Right before we left for our two month excursion to California & New Jersey, I was walking around our property checking out the plants. One of the first things that we planted were a few little banana trees and they have gotten quite large. Since they havn’t produced any fruit, I was wondering if perhaps we planted non-fruit bearing banana trees and said out loud, “Hey, why havn’t we gotten any bananas out of you guy!?” (Yes, I talk to our plants…) I looked up and guess what I saw: Bananas!

Does any one know the best time to pick bananas? While they are still green or when they start to turn yellow?

In addition to bananas, we could not believe how much the papaya plants had grown in the two months we were off the island. I would say they are ten times the size from when we left and there are 20+ papayas hanging off of that tree!

In the madness of preparing for our first cross country trip with the baby we forgot to harvest and eat our first pineapple and it went bad by the time we got back…Bummer! But we do have 6 more pineapple plants in the ground so hopefully we will get another soon.

It’s so cool to finally be able to eat the fruits of our labor (literally)! So far we have produced the following food from our land: mangos, papayas, pineapples, avocados, kumquats, limon dulce, noni, tomatoes, lettuce, basil, rosemary, string beans, calabaza, snap peas, jalapenos, edamame, chives, bell peppers, peanut butter fruit, starfruit and cilantro. It’s like Farmville, but for real! Right Robin?

Today Stefan and I were shopping at the Kmart in Mayaguez and I noticed a big ol’ sign that proclaimed, “Shop anytime at Kmart.com!”. I thought to myself, “Well that’s cool! I would much rather shop online then stand in the ridiculous lines that seem to plague every Kmart in Puerto Rico”. When we got home I fired up the computer and went to Kmart.com. I turned to Stefan and said, “How much you want to bet that Kmart.com won’t deliver to Puerto Rico?” We both laughed and I proceeded to add all the items I needed (curtains and curtain rods) to my Kmart.com shopping cart. I went to check out and guess what? When you fill out your shipping address there is an option for every state, APO addresses and every US territory…EXCEPT FOR PUERTO RICO. First off, I have to ask: What sort a moronic management does the Kmart in Mayaguez have exactly, that would put up signage advertising Kmart.com, when you can’t actually SHOP at Kmart.com if you live in Puerto Rico? With this in mind (they can’t really be that stupid), I call Kmart.com and point out that there must be some sort of mistake on the website. No, no mistake. Kmart.com does not accept orders from Puerto Rico. But they gave me a phone number where I can supposedly place an order over the phone. I call the number (888-258-8869) and get a generic message, “The party you are trying to reach is not answering. Your call will now be disconnected.”

Seriously? WTF…

I can’t begin to tell you how excited Summer and I are to return home to Puerto Rico. Here are two shots of us with our JUST our carry on luggage.

Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool
Were three little fishes and their mommy fishy too
Swim! said the mommy fishy, Swim if you can!
And they swam and they swam right over the dam

chorus: Boop boop dittum dattum wattum, choo (3x)
And they swam and they swam all over the dam (repeats last line)

Stop! said the mommy fishy, You’ll get lost!
But the three little fishes didn’t want to be bossed
So the three little fishes set off on a spree
And they swam and they swam right out to the sea

Whee yelled the fishes, oh here’s a lot of fun.
Swim in the sea ’til the day is done
So they swam and they swam, it was all, a lark.
‘Til all of a sudden they saw a shark.

Whoa(?) cried the fishes, oh look at the whales
Quick as they could they turned on their tails
Back to the pool in the meadow they swam
And swam and swam back over the dam.

We’re packing up our flip flops, laptops and diaper bag. We’re putting the wetsuits back into storage and savoring the last morsels of Traders Joes goodies, mexican food and sushi. It’s time to head back home to Puerto Rico! Yippie!

Bye, bye California sunsets!

While it was good to get off the island and to see old friends and family, Stefan, Sydney and I are ready to get home to Rincon. We are preparing to wrap up work here in California and head home to Puerto Rico, after a quick stop on the East Coast to introduce Sydney to Stefan’s familia.

We’ll be back soon and will have tons of stuff to write about since there has been some pretty major construction going on while we’ve been gone…

Summer and I have been working on our house for over two years now! I would like to say it seems like only yesterday that we bought the house and started construction, but living in it through every stage didn’t really make it go quickly.

We really are getting close though. We have been working much more outside on the landscaping and paint and empenatar work, but finally moved the next project to inside.

We are going to close up the ceiling in the basement with sophets and drywall and make it look real real nice. We are currently working on all the wiring downstairs, the future wiring for outdoor landscape lighting, power for our water purifier, our back porch lighting and a power source for an eventual pool area.

Once all the wiring is done, we are going to insulate the ceiling and close up the stairwell so we can have a fully climate controlled level of the house. This summer really taught us that it pays to have AC with a newborn. Sydney didn’t like taking naps very much all swaddled up when it’s 100 degrees.

Once I get some pictures I will upload them so you all can see the progress. I’ll also update you to where we bought the 3 wire and recessed cans which were very difficult to track down. Also, we had to reground all of the wiring downstairs that was in the block wall because the original electrician didn’t ground anything in the concrete. I don’t know if that is local standard or we had a lazy electrician with too man Medallas in him, but we blew out a bunch of battery back up units and Summers expensive sewing machine.

While Robin (my mom) was in Puerto Rico, waiting for Sydney to arrive, we visited our neighbors pina mango tree and had ourselves some delicious pina mango goodness. While cleaning up, we were commenting on what large seeds pina mangos have and Stefan got the bright idea to try and grow our own pina mango tree. So, we dropped a pina mango pit in a cup of water and sat it on the window sill, next to the pineapple tops. We had pretty much given up hope on the pina mango pit after a few weeks, but low and behold…I woke up the other morning and it suddenly had a huge sprout sticking out!

So, this pina mango tree is officially going to be Sydney’s tree, since it was “conceived” by grandma, Stefan and myself right around the time Sydney was born. Now we just have to figure out where to plant it…

I just got back from a trip to Sears with my mom, signed into facebook and see all my friends down here talking about getting hit by a hurricane! Last I checked, they were just storms off of Cape Verde. Well, they are still just tropical storms but are predicted to deliver 50mph winds to the island starting on Tuesday.

Neither of them look very big, but they are both forecasted to hit Puerto Rico head on. Sweet, let’s see if the power company can justify their astronomic rates and keep our power going.

On a side note, how exciting for Sydney! She is only 2 weeks 6 days old and daddy is already telling her stories about how much fun hurricanes are. Rain, wind, everyone partying because no one has to go to work!

On another side note, the generator we have been planning on buying hasn’t been purchased yet. Maybe I’ll go get it on Monday with the rest of the island.

Too busy to rant and rave too much. But, after getting all the things completed to the house that the bank required for our refinance, they tacked $15,000 in closing fees to the loan. Crooks. I spend $5,000 on the house to get the loan and then they try to screw me when they ‘think’ they have me in a corner.

Two things that piss me off about Banco Popular:

1. One of the line items on the paperwork is Discount. This is where they added the $15,000 to my loan at closing. I asked what that discount was all about and that should be a minus sign if they are going to use the word discount, but they corrected me in a very patronizing manor. They told me that: “Discount is the name of the fee and that I am wrong.”
Oh, the name of the fee is disount. Nice move, I wish I thought of that when I was a full time sales guy, I probably could have screwed over a few more people and made a couple extra quick bucks.

2. Banco Popular does not have access to any of Popular Mortgage paperwork, because they say they are separate companies. They told me I would have to drive to San Juan to get my Puerto Rico mortgage paperwork. Here is the thing that annoys me about and should send up a red flag for anyone planning on doing business with them. The Popular Mortgage website is a part of Banco Populars’ website. It is http://bancopopular/mortgage or something (that I won’t link to). I found them at number 1 spot on Google after I searched for the term “Popular Mortgage”. Right below them is Ca2Pr.

If you want everyone to know about how poor the Banco Popular business model is and deter people from opening new accounts there AND stop them from getting screwed by their mortgage division, link to our Banco Popular Sucks page so everyone researching a new bank in Puerto Rico knows what they are getting into if they sign on the dotted line with Banco Popular.

Here, I’ll make it easy for you, simply copy this code and paste it into any html page you have.
<a href="http://ca2pr.com/2008/04/16/popular-mortgage-puerto-rico/">Banco Popular - Puerto Rico</a>
If you did it right, your link will look like this: Banco Popular - Puerto Rico

Summer and I love the lifestyle we have created for ourselves. There are positives and negatives to everything but we focus on the positives, even if we like to talk about the negatives. Funny thing, but that is just how I work. Summer says it’s because I’m from Jersey.

Anywho, this is a Rincon blog about DIY projects, adventures in PR, dealing with contractors, engineers, locating materials, running a business here BUT all of our family and most of our friends are thousands of miles away, so Summer and I are going to post a BOAT LOAD OF PICTURES of our beautiful daughter Sydney. Robin (Summers mom aka YoMama) lent us her very nice camera to ensure we get great baby shots. I just started experimenting with Picasso Web Albums and am going to start posting pictures from there so I can upload bigger pictures. Let’s see how this works out.

Ok, I can’t figure out how to slow down the slideshow, but you can hit pause and manually play it if you want to have a closer look or you can even go to the Picasa page and view them in full resolution!
Sydney Rest Photo Album

I love it. I like how the Picasa slide show turns out. That that slideshow looks great. The only thing I don’t like is that Picasa (Google) only gives away 1GB of free space, from there on out they charge an annual fee. We’ll so how far we can get with it.