California 2 Puerto Rico

Summer and I like to send postcards. They are quick fun ways to say hello to friends. The problem is, Rincon doesn’t have any cool postcards. They are all super old and not quite cheesy enough to be cool. Maybe Summer and I should make cool postcards for Rincon. hmmmm….summer is the genius with PhotoShop…here is a digital postcard for personal websites, blogs and social networking sites that I made. I bet she’ll do a better job.

Just right click the picture to save
it to your desktop OR past this code into
your MySpace profile or comment field:

<a href="http://www.ca2pr.com"><img src="http://www.ca2pr.com/images/rincon_puerto_rico_0708.jpg" /></a>

Today Stefan and I took Drew (who is in town visiting) up to The Goat House. The Goat House is a former drug dealers house, that was seized by the government. It seems that the government has forgotten that they own the house, because it has remained in the exact same state for over 15 years.

Walking in to The Goat House:

View from the first floor of The Goat House

The Goat House is a place where local kids sometimes hang out, drink rum and watch the sunset, and there is a reason for that…There is no place that has a better view of Rincon!

The view from the roof of The Goat House:

I took the panoramic photo of the view above, today, and pieced the pics together real quick, but I think you get the general idea of how awesome it is. Famous photographers (Aaron Chang, for one) have taken quite a few photos from the roof of the Goat House. But, you can sure see why!

Stefan, Sheena, Shay and I were dining at The Lazy Parrot tonight and I came across a sign from the Animal Rescue Foundation of Rincon Puerto Rico. A.R.F. of Rincon is a non-profit animal rescue and they are in danger of shutting down. A.R.F. of Rincon is staffed only by volunteers and is funded only by donations. Unfortunately donations are slow to come by for an animal rescue in Puerto Rico, so they are currently only able to run two days a week due to lack of funding.

I’m a total animal freak so I’m going to do what I can.

I am going to donate and figure that it would be a good opportunity for anyone else that would like to donate to this good cause, as well. ARF’s website certainly is lacking and donations can only be sent via mail (helllooooo 1990’s). So, I have set up a way to easily donate via this website:

AND, to sweeten the pot, I will personal MATCH any donations made here (up to $1000). One month from now, I will take any donations made here + 100% and I will mail a check to A.R.F. of Rincon.

A.R.F. of Rincon is a legit non-profit and donations are tax deductible. I will make sure anyone that needs receipts gets them (just let me know).

Lorenz has a chicken in a bag, in his trunk. It’s his new pet.

Stefan and I ran into Carrie (Lorenz’s girlfriend) at the convenience store today and she told us that Lorenz was in Ponce and apparently he decided to buy a chicken as a pet.

I think Lorenz may be drinking Jameson.

(only in Puerto Rico…)

I have been working or overseeing work on the house now for over 8 months and including all the financial shenanigans I needed to pull off to negotiate the approval of our loan I have had this house in my head non-stop for over a year and a half. In the past month, I have felt a bit consumed with it so when our great friends Conner and Dianne decided to come down for a quick visit, Summer and I decided to not do any construction work or have anyone else come work on the house for the length of their stay.

(Yes, we did finish building the closet, but all the measuring and cutting were already done and it was cool to have Conner and Dianne help us glue and finish nail it together…Nail Guns are cool…we owe the experience of using one to visiting friends)

At the end of their trip, Summer and I drove them back to San Juan so we could go to the Marshals Mega store and hopefully score some furniture, rugs, kitchen stuff cheap. We decided to go up a couple of hours early so we could visit Old San Juan and eat at one of our favorite restaurants FireFly DragonFly.

We scored a parking spot right before the streets turned into little one way alleys allowing for easy parking of the truck. Conner and Dianne won’t know the difficulty of finding a parking spot in Old San Juan on this trip.

We walked around, checked out the architecture and ate some food. We may have had a rum drink or two as well.

Check out some pictures of the architecture of Old San Juan Puerto Rico:

Can anyone tell me what the significance of any of these buildings are? I know that the buildings with the big front lawns (i am jealous) are government buildings of some sort…




I know this picture of the Airport in San Juan Puerto Rico is completely random, since I am showing pictures of Old San Juan, but I couldn’t help but think that this new terminal looks a lot like a space ship. I have a completely new fascination with construction projects now that I am building our house. I’d say it compliments my life long fascination with architecture quite well.

Feliz Navidad!

Mark is a good friend of ours, here in Puerto Rico and he is actually the one that tipped us off about this house that we ended up buying. He even knew exactly how much we could low ball the seller ($100K), since he’s been watching the market and well, because he’s the “Mayor” of Rincon. I call him the “Mayor” because he doesn’t actually hold a political office, he’s more of a Peoples Choice Mayor. Everyone knows Mark and everyone love Mark. Guys, girls, Puerto Ricans, gringos, dogs, kids, old ladies, etc. Mark has lived in Rincon for 13+ years and he also hosts the poker games we talk so much about.

Here is a rare sighting of Mark outside of his house. He is showing Stefan how to pick up chicks in a bar.

Here is another blog about a couple that just picked up and moved from the West Coast (Washington) to Puerto Rico:

The Kruse Chronicles

It’s pretty funny to read about them going through many of the same things we have been experiancing…From trying to decide on solar power and getting hot water to our pets adjusting to life in Puerto Rico and new neighbors.

Although, it looks like the Kruses have been having more fun then us! While we are stuck in a major construction zone, they have been riding manatees and climbing trees ;)…

I recently got a hot tip from The Kruses on where to get some great plants, here in Puerto Rico. Karina recommended Montoso Gardens, which is in Maricao:

Montoso Gardens has all sorts of great exotic fruit trees, flowers, nut trees, spices, palms and more. They even have an online store and will ship plants for very reasonable prices. Stefan and I are going to head over to Montoso Gardens sometime this week, so we’ll let you know what we end up with :)!

I’m currently back in San Diego for work and one thing we’ve taken for granted, when living in California, is how awesome the grocery stores in California are. The Vons’ and Ralphs’ are pretty nice, but nothing compares to Trader Joes, Henrys, Boneys and Bristol Farms. Here are some snaps that I took of the Bristol Farms in La Jolla, California:

They even have Vicious Cookies!!

Look at all that amazing produce! The local grocery store in Rincon, Puerto Rico (the Econo), pretty much sucks. The produce is horrible, the meat is bad and they run out of shit for long periods of time (who runs out of bagels for 5 weeks?!). I do understand that being on an island means that items need to be imported, but come on…It took me 2 days to ship my computers from California to Puerto Rico. Why can’t you keep bagels in stock?! Or yummy produce?! Sigh…