tacos de pescado y punta banda

well... I'm back from Mexico.

Our trip was awesome but not particularly eventful.  The idea really was to just hang around on the beach.

The houses we rented were awesome and obviously extremely nice compared to the surrounding area.

You can check out our house here.

We had two other houses, all next door to each other so it was nice to have all that room.

It wasn't warm, and it rained a few times, but the view was spectacular and just being on the beach with the briny breezes was enough to liven up my senses.

With the exception of a few fishermen on the beach outside the doors of our rented houses there were no other people to speak of.  An occasional dog.  One jogger or strolling couple every few hours, maybe.  That was it, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves.

There were 10 of us. We drank drank drank and had a pretty awesome time just laughing at nothing... singing, making fun of each other. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious and full of martinis and wine and snoozy woozy heads after stuffing our bellies.

On the 2nd or 3rd day a group of fisherman were attempting to drag in their net with their catch for the day.  Some of the boys helped out and were rewarded with a couple tuna.  We made delicious ceviche with them.  It was pretty cool to see the fishes dragged in.  There was also a sting ray that shawn saved with an oar and deposited back into the ocean, but not after a few pics were captured by yours truly.

The boys and fishers collected all the flopping fishes and plunked them into a pile.

I began to harbor dreams of buying a beach house in a remote village like this one and fishing for my dinner.  Maybe I could barter with the locals for tacos (we found an amazing fish taco place down the street from our house) or tamales.  That would be the fucking life.  really.

I have no problem living that far away from civilization.  There is, after all, one bar in town, that's all I need.

  

I spent an entire afternoon taking pictures on the beach by myself.  I was sad to find that I couldn't put them on shawn's laptop even after re-formatting the disc before I took the pics. I'm hoping that they will miraculously appear when I attempt to input them into my own computer.  Rest assured I will obsess until I've exhausted every avenue.  I remember that i got them off with no little effort after my last trip but I can't remember how I did it.

I shouldn't be up.  I know I say that a lot but I've just gotten home @1:30ish after being on the road since 10am, I should be exhausted.  I shouldn't have drank that coffee.

stupid.

hm... what else?  We did a little off-roading in shawn's xterra.  It was his first opportunity to shift into 4wd so that was exciting.  We were in a tiny po-dunk town called Punta Banda.  It was poor, people just doing whatever they could to get by.  All but one restaurant was a tiny shanty on the side of the road.  Most with no seats to speak of.  Most spoke no english.  My kitchen spanish came in handy.

There was a small village on the other side of the hill.  We were warned not to drive there or back after dark or we would DIE.  

seriously.  

The village was called La Bufadora.  Everyone there was very nice, not dangerous in any way, just the driving is fucking psychotic after dark, best not to chance it.

We bought some Oaxacan ceramics, insanely cheap.  We got an amazing handmade and painted sink for $50.  It's beautiful.  We also bought a few other things for family and what-have-you. 

We're poor with yet another trip coming up so we'll save those gifts and give them for Christmas so we don't have to break the bank.  I don't think Shawn and I are going to buy gifts for each other this year.  It'll just make things easier.  

I'm trying to will myself into sleepiness as I type this.  It's nearly 5am and relaxation is just out of reach.  I feel wired.

sleep will eventually come...

so good night for now friends.

viva la meh-hee-co

So today marks my last day of work before embarking on my vacation from life for the proverbial gluttony of the masses.

We don't actually leave until saturday night but I always make sure I take off one day before and after any trips I take just to get my factions in order.

I'm old and it makes me insane crazy to rush myself into or out of anything travel-ly.

There are a good amount of us going, we're forging our caravans into ensenada and onward to our houses that we rented for the week.  This has been months in the making and I really hope it proves to be a relaxing yet lecherous advent.

To those of you deep frying/baking/bbqing turkey on the home front I hope you enjoy the lazy bloated holiday in front of the madden turkey bowl or t.v event of your choice, or better yet, the enjoyment of friends and family without the distraction of modern mediums.

I'll be thinking of you, so think of me thinking of you (or some equivalent of aforementioned brain activity)

look, no hands...

There is absolutely no good reason I should still be up @ 4:30am, and no reason at all that I should be blogerating when I should be sleeperating.

I've been working on le business plan that will most certainly wow the granny panties off my professor (I'm pretty sure he wears women's garments under his clothes, he'll tell you it's for comfort but don't believe it.) and potential investors.  

It's actually pretty kick ass.  It's fun and interesting for a presentation if I do say so myself.  I have a partner but she hasn't done a lick of work on it.  okay, she did scribble down some notes, but since I already had all that info it wasn't helpful in the least.  So even though I should be annoyed that she hasn't done any work on our final project, I'm not.  

I'm not annoyed because I feel a sense of pride that "look mommy I can do it all by myself"... 

which is funny because my partner just happens to be my mother.  

power points to this (obscene finger gesture)

Well the time has come where I have to begin preparing my final project to my business class.

The project is a business plan that must be presented in Power Point.

Why I capitalized the name is a mystery, since it seems to be a nod of respect, I should go back and fix it but I won't.

I've never used the program before.  never.

In all actuality it's not that difficult to navigate, but it is time consuming to say the least.  It is also an angry little program that desperately wants my spinal cord to deteriorate and crumble, creating tiny piles of rubble on the floor around my desk.

I spend hours working on it, only to look up from my endeavors to discover that I have completed only two measly slides.

*sigh*  *save*

It must be done by the end of the week, there's no way in hell I'm working on it in Mexico.

I'm pretty sure homework and lobster tacos by the beach are completely and totally incompatible.  I'm positive that my computer will turn into a Decepticon and engage a fight to the death, Thunder dome style with my margarita.  A fight that my mellow, delicious-flavored alcoholic friend will most certainly perish in.

I musn't do this.  He is, after all, totally defenseless.

misplaced birds

I have (had) the day off today.

I had stuff to do, aka chores, homework, etc. but decided to fuck it all off in favor of lying about and reading comics, watching hospital dramas on t.v. and... well, that's pretty much it.

o!  I had a dentist appointment this morning, so that's exciting.

I'm on a diet this week and have been stuffing my face with veg and fruit for a few days now. I just "splurged" on a baked potato and now I'm wishing I hadn't. My body hasn't had to work this hard to digest food in a few days and is pretty pissed at me right now. ugh.

anyhoo...

I had a really weird dream the other night that I was walking through the woods or through a clearing of some sort and a bird landed on my finger and starting singing. Somehow it later turned into a baby. I took care of it for awhile and then I must've misplaced it or something because then she just wasn't around anymore.

hm.
sounds about right.

"Excuse me, has anyone seen my child? 

No? 

Alright then.  no, don't worry about it...   

I can grow another one".

better late than...

Maybe a bit late... okay late.

But I have a really good excuse.  It's so good in fact that I won't even tell you what it is because then you'd only want to bite my style and use it yourself.

Anyhoo, here are some pics from Halloween.  I don't have a lot, I think most were taken on Shawn's camera but here are a couple...

o! in case you can't tell we are Nightmare Before Christmas peeps.

I made these from freakin' scratch.  I made my dress and wig.  I also made Shawn's flip-top head and brain, from liquid latex, papier-mâché, and misc.

Shawn also had a wheelchair to make his transformation complete.  When I get those pics I'll update.

Shawn wanted to be able to scratch his brain. 

What baby wants, baby gets...

Neverender and the Kill Audio pictures that could have come out clear

After an extraordinary week in Hollywood I am home and... utterly depressed that I have to face real life again.

I spent the week creaming myself at the Neverender shows, sweating in swampy crowds, fevered with rocking out on the most supreme of levels.  No black eye this time but I did spend hours on end smelling other people's rancid farts and suffering through it so I could rock out to the "The Suffering".

Jon and I left tuesday night, stopped in San Luis Obispo and stayed with Ricky for the night. Was really nice to see him and it's awesome to know that he is going to be a huge success one day, something most of us failed to do with our own lives.

The next day we headed into Hollywood, checked into our Motel 6 that we expected to be a total dump, but we were pleasantly surprised.  It was actually very clean and aside from the fact that it didn't have a fucking hairdryer in the room (fuckfuckfucking pissed me off) it did have other amenities that these kind of budget slums don't usually have.

The shows were phenomenal, although we did hear a lot of the same songs over and over with encores and all, I understand why the did it, not everyone could go all 4 nights.  I won't complain about that but I could've done without the Coheed fanatic down the hall who blared them all week despite the fact that we were seeing their live shows every night we were there.

We found an awesome little place on Hollywood Blvd. called Snow Whites.  A tiny hole in the wall with $10 burger, fries, pint lunch specials and $7 32 oz. mugs of beer.  Delish.  We went there a few times and talked dreamily of how great it would be if there was only a place like this in Napa.  After a couple beers larger than your head you start to have fun conversations about how you're gonna open a place just like it...  even though the likelihood of that ever happening is totally bogus.

We met a few people from other areas, down for the shows.

First we met Brandon.

We were standing next to him at the back railing.  Jon and I both had merch and weren't really sure what to do with it.  We stashed it past the railing, between us and the soundboard, no one could get to it unless they chopped us down, and even then they'd have to know it was there.  

Brandon had a Kill Audio figure, I asked him if he wanted to stash it...

After hanging out with him for most of the show we found out that he was coming to all four by himself, so we resolved to meet up each night.  He turned out to be a regular fixture and a really fun guy.

Jon met some guy that we called Gus all week ( I think his real name was Ricardo??) and another guy and his swedish girlfriend in the hall at the motel.  They too became regulars in our retarded posse and we all effectively poisoned ourselves with alcohol and greasy food all week while kicking the shit out of ourselves at the shows every night.

We also met up with JoelOne,

but he was staying at a hotel a few metro stops away and hanging with some antisocial weird dudes so we only saw him at the shows.

On Saturday Jon, Brandon and myself went to Munky King for the Kill Audio signing.  

(Side note:  Brandon lived only 20 mins away so after buying a KA figure the first night, he left it at home so he had to buy another one for the signing.  On top of that he really wanted a limited edition gun metal figure, 7 sold at each show, and ended up getting one.  All told he spent $170 on KA figures alone.)  This was one of the highlights of the trip.  We all met Claudio and got our figures signed and took pics with him.  John reminded me multiple times that his beautiful fiance Chonny Chondra called him a "sweetie".  Apparently he was in her way and she needed to get by him.  haha.  (Chonny, I wonder if you reverse stalk me?  hmmm...)

My picture is blurry, as are all of the pics I had Brandon take because boys are effen retarded and John insisted on being in my pic with me instead of just waiting for me to get his figure signed. *SIGH* So the only pics that came out clear are the ones I took, which obviously don't have me in them. I will be eternally full of regret for this sad sad moment in history.

Regardless, I got to meet him and shake his hand and get my figure signed.  I also got to scope out the woman that is taking my rightful place next to his side.  haha.  He was very nice and polite, he also seemed a little shy which I found endearing.

mk.  long long blog?

yea.  The point is, the week rocked.  The shows rocked.  Claudio rocks.