We love our new house. Come visit.
TMo, I didn't get THE red chair, but I did get a different red couch.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Home Sweet Home
We love our new house. Come visit.
TMo, I didn't get THE red chair, but I did get a different red couch.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
A Man Proud of His Work
With frosting, toilet paper, and milk cartons, we celebrated with McKay and Shea.
Monday, June 21, 2010
MLB First
Made it to a Rockies and Brewers game last weekend, Spencer's first time in an MLB stadium.
May I ask, what is Todd Helton still doing on the team?
After the Rockies' 2–0 win, we consoled some Brewers fans at Coney Island the next day. It was my first time in the dog since it moved from Aspen Park to Bailey; the service was as slow as ever, but the burgers have improved marginally.
We met my old roomie Lyndsey and her husband, Brandon, at the dog (they're in Colo for the summer for Brandon's MBA internship). Next time I'm in Colorado, I will be visiting the Tiny Town version of the giant hot dog.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Peru Part Duex
So . . . I'm finally getting around to finishing up a post on our second day in Peru. As mentioned, after the oasis in Huachachina, we headed back up to Ica—which could be summed up with Nasca war heads, a local market, and Princessa ice cream bars.
Speaking of Princessa bars, Spencer made the 13-something girl selling them at the bus station in Ica blush. He asked for a Princessa para (for) his Princessa. She liked that. (So did I.) Basically, we bought ice cream bars at every cart we passed—approximately every 50 yards.
Anyway, here's a shot of the local market: tight aisles, strange new fruits.
Like picay (spelling?) (see below). One of the vendors handed us a trial pod and we bought the whole bundle.
To ingest, you crack open the pod, pluck out one of the seeds (which are wrapped in a gauzy white fiber), and suck off the white stuff, spitting the seed out at the end. It's literally like sucking on a cotton ball, but a very sweet, very tasty cotton ball. Natural cotton candy?
A kindred spirit: He couldn't resist the Princessa bar either.
The best meal of the trip, in the local market, cost maybe $1.50 U.S. Can't remember the name of this dish; basically it had rice, potatoes, chunks of meat, a slab of chicken, some delicious sauce. We washed it down with fresh-squeezed maricuya, surely the best fruit in the world. We later found out that eating in the local markets is against mission rules.
From Ica we caught the bus back up north to Paracas, a beach town that survives off tourism to the Islas de Ballestas—also known as the poor man's Galapagos. We arrived at our hotel just in time to catch the sunset off the balcony.
The most defining part of Paracas was meeting new friends, Julio and Julio (Sr. at left, Jr. at right). They run the fair in town, which consists of a few rides and a lot of foosball tables. We gave them a run for their money. Sadly, we also watched their dog die in their arms. A German Shepard mix, it was the fair's guard dog of sorts; someone had fed it broken glass.
The Candelabra . . . a Nasca geoglyph or a tourist hoax? Verdict's still out.
The Islas de Ballestas were stunning. Giant rock outcroppings full of natural arches and frosted with guano—"the droppings of the bat" . . . also the droppings of the hundreds of species of birds found here. Turns out guano is a huge money-maker for Peru. They export the white gold as fertilizer.
Beautiful. Stunning. Also, pungent.
Humboldt penguins. The Humboldt Current runs from the tip of Chile up the coast of Peru, chilling the coastal waters enough for these little guys to flourish at an otherwise uninhabitable latitude. This is the only part of the world you can find these friends, or your local zoo, perhaps.
The Humboldt Current provides an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water, which means lots of fish and sea life for pelicans and sea lions and millions of birds to chow.
We saw lots of these and heard them bellowing on the one beach—if you can call it that—on the islas. Apparently this is a very important mating beach where thousands of sea lions gather. The video below doesn't do it justice. They are crawling all over each other on this beach, bracing for the next giant wave, which will smash them all into the cliff. There were carcasses of dead baby sea lions on the beach, too. Apparently the males eat the baby males.
Inca Kola and ceviche. It doesn't get more Peruvian than this. Ceviche is raw fish soaked in lemon juice, served with tons of red onion and Peru's fat, quarter-sized corn petals. Inca Kola tastes like carbonated bubble gum.
We made a 16-year-old friend at the foosball tables who was waiting for us when we got off our boat ride to the islas. He'd arranged a game of barefoot soccer for us on this cancha. The police officers, below, were watching; later in the day they caught up with me and called me Maradona. A picture with them was requisite.
Speaking of Princessa bars, Spencer made the 13-something girl selling them at the bus station in Ica blush. He asked for a Princessa para (for) his Princessa. She liked that. (So did I.) Basically, we bought ice cream bars at every cart we passed—approximately every 50 yards.
Anyway, here's a shot of the local market: tight aisles, strange new fruits.
Like picay (spelling?) (see below). One of the vendors handed us a trial pod and we bought the whole bundle.
To ingest, you crack open the pod, pluck out one of the seeds (which are wrapped in a gauzy white fiber), and suck off the white stuff, spitting the seed out at the end. It's literally like sucking on a cotton ball, but a very sweet, very tasty cotton ball. Natural cotton candy?
A kindred spirit: He couldn't resist the Princessa bar either.
The best meal of the trip, in the local market, cost maybe $1.50 U.S. Can't remember the name of this dish; basically it had rice, potatoes, chunks of meat, a slab of chicken, some delicious sauce. We washed it down with fresh-squeezed maricuya, surely the best fruit in the world. We later found out that eating in the local markets is against mission rules.
From Ica we caught the bus back up north to Paracas, a beach town that survives off tourism to the Islas de Ballestas—also known as the poor man's Galapagos. We arrived at our hotel just in time to catch the sunset off the balcony.
The most defining part of Paracas was meeting new friends, Julio and Julio (Sr. at left, Jr. at right). They run the fair in town, which consists of a few rides and a lot of foosball tables. We gave them a run for their money. Sadly, we also watched their dog die in their arms. A German Shepard mix, it was the fair's guard dog of sorts; someone had fed it broken glass.
The Candelabra . . . a Nasca geoglyph or a tourist hoax? Verdict's still out.
The Islas de Ballestas were stunning. Giant rock outcroppings full of natural arches and frosted with guano—"the droppings of the bat" . . . also the droppings of the hundreds of species of birds found here. Turns out guano is a huge money-maker for Peru. They export the white gold as fertilizer.
Beautiful. Stunning. Also, pungent.
Humboldt penguins. The Humboldt Current runs from the tip of Chile up the coast of Peru, chilling the coastal waters enough for these little guys to flourish at an otherwise uninhabitable latitude. This is the only part of the world you can find these friends, or your local zoo, perhaps.
The Humboldt Current provides an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water, which means lots of fish and sea life for pelicans and sea lions and millions of birds to chow.
We saw lots of these and heard them bellowing on the one beach—if you can call it that—on the islas. Apparently this is a very important mating beach where thousands of sea lions gather. The video below doesn't do it justice. They are crawling all over each other on this beach, bracing for the next giant wave, which will smash them all into the cliff. There were carcasses of dead baby sea lions on the beach, too. Apparently the males eat the baby males.
Inca Kola and ceviche. It doesn't get more Peruvian than this. Ceviche is raw fish soaked in lemon juice, served with tons of red onion and Peru's fat, quarter-sized corn petals. Inca Kola tastes like carbonated bubble gum.
We made a 16-year-old friend at the foosball tables who was waiting for us when we got off our boat ride to the islas. He'd arranged a game of barefoot soccer for us on this cancha. The police officers, below, were watching; later in the day they caught up with me and called me Maradona. A picture with them was requisite.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Does This Count?
I've always wanted to win an intramural championship T-shirt, but this one feels tainted. Two reasons:
1. It is a middle-division champ T.
(We've lost three upper-division shirts to teams made up of ex-BYU players, who, naturally, should be outlawed from intramurals.)
2. I wasn't there for the T-shirt–clinching game on Saturday.
(I was at McKay's wedding.)
And yet, I still went and picked my due from the intramural office—I always said I needed one of these before I could leave BYU—though I'm obviously settling. (Especially considering that all 2010 intramural champs are donning a punctuation error—how embarrassing.:)
Friday, June 11, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
J-O-B
Spencer has found employment (finally:). He'll be working under his Fijian racquetball buddy at Zions Bank.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Niels Is a Man
Nephi was visiting family in San Jose and took Niels out to lunch. Sunday, Nephi reported, "He's a man now, Britt." Weird.
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