Diaper dash

Last night, we had to make a pilgrimage to Target and so we called our friends who just had a baby to see if they needed any formula, diapers, bourbon, or whatever. Well it turned out they did need diapers--evidently babies poop...A LOT! And they were running low. They asked for newborn, and when we got to the store, they had a size 1, which we thought must be the smallest they come in. When we got back with the diapers, they were way too big--who knew that the difference between a diaper for a 6-7 lb. baby and a 8-14 lb. baby would be so big?

I remember when my little brother and sister were in diapers and my mom used cloth diapers. Invariably there would be the complete blow-out diaper that had to be soaked before it could be put in the washing machine. I remember the pain of dashing into the house with a full bladder, only to open up the toilet and, horror of horrors, find a poopy diaper soaking in the toilet water!!! Since I was only 7 or 8, I did what any kid of that age would do--I just used the toilet anyway. In my little kid's brain, I figured that I was just dirtying the diaper up a little more and that mom would magically take care of it. No wonder disposable diapers have become such big business. If you're reading this, mom, I'd just like to say sorry.

Flashback to the 80's

Last night, we rented a DVD from the first season of Remington Steele. I remember watching that show religiously during those halcyon days of my youth. My brother and I even had goldfish named after all the cast members. Watching it last night, I realized that as a 10-year-old, the entire sexual innuendo going on was COMPLETELY lost on me. In the one episode we watched, there were THREE scenes where there is heavy breathing and moaning, only to have the camera pan over to Remington and Laura searching under the seats of a car or taking apart an engine. As a kid, I'm sure I just thought that those were the noises mechanic must make. Oh how naive was I! Well, in my defense, I DID grow up on a farm in Idaho!

Cruel tease

This morning as I trudged into work, I read a quote from Luke Perry, who stars in that new series about the group of friends that win $389 million in the lottery and how despite saying that it wouldn't change them, it really does. He listed several things that he'd do if he won the lottery, including raise 1,000 head of cattle, build an arch bridge, and ride cross-country on a horse and write a book about it. That got me to thinking about what I'D do if I won the lottery--and not just travel, but actual random acts that always intrigued me. Like formulating my own recipe for a delicious cola that is even MORE refreshing than Coke or Pepsi. I'd only use cola beans harvested by monkeys, and sugar grown in special hydroponic tubs from Antarctica. Unfortunately each bottle will cost over $700, but once you taste it, you'd be willing to pay $750!

Well, when I checked my stocks this morning, I almost had a heart attack. This is what I saw when I logged in;

Needless to say, I'm used to this number being MUCH lower. At first I thought something happened over the weekend and that we were rich, Rich, RICH! Then I thought, "I'd better hurry and sell these stocks before they crash." Then reason took hold and I realized that there was a glitch in the portfolio tracking site. Now I should sue MSN: Money for the emotional and psychologial damage those 3 seconds inflicted upon me! I guess the world will have to continue its anticipated wait for Jeremy Cola another few years.

Stupid Portland weather

Don't you hate it when you check the forecast and says overcast but no rain so you wear your shoes that have a split in the sole that you can't wear during wet weather because the water seeps in and soaks your sock so you only can wear them during dry weather and on the way to work it starts raining and you get to work with a wet sock? I hate it when that happens.

One of those "disgruntled Mormon" pictures

This is a picture that Margaret took of me outside the St. George Temple. We weren't allowed inside since the management had already heard about what we'd done in Las Vegas the day before! So much for "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!" Anyway, I love this picture because it looks like one of those pictures you always see in the paper where someone has some problem with an organization so the photographer takes a low-angle shot of the person with an iconic building behind them. With that in mind, I'll caption this photo like this: "Jeremy's crusade to bring caffeinated Diet Pepsi to the Brigham Young University campus has put him at odds with church leadership. He claims the caffeinated Diet Pepsi is a 'metaphor for liberalism and free-thinking', both treasonous concepts likely to get him a church calling as Word of Wisdom enforcement officer or involuntary 'volunteer time' at the local Republican party call center."

The ill-fated weapon of mass destruction

Here's a picture of the tomahawk that was seized at the airport. We have four photos of us in various poses with it. That's all we got for our $20 (that and the memory of wielding that knock-off Aztec weapon, and fantasizing about single-handedly repelling the Conquistador invasion and preserving Montezuma's Aztec Empire only to be sacrificed to Queztocoatl in gratitude... What? Don't tell me you would have thought the same thing!). I love the kids in the background with their "look at the stupid American" expression. It was an expression we saw there, on the bus back into the city, on the subway, in the hotel lobby, and at the airport. I guess it was the Mexican equivalent of wearing those stupid foam Statue of Liberty hats. No self-respecting local would dream of getting within 5 feet of one of those things!

Wrong turn

This past week, while in St. George, Utah, we took the opportunity to see some sights around the area. Normally when we go down there, we spend the whole time in Zion National Park, but with a whole week, we decided to see what else the area had to offer. Surprisingly we found more than the St. George temple, Brigham Young's winter home, and the St. George tabernacle (three sites on the Mormon history tour that we ended up visiting during our stay--partly because these sites were well-air conditioned and the temperatures while we were there were WAY past 100 degrees!) One day we planned a loop drive that would take us to Gunlock State Park, the Mountain Meadow Massacre site, Honeycomb Hills State Park, a ghost town, and some petroglyphs outside Cedar City, Utah. Anxious for a fulfilling Utah history tour, we carefully plotted the route and we got an early start, as we wanted to be in Cedar City around lunch time. Everything was going fine until we couldn't find a fork in the road that we were expecting. We drove and drove and DROVE--finally coming into a valley that was absolutely COVERED with joshua trees. Margaret looked at the map and noticed a point of interest on the map called "Joshua Tree forest." Unfortunately it was the other road than the one headed to Gunlock. At this point we were only a couple of miles from Arizona! We snapped a few photos of the forest, because it WAS impressive, and turned around and drove the 30 miles back towards St. George.

There's a tiny Indian reservation just outside the city, and we stopped and asked someone how to get to Gunlock. He told us directions and since it wasn't too far back, we decided to give it another try. My aggravation when we got to the fork in the road we were lead to was complete when I noticed something lying by the side of the road that I hadn't seen the first time we'd driven by it--yes, the road sign saying "Gunlock ->" At that point we were WAY behind schedule so we ended up only seeing the Mountain Meadow Massacre site and then rushing to Cedar City because we were starved. So much for our fulfilling Utah history tour. Our pioneer ancestors are probably rolling in their graves at our lack of desert navigation skills.

On the way back to St. George, we stopped at the northern part of Zion National Park to go on an afternoon hike. We started out, but the bugs were so bad that we were forced back into the car and ended up just appreciating the canyon from the air conditioned comfort of the rental car. This picture is one of the bugs in that canyon. We were driven away by biting flies, but if one of these hornets or wasps or insectoid alien-things or whatever it was were to sting us, I'm sure it would have been more like an injection than a sting. Notice the finger in the picture for size comparison! I wasn't even aware that bees could get that big outside of Starship Troopers!

Mexico CIty: Day 3

Sorry this is so late. We've been in Utah all week and while the condo we were staying in had wi-fi internet access, the antenna on my computer was shot. I desperately wandered around the place looking for the transmitter, as I could connect if I was within 3 or 4 feet of it. Alas, I never found it, so I was untethered from the internet for AN ENTIRE WEEK! Talk about withdrawals!

Any, the conclusion of our Mexico City trip: Day 3

On our third day of our trip, we planned on going to the National Museum of Anthropology. We decided to just pop in at McDonald's, since it was on the way to the subway station. We ordered an "Especialle" and it was great! The scrambled eggs had peppers, tomatoes, and onions in it, and it came with two "mollettes"--an english muffin spread with refried beans and topped with cheese, then toasted. It came with fresh salsa to put on it. The food was really good, but I couldn't help but feel totally typically American to come to a foreign country and eat at McDonald's. After breakfast, we hopped on the subway and made our way to the museum. We were supposed to get off on a stopped called Chapultepec. Since I just looked at the map and saw an unpronouncable Aztec word that started and ended with a "c", I had us get off at the Cuauhtemoc stop. When we came up to street level, we asked where the museum was and found out that we were too far away to just walk to it, so we had to get back on the subway--and were out another 36¢! Well, we finally made it to the museum and it was incredible. It was separated into the main groups from Mexico: Aztec, Toltecs, Mayas, etc. They had some amazing pieces of art, pottery, building, etc. Most of the signs were in Spanish, so I would just hop around hoping to find one of the few signs that was bilingual. Our guidebook recommened at least two hours at this museum, but we could have easily spent an entire day there. After a great lunch buffet at the museum (where they served some really colorful jell-o suspended in clear jell-o!) We headed back for some final souvenir shopping. We hit the streets again and Margaret got some shoes and a skirt from some guy under a tarp. We also stopped at the Merced--a GIANT market (claiming to be the biggest in Latin America) It was pretty overwhelming. I took off my backpack and was just carrying it in the front, because I didn't want to tip anything over with it. Some old lady gestured to me to put it back on signing someone snatching it out of my hands and running off. Fortunately nothing like that happened while we were there. It was funny, though, to see little old ladies selling stickers right across from booths selling hard-core pornography. When we finally got back to the hotel, it was dinnertime, so we unloaded our stuff and decided on a restaurant nearby that we'd found in the guidebook. Of course the restaurant was closed for renovations, so we wandered around and found a little local restaurant that was probably like a Denny's to the Mexicans--basic food and cheap. I tried something called a "huarache" that was really, really good--it was a thick corn pancake spread with refried beans and covered in green sauce. After dinner, I asked Margaret to order one of the cookies that they were diplaying up front. We couldn't remember the word for cookie in Spanish, and I told her that it was "biscuit" in French. She thought that the Spanish must be similar, so when the waiter came back, she ordered a "biscuit" and specified the one furthest to the left (since those were the sugar cookies that looked particularly good). The waiter looked really confused and couldn't believe that we were only ordering one to share, but Margaret pressed, and the waiter left and came back with, what else, a buttermilk biscuit! We got a good laugh out of it, and felt obligued to eat the biscuit.

Afterward, we made our way back to the hotel, where we got started packing. Everything fit except the obsidian tomahawk. We wrapped it up as well as we could, and decided to just get a box at the airport and check it separately. Well, the next morning at the airport, the airline said they didn't have any boxes that size and that they didn't have a problem with it being in the cabin. Unfortunately when we went through security, they said that the US security would not tolerate it and we could either go back and try to check it or relinquish it. Knowing that it would have been impossible to find a box at 4:30 in the morning in the middle of the airport, we gave up our cool souvenir. At least we had a couple of pictures of it to remember it by. What kind of paranoia have we reached when we're afraid that an Indian is going to take over an airplane with a tomahawk!

Fine print

I just got a refresher course for life lesson 47 in the chapter on purchasing: "if it's too good to be true, it probably is." While in the Mexico City airport, Margaret and I took advantage of the duty free shopping there. There were some great deals--like Mexican vanilla for a few dollars a bottle, or French cigarettes for quite expensive. One thing that caught my attention was a cologne that I really liked. After vacillating for a while, I picked up a small box and saw that it was only $25. Since the other colognes were in the $40 to $80 range, I thought that was is a real bargain and that clinched the deal for me and I decided to get it. Well, this morning while packing for our trip to St. George, I opened up the box to pack it and to my dismay found not a small bottle of cologne but a stick of deodorant! I paid $25 for DEODORANT?!? Sure enough, in a small font in almost the same color as the packaging, the box was unclearly labeled "deodorant stick." And to make matters worse, there's no way I can return the package, being that I got it in ANOTHER COUNTRY! Arg! Now I guess I'll just have to rub the deodorant all over my body in the hopes that it will replicate the effects of the actual cologne, since I checked online and that particular cologne won't be available in the United States for at least a couple more months. Now I know what the crushing disappointment that my Mormon pioneer ancestors found out that they had to colonize Emery County, Utah felt like.

Day Two of the Frequent Flier Diaries

The second day in Mexico City started out a little better than the first one--primarily because we got more than two hours of sleep. We decided to go the easy route and get breakfast at the hotel again. At this point I was still a little leery about eating elsewhere. And once again the food was great (although the lack of Diet Coke forced me to drink coffee (which I don't really care for, but during the middle of a vacation is not the most opportune time for caffeine withdrawals--although I forgot to mention that on the first day, I tried a coffee drink that I'd read about in our guidebook called Caffe Olla, which was coffee that was sweetened and flavored by cinnamon. Upon reading the description, I had to try it and it was AMAZING! Margaret took a picture of me drinking some and I had a completely rapturous look on my face--if you've heard of "Better Than Sex Cake" Caffe Olla is even better than THAT!) Anyway, back to day two. We finished up breakfast and since we wanted to see the Aztec pyramids but didn't want to pay for a personalized tour guide that cost too much and went to several other places that we weren't too keen on visiting--like the Basilica of Guadelope, we went to the tourist information booth and got directions for getting there on bus. The instructions were pretty straight forward and game for saving $80 on tour guide fees, we decided to take the more adventurous route--and I'm glad we did. First off, the city bus to the regional bus station was quite an interesting ride, going through parts of town I would be having a heart attack in if we were on foot. When we got to the bus station, we bought our tickets to the pyramids: 54 pesos for the both of us (About $2.50 each!) The ride out of the city was so eye opening. We got to see the slums of the city and the houses that stretched as far as the eye could see that were almost exclusively built with cinder blocks. Some of them were carefully painted and had beautiful gardens, while others were on dirt roads completely surrounded by trash with only a tarp roof. A couple of times we saw people searching through piles of trash alongside the filthy river that ran through the area. It just blew me away that that abject of poverty could exist so close to America. It was then that it struck me at how much the illegal immigration problem makes sense. Here were people digging through trash holding their babies, scrounging up who knows what just to survive. I'm sure risking life and limb to sneak into the U.S. would seem like nothing after living like that. Despite being completely depressing, it was incredible to see and was actually one of the highlights of the trip for me.

After riding through the suburbs of the city for about 45 minutes, we started getting out into farmland and pastures. The fields of agave (for making tequila) and cactus (which they use in cooking) was quite different from the wheat and lentil fields of Idaho. Soon we could make out in the distance what looked like a small hill, but upon closer approach could see that it was one of the pyramids. I had no idea they were so big, but our guidebook said that the largest of them, the Pyramid of the Sun, has the same base as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, but is only half as high. That still made it over 200 feet high! We entered the park and started the mile-long walk up the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Sun. All along the avanue, there were people hawking items like masks, jewelry, statures, etc. It was like walking a gauntlet to get to the pyramid. And of course they were always taken aback that I didn't speak Spanish, thinking I was Mexican. When we were almost to the Pyramid of the Sun, one of the peddlers tried to sell us these big stone carvings of Aztec figures. Looking at the hundreds of steep steps that we were about to embark on, carrying an additional few pounds was the LAST thing we wanted to do (and by we, I mean ME, since I had the backpack. Climbing up the pyramid was an ordeal--the steps ranged from steep to vertical and fortunately was broken up into several tiers, or our hearts would have burst halfway up. Getting to the top, however, made the effort completely worthwhile. The view was amazing, but more than that, it was surreal to be standing on top of a structure that had been built thousands of years ago and knowing that thousands of people were sacrificed on the very spot we were standing. I have a list of things I want to see and do before I die, and seeing those pyramids was one of them and was an experience that I've wanted to do since I first learned about the Aztecs in grade school.

Walking back to the bus stop, we caved about bought a couple of souvenirs from the peddlers. Margaret bought a very cool obsidian war hatchet that had an obsidian blade at the end of it and had figures of snakes and an Aztec warrior with a carved obsidian face. I got a cool carved obsidian letter opener, but looked enough like a dagger that I was going to tell people it was a replica of the knife used to sacrifice victims to the rain god Tlaloc. We caught the bus back into the city, and I felt completely ridiculous walking around the bus station carrying that tomahawk, but we stuck out as Americans anyway, so I guess we just looked the part. After getting back and cleaning up, we went out to eat at a restaurant recommended in our guidebook that used to be a mansion of one of the conquistadors. It was a beuatiful building and the food was great (although a coke cost 15 pesos and a Diet Coke cost 19--I guess sugar is cheaper than Nutrasweet.

After the long day of riding the bus through the slums of the city and hiking to the top of an ancient Aztec pyramid, we didn't have much energy to do much besides stumble back to the hotel and go to bed.

The adventures and experiences on this day really opened my eyes to the fact that Mexico was a nation of Indians. Throughout the day, I saw many people that looked like tribal members that I know. It was weird, though, how much I could resemble them, yet feel so conspicuous in my clothes, language, and relative wealth. In some ways, I felt more conspicuous in Mexico around people I resembled than I did in Norway, amongst people who were blonde and blue-eyed. I'm sure it was me that was imagining the conspicuousness, too. I guess that's one of the great things about traveling, though; you learn just as much about yourself as you do about the locals. Maybe it was the feeling that a person's situation is so luck-of-the-draw. I could just as well have been born in the slums of Mexico City but through no effort on my part, I was born in the U.S. where I've never know hunger, homelessness, or despair. I certainly made me appreciate our life here in Portland, but it also made me hope for a day when such poverty doesn't exist. Maybe I should take a page from the life of Ché Guevara and help start a revolution!