Things I learned about crankypants in Puerto Rico.

1. He wants to retire from his legal career at the age of 40 and open a hotel. Okay, I knew this already, but I didn't know it was happening at the young age of 40, I always thought he was going to do it around 60 or so. Maybe 55. I can and can't see this happening. He is a massive workaholic, yet manages to give off the impression to those who don't know him that he's a tremendous slacker. It's quite contradictory. But for him to stop working at 40? I don't know. But, if he opens up his hotel, then I can have my hole-in-the-wall beach bar on his grounds and not need to pay rent. This means he's gonna have to get a place with enough land so that my bar can be hidden and so that hotel guests don't come in droves. Because it's all about me and what I want, you know.
   
   
2. He uses Propecia (sp?). For those of you who don't know what it is (I certainly didn't), it's some costly drug that prevents hair loss. It doesn't help it grow back in, it just prevents more from being shed. I really hadn't noticed that crankypants was losing his hair, but apparently he went home over winter break and his sister teased him, saying that he had thinning hair, so of course, in the name of vanity, he got a prescription and now has to take it for the rest of his life. He does have a rather nice thick mop of hair, so I'm glad that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Still. It's rather funny.
   
   
3. Little girls between the ages of 1-5 love him. It's really quite amusing. Starting with the plane flight, there would be all these little girls who would just stare at him, and smile and flirt. He thinks that this means he's going to be "cursed" with a zoo of little girls, instead of the soccer team of boys that he wants, which is fine by me. But it was funny watching these little girls be completely entranced by him, and then watch him be slightly uneasy with all this female adoration.
   
   
4. It is possible for him to spend a week not talking about law school. And he also barely did any law-related work. This is a minor miracle. It also meant that all attention was on *me* and *my* wishes and that I was his sole focus (and his reason for being, even, heehee). I am a vainglorious five-year-old who loves the spotlight. However, I feel like this might be the only time that I get to experience this. Maybe it'll happen again after he takes the Bar and before he starts working. But then, that's it. Until he opens his hotel, I guess.
   
   
5. He has the most bizarre friends. I've already mentioned Harold - oh, but there's a new twist to the Harold story. He randomly met this girl at a bar, they got raging drunk, he took her back to his place where she proceeded to convince him to buy plane tickets home so that she could meet his parents. He didn't even know he had done this until he received the confirmation in his inbox the next day. What a scheming shrew - I don't know any relatively sane girl who would ever do that. Serves him right for being stupid. He's already a trust fund child, and you know that when she sees his house, which crankypants tells me is one of the nicest in their area, she is not letting go. I'm prepared for the announcement any day now that she's pregnant, and that he's marrying her. But enough of Harold. Crankypants's other best friend from high school, Elliott, is teaching English at a high school in Puerto Rico. Elliott also has a penchant for barely legal girls - hence this teaching job is perfect for him. As a matter of fact, he met his current girlfriend when he was her English tutor in Kuwait. She is now 18 and at Middlebury, and although he claims she is The One, he is still sleeping around in PR. It is impossible to describe Elliott. You have to meet him to understand what a character he is. Vain - he found out about crankypants use of Propecia, and you know he went and bought himself some the next day - but not in an obnoxious preening way. At least not in front of me. He is a "man of the earth", as we started to call him - kayaking out to a nearby island to collect conch shells, sleeping in hammocks, wanting to open up an organic farm, wanting to just have a barn in the backyard to do his sculpture, etcetc. He has a nine-foot longboard, even though he just started surfing, because he's that kind of guy (and he has not yet mastered control over it.) Elliott is also overly concerned with sex enhancing drugs, the reliability of condoms, and actually anything relating to sex. After I told him about Cialis, you could totally tell he was going to try to acquire himself some. As well as the fact that conch is the Viagra of the sea - it's all conch for him, from now on. I could go on and on. He is just the biggest source of entertainment ever.
   
   
6. There was a time he was even skinnier than he is now. This is quite hard to believe. He claims that he is 6'4 and 170 pounds. I think he's really 165, but is rounding up because any less just sounds emaciated. He doesn't look anorexic, but he is definitely skinny. There is no fat on his body, it's very annoying. The body of a true distance swimmer. It makes me look like a fat dumpling in comparison, I swear. It would make anyone look like a fat dumpling. But, Elliott told me that crankypants had filled out since high school. This leads me to believe that he must have honestly just been a skeleton. It's quite scary. I am glad that there is now some meat - however meagre - on his bones now.
   
   
7. In secret, he thinks that the white fluffball dogs I love are cute. No doubt, he will deny this 'til the cows come home. But let me point out that it was his idea to go visit the dogs that lived down the street from our hotel. Not mine. I think that's proof enough.