Reality? Nah, I'd Really Rather Not...

I love to travel and all, but the stacation is awesome. I can't remember the last time I was so well rested! Getting up and coming to work this morning was barely even a struggle. On the downside, though, my house is a mess AGAIN, despite me having spent so much time cleaning during my week and a half off. I did get much accomplished, though, the least of which are not the following:

The IKEA dresser that has been waiting patiently in its box at the end of my bed has finally been rescued from the darkness of boxitude. Behold its gloriousness!

I also got a wild creative hair on Monday, and what resulted was the following painting (with original, for comparartive purposes).

My obsession with Lady Gaga is reaching new levels. She is just so utterly fabulous that I can't help it! This pic, btw, is out of the most recent Vanity Fair.

I was also able to spend some quality time with this little one

He is just too cute! As a now-three year old, he doesn't look too much different than when he was two, but his brain is obviously developing at a fast pace. I picked him up from day care one day last week, and he came over with his mom to swim in my pool before they closed it down for the season (so soon! I'm totally bummed) on Monday. Before they even left my house he was telling his mom "I miss my Auntie." God, I love that kid!

And, of course, my other major accomplishment has laready been mentioned, but here's a pic for good measure.

Asus is currently rated the No. 1 PC brand, apparently. So far I like it. Mostly because it allows me to surf the web and use Photoshop from my couch, but also because it was my first major business expense. Exciting things to come for sure!

A Week in Paradise (no pics)

So, I'm back from my vacation. I have been for about a week, actually. For those of you who didn't hear, a volcano in Iceland blew up a couple weeks ago and effed up air traffic in and out of Europe. Well, said volcano went off two days before I was supposed to leave, and therefore my dream vacation to Amsterdam and Paris was DOA. I'm still trying to convince myself that I'm not bitter about it. I'll get back to you on how that goes.

In any case, having vacation time from work already set up, T and I said "F*CK IT!" and went to Mexico, where we spent a week laying on the beach/by the pool and drinking fruity alcoholic beverages. We even managed to tour some Mayan ruins and got cultured. It was amazing and beautiful, and I will most definitely be returning there for future vacations. So, though it was not Amsterdam and Paris for 10 days, 7 days on the beach is a pretty awesome consolation I suppose.

Still.

I'm not bitter.

I'm not bitter.

Pics of the beach and what not to come eventually.

Done and Done

Plane tickets for my trip to Amsterdam and Paris have been reserved and charged to my credit card. We (T and I) are leaving April 16 and coming back April 26. Five nights in Amsterdam, five nights in Paris.

Jealousy can commence now.

Paisley Mae

Vacations are awesome. Especially when one gets to travel to St. George to meet the latest addition to my fam-damily, Paisley Mae Davis. Da da da daaa! Without further ado, Her Royal Cuteness:Isn't she a doll? Check out that hair! Her mom says that it's getting thicker, which is odd because usually baby hair falls out. Nope, not Paisley's. I had an awesome time hanging out with her, and her parents were fun too I guess ;-) Kidding. I sure to love those Davises! Something tells me that I'll be spending more and more time in St. George over the coming years. I can't wait to see her grow up! I mean, if she's this cute as a baby can you even imagine how cute she'll be as a toddler? OMG, she'll be an overdose of cute. And when she gets older, the boys will no doubt be lining up. Sorry, Jon, but it's true. Better start collecting those shot guns now so that you can be cleaning them by the time she's old enough to date.

Cruise Part 3: Puerto Vallarta

The third and final stop on our cruise to the Mexican Riviera was the tourist trap that is Puerto Vallarta. Vinnie and I were kind of worn out by the time we got into Puerto Vallarta, so we didn't do anything cool. There were a bunch of little shops in the port area, so we did some shopping there. I made a new friend there too:Isn't he hot? After that we went to the mall (yes, a mall. Complete with a cinema and a Starbucks. I told you it was a tourist trap...), which was right next to: And you thought I was kidding about the Wal-Mart! My favorite part of this photo is probably the jacked up pick-up truck. This could be a Wal-Mart in California, but I promise it's in Puerto ;-) Quite possibly the funniest thing I saw in Puerto was this shoe store in the mall: If that's not hilarious, I don't know what is!

I did take some pictures of the city from on board the ship, which was once again harbored out in the bay so that we had to take tender boats into the port.


The stop in Puerto was the last on the itinerary. From there we turned around and headed home (and the change of direction once again screwed up my internal compass!). On the last night I took a thousand pictures of the sunset. Turns out I was over eager, and went up to the top deck before the sun was very close to the horizon. But I snapped away anyway, catching the last five minutes or so. I won't post them all, just some of my favs:

All in all, the cruise was absolutely freaking fantastic. We will definitely do it again, though I think next time we'll take friends with us. As you can imagine, there are lots of old people on a cruise ship. Everyone who wasn't over the age of 50 (besides us) was a married couple with four or five kids. So, for the sake of good company, it will probably be a group vacation next time! But even if we go by ourselves I wouldn't mind. One of the greatest things about the trips was the opportunity to hang out for seven days with my hubby. Since I started working the night shift we haven't seen that much of each other, so it was awesome to get to have a whole week to ourselves. It was a really, really good time. I want to do it again...soon!

Cruise Part 2: Mazatlan

As previously mentioned, Mazatlan was my favorite stop on the cruise. Mazatlan was actually a city before it was a tourist destination, so it has a lot more history than Cabo and Puerto Vallarta do. We ended up taking a van tour through the city. Our driver/tour guide knew just about everything and everyone. He was hilarious.

The first stop on the tour was a lookout point in Old Mazatlan, where we could view the Princess Islands and the second largest natural lighthouse in the world:

Our second stop was the city's cathedral, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which was beautiful. I took several pictures of it, a few of which are below:

Also in the neighborhood was one of the city's main markets, which was pretty much identical to other markets I've been to in other Mexican cities. In a Mexican market they sell everything from shoes to shot glasses to poultry and beef. You need a pig's head? How about a cow heart? Needless to say, it smelled pretty gross, and I found myself wondering how Mexicans don't all die of food poisoning. I guess that much contamination breeds really strong immune systems or something...

Anyway. Next stop on the tour was the Zona Dorrado (Golden Zone) in the new part of the city. It is called the Golden Zone because there is jewelry store after jewelry store after jewelry store. And I'm not talking street vendors with silver bracelets for a buck. These are high end jewelry stores. New Mazatlan is the tourist destination, so it is stock full of resorts and big hotels on the beach, such as this giant one:The hotels in the Golden Zone are actually pretty affordable. The ones that are directly on the beach range from like $50 to $200 (USD, not pesos, though that'd be pretty cool!) per night, but there are some that are only a block away from the beach at are $15 to $30 per night. Vinnie has already started looking at prices for flights to Mazatlan, because he really wants to go back. He would not stop saying how much it looks like his home town in Albania.

For funzies, the waves:

We ate at a restaurant on the beach. Mazatlan's main industry after tourism is shrimping, so Vinnie was determined to have fresh shrimp. I like shrimp, don't get me wrong, and I found that fresh shrimp is MUCH better than the frozen stuff we get at home, but to be completely honest I was more excited about the fresh salsa they served us:Now that is real, authentic, mexican salsa!

That's pretty much it for Mazatlan. That night we got back to the stateroom to find this: I'm not sure what it's supposed to be (an ant eater, maybe?) but it was funny. I'd heard that they fold your towels into funny things on cruise ships, but this little guy only appeared in our room once. Good times!

The next installment will be Puerto Vallarta, which, sadly, we didn't get to see too much of. I think my attitude toward the place may have been soured by the fact that the first thing I was able to see was a Wal-Mart...

Mexican Riviera, Nov 2008, Part 1: Cabo San Lucas

Being on a cruise ship was a completely new experience for me. I've been on the ocean before, of course, and boats for pretty much my entire life. But a cruise ship is no boat. One of the first things I came to realize was that my sense of direction was completely thrown off, and that's a crazy feeling for me. Anyone who has ever travelled in a car with me (especially my husband...) will tell you that I always know which direction we're facing and how to get where we're going. But once on board I had no freaking clue! It got better as I got more acquainted with the ship, but even on the last day I found myself going in the wrong direction, or in a place I hadn't expected to be.

Also, I haven't been to the ocean in quite some time (I don't even really know when the last time was...), and being there made me realize one of the reasons I don't live by the ocean: humidity. Vinnie loves it, but I can definitely do without it. My hair is the main problem. Humidity equals frizziness, which equals frustration. It also equals being hot and sticky all the time. I probably showered an average of about three times a day, because I just can't stand the feeling.

But the humidity and lack of direction were only very, VERY minor inconveniences. The trip was completely and totally fantastic! 7 nights, with stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. This first picture is the sunset over the Pacific on our first night (Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008):The ship also had two giant chess sets on board. I wanted to play, but we just never got around to it. I did insist on this picture though:


Our first stop was Cabo San Lucas. Cruise ships cannot go straight into the harbor because the water is too shallow. So, we anchored outside of the marina and took tender boats into the port to be accosted by all of the street vendors (Whistles? Hats? Water taxi? Whistles? Plates? Jewelry? Whistles??? They're everywhere!) View of the marina while we were waiting to depart from the tender boat.

Cool pirate ship we passed on our way into the harbor.

We did end up taking a water taxi tour around the tip of Baja. This is the view from the ship. I didn't know that the tip of Baja California was all rocks jutting out of the ocean. It's beautiful though, and we had a good time touring through them in our water taxi. This rock is apparently the shape of Baja California in minature.

El Arco.

This rock looks a bit like Scooby Doo!

This is the very last rock of the Baja Peninsula.

There are more pictures, of course. The next installment will be Mazatlan, which was my very favorite stop on the cruise. More on that to come...

Panguitch, UT

As promised, the real blog post =D

Believe it or not, the tiny town of Panguitch, UT is actually a cool place. Well, technincally it's surrounded by cool places. Namely Bryce Canyon and Panguitch Lake. Vinnie and I figured we should take a trip somewhere before he started his new job, so I took Friday off and we drove down. The rest of our gang joined us on Saturday afternoon. It was awesome.

It was gorgeous all weekend, thankfully. It takes about four hours to get to Panguitch from SLC, so I entertained myself by taking pictures out of the windows and sunroof.

The traditional passenger-seat self portrait...gotta love the glasses!

The first night it was just me and Vinnie, and there isn't a ton to do in Panguitch itself (surprise, surprise), so we headed up to the lake to have a look around. There's a cabin/RV resort being built on the south side of the lake, and we stopped there and hung out for a little while. That's where we found out that we could rent a boat, which we did the next day. This is Vinnie looking out over the lake on Friday night:

We also made friends with the resort's mascot Wilson, who was named after the tennis ball because he loved to fetch.

He followed us around for an hour and a half with a block of wood. He'd set it at our feet and just stare at it until we would throw it for him. He was awesome.

On Saturday morning we went for a hike through Bryce Canyon. Bryce Canyon is one of my favorite places in Utah. I think that probably has something to do with the fact that we would stop there on our way to Lake Powell when I was a kid. This was the first time I'd actually gone on a hike through it though. We took the Rim Trail, which wraps around the outside of the canyon. The views were incredible!

There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and the sunlight was intense, so unfortunately my camera didn't pick up on the stunning colors very well. I'll have to see if Photoshop can fix that for me...
Later that afternoon we returned to the lake. We rented a party barge, which Vinnie was all too willing to captain:
Elson bought an inflatable raft a few weeks (months?) ago, and hadn't used it yet. So we inflated it on the boat and Leard took it on its maiden voyage:
Every now and then I take a picture that I love, and that makes me realize why I love taking pictures. This is one of them:I don't know why they are laughing, but the expressions on their faces are priceless. This another one that is awesome: This is on our way to dinner on Saturday night.

All in all it was an excellent trip to Panguitch. We'll definitely be doing it again...right after we go to Moab again ;-)