcoming wedding perhaps. Another couple nearer our age were within my view, and they were enjoying a full dinner and sure seemed as though they would be heading back over to Music Hall after they finished the bottle of wine that accompanied their meal. We settled for a single glass of wine, coffee, a snack of hard cooked egg with salmon caviar and an appetizer of cold salmon (gravad laks, though it wasn't termed that on the menu), and then a giant pecan pie ice cream sundae for dessert. Sated but not stuffed, we ambled back toward Music Hall through Washington Park, a delightful and lively small park filling the space of two city squares in the OTR (Over-the-Rhine) area. There were people everywhere--walking, sitting on the benches, biking through the park and around the colored water jets spouting up in the center of the park. When we got around to the other side we read a poster telling us that you can select music on the internet, and the various jets will react to the music.

The performance that night was grand; we were introduced to a fantastic clarinetist, Martin Fröst, who was featured in Mozart's Concerto in A Major for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622. You can hear and see him play it yourself in three movements on YouTube and discover why we were so enthralled.

Then the following week, through the generosity of a new acquaintance who has retired from playing in the CSO, we were at another performance. This one was at 11:00 Friday morning, which is the earliest I have ever been to a professional concert (and about twelve hours earlier than they normally begin in Spain!). It turned out to be a great time to listen to music. Emanuel Ax was the piano soloist for Chopin's Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 21. The remainder of this performance had a nautical theme:

Ravel. Une barque sur l'océan (A Boat on the Ocean)
Mendelssohn. The Hebrides ("Fingal's Cave") Overture, Op. 26
Debussy. La mer
     From Dawn to Noon on the Sea
     Games of the Waves
     Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea

Following the performance we went out for a bite to eat for lunch at Salazar, another chef-owned bistro down the street, where we split a giant burger and plate of scrumptious Mediterranean sea salt fries. But there was no music at the park afterwards, and no colored lights. After a longer-than-expected tour of OTR that confused even Gladys Philips Smith, we found our way home and still had part of the afternoon and all evening to revel in the music we had heard.