Sunday, November 27, 2005

Sunday in Florida - delayed a bit

This entry is getting posted late because Turk's cable modem died a horrible death on Sunday and I couldn't get on to post anything. Saturday I went to the Morikami Museum and Gardens in Delray Beach. If you are ever in the Delray Beach area of Florida you should check this out. It's a very fascinating museum with changing exhibits and a beautiful garden. There's a path that goes around from the museum in a circle through the gardens and passes the original museum. The cool thing about the original museum is that you have to take your shoes off. It's a traditional Japanese house set up. It's got neat displays as well, including several rooms where you have an artifact with three possible descriptions below it of what it could be. You have to figure out which one is the right description. You can add up your score and then it tells you that if you get most of them right you could be the curator. It's cute. All in all, definitely worth the $10 entrance fee. Oh, and I got some pictures, which will go up eventually. I'm still working out a Flickr account.

This morning Jake left around 8am. Hopefully he'll be smart and stop somewhere for a hotel and not try and drive all the way through. Turk and I hung out at the house while I did laundry. Always good to start a trip with as much clean clothing as possible. Also good to do laundry when it's free. :) I'll be able to do laundry again in Toronto. The youth hostel I'm staying at has a laundry. Although I'm assuming I'm going to have to get a hold of some Canadian coins to take care of that. The currency thing is going to be very strange in Canada. With the value of the US dollar down the way it is, the exchange rate isn't as simple as it used to be. Not that I've ever been to Canada, but I remember it being $1 to $1.50CAD at some point, which is easy math. The math isn't so easy now.

This afternoon we met up with Theresa to go catch a movie and dinner. We saw Walk the Line. Awesome movie if you have any interest at all in Johnny Cash. Great movie just for it's pure value as a film, but really fascinating look at Johnny Cash's life. I never realized how long his realationship with June Carter took to develop. I also never realized he was married to his first wife for so long. I'd really like to read one or both of his autobiographies now. He had quite the life. Joaquin Phoenix was an impressive Johnny Cash. I'm amazed at his singing voice. I guess that's what months of special training will do. Reese Witherspoon really proved that she can handle any role, not just the ditzy cute blonds. Her voice was also pretty impressive, although not as similar to June Carter's voice as Joaquin's was to Johnny's.

After movie dinner was at a nice little Mexican joint in Boca Raton. The food was good. Their guacamole was great, nice and chunky the way I like it. After dinner we chilled at Theresa's for a bit before I had to head back and pack up all my stuff into as small a space as humanly possible. I think I did pretty well in the end. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to handle the bags I have on the train and wandering around for the next month.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Probably the easiest thing to do regarding getting money here would be to just go to an ATM. Your card should work just fine (if it has the Plus or Cirrus on the back for sure) and it will automatically build in the exchange. When you make your withdrawal you'll get (for example) $100 CDN but your bank statement will say that a $82.34 withdrawal was made. Credit cards work the same way. Your receipt will say one thing in Canadian but your actual bill will include the exchange.