So, bebeh’s now 1 month old, as of yesterday. It’s been an interesting month. Busy, tiring, frustrating, rewarding… all the things that everyone seems to say, and none of it really captures the feeling of it all.

I’ve been as tired as I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve found that with enough sleep, I can tolerate his cries for as long as need be, but with too little, I get really frustrated, and sadly, really angry, which is difficult, because I know that being angry doesn’t serve any purpose. But still, that’s part of the reaction, and learning to deal with it is part of the process.

We’re still trying to figure out how to get enough sleep to both be fully functional people, and it alternates. Last night, Ei-Nyung let me get a full, uninterrupted 9 hours of sleep. When I woke up, I nearly wept with gratitude. I wish I could do the same for her, but biology makes that a bit more difficult. Still, I do what I can.

It’s interesting watching him grow. He follows things, clearly, with his eyes. He looks at his reflection, though I have no idea what he’s thinking when he sees it. What a strange little guy. He’s sleeping now, in a sling, as I type this.

Some unsolicited advice for people who may be in a similar situation – the first month, when you’re dealing with a new addition to your family, the level of stress, of fatigue – they make everything more intense. You may feel euphoric after the slightest positive step, or you may become completely despondent over the smallest frustration. Anything that you introduce during this time is going to be heightened. If you have a poor relationship with your family or friends, now is not the time to try to mend those relationships, or even maintain them.

It’s been an interesting month. Seems like only yesterday it was just the two of us & the dog, yet also forever since he’s been here.

Tomorrow, scaffolding goes up in preparation for home repairs to hopefully fix the 8 years of leaking windows. Next week, the entire front of the house comes off. Let’s see how that goes. 🙂

Man. So, kid. Here. It’s been a couple of weeks, but things have been pretty busy. Ei-Nyung’s mom came out and helped out loads, cooking TONS of food, and hanging out with the new addition. After Ei-Nyung’s mom left, my parents showed up. My dad left for St. Petersburg a few days later, and my mom’s still here, helping out. She’ll be here for another week, and then it’s just us on our own.

It’s pretty strange, being a dad. Frustrating at times, satisfying at times, just crazy all around. People tell you that it can be really stressful, but even after taking a couple classes, you really don’t get the intensity of it all. Kid needs to eat 12, 15, or more times daily – as things ramp up, they eat a LOT – not much at any feeding, but a lot of times during the day. It’s exhausting, and the lack of sleep is a real problem.

Knowing that neither of us functions all that well under limited amounts of sleep, that was my biggest worry going in – and in the end, that fear was definitely justified. Keeping both of us rested enough that we don’t get really frustrated or upset has been one of the hardest thing.

The kid’s pretty good-natured so far. He cries when he’s hungry, gassy, or needs a change of diaper, but for the most part, he’s otherwise pretty laid back. Crying a bit more these days, and harder to get him to settle down, but still definitely bearable.

Woo. It’s all very strange. Still trying to settle in. Particularly getting back to work, definitely… whoo.

Happy, though. Kid’s healthy, growing and changing every day.

—

On a totally different note, Forza 3 = awesome. Dead Space: Extraction is fun, if simplistic, and looking forward to getting into Brutal Legend, Dragon Age, and Uncharted 2, among other things. Not that I’ll have the time, but hey. 🙂

To those that are waiting, no. No kid yet.

But an interesting thing happened last night. Pete came back. I mean, he’s been in the area for a little while, settling into his new place in Sacramento. But last night was the first time I’d seen him in a long time – couple years, maybe the first time we’ve seen him since the wedding? I don’t know. But it’s been a long time.

He was one of the few people I hung out with a lot when I was young. We spent time at my house, his house, played ping-pong, played the early Sierra adventure games, went to Berkeley together to play arcade games until we both had headaches… all kinds of things. We met, I think, in sixth grade. My first memory of him was in a vocal class? I think he was singing to himself, and I thought, “What a weird kid.”

But we became good friends – I’d consider him one of my very best. And so when I think about my youth, there are a handful of people that are part of that. Some that I’m still close with, some that I’m not. For the most part, I’ve either kept in close contact with the people I still care about, but Pete’s been a skipping stone in my life for the last 15 years.

We didn’t see each other that often, but when we did, it didn’t take much to catch up, and it never felt like any time had passed. Yet, we both changed. I met Ei-Nyung, started a career in game development, got married, bought a house, and am about to have a kid. He lived in New York, became a doctor and has had all manner of grand adventures in the time since (there are other interesting tidbits, but you’d have to ask him about them, as I won’t spoil them for you here).

So last night, we hung out. And it was like nothing’s changed. Well, that’s not right – obviously, lots has changed. But somehow, something flipped in my head last night. And I know this may be weird, but seeing Pete again – it felt like a bookend to my prolonged adolescence. My fear of the future disappeared. Fears about fatherhood, the changes that are coming in Ei-Nyung and my life, the changes that we’re all going to go through in the *next* 15 years… it became a sort of excitement and joy. And no, I can’t explain it.

But I look forward to meeting my son. I look forward to seeing him learn, and grow, and to watch him form the kinds of friendships that last a lifetime. I look forward to how Ei-Nyung and my relationship will change – one of the things that’s been good about our relationship is how we handle change, and growth – I fear the sleepless nights, and the stress – the inevitable arguments and conflict – but it’s *progress*. Towards a family – our family – surrounded by friends that I love deeply – towards the future, both in work, which has been incredible, and in life.

The last 15 years, for their little stresses and various challenges have been utterly spectacular. May the next 15 be as good.

So, it’s hard to comprehend the idea of impending fatherhood. It’s alternately exciting and horrifying, as I’m sure it is for most fathers-to-be. With some close friends already having taken the plunge, I’m glad to know that we’ll have people to rely on for a little experience and help. It’s still quite strange.

I was thinking what I would like to pass on to the child (it’s a ‘he’ if you don’t already know, and no, we don’t have a name yet – we’re not just not telling you), and the thing that kept coming to mind was simple, but also impossible to accurately convey:

“Know when to quit.”

WHOA! That’s a horrible thing to say, right? You should teach your kid to persevere, to work hard, to fight through things – that with dedication and hard work, anything is possible… right?

Well, no – I don’t think so. I mean, I’m not saying I *don’t* want to teach them dedication, hard work, perseverance – absolutely, I do. But a companion to that is to know what to focus their dedication, etc. etc. ON.

How do you explain to a kid that you should always, always work hard, try hard, stick to it, and not to give up, but also that some battles are not for you, that you can be passionate about many things, but that there is a limit, and your life might be better if you tried something else.

It seems like the kind of lesson that you learn only with experience, and an understanding of what you want in life, and how to achieve it – how to strip back the trappings of daily life, and to figure out what you really, really want, and how to let the other things go. Or how to not drive yourself crazy trying the impossible. After all, a lot of people who were great at things were also… crazy. And if they want to be great, maybe it requires a little craziness, in the end.

Maybe.

But maybe there’s also value in knowing how to focus your efforts to maximize the return. I mean, I like a lot of things. Some of which I still do, and some of which I simply don’t have time for – but finding the right balance is hard, because what you want to do and what you *can* simply don’t match up a good amount of the time.

I like cooking. A lot. But I find that one problem is that I’m ambitious. I want to cook something awesome. ALL THE TIME. And so what happens is that instead of an occasional simple meal, like a bowl of ramen, I’ll want to do something crazier, but never get to it because we don’t have the time or energy to devote that much to food preparation every night. So ingredients will go to waste, or we’ll put it off and order in, and eat worse in the end because it’s taken five years to realize that sometimes, it’s fine to just chill and make something at home that only takes five minutes.

It’s just a matter of finding balance. I know I can do almost anything if I put my mind to it, if I’m dedicated to it, if I try really hard. And for the things I realize I’m truly, deeply passionate about, I do all those things and more. But the ability to step back and say, “Maybe I don’t want this as much as I think I do,” not because you have to but because you can get that perspective…

It seems like that frees you to be great, rather than frustrated by good.

So… lots of changes since the last post. Lots of baby gear acquired. Friends held us an awesome baby shower. Work’s going well, but is often crazy. I dunno. Lots of stuff. Nervous. Scared. Excited. Can’t wait for baby to arrive, but also can. It’s all quite strange.

We ate at a really excellent restaurant Friday (and then again on Saturday, it was so good) called Commis, which is a new addition on Piedmont Ave. Ex-Manresa chef, who’s also staged @ El Bulli & The Fat Duck. Awesome food, close, really good value (for what it is), and the kind of restaurant that Oakland’s needed, but lacked, for decades. I suppose it’ll be a little while before we can go back, but I’m looking forward to it.

Looks like the 360’s drive might be giving up the ghost. Getting disc read errors like nobody’s business. Tried & failed to play both GRID and RE5 tonight because the disc wouldn’t read. Boo.

Trying to get some sleep while I can, but also ended up up until 2am every night for the last three days. Combination of nerves and… nerves, I guess. Man. I wish I wasn’t so … excitable about stuff like this. It’s no good for anyone. I fret, it does nothing, I lack sleep, and everything gets worse. Boo again. Guess I’d better get used to it… :O

Today we were beat. After crawling pathetically out of bed, we dragged ourselves to Fatboy’s for breakfast, which consisted of what appear to be the two most common foodstuffs in the area: garlic chicken and kalua pig. Not that I mind, as they’re two very excellent foods. So we ate, then came back to our place, and searched for a nearby geocache. We’d passed the area almost every day, but hadn’t been able to find the thing. But today, we looked a little harder, and found it in only a few minutes. Logged the find, then went back to the pad.

Then we slept… for HOURS.

It was hot. Very hot. I felt like I’d been crushed under a giant mass of heat – everything felt heavy, slow, and sort of molasses-y. We managed to pull ourselves out of our groggy state long enough to slog to the beach, where we bobbed around in the water, looked for honu (no luck), and watched a bunch of dogs play on the beach (adorable).

Crash, take 2, then off to Sunday dinner at the K’s for the second week in a row.

It was great – they treated us like guests, and like family. We felt very welcome, and it was strange how familiar everyone felt, even though we’d only met once the week before. (except for S & E, who we’ve met previously). S cooked up some awesome food, the rest of the people brought some excellent other food, we ate ’till we were absolutely stupid, hung out and talked for a bit longer, and then came back and completely crashed out, watched ABDC, and here we are.

All in all, a lazy day, but I guess we were just wiped out after the week. One more day to go. I think the plan’s sort of like, “eat some of the food we have at the pad, try to swing by Boots & Kimo’s, clean up, check  out, go somewhere, hang out all day, meet up with SG for dinner, drop the car off, hop on the plane, and head home on the redeye.”

Should be exciting. It’s been a great trip.

Our Saturday kicked off with leftover Mochiko Chicken from the previous night, supplemented by a pork burrito and coffee from Kalawapai Market, and a mango that the K’s gave us, then a dip in the ocean. While bobbing around, we saw a sea turtle right nearby! I chased after it for a bit, careful to keep my distance. Got to see its head pop up out of the surface less than 10 feet away. Funny little creatures.

After that, we took a little break, then headed out to Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. Beautiful, beautiful place. Spent a couple hours at the bay, snorkeling around the really shallow coral. My favorite sighting was a big (2.5-3ft?) rainbow-colored fish that fed on the coral. It was big enough that when you swam up to it, you could hear it biting on the coral. Sounded like the “CHOMP CHOMP” you get when you eat a mouthful of Doritos. So maybe it’s the Dorito Fish.

After Hanauma, we decided to go see what was in Waikiki. On the way there, we discovered Ei-Nyung’s Home Button on her new iPhone had broken. Bleh. It’s not like we couldn’t wait to fix is at home, but it’s one of those annoyances that just gets under your skin. Since a quick search revealed an Apple store right where we were going, we figured we’d pop in and see if they could fix it. Which they did, on the spot, with no wait. Nice.

The other thing we noticed while in Waikiki was that HOLY CRAP are we glad we didn’t stay there. I dunno what it is about tourist traps, but they all look the same. And they all have a Cheesecake Factory. It may be some people’s idea of paradise, but it was my personal vision of hell on Earth. Our curiosity satisfied, we decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

Next stop was Tokkuri-Tei, for an early dinner. Ayyana had recommended the place, and while I wasn’t necessarily jonesing for Japanese food, we figured we had to make the stop. And I’m really glad we did. If you’ve been to Gochi, it’s … like Gochi. Different dishes, but a similar vibe. That type of food, at least.

They’ve apparently got some award-winning poke, though I dunno that I’d have even considered it poke. It was delicious, but the star of the meal was the yaki-ika, a squid pancake that was served like a pizza. The “weird dish” goes to the nori-chos, which were nachos made with deep-fried nori instead of chips. Without the cheese sauce, this would have been *excellent*, but the cheese sauce didn’t work for me.

Even still, the whole meal was fantastic. And if you’re in the Honolulu area, it’s definitely worth checking out.

After that, we headed to the K’s to check out their local church’s Obon festival thing, complete with EVEN MORE FOOD. When we showed up at the K’s, it turns out that they had EVEN MORE FOOD, so we had some MORE FOOD (which was awesome), and headed over to the obon. Where they had Taiko. Which is always awesome (though to varying degrees – this one was pretty darned good, though).

There was also dancing.

And “andagi,” which are apparently Okinawan donuts. Ei-Nyung was smitten by them. I thought they were pretty darned good, too. We hung out there for a bit, then headed back to Kailua, exhausted after a long day.

Seppo’s note: I slept like garbage last night. Thoughts about the robbery kept me up until about 3am. So, today, I’ll let Ei-Nyung recap the events of yesterday and today. Fun times. I’ll have something to write about how try as I might, thieves have ruined part of the vacation, and there’s simply no denying that – but that the vacation as a whole has still been incredibly awesome, and I really like Oahu. Now, handing over to the wife.

—

Wow, after all these years, this is my first official guest post. OMGTHEHONOR! :p Heh. Seppo skipped HI: Day 3, so I suppose I will try to use my memory and twitter logs (mostly twitter) to reconstruct what we did that day.

HI: Day 3

We woke up early again, as we’ve been doing everyday. I got a call from my friend Alex (my best friend’s older sister) and decided to meet with her at Boots & Kimo’s. And yes, we had just gone there the day before. 😀 We ate with Alex and her 7 month old son, Aiden. This time, I had Hawaiian sweet sausage, two eggs over medium, and fried rice. Damn, that fried rice is good. Seppo had the fried rice omelet (apparently, not as good in omelet form, as the cheese was overwhelming) with hash browns (meh), and Alex had the macadamia nut pancakes and fried rice.

We went to Alex’s house in Kaneohe and hung out there for a bit. She has a great view of the mountains from her house. We came back home for a nap, then Alex & Aiden came to visit and go to the beach. Whenever I say “the beach”, I mean Kailua beach, which we are literally a couple of hundred feet from. Eet ees awesome.

We headed back over to Alex’s neighborhood to Haleiwa Joe’s for dinner.

I think we came back home and conked out.

Seppo covered Day 4 pretty well, but I need to add this photo:

It’s like all we do is eat. Wait, that’s exactly right.

This brings us to…

HI: Day 5

On Day 4, we decided that we wanted to explore the famed Lanikai Beach, just a bit south of where we are staying. But first, we went into town to get some curry buns, a spam & egg bun, and a portugese sausage & cheese bun (this was the big winner, IMO) because that is how we roll.

It’s only about 1.5 miles from where we are staying to Lanikai but the path is rather wacky (and I’m totally enfeebled at the moment on dry land), so we decide to drive there. Finding a path to the water that actually led to beach rather than a boat launch point was rather challenging, as we ended up trying two or three paths before finding a good one. We ate the buns at one of the non-beach paths.

Lanikai is very, very small and the beach is, in general, shorter than over on the Kailua side. But the waves were gentle and there was a decent amount of coral close to the shore, so after bobbing out there for a while, we decided it’ll be a good idea to pick up some snorkel gear and go back.

And we did! Oh, but on our first run of the day, I spotted a sea turtle! I thought it was a rock, which was confusing because it was moving, then it broke through the surface where I could see its little face. Awesome.

Anyway, we returned to Lanikai in the afternoon, after Seppo ran out to Don Quijote (they spell it with a ‘j’ rather than the standard ‘x’) to pick up the gear. I will admit that I was not 100% convinced we’ll see any fish, but I am glad to say I was wrong and Seppo was 100% right. 🙂 We saw all manner of fish, not to mention an creepy eel. I suppose I think all eels are creepy looking. I managed to overcome some of my more frantic panic at sticking my face under water and continuing to breathe and had a great time. I love being in the water because nothing hurts in water. I also find myself constantly overheated, so it’s nice to cool off in the ocean.

Dinner time rolled around, and we hit up Uahi Grill, which we had tried to go to on another day (and failed). Oh MAN, was my garlic chicken good! Seppo ate something or another. Oh wait, twitter tells me it was kalua pig with kale. That was quite good as well, with a great smokey, deeep flavor offset by the greens.

We ate much too fast — scarfed down the entire meal in like 20 minutes flat) and found ourselves with nothing to do at 6:30 in the evening. We went to a bookstore for a bit but realized that we didn’t want to buy any books to carry back home. After wandering aimlessly for a bit, we went home then watched a movie on Netflix. Heh.

Kailua doesn’t have a big nightlife, and we aren’t really nightlife kind of people, so it was a fine evening of relaxing, but it did seem odd to be done with our day so early. Heh.

HI: Day 6
Seppo and I both slept badly last night yet still woke up pretty early. We headed out to the local market to grab some coffee (decaf for me) and head out to Laniakea Beach to spot some turtles, thanks to a tip from Ayyana. 😀

We caught sight of either 6 or 7 turtles. They were incredibly cute! I didn’t think it would be as exciting as it was. Two people who were snorkeling at the beach were caught completely off-guard by two turtles, which was hilarious to see.

We got back to the car and found that my iPhone had spawned some spontaneous art while in Seppo’s pocket.

Can you see the lady’s profile, looking up and to the left? Odd, but cute. We headed out from the beach in search of some food, both of us starving and slightly lightheaded from not eating earlier. Some of it was probably due to not drinking enough and being out in the sun too long too, but either way, we found some food at North Shore Okazu & Bento.

Their bacon, scallion, and crab spicy handroll was awesome! As was the spicy shrimp tempura roll. I also got a spam & takuwan musubi and a ume musubi. The ume one was weird. The ume itself was like this tiny hard, nutty-textured thing, something I’m totally not used to.

Food needs taken care of, we headed to the Bonzai Pipeline to see some surfing action.

It was surfy goodness. We sat on a little bench and people-watched for a while, then headed back to home turf.

We got back early afternoon, and I attempted to take a nap. Seppo went out to our beach to see if there was anything to see with the snorkeling gear and reported that there was nothing. Heh. We headed back out around 5pm together for a little early evening dip in the water. I’ve mentioned that I love being in the water, and it’s absolutely true. It makes all my swelling go down significantly. And the color and sounds are just astounding and soothing.

We headed out to dinner after the beach, after much googling and yelping (as we have been doing for every meal – heh), to a little place called The Food Factory. Wow, their menu is crazy big. The food was quite good, not super-remarkably so, but good enough that I enjoy every bite I ate. Seppo and I went a little overboard, he with a loco moco and lau lau, and me with a mochiko chicken and saimin. I ended up taking home my first leftovers from a meal during this trip! 😀 And also took my favorite picture of Seppo from this trip:

Check out his crazy eyes! 😀

I don’t think we have fixed plans for the morning tomorrow, but in the evening, we are heading out to an Obon Dance near Lindsi’s parents’ house. Exciting street food and dancing!

Today, the only thing we had planned was a trip to the Polynesian Cultural Center. A co-worker kindly bought us tickets to the place, ’cause it was something he’d done when he was in Oahu that he really liked. Which is great, ’cause that’s exactly the kind of assistance that works great on a trip to a new place.

So, we were just at a loss for what to do in the morning. So we ran errands. Ha. Got a new belt, to replace the one that was stolen, and Ei-Nyung got some new underwear to replace the underwear that was… yeah. Stolen. Fun. On the way back from Macy’s (yeah, shaddap – it was close, adn we knew they’d have what we were looking for), we stopped off at Island Snow, a skate/surf gear shop/shave ice place. Got a bag (to replace… yeah, you get it) and a shave ice. The shave ice was good – not much more or less than expected, though the flavors the guy behind the counter recommended were surprisingly tasty.

Oh! Forgot to mention – before going to Macy’s, we went to lunch. LUNCH WAS AWESOME.

We ate at “The Alley,” which is the restaurant inside Aiea Bowl, a bowling alley about 20 minutes from where we were staying. Yes, we drove 20 minutes to eat at a bowling alley. It’d been recommended on Chowhound. We got the “Tasty Chicken” (foreground), the garlic fries (background), a bowl of ochazuke, and another bown of yakisoba. It was all pretty surprisingly awesome. I’d definitely go back – the best things, IMO, were the ochazuke and the Tasty Chicken, though both the garlic fries and yakisoba were well above average.

So, anyway – after that was the shopping, and the shave ice. Then off to the PCC*.

It was about a 40 minute drive – and while it’s a gorgeous drive, the problem for me was that it was exactly the drive to the North Shore, where we got robbed, so the whole time I kept thinking of that. Which sucked – there’s nothing to be done about it, but it’s difficult to just not think about it, even if I really, really want to just let it go and get on with things.

When we arrived at the PCC, there was a show already underway, so we scurried along to check it out. The PCC’s basically got five branches – Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Fiji. Each was represented by some traditional dance on a boat as they made their way down the little manufactured river. The highlight was the Haka, a Maori dance that we first saw on the Korean show Dream Team, which I’ve really grown to enjoy watching. It’s a powerful, intimidating, and strange dance, full of chest-slapping, tongue-sticking-out, eye-bulging, and stomping. I LOVE it.

So that was nice.

We then went and watched an IMAX movie on coral reefs, walked around to tht little villages, and watched some demonstrations of stuff. Taken as an authentic experience, the place is sort of ridiculous, but as a little Polynesian tourist EPCOT center, it’s pretty entertaining.

After walking around and checking out the villages, we were off to the Luau, where we got our lei’s and sat down for dinner. The show was entertaining – the MC was pretty sharp – strangely, did a really good Louis Armstrong impression, among other things. The food was good – the poke was surprisngly good, and I had enough of it that it was at least a little unreasonable. 🙂

After the Luau, we went to watch “Ha – The Breath of Life,” which was the big show of the evening. Didn’t really know what to expect. Started off with a strange narrative that was a little hard to follow, and ended up basically following a guy’s life story as he grows up, falls in love, gets married, etc., while transitioning between the various cultures at the PCC. It was good – lots of people, very energetic performances… then it got INSANE. The fire show at the end was pretty freaking epic, and in the end, we left with big smiles on our faces, grateful to the friend that got us tickets, and tired from a fun day.

* The only negative thing about the experience was that a couple days prior, someone had mentioned that the PCC was heavily tied to the branch of BYU that’s adjacent to it, and that it’s a Mormon-run establishment. Given the Mormons’ involvement in Prop 8 in CA, I’m not exactly happy with their involvement in our culture. How that extends to the cultures represented at the PCC, I honestly can’t say. But would like to find out.

And if one day, I can go see a Haka done with experienced Maori tribesmen, it would BLOW MY MIND.

All in all, though – good day. Full of good food, lots of new experiences. Now I’m beat.

Excited after an awesome 1st day in Hawaii, we took up some of our friends’ suggestions, and tooled around the island. Started the day at Boots & Kinos, whose macadamia nut pancakes are *ridiculous*. Their fried rice was also spectacular.

Went back to the pad for a couple minutes, then off to officially check in at the property rental spot. Once all the bureaucracy was taken care of, off to Three Tables on the north shore!

On the way there, we stopped at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, which was tasty, though honestly, not super remarkable.

Then we headed to Three Tables, which was awesome. Had a great couple hours snorkeling, swimming with the fishies, and otherwise lounging around and getting mad sunburned.

And there’s where the fun ended.

We got back to our car, popped the trunk, and found our bag was gone. Our bag. With our camera, our e-readers, our phones, our sunglasses, my prescription glasses, and my wallet. And probably more stuff, but that was all I could remember. My pants. My only good belt. Ei-Nyung’s clothes.

Motherfuckers stole my fucking prescription glasses, those worthless fucks. Christ.

It’s times like this where I’m glad there are laws to protect the criminals, because if I’d seen one of these worthless meatbags with my stuff, I wouldn’t have hesitated in running them over, then backing up, and then getting out of the car and kicking their mangled fucking corpse.

I know you’ll never see this, but: fuck you. I hope my phone battery explodes and you and your whole family die in a fucking fire.

That said, we handled it alright. Called the cops on a kind stranger’s phone, filed a report, went back to the pad, canceled our cards, suspended our phones, and that was that. I’ve got a piece of paper that I can supposedly use to get on the flight home next week as well.

I’m trying not to be like, “Great. That’s that. Fuck this place, I’m outta here.” Because this IS our last vacation before the kid. Everyone ELSE here has been spectacular. The place is freaking paradise. I don’t want this to ruin the vacation, and I think it won’t, but it’s not going to ever have that same idyllic feeling that the trip to Tulum had.

We swung by the local AT&T store a town away and got new phones, ’cause frankly, those were the things whose (aside from my wallet) utility we were going to miss the most.

So… yeah. Tomorrow, we start again. Maybe go to the beach, ignore the mad sunburn on my back from snorkeling, and try not to think thoughts of strangling worthless thieves in the beautiful ocean.