I was chatting with one of my sisters the other day about where she and her family might move as her husband pursues a new job (she's a SAHM). "If he gets & accepts an offer from the one in Indianapolis," she noted, "We wouldn't even have to move. They've said he can work 100% remotely ( Read more... )

Starting even before we finished our recent trip to Puerto Rico and New Orleans I began thinking about it in retrospective, assessing what I'd learned about myself and thinking about how to make future trips even more fun. Here are Five Things:

1. It's good to be homeWe've been away for 10 nights/11 days and stayed in 3 cities. This isn't the ( Read more... )

Wednesday, December 30, 2015. 3pm.We spent a few hours at the beach and in the pools this morning as a last hurrah before leaving Puerto Rico. Our flight wasn't until 2:30 so we had time to do that, clean up in the shower, and taxi to the airport without rushing ( Read more... )

Tuesday, December 29, 2015. 4pm.Travel is three parts discovery, one part self discovery. One thing about myself I'm reminded of every time I go on a beach resort vacation such as this is that I don't do beach resort vacations very well. Here it is Day 5 of our visit to Puerto Rico, our last full day here, and I haven't yet spent a day taking it ( Read more... )

Tuesday, December 29, 2015. 7am.

Yes, I'm up early again today. Couldn't sleep much past 6. But like I noted before, I'm not too upset about it because I get to enjoy the sunrise from our balcony overlooking the ocean. I'd include a picture but with our Eastern view there's too much glare out over the water ( Read more... )

Monday, December 28, 2015. 9pm.

We got back to our hotel around 5pm today after our bus tour to hike La Mina Falls. We were supposed to have been bused to some "authentic" local restaurant near the rain forest- a restaurant that suspiciously has the same name in several packaged tours offered by different operators I looked up when planning the ( Read more... )

Monday, December 28, 2015. 4pm.

As I described in my previous entry, today we are taking a bus tour to El Yunque National Forest. The two dozen or so people we're sharing the bus with today seem like a reasonable enough group of strangers but, man, is this park crowded. As if the traffic jam at the entry gate wasn't dispiriting enough, when our ( Read more... )

Monday, December 28, 2015. 12pm.Last night we booked ourselves on an organized tour today to visit the rain forests of El Yunque National Forest, about an hour southeast of San Juan. The highlight we're looking forward to is a short hike to La Mina Falls, one of the forest's main attractions ( Read more... )

Monday, December 28, 2015. 7am.Today's our third full day in Puerto Rico. It's the midpoint of our trip. The hump day, if you will ( Read more... )

Sunday, December 27, 2015. 12pm.Yesterday Hawk and I thought we'd be able to take in all the sights of Old San Juan in a single day, including both forts San Cristobal and El Morro, as well as wander the narrow cobblestone streets past centuries-old stores and homes painted in bright, tropical colors. Turns out we accomplished only about half of ( Read more... )