vacation

My blogging will be at a minimum for at least two weeks. My family is going off to visit my family in California! My son has been counting the days til we leave since August 1st. We are half packed and ready to leave tomorrow. Tomorrow will be airline hell, but by Tuesday I will be happily settling into my California relaxation mode.

I used to love flying. Now, if it wasn't for my family living across the country, I'd avoid flying like the plague. Between Homeland Security's ineffectual but degradingly insulting measures and the airline's incresasingly petty fees and service cuts, the fun has been totally sucked out of air travel, leaving nothing but a husk of misery, anger and bitterness. I used to travel with a smile and just enjoy the ride. Now I fly with a tight lipped sense of dread. Thank you very much airlines. You suck and your suckiness gets worse year after year.

Coney Island, 1 September 2007

I think unitedstatians have a weird sense of humor. How can you explain celebrating Labor Day on the last day of Summer?

In this household we are not typical americanos by any stretch of the imagination. As good slash-puertoricans, would rather be boogie boarding in Isla Verde than fighting the crowds at Sandy Beach. So we are going to high-tail it to the park and the museum for our last day together, to have some fun.

How are you spending your 'labor' day?

Mi silla en El Alambique, Isla Verde (Puerto Rico)

after i come back home from going home, i get this melancholy limbo of a feeling : that i have left a home behind in search of a home that is not there and yet is familiar and welcoming and soothing and incomplete for the lost years and the lost house because i have no real place to be home but the few couches and extra beds to crash on my families places and even my mother's house is this foreign, mold controlled zone in which my lungs collapse, my heart stops with the toxic molds that makes me feel unwelcomed and pushes me into the asceptic living of hotels with their climate controlled hells drowing the sound of coquis and the rustling of platain and palm trees in the middle of the night and making my body remember how to go to sleep.

after i come back home from going home, the place i come back to is so familiar and yet so removed missing the little bit of heart and soul and pain and laughter i left back in spanish with its ay benditos and ave marias and its tu sabes and its bochincheo with arroz con gandules and alcapurrias and habichuelas and sancocho de medio día and el cafecito para empatar.

This is about the same spot I end up everytime I go to El Alambique beach in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico.

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Este es el sitio en donde termino sentándome cada vez que voy a la Playa del Alambique en Isla Verde, Puerto Rico.

8am in Puerto Rico

This is what, in theory, we have been doing for the past 7 days here in Puerto Rico. We have allegedly gone to the beach each day, played and enjoyed ourselves.

The reality is that, as part of the new working class, I have been squeezing in vacation time around my work schedule. I will blog about all the things I have been working on while here, but I just have to say that in spite of how difficult it is to have to work while being in a remote part of the island and alone with the kids, I am happy to be here. It's good to be back home.

Brief moment of computer time. Thankfully I have been paying little attention to news and mostly relaxing. Spent several days staying with friends in the Hollywood Hills (in a house that originally belonged to D. W. Griffith) now with relatives in Santa Barbara.

I hear Fred Thompson, supposedly the savior of the Republican's chances for the White House, has hit some rough waters. No real surprise, of course. It's going to be a rough ride for ALL the candidates, particularly the Republicans who have to somehow appeal to an America sick to death of Bush but also appeal to the base that is so fanatically right wing they practically are from another culture altogether.

Would love to write about one of the people I know in Santa Barbara who was one of the veteran reporters fired (perhaps illegally) from the Santa Barbara News-Press by the nut-case rich bitch publisher Wendy McCaw, but it isn't my story. For those who want to see how a dumb rich idiot can spoil a Pulitzer prize winning newspaper, I refer you to Craig Smith's blog and to a recent biting letter from Lou Cannon (Cannon's letter is a PDF). This whole thing was blowing up last year when I visited California, but I had forgotten about it until hearing the latest from my friends here. My connection is now free lance because of McCaw's purge. One can find some sense of justice in the fact that McCaw is driving her newspaper into the ground as readership drops precipitously, but that doesn't help the many men and women whose livelihoods have been ruined or at least hurt by her utter stupidity. Again, I defer to the above sources for details. But it has been on my mind.

My kids and I should be on our way to San Juan by 9am. We're staying at the vortex of civilization for almost 3 weeks. Can't wait.

I am going to be off the grid most of the day --although once we get to our vacation spot, I am going to make the most of my EVDO card. Let's see how it works in the part of PR where I am going --and no, I won't tell you where exactly I am staying --I'll turn it into a guessing game

Coming to UCLA is like returning to the womb for me. My mother got her Ph.D. here, she taught here, and I got my Ph.D. here. The layers of memories at each corner at UCLA are stacked like cordwood. Sometimes I am not even sure whether a vague memory is from early childhood, later childhood, high school or grad school.

I have returned to UCLA for an international conference comprising the bulk of the researchers in the world studying the model system C. elegans, a nematode that has been critical in discovering a lot of what we know about, for example, aging.

It has been odd wandering around campus in my new role as C. elegans biologist since mostly I remember rolling down the hills with my brother in the sculpture garden (mostly the same sculptures I remember as a kid, just rearranged), smoking (don't ask what) in the stairway below Bunche Hall (my mother always called it "the waffle") in high school, or studying the development of the immune system as a grad student. Today my step daughter experienced the "upside down fountain" much the same way my brother and I did as little kids: wading in it, drawn to the central vortex until submerged and wet...and surprised at how shallow it was.

I love Los Angeles. It is still home to me even after nearly a decade as a New Yorker. Jody Maroney's sausages on Venice beach are still my favorite sausages. Versailles is still my favorite Cuban restaurant and Tito's Tacos, though by no means the best tacos I've had, are still among my favorites. For those who think Los Angeles is shallow and nothing but Universal Studios and Hollywood Boulevard, you should come and see the LA County Museum of Art (still my favorite though I've seen the best in NYC), the tongue in cheek Museum of Jurassic Technology (figure it out for yourself!), not to mention the lovely purple of the blooming jacaranda and the sweet smell of the blooming jasmine contrasting with the smell of eucalyptus. Unless the smog is really bad (which of course happens) the smell of Los Angeles is often quite nice.

My family will be on a trip for three weeks. First part is work for me (a conference at UCLA) and the second part will be spending time with family and friends.

I will try to repost some old articles that still have relavence just so you all don't forget me!

Bye bye