Biding My Time

The week of New Year’s I spent with my family near Cancun. It was relaxing, refreshing, and beautiful.

Here are some pictures, mostly of my family, Mayan ruins, and the resort at which we were staying. The Mega bar was a major obsession; my sister and I probably had about 10 each while down there. My favorite picture is the beach shot after the crocodiles; it actually took me some time to set that one up. I’m still pretty woeful at taking good pictures, though. Hopefully I’ll continue to improve with time.

In addition to lounging around, playing beach soccer and volleyball, and swimming, I did a lot of reading: America: The Book (good but not outstanding), Word Freak (about professional scrabble players; fun), Cyrano de Bergerac (awesome), a collection of short stories by the Russian author Gogol, and now I’m halfway through A Confederacy of Dunces, which I’m enjoying but doesn’t seem quite as good as all the insane reviews make it out to be. The Gogol stories were sometimes frustrating and sometimes hilarious. My favorite story was “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich”. Anyway, the stories struck me as ones that my high school friend Peter Yacavone would love (although he’s actually probably already read them). I wanted to email him about them, but we’ve been out of touch for a couple of years (so his college email address is dead), and he’s not on any of the social networks. I can’t believe that I can’t find him in this day and age! Any ideas?

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I’m still wrestling with the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis. I’m not sure what to write about it, so perhaps I won’t — certainly some experiences are best kept private, especially by an unskilled writer like myself. If you haven’t donated yet, you might want to consider it. In fact, Maya sent me an astoundingly well-timed music video that illustrates this point: go here, and click on “World on Fire”. It’s definitely one of the best videos I’ve ever seen, and I promise it’s worth your time to watch it. (Of course, it was made well before the earthquake.)

Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?

[Edit: Or watch the video in QuickTime here: http://www.worldonfire.ca/]