Puerto Rico.

As promised, here is the first installment of the picture calvalcade that is going to be beamed into your living room, detailing both the cruise and Dallas elements of the recent trip. I'm hoping that posting the pictures day by day will act as a soothing balm for the vacation withdrawal from which I am ailing and that the process will distract me for so long that by the time I've finished, the effects will have gone away. The fast flurry of Christmas planning that the Horns have just achieved has helped somewhat, but nothing beats going through photos for reliving the glory of a past holiday.

If you can't wait for the whole trip to play out over what may be weeks or even months of blogging (based on my past rate of posting), you can see a collection of photos from the trip at our Google album. I'm trying to use different photos for the blog than are posted on the album, since it's more interesting that way, and heaven knows we have enough to do it (a total of about 1550 photos were taken, across our four cameras, during the two weeks. I was the winner with the most photos taken - 646).

So here we go, I'm trying to stay light on the commentary, which means I won't make you sit through the harrowing account of our trip from JFK to San Juan, but pick up with our trusty travellers on the two glorious days in Puerto Rico prior to embarking the cruise.


This is one of the beaches of San Juan:




Our first main 'sight' that we visited was the Arecibo Observatory, the largest single dish radio telescope in the world. You might recognize it from the setting for the showdown in the movie Goldeneye:





Dad noticed that part of the telescope was wobbly:




So Mark had to hold it up for a bit, while they fixed it:





There was also an inside bit, with one neat exhibit (fog - below) and a video of a "Day in the Life" of the observatory, which was really sweet because it featured scientists Acting.




The next day we visited El Yunque, which is the only tropical forest in the National Park System (a fact of which they are very very proud). I just thought it was neat because I think it's the first rainforest I've seen. It's kind of a like any other forest, but with a few more dangly bits. And frogs that click.

Nothing says "tourist" like a fascinating array of sandals:



More from El Yunque:





(Notice how I cleverly framed this next photo so you can't see the kid who is climbing on the rock behind mom and dad. Yes, I'm proud of it:)





And then after the rainforest, we headed to the boat. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn on our way to Old San Juan, and ended up in stand-still traffic resulting from some kind of religious rally that was taking place nearby. It took us the longest time to figure out what was going on; no one's Spanish was good enough to translate the signs we saw (no one in the car, I mean, the Puerto Ricans around us probably could have translated, but no one would stand still long enough for us to ask, and none of the cars around us had their windows rolled down - believe me, mom tried to find out). All we saw were lots of kids dressed up in leotards with flags like in a marching band and giant dump trucks and things all convoying somewhere not very quickly. There was a bit of a panic that we would never get out, but of course we did, after lots of sitting and inching forward and "what could this be?" and "are we going to make it?" and "do you think we'll get to turn left up there?" etc.




And then, after escaping and driving a bit more, we finally got our first view of the boat:



And then the real fun began...

Holding Post

As I prepare myself for the task of doing my own posts about the recent cruise and family visit (a la AmigoNet and ScreaminJohn) , I'll post a few pictures. We're home safe but still jetlagged, so I'm not yet up for the full process. But I know things are overdue, and to prove that mom's (somewhat emphatic) request to post more pictures has got through, here are a few to keep y'all occupied until I get my act in gear.

Betablog

Blogger has a beta type site called "Blogger in Draft" and one of the new features they're trying out is "scheduled posting" where you create a post and tell it when you want it to go live at some point in the future.

I'm trying it out with this post. I'll let you know how it goes.

Out of ideas.

I really really wanted to post on the blog today. A person who shall remained nameless has urged me to post and added to my heightened awareness of blog-neglect that I am currently experiencing. The desire is present and I have the time (I've finished my online tutoring shift for tonight and it's not quite bed-time) and I actually thought of it while sitting at the computer. The only thing is, I just can't think of a single thing to write about. And it's not like this blog has distinguished itself by writing about things that matter. So it's not even that I can't think of something significant enough to write about, I can't think of ANYTHING to write about.

I guess I need a kid.

Ha ha, just kidding. But actually, it just occurred to me - is that what they mean when they refer to "the biological clock"? The alarm is the moment you realize that you're actually a fairly boring person who doesn't really have much more to say, so you might as well create another person who may end up being more interesting?

Oh wait. I can tell you about my dinner. That's interesting. No need for a baby - when in doubt, talk about food. Mark is dog-sitting this evening, so I had dinner on my own. As is usually the case when I'm eating on my own, I went for a very quick and very easy option - I had hot dogs with my last can of Wolf Brand chili (which I've been saving for about 6 months now). It was goooooooood. I only used half the can, so I can stretch that out to another meal (as long as I don't share with Mark). My stomach is glad that it's now less than a month until the trip to Dallas. Warm up the burritos, everybody, I'm coming to town!

Phew.

The ties that bind.

Like most people (I imagine), Mark and I have our weekday morning routine. This has been a bit more varied, now that I'm working from home a lot more because of the new job, but it still tends to run along the same lines.

Mark gets out of bed, gets dressed and heads to the bathroom first. He wakes up without an alarm (which I am completely and permanently unable to do) and is the more responsible person of the two of us, so is actually able to instigate the day. As he does his ablutions, I get a few more mintues to laze in bed, talking myself into getting into a sitting position.

Mark moves to the kitchen, gets his cereal for breakfast and I do my bathroom things. Then he returns and brushes his teeth while I get dressed. Then we tend to both sit down on the bed and put on our shoes at about the same time.

It was at this stage one morning recently that I discovered that we are in fact, different people. We see eye-to-eye on the sock-sock-shoe-shoe issue, but it turns out that when tying his shoes, Mark makes the right loop first and holds that with his right hand, while doing the round-the-loop bit with his left hand. Crazy. I'm the exact opposite, holding the stationary loop with my left while my right goes around and through.

There was a moment of stunned silence while we both contemplated the discovery. We talked it through, and worked out the reason for the difference, so everything ended well. We've worked through it and come out stronger on the other side, accepting and enjoying our differences.

But let me tell you, thank goodness he doesn't do the make-two-loops-then-entwine-together...even the strongest love can only survive so much.

Browse this.

I've just discovered Flock. I don't know if I'm just behind the times, and this is yesterday's software, but I only just found out about it. I was introduced to it via a news article from the BBC about it, so it can't be new or cutting edge...I think I've just really not been paying attention. But I've tried it, and I kinda like it.

If you haven't heard of it, it's a web browser designed to take better advantage of, dare I say it, 'web 2.0' sites. It calls itself the "social web browser," which almost drove me away, but I've been using Firefox for a while now, and I'm curious about other browsers, so I decided to give it a try. I've only been trying it for about 10 minutes, and already I have figured out how to use some of it's gizmos (which means it's pretty intuitive, even though it looks overly-complicated with lots of buttons and tabs and windows-within-windows). I like how it deals with web mail, and I've already set up the RSS feeds for all the family blogs.

I'm posting this from within Flock, rather than using the dashboard at Blogger, and so far, so good. But I did have to open up a window in Firefox to find the urls for the links above, so I don't think I'm there yet. But hey, it's only been 10 minutes...give me a couple days and we'll see how it goes.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Meet the newest member of Team Vallentine.

Meet...uh, well, we don't have the name settled yet, but here he/she is, in all his/her glory.

It is a Suzuki DL650 V-Strom and it is rapidly taking my place in Mark's affections. We bought it on Saturday after about three weeks of research. It was kind of the out-from-nowhere contender, since until about a week ago Mark was pretty sure that he wanted a BMW F650GS or possibly, if we couldn't find a BMW in our price bracket, a Honda Transalp. (He really would have wanted one of the new Honda Transalps, but those are definitely OUTSIDE Team Vallentine's budget, so he was going to have to have one of the boring older ones that didn't have all the neat-o improvements that the 2008 model has.)

Mark had sort of dismissed the V-Strom as a contender until it was recommended by Dad. He then started keeping an eye out for them and on Friday one appeared on the web site for our local BMW dealer. It was a new listing of a used bike that had come in as a trade-in. Mark went up on Saturday for a test ride and was sold before he even got back to the shop.

I went out for a ride on it on Sunday, and it was pretty cold even though it was sunny, so we just went up to Portishead and back. It's really comfortable, and once we get a top box for it, will be pretty much as comfortable for a passenger as Smedley, the Varadero we had previously. I think we could actually tour with it, and we talked about maybe going over to France with it. (Until we saw how much ferry tickets cost....but maybe some day!)

Mark rode it to work today and walked in this evening smiling and going on and on about how versatile and responsive it is, so I think it will probably be a long time before it loses its appeal...especially now that summer is coming! So now all we need is the name...