Non-Book Review: Blech

I'm not going to do it. I don't want to read this. I thought I "had to" based on the fact that it was a classic and everyone says that you "have to read the classics." I don't want to.

I read lots of reviews online and they all seem to say the same thing: This book's main point is that war is bad. However, it tries to convince the reader of this using a lot of sex, violence, profanity and apathy for human suffering.

Sorry, I just don't want to read it!! I think that by reading Catch-22 in high school I filled my quota of "War is bad. War is senseless. But someone can write about it in a humorous way" books. (Seriously, Catch-22 is really funny. And it doesn't use the phrase "So it goes" 163 times, which apparently is what happens in Slaughterhouse-five)

Anyway, did you read it? Can you tell me what I'm missing out on?

. . .With Nothing but a Dance Belt and a Tube of Chapstick-Part 2

Sorry about the delay. I really shouldn't break these things into two days. I never get around to doing the second day!!

Congrats to Lisa Nielsen for getting the movie quote right!! Waiting for Guffman is one of the best movies of all time. Made by the same people that made:"This is Spinal Tap" and "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind". Genius. If you have ever done local community theater or SEEN a play done really badly, you will love this movie. So as her prize she gets dinner made for her like promised. Name the night, Lisa, and I'll be there with Food 'O Plenty.

Anyway, I got to "watch" this movie as I was driving down to L.A. By watch I mean put on headphones and listen to it on our DVD player. It really made the time fly by and kept me wide awake. I would recommend anyone drive that way.

Ok, so after we got back on the 10, we pretty much were out of there as fast as we could go. Luckily we got out of there around 12:30 or 1 and so we didn't have much traffic. There was just one accident that we had to deal with, but it wasn't a huge back-up. It just slowed us down for maybe 7 minutes. And then we were GONE.

But the problem was that since we left in such a hurry, we didn't have a chance to find a good hotel online. I had to call my mom and then call the hotel and we ended up at the SARAHA. Now the thing about the Saraha is that it was a SUPER fancy and great hotel. . . back in the 1960's. See, Elvis and Frank Sinatra and The Beatles all built it/stayed there and so you know that the only people there are people that wanted to stay at the same hotel where ELVIS stayed!!

The hotel has tried to appeal to a younger demographic, so they have put this hideous looking roller coast in the front of the building. But at the same time they haven't bothered updating the rooms. There was a strange greasy film on all the window sills of my room, and the carpet had tears/iron burns in it.

But the worst part was the bathroom. I present for you pictures. This was what the toilet looked like WHEN WE ARRIVED. This is a supposedly "clean" toilet:


I almost died right there. But it gets super better. Here is a picture of the leaky faucet that dripped all night and kept us awake. And the peeling wallpaper in the bathroom.














But the best part? Hands down it was the shower. See, several years ago, the thinking tank that IS the Saraha Planning Committee decided to change the knobs on the shower and convert to a more "simple" one knob system. The problem? They didn't bother to fix up the other handles. They just left the copper nubbins there in the shower!! I'll show you:


The old farts that keep coming back to the Saraha year after year "Cause Sinatra built it!!" couldn't quite grasp the concept of the one handled system. That, plus the fact that the "nubbins" were still there meant that the front desk was getting call after call from Auntie Mae and Pa Josiah asking how to use "this new-fangled water system. I got out my wrench to use on those little stubs but it don't seem to be workin'." This inevitably lead to the nice sign you find BETWEEN said nubbins.

Ohhh. . . is that some contemporary Gothic script you got going there? I'm very impressed. It really bodes well with the rest of the "Oasis" theme you got working at this hotel.

We got out of there ASAP. And we went to Marcelo's favorite place on the earth: The Buffet at Mandalay Bay hotel. Why? Why the King Crab Legs, of course. Here he is trying to get Evi to enjoy one:

She looks, and touches it to check it out. But then she catches on that it's not as cool as it looks. And so she tells it so with her eyes:















She tells dad in not so simple language that she prefers her cantaloupe, thank you very much:















She did have a great time at the hotel. We were all so tired that we crashed after dinner and didn't get up until 9 am the next day.

So that was it, that was our lightning fast trip to Las Angeles and then Las Vegas. I'm so thankful it's over and that we don't have to do that ever again. But I am grateful for Marcelo and his spontaneity. I don't think I would've done it that way if he hadn't suggested it.

And I'm glad I don't have to do it EVER AGAIN.


P.S. Here is a picture of Evi and Marcelo at the water fountain. She LOVED it so every time I told her to turn around and look she had a huge smile because she was just laughing at the water. Enjoy!!

. . . With Noithing But a Dance Belt and a Tube of Chapstick: Part 1

If someone can name the movie that that quote comes from WITHOUT CHEATING you get a prize. I'm not kidding. I will come to your house and make you dinner. Unless you live in TX. Then I'm not going. But I'm serious, NO CHEATING!! You have to know where that comes from off the top of your head.

So what is this post about? Well, it's about how we went down to LA on Tuesday night. It's a long story. I'll try to sum up quickly.

Marcelo has a permanent resident card, but that only allows him to come back to the USA. To travel to any other country (including his country of origin) he needs a passport from that country. And his Ecuador passport expires in April.

We would be able to renew it VERY EASILY in Ecuador, but we need it valid BEFORE we travel back there. So that means we need to go to an Embassy or Consulate somewhere in this country. There is an office in LA and an office in San Francisco so naturally we would be going to LA because 1)it's closer and 2) we can pass through Las Vegas on the way back for Marcelo's most beloved king crab legs. DUH!!

So for a long long time I've tried to get Marcelo to commit to going. I wanted to plan the trip, make hotel arrangements, find maps online, you know the works. He wouldn't commit. He kept putting it off. We made up a tentative plan of our schedule so he knew what to expect. The original plan was this:

Wed-Drive to Vegas. Stay the night in Vegas
Thursday-Drive VERY EARLY to L.A. Get Passport renewed. Drive back to Vegas. Spend Second night in Vegas
Friday-Drive home.

A pretty long trip, but broken up nicely and easy to remember. Well, on Tuesday (his last day of school for the week before Spring Break) and he comes back from school and we start talking about going. He says. "well if we are going to go tomorrow, I should get the tires checked out". So he heads off to the tire store.

I post that blog about which freeway to take, thinking that I'll get a few responses before I leave the next day. However, Marcelo comes back from the tire place and says, "let's just go now. I want to get this over with. Let's just drive all the way to L.A. tonight."

You should know it was like 6pm when he said this. I was cooking Evelyn dinner. Nothing was packed, no hotels were reserved, no maps printed out, NOTHING! But he just wanted it to happen. OK!! Let's do it!

We quickly found a place for our dog to go, and then we started running around like mad. The plan was to get Evy ready for bed like normal, but then put her in the car seat and just start driving. The hope was she would sleep for a long time. We packed and were on the road.

The drive down to L.A. was pretty uneventful. I wish I would've known about taking the 10 to the 210. But we did get there VERY early (right around 5 am) and there was very little traffic. And it was just easier for me to take the 10 all the way. Marcelo is TERRIFIED to drive in big cities and he's horrible at reading maps. So I didn't want to have to look at the map MIENTRAS driving in L.A. and just taking the 10 all the way there accomplished that for me

However, on a side note, while there was not a *lot* of traffic, there was still some!! At like 4:45 am!! What the crap? Why are there that many drivers on the road at that horrible hour? Who is commuting at 4:45? If you are awake and going to work at 4:45 you need to speak to a specialist about some workaholic issues you got going on. And maybe this is just my opinion, but pre-5 am drivers are WAAAYY more aggressive than normal L.A. drivers. It's like they are manic about getting to where they want to be before the massive amounts of traffic come out.


Anyway, the Ecuador Embassy is located in the Larry Flint (AKA Hustler Magazine) building on Wilshire Blvd of downtown Beverly Hills. I am talking RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF BEVERLY HILLS!! I could only find one grocery store and no Target. I know: I asked some scary Phillis Neffler look-alikes if they could help me. So no regular stores. However if I needed to buy a luxury car I could choose anything from the Lexus, Mercedes, Aston Martin, BMW, Lotus, Jaguar or Ferrari dealerships all surrounding me. Apparently those in Beverly Hills don't need to eat or buy moderatly priced housewares, but they DO need fancy new cars! Holy inferiority complex, Batman!

When we got to the building, we were VERY early. It didn't open till 9 and we were there at 5:30. UGGH!!! We tried to get our kid to sleep, but she wasn't having it. So we found a really nice Beverly Hills park and I took our child out to play in the sand while Marcelo got another 90 minutes of sleep. I chatted on the phone with my mom-I love that my mom talks to you when you are driving late at night so you can stay awake. It's her thing. She told me to call her at any hour if I needed to talk. However, a combo of Diet Dr. Pepper and sunflower seeds had me WIRED!! I guess all that sleep deprivation from motherhood has finally started to do me some good.

Other side note on people of Beverly Hills: They are angry all the time. I've never been honked at so much while driving. Like if I was turning into some driveway and the person didn't like my turning speed? HOOOOOOOOOOOONNK!! Apparently money doesn't make you happier; It just makes you a bigger dill-hole.

So when the building opened we went inside and I was instantly reminded of why I don't miss Ecuador some days. Now, this is TOTALLY my opinion, but I think that those from Ecuador are just used to things being difficult. They just expect that life will suck, and that there is no other way. And they just accept it. We Americans don't accept much of anything. We question our bill from the Denny's. ("Did you order a drink AND a milkshake? It just seems like a big charge for a drink. I think I'll ask them about it"). But Ecuadorians are much more likely to be like, "Oh, man, we just got screwed over. DANG!! Oh, well, I guess it's my turn to be screwed over. Too bad!!" And then they just go on with their day. Americans would be much more in your face like "Um, I'm going to need to speak with your manager. . .. NOW!!"

The way I saw this happen on this day was because the "system" went down and everyone was stuck waiting around waiting to see if it came back. The "system" was never fully defined for us, but we all joked around that it was some sort of waffle making/picture taking apparatus that needed to speak with Ecuador and Ecuador was offline at that time. We had fun joking about it. They told us that we might have to come back tomorrow. Like we lived down the street or something!! And Marcelo was just going to be like "What can we do? We have to come back tomorrow!" And I was ANNOYED!! Seriously annoyed.

Remember, at this point I had been running on 1 hour of sleep from the previous night. The Diet Dr. Pepper had been out of my system for hours at that time and I had a hungry/whiny baby. Oh, and I was hungry. I didn't have dinner or breakfast (unless you consider sunflower seeds at 3 am breakfast). And when I went to find a bathroom, I was told that I had to go to the basement of the building next to valet parking where they made me use a KEY like I was freaking in the 3rd grade and they had to "regulate" who used their bathroom. I mean, it's freaking Wilshire Blvd! I just watched you valet park a Lamborghini! The people around her drive $150,000 cars!! And you don't trust them in your public bathrooms? And then they told me I had to come back? I'M GOING TO NEED TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER RIGHT NOW!!!

Luckily the mysterious "system" came back on line and we got out of there around noon. Not too bad, right? We went to get some food. Correction, we went and INHALED some food and then got back on the road to go back to Vegas.

I'm going to do the second part of our trip tomorrow. But I just want to add something here: My husband is a TOTALLY different man when he's around his own people. He's funny, life of the part and the "class clown". He's so much fun and just so funny to be around. Sometimes it's hard to remember why you got married when the baby is sick and you have no money and you are annoyed with each other. But sitting there in that tiny little room, watching my husband joke and laugh and have a good time, I was reminded of just how much fun he is, why I fell in love with him and how much I love him. Oh man, now I'm REALLY looking forward to June.

Ok, that's enough for today. More on this trip tomorrow!

Does anybody know?

Hey, does anyone know? If you are going to Dowtown LA (right around Wilshire Blvd) from Utah, is it better to take the 10 or the 210 all the way there? Or to do a mixture of the two? Like take the 10 to the 605 and then get on the 10?

And how would I find out which highway is going to be busier than others?

Thanks online friends!

Wheels

My mom went back to Eureka driving another person's car. See, she didn't want to put the miles on her own car especially because she knew she would be back here in 2 weeks for a baby blessing. So she looked online and found someone that needed their car driven to the Bay Area. She's hopping on a bus there and will arrive back in Eureka tonight.

And I bet that doesn't really matter to all of you. But this will: I HAVE A CAR!!! For the next two weeks, this is what I'll be driving around:



Now the car itself is pretty cool. But I wouldn't car if it were some car that is old and falling apart. A car is a car! Just the fact that I have WHEELS is enough to make me so happy.

So people, what do you want to do in the next 2 weeks? I'm no longer a shut-in. Do you want to go to lunch? I can do that! Do you want to get our kids together at a park? I can do that too! Give me a call. I've got WHEELS!!

Ecuador, HERE WE COME!!!

I bought our plane tickets today. Does everyone get that little adrenaline rush when they buy something that they know is non-refundable? I know I do.

And the websites kept changing the prices on me. One time it would be $538 and then I would go to the website, and they said the price jumped to $714. I was getting REALLY upset. But then I read something online that told me the best time to look for tickets is Tuesday night at midnight. So I did it last night, but then I was too tired to do an extensive search. Plus baby was asleep and I worried about waking her.

So I just took care of it right now. And I got a great deal!! I'm so excited, it's really happening. Baby girl is going to LOVE it!! The cobblestone streets, the toothless merchants, the beaches. Oh, I'm so excited!!!

I really want to post some pictures here, but I can't put in any of my own photos because I don't have a scanner. Nor do I have the photos on disks. But I do have tons of them. I've been meaning to convert those to CD's for a while. Does anyone know where I can get that done cheap.

Anyway, I'm going to post some pictures I found online:

Here's the Ecuadorian White House. Look how unprotected it is.
I asked Marcelo and he said the president doesn't live there all the time like our president lives in the D.C. White House. But still!! Maybe put up a fence or something? Moving on.

This is Volcano Tungurahua
That's not something unusual to see it going off all the time. This volcano was ALWAYS spewing ash all over.

The markets:
where I will be feeding my Maracuya addiction daily

And finally the beaches
Oh, I'm so excited to go!!!

Book Review-Blink, Outliers and The Scarlet Letter

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was great. I really liked "The Tipping Point" But I think this one is even better. He talks about what our mind can see and interpret and think in just the blink of an eye. Why some people can "thin slice" a situation and recognize a distrustful person or a fake piece of artwork. It also talks about reading faces and how to tell if someone is lying. It's really amazing.

However, I think the best part was the section on married couples and how one scientist can tell with 90% accuracy if someone will be married in 15 years. And it all comes down to one word: Contempt. Do we hold our significant other in contempt? Wow, that was a shocker to me, because I know that I can feel this way. Like Marcelo isn't pulling his weight around here. And that's a sure way to put a wedge in your marraige.

By the way, Contempt is defined: the feeling with which a person regards anything considered mean, vile, or worthless; disdain; scorn.

Now look at the definition of Enmity: a feeling or condition of hostility; hatred; ill will; animosity; antagonism.

That's so similar it's scary. We know that pride is also known as enmity towards God. So basically your marriage will be brought down by pride and you thinking you are better than your husband.

Ok!! I have lots to work on!! See you all in couples Therapy!!

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is his newest book and it's great to learn about why some people advance and others don't. And very amazing to see that the year you were born but also the MONTH you were born has a lot to do with it!!

Also, your background has a MAJOR part to deal with your success rate. If you were Jewish growing up in New York, your success rate and possibilities and opportunities will be much more different than say someone growing up in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky. And not because of why you would think!! It's all based on where you originate, your history, your family background. The "old country" so to speak. So interesting.

The part that really stuck with me was this whole section on Korean Air and why their planes kept crashing. Now I don't consider myself a scared person flying. I mean, we all fly all the time, right? But this book SERIOUSLY made me think about flying on other planes in other countries. Basically Korean Air kept having plane crashes and they couldn't figure it out. They knew that the pilots were well trained and that they weren't flying in any different conditions than others all around the world. And finally they figured that it was because the society of Asian (and ESPECIALLY South Korean) cultures is to pay very high respect to your authority. So what was happening was that the co-captain would see something, but wouldn't speak up, or might only speak up once. But he's position is one step lower, so he can't over step his boundaries. Once they taught these pilots HOW they need to communicate with each other (and with air traffic controllers in super busy airports like JFK) there rate went down dramatically.

This book was amazing. You should read all his books. They will make you smarter. I promise.


The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

My review

I know, everyone reads this in High School. But I really wanted to read it again. For one reason, we never read the first part of it, the part titled "The Custom-House" and now I know why!!! It kinda just blabs on about the "author" and how he finds this chest with the letter in it. But before that, he goes on and on about the house, and the station, and who he hangs out with. Totally irrelevant to the story, and you can TELL he knows it. Because in this version of the book there is a forward by the author where he ASKS people to make sure to read it. So he KNOWS it will be brushed aside. As well it probably should be.

But this book really is great. It's so simple, a very fast read (around 200 pages) and just kinda tragic in an interesting way. I don't think it's trying to tell us that the loss of virtue is bad. But rather that lying to ourselves and hiding our true selves will ultimately destroy us and everyone around us. We can see this in both the Minister's character and in Hester's estranged husband. Very upsetting.

Anyway this book had LOTS of commentary and pictures and essays about life in the colonies when the book is set(around 1649) and life during the time the book was written (1850). There is a great excerpt from a book by William Cobbett called "Advice to Young Men" where it tells men what to look for in a wife. This is what it says:

"The things which you ought to desire in a wife are. 1. Chastity; 2. sobriety; 3. industry; 4. frugality; 5. cleanliness; 6. knowledge of domestic affairs; 7. good temper; 8. beauty."

Isn't that amazing!? They put Beauty last. Chastity was SO important to them. A girl could be a whiz in the kitchen, budget like pro, laugh at your jokes and be the best looking girl in town. But if she had slept with another guy? SHE'S OUT!! But that's how it was.

What about today? Do you think the order has changed? I think it depends on the person. If it were my husband I think he would put them in this order:


Industry
knowledge of domestic affairs
Chastity
good temper
sobriety
beauty
cleanliness
frugality

But that's my husband. He wants me to be industrious and moving towards a goal (ANY GOAL) at all times. Which is good, right? What do you think your husband's order for the perfect woman is? And are you that order? (I'm not anywhere near my husband's order, by the way. my "good temper" and "knowledge of domestic affairs" are the highest, while my cleanliness is lowest)

If you haven't read this book in a while you should. There's definitely a reason they call it a classic.