Holy hell but if I promised myself I wouldn't talk about GamesGrid
Poker but I just popped in and saw like so many more tables running
today than just a week ago (last time I actually looked). For someone
who feeds on this stuff (information, movement and trends)-- to see a
difference of just a week is fascinating to me.
Like, not just the number of people on gamesgrid poker (real money
games: i have my lobby sorted to "real money games only" on the left
hand side toolbar to filter out the play money games... i found out
today that when worlds largest says 70k ppl are playing there, it
includes the play money players as well, that it is closer to 10k of
real money players daily. i'd ass(u)me-d the 70k figure was real money
player stats, never looked at the nuances of the stat before) -- but
more people are talking about it, which is also like, so cool. I can
see how it originates and is flowing, which is totally getting my
rocksoff being my favorite thing to do: to follow.
Technorati search on gamesgrid poker isn't just a rehash of my old blog entries but so many new ones now...
(faints. just checked my referrer for a link but found trackback to felicia pimping me today, wow. thanks...)
::gets back up off the floor::
here are the links i was going to yak on, and get back to the pics
since i resized sooo many this morning, weird jetlag still in me, slept three hours between four and seven only so far...
The Test of Human Tendency blog post re: GamesGrid Poker and *please use 'teembtallent'
when signing up to GamesGrid Poker as your referrer, thanx* (really
cool site, i love compilations of news and got a little lost reading
when i should have been resizing more pr pics)
Lazy Man Pokering blog post... a few actually. "amazing" is an adjective i always delight in passing up the food chain :)
Double As reference to gg poker, Chris Halverson's ref, and more but I'm getting impatient to fill the void with pr stuff... :)
Leaving Ponce after a night's stay in an icebox cold room (there is
much to be said, and i am not the one to eloquently put it, but puerto
ricans love their air conditioning) we headed to the baños de coamo-- natural hot springs that the tainos used to use, Roosevelt soaked in, and now is a draw for (what it seemed) many locals and no tourists except me.
Touted by many as the *fountains of youth* Ponce de Leon was searching
for (especially the owners of the hotel next to the hotsprings), the
springs are encased in artless concrete but are pleasing to the skin
and soul.
The area is walled off, lending to some shade in the heat here (compounded of course by the springs themselves).
There are some trees and larger plants inside the concrete table, with
handpainted signs nestled in between impatiens (that's what mom called
them when planting her garden, i don't know the pr name for the flower)
and mounted on treetrunks or on stakes in the ground.
"Nunca des explicaciones tus amigos y tus enmigos, *no* las creerán."
A soak and then back into the dry heat of Coamo, a long walk back to
the car but not long enough to hold the conversation about the fountain
of youth we had after soaking in silence for so long. From Coamo we
drove north-east towards the Guavate region, which has no city name but
is famous for their lechoneras (pork).
The way to Guavate was much more arid than the north coast, and held
rolling houses on manicured lawns, facing the highway from long
setbacks akin to dotted homes in California. After this stretch, we
took the "panoramic route" which is a two lane highway cutting thru the
forest mountain region of pr's center-- I kept trying to convince
myself not to puke as we wound mountainside and moutainside. It was
more disconcerting and woozy than PCH, maybe because it had the added
bonus of inspiring clausterphobia as the forests bent down and around
the highway. (i've never done well with that kind of ride at the county
fair-- i distinctly remember puking orange soda on every passenger in
the *teacup* ride and not drinking the same since, well ever now).
The panoramic route exploded into a line of
restaurants/lechoneras/bars spread over a few windy miles. I can't say
how many pictures of lechoneras' signs I took, but they all
incorporated a pig (smiling, on a spit, in trousers, just 2D pig,
etx)... A few:
And of course when in rome...
Guavate was host to acres of motorcycles and attendant masses...
something about pork I suppose. I've had boar cooked on a spit before
(batt had a friend who went hunting with bows wild boar somewhere here
in norcal and i can say i've had the experience of picking boar
bristles from my teeth after being served from the spit), and I've also
had Hawaiian pork (japanese and hawaiians were closeknit and the
grandparents hosted "ethnic food days" where a giant pit would be dug
and lined with smoldering coals for a whole pig to be buried in, some
strange juxtaposition between burial and cremation but tender and
guiltladen)... but not this.
It was good.
Finally full from pork, amarillos, tripe, arroz blanco y maizeña with
chickpeas, boiled roots and bananas, shredded fried plantain pancakes,
and too many carbonated beverages, we jumped from the panoramic route
to the main north back to San Juan... parking the car in Old San Juan
next to the Museo de Americas/in front of El Morro and walking thru the
hot nite taking blurry dark pics of statues and buildings and
fortifications.
We imagined we were in the square below, listening to colonial dictators and damning/loving them if we were pr/spanish.
I'm not religious but have quite a bit of awe for the depth of the love of Christ runs in pr.
Being from Berkeley, having la raza-activist friends campaigning against
Columbus Day (for indigenous peoples day), and maybe a little too off
the cuff left of center dyed in the wool liberal hippie, I think the
celebration of CC's landing in PR by pr'ians is ... well, enough to
take a picture of and think about later. (Also took one of his statue
in SJ but too dark, didn't take).
And of course I can't forget piña coladas (did you know they made these without alcohol??!)...
...y empanadas...
...while walking by the twin lamb statues (pr's symbol, the entire name
of the island is isla de san juan bautista de puerto rico, the lamb is
it's symbol in Christ, emblazoned on its arms and without any reference
to estados unidos.)
aK
gamesgrid
3:28:09 PM 
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Friday, April 29, 2005
