Apologies for the lack of updates (all three of you, my dear readers). It’s been a whirlwind lately. A week in puerto rico with carmen, one day at home, and then out to santa monica for four days. That ended about a week ago and i’ve been catching up on daily shows, colbert reports, and battlestar galactica (holy frak!).

Anyway, puerto rico was fantastic. It ended up being one of those ideal vacations you see in corona commercials or something. just beach, sun, food, and quality time with the lady friend. We went with a vacation rental and stayed at this place called elena beach in ocean park. It’s run by this sweet lady, betty, and, although we were a bit trepid with renting a place sight unseen, it worked out great. We ended up with a nicely furnished studio apartment that only cost us $600 for seven days.

The only oddity of our stay was that in coincided with 9am-jazzercising-notre dame-kids who were apparently on spring break at the time. So, they’d roll home around one or two in the morning and then wake up at nine and start jazzercising in the quad area outside our apartment. so yeah, listening to a bunch of college seniors stepping to c+c music factory: odd. i almost want to say that i was cooler than that when i was a senior.

anyway, since i’m into unordered lists these days (this being the age of the semantic web and all), here are the highlights:

• beach
• ocean
• sunshine
• mcdonalds apple pie. old school fried, not baked.
• mofongitos at urdin.
• coffee. holy cow is the coffee in this place good.
• being told: “we have a dress code here. you can’t wear shorts, but we’ll provide you with a sarong, is that ok?”
• walking through the projects trying to get to isla verde
• carmen would want me to list the bouncer who gave me a double ass cheek grab while patting me down. he was very thorough and found the gummy bears i was hiding in my back pocket. he let me in anyway.
• The kind policemen who found us a taxi on our way our way home

Well, there you have it. Photos can be found here (free registration and friendship required).

I’ve started taking the 6:30pm bus home lately. I had been taking the 6pm due to the physical limitations that prevented me from spending more time in the gym. Thankfully, those limitations are now in retrograde. One of the downsides of the 6:30pm bus (affectionately known as the Van Ness line), is that it drops me off at Van Ness and Grove. The intersection of Van Ness and Grove helps form the locus of points in the city that are farthest from my home. It often takes another 40min to and hour to get home from that stop. Just for some background, the 6pm bus (The Glen Park line) drops me off at 19th and Judah where it takes me about 15min to get home.

Anyway, so i’m on the 6:30pm and we’re waiting to leave sunnyvale when a woman steps on and asks “Does this bus go to Glen Park?” I kindly tell her that the last Glen Park bus was 6pm. She then turns to her comrade and says “Sorry about that . You can take a cab home and expense it.” I have to say i was slightly aghast. To me, that’s an egregious misuse of company funds for multiple reasons. I mean, you’re going to get into the city at 7:30/7:45. You have to stay past 8pm for a free cab ride in most financial institutions in new york! Also, if you need to get from Van Ness and Grove to Glen Park, you should take the Bart for $2 instead of running up a $30 cab ride. sheesh.

Sometimes i hear something that makes me take a step back and appreciate different people can be. Today, it was a story on npr about islamic radicals in gaza. Choice quote:

Internet entrepreneur Ahmed al Rafa-tee was not lucky enough to get a warning. One morning, the 24-year-old arrived at the Internet cafe he owned to find that his business had been blown up.

A statement from Suf al Haq Islamiya, or “The Swords of Islamic Righteousness,” claimed responsibility for the attack. The group said they were “implementing the rule of God” and called shops like Rafa-tee’s “dirty, corrupted” businesses that make youth “slaves of the devil mind,” an apparent reference to online games and porn.

“They think these Internet shops are wasting the time of the youth, keeping them away from praying, from liberating Palestine, from Jihad,” Rafa-tee said.

Rafa-tee calls the Swords group irrational. He says he had Internet filtering software in his now-destroyed cafe to block out porn sites.

Holy fuck! Online video games and porn keep kids from Jihad! This has got to be one of the best reasons to let your kids raid one more fortress or slip them the latest issue of playboy. It just blows my mind. Video games and porn are instruments of peace. who would have thought . . .