A beeyoooootiful lady!

For Christmas, The Boy gave me a gift certificate to Le Pli, the spa at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge.

Because a) I'm completely indecisive (or am I? I don't know ...) and b) math is hard, it took me a while to figure out how best to use it. Should I blow it all on one indulgent session, or split it up between a handful of treatments? Should I go for relaxation and tranquility, or have every last errant hair painfully, efficiently, yanked from my skin?

I settled on three treatments that combined indulgence and practicality: a back/neck/shoulder massage, a customized facial with glycolic peel, and a manicure.

First order of business at the spa was to go to the locker room to change out of my clothes and into a thick bathrobe and terry flip-flops. As I was hanging up my coat, a sweet gray-haired old lady came into the room and started to pull clothes out of her locker.

"I can't find my bra!" she exclaimed.

I couldn't help myself. "If I had a dollar for every time I said that ..."

She let out a whoop of laughter. "Don't worry," she said, "I won't tell anyone!"

I tried to decide whether to explain I was joking but gave up. Because anyway, some guy was about to put his hands all over me.

My shoulders have been knotted for some time (the result of hours hunched over a computer at work, not to mention the inergonomic but comfy big red chair I'm sitting in right now), so I was hoping to get some of the kinks out. As I waited my turn, I noticed that most of the massage therapists seemed to be diminutive middle-aged ladies, and I wondered how effective they could be.

Luckily, my masseur was a big, beefy guy called David with hands the size of dinner plates. He spent 30 minutes working on my back and shoulders, paying special attention to kneading out the two biggest knots and laughing gently each time I moaned in appreciation. He also suggested I have massages more regularly, though not when the knots were flaring up. "Right after they've subsided is when you should come back in," he said.

And then it was on to my facial with cute, perky Katie. She started by having me lay down under blankets, and wrapped my face in a hot towel. Then followed a series of unguents and salves and creams and compresses: first a cleanser, then the glycolic peel (which tingled so much I wanted to scratch all the skin from my face), then an antibacterial serum, then ... I forget exactly. In all, there were probably eight different facial applications, smelling of everything from vinegar to fresh bread to thyme, with hot towels in between.

And then she said, "Now I'm gonna do some cleanin' up," covered my eyes, pulled a high-powered lamp in front of my face and started what felt like trepanation, digging into my forehead with some sharp instrument, pulling out whatever imperfections she could find (and she was busy there for a long while).

Then she swathed me in hot towels for the fiftieth time and went to work on my hands, slathering them with gel, wrapping them in tissue and sliding them into heated gloves before saying, "I'll just leave you to try and relax," and leaving me prone on the table with just the sounds of a mellow spa CD and a tinkling fountain for company.

Three minutes later, bored, restless and having had my fill of meandering Navajo flute, I was ready for her to come back.

She finally did (though I couldn't say how long I lay there fidgeting), massaged my decolletage (her word, not mine) and applied moisturizer and vitamin E lip protection. And then we were done.

The difference in my skin was amazing. And she gave me some good advice about skincare, including the fact that one should always use a washcloth, rather than just rinsing cleanser off the face ("All you're doing is moving the debris around," she said). She also recommended some products, one of which--SkinCeuticals Phyto Corrective Gel (the one that smelled like thyme)--I picked up.

And she said I should try and get a facial once a month. Of course that could just be a bid for return business, but as we didn't talk about whether I lived in the area, and as a spa in a hotel probably doesn't expect a high percentage of repeat customers, I'll take it at face (har har) value. It's certainly worth consideration.

And so on to treatment number three: the classic manicure. For this, I had to get dressed again (boo!) and go from the spa to the salon. My manicurist, Nilde, was an older Hispanic lady who didn't say much beyond asking me which color and shape I wanted (bright baby pink, square). She was, I realized, one of only two non-caucasians (herself and the other manicurist) in the whole shop. All the spa staff, from cosmetologist to towel-stocker, were white, as were the receptionists and the hairdressers.

This is worth noting for two reasons: first, because the nail ladies were tucked in a corner out of sight of the rest of the salon. And second, because of the comment made by the smartly groomed young Asian customer to the receptionist:

"Everything was very nice, thank you. But perhaps you could do something about the manicurists. They don't speak much English, and it's hard to know what they're saying. I mean, I know people who have English as a second language, and I can understand them. But not the people you have working here. It made things very difficult."

Guess the outer beauty just doesn't quite conceal the inner ugly ...

Head cheese in the basement

It's easy for a New England restaurant to offer a menu of seasonal local ingredients in summer, when neighborhood farms are loaded with corn and tomatoes and strawberries, all celebratory and exuberant.

But what to do in winter, when the ground is frozen and the pickins consist of turnips and apples?

The answer can be found at Craigie Street Bistrot. Or at least, it can once you find the restaurant, which is in the basement of an apartment building a few blocks north of Harvard Square.

The philosophy at CSB is that local, organic produce is tastier and more nutritious (not to mention being more beneficial for local farmers instead of corporate agribusiness). The menu changes daily, and is based upon whatever looked good at the market that morning.

So what looked good the day of our visit? Among other things, the fixins for my appetizer, a fresh, wake-up-call salad of endive and peppery-bitter watercress with duck prosciutto. The Boy won this round, though: he had grilled Spanish octopus with cipollini onions on a bed of cardoon puree. Octopus can be tricky--it's easy to turn it into rubber. But this was amazing: scallop-like in texture, and beautifully matched with the sweet onions and creamy puree.

For the entree, The Boy had tuna poached in curry oil with celery root and cauliflower--not spicy, but warming and full of flavor. But this time I won (!): thick slices of pork belly (the fat so sweet and melty it made ya wanna cry); chunks of peppery boudin noir; and a fried rissole of fromage de tete (aka head cheese, aka brawn).

What made it especially delicious was the oh-so-Cantabridgian table of four to my left (your right), who spent a great deal of their menu perusal disussing the inedibility of anything made from pig's blood or brains. Neophytes.

The other ingredient du jour, apparently, was truffles, which had arrived from Spain that afternoon and were being liberally shaved over everything for a supplement of $20. The waitron wasn't quite sure how to take my (joking) request to have them shaved over our gingerbread pain perdu (with intense ginger ice-cream) dessert. The Boy wasn't sure how to take my request to have them shaved over the busboy. Kidding, sweetie, kidding!

So a lovely evening; the only downside (my constant complaint) was that the room is tiny and loud. It's partly what happens when you're dining in a low-ceilinged basement, and partly what happens when you're surounded by the Boomers (demographically and vocally) of Cambridge.

I mean, I love being able to live like this; I just hate having to share it with the kind of people who also live like this.

Barely adequate*

We'll be the first to admit, The Boy and I, that we're foodies. (In fact, I was introduced to someone in just that manner yesterday. "This is LimeyG, the foodie"). But we're not food snobs.

We've eaten rellenos de papa from a truck parked around back of warehouses in New Haven. We've had scotch eggs from Greggs in Billingham (where they do an eight-item breakfast, and nine of the items are fried). We've sampled moonshine poured out of a metal can in Hatillo (sipping a little at a time ... not blind yet ... so far so good ... not blind yet ...).

The point is, our palates are not so sensitive, so delicately refined, that we can only truly appreciate haute cuisine.

But that doesn't mean we don't recognize a crap dining experience when it's haphazardly dropped on our table.

Tonight, we went to Bouchee, a self-described "urban brasserie" on Newbury Street in Boston.

The address alone is a toss of the dice: the restaurants on Newbury aim to attract the young, hip and well-heeled who make up much of its traffic. But just because the clientele has disposable income, that doesn't mean it knows what good food is--just where the cool kids hang out.

So while there are standouts like Tapeo and 29 Newbury, there are also way too many locations that surely survive on their looks and personality, because their skills in the kitchen aren't much to write home about.

Bouchee is a perfect example. The design is pure French brasserie: long zinc bar, pressed-tin ceiling, hand-tiled floor, leather booths. The waitrons wear the French-waiter uniform of black pants, white shirt, black vest. The menu offers steak frites, coq au vin, cassoulet.

But.

Well, let's start with the service. We had a waiter, of course, who took our order, topped up our water, brought bread, cleared plates. And then there were the busboys/girls, who topped up our water, brought bread, cleared plates. And then there were the people who brought the food, topped up our water, cleared plates.

It was a little like being served by obsessive-compulsive amnesiacs: every five minutes, someone else was hovering at the table, bringing something or taking it away. Or coming by with water, realizing we hadn't touched our glasses since the last visit, hovering until we drank some.

I haven't spent much more than a couple of weeks in France, but I know that's not the way things are done there. In Paris, you pretty much have to stand on the table and insult the guy's mother before he brings the check; otherwise, you can stay all evening, lingering over coffee, discussing Rimbaud, shrugging your shoulders and pursing your lips and saying "boeuf alors" in a resigned fashion.

At Bouchee, it was as though they were in a hurry to get us out the door so they could re-use the table (not that the place was busy; we arrived before 7, and only five other tables were occupied). And despite the abundance of larger spaces, they sat us at a cosy (in real-estate terms, i.e. cramped and narrow) table for two--and then sat the next incoming couple at the four-top right next to us.

Let me back up to the wine. A pretty good list (nine--count 'em, nine--Rieslings alone) with plenty of good offerings by the glass, though the serving sizes were a little Scrooge McDuck. I had the 2004 Trimbach Riesling; The Boy chose the 2004 Olivier LeFlaive Pinot Noir. His was soft and very cherry: mine had a nice edge of acidity. It was also served at room temperature. Feh.

The food got off to a good start: we shared a plate of melted raclette, studded with chunks of pear poached in wine, served with crusty bread and a simple heap of salted frisee.

But then came my salad. It sounded good on paper: greens, asparagus, haricots verts, lardons, hard-boiled egg, fennel, "blistered tomatoes." But everything was chilled: all of the above, plus the plate. I'm all for freshness, but sometimes cold is not the way to go. Not when it means your romaine is more like iceberg, your lardons are chewy and your tomatoes have no flavor. I mean, not even the Cheesecake Factory gives you salad out of the fridge!

The Boy had the coq au vin (which the waiter rhymed with "tin"). Not hard to get right. This version was okay, though, frankly, The Boy does it better. It's supposed to be a deep, rich, hearty dish (authentic recipes use cockerel and involve its blood, which admittedly is hard to come by) rather than chicken in a light meat-tomato sauce. The lardons made another appearance, adding just enough smokiness to lift the flavor, but the texture was still kinda tough.

And so to espresso and a hasty retreat. We'll keep an eye on the reviews and maybe try again in a few months. But then again, maybe not. We have Brasserie Jo and Sel de la Terre to sate our snails-and-frites needs. Why did we ever stray??

(It turns out Bouchee is managed by the Back Bay Restaurant Group, who also own Abe & Louie's, Joe's American Bar & Grill and Papa Razzi, among others. Which explains a lot--Bouchee is to French as Papa Razzi is to Italian: a reasonable enough Disney-esque approximation, if you squint your eyes and look at it kinda sideways-on and pretend you'e never experienced the real thing ...)


*"Barely adequate" is a trademark of Kyle Pepe Enterprises.

Say hello to our little friend

This is Lil' Tony.

Lil' Tony came into our household at Christmas, and has since become an integral member of the family. He's so full of wisdom and sound advice.

For instance, if you ask Lil' Tony who he favors in the SuperbOwl, he'll answer,

"In this country, you gotta get the money. Then when you get the money, you get the power. And then when you got the power, then you get the women."

Likewise, if you're considering whether to have Chardonnay or Fume Blanc with dinner, he'll offer a suggestion:

"Why don't you try sticking your head up your ass ... see if it fits."

And of course, when you need a disinterested party to bring clarity to a discussion of which Democratic presidential candidate would be better for the country, Lil' Tony can be counted on to interject a note of sanity:

"I'll bury those cock-a-roaches!"

Ummm ... actually, maybe Lil' Tony doesn't know so much ...

I dreamed I voted

Last night I dreamed that I was going to vote for the first time. I was very excited. The polling station was at a school--I think it was the school where The Boy's mom teaches, lots of peach-colored concrete--and I was almost at the front of the line when I realized: oh, no! I haven't registered to vote yet!

Which is true, because I haven't.

After my citizenship ceremony, the first person to talk to me when I walked out of the building was a woman who offered me a voter registration application. Which I accepted with enthusiasm. But it's still sitting on the kitchen counter, incomplete.

I shall fill it out (fill it in? Which is the American way??) as soon as I'm done here.

I did succeed in applying for a passport this week, Post Office ineptitude notwithstanding. When I went into the PO in the morning, the old dude behind the counter explained in excruciating detail what I needed to provide as part of the application. It included two photographs (passport-sized, natch). Could I have those taken at the PO, I asked. No, he said, you have to go elsewhere.

So at lunchtime, I went over to the UPS store on Newbury Street and paid $15 for two photographs that (gasp!) actually make me look my age. Scary.

I mean, I always have some kind of problem with any photos of myself, because I look stupid or goofy or awkward, or else I have my eyes closed. But these shots actually made me look as old as I am.

On the bright side, ten years from now they'll remind me of how young I used to be.

Photos in hand, I trotted back to the PO and handed over my application. The same old dude behind the counter charged me a delivery fee, and then directed me to another window. Where I discovered that I could have had my photos taken at the PO. And that the old dude had charged me an extra $15 for photos anyway.

Eventually it all got sorted out, and they gave me back the $15, and I had the process expedited (that'll be another $50, please) so I'll have my passport in two weeks. Usually it takes six to eight weeks, but as we're going to England in March, I figured it would be better to have everything safely taken care of. Otherwise, knowing my luck, it would turn up the day after I'm supposed to leave.

The other scary thing is that they took my certificate of naturalization. They claim I'll get it back. I certainly hope so; it's my only proof of citizenship, and I'll be damned if I'm getting myself tangled up in any more red tape in the pursuit of a quiet American life.

The Boy's Moroccan Christmas basketball

Because I care, because I love, and because I like it when The Boy cooks for me, his main Christmas gift this year was a tagine from Le Creuset.

We haven't yet found a place to store it, partly because it's too tall to fit under the kitchen sink, and partly--let's face it--because it's beautiful.

It's like a fez and a flying saucer had a child, which went to Japan to study design and then discovered stew and decided to devote its life to making people very very happy. Who'd want to hide that in a cupboard?

This weekend, The Boy took it on its maiden voyage--Moroccan lamb with fennel and dates:

Wine, wine, wine!

Lots of wine-related fun this week. It started with a link The Boy sent to the usual suspects from Modern Drunkard Magazine, about the drinking prowess of Andre the Giant:

"It has been estimated that Andre the Giant drank 7,000 calories worth of booze every day. The figure doesn’t include food. Just booze. 7,000 calories. Every day."

On a (slightly) more civilized note, I found this article on slate.com about the correct way to spit wine:

"If you want to be seen as legit by the Crips, it helps to have a drive-by shooting to your credit. If you want be seen as legit by wine geeks, you need to be able to shoot a mouthful of Chardonnay in a clean, straight line."

Working on the premise that we fall somewhere between Andre's liver-defying consumption and Jancis Robinson's projectile perfection, on Friday we headed over to the opening reception for the 2007 Boston Wine Festival, now in its eighteenth year.

I really had no idea what to expect; on the one hand, this was a $100-ticket event, held at the schwanky Rowes Wharf hotel. On the other, the point of the evening was to showcase some of the festival's premier labels. Which meant there would be various wine importers, only too happy to have as many people as possible sample as many of their wares as possible.

This had the makings of a kegger. With bowties.

The event started at 7pm; we arrived at about 7:30 to find hundreds of people in evening dress fighting over the buffet. With good reason, I should add: the food came courtesy of Meritage's chef Daniel Bruce, who's known for making sure wine and food pair well (his menus list dishes according to wine type).

If we'd thought ahead, we could have spent the evening grazing the buffet without even hitting the bottle. Especially good were the cocoa-rubbed venison with roasted brussels sprout salad and the five-spice pork tenderloin pastrami, but there were also coconut and Riesling-poached shrimp; grilled Pinot Grigio-tossed calamari on a tomato-olive salad; and lorryloads of interesting cheeses. Ohhh, and the desserts--tables of teeny-tiny squares of lemon tart, cheesecake, fruits in creme anglais ...

Oh yeah. But we came to drink. So after a couple of sessions of lining up for food alongside people who hadn't been in a cafeteria since Princeton (for god's sake, I know the serving spoon has fallen into the veal bolognese! Stop trying to flag down the waiter and damn well pick it up and wipe it off yourself! There are people in line behind you trying to get to the truffle-laced fingerling potatoes!) we braced ourselves for the wine vendor tables.

As it turned out, there were only six importers represented. Six tables. Each one was staffed by two, maybe three people. The smallest brought just five or six varieties; the largest, Ruby Wines, had 12 different wines for the samplin'.

Did I mention there were hundreds of people? Who had each shelled out four ponies (or a fifth of a monkey) to get through the door? Had dressed up in their best bib 'n' tucker? Had driven all the way in from Newton (possibly Concord or Wellesley)?

And now they were expected to line up for wine???

So, um, yeah, it was a little chaotic. The whole idea of forming a polite queue went out the window pretty quickly; many people just hogged a corner of a vendor table and stayed there, resolutely making conversation until they'd had a swig of everything on offer. Others (and this seemed to be the most efficient course of action) simply stuck their glass out in the direction of someone holding a bottle and waited for random liquid to be poured into it.

Not knowing what to expect, we'd figured ahead of time that there was no way we could taste everything, so we should decide which wines we'd really like to try and stick to those. My vote (as ever) was for the Guigal 2003 Chateauneuf-du-Pape; The Boy favored Guigal's '98 Hermitage.

As we made our way through the rooms, past lamb dressed as mutton and mutton dressed as lamb (and mint-rubbed grilled baby lamb chops), We stopped long enough to try the 2004 Robert Foley Charbono, the 2005 Kim Crawford Pinot Gris, the 2005 Martin Ray Riesling (the only Riesling at the event! What gives??) and the 2004 Prunotto Fiulot Barbera, which I assumed was pruno made by Italian convicts--thankfully, I was wrong.

And finally we found the Classic Wines Imports table, and the Guigals we'd been searching for, and--wait--why was there no Chateauneuf on the table? Oh, the guy's holding a bottle with about two inches of liquid left.

What's he saying? That's the last of it??

The Boy, thinking quick, thrust his glass out and yelled something indecipherable, and--yes!--the guy emptied the bottle into it. The Boy passed the glass back to where I stood, grinning, and I handed him my empty one, which was quickly filled with Hermitage.

We retreated to a quiet corner to savor the victory of snagging the wine. And then The Boy said, "I think we need red meat with this," and disappeared toward the steamship-carving table, returning with two pink slices of beef. Oh, perfect pairing.

The yummiest of birthdays

This week I got to celebrate my birthday with two very fab, and very different, meals.

On Thursday, the actual day of my birthday, we ate at Sel de la Terre, the more affordable sister of L'Espalier, with seven of our closest friends. It's rare that we do dinner with such a large group, and it was fun to hang out, pass around bottles of Pinot Noir and Viognier, and sneak tastes from everyone's plates.

Sel de la Terre does possibly the best french fries in the city, subtly fragrant with rosemary. But frankly, everything that comes out of the kitchen is great: the charcuterie plate, the fork-tender beef short ribs, the venison with foie-gras bread pudding.

A finger-lickin' good time, right up there with our other most memorable meal at Sel: dinner with TimandPeter and KathyandRobert on the day the US declared war on Iraq. It was a small, symbolic act of protest to go to a French restaurant that night ...

On Saturday, we went to Radius, which has been on our list for a while. At first I was going to order off the regular menu (how could I not? They had an appetizer of asparagus, Scotch egg and caviar!) but then our waitron told us about the tasting menu, in which the chef throws dishes together based on the ingredients available that day. Ooo, adventure!

So we opted for the four-course menu with wine pairings, which were poured and introduced by the hip young English-Tuscan sommelier. The waitron checked for allergies (crustaceans for The Boy) and aversions (mushrooms for me), and then it began.

First, a couple of amuse-bouches: fried tofu with soy sauce and ponzu (crispy and delicious!) followed by a single, fabulously fresh oyster with Lillet mignonette.

And then on to the main event. As each dish hit the table, it was described in detail by our friendly waitron. Of course, by the end of the night, our memories were dulled slightly by taste overload (oh, and wine), so it's a really good thing they gave us a menu to take home:

Gently cooked ono (with marinated golden beets, red beet puree, crispy potato, green tobiko)
A relative of the mackerel but less oily, ono is big in Hawaii, so the brightly colored presentation and the blend of Eastern and Western ingredients worked really well.
The potato was like God's own Tater Tots.
Served with a glass of 2005 Nyakas Olivier (Hungary), a light, crisp Muscat varietal.

Smoked scallops (with roasted cauliflower puree and black truffles)
A really nice combination of textures and flavors: the smokiness of the scallops and the creaminess of the puree.
Served with a glass of 2004 Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc

Loin of venison (with braised red cabbage, chorizo, spiced spaetzle and green peppercorn sauce)
The meat was firm and tender, and the spicy sides matched well. Here we had a slightly different presentation: The Boy's came with roasted maiitake mushrooms, while mine had haricots verts.
Served with a glass of 2004 Borsao Garnacha Tres Picos (Spain)--deep and plummy.

Then a mouthful of Asian pear sorbet, and then dessert: goat-cheese cheesecake with huckleberry ice-cream, served with a glass of 2002 Chateau Bel Air St. Croix du Mont Bordeaux--rich and Sauternes-y, and a good match for the creamy cake.

Because Radius has such a focus on seasonal ingredients and market-available produce, it's the kind of place that's worth going back to a few times a year; late summer is doubtless fabulous.

A happy birthday? The happiest!

Death by lechon, art by Macy's

A few final snippets from the Puerto Rico trip:

On Christmas Eve, according to news reports, a guy choked to death on a piece of lechon. This is possibly the most puertorriqueño way to go. Sadly, I was unable to track down an online version of the newspaper El Vocero's report of the tragic event, which spent the first three paragraphs describing the succulence of the meat, and how the poor victim was savoring delicious porky goodness just minutes before he staggered outside, dropped to the sidewalk and cracked his head open.

* * * * * *

We spent a couple hours at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan. Beautiful building, with a permanent collection of works by the island's artists (José Campeche, Francisco Oller, Angel Botello), plus a selection of visiting shows. We went initially to see the Basquiat exhibit, which included some of his early experiments on paper as well as later lithographs.

But the works that left me spinning were Milton Rosa-Ortiz's installations. Each one involved hundreds of strands of monofilament suspended from an overhead frame, with objects--beads, bullets, wood, glass--strung on the strands to form three-dimensional shapes, and the whole piece uplit from the floor.

So imagine, for instance, a figure depicted in black beads, frozen in the act of rearing back to throw a stone. Or J-Lo's famous barely-there green Grammy dress, recreated with shards of glass from the Bronx and Puerto Rico (a not-great photo of which is here).

This screenprint captures some of the luminescence of Rosa-Ortiz's work.

Of course, there had to be something to bring down the whole event, and it was this: all the galleries had corporate sponsorship. Not necessarily a bad thing, it's true. But there's something disconcerting about absorbing incredible, transcendent works of creativity in a room sponsored by Macy's. Or Johnson & Johnson. Or RJ Reynolds.

On the other hand, all that corporate support makes the museum an affordable place to visit: admission for three of us, including supplementary tickets for the Basquiat exhibit, came to less than $20 ...

Did you want to see more photos from PR? Well, why didn't you say so?

Things we don't need from the SkyMall catalog

My list:

The Aqua coffee table
The Breakfix Cereal Dispenser (check out the video: "I really want some cereal, but I only have one hand!")
Thomas Kinkade's Night Before Christmas House (Why? WHYYY?)

The Boy's list:

Basho the Sumo Wrestler Table
The Tiki-Head Tissue Box
The iCarta Stereo Dock

And somewhere--I know this must be true--there's a house containing all of the above.

And lo, Matthew got a par three

As I'd hoped, we were able to make a trip to the Museo Historico de la Biblia, a spankin' new, 13-storey, $40 million edifice next to the Fuente de Agua Viva megachurch in Carolina.

Admittedly, the place wasn't quite finished: there was a crane on the roof, the elevator only went to the ninth floor (unpainted and windowless) and the air had the faint taste of concrete dust.

Maybe I'd just missed the part in the New Testament where Jesus and the disciples go ice-skating and play mini-golf. But the museum is, so far, Bible-free, with the exception of a video of Pastor Otoniel Font (a genial, chubby young man with slicked-back hair) explaining where in Genesis it mentions dinosaurs.

This part was necessary to give context to "Journey to Jurassic," a walk-through experience whose premise is that a newly discovered hollow volcanic seam has revealed a perfectly preserved prehistoric ecosystem deep below the earth's surface. A tour guide leads you past crap animatronic Triceratops and Brontosaurs who wave their heads jerkily from side to side like crack addicts. All is well until--oh, no! The T Rex has escaped! The tour guide and his lab-coated scientist buddy lead us to safety--or do they??

It's all good tongue-in-cheek fun, and of course the kids in the group loved it. But what made it especially charming was that the tour guide was played by an adorable and energetic dead ringer for Gael Garcia Bernal in The Science of Sleep. With that in mind, it was easy to believe that he really believed it--or maybe that the whole museum, and everyone in it, was in his head.

That would certainly explain the second-floor mini-golf attraction which, again, was tied into the greater scheme with a verse from Genesis:

Yep, this was Bible-based mini-golf with a neon underwater theme. It was actually pretty cool: everything was black except the playing areas, which were painted in bold fluorescent colors and lit with blacklight.

It was like being in a nightclub in the Eighties, except with more children and no cocaine.

And adding to the Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole weirdness (apart from the small boy, apparently connected to no-one, who kept trying to steal the pretty rocks) was the fact that the only thing preventing the people downstairs from being pelted with golf balls was the tenacity of the plastic cup at each hole. We realized this when we tried to play the 17th and discovered that the cup was missing, and that through the hole we could see people milling around the lobby directly below ...

The Museum of Bible History also has a small but well-designed aquarium (mostly displaying ugly catfish from various geographic regions) and an ice-rink, staffed by a doubtless underpaid young woman whose job is to herd everyone off the ice at the end of each session. Each time she turned her back to get one kid to the exit, another would sneak on, and comedy would ensue until the kid fell over. Repeat as necessary.

Once we'd completely finished getting our money's worth ($20 gives you all-inclusive access to the four main areas), we wandered across the parking lot to check out the church. It's bright, clean, filled with light. A smiling receptionist greets you. Tropical fish play in colorful tanks. There's a huge auditorium with slanted, plush, theater-style seating. A bookstore, a CD store, a cafe, classrooms. And a bulletin board showing photos from a recent party, in which everyone appeared to be dressed as Arabs. It was scary.

Christmas Day lunch

We went to Cafe Valencia, which has been a favorite of The Boy's family for years. The food is largely Spanish, as is the wine list, and pretty much everything is good.

I had mofongo relleno de pollo--fried green plantain, mashed and built into a container for juicy chunks of chicken in a tomato-sofrito sauce.

The Boy had arroz con calamares, cooked in ink:

Valencia one of the few remaining places where they have a dessert cart, which they wheel over to your table. It's pretty much impossible to resist when they do that. Evil, evil people. The Boy and I shared a huge slice of tres leches cake, which is a yellow sponge made with condensed and evaporated milks and heavy cream. Ay, que rico!

A little romance

There are a lot of homeless people in San Juan, including the ones who enage in old-school begging; the ones who clean your windshield at red lights; and the ones who will watch your car for a small fee to make sure it doesn't get scratched "accidentally."

One of the popular news stories in Puerto Rico recently concerned a woman who fell in love with a deambulante of the first type. Apparently she looked into his eyes when he knocked on the window of her car to ask for a handout, and saw beneath his outward appearance to the real person beneath. She helped him quit drugs and turn his life around, and when they married, a group of local people got together to donate everything from the cake to the honeymoon suite.

Here's the story in Spanish; here's a poor Babelfish translation.

Happy Ought-Seven!

Ugghhh ... feeling a little fra-geee-lay this morning, after an evening of champagne and Chinese food chez Tim & Peter. P made a delish lemon cream pie and some amazing ginger ice-cream, and we sat and talked and watched TV.

In past years, we've headed up to their roof deck at midnight to watch the fireworks over Boston, but this year we unanimously decided "Feh" and instead watched a documentary about a 627-pound woman undergoing extreme surgery.

Which seemed an appropriate a way as any other to ring in the new year: a symbolic extraction of 2006's political and social unnecessary, unhealthy excesses, making way for a more sensible diet and lifestyle for the nation.

Like John Edwards is saying, we all need to take responsibility for the future; we can't rely on the president, or on others, to fix things.

Good intentions, at least. Let's see how long they last.