Back in San Francisco

It's been a long time since I spent a Monday - Friday in San Francisco. Observations about Brazil and Hawaii:

Brazil - casual, cheap drinking and good conversation every evening seemed like the local routine. Very fun, relaxed place. Absolutely no one outside of my office spoke English. At all. Including at a very popular museum. They had to find a fellow visitor to translate the tour for me. I got a one week membership at a local gym via gestures and semaphore.

Kauai - undeveloped. The north is stunning, like everyone says. All goods are ridiculously expensive, even for San Franciscans. Lots of fun stuff to do - we hiked, surfed, snorkeled, golfed (both mini and full), and ate. Surprising number of good places to eat. The little town of Hanalei is particularly stuffed full of good casual or sit down food options.

Despite all that fun, happy to be back.

Woefully Unprepared

You know you've been travelling a bit too much when you realize the night before a flight to Brazil that you have no place to stay. I kinda let that item slip past me. Thankfully, a Brazilian contact came to the rescue.

I also didn't feel like packing last night, so now I'm packing a few hours before my flight leaves. I also haven't planned a single non-work activity. I don't even really know what the city I'm going to looks like. I think all of my Brazilian energy went into getting the visa. Now I'm tapped out and just hoping to show up on time.

This is how your turn a work trip into an adventure.

Obvious Sentiment of the Day

Florida is very tropical. Quite different from California in this respect. California is palm trees, desert, and rattle snakes. Florida is palm trees, marshes, and alligators.

How are they similar, besides palm trees? A big one: Orlando and Orange County should declare themselves separated at birth. Two warm, Republican places in which countless acres of orange groves were sacrificed for 1. theme parks and 2. planned communities.

Miami Beach is pretty great - it's a grittier but prettier Santa Monica.

I don't know what Tampa is, but I enjoyed a Rays game. Gave me Kingdome flashbacks, though Tropicana Field is a far better, more intimate dome. Probably about as good as dome/AstroTurf baseball can get. Not competitive with any of the new parks but not a terrible experience either. I saw the construction in Miami of the Marlins' new joint. Tampa folks must be jealous.

Going to Florida Next Week

Trying to determine what is better about Florida than California. There's gotta be stuff, but I haven't come up with anything yet. Not weather, not universities, not food, not beer, not wine, not sports teams. That's most of what I care about in this world. I suppose it's competitive in lunacy and intrigue. After all, the game is Germany or Florida?, not Germany or California?. I'll look out for that.

One fun thing

One fun thing about (barely!) bringing this blog back to life is looking at site traffic. I get a little stipend from work, so I run ads too. Fascinating that the ads on search actually kinda work. Six people clicked already!

I've also learned that a majority of you use IE. Go Chrome. It's better.*

* I refuse to annotate this endorsement despite the FTC guidelines' mandate to contextualize blogger testimonials. Enjoy your unconstitutional guidelines while you can, FTC. Boo.