Yunuen and I arrived with Matt and Dana to the White Mountains in Northern Arizona yesterday where we are staying in a little a-frame cabin. It is pretty warm today, but it certainly beats the high 100s of Tucson. Last night the temperature dropped significantly, so we slept well. There are a number of lakes and creeks and thermal springs, so we will likely go swimming later today and perhaps do some hiking.
Our third study on Ryle’s book “Holiness” this evening at Ross and Susie’s house. Susie made some excellent food and as usual, we had beer, wine, and cigars to help concentrate. It was an ideal location for this sort of thing – too bad we didn’t get a chance to light up Ross’ chiminea. I smoked my Romeo y Julieta (Reserva Real) which was a gift from my friend Matt – I enjoyed it very much.
It is another clear and sunny day!
I just bought some seeds from Park Seed which I hope to add to our pending flower garden in the back yard. There’s quite a bit of work to be done with that, but at least I can start growing the plants!
Yunuen, Matt, Dana, and I traveled down to San Carlos over Memorial Day weekend. We ended up staying at a condo that we do not normally stay at, but it was a last minute decision to go and thus our options were severely limited. We were at least on the water and had miles of decent beach. We stopped in Hermosillo on our trip down for dinner and I had some tasty chille rellenos. We found some really great places to snorkle and saw lots of diverse sea life; such as, sea urchins, star fish, sting rays, crabs, angel fish, and puffer fish. Matt was actually stung by a jelly fish a couple times. There weren’t that many jelly fish on our first day in the water, but as seems to be typical, there are always hundreds of jelly fish on our last day. Surprisngly, the water temperature was excellent for this time of year – somewhere high 70s low 80s. I collected a huge pile of old worn, bright white shells for a decoration for the house, which looks really cool. Yunuen and Dana made enchiladas on our second night and Matt and I did most of the work (at least from our perspective) for the carne asada we grilled on our third night. Yunuen and Dana learned to play Spades on this trip so we had a lot of fun with that. Out of sympathy, Yunuen and I allowed ourselves to be beaten in the first set, but decimated the Mcreynolds clan in the second round (540 to 510). Team Jankowski is preparing for the next round in Ireland when the Mcreynolds relocate there in the next few months.
Here’s a photo of one location we did some snorkeling:
Here is a photo of some of the fish we saw:
Tonight I had a few guys over for a study on one of J.C. Ryle’s books ‘Holiness’. To supplement the study, I cooked up about 20lbs of meat for our carne asada, while Yunuen and Betsy prepared all the food. We had lots of beer, wine, cigars and pipes to help focus and the food was excellent. The night began a little windy, but turned out to be really pleasant later on. The plan, tentatively, is to meet again on May 22nd for more of the same.
Yestrday I went to the Tinder Box (a smoke shop) with Matt after helping Liam pick up some brick for a backyard firepit. I picked up two cigars, one was a Black Pearl (rojo) which is made in Nicaraqua (http://www.laperlahabana.com/products/cigars/rojo.sqrl) and a Kahlua cigar (by the Drew Estate (http://www.drewestate.com/). The Kahlua was awesome! But the Black Pearl was also exceptionally good. I need to buy a humidor (http://www.humidor-guide.com/) so I can buy a few boxes of these cigars (or someone could buy them for me!) I also bought a torch which is really exciting as it can be really hard to light a cigar (or pipe for that matter) with a flame.
Yunuen successfully made eggs and fingers the other day and they were really good! My mom used to make these for me in years past and she provided the eggs holders in the picture below (which are quite hard to find!)
It is another absolutely beautiful day outside, so I think I will work on the backyard some and maybe make a trip to Lowe’s later to buy a trimmer for the bougenvillas as there are a lot of dead branches from last year.
As usual, the weather is perfect and not a cloud in the sky.
As such, I transplanted a cucumber of good size to a pot outside. To protect it from the wind, I added some stakes and saran wrap. I did the same thing for a bell pepper. I have about 10 other bells (red and green) ready to go into the garden as soon as they get a little larger. When we got home from Panama, about 30 of my potted plants had all died which was pretty disappointing as I had been growing various plants since December 2006.
Our appricot, lime and orange trees are doing really well. I fertilized them again today and will continue to do so on a monthly basis. I figure it was the lack of fertilization that killed our guava and previous lime. There are a number of appricots growing and it doesn’t look like it will be much longer before they are ready to eat. The same goes for the lime tree.
As I was working in the backyard there were a number of F16s that passed over the house. I recently purchased a new lens on ebay and was able to get some decent photos. We get a lot of F16s , C130s and A10s flying around Tucson.
Yunuen and I just returned to Panama City from Valle de Anton, which is a neat little village in a rainforest West of Panama City. We stayed at Los Mandarinos which is a small Villa in the valley of a dormant volcano (see photo below). It was really beautiful and we enjoyed it a lot and would highly recommend it to others. The temperature was absolutely perfect and there is always a slight breeze which is nice at night when you have all the windows open. Waking up in the morning to the exotic noises was also very neat – there are guacamayas (parrots), toucans, monkees , sloths and other wild things running around in the area. Yunuen was very nervous when we saw a sloth as she felt it was looking at me funny, but given they move about the same pace as I do in the morning when getting ready for work, there was very little to worry about. This was probably the most relaxing place we’ve ever experienced!
Paul and Sara came over for dinner this evening and that was a lot of fun. They are moving to Colorado in a few months so we won’t have much more time to spend with them. We’re hoping to go camping with them in the next month or two. Paul is helping us with investments and life insurance, so he’s a good friend to have.
Our apricot tree has begun growing it’s first apricot! Our lime and orange tree continue to do well likewise, we actually have many limes growing too.We leave for Panama in a couple days and we’re both very excited. I received a new lens today for my camera from UPS that I had purchased on EBay which was awesome as I didn’t think I would get it in time.
Spring is here and it is suppose to be in the 80s this week. Yunuen and I planted three trees last week in our backyard: a lime, an orange, and an apricot. They seem to have taken the transition well and the lime tree has a number of limes growing on it. This will be our second attempt at citrus trees and this time we did a little more research in hopes to increase their life expectancy. Apparently they need to be fertilized frequently.
Our friend Liam returned from Iraq a few days ago. We met him at the airport along with a number of other friends.
I received a second computer from Dell last week due to problems with the first one that I purchased and I came to find that the new computer they sent has the exact same problem. The problem is minor as I am only unable to get into the BIOS which I really have no reason to access anyway, but nonetheless I don’t want a computer that has this sort of problem. Dell customer service is absolutely worthless, I have spent many hours on the phone with them as well as had multiple visits from a technician to my house which are all unable to resolve this situation. As such, I now have two new computers which are unable to access the BIOS.
