Soon, one of my favorite “days” will be coming: Talk like a Pirate Day. It is a day, let me tell you, worth celebrating…. I did last year and all without the helpful website which includes things like history and tips. They even have advanced, contextual words and tips like the following:

Bilge rat

I am back in Chicago where well, I go to graduate school. This is the first time that I have ever moved back somewhere and it is in some ways really exciting precisely because it is going to be so boring. Boring in the sense that I will be mostly concentrating on one thing, writing, and won’t feel like I am bein pulled in many directions which is what I need right now.

It is daunting thinking about the amount of work and writing I have ahead of me but I also want to move ahead with it all. I recently wrote a small overview about the social and political importance of Free and Open Source Software, which is the topic of my dissertation, for an activist handbook for a conference in Helsinki. Now I have to convert that short piece into a large large one

Tomorrow I leave Puerto Rico after a summer that will be unforgetable. Being with my mom who has been sick has been much harder than I ever thought it was going to be. It is hard on the soul to see someone you care about so much suffer and then it is just hard to care for someone. Today, the weather matched my mood about leaving. The ocean was fierce and wavy because of hurricane Fabian which is not going to hit here but still stirs up the waters around our shores. The waters were really fierce, thrustring everwhere, while large eddies of waters formed where sunbathers usually lie. Despite the fierceness, there was also a cool calm mist along the shore and even inland because of the sea spray. The normal tradewinds were noticeably absent too. I feel a lot like those waves and the mist. A lot of turmoil about leaving but also a sort of softer, kinder sadness and resignation about the whole affair. I will be back soon and hopefully those around her will help her out.

Despite what my mom is going through, she still has an amazing ability to delve deep into humor. One day a couple of weeks ago she told us about how “The Mafia Runs Away From ME,” noting all the times in her life that “mafiosos” would steer clear of her… She was being totally honest and found her phrase: “The Mafia Runs Away From Me” as a sort of humorous refrain. So, some friends in celebration of this most catchy phrase, printed a shirt in honor of my mom!

So, if you are passing through Puerto Rico and net Internet access, there are of course a number of Internet cafes around the metropolitan area but then tend to be pretty expensive. So if you need to spend some time on the computer and don’t have too much money, one of your best bets is to go the Biblioteca Publica de La Comunidad Carnegie located on Ponce de Leon just outside of Old San Juan. Also there is supposdely wireless access at the University of Puerto Rico but there was something wrong with my own wireless devices when I tried yesterday so I can’t confirm. All the relevant information is in my cheap guide to PR which I have recently updated..