Shawn, Joseph, Misha, and I just got back from a kiteboarding camp in Cape Hatteras, NC with Real Kiteboarding. The wind was only there for us for one day out of the four, but we still had a great time. I now own another kite, a 16 square-meter Turbo Diesel. Extrapolating from a page about lifting an obelisk with a kite, we should be able to lift a 1-ton obelisk with it. Next time I find one of those lying on its side, I’ll have to give it try.

And here are the photos from the trip:

Lisbon airport workers are a kind, industrious people with a rich social history and a really big atrium. What few electrical outlets the airport contains are situated nowhere near the waiting chairs, which all happen to be unupholstered. Here are some fun facts should you find yourself in the main Portuguese airport when the UK terror alert goes to Code Teal Armageddon: more…

I have a very unrefined sense of taste. In a blind taste-test between a $2, $30, and $200 bottle of wine, I could maybe pick out the Two-Buck Chuck, but I would be lost between the other two. I don’t think this is a bad trait to have: as long as I don’t need to impress anyone, I can save a lot of money. But it also means I subject everyone downstream of my “cooking” to my gustatory caprice. I also make a bad bartender.

I probably shouldn’t have been in charge of making drinks at the dinner party the other night, but I wanted to make mojitos. You get to make sugar water, and then you get to smash leaves with a stick, two of my favorite activities in preschool. No one complained about the drinks, either. It turns out that if you put enough sugar, lime juice, and rum in something, people won’t really notice that they’re drinking basiljitos. Or, if they do, at least they won’t complain about it to your face.

That is, until the host points out that the box of mint leaves is still sitting unopened on the other counter. Then they all laugh at you. And then they get to try little-shards-of-glass-jitos.

Kiteboarding is an expensive sport, especially when you suck.

Misha, Joseph, and I went to 3rd Ave. Beach in San Mateo today to try out the equipment we had bought two weeks earlier. Up to this point, we still hadn’t managed to propel ourselves through the water on our own gear. Misha and I had come close to hurting ourselves the week before, though only his kite suffered permanent damage.

“You’re so going to lose your board.” prophesied Joseph. And I did. My board is somewhere in the middle of the San Francisco Bay right now, slouching towards Alameda. To my credit, I did have a good three or four minutes at the beginning and managed to go upwind for a few blissful seconds. Soon after, I got going too fast, was dragged off of the board downwind, and never found it again. It turns out the Bay is quite large.

Next time, I think I’ll buy a used board and maybe a leash.

Not much to say about it, but I’m going to be leaving San Francisco and moving to New York at the beginning of May. The main reason is that I have a lot of friends over there, and it seems like something I should try out at some point. Another big reason is that although our company has created offices in nearly every city in the world, they have stubbornly refused to build one in San Francisco. If I want to live and work in a city, it can’t be here.

Is it permanent? I’ll be out there for at least a year, which is about as far as my horizon stretches. I would like to return to the Bay Area some day, but who knows when that will be?

I made a recent trip to Australia, intending to become an expert at kitesurfing. This did not come close to happening, which came as great surprise both to myself and to the orderly workings of a rational universe. But if Aeolus withholds his winds, you can only become so awesome. more…

I just spent the past 15 minutes trying to tell Amazon.com that I enjoyed reading The Remains of the Day. I even read the help pages, but eventually, I had to give up. I know I’m the last person who should complain about cluttered interfaces and not keeping documentation up-to-date, but I just wanted to get that off my chest. I also wanted to tell it that I liked The Picture of Dorian Gray and failed there as well. So if anyone knows any books about butlers who never get old, please let me know.

Attended Sundance the other weekend. If I go again, I’ll have to make sure that I either plan much farther in advance or am much cooler than my current self. As-is, I had a lot of trouble getting in anywhere. The first weekend, every bar and restaurant is reserved for a private party, none of which seemed to have me on their lists. more…

My trip to Thailand this past Thanksgiving was marred by many little inconveniences, among them torrential rain, a missing person’s report, and an airport hotel with a diverse ecosystem thriving in its carpet. Those are for another today. Instead, I want to talk about my Thai massage. more…

I am ruined for Christmas cards.

Growing up, there was always a good chance that when I opened a Christmas card from a grandmother or an aunt or a family friend, something flat, fungible, and quite possibly green would slip out and flutter to the floor. At the height of the phenomenon in early high school, I made out like a jolly Christmas bandit. And when my birthday rolled around a few weeks later, my wallet could engorge itself on a second wave of cards.

As much as I enjoyed the holiday largess, maybe I would have been better off without it. Because today, when finding a heartfelt message from a friend should be worth more than any amount of money, I find myself reading their words through a thin layer of disappointment that their loving sentiments weren’t hidden behind a greenback or two. It’s not even rational. I could find a card taped to a case of champagne or resting on the hood of a new Ferrari, and I would still be disappointed not to find a check for $10 tucked inside.

My soul-rot could take a while to clear out, but hopefully I can help out the next generation by holding out on them. Not that I actually send Christmas or birthday cards, but I imagine I’ll get around to it some day, and when I do, we’ll keep it traditional. Open up the card and find … nothing? Another, smaller card reading “it’s for your own good”? Anthrax? OK, not anthrax. But no cash, no checks.

Actually, maybe checks that bounce. That’ll teach them.