Since it looks like I’ll be heading back to the 305 a little earlier than I expected (only until January! Don’t worry, good people of Argentina, I’ll be back!), now seems like a good time to share four new Miami-based blogs that I just discovered.

The first is Miami Dish, a very cool blog about Miami food and events, which I found via Twitter. (I still haven’t gotten around to learning how to use Twitter properly, and I was just about to abandon it when I saw a “tweet” by Miami Dish. Twitter, Miami Dish bought you another chance.)

The second, also found via Twitter, is Greener Miami. For being such a clean, stylish city (last spring, Forbes named it “the cleanest city in America“), Miami doesn’t make its green initiatives very obvious. Public transportation isn’t great, traffic is heavier than you’d think, and I’m pretty sure my building didn’t recycle a single bottle in the three and a half years I lived there. The more blogs like Greener Miami, the better, in my opinion - especially when you consider that, if Al Gore is right, and the sea level does rise, South Florida is one of the places with the most to lose.

Two others I found on Miami Dish’s blogroll:

Mango & Lime: another great food and restaurant blog. The recipe for portobello quesadillas looks pretty fantastic, and the restaurant reviews are great. When I get back to Florida, I’m sure I’ll be checking out this site a lot more often.

The South Florida Daily Blog: a useful aggregator of news stories, blog posts, discussions about all of South Florida. It was SFDB that directed me to this Sun-Sentinel news story about local businesses trying to silence critics on the Internet by suing them. (Just when I was starting to give Florida a little credit.)

Obama wins! Even Florida came through in the end.

UPDATE: Here’s a website that clearly and concisely answers the question, “Is Obama President?”

Living outside the U.S., I don’t watch a lot of news on TV, and I have to say that I don’t really miss it.

But I would like to see the rest of this interview with Colin Powell, former Secretary of State (under George W. Bush) and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (under George H. W. Bush):

Okay. If you’re an American, the last couple of months have probably felt like you’ve been getting screwed by a rhinoceros unusually challenging times. I know this turn of events has added some extra excitement to my life.

There are some things you can do to make yourself feel better, though.

One of them is voting – but, in most states, you have to wait a few more weeks to do it (until Tuesday, November 4th), and it looks like that game is winding down a little early this year, anyway. (Let’s hear it for Florida!)

Still, please vote; it’s never a sure thing until the guy takes office. Especially if you live in Florida or Ohio.

The other, more immediately-gratifying thing you can do is eat panqueques con dulce de leche – one of Argentina’s most significant contributions world happiness:

If you’re in Buenos Aires, Miami, or New York, you should make your way to Novecento. I used to live across the street from the one in Brickell (Miami). Take my word for it on this one. Order the panqueques, with ice cream.

In the likely event that you don’t live in any of those places though, or, in the even more likely even that you’re on a budget, you’ve got to take a slightly longer road to get your panqueques.

First, go to Pip In the City, (the source of the picture above) and get her recipe. Pip has graciously provided it as a public service to the entire world.

Second, find someone who you love very much.

Next, find some way to get that person to make the panqueques for you.

Finally, eat the panqueques.

After taking these four simple steps, I guarantee you’ll feel much, much better about everything.

Being an American in Argentina, I’ve been asked about 20 times, in the past two weeks, to explain what exactly is happening with the U.S. banking system and why it’s happening right now. I actually do kind of understand it, but not well enough to clearly explain it to someone who has no idea what’s going on.

Which I guess means that I don’t really understand it as well as I thought I did.

Luckily, Very Short List just sent me a link to a website called The Money Meltdown that explains the situation so well that anyone can get a handle on it. It has links to further reading for people who want to learn a lot more, and it compares the current catastrophe to past financial catastrophes.

Even if you’ve never read the Wall Street Journal (or FT, or whatever) in your life, even if you can’t stand to watch CNBC for a second, you should give The Money Meltdown a look. Wherever you live, chances are pretty good that the things happening in New York and Washington right now will affect your life for the next couple of years, and this is a great site to help you understand exactly what’s going on.