Miami! (aka "Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa!")

A mere two weeks after my whirlwind trip to Chile, I was off to the 6th annual regional conference in Costa Rica (click here if you really really really want to see the kinds of things I do. Warning: discussion quickly turns to customs unions, equity markets and income distribution). The conference was really interesting to attend, and, except for the fact that I somehow managed to coordinate one of my outfits completely with the hotel's uniform of red and black and was, therefore, stopped a number of times by lost hotel guests, all went well. The conference ended, and I was off to Miami, where I was going to meet Mike for a whole Saturday of Miami-style rest and relaxation.
I made it to Miami without incident, and met up with Mike. Beautiful! Fast forward to 2:35 am. We are jolted from deep sleep by the most horrible sound you may want to imagine, complete with flashing lights. Fire alarm! We wobble out of the room with puffy eyes only to hear someone yelling in the hallway: it's a real fire! We wobble much faster with still puffy eyes and we're out of the exit, past the pool and into the courtyard where a frazzled security guard was propping up some door to let out what did indeed look like lots of smoke. No fire trucks. 10 min later the alarm stops. Diagnosis: someone had yanked out the fire extinguisher and upon dropping/throwing it, released whatever chemicals are in a fire extinguisher, and caused the fumes. Back to bed. 5am. You guessed it: the now familiar but still horrendously awful fire alarm goes off. Back outside. We are all even less amused this time. The guard mutters some explanation which we didn't understand, the gist being that there is no fire, just the awful noise...
Luckily, the next 4 hours were peaceful, and we rose to a beautiful if slightly scorching day. The rest was pretty much your regular Miami vacation: lounging by the pool next to some highly tattooed but very friendly gentlemen with a giant boom box, a R&B play list of 700 songs and what seemed to be a 5 liter bottle of vodka and copious amounts of cranberry juice and Red Bull. At 11:47 am, Mike asks me if I'm relaxed. "Yes", I nod. "Very". "Good", says Mike, "I guess now is a good time to tell you that the kitchen sink is stopped up..."
It's now dinner time. The weather service promises a severe thunderstorm, and then promptly delivers on its promise. The sky dumps what seems like millions of gallons of water onto Miami, and then stops. We, hungry, set out for Greek Taverna which promises food, and above all, table dancing, wading through ankle deep water. 3 hours later we have consumed massive amounts of really outstanding Greek food, have indeed witnessed said table dancing complete with napkins-turned-confetti, and finished off the night with some Ouzo. Ankle deep water has mysteriously disappeared. Fire alarms do not sound even once during the night and we count the Saturday a huge success!