thank you officer guapo

so jarilyn and i ventured back into the states today to gather some supplies for a new project. a group is renovating the teen girls dorms, so we went to costco and home depot to buy floor laminate, paint, caulking supplies, knee pads, ceiling fans, and yeah, we may or may not have bought a 5 lb tub of cookie dough. maybe. anyway, we loaded down this 15 passenger van with A LOT of supplies and hoped to make it through the border back into mexico with no problem.

well, we did get stopped. and about four or five different men looked through the van, each asking "what is that?" and jare answers with a stock "glue for the floor. the wooden floor in the back." after being waved through a few checkpoints we found ourselves facing what we had hoped to avoid: we needed to play taxes on the stuff. i looked at jare and said "turn on the charm" and we proceded to act oblivious and pump up the gringa. the officer who finally took us over, whom i like to call officer guapo, explained the different amounts of things we were allowed to bring in and the amount of taxes to be paid. even though we had payed well over $2000 for the supplies, jare told him, "como, quinientos, mas o menos, seisientos?" (500, maybe 6?) guapo smiled and started writing us a form... $400 minus the amount we are allowed to bring in for free = $250 time 15%...about $40.
yey gringas!

in a very large nutshell

since the last legitimate post i have been jack kerouac-ing all over the road with my sister. we started in san diego on a three day carnival cruise with my mother. it was the perfect amount of time and my only regret is that my mom had to take a red eye on sunday night to get home. but, it seems she rolled with the punches... the cruise was my first, and we found plenty of time to learn how to play roulette, win some money, lose some money, drink really strong mixed drinks with really cheap rum, win the "name that tune" contest, hottub it, and eat a lot a lot of food. lucky for us "crazy bonny" came out to play and so the trip was punctuated with sheer silliness. by the end of the three days bons had endeared herself to all of the housekeeping staff on our hallway as well as our dinner waiter jorge, who called bonny his "little champion". her particular favorite part of the cruise was when the waiters sang during dinner. she called this waiter time and compared it to an intoxicating substance which takes one to the pinnacle of happiness.

the sunday that we disembarked we drove back to newport, had dinner at alta and dropped the moms off at LAX and proceded to drive north. we hit bakersfield having to pee and stopped at a sonic, which turned into a long debacle involving one sonicblast, three young employees who were probably high, bonny saying "bakersfield is sketchy", one of the employees not remembering where the water faucet was (here's a hint, look to the soda fountain), and generally the weirdest fast food experience i've ever had. four hours and a melted sonicblast later, we were still an hour away from our destination of modesto, so bonny took the reigns and drove a full 25 mph over the speedlimit. we nestled our heads in a scratchy and janky travelodge and tried to sleep.

the next day i convinced bon to take me to sacramento so we could see something i have longed for- the sign that says "Ocean City, MD - 3073 mi". you can guess that we have one in OC that says the reverse. we found it, but anticlimactly the official large sign had been stolen by some frat boys and all we got was a regular mile marker. oh well, dream realized. we spent the afternoon in davis and then made our way to san francisco. bonny found a great deal on the hilton near union square, so we were sitting in the lap of travelocity luxury. for dinner we ate at the stinking rose (really, too many garlicy details), then lulled ourselves to sleep by watching mtv's taking the stage. i should add that the sleep came easy after a 5-pint pitcher of fat tire.

the next day we found ourselves riding for free on the trolley, holding photo shoots with some sea lions on a public set of docks, and eating the rest of our previous night's dinner before heading off to see sunshine cleaning. we settled the night with pisco sours at a bar called cantina. apparently pisco is a popular spirit of the city, which only made my heart beat stronger for it. the liquor, similar to brandy, is made from grapes not good enough to make wine; i drank it by the liter when i lived in santiago. while in country we were told that valparaiso, chile is the sister city of san fran (they call it pancho, the diminutive of francisco), so the alcoholic tie suits.

now i find myself in baja mexico playing with babies and loving every minute of it. i will post pictures soon so that you can empathize. my favorite is named andres. i want to take him home with me.

lovies,

i'm on a boat

just in case you haven't seen this gem, i encourage you to take three minutes to enjoy andy sandberg, t-pain, and the rest of the lonely island crew who are really on their way up (in my opinion):
so you might understand that when i found myself on a 3 day cruise with my mom and sister i continued to sing "I'M ON A BOAT" over and over and over and over.....

socal

i have partially dedicated my residential status to the area of southern california. i've been here for a few weeks with my sister, minus one day trip to see laura and kim in vegas. kim put $20 down on a roulette table and ended up playing for hours, as i stood and cheered her on like i was her girlfriend, and we befriended a couple from santa cruz and the dealer who was from armenia. kim declared "i don't even know how this works" and he handed her a printout with the odds and the payouts. she asked if he ever came to gamble when he's not working and he replied "sweetie, do you come to work on your days off?"
bonny is finishing her quarter in school so while she's been out her friends, which i guess are technically fully and officially my friends now have been entertaining me, and i've also been entertaining myself with the dvd player and a little thing called hulu.com.
this weekend we were lucky enough to catch bonny's best friend jarelyn in san diego. she currently lives in baja mexico working for an orphanage, but she spent the week in the usa helping her very pregnant friend. we drove down on friday and had dinner with her and bonny's bf david at filipi's pizza, aka the best pizza in san diego and they ain't lying.
after dinner i took jarelyn home and swung down to point loma to see my friends from ocean city, nate and kate. kate is in school at point loma nazarene university? or college and nate moved to sd two months ago from philadelphia. we piled in the car and headed downtown, and promptly dropped our movie plans in exchange for eating at hooters. lucky for all of us a certain matt rumsey just so happened to be in sd too at the end of his spring break, so he cruised by with his former roommates and we had ourselves a grand old time. afterwards we went home and stayed up until 3am talking about high school and drinking beers. or at least, i was drinking beers.
the next day kate and i went to the store and bought two of everything because she says they get her with the twofer deals, even though i explained that you can buy just one. we made breakfast sandwhiches and then walked around ocean beach. it was so great to see both of them and chat about old times. nate's bro noah was there, too, and it was nice to meet him.
i drove back on saturday afternoon to get my hair cut by tina and then she, layla, a few other friends and i went dancing in laguna beach. i had a great time, but am slightly embarrassed that i tried to tell a marine that he should handwrite a letter to barack obama to end the war on terror.
my mom is landing in orange county on my birthday which is a really nice present, and bons and i are also going to fabio from top chef's restaurant in LA. i reaaaaaally want him to sing happy birthday to me. i'm going to santa monica with friend-since-kindergarten maria mueller for st. patty's day, and there are many more travel plans in the mix. so HAPPY IRISH DAY! if i don't see you, which i probably won't.

besos,

IN N OUT BURGER

WHY DO I ALWAYS GIVE UP BEEF FOR LENT? AND THEN COME TO CALIFORNIA???

wait, they don't love you like a love you....maaaaaaaps, wait

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a little physical manifestation of the last month spent in the car (amongst other places)

a-ha!

i had my epiphanic, glorious, jack kerouac moment on the road today. i was in west texas, past fort stockton, and Don't Stop Believing came on the radio. there was nothing but me, the road and that song for miles and miles. just in case you were wondering.

more on the serendipity of carlsbad later.

keep austin isolated

i'm not even going to lie (or in the words of my mother, i'm not even lying) i really LOVE Sonic Drive-Ins. besides being made of greasy and cheap food, i am also drawn in by the novelty of ordering from a parked car and the possibility of rollerskates. saturday night particularly i realize i'm crrrrraving their signature ice cream dessert, the Sonic Blast. i tell my host, jeffrey:
-we gotta go to Sonic tonight.
-why?
-because i want ice cream.
-well, we could go to Amy's. It's Austin ice cream.

uggggghhhhh. i've done it again. it's like a sin in this town to dare to support anything but a local austin business. i ask to go to starbucks, and we end up at Austin Java. i need to go to the grocery store and jeff picks a local market that wraps up my ground beef in deli paper. i commit another crime- asking for a plastic bag at said store. i'm given paper. because that's just how they do it in austin.

besides being the capital of the state that thinks the most of itself, i didn't learn all too much more about the history of austin. the city boasts something a lot more organic as its ultimate offering- its own culture. it's as if someone plopped williamsburg or portland in the middle of the world of straighlaced and standard. jeff explains how someone even wrote a book about the ubiquitous spirit of individualism -
Keep Austin Weird.

since then there's been an ironic twist of commercialization on this statement, as well as the counterstatement- Make Austin Normal. we couldn't help but comment on the similarity of just about everything in the city to any town in southern california... the terrain, the people, the attitude. so if you never thought there was anything in texas worth caring about - especially now that W is back home, don't forget austin, a big little city.

highlights from the visit:

• alamo drafthouse - a movie theatre that serves dinner. we saw Wendy and Lucy.
• the austin kite festival, aka try not to get nailed by a falling kite.
• jeffrey's birthday party (happy birthday jeff)
• party barn drive through beer store
• jeff's parents taking us to lunch
• botanical gardens
  

i'm off to new mexico and then california! can't wait!
pieces,

p.s. here are more photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2139838&id=7408023&l=d00e9