Welcome to Alabama

 After a long day traveling Wednesday, we woke up to a nice gift basket of Alabama goodies courtesy of Peter's new office.

Our apartment for the next few weeks is on the ground floor with a balcony over a slope overlooking some trees.  Without our normal toys and places to visit, we will have to make due with cable network cartoons and a swimming pool.

Lots of green in Alabama, that's for sure.  The bright, well watered kind; not the dusty, CA kind.  In the evening, the croaking of the frogs in this wooded area along our apartment are so loud you can't hear yourself think.

This morning we went to Costco to pick up a few more staples for the kitchen.  We've done some other shopping in stores we've never been to before and found it frustrating.  The familiarity of Costco was wonderful.  Costco doesn't sell milk in a two pack or the eggs in a 5 dozen flat but at least the price seems more reasonable.  Other things we've observed:  Sabra hummus actually comes in about 8 varieties - in CA I'd only seen 2.  Humidity isn't so bad - humid or not, everybody hides out in the AC, just like in CA.  Tea is sold everywhere in gallon jugs - think of the milk section at Safeway but with tea. (Sweet "teh," by the way, not "tee")  We spotted the local Cracker Barrel and will visit soon.

S