Exploring new places in Mexico

Posted on March 19, 2011 by admin

Yunuen and I took a trip to the south of Mexico with my uncle Dennis and his girlfriend Beth. We traveled through five States (Sonora, Jalisco, Guanajuanto, Queretero, and Michoacan) and spent time in the cities of Hermosillo, Guadalajara, Guanajuanto, Queretero, and Guaymas.

Dennis and Beth flew in on Saturday and we departed for Hermosillo early Sunday morning. On the way, we stopped in Nogales to have breakfast at Yun’s parent’s house. After breakfast, we drove with her parents to Imuris where we spent a little bit of time at a ranch where Dr. Vargas keeps his roosters.

From Imuris we continued south to Magdalena where we spent a little bit of time touring the town and seeing some sites. Magdalena is a nice little place and only about an hour from the border.  We traveled to Hermosillo from Magdalena which was a couple more hours south.

In Hermosillo, we stayed at the Royal Palace Hotel which I had found through tripadvisor.com. It had great reviews and we were pleased that it lived up to those reviews. Also, we were able to park the truck at the hotel for the remainder of our vacation which was significantly less expensive than the airport. We had a nice dinner at Mariachisimo that evening.

Early the next day we took our VivaAerobus flight to Guadalajara. The tickets were about 100 pesos each (roughly $8.80), but with taxes was just over $100 each. Still not bad. We printed our boarding passes at home and so when we arrived at the airport, we only had to go through security. No lines, no waiting. I love this airline (it is co-owned by RyanAir).

When we arrived in Guadalajara, we rented a car from Hertz (~$25/day for the car, and ~$35/day for the insurance). Guadalajara is a bit of a nightmare to drive around. We eventually made our way out of the city and were on our way to Guanajuato. It was a beautiful drive and on the way we found an  enormous old hacienda out in the middle of  nowhere. We stopped and the owner gave us a tour of the place which included a visit up to the bell tower which had an impressive view.

Guanajuato is an incredible city. It is now my favorite place in Mexico and I believe the most beautiful and interesting. Driving in the city, however, was less than pleasant and make Guadalajara look simple. The roads are extremely narrow and extremely confusing. As such, we hired a taxi cab to lead us to our hotel shortly after our arrival to the city. This probably saved us hours of frustration. Once in the city, we parked the car and traveled around by foot.

When you first arrive to Guanajuato, you are introduced to a complex system of roads both above and BELOW the ground. When we were told about a ‘long tunnel’ we would pass when we arrived, we had no idea.

The highlight of Guanajuato was probably the dinner we had at a restaurant called Las Mercedes. We chose it because of the incredible reviews on tripadvisor. Incredible is understated. The place is run by one family out of their home and it is quite small. The father and daughter served our food and wine while the mother and son cooked our food. They all spent time with us at our table introducing themselves and telling us about the food. The menu was all family recipes. A fusion of ancient recipes with a modern presentation. It was impressive.

A couple days later we departed Guanajuato to travel to Queretero. Queretero is much larger than Guanajuato with many interesting things to see and do. We stayed at a spectacular boutique hotel called La Casa del Atrio. Yun and I did a lot of shopping and purchased some neat things for the house. We spent hours going up and down the streets and saw a few museums. We also had the opportunity to take a trolley tour which gave some history of the city.

We departed Queretero on Friday and drove back to Guadalajara so we could spend the night near the airport before our early departure on Saturday. On the way, we stumbled across some ruins in a small pueblo in the middle of nowhere.

Due to some stellar navigational skills (which he obviously got from me), Dennis was able to find a route into Guadalajara which brought us right to Hertz and our hotel. It was too easy. We spent the night in Guadalajara so as to wake early for our ridiculously early flight to Hermosillo Saturday morning.

We arrived in Hermosillo after a short flight, picked up our truck, and then made our way to the beach in Guaymas. We didn’t have enough time in Guaymas. We never do. I could live there.

All together – this was a great trip and one we would readily do again. I will add photos to the travel link above.

Posted in family, Mexico, travels | 3 Comments

Movie: Unstoppable

Posted on March 19, 2011 by admin

Yun and I watched this movie last night. The premise, at first, seemed a bit bland. It’s a train movie. But surprisingly, it was a great action flick that we enjoyed quite a lot. The acting isn’t particularly impressive. The characters aren’t particularly interesting. It must have been the impressive cinematography and sweet action scenes – either that or I am just easily excited by things blown up.

Posted in movies | 2 Comments

Owls outside of work…

Posted on March 19, 2011 by admin

Every day I pass these two under a large tree on my way to my car after work.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

stucco/kitchen design/lighting/peruvian food/dogs

Posted on February 20, 2011 by admin

Today was a great work day. I’ve had Tavo working 6 days a week for a couple months now, but Saturdays are more exciting because I am at the house when he’s working. He always has great ideas and get’s me excited about the next steps. Today we had four additional workers at the house working on the stucco. There are two phases to the stucco application: the first is the foundation, the second is the texturing. I will have the second stage done next week or the week after.

I added a nice pop out to each of the windows (the border around the windows). It will look nice when we paint the exterior as I’ll use some sort of contrasting paint on the pop outs. The windows were installed last year. They are awesome – very secure. A sledge hammer could not break them. After all, this is Tucson. I don’t want anyone breaking into the house.

I spent a good part of the day at Lowes. I never seem to get tired of that place (or any other home-related store). I bought all of the recessed lighting for the house. Eight lights in the living room, four in the master bedroom, four in the office, and two in the hallway to the guest bathroom. I love recessed lighting.

I also had to buy another 250′ of electrical wire, electrical boxes, electrical ties, electrical connectors, and virtually everything else related to electricity. I bought a couple nice fluorescent lights for the enormous master closet, and a fluorescent light for a guest bedroom closet. The 10% off coupons I have been purchasing off of ebay have saved me a bundle – I would estimate close to a $1,000 at this point.

We still have yet to commit to a design on our kitchen. I had previously posted the picture below, but the part of highlited we’ve never liked too much:

It’s just too much counter space and looks weird. So I was looking through a design book we have on Friday night and came across this photo:

I like the idea of having a little bar area in the kitchen. So I was sharing this idea with Tavo today and he added some ideas I really liked a lot. It took the form of this draft:

It might be hard to discern the details of the idea from the photo above. The center portion is a bar (the Xs is a wine rack), the left and right of the bar area are pantries and the area on the far left is a little work station. I really like this idea and the plan is to adopt it going forward (subject to change on a pretty regular basis of course).

After working on the house, we stopped off at Don Pedro’s for some yummy Peruvian food. I had the Loma Saltado. It was really good.

On the way home from lunch, we stopped by a natural foods pet store. We make an effort to feed the dogs the healthiest things we can find. I found a new brand of dog food I was really impressed with and bought a snack for them too.

Apparently it was the hoof of a pig (or perhaps it was a javelina). Tila gets pretty in to these sort of snacks. Scout knows his place when she has claimed the treat.

Posted in food, home restoration, tila! | Leave a comment

I’m Readin’ a Book

Posted on February 13, 2011 by admin

HILARIOUS. Dana sent me this video. It is probably the best song ever made!

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Pasta!

Posted on February 9, 2011 by admin

Yunuen and I have been longing to make nice meals for dinner. Tonight we made that happen when we made Tagliatelle with Scallops. It took us about 1.5-2 hours to make and another hour to clean up, but it was certainly worth it. We also made a nice caesar salad. The dressing was made from a recipe I have had for years and it was incredible.

First we had to make the pasta. We made a spinach tagliatelle. We boiled some spinach, mixed it in with some eggs, then added the flour. I mixed that for a bit and then wrapped the dough in plastic for 20 mins.

While we waited for the pasta, we made the scallop sauce. The most entertaining part was the 4 tablespoons of brandy which I was instructed to light on fire in the pan. Very nice effect.

It’s no small task to make a nice dinner. I think I have a greater appreciation for the work that goes into what we eat at restaurants. Last night we had pasta at Vero Amore and it cost about $40. Tonight we made dinner at home and the ingredients cost $44. Even so, it is fun to make things together and especially things that taste good.

Here is our final product, it was so good!

Posted in food | 6 Comments

fried (sweet) potatoes

Posted on February 7, 2011 by admin

I have been eating an excessive quantity of potatoes for years. It started in college where I went from 140lbs to 205lbs in about 45 days from eating potatoes for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, and snack. Red potatoes, white potatoes, russet potatoes, fried potatoes, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, twice-baked potato, potato skins, scallop potatoes, french fries. I could finish off a 10lb bag of potatoes and a bucket of butter in a couple days.

Unfortunately, that obsessive passion for potatoes has stuck with me long past my college years (where I was prompted primarily by a tight budget). I say unfortunate because they are not exactly ideal for one’s health and particularly for one’s weight.

Since October 1st, 2010, I have not (intentionally) consumed potatoes (in any form). I’ve done the same (mostly) with sugar. It’s not been easy, especially the potatoes. They are really the only thing I’ve craved over the last few months.

So as tonight’s experiment, I am attempting to fry some sweet potatoes. I’ve never liked sweet potatoes (or yams), but so far they are about the closest thing I have found to the real thing. My experiment was prompted from the rumors that sweet potatoes are more healthy than regular potatoes. Is this true?

According to Wikipedia, the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is only distantly related to the potato (Solanum tuberosum). Here’s a comparison between the two:

Regular Potato Sweet Potato
Carbohydrates 19g 20.1g
Starch 15g 12.7g
Protein 2g 1.6g
Fat .1g .1g

Apparently the most significant dietary difference is in the glycemic index. Potatoes have simple carbohydrates which are easily broken down to sugars in the blood which can rapidly increase the insulin production in the body. As such, some people say that too much consumption can lead to diabetes. Yikes.

Sweet potatoes have a more complex carbohydrate which is not as easily broken down into sugars. Additionally, they are higher in fiber (for whatever that is worth).

My experiment on the stove is now over and I am about to sample it to determine how it compares to my favorite all-time meal….

Well, there’s a reason why they call them sweet. Despite the excessive use of peppers (red and black) and an array of other spices, the sweet is still there and overpowers everything else. There is a distant taste of what I was hoping for, but it’s too distant for me to ever try making this meal again. As it stands, I have yet to find an attractive substitute to the food that makes me most happy.

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kitchen design/books/movie/bagels

Posted on February 5, 2011 by admin

The electrical has been completed for the entire home except for the kitchen. That has been because we had not yet designed the kitchen layout until last week. The above design is our current plan, but like everything else, that is subject to change as we get better ideas from others. The kitchen is pretty big and the amount of cabinet space is a bit excessive. We may remove some of the lower cabinets to make room for a kitchen table or something else.

I use Home Designer Suite 8.0 which renders the above into the photo below (minus the misplaced bar stool):

Recently I purchased a new stack of Lowe’s coupons off of Ebay. They run about $1 each, which is not the best deal for a coupon, but one coupon used yesterday saved me over $60, so they pay for themselves pretty quick and up saving me a lot of money.

Yesterday I bought three bathroom exhaust fans. Two of them are under 1 sones (a measurement of how loud they are where 1 is the lowest) and one of them moves over 210 cfm (cubic feet/minute). The cheap fans move about 50 cfm and are around 4 sones, so these will be a nice upgrade to those.

I spent another $100 in electrical wire yesterday in order to complete the kitchen and also for some light switches where more than one switch will turn off the same light. In total, I will have spent about $700 in electrical wire which was more than the plan.

I also bought 60 more feet of cpvc which are the pipes that will complete all of the plumbing on the house. Cpvc is quite inexpensive and does the job just fine. It’s a pretty easy job when you have no walls and no ceiling.

The last item I bought yesterday was a steel door for the laundry room. It looks pretty nice and is pretty secure. I suspect it’s a door we’ll rarely use, but I needed to have that installed in order to have the stucco completed. I hope to have the stucco done next week.

I have bought a number of books over the last few weeks to help familiarize myself with each step and to get ideas for how we want things. These are the books on my shelf which I have found most helpful:

  1. Black and Decker’s The Complete Guide to Plumbing
  2. Black and Decker’s The Complete Guide to Dream Bathrooms
  3. Black and Decker’s The Complete Photo Guide to Home Improvement
  4. Complete Home Decorating: Design, Inspiration, and How-To from Lowes
  5. How Your House Works by Charlie Wing
  6. The Visual Handbook of Building and Remodeling by Charlie Wing
  7. Process Lighting: Product Catalog

The best of the books above are the two by Charlie Wing. They are extremely insightful to someone like myself who is unfamiliar with pretty much everything. They both have great illustrations.

Last night we watched the movie It’s Kind of a Funny Story . This was a really funny movie and is highly recommended. We are both fans of Zach Galifianakis since we first saw him in the movie The Hangover. He is also in the movie Due Date which looks hilarious, but we have not yet seen.

Yun and I have started a new Saturday morning tradition of going to Bruegger’s Bagels for breakfast and coffee. We have a Bruegger’s just up the street from us at Swan and Sunrise. I like having traditions.

Posted in food, home restoration, movies | Leave a comment

no jury duty/rooting the phone/yun’s bday/we moved

Posted on January 25, 2011 by admin

It’s been an eventful month. We moved a couple of weeks ago to the North of Tucson. Its an entire different city and one in which we prefer. Moving is mostly miserable. Things are heavy and its a lot of work.

The new home is great. I like: the spare rooms, the fire place, the big garage, my office and all of my books, and a huge piece of land to explore with the dogs and collect firewood for the fireplace.

Our other home is coming along great. The electrical and plumbing should be done in a couple weeks. The stucco should be done next week. Then its on to the insulation, drywall, texturing and painting, the tile, the hvac, hot water heater, recessed lights, kitchen, bathrooms, and doors. These are exciting times for that house. Then we have the other house to get in order so we can sell them both. Then we hope to head back to the auction.

I was finally eliminated from the jury pool last Friday. There was a point near the end where I thought I was going to be chosen. It was a criminal trial where the prosecution was seeking the death penalty. It was a horrible crime.

Last weekend was Yun’s b-day. We spent the weekend with her parents and brothers at our house. We had an awesome carne asada on Satuday and Jeff and Beth joined us. Late in the evening we cut into the cake. It was excelente.

Tonight I was able to finally root my phone. This has been a long process trying to determine how exactly to do this. My carrier is Verizon and they set their phones up to have all sort of bloatware that significantly reduces the phone’s performance. The only way around it is this complicated hack to remove the manufacture’s ROM and install one of my own choosing that removes all of the garbage and allows for other neat functions (like wireless hotspots).

Posted in birthdays, family, phone | 3 Comments

Lunch

Posted on January 20, 2011 by admin

image

I have jury today. The jury pool was over 200 people. I’m pretty confident I will not be selected. I don’t mind the break from the regular routine. I also don’t mind the 3 hour lunch break we were given. I am taking advantage of the time to partake of my favorite cuisine…carne asada x5 at the El Sinaloense taco van on 6th.

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