We started today by asking at the front desk for a rental car. The person there called and a van came to pick us up. When we got there, we learned that we would need to have a letter from the insurance agency saying we were covered to drive in Puerto Rico. We couldn’t find a toll-free number for A’s agency - State Farm uses local offices, and nobody was answering at hers - so we ended up renting the car in my name! I’ve never actually rented a car myself before. It almost didn’t work out because I couldn’t find my proper credit card (rental agencies don’t like debit cards) but suddenly it turned up in a place I thought I’d already checked. We rented a GPS unit with the car too; it turned out to be a worthwhile investment for $10/day.

Once the car was ready, we got in and I drove away. We’d planned that I would drive it off the lot, and then we’d pull in somewhere and switch drivers. But I actually felt quite comfortable in this car, so I stayed in the driver’s seat. We drove out to Arecibo, and traced the insane winding path that is the route to the Arecibo Observatory. The road to get there is almost not wide enough for two cars, and it has hairpin twists and turns plus rapid changes in elevation. So it was a rather nervewracking trip, but we made it okay! We stopped at a restaurant right before the observatory and got some lunch; I was pleasantly surprised by how tasty the rice and beans I had were.

We went up to the observatory and parked where we were instructed to. And then began the climb of 500 steps that it takes to get to the actual visitor center. There’s probably only about 100 stairs, but the rest of the walk is rather steep; in the parking lot they say to talk to the guard if you’re disabled, and I guess they let you drive up. (I think the ADA still applies in Puerto Rico, right?) The exhibits were pretty boring, because half of them were broken and the other half were things you could find on the internet. I did notice that they still have Pluto listed as the outermost planet in our solar system! Once we had finished looking at all the exhibits, we went out the door to see the world’s largest reflector. That thing is huuuuuuuge. There were some people on the actual telescope itself, doing maintenance or something; everyone on the observation balcony was chattering about how they’d never want to go up on something so high! The little bridge leading out to the telescope definitely looks treacherous, and if you dropped something it would fall a LONG way and probably crack some of the nearly 40,000 panels. We were kind of surprised by how dirty the reflector was - we had both been expecting something at least reflective, if not actually shiny. When we were done gaping, we decided to skip the movie presentation and headed to the gift shop. They had a cute shirt that I wanted - it would have been a very geeky souvenir of Puerto Rico - but they didn’t have it in anything but a size small.

I was really tired, so A drove us back to San Juan and I caught naps where I could - mostly after we got back on Highway 22, because the GPS voice shut up for 45 miles. We wanted to look around Old San Juan a little bit, so we parked near the ocean and walked around; we got back in the car and drove to another part of town to look for a particular store A remembered from when we were here three and a half years ago. We got kind of lost getting to the right area, and ended up not finding the store at all. We had dinner at Señor Frog’s, which is a total tourist trap…A was surprised that I wanted to eat there, but it amused me.

After dinner we had to come back to the hotel so I could do homework, but we got lost on the way. (The GPS unit wasn’t clear about which “slight left” to take, and we took the wrong one; it had trouble recalculating for some reason.) We ended up driving in a bus-only lane, which we didn’t figure out until a police officer going the other way stopped to ask if we were having any problems. We said we were lost, which I’m sure he had already figured out, and he told us how to get back to the expressway so we could return to our hotel in Isla Verde. When we got back I immediately jumped in the shower to wash off the horrible grease of the continuous spray sunblock, and although I had found out last night that we did have hot water after all, I learned that now the bathroom light was out. What fun! No matter, I showered with the door open and I could see well enough…well enough, that is, to figure out that the maid had removed our dirty washcloth but not given us a fresh one. Sigh…this hotel may be really cute to look at, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of maintenance and service.

I’m not sure what we’re doing tomorrow; we have the rental car for tomorrow too so we might go to El Yunque (the rain forest at the center of the island) or maybe we’ll pick somewhere else. I already found one geocache here - the reflector is a virtual cache - so I don’t need to find more, but maybe I’ll convince A to try it with me anyway!

Hello from San Juan! I’m writing from a Notepad window actually, because the wifi connection here is SO flaky. Once I’m done writing I’ll try to connect again and again until I upload it.

Our flight down here was just fine. I had a chatty person next to me on the way to Fort Lauderdale. She was sitting on the aisle, and chatting with a guy across the aisle who had the whole row to himself - I have no idea why he didn’t just move over and take the window seat and let her have the aisle on that side. I managed to sleep for a great portion of the flight, fortunately, but toward the end I woke up and she chattered at me a lot.

The Fort Lauderdale airport is absolutely dismal. We were in Terminal H and the only thing I was able to find to eat that was timely, inexpensive, and not really bad for me was a granola bar. The flight to San Juan was fine, I slept about half the trip; this time I had the window so when I woke up I was comfortable and not next to some chatterbox. We landed uneventfully but had a hard time getting our luggage because the carousels weren’t properly marked. Once our flight’s luggage finally started to appear, ours came up fast and we got a cab to the Coqui Inn. The cab driver was a complete ass, though. We had spotted the hotel from a ways away, and we were surprised when he blew right past it, so we said something. He said “oh, well, you obviously know better than me” and then dropped us off in front of something else that was also labeled with our hotel name, but was actually a BACK entrance. We had to drag our suitcases back down the block to the door we had gone past in the first place…the cabbie was an asshole and didn’t deserve a tip.

Our hotel is really cute and charming, there are murals everywhere that I will have to take pictures of! Our first room had a slow leak in the toilet, though (I discovered this before using it, fortunately), so we had to switch. We ended up in a slightly nicer room, and unpacked all our stuff. I did some school work (despite the crappy wifi) and we ordered pizza and watched X-Files. Then we decided it was too late to catch the A-5 bus to Old San Juan - it was 6pm when we were thinking of leaving, and the bus only runs till 9pm; after that you have to take a $20 cab back. So we decided we’d just walk to a nearby grocery store instead. It rained part of the trip but we found safety in a bus shelter and chatted about things. We continued on, and bought a bunch of stuff. I had to get a new bottle of continous spray sunscreen - we’d accidentally left it in the carry-on, and it was more than 3oz, so they threw it out in DC. We also got some diet champagne cola soda, which is impossible to find back home - you can get the regular kind, but never diet! We also got a $7 bottle of vodka and some juice to mix it with, plus some snacks, and then we came back to the hotel.

We were hot from walking, and A beat me into the shower to cool off. Unfortunately, while in there, she discovered…there was no hot water in the shower. So she went to the front desk and they offered us a couple of other rooms, one of which had better wifi than this one, but the rooms overall weren’t better. So we’re still in the room with no hot water in the shower, but it’s a nice room and very Caribbean-feeling. (One of the others we were offered felt like a dorm room.)

I think tomorrow we are going to the Arecibo radio telescope, assuming we can get a rental car. I was surprised that there was no public transportation out there, but I guess it’s too far. I am going to have to take stock of my schoolwork tomorrow too; today was long and hectic but tomorrow I want to make sure I can keep up with everything. It’s essential that I keep up.

I have a connection at the moment, so I’m going to upload this. I’m pretty tired anyway! Tomorrow I will be taking pictures even though I didn’t today. Oh my god, A just went to get up from the bed and said “Oh, a nasty roach!” This hotel may be charming but it’s a little scary! So now we are making sure all food goes in the fridge!

After A went to bed about 11pm, I came downstairs and watched the last episode of Eleventh Hour, and this week’s L Word. I switched to regular TV and watched half an episode of Intervention, then X-Files and Outer Limits. I think the alarm upstairs will be going off in about 20 minutes; our flight leaves at 7:30am from National Airport so our cab is coming at 5:30. (We could take metro but I’m not confident we’d get there fast enough, and parking is expensive, so cab it is.)

I caught up on my LiveJournal and DeadJournal reading though not my blog reading yet. Unfortunately I found out that one of my best friends in the world got her heart completely ripped apart, so I’m aching for her. I wish I could call her up on VP but I doubt the free wifi at the hotel in Puerto Rico will be good enough for that. I did get my Palm Pilot and GPS synced up so that’s good, I can do geocaching on this trip.

I think I’m ready to go…I better be, right? The weather in San Juan is in the 70s and 80s. As of the minute I am writing this, it is currently 23°F in DC and 73°F in San Juan! Fifty degrees, damn. I can’t wait to get there, but I am going to miss my friends. I think I am going to be able to keep up with schoolwork, at least I hope so!

Oh, and I have a temporary seasonal theme up on my site, for those of you who read it elsewhere. When the season expires I will probably be making some changes to my design structure, whee!

Today we flew home. That’s pretty much all we did. Except I woke up this morning officially sick instead of just feeling poorly. I made it home fine, except for the descent into Washington. I think a combination of the October 2006 scuba accident and being congested from the cold combined into a terrible situation in my left ear, and I thought I was going to die. It wouldn’t pop no matter what tricks I tried. I was literally in tears from the pain. I thought for sure my eardrum was going to rupture again. Fortunately a flight attendant talked me through the “pinch nose and blow” trick, which I had tried and not succeeded with…she said the trick is to do it very slowly. The pain when my ear popped was intense but it quickly subsided after that.

So yeah, I feel pretty crappy today. I am planning to spend most of tomorrow in bed, but I do want to run over to our house - we’re still house-sitting - and get the mail and whatnot. I miss California already, and not just for the weather. A has wanted to move back there for years, and I’m considering the possibility after I’m done with school. In fact, I kind of want to pick up and go now, but Gallaudet is the only place to get the experience I want.

I am backdating this slightly because I have had connectivity issues and browser issues, and if they hadn’t happened I would have posted before midnight. Also, I am a little fuzzy because I am finishing off the last of the Drunken Egg Cream. It’s a drink of my wife’s creation - chocolate vodka, chocolate milk, and club soda. It’s good. Also, pictures will have to wait, because I am too woozy to operate the camera and upload them.

A let me sleep late this morning because I didn’t get to yesterday - I had to take her to training on my actual birthday, so I got to sleep late today! (I can’t believe I’m 27.) Once I was finally ready, we went to the Farmer’s Market and got crêpes. There were plenty of interesting places to look around, but we vowed to come back for dinner and tore ourselves away. We had been planning to take a bus tour of the city, but instead we decided to drive it ourselves; next we went over to the La Brea Tar Pits. They don’t look like much; I was kind of surprised how small they are. In fact, while growing up, I’d always thought they were huge pits on the outskirts of town, instead they are little blobs in the heart of the city! Most of them are contained behind fences, but we saw at least two that were bubbling up in the middle of everything; people seemed to enjoy poking at them with sticks. We didn’t bother with the Page Museum because it cost money, and we mostly just wanted to see the pits themselves.

After that, we wanted to go to the Chinese Theater. I took us on a rather roundabout route to get there, though - down Wilshire all the way to Western and then back along Hollywood Boulevard. It probably could have been done more directly, but I enjoyed our trip through Koreatown, Little Armenia, and all the other interesting places we saw. The trip along Hollywood Blvd was rather boring though - it was a long sequence of tattoo parlor, smoke shop, souvenir shop…tattoo parlor, smoke shop, souvenir shop…sometimes one was combined with the other, as with the tattoo parlor combined with the smoke shop. I can just picture the tattoo artist saying “whoa dude…lemme smoke another joint…okay gimme your arm” and it doesn’t sound pretty! At any rate, parking was a total pain in the ass. We finally managed to get parking outside a Famima!! store, which I found terribly amusing. Famima!! is based on Japan’s FamilyMart convenience stores, which - I’ve heard - are based on American convenience stores like 7-11. So it’s all a big circle. Soon there will be Japanese stores based on Famima!! stores, which are based on…you get the picture!

From Famima!! we walked to the Chinese Theater; I took pictures of a few stars along the way. I was astonished by how many street shows and buskers there were along Hollywood Blvd. We had been rather surprised to see Jack Sparrow eating sushi as we drove along the street…later we spotted him posing for pictures with tourists, which I assume he got paid tips for! It was hard to get any pictures at the theater itself, because the courtyard was so crowded - I had to say “excuse me” several times in order to get a decent photo. After that we went up the stairs to the Hollywood & Highland Center to take pictures of the Hollywood sign; next we went to the Disney Soda Fountain across the street where I bought way too many pins! I’m still not sure what the purpose is of the Disney Soda Fountain, but they have their own special pins, so there you go. Next we got back in the car and went to the Farmer’s Market. After struggling to find parking, we went to Lotería for dinner. We did a little shopping, and then we finally saw Sweeney Todd at the on-site movie theater. After that we came back to the hotel!

Our flight is at 11:00am tomorrow so we are waking up at 8:00am. So I am going to go to bed so I can try to get a little bit of sleep. I definitely had fun in Hollywood today, and I’m glad we drove ourselves rather than taking some dumb bus tour. It was much better that way!

Well, my 27th birthday could have been more enjoyable. I had a great time relaxing in the hotel room, but I felt vaguely sick part of the time - oh well. Dinner at Inn of the Seventh Ray was fabulous, though I am making a late New Year’s Resolution to never visit such a pretentious restaurant again. If I’m paying $25 for my entree, I expect more than four ravioli squares. (I had wanted the butternut squash risotto but it wasn’t even on the menu.) I don’t mind paying high prices for a big plate of fancy food, but paying high prices for a TINY plate of food is ridiculous to me. I enjoyed everything I had - Oregonzola Blue Cheese Tart, Cauliflower and Red Pepper Soup, Vegan Mascarpone Ravioli, and Mascarpone Cheesecake - but the prices were just appalling. Dinner for two, including four courses, one glass of wine each, tax, and tip came to $175. Ouch.

The waiter who brought our receipt was not our usual waiter, and he said “happy birthday” to me. I wondered how he knew it was my birthday, and I figured it must have been on the bill. How tacky, I thought, to charge for a single birthday candle on my cheesecake! But when I checked the paper, I was tickled to see that we were actually charged $0.00 for “1 fire soup” - I guess that’s just how they noted the candle! How funny. There was a new age shop on the premises, and I had A buy me an $8 pendant with a little glass vial of pink fairy dust and a silver fairy wrapped around the vial. I think it’s adorable!

Tomorrow is our grand tour where we do all the cliché stuff - the Hollywood sign, the Chinese theater, etc. I am NOT looking forward to going home and having it be all cold and yucky. I know some cool stuff will have arrived in the mail though, so I am at least looking forward to that - and to grabbing and squeezing the first kitty I see!

Today I went to Universal Studios. The traffic was actually pretty bad both there and back, and I didn’t even enjoy the park. It was very uncrowded all day, but there just wasn’t anything fun to do there. I headed for the studio tour first, and I took a ton of pictures during that, but then I noticed my camera battery was dying so I figured I should give it a rest. There were only a few more things to take pictures of in the park itself anyway. The tour was kind of cool, but also kind of hokey. It was hard to believe that anybody actually worked there - a few film academy students were on the streets, and I saw craft services setting up a table, but that was about it. Other than that it was deserted. There were a few special effects sequences that were pretty cheesy, but I suppose they look cheesy to the actors too, and yet they end up looking good on screen.

I went on the Revenge of the Mummy ride, which was even more tame than Space Mountain. There was essentially zero line, so they let you ride twice in a row - when you got back to the loading area, they sent you through again, and then made you get off when you came back the second time. After this, I got some food, and became the best friend of a bunch of little tiny birds. I went back up to the upper level (the park is on two levels, separated by a HUGE set of escalators) and caught the Terminator show, which was nifty; my favorite part was the blast of fog that blinded you for several seconds. After that I didn’t really do anything else, because nothing else really called to me as something to do.

I left the park and went to Universal CityWalk, the mall plaza area just outside the theme park. I wandered around there and bought a pair of Skate Buds, which I immediately regretted, and really regretted after I discovered I couldn’t use the damn things, and really really regretted when I discovered you can get them for half what I paid if you shop on eBay. Fortunately I was able to return them, though it was a little bit of a hassle. I left shortly after that; one thing that was really weird about the drive home was hearing Marketplace come on at 3:00pm! It’s the same time as when it’s playing on the east coast, but I’m used to it being an evening thing, whereas out here it airs in the afternoon, so I guess fewer people out here get to hear it because it’s playing while they’re at work rather than during drive time.

No idea what I’m going to do tomorrow. It’s my birthday, of course! I know I want and egg & cheese sandwich from Subway for breakfast, but after that I’m not sure if I will go to West Hollywood or not. I bought a bottle of chocolate vodka today and it was delicious but I’m not supposed to drink when I’m alone, so I dunno. Maybe I will knock around the hotel room, maybe I will knock around West Hollywood, maybe I’ll figure out something else to do.

Well, there isn’t really a lot to say about today, because I stayed in the hotel room! I finished off that bottle of wine and ran around the room naked all day. I did go to Disneyland yesterday though, and those pictures are now on my Flickr, as are the pictures from Monday, which I spent in Long Beach.

One of the things I did today was research restaurants for my birthday dinner on Friday. (Holy cow, in 36 hours I’ll be 27!) I asked on Yelp for recommendations, and I think the place I’ve settled on is Inn of the Seventh Ray in Topanga. It gets high marks for being romantic, fancy, and vegetarian. Tonight we went to The Spot down in Hermosa Beach. It was nice - the portions were huge and the prices were good! It was a little bit woo-woo and hippie-dippie, but I liked it! I wasn’t feeling very well, though, so we ended up getting most of our food boxed up, including dessert. The beach was only a block away, though, so I insisted we put the food in the car and go check out the beach! We walked all the way out to the water, and I bent down and touched it - the first time I’ve touched the Pacific Ocean. And then I ran away squealing because it was cold! We walked back to the car and came back to the hotel room, and here we sit.

Tomorrow I am going to Universal Studios Hollywood to use the last coupon in my SoCal City Pass booklet. I’m not sure what it will be like there, I hope I enjoy it. I didn’t have any plans for Friday until a few minutes ago, but now I think I will go to West Hollywood and see what’s there. It’s supposed to be the gay district of L.A., so we’ll see how it goes. On Saturday we are going to do a hop on/hop off bus tour that stops at the Walk of Fame, Rodeo Drive, and all the other classic places.

Today was A’s first day of training. It was pretty easy to drop her off at the right building in the morning, but as I pulled away I realized she’d taken the directions with her! That’s what I get for letting her navigate! (Just kidding.) I managed to find my way back to the hotel, even though I had to take various exits and ramps to avoid ending up in the LAX parking lot. On the way, I passed a Budget Car Rental store with a sign outside saying “Don’t Get Lost, Rent a GPS” and I wished Hertz had that option too!

I knocked around in the hotel room for about an hour and then I got on the road to Long Beach. I was due to meet Maria at 11:00, and I got to the aquarium much faster than I had expected to! I talked to my mom on the phone a little bit, and then when Maria arrived we went inside. I think we were the only “tourists” there, but there were at least five school groups, so we ended up swarmed by children more than once. It was pretty cool though, because we got to pet rays and even a shark! I have never touched a shark before, though I did read Sevengill growing up, so I knew about the denticles. It was just a little bitty shark though, I think it was a leopard shark. But still, I got to pet a shark!

When we were done at the aquarium, we got lunch at a nearby restaurant and then hopped the free bus over to the Queen Mary. We had bought combo tickets at the aquarium, so it was inexpensive! I am a little bit of a ship geek, so I really enjoyed looking around, though I wish it had been a bit brighter so it would have been easier to read the displays. I would have liked to have gotten a book about her because there was a lot I think I missed - we saw the whole ship, but there must be more story that I missed. I find it strange that she is such an icon of ocean liner travel, when she really only sailed for 31 years, and for many years she was a troop ship during World War II. But the books were all expensive, of course, so I didn’t get anything. We did take a break and got smoothies at an on-board shop, which was kind of cool…but I know there was more story there that we didn’t get. I wish we could have spent a night in the hotel section on the ship, but it’s pretty expensive.

I made it back to El Segundo in about 25 minutes, and I waited 10 minutes, and then A came out, 30 minutes before I was expecting her! We had a boring dinner…just IHOP. I think tomorrow I am going to take the day off and just hang out in the hotel room all day. I can have my leftover Mexican food for lunch before it gets too old…it’s from Saturday night. I have been walking all day for six days in a row: (1) Disneyland, (2) Disneyland, (3) Sea World, (4) Tijuana, (5) Balboa Park, (6) Long Beach. It is time to sit and rest for a while. It was A’s idea, she said she feels reinvigorated after just sitting in a classroom all day. So I will probably do that. And at the same time, I will work on uploading photos from the past two days. The connection here is great, so it should be easy! Unfortunately A accidentally had the camera in her purse all day, so today’s photos were taken with my camera phone…better than nothing though!

We went to the San Diego Zoo today, and walked around Balboa Park a bit. The zoo was both delightful and disappointing. Many of the exhibits were really outstanding - the habitats for bonobos and gorillas in particular. But I was surprised how many of the exhibits were depressing. I know animals in zoos don’t have much to do, but they were all just sitting there. I think the most excited ones were the birds, just hopping around in their little cages without much going on in their heads. The hippos were bored, and so were the tigers, although I think actually we just happened to catch the tigers at lunchtime. We got to see a really funny looking pig eating his piggy chow, and of course we saw the meerkats rolling around in their rascally way, though we had to walk quite a ways to get to them. I think my favorite part was the clouded leopard. When we got there, a keeper had the young leopard on his lap and was petting him the way you’d pet any cat. Eventually kitty got bored and hopped down, and then rolled around on the ground and marked things just like a housecat! He may have been a very expensive and exotic cat, but he was a cat just the same. The zoo settings were just gorgeous. The whole place is wooded, and it’s basically on a hillside so there is a lot of opportunity to go up and down to various levels of the park.

But what really amazed me was that as huge as the zoo was, it was less than a quarter of the size of Balboa Park as a whole. We wandered around in the park a bit, including taking a ride on the little railroad that A remembers from over 20 years ago. She went into lots of museum shops, which I wasn’t interested in because I always feel clumsy in them and I worry about breaking stuff. We had a snow-cone thing, and just sat in the sun and enjoyed watching all the other people enjoying the park. There were several buskers and it was just a really perfect day. Of course, then we had a two-hour drive to Los Angeles ahead of us, but that was okay. We were tired from walking all day plus cramped from sitting in the car, so we have been sitting around staring at each other since we arrived. Tomorrow I plan to wake up, drive A to her training, and come back to shower and get ready for the day. I’m going to meet a friend at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, and we are also going to visit the Queen Mary.

Too tired to upload today’s photos and videos - I got clouded leopard and meerkat videos! This hotel’s wireless connection is superb though, so I’ll be uploading everything sometime tomorrow.