Sara and I are back from the Dominican Republic and it was amazing. What is there to do in the Dominican Republic you ask? Primarily there is the laying on the beach and the drinking of the tropical drinks, which did not have little paper parasols, much to my chagrin. Despite that minor hang-up, everything else was completely wonderful. Day 1: The flights to the DR were a little cold and uncomfortable, but as we arrived, we saw the tropical turquoise beaches that we would soon be lounging on. The airport had a roof made out of palm-tree leaves which was cool. We walked off of the plane onto the tarmac, paid $10 each for our tourist cards. The passport stamping lady was smoking a Marlboro. Before picking up our luggage, we passed through a checkpoint that collected our tourist cards, which we had for about 30 seconds. On the drive to the hotel, there was this little Day 2: We saw some lizards outside our building and named them Lester and Ernesto. The beach was topless but unfortunately it seemed that the less attractive you were, the more you exercised your right to go topless. All-in-all it probably wasn't worth it. There was a really cool burnt shipwreck about 1/2 mile off the beach stuck on some rocks. It was so cool it almost seemed staged. We smoked some cigars and shopped at some little shops they had on the hotel property. The whole time I was trying my best to remember all of my old Spanish and then use it, just like my dad does on trips. Day 3: 4:30am: Sara gets a visit from Montezuma and doesn't sleep very much - she's also dealing with some mosquito bites so I went to the shop to get her some itch relief while she slept. I came back with a box that said on it "Itching, burning relief!" Sara pointed out to me that it was hemorrhoid cream. I told her I didn't know since the box was all in Spanish, but she then pointed out that it was, in fact, all in English. We went snorkeling, which was just unbelievable, it was my first time. We used up all of our underwater camera pictures before we got to the sharks. There were about 12 of them and they were only about 6 feet below us. Day 4: More beach relaxing. At lunch they had corn pizza, a little strange (not too bad though). We both got a massage. My lady asked if she could take my boxers off, which I did and it wasn't so bad. Sara didn't realize this had happened until later, so that was kind of funny. Day 5: Woke up to the sound of coconuts hitting our roof, they were cutting them down and landing very loudly. That wasn't so relaxing. We went out and took pictures, went to the pool, took a nap, and saw many more lizards because it rained for 15 minutes (which was the only rain we got the entire time we were there). Day 6: We went on an "Outback Safari" tour. Our tour guide was David and Papi was our driver. We went to a local school and had brought some school supplies and stickers. We were able to go in the school and give the teacher these supplies. In the D.R., the government pays for the school building and teachers, but not for supplies, lesson plans, books, uniforms, etc. It was nice that we could help out a little by bringing supplies that would probably last the teacher a long time. We saw a typical country house, where a family made coffee for us. We also went to another local family's cocoa and coffee farm. The cocoa plant is completely different than what I thought it would be like - the cocoa bean pod grows on the tree trunk and is a very large oval pod with big white seeds inside (these are the cocoa beans which are purple before they are roasted to a dark brown color). I went boogie boarding on a remote beach while Sara looked for sea shells and we bought some souvenirs at a small shop. We went shopping again that night and talked to a guy who couldn't believe there was hockey in America, he thought they only played hockey in Canada. If you made it this far, congratulations, I think this was my longest post ever. I'll have pictures up soon. The trip was so amazing and I am so happy I got to do it with my favorite person in the world. We'd recommend visiting there to anyone and can't wait to travel again.
I am leaving the country for a week. Sara and I opted out of Christmas presents in favor of going on a vacation to the Dominican Republic and here we are. We are going to Punta Cana, which is a beach resort place. This will mark the first time I have left North America and I am really excited. So excited (and nervous) in fact, that I think I am now suffering from a case of Montezuma's... um... what's the antonym for "revenge"? Perhaps it can be best described as "Montezuma's Preemptive Strike". I'll say it again for posterity: Montezuma's Preemptive Strike. So don't expect updates to the main site for a week (not that you could ever count on that in the first place), but kottke style, I am delegating the posting of (5ivethings) links to someone else: my brother! He will be posting the links on the sidebar or get the feed for your reader. Feel free to leave comments but I won't read them for a week! See Ya!
 Thought I'd post a picture of my new wheels/whip/ride. Thus far I am thoroughly enjoying it. Here's another picture of it for those interested.
Over the past year I have gotten a lot more into music, namely indie-based, what some would call "less popular" music, others would call it more obscure. Regardless, I think I will start logging my music purchases in the hopes of inspiring others to discover new music for themselves. Also, in the effort of keeping this a regular segment here on /mark, I will try to keep it simple, short, and to the point. Here is my first example:  The Mountain Goats - All Hail West TexasI bought this album this weekend after hearing a fair number of Mountain Goats through pandora and enjoying it. The music is fairly simple. Mostly acoustic guitar with the lead singer's nasal-ey nasal-ey voice which you probably instantly like, or can't stand. The songs are musically brilliant and the lyrics seem very stream-of-consciousness, yet very real. Anyhow, All Hail West Texas is a great album, there are some funny songs on it and some serious ones, but they are all quite good in my opinion.
After many months of asking the question to ourselves, "Why don't we just live together?" Sara and I decided we should just live together. While things wont really change much considering we spend all of out time together anyway, this is pretty huge, and I couldn't be happier. That's right, we're officially living in sin. We decided we will refer to each other as "my roommate" from here on out, just to confuse people about the situation. "Do you and Sara want to come over Thursday night?", "I'll have to ask my roommate." Should go over like hotcakes. Something I find really neat is that when telling people about it, everyone (parents included) seem to be completely unsurprised and unconcerned which is both comforting as well as, what I think, is a testament to our relationship. So far everything is great and I really can't see that changing in the near, or far, future. "Purple in the morning, blue in the afternoon, and orange in the evening. Just like that, one, two, three, four."
Overheard at the office: "Cinco de Mayo? Why do I have Cinco de Mayo written down here? Let me see.. Wait a second, Cinco de Mayo isn't untill May 5th!"
From Fox News: "Apple to let Mac users use Windows" In a stunning turn of events, Apple Computers has chosen to revise it's policy regarding it's users choice in operating systems. Earlier today, Apple Computers reversed what Steve Jobs, Apple CEO formerly regarded as a, "stern but fair" policy in where users of the Macintosh OSX operating system could not use any other operating systems, including Microsoft's Windows XP or upcomming Windows Vista operating system. Violating this policy would lead Apple to steal your baby and kill it to be sold on the Vietnamese black market for scraps. "Today, however, that all changes" said an upbeat Jobs. Analysts say Apple will leverage the use of other operating systems by offering a choice to consumers. They will now be able to spare their babies deaths instead by.... this was supposed to be going somewhere funny, but I lost it. You get the idea.
 I got around to putting my pictures from Las Vegas up. Be sure to check out my Las Vegas, 2006 set in Flickr. Here are some more shots from it:     
 
|
|
