Arecibo

All righty. Sorry for the lag - our internet has been down, and it's been really busy around here lately! Here are some pictures from last Saturday. Steve and I loaded up and drove to Arecibo - a very pretty little town with a very big telescope! In fact, this is the biggest radio telescope in the world. Apparently, it landed here in Puerto Rico because of the terrain; the northern part of the island is called "Karst" Country, and it's made up of all these crazy looking craters and haystack hills. Basically, it's all due to the sinkholes the limestone ground creates. Since the land is already shaped just like a satellite dish, it made sense to go ahead and plunk a receiver right down in one of the craters. A few movies were filmed here - my favorite is Contact with Jodie Foster.

Arecibo Beach

After that, we went to the Arecibo lighthouse, and then a great little beach just below the lighthouse. The beach is called the Bishop's Pool - and it's really cool because the water is so calm inside that little pool, but you can see how big the waves crash up over it!

After that, we were looking for a place to grab something to eat and a cold beverage, and we stumbled into a place called the Arecibo Outboard. It had a nice view, so in we went. Come to find out, it's a private members-only club, but the people in there were so friendly! Pierlo, the bartender, came up and grabbed us and welcomed us in anyways, and took care of us very graciously. We also made friends with Georgina, a 77 year old spitfire with the sweetest smile you've ever seen. She immediately came over and started talking to us; two hours later, we were still talking, laughing, and she had brought us a huge plate of homemade veal. I'm telling you, I've never seen a more friendly group of people in my life.

Pretty mornings!

Sent from my iPhone. This is our next door neighbor's house. I think the clouds and the
sky are just so pretty. It's been really windy for the past week or
so, which is keeping the humidity much lower and making everything
seem to sparkle and pop. This is about 7:30 or so in the morning and
we're on our way out to see the Arecibo telescope. More on that later!

Jalapenos

Sent from my iPhone. I thought these are getting pretty! And mom and aunt jean and uncle
bob, the red one is the one we've decided to leave on the plant and
see if we can harvest the seeds. I'm impatient! :-)

Look at how the tangerene is growing!

Sent from my iPhone.

Mistress Mary quite contrary

Sent from my iPhone. How does your garden grow?

These are the first of our better boys - I love the way the seed husk
is still holding the back two leaves together! My intent was to have
these in the ground by now, but the fill dirt we requested won't be
available for at least another three weeks. Technically, the dirt's
available now, but the front end loader blew a tire and it's going to
take that long to get it back in comission. As much as I like
gardening, I wasn't too excited about hauling wheelbarrows o dirt for
a mile each way.

Today's project

Sent from my iPhone. I've been putting it off for too long. The only boxes not unpacked are
the boxes of filing crap that have served as a bedside table in the
bedroom for 2 months now. Time to actually go through and start
cleaning out and filing. I'd rather have my thumbnails pulled out
slowly.

Let the shredding commence. Sigh.

Morning sunlight

Sent from my iPhone. Well, granted it's a crummy camera phone, but I still thought the sun
was pretty coming through the leaves.

This is what I call philodendron!

Sent from my iPhone.
This is some of the philodendron growing wild in the little jungle
behind our house. It's bigger than my hand!

Still pretty. Even looking in the other direction

Sent from my iPhone.

Pretty morning

Sent from my iPhone.

Pretty morning

Sent from my iPhone.

Surf is picking up today

Sent from my iPhone. You can't see it so much in this picture, but the surf was really
picking up some gusto today. Waves were coming in about 45* to shore.
I opted out of a pounding on the rocks here today.

My new favorite sign!

Sent from my iPhone. I went in search of some shovels this morning and found the plumbing
shop on the way

Sunset storms rolling in

 
 
 

Today has been an absolutley glorious day. So glorious, that I have a newly pinked nose and top of head to show for it. Not a cloud in the sky, lower humidity, and one fabulous breeze. Tonight, just as the sun was going down, it started rumbling off in the distance, so I grabbed my camera and biked to the cliff to see what there was to be seen. Alas, I got there just as the sky was going from greenish to yellow, but the colors were still pretty nice.

You gotta love biking to work

Sent from my iPhone. As well as the fact that your work uniform is SHORTS. I love the fact
that I now live in a place where it makes sense to have a SCUBA tank
in my dining room :-)

Itsy Bitsy

 

We are decidedly in the middle of spider season right now - Mom, it reminds me of those late summer morningings when you and I would go out driving at Owlsley Fork to see all the night's new spiderwebs while the dew was still on them! Every morning when I go out to water, I have to swipe about 50 new webs off of the clothesline and the plants just to be able to walk out to the backyard without fear of being ensnared. This little fellow was so cute this morning that I had to take a picture! This is the smallest of the two tangerenes budding on the tree, and you can see the spider is even tinier! What's hillarious is to look at the girth and the number of guy wires he used to support his web. That's what I call true optimism

1:30 am

I read to him until 1:30 in the morning, and this was the thanks I
got...

St. Thomas

Airport in St. Thomas