I… I… I just can’t stop looking at this hilarious picture.

The always inspirational, Cory Booker. Watch Street Fight if you haven’t.

Every burgeoning bike rider probably has a stuck in the rain story, below is mine:

The clouds looked ominous as I left work, but I hoped the weather would hold off for the 20-25 minutes it would take to get home. Unfortunately, about halfway home, as I started across the Mass Ave Bridge, I felt the first drops. Big, intermittent, falling from the sky with more urgency with each pedal. By the time I crossed the bridge, it was a full out sideways rain thunderstorm. My shoes filled with water. Dirty water from the street was spraying into my mouth from the tires. My glasses were quickly rendered opaque by the drops and when I looked over them to see, water laser beams shot into my eyes. It was an angry, confused shower, filled with all the bitterness of a scorned Mother Nature.
I wasn’t sure if I should stop (I should have) or keep going to meet the HVAC guy who was coming for a spring tune up (what a waste that was), and I wasn’t sure how much protection my backpack would provide to my laptop.
Of course it stopped raining a couple minutes after I got home, but by that time, I had already seen the angry, blinking lights of my soggy D430 and taken the battery out. I tried it one more time after the HVAC guy left (seriously, a waste of time and money. He hadn’t even brought a ladder to change the air filter, leaving it for me to do). And one more time a couple hours later before leaving it in an A shape on the table to dry. And then I waited. And waited. I’d say it was the longest 24 hours of my life, but that would be cheap hyperbole, wouldn’t it? Finally, I couldn’t wait anymore and put the battery back in and it worked no problem. It came right back from hibernation somehow and it seems to be fine.
For those of you looking here for instructions on what to do with a wet laptop to guarantee bringing it back to life… I don’t know. Shut the power off right away. I guess probably don’t leave it on standby on your way home to reduce the chance of it getting wet while it’s powered on, also. And then hope it works after it dries for as long as you can stand drying it. Hope and Luck. That’s what you need with a wet laptop, because I imagine I had as good a chance of getting a brick out of the whole experience.

Yesterday was a hot one, so a quick no-cook meal seemed the thing to do. Here’s what I made:

Into a bowl went half a red onion, one jalepeno, and one red bell pepper, diced, along with two 15-oz cans of black beans, rinsed, a healthy bunch of cilantro, chopped, and the kernels from two ears of corn. Add the juice of a lime or two, a good pinch of salt, and black pepper. In retrospect, some scallions would have been good in there, too.

Next! Put the juice of a lime in a small bowl, and then toss two halved avocados in there. While they sit and get limey (and don’t turn brown), finely dice the other half of the red onion, another jalepeno, and another big bunch of cilantro. Add the avocados and some of the lime juice they’ve been sitting in, and mash along with a big pinch of salt, pepper, and ground cumin. Taste, and add more lime juice if necessary.

Put a big scoop of black bean salad on one side of your plate, and a smaller scoop of guacamole on the other side, and dump a bunch of tortilla chips in between them. I’d recommend opening a beer, as well.

(I was too hungry to photograph this one, but I’ll try to remedy that with the leftovers tonight.)

Update: Photo!

I propose that this sentence in the Washington Post is a strong argument for the use of the serial comma:

Assuming that you work, worship, vote, parent, own property the government might covet or occasionally have sex, the high court will intimately affect your life.

Thanks for clicking on the Free Barcelona Travel Guide. There are 10 chapters total, listed at the end of this post. Check out the introduction for more information.

Our last day. A couple days earlier, we had started feeling tired of being on vacation. I know, I know, that problem tops everyone’s list of “Nice Problems to Have”, but still. We had saved Montjuïc for today because it was a Sunday and we didn’t think they’d close an entire mountain. It was sunny and hot, the African Heat J had read about earlier in the week had come. It was about 127 degrees (check my Celsius math) and sunny. Montjuic sits on the water looking over the city and giving the opposite view as Parc Guell and Tibidabo (presumably, we never went).

There’s a fort on the top of the mountain, which has been used several times throughout history to shell the city. Also, the Olympic stadium is up there, which must have made for a nice opening ceremony. There’s a bus that will take you from the bottom of Montjuic to the fort at the top. If you want to avoid a sunburn, please, dear reader, take the bus. I’m speaking from experience here, but, you know, do what you want. Also at the bottom is a fountain that if you go when it’s not a drought (which it was) and at night (which it wasn’t), you’ll see a fantastic light/fountain show. Anyway, we walked up and wished we hadn’t.

After taking some pictures at the Olympic stadium, we walked over to the botanical gardens to consider the high entry cost. It looked very nice and all, but we decided against it to continue our march to the top in the scorching heat (seriously, take the bus).

Castell de Montjuïc is a fairly standard 17th/18th Century Store fort, but what makes it so cool is the crazy port right below it. We thoroughly enjoyed the view, had a lunch of Cornettos, and decided to head down. I’ll take this opportunity to interrupt the travelogue and mention the sun and heat. Again.

As it was the end of the trip, we were trying to manage our Euros in such a way that we got on the plane heading to Boston with exactly no cash left. This had us in a bind when we wanted to take the cable car from the castle to the bottom of Montjuic and the only way to buy tickets was a machine that wasn’t accepting our credit or debit cards. The main problem with 17th/18th century castles, as we saw it, is the lack of ATMs. With only enough cash for one ticket and about 7 useless pieces of plastic between us, we continued marching down in the unrelenting “African Heat”. The reality of our foolishness was beginning to illustrate itself in the form of mild sunburns and I must beseech you, if you visit Montjuic, take the bus up and down.

We took a breather in The Jacint Verdaguer Gardens or “bulbous” gardens, which were not a replacement for the Botanical Gardens so much as lovely park to collapse in the shade and marshal energy for our continued march. A respite from the unrelenting assault of the sun. The park was dried by the drought, but had plenty of children playing and families picnicking.

Just below the bulbous garden was a street with a restaurant, metro buses, and information booths. We knew a funicular was supposed to be somewhere on this hill and thought the information booth would be able to tell us how far. Unfortunately… well, not to mince words, but the girl in the information booth didn’t know anything about the funicular and didn’t know where it was when we showed her the map. The funicular was literally 35 yards across the street. Finally the funicular came and took us off this Godforsaken hill. May we only return under somewhat cloudier conditions. Try not to miss the Fundació Joan Miró, I think we would have loved it if we had planned this morning better.

After alighting from the funicular, we decided to make one more wide loop of this eminently walkable city, hitting the Born and Barri Gotic again for memory, and for the first time exploring the Port area. The Port includes an extension of La Rambla called La Rambla del Mar, which is essentially a funky drawbridge. The drawbridge is a walking path separating the marina and a crazy futuristic mall. They let the boats out of the marina at regular intervals and try not to be stuck on one side or the other. It turns into bedlam as people keep moving towards their destination in that human trait that has them moving forward even as there is nowhere further to go. The mall is out on a mini-island and likely caters to cruise ships, but we were too tired to explore fully. If we had known about it earlier, we might have come here to do any shopping we had intended to do. As it was, we completely struck out on the Barcelona shopping experience. On our way home, we stopped ever so briefly at a Spanish flea market and confirmed that junk is junk no matter what language.

We heroically made it back to the hotel and rested up for dinner while reflecting on our trip. Just kidding. We were so devastated by the heat that I don’t even remember this couple of hours. Wanting to make one last trip to our favorite part of the city, La Placa de Maria del Mar, we decided to try dinner at Taller de Tapas

We got to Taller de Tapas around 9 and illustrated the point beautifully that the reason we hadn’t had waits at restaurants all week was because we were getting there before the late night dinner rush. We waited about 35 minutes, a wait that would have been much more pleasant if we hadn’t decided to wear our cranky pants. I liked this place… We got a pot roasty thing that was awesome, pan y tomate, patatas bravas, green beans that were delicious and then, since it was our last night and we hadn’t yet, gambas al ajillo. These weren’t very good, but overall, Taller de Tapas is a win. Try to sit across from the restaurant in the courtyard so you can be serenaded by the duo of singer and guitar player playing along to a boombox.

After dinner, we did one more spin around the Placa, getting gellato from the good gellato place (the smaller of the two) and happening upon a tiny shop with a TV just as Spain won a Eurocup match against Italy advancing to the quarter finals. All the way back to our hotel, there were shouts of joy, sky rockets and roman candles, and cars honking. It was a cinematic ending to the perfect vacation, just as this would be a cliched ending to the perfect Free Barcelona Travel Guide. If only we hadn’t had to fly home.

Waking up early the next day, we walked to the train station and got to the Barcelona airport a couple hours ahead of our flight. Spain’s amazing propensity for travel lines (as evidenced by customs on our first day) was again displayed in the check-in line I waited in without moving for an hour and fifteen minutes. There was some excitement when luggage was left unattended and someone told a guard. The missing person had been using their luggage to save a place in line. Tsk tsk tsk. We made it through in the nick of time only to land in Madrid and have our Madrid to Boston delayed SIX HOURS! I prefer to think of the above paragraph as the end of our trip and this travel day as the re-entry into the real world. Hope you enjoyed this guide and that you have fun in Barcelona!

There are 10 chapters in the Free Barcelona Travel Guide. I hope you find them useful.
Introduction
Day 1: Barcelona to Boston: Plaça de Catalunya
Day 2: More Walking: Santa Maria del Mar, Picasso Museum, Ciutadella, Euskal Etxea
Day 3: Gaudi and Eating: Casa Milà
Day 4: More Gaudi: Parc Guell, Sagrada Família
Day 5: Sitges and Birthdays: Barcelona Cathedral, Parrots Hotel, The Beach House
Day 6: Sitges and Beach
Day 7: Sitges and Montserrat: Montserrat
Day 8: Sitges
Day 9: Too Hot to Shop: Aparthotel Calabria, La Boqueria, Tapaç 24
Day 10: Montjuic: Montjuic

Map of where we went or wished we had.

Click here to blow out the map and get the full effect

Hard Rain is number two of six, and is sort of indistinguishable from the others in the way I would probably feel about any series of books if I read them in quick succession. The specific naming of different scotches and jazz performers began to grate in this book, but again, likely because of the quick succession I read the series in. Unlike the first book, this one had scenes seemingly written with a movie in mind.

Rain Fall is the first in a series of six (so far?) smart books about a Japanese-American assassin who loves whiskey and jazz. I read books 3 and 4 on vacation a couple years ago and then read 1, 2, 5 and 6 in the last month. I should stay away from books like this because they’re really like crack to me, but perfect for vacation or commuting.

This book was a completely engrossing read, and was way weirder than I expected it to be. Although I enjoyed every minute reading, I was unsettled by how many plot threads were left unfinished, and how the rules of Murakami’s magical world were never explained in any internally-coherent way. Maybe that’s my limitation as a reader.

Thanks for clicking on the Free Barcelona Travel Guide. There are 10 chapters total, listed at the end of this post. Check out the introduction for more information.

It was on this day that the realities of staying at a gay hotel began to set in, but only in that the realities of staying at a gay hotel are that there aren’t any women down at breakfast besides J. Earlier in the week, it was impossible to notice because we were the only ones at breakfast. Today was very hot, so why not spend the morning lounging on the beach reading trashy novels? In any case, that’s what we did until lunch. We had a smoothie at Parrots Terrace and then light sandwiches at Mostaza right next door before, uh, going back to the beach to read trashy novels for the afternoon.

Douglas at Parrots who had steered us so rightly to The Beach House on our first night in Sitges suggested Mezzanine. We weren’t AS thrilled with Mezzanine, but only because of the incredibly high bar set by The Beach House. The atmosphere was lovely, the service charming, and the tempura de gambas had eyes. The food was presented amazingly, but unfortunately, there was something missing from the taste. The chocolate cake for dessert, however, was out of this world.

There are 10 chapters in the Free Barcelona Travel Guide. I hope you find them useful.
Introduction
Day 1: Barcelona to Boston: Plaça de Catalunya
Day 2: More Walking: Santa Maria del Mar, Picasso Museum, Ciutadella, Euskal Etxea
Day 3: Gaudi and Eating: Casa Milà
Day 4: More Gaudi: Parc Guell, Sagrada Família
Day 5: Sitges and Birthdays: Barcelona Cathedral, Parrots Hotel, The Beach House
Day 6: Sitges and Beach
Day 7: Sitges and Montserrat: Montserrat
Day 8: Sitges
Day 9: Too Hot to Shop: Aparthotel Calabria, La Boqueria, Tapaç 24
Day 10: Montjuic: Montjuic

Map of where we went or wished we had.

Click here to blow out the map and get the full effect