Back in PR

8:36 AM (of Sunday, January 5th, 2024)

Today is Saturday, January 4th, 2024, and I flew back to Puerto Rico today. At my parent's home, I basically just watched different shows and packed up until it was time to head out. We headed out around 3 hours before the boarding time, and I got to the airport pretty early.

As I was walking through the airport, a woman asked if I was interested in Clear, which allows you to skip pass the lines through the airport. She asked me how many times I flew a year, and I said, sometimes like 20 times a year. I don't even know myself. Last year I probably flew around 10-15 times. I don't even know. I flew like 4 times just in late November through January alone. She was shocked. We talked for a while while she signed me up for Clear. It was cool talking to someone. She complimented me on my shirt too, it said "I love animals, I don't eat them" with pictures of animals in the front, and we talked about our favorite animals for a while.

Anyway I signed up for Clear, they got a retina scan from me, and a two finger scan, and this is all I need to get through. I skipped pass the security line, which would have probably taken 10-20 minutes of waiting, maybe more. I got to the front instantly and that was cool. This service is $200 a year, which I think is worth it for someone that flies frequently like me. Today's line wasn't particularly busy, but on days that it is busy, waiting in line can take 2 hours or longer. So skipping pass the line is worth it in scenarios like that. Although, I have been able to skip the line by cutting everyone too, asking them for permission first of course, and I've done it a few times with people just letting me by. It's easier when there's a dedicated service for it.

Waiting at the gate took a while. I was pretty bored. I put on my eye mask and took a nap for a bit, I still had to wait like 2-3 hours just doing nothing. At some points I would stand up for a while, and maybe even walk around for a bit. My shirt was visible to everyone and people would read it. At some point near the boarding time, I sat down again after having stood for like 30 minutes, and I sat across this family.

The mom started giving me a thumbs up, and I had my earphones on so I couldn't hear what she was saying, I took one off, and she complimented me on my shirt. She said her entire family is vegetarian, and asked her two daughters to read my shirt, and they were all really fascinated and happy. They were a white family with two daughters, and they were already heading out as I sat down, so they weren't there for too long, but that's the second compliment I got.

Another 30 minutes or so and I was in the airplane. For some reason, I got the Economy Plus seat, which was this amazing seat with so much leg room. I had unlimited leg room. They assigned me to seat 7D, which was the seat by the window, but some other woman took it. I'm guessing she wasn't assigned to the Economy Plus section, but she just sat there anyway. She took my seat and was occupied by the window, staring out the whole time, so whatever, I just took the aisle seat, and wow was it comfy. I was going to ask her to move, if someone else came by and kicked me out of my seat, but no one did. No one took the seat between us either.

So I thought overall this was an excellent flight. I got really good treatment throughout my whole airport experience. I got several compliments on my shirt, I enjoyed doing a tiny amount of vegan activism, just hopefully getting some people to consider not killing animals. It's still always strange to me that people do, there is no justifiably reason to hurt and kill any, people just mindlessly do so out of habit. It's such a normal action that people have dead animals on their plates and don't even notice. I wouldn't have gotten any compliments if I had worn any non-vegan related shirt.

When I arrived too, I texted Eric and him and Gus came by to pick me up. So I got a ride back home that night too. I gave them a bunch of free shirts, because I brought like 15 shirts over, just for them. I spent like more than $200 on these vegan shirts, and I gave it to them so they could wear it.

At my place, when I opened the door, and an albino lizard dropped out from the ceiling. There's this albino lizard family that hides behind the mirror of my place, sometimes they hide on the door, and this albino lizard fell as I was opening the door, and they fell inside my home. He ran over my foot and ran somewhere in the living room. I tried looking for them but couldn't find them anywhere, they probably hid somewhere. Anyway, I hope they can get back out. There is a slit between the door and the ceiling, and although I have covered it so that the gap is mainly gone, I think they can still use that to get in and out. I've seen random lizards in here every now and then, so yeah hopefully this guy can find his way out that way.

I have the gaps between doors covered because of mosquitoes. I don't like the idea of them getting in or out, so I have every gap covered. Maybe the lizards can still get in and out somehow?

Anyway, at home, I didn't do much. I basically just watched videos and slept. Anyway, that was my day today.