Farewells

Slowly my stay in Cincinnati is coming to an end. Work has been a little bit crazy, I took the position of a post doc that left and with my leaving, support is lacking for some of the people that are new at performing PKPD analyses, so in addition to wrapping up the projects that I had been working on, people want to take advantage of the last opportunity to ask questions before I’m gone. Unfortunately the vicodin shut down my brain last Tuesday, but also on the unintoxicated days my last week has been less productive than I had hoped and I am very glad that first impressions are said to be more important than last ones. After two days without improvement of the ear issue it is going better now, so I can face the air pressure differences without an ear infection.

Farewells of course go hand in hand with food and drinks in the company of the people that I have met. Last Thursday a nice dinner was planned with my colleagues. I have clearly been complaining too much about the fact that I have to take the car to get anywhere and that I cannot drink because of that. As a farewell gift one of my close colleagues decided to support my drinking habits and pick me up from home in the morning and drop me off there again after the dinner, allowing me to tip the alcohol scale a bit more in the right direction. I thought that was a very nice gift indeed, so I looked for a dinner location that served cocktails as well :). At that time, the ear infection (or the ibuprofen that I was using to treat it) was still an issue, but I wanted to take the opportunity that was presented to me so I popped some pills in the morning and then went without for the rest of they day. I enjoyed two very nice cocktails that evening and when leaving the restaurant I figured it would have been safer to drive then, compared to the driving on the vicodin high that I did earlier that week. But still, I prefer to stick with the ‘drink, don’t drive’ motto.
My colleague JJ usually dresses very practically, but I have seen her in a skirt once and it looks very nice on her. I had asked her to wear the skirt again on my farewell dinner, but skirt in day time was too much, instead she wore a fancy top in the correct color (orange). Upon seeing this, the colleague that picked me up at home remembered having an orange shirt as well and had been wearing that the rest of the day too!

Most colleagues of the clinical pharmacology department joined the dinner on Thursday, but a number of people from the anesthesia department could not make it, so I was invited for a lunch (more food, I think they got to know me pretty well here) on Friday. I am not a huge fan of blue cheese and dried cranberries, but was very surprised at how well they go together!
Friday evening we had a private farewell party with the two colleagues that I have been hanging out with most during my stay here. Cincinnati is very supportive of many different art forms making art very accessible to anybody. The College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati was having a concert on Friday and we went to see it. It is very low key, free entrance for UC students and $5 for the rest of the people. You don’t need to dress up, any music lover (or any novice to the art that is interested in finding out what it is about) can just walk in and enjoy, while the quality is high. After the concert there was one thing still left on my to-do list that I had not gotten around to before, partially because of the very crappy whether we have had while I was here. When I entered the country 15 weeks ago in Detroit, the custom officer that I talked to asked me whether I like ice-cream when he saw I was heading to Cincinnati. My answer was “who doesn’t?”, so he grinned and told me that there is a famous ice-cream parlor in Cincinnati that I had to go. And yes, that Friday the whether was very agreeable so after the concert we went for Greater’s ice-cream. They are best-known for their blueberry chip flavor, so I had a small one of that. The ‘chips’ in blueberry chip are chocolate chips, or rather chunks of great quality chocolate and a ‘small’ one is also a tiny bit larger than I was aiming for, but I have to say it was great ice-cream indeed!
Then walking back to my car, I noticed a parking ticket under the windshield. Not for parking in an emergency lane, parking without paying, parking in a dangerous place, near a cross road or too far away from the curb on the road. No, my ticket was for parking facing the wrong direction. It was not a one-way street, it was perfectly legal to park there, if I had been parked in the exact same spot, but with the nose of my car in the other direction it would have been no problem… Really!!! How can that be a violation? What is that a violation of … the right of the people parked behind me (or in front of me in this case) to see the rear of my car (they can come and kiss my rear if they like)? Of course I immediately looked at the digest of the Ohio motor vehicle laws and could not find anything about this rule. The only thing I could find was that it is prohibited to be parking or standing on the side of the highway facing in the wrong direction. And believe me, the road I was parked on was anything BUT a highway! The fine is only $50 dollars, so it would probably make my life a whole lot easier if I just paid it, but of course it is a matter of principle, I am not going to pay a fine for a law that stupid and that I cannot find in any of the documentation available to me. To be continued… (I have a feeling this could continue for quite a long time, but principles are principles)

I have also been hoping for a BBQ for a while now, especially since many of my facebook friends on the other side of the ocean have reported to be BBQing. I told Amanda I was not going anywhere without a BBQ and that helped. Her brother with his (extended) family came to visit us in the weekend since one of his sons had a tournament near Cincinnati. After the games on Saturday they came back with supplies for the BBQ. I did find out thought that BBQ here does not include sitting in the sun with your big sunglasses on, a glass of rose in one hand watching the meet on the grill from the corner of your eyes. No, Saturday the guys grilled the meet in the garden, brought a big bowl with meat inside and then everybody ‘attacked’, but it was a BBQ so I am not complaining.
After cleaning and packing on Saturday and Sunday, Sunday evening was schedule for (yes, you guessed it) a farewell dinner with Amanda and her boyfriend. Since I am an absolutely huge fan of ribs we went to this very typical American ‘eetschuur’, where they were supposed to have the best ribs in town. And they were pretty darn good I can tell you!

Today was my last day in the office, wrapping up my work, saving my work on a stick, being on hold for 27 minutes calling the court house, writing a letter to the court’s clerk about my parking ticket and really saying goodbye to my co-workers.
Then when I was back home, cooking my dinner and packing some final things, the tv show I was watching was interrupted for a tornado warning (this is quite a bit more serious that a tornado watch) and it was looking pretty threatening outside indeed. And just when I finished preparing my dinner, the power blacked out and the tornado alarms went off. I still know the odds of getting hit by one are extremely small, but I figured I better be safe than sorry, so instead of being a smart ass and ignoring this warning I ate my last dinner here in the dark on the steps of the basement (I did find candles, but could not find anything to light them with). And I am really hoping that it was my last dinner here (at least for a while), because when Amanda arrived back at the house, she mentioned that some flights were cancelled because of the volcano eruption in Iceland, but without power I could not check whether that was my flight.
After 1.5 hours, quite a bit earlier than expected, power went back on again. My flight is still not cancelled; let’s hope it will stay that way. I also saw an e-mail from my colleague asking me to come back into the office tomorrow on my way to the airport, but really I am not as indispensable as they think I am.