deadtreeware, felled trees, convention says threes

(This was originally a reply to Sunshine's comment, but it got out of hand, so here you go.) Books have been great, especially at those times when there's not much else to do but swat mosquitoes (ie. when it's raining hard in the jungle). Thankfully my slightly literature-centric attitude has paid off well in such matters: I've read, for the first time, On the Road, The Maltese Falcon, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Catcher in the Rye, and a bunch of others that I've been meaning to read once a copy landed in my lap. Sam Spade, Sal Paradise, Holden Caulfield, and especially Ignatius Reilly mixing it up in jumbled, bumpy bus ride thoughts is an interesting way to spark creativity, and I'm hoping I'm hitting a manic phase. I've got a bunch of random geek ideas down, an short story outline with some character notes and a couple of bits of dialogue, a music video idea that I think I can swing (Matt, if you're reading this, I'm gonna be picking your brain when I get back), and lots of other random stuff, which is good. We're done volounteering in the Amazon. The work wasn't rewarding, there was very little of it (5h a day if it didn't rain, uncommon), and it didn't really feel like we were making a difference. As Em pointed out, we cut down more plants than we planted; I've hacked enough trees down with a machete. At least we moved a nursery... but that's done. Really, it felt like we were paying to be ecotourists that cleared land from time to time but mostly sat around waiting to work. Oh, and exciting news! Eliza, who went to volounteer with turtles in Osa, partly because of me (yay, I did good!) has solved the dead bug bits mystery! She said: "I also stayed in the cabin with the scattered bug bits, the culprit is a foot long gecko that can periodically be seen hanging around in the rafters. It still owned the bed when I was there, apparently if you sleep there with a mosquito net it still rains bug bits down on you when eating on top of the net." We're on the coast now, and couldn't rent bikes today. So... soon we go down the Sun Road, slowly, to Guyaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador, before I go back to Quito and Em goes to the Galapagos (for which I'm jealous, but I don't have the money and I haven't really researched how bad tourist damage to the area is). Love ya and miss ya! -Dan