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We've had some pretty intense driving around rural Puerto Rico in the last two days. Tuesday morning we hit the road westward from Ponce to San Germán, a small inland colonial-era city known for its architecture. It was a nice place to stop -- we took some good pictures and walked around the towns two plazas. But the unbearable Puerto Rican tendency towards traffic jams made the visit barely worth the trouble. We were glad when we got on the road again, south towards Parguera.

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I'm in the extremely pleasant balcony hallway of the awesome Hotel Melia in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Everyone's getting ready to go for a trip to the west of the island, so I thought I'd take a few moments to blog about the last few days.

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Maj, Amita June and I got off yesterday pretty well from Montreal. It was a bit of a rush at the last minute, since we decided to meet with our general contractor for house renovations just before going to the airport. (Yeah, I never thought I'd have a general contractor or do house renovations, either.)

 There was snow a foot deep in Montreal when we left. It's been a crazy April in Quebec, and a little bit depressing. I love snow more than anyone I know, and even I am starting to get sick of it. Spring already! C'mon!

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We got back to Montreal yesterday morning just after midnight. Maj got us upgrades on United to business class, which was really a life-saver. There's a direct flight from San Francisco to Montreal, but it's 5 hours one way and 6 hours on another. This time traveling to California, we decided to split up the flight, stopping in Chicago about halfway between.

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My brother Nate and his girlfriend Kristen live in the Laurel Heights area of San Francisco, just north of Presidio Heights, across the street from Laurel Village on California Street. They invited us up for dinner at their house last night, and since my Mom and Dad hadn't seen their apartment yet, they decided to join us, too.

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We had a great day on the coast yesterday, just the three of us -- Maj, me, and Amita June. We drove over Highway 92 from my parents' place in Los Altos Hills, a pretty steep and winding highway, down to Half Moon Bay on the peninsula's coastline.

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We're on a trip in Southern California this week, so we decided yesterday to go to Tijuana for the day. Maj, Amita June and I got out of the condo we're staying at in Encinitas early in the morning -- well, early for a vacation day -- and headed down to downtown San Diego.

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Maj and I finished up our business in Los Angeles this morning, so we picked up stakes from her parents' house in Long Beach and drove down to my parents' condo in Encinitas.

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My work permit in Canada expired on December 1, so I needed to renew it. It's possible to renew these things by mail, which is worrisome and time-consuming, or even to go into an office in Montreal (near-mythical, crowded, reportedly ineffective).

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Last night we went to visit our friends Zach and Wendy in El Cerrito, in the East Bay. Zach and Wendy have been our friends for... oh, more than 10 years now, I guess. They had a handsome little cowboy son two years ago, on the same weekend as my bachelor party in Las Vegas (making it easy to remember his birthday... better than I remember that weekend, is for sure).