The Seven Days of (Post) Christmas

I've had some busy trips in my lifetime, but the last seven (eight, now) days have been a whirlwind!


Last week I was down in Peru for Christmas. Christmas is done a lot different down there, with the 24th actually being the day of celebration. Or night, rather. All of the events commence at midnight, starting with watching and launching fireworks from the roof of Erika's house. She has quite a view of the city form the top of her house and just about everyone in Lima is launching fireworks, so it was a crazy light show. Most of the fireworks weren't grandiose and massive like they are on the 4th of July, but the sheer number of people launching them made is impressive.

Following fireworks, we went downstairs and opened up presents and finished up with dinner. By the time we cracked and finished the bottles of celebratory champagne and finished off the plates and plates of turkey, applesauce, Arabic rice, fruit salad, and washed it down with hot chocolate, it was 3:00am! The four bottles of champagne did their job and I passed out really quickly at night!


The next day (the 25th) was a traditional ceviche lunch and several hours of napping :o). Overall, Peru was a pretty relaxing time with just two days that we spent out - one day getting dental work done (two cavities filled and one x-ray: $70), getting hair cuts/coloring (my first "real" hair-cut that was actually styled), and another day that involved Erika getting all of her beauty salon work taken care of while I went to a movie and watched some soccer in the dining area of the mall. Luckily, the films aren't dubbed in Peru, they use subtitles so it was no problem for me!

We took our usual red-eye flight back to New York on Monday night to conclude our short six day trip. The flight was alright except for all of the stupid rules they imposed on the passengers thanks to the retarded terrorist. I don't mind having my whole body fondled and all of my luggage getting searched before getting on the plane (again). But what was stupid was that the flight was freezing and I actually had to use two blankets to keep warm while I was sleeping. And they woke me up an HOUR before we actually landed and took our blankets away! And they wouldn't let us stand up to get sweaters out of the overhead compartment or go to the bathroom. What does that accomplish? Nothing, in my opinion. Turn up the heat and keep the f-in blankets and let me sleep! Then, they turned off the in-flight entertainment forty-five minutes before we landed. I wouldn't have cared if I was SLEEPING, but they had already done their best to wake us all up. If I wanted to blow up the plane with a bomb in my boxers, I still had the six hours of the flight to do it, not just when we are landing.

After leaving our sandals, shorts, and t-shirts behind in Peru, we landed and left the airport at 8:00am and were almost knocked over as soon as we stepped outside the airport. Probably 50mph winds and 18 degrees (that would be Fahrenheit) blasted us and it was a rude-awakening for us that we were back in NYC! The only benefit that I got from this was that I was AWAKE, REALLY AWAKE by the time we got home!

But the day was not done. Later in the afternoon, Sean and Roberta were getting married, and we were going to be the witnesses! It made sense since they actually met at my birthday after we had introduced them together. So Erika and I got dressed up for the City Hall and while we were waiting for them, I was actually thinking about it. I have no idea what a city hall wedding with Sean (the guy who started his own company and dressed in very expensive suits, had a one foot beard for about a year, and who liked to spend a lot of money) and Roberta (completely altnerative life-style Italian, artist, who wears no makeup) would be like. Would they show up in a Limo, a cab, or via subway? Would they dress up for the event in expensive clothes, completely casual, or with some funky outfit? It could have been anything. It turns out that Erika and I

overdressed for the occasion and they actually wore the same casual clothing that they wore when they met each-other!

The wedding went smoothly and quickly, and now I have one-less single friend! Yay! So, let the outrageous celebrations begin! We tried to go to Balthazar, one of the great French institutions of SoHO for dinner but their list was already full for the night. Sean and I went to buy some champagne and he spent $300 on two bottles of it - yikes! With Roberta being preggers, the three of us went ahead and drank a bottle of champagner at their house since it was FREEZING outside. Not having eaten anything all day, we decided to hold off on the second bottle and went to have dinner.  Since they lived around the corner from Balthazar, they actually had a "secret" number to call and we got reservations for an hour later!

We had a fabulous dinner at Balthazar. Wow, what a meal it was. Being in a place like that makes you really feel like you're living the life, with the French wine recommender, the Northern African-French waiters at your beck-and-call, and drinking French bottles of wine from 1988. It was actually quite outrageous, but what the hell, it was Sean and Roberta's wedding and they knew had to live it up!

We had a great time together with them as we always do and the topic of New Years Eve came up. They were going to Washington DC to attend a New Years Party at one of Sean's client's house and invited us to go. The thought had crossed our minds briefly, but the money situation has been tight lately and I kind of decided we better not go, espsecially since the party's theme was "Leather and Lace" and I had neither. Then, they said we could stay at their hotel, which happened to be across the street from and with a view of the WHITE HOUSE (!!!) with them if we wanted and that H&M had leather goods for cheap and most of the museums and sites were free. At that point, it was ON!

The next day (the day before New Year's Eve), I got online and booked $42 round/trip tickets on MegaBus for Erika and I to DC. I couldn't believe that they weren't sold out, but having heard stories about some of these cheap buses, I was really nervous. MegaBus supposedly had nice buses, free in-route Wi-Fi and power supplies, so it sounded like it was worth a try. I also booked a 3.5 star hotel for $70 a night right on Hotwire.com around the corner from Sean's (since they were only staying two nights and we wanted to stay for the weekend). 

The bus ride organizing was my worst nightmare. We got to the pick-up spot and there were probably 1000 people there waiting for different routes and the word from the people there was that everything was way behind schedule and that they had oversold the tickets earlier in the day. And it was FREEZING cold outside still. So we stood around and watched as buses took people away little by little until our bus finally arrived (about an hour late). We didn't really care if we'd arrive late, we just wanted to get on that bus because it was warm and we had a nice hotel waiting for us.

Well, to make a long story short(ish), we made it on the last bus! The ride was super easy, except that being on top of the double-decker luxury liner got us kind of woozy with the rocking motion from the terrible roads and the power sources weren't working at all. I was super psyched up for the trip though and it brought back memories from my 8th-grade spring break trip with the school, the last time I went to DC. I couldn't sleep I was so pumped up (and maybe from the two sips of coffee I had while waiting for the bus) so I so I went ballastic on my little notebook (in the dark):

"My head pressed firmly
  against the artificial
  substance
I ponder, like a 12 year-old
  with his new luggage and
  a deposit in place
Things, certainly they
  have changed in 20
  years, but somehow,
  they are still the same.
1991 coaches had no power
  source that threatened the
  vitality of Google phones and
  laptops. It had ideas, excitement
  and a thirst for exploring
  the agenda presented inside of it.
I'm Prepared,
  like the agenda, but a chasm
  now exists. Backpack, loaded
  like the Christmas suitcase,
  is the key to the weekend.
The memories still exist, though
  this time there will be no
  cool crowd nor mall lunch
  specials."

J. Riley, next up: Washington DC highlights and lowlights!

Urine Luck

There are certain times in ones life when the discovery of a tool leads to inspiration of sorts. Blogging was one of those events back in 2003 or so. After opening my account and remaining dormant for months, I had a back-of-the-cab discussion with Paul, Cathy, and a friend of theirs in town about the crazy city of New York and how there needed to be a way to keep track of places that I wanted to go, events that transpired, and the life that was being lived. It was fairly successful over the years, even if the production line of posts isn't quite like it was in the past.

Recently I was out at dinner with some friends and was learning all about the book of James. It was fascinating and was something that I had yearned for throughout the years that I had been blogging. I hope that the book of James provides another moment of inspiration since I went out and bought something just like the book of James: a pocket-sized faux-leather personal journal. It's great for keeping track of my thoughts, making a note about websites that I need to check back on when I get home, and pretty much anything else that I can think of that needs to be documented.

Thus, it is Christmas Eve and I wish to provide you with a taste of my own book of James. Oh hell no, there's a poem in store for ya'll!

The First Day of (Peruvian) Christmas
    by J. Riley

You're in Luck,
   when the faux-hawk that you rock,
   stands up like a shock
   and when 230v > 110v, I nearly knocked my socks off. 

   The sirens will sounds,
   that there's a new gringa in town.
  The fish will clown
  while her tooth is getting crowned.
  This, with the girl that wore my wedding gown.  

J. Riley, Feliz Navidad! Pictures that go along with the linguistic art above will have to wait until I get back to NY...

Thanksgiving Week: The Abriged Version

It's been an unprecedented week and a half of greatness around here lately - and it didn't even include computers! Okay, I lied, there was some nerdliss bliss going on as well as some other awesome things. Such as:

• I caved in and took Erika to see a sigh-fi movie (pun intended). I am not the biggest fan of these movies and the thought of paying $30 for tickets and a drink to see "2012" is not ideal. It is, however, acceptable if you watch "2012" and a second movie on her agenda ("New Moon") is conveniently starting right when we walk out of the theater - and a double-feature night was on. Okay, so we were stuck in the first row, but it was too good of a deal to pass up!
• Thanksgiving week is always awesome because it's a short work week and there is plenty of weight to be gained (in the wrong parts). But what makes it even more awesome is when a friend comes to town from Slovakia! Roland rolled into town on Tuesday, and it was on! 
• Roland and I always get into some kind of trouble together, usually involving car accidents. But with no cars in my household, Roland found other ways to accomplish this. I'll spare the details, but suffice to say that bright and early on Thanksgiving morning, I was going across the street to White Castle to see if they had a plunger I could use. They didn't, but luckily the grocery store was open and they did! Why does this stuff always happen on the holidays, just like when I locked myself out of my apartment on the 4th of July, when my super was out of town for two weeks?
  
• Since I am rarely in town during Thanksgiving (unless I'm recovering from jaw-surgery and eating liquids), we made plans to actually fight the crowds and watch the spectacle that is the Macy's Parade in mid-town. And by watching, I mean getting there about 10 minutes before the final float passed by. I'm not a big parade guy, but the other members of my household are, so we hit that. 
• We followed the parade up with a stroll down 5th Avenue and, much to my surprise, many of the stores were already hawking their goods at Black Friday prices. Much to my chagrin, Roland forced us to go into Armani Exchange, which I consider to be one of the least likely places for me to enter due to their ginourmous "A|X" labels on everything they sell. Or so I thought. The place actually rocked my world in terms of style ingenuity. Wow, where has this store been in my life?? I still didn't buy anything, but there was plenty of eyeballing going on in that store. Vas shoved it in my face by modeling in and buying half the store - but at outrageously reduced prices!
• We arrived home and realized that we still had to cook. Ughhh....actually I was in a productive mood so I went to work on prepping the goods and stressing Erika out to the point that she went and took a nap. Rachel Ray promised that it would take only 60 minutes to make this meal and I was dead set on getting it done within an hour and a half - at which I failed! But, damn, did we do well. Of course, I realized at the end that I forgot to make the mashed potatoes, so I put Vas to work grating the 1/2 pound of manchego while I quickly boiled the Yukon Golds and everything came out just perfect. We followed that up by sobering up from the pre-meal aperitif(s) and delicious Hungarian white wine and watching "Pelham 123", which was predictable but alright. 
  

The succulent fowl breasteses

Justin as a sous-chef in 1997 (Italy)                                              vs.                                                 2009 (NY)

• We decided to do the Black Friday thing in Manhattan since Erika and I had to go to the city at the plumber-crack of dawn anyway and Roland wanted to hit the town early and do his shopping. We did marginally well at getting to our appointment on time while Roland worked at his pace and eventually arrived at 11:00 ;o). We all did pretty good at saving some cash and Vas found the caloric love of his life at Pax - Wholesome Foods. But this day is just exhausting here, dealing with the throngs of people fighting for clothes on sale.  I think that Macy's on Black Friday is something everyone should experience once in their lifetime - for the pure frustration of it all.

The first floor at Macy's in Herald Square on Black Friday

• Saturday was our lazy day of recovery from Black Friday. The apartment was trashed, but Roland and I rolled out at about 3:00 to go eat some bagels and leave Erika to her homework. It was nice to have some one-on-one time with the guy that I consider one of my best friends in the world and talk about life and normal random scheisse that we don't get to talk about when we're busy traveling with six other friends to the heights of Machu Picchu, remote beaches in Brazil, or packed into a rental car en route to Berlin for the World Cup final. We strolled around Central Park and returned in time to relax some more and get ready for the evening's main-event at a world-renowned night club - Pacha NYC.
• The last time that Vas and Csilla came to NY, we were too beat to make it to a disco and I promised him that this time would be different. We missed a world-class DJ in David Guetta by one painful day, but the local guy who was spinning that night did the job as we arrived lubricated with Vilmos at around 12:30 at night with two of Erika's friends. The place was hopping and it was definitely one of the most epic nights in recent memory since we didn't return home from "brunch" at Sanford's until almost 6:00am! I realize now that I'm too old for that since I still haven't recovered from that night! 

•  Sunday was Roland's last full day in town and he had some additional items that he needed to purchase before heading home - including a new piece of luggage that he totally got ripped off on in midtown. I probably should have mentioned that he can negotiate on those prices before he wiped out the credit card. This thing he bought was just completed ridiculous and felt like it would fall apart without even putting one of his 97 bags (give or take a few) of Abercrombie & Fitch clothes in it. He recovered from that purchase well, however, when we did a final supper of Astoria-fresh sushi at Watawa on Ditmars. The place was packed on a late Sunday night, but it was pretty good stuff, even if it wasn't as good as the first sushi place he visited shortly after arriving (Bistro 33)
  

J. Riley, after family, friends are the next best thing to have at Thanksgiving!!

Back Online

I just got back home to Lima and am recovering from my wedding, honeymoon, etc. and will share some stories about it all when I feel like it. I get home this weekend on Saturday night, so I will have some time to write about some stuff on Sunday - my day of rest before returning to the boredom of everyday work! Some quick notes about everything though;

1. I was thrilled that those of you who attended the wedding came! I had a great time and I don´t think that the wedding could have gone any better. You can blame Erika for that, she spent a lot of time getting things ready! In my unbiased opinion, it was better than I expected and the best wedding I have been to!
2. We did a couple tours around Lima to show some sites to the gringos and I think it worked out well that way. Renting a bus was definitely the way to go, especially since people got to sit next to new people and by the end of the day trips, everyone knew everyone else, which was just perfect.
3. Like always, I had a lot of fun in Brazil, though the trip was definitely different in style to the other trips. Daniel and Kelly and their family were excellent hosts and showed us Sao Paulo, the Carneval parade in Sao Paulo (AMAZING!), and the beach town of Peruibe, where we spent hours talking by the pool, drinking beers, barbequing, trying to find places not overwhelmed by Paulistan tourists (impossible during the Carneval holidays), and walking through the flooded streets up to my knees (or higher)

So, stay tuned. Pictures and videos will have to wait since my camera is staying in Peru for one more week with the lady of the house!

J. Riley, and I´m spent!

Thanksgiving Week: Barber Shop

Ahhhh, Thanksgiving week: A time for cold weather, hanging out with the family, shopping, and eating an inappropriate amount of delectable treats and meals given your body mass. It happens every year for me, with little exception. There were some minor logistical differences this year, in addition to the fact that I didn’t eat any turkey.

This year, not unlike last year, I took a few days off and migrated south in search of warmer weather. Like always, I found it in Lima, Peru where my wife had been for the month, planning our wedding. We had plans to fly up to the northern city of Cajamarca (historical note: it was the city where the Incas first made contact with the Conquistadors in the 16th century) and experience the distinct culture there and visit her extensive family that still lived in the area after both of her parents had moved away to the big city of Lima. But before we left, we had a day to kill.

One of Erika’s, like most girls I suppose, favorite things to do was to go to get her hair cut by her gay hairdresser and get her nails and toes done at the beauty salon. You could spend about three hours at the beauty salon getting full manicures and pedicures and massages done and walk out paying less than $10, it’s so cheap there. She had joked with me a few times that men could be found in such places and that I should give it a try. At risk of being mislabeled, I asked myself, “WWDBD?” Of course I knew the answer to that. David Beckham would get a haircut, a manicure, and a pedicure! I had arrived sufficiently shaggy, without a haircut for a few months and had worn my retainer enough the week before to prevent me from chewing my fingernails until they bled, so I was totally focused on getting a suave new haircut from a gay guy and having beautiful fingers and (maybe) toes when I met her extended family.

The only problem was, we had some errands to do, Liverpool was playing soon, the beauty salon to go to was a good 1.5 hours away on “mass” transit, and we had dinner (more like lunch) plans with some of her relatives nearby. CRAP - all that preparation work for nothing. But I REALLY NEEDED a haircut, and Erika told me I could go to her dad’s local shop to get a haircut. Her dad always looks presentable and I had never been to a, shall we call it, “lower income” barber shop before. So of course I would give it a try. I am generally of the opinion that nobody even notices that you’ve had a haircut except for you, so a “bad” haircut that anybody notices is extremely rare. On top of that, they told me the haircut would cost me S./3. That’s ONE DOLLAR, people. Holy crap, that’s awesome.

So off to the barber I went. Erika went with her mom to exchange some dollars for Soles, and I was actually called up by the cute barber while they were gone. My Spanish skills + her lack of bilingualness + describing how to cut my hair: Not good! Where the heck was Erika and why was she taking so long? Well, somehow I described how I wanted my hair cut and Erika came back shortly to further refine any instructions so all things turned out pretty well. This was the first time that I had gotten a haircut from a barber who actually used scissors – as in the kind you buy at Office Depot – along with the electronic shears. She finished it off with the old fashion shave on the edges – you know, the shaving cream along with a slightly dull, possibly rusty, non-disinfected straight edge. It was quite awesome and a decent haircut to boot. When I finished, I looked down at the few morsels of blond hair clumped together on the floor with all the black/dark brown hair with pride and threw down S./ 5 ($1.66) for a job well done.

J. Riley, this is the first half of the first day? I've gotta lot of writing to do!

Bux Town Wedding

So Erika and I are going to my friend Jeff's wedding down in Charleston, SC in October. Last I checked, it's now August and somehow I hadn't arranged all of my travel plans yet - what's happening to me!!! Last week, I checked the flights down there and they were a whopping $274 each for a direct flight. Doing the math for flight and hotel, I was looking at a grand. Geez, and I'm having a hard enough time paying for my own wedding!

Anyway, I checked flights later in the week only to almost gouge my eyes out when I saw how much flights were now going for. Is this possible? I considered a 12-hour road trip in a rental car but for a weekend trip that's quite a haul and with gas and rental car prices, I'd probably come out even.

So last night, I started the great search for reasonable flights and ended up booking them to Charlotte for $200 a pop. Pretty reasonable price, but that's still a four hour drive to Charleston. So, I decided to use something I've never tried before: Priceline.com . I actually bid $14 for a rental car and got it accepted! With all their scam fees and taxes, it's going to be $100 for the weekend, but that's not bad. Plus, I'm taking a day off on Friday for the flight and drive and it'll be October so the drive should be beautiful. Monday is Colombus Day and is a holiday for me, so that'll be a four-day weekend for us in what is supposedly lovely, historic Charleston, SC.

J. Riley, finally I'll be getting my long-desired road-trip, long weekend. Too bad it's not until October!

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage....

They go together like a horse and carriage. As do a few too many shots of jet-fuel grade tequila and a hangover, which I woke up with on my wedding day. As I contemplated the previous night that morning, and unsuccessfully tried to remember any part of the drive back to my house, I realized that maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do since I now had bags under my eyes and barely looked awake. Oh well, there was plenty of time left in the day.

The crowd of guests for my wedding started arriving at our house in the morning. And by "crowd", I mean my grandparents who made the two hour drive down from Sacramento. As I started to think about the nights plans, I realized that this ceremony would be unusual for a wedding. In fact, I don't think I've ever even heard of a wedding that would be like mine, for this would be a "surprise" wedding. Like a surprise birthday, except it was a ceremony where you're dedicating your life to another person. But I honestly had NO idea what was in store for the night.

My mom had done all of the planning and had actually resisted any of my feeble attempts to understand the schedule of events of the night would be. I imagine that for most people, this might not be a concern. But I'm kind of a schedule-control freak, as anybody who has traveled with me can attest. I think that this Teutonic aspect of my character is why I have always gotten along so well with Germans throughout my life :o)! In any case, I was a *little* uncomfortable about not knowing what was going on, but I know my mom can organize a party as well as anyone and had been working tirelessly on organizing it, so I tried not to worry about it.

After lunch with Stefan, Roland & Csilla, Erika, and Graham, Erika and I went up to the winery where our "reverend" works so that we could actually, ironically, talk about what the plan was for the ceremony in two hours. Ok, as I write this, I'm thinking that maybe I'm not as much of a schedule-control freak as I at first thought. So he got to meet Erika, we got to talk about the night's plan, and my nerves started to get a tingling sensation for the first time. Not good! But I was okay after a few minutes and knew that if I don't have that sensation, then I wouldn't be taking it seriously!

We drove back down the hill and, in another wonderful display of being a schedule control freak, after picking up some things for the wedding, I decided that maybe I should get a trim on my hair with the wedding starting in like an hour. I got that done and then headed home so that I could shower, shave, put on my makeup, etc. etc.

We arrived at the house and it was a whirlwind. Somebody that my mom knew was there to present us with our wedding guest book, which was very nice and had a personal touch - even if I didn't know who this lady was! Interestingly, since we only have two bathrooms at my house, everyone was getting ready for the wedding except me and Erika - because all the bathrooms were occupied :) . That's cool, everyone else was dressed up and I'm walking around in my shorts and sandals still! But, eventually we got into the bathroom to get ready...

J. Riley, to be continued...tomorrow? Maybe, we'll see!

House Parties and Holidays and Homicides, Oh My!

I've been getting verbally body-slammed about the fact that I had absolutely no time to update my blog while I was in Peru and I've been so busy in the one, err.....two weeks I've been back that I haven't been able to update my blog. Or, I haven't created the time to update el blogo. So, here's a run-down, bulleted style for Cathy.

A. Conclusion to Peru

1. My parents arrived in Peru about five days after the party. Erika and I showed them around the city, going to the downtown area and running around town trying to find the best food to eat in the short amount of time that we had. Sometimes things don't go as planned and you end up finding the best surprises that way, such as the ceviche restaurant that we went to on their second day there. Because of an earlier delay, our lunch schedule got pushed back...to about 5:00! We ran around Lima spending a good hour and a half and $8 in cab fares and found all three of the places that we wanted to eat at closed. We ended up on a quiet street (Nueva York St., as it were) eating at an awesome place in a small corner with the most AMAZING ceviche I've ever had. There are pictures of the food on my picture site.
2. On Saturday, we did a meeting of the families by having lunch at Erika's family's house. I should have known when I was instructed to wear pants to the event (though it was hot and sunny outside) and told to bring my proposal speech in Spanish. But, I was foolish enough to think that I'd get away easy with the proposal the week before. Oh no, I had to do the thing ALL OVER AGAIN, and worse yet, it was in front of HER parents, MY parents, her aunt, and her cousin! It's nerve wracking enough proposing, but to have to do it twice, in front of everyone? I really didn't want to, but in the end it was the right thing to do, the traditional thing to do. And I was happy that her dad was there this time around! Her mom made an amazing lunch for us and I could tell that it was a big event for them, as it was for my parents. Despite the language barrier, we could all somehow communicate and everyone had so much fun, laughing at the pronunciation of my dad's name: "Doug? Like Hot Dog? We call that 'pancho' in Spanish", and a new nickname for my dad was borne!
   
3. That night we took their, and my, parents to Brisas de Titicaca, a show demonstrating many of the traditional dances of Peru. Dancing is a big part of their culture and in a country steeped with so much history and ancient civilizations, it was fun to see. Her dad had never even been to the show, so it was fun that they could dress up for a night and have fun out on the town, something they don't normally get to experience.
   
4. I went to Cusco again! Despite being there twice before, I wanted to take Erika and my parents since they hadn't been there before.
   
5. The first day, we sucked down the mate de coca tea (from which cocaine is made) to help give us relief from the 12,000 feet altitude. The second day we wandered around slowly and met up with an acquantince that I had met the year before. She took a 2-hour bus ride to meet us and show us around town to some places I hadn't even seen before. We got the local tour of the giant market place with all the fresh food, some typical streets, some ancient buildings from the Incas, and ended up at the Inca fortress Sachsahuayman (sp.) at the end of the day before taking our guide to a fancy dinner before her bus left. We are very greatful to her for her time!
6. The second day, we had a private tour of the Sacred Valley, Pisaq, and Ollyatatumbo. We had a great deal from a tourist company for the trip, paying $60 for the day. Well, you get what you pay for! We had a tour guide who's English was poor and who basically knew very little. I was a better tour guide based on my previous trips than he was! The hiking around the Pisaq ruins brought back memories of my first trip with my friends, but this trip will always remind me that my dad is in way better shape than me, trudging up the hills carrying his tripod and massive SLR camera on his shoulder! I didn't do too bad on the hills, Erika was surpisingly fit (it must be her Inca lungs!), and even my mom did all of the hills!
   
7. The third day was the long trip to Machu Picchu on the train, leaving at 6:30am. Machu Picchu is not something you can get old of, but note to self: next time pay the $50 and hire a guide! You really can't appreciate everything without a guide telling you what each piece means. We got stuck on an early (and more expensive) train home but it wasn't a bad thing because it had started raining and you couldn't see anything after that. Next time, I recommend staying in Aguas Calientes (the town below the mountain) for at least a day so you can get a whole day on the mountain!
8. The fourth day, which I was bracing for the whole week, turned out to possibly be my favorite day - since I've seen all the tourist stuff before. The day of shopping! My wallet was already light from the trip and my mom had been teaching Erika the art of spending-your-significant-other's-money all too well. We ended up aimlessly wandering around the San Blas neighborhood of Cusco looking at jewelry shops and clothing stores, finding amazing views of the city, quiet, scenic cobblestone streets, a few good deals and unique items, and more than one hippyish cafes to stop and have some corn-based chicha morrada to drink. I didn't mind spending money on some of the jewelry, purses, and other things for Erika, she deserves it all and I loved shopping with her.
   
9. The next day, we headed back to Lima and bid my parents goodbye as they travelled back to the states. It was a very fun trip with them, like always, and it's good to know that they appreciate the gem that I have in this girl and that she loves them as much as they love her!
   

B. House Parties

1. Five days after I got back, Melissa had a small house / dinner party to celebrate my engagement! Everyone wanted all the details about my trip and to know about what's going to happen in the future with our wedding!
2. Speaking of weddings, I didn't have many of your email addresses in my email address book! If you didn't get my "guaging the interest of attending my wedding March 28th, 2009 in Lima, Peru", you might want to send me an email so that I can invite you! If you don't know my email address, send an email to my parents, who will forward on to me. I don't publish my email address for many reasons.....nevermind, I don't have time to digress on information security!

C. Holidays

1. Monday was St. Patrick's Day, the day for drinking significant quantities of beer, wearing lots of green, and eating too much marginal corned beef and cabbage. Paul brought up a good point: why should we go eat marginal Irish food just for the holiday's sake? Why not go out for a good dinner?
2. Good point Paul! So, it was off to the Meatpacking District, and under-appreciated neighbohood in our culinary repository, where we ate "Pan-African" food at Merkato 55 and dessert at the neighboring Italian, former-butcher-warehouse restaurant. Naturally, we had a lot of fun and had a few Irish beverages to boot!
3. Sean Murphy, as Irish as he name indicates, was conveniently born on St. Patrick's Day, so last night we celebrated his birthday with a "company party" (i.e. I don't have to pay nothing) at his Williamsburg, Brooklyn neighborly beer garden Radegast. They served up some wicked wursts, had a plethora of stellar imported beers including a rare breed of Schlenferla Rauchbier from Alex's town of Bamberg in Germany. The dinner was marginal, but the beers were great and the Hipster/Jewish music band was certainly interesting.
   

D. Homicides

1. As in, there was one. Close to me.
   
2. The scene: My apartment in the Bronx.
3. The situation: Me, Melissa and Jonathon were waiting for the crew to show up for our dinner party. Then, out of nowhere, we hear BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG very close to our apartment, followed by screeching tires and a minute later, sirens. The crew entered our apartment a minute later, having been in our elevator on the way to our apartment! We rubbernecked out of our 11th floor apartment and heard many sirens from the po-po and ambulances show up right next to our apartment.
4. The Resolution: The next day, we see on the news that a 19 year-old was shot three times in the chest and were looking for suspects! Today, I saw a HOMICIDE poster in the subway station with the suspect's mug-shot.
5. What did I do with that list of people that were going to visit me??
   

J. Riley, caught up, mostly!

Salazar Family Reunion

After completing the important business of my first day in Peru, we met up with Erika's friends Ketty and Renzo to go to the beach for a little bit to pass the rest of the day before the family reunion party later that night. Beaches tend not to be the best place to reserve strength for a booze fest that will last until the next morning after a red-eye flight down the previous night and an emotionally draining event, but what the heck. Maybe I'm too used to my short trips down here and trying to squeeze everything possible into a day....

Anyway, we headed out to the beach, stopping at a cevicheria near the beach for a little lunch first. Ceviche is a collection of wonderful seafood dishes that is essentially raw fish, clams, etc. that are doused with lime juice, spices, and red onions. The acid in the lime juice actually "cooks" the fish so that it isn't raw like sushi, but isn't really cooked. It's absolutely a must-try and I love to eat the stuff.

After chilling late in the afternoon on a beach that had a club nearby that was blasting club music over the sand, we headed home to rest up for the night. I believe that I took a nap, but I know that at around 9:00pm, we headed down Erika's street to try to find a taxi that would take us way across town to this place where the party was. I had absolutely know idea what it would be like, but I actually mentally drew a pretty accurate picture for once. Being in Peru, it was naturally partially outdoor, which is critical considering how hot and cigarette-filled clubs can be. I found out later that it wasn't actually a purely-Salazar family reunion, in fact anyone could attend that wanted to (if they bought a ticket). It was more of a carnival celebration of Cajamarcan culture. Cajamarca is a city in northern Peru where Erika's family is from and, incidentally, was where the Spanish conquistadors first met and decimated the Incas. But I won't go off on that tangent right now :o).

The reunion was composed of live-music playing traditional "huayno" music (I was briefly taught how the dance worked earlier in the day), hordes of Salazars (there are 14 brothers and sister's in Erika's dad's family, plus their spouses, kids, girlfriends and boyfriends, nieces, etc. ) who had taken the 18 hour bus rides down from Cajamarca or other parts of northern Peru and basically none of them spoke much English - at least until later in the night after the beer had been flowing and a about two of them spoke a few words. There was a selected/elected King and Queen of the party, amazing demonstrations of traditional dancing (marinera and huayno) by nine-year-olds, and beer, lots of beer.

In the midst of all of this, I think I violated almost all sanitary policies that could possibly be violated. I hadn't brought my bottle of Purell, I wasn't about to use the sinks in the bathrooms, and, best of all, was the way that the beer was drunk. People would buy cases of beer at a time that came with a single small plastic cup. People would kind of stand around and, after first opening the bottle of beer with their teeth (maybe that's why there are so many teeth missing here :oS ), they would take the bottle, pour a little bit of beer into the cup and pass the bottle along as a "toast". Then drink the beer in the cup, emptying the little bit of beer, backwash, and spittle left at the bottom after you down it, and pass the cup to the guy with the bottle, who would do the same. This happened ALL-NIGHT-LONG. We're talking about 8 hours! I was definitely impressed by how these people hold their liquor as it was the most beer I've seen drunk since my days at German beer festivals back in the day.

The beer also loosened everyone up so that it didn't matter if we didn't speak the same language, it was the perfect way to meet their family :o) . When Eri and I were "invited" to join a particular group of younger people, we finished our food, bought a case of beer (it was about $20 for the case), and brought it over, only to find that there were already two full cases there waiting to be drunk. And, indeed, it was drunken in short time! Interestingly enough, sometime around the time that the third case was being finished, I found my dancing shoes and sense of rhythm and did my twirling and stepping on feet with old ladies and girls alike.

One of the last events of the night was something I haven't seen before. There was a giant tree branch stuck into the ground and at the top there were "branches" and netting with a bunch of random clothes and plastic buckets and a bunch of other random things stuck the net. I guess it's sort of their version of a pinata, because when the branch was finally uprooted out of the ground, people went nuts for the stuff in the nets. I was definitely confused by this tradition but it was interesting to see. I think that people genuinely value the items for their utility, not just for the carnival value. How different me as probably the only gringo to ever attend this party sees the value of these items compared to the locals!

By six o'clock in the morning, I was basically destroyed so it wasn't a problem convincing me to head home. Apparently I had made some "amigos" at the party (some that Erika didn't even know) and apparently the family really enjoyed dancing and drinking with me, as I did as well.
It was quite a great, local event!

J. Riley, I had a splitting headache the next day :o)

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, the Story

I arrived in Lima on Saturday morning with my flight delayed thanks to a Customs issue in the USA (whatever that means!). I slept decently well on my overnight flight down there, which was a requirement because the first two days in Lima were going to be crazy because I was going to be attending her family reunion party that starts that night at 9:00pm and ends sometime around sunrise and involves large amounts of cerveza consumption!

I had a wide variety of options available for a proposal. Since we're going to visit one of the seven wonders of the world, Machu Picchu, it would pretty awesome to do it there. Or I could do it when we celebrate our 13 month's "anniversary" this week. Or I could do it AT the family reunion. Or, as I chose, I could do it in the hours before the family reunion, and I had two options there. With a lot of time between when I arrived and the party, I could do it at the beach when we were alone together, which is a little scary if you know what the beaches are like here and how crowded they are. There was also the issue of transporting it to the beach, where I could hide it, etc. Then, at the last minute, I found out that her friends were going to pick us up and take us to the beach with them, so the solidarity became an issue with that plan.

My final option that I thought of a few days ago involved the fact that her parents are very "traditional" and Erika had told me that they wanted me to ask them for permission for her to stay with me in the apartment I'm renting in Lima for the week (which is awesome, by the way). I had asked my friend Russ to translate both this request and my proposal asking them for permission to marry her, which actually occurs AFTER you ask the girl in Peru. So I thought, wouldn't it be funny if I asked for permission for her to stay with me, which Erika expected, and then continue on to ask permission for her to marry me, which she didn't expect? I liked the idea but the fact that her dad wouldn't be there because he was busy organizing the party all day and from what I'd heard about Peruvian proposals, we were supposed to all be together with a nice dinner together, champagne, celebration, etc.

So we were sitting in her living room with her mom and waiting for her friends to pick us up and somehow the subject came up about the fact that we had always called each other "novio" and "novia", which I originally thought meant girlfriend and boyfriend, but I learned later that it actually means "fiancee" :-X ! Oops. She never had a problem with me using it and she always referred to me as her "novio" too. So the three of us were talking about this and laughing a little bit about the fact that "she can't be your 'novia' because she doesn't have a ring on her finger yet, ha ha ha!" Ha ha ha, indeed. Without saying a word, I decided to strike while the iron was hot and went to my room, got out my cheat sheet with my proposal(s) and came back in to read it.

They were both touched by me asking permission about her staying with me and I left a significant pause there for that to sink in before diving into the short proposal, which said to the effect that I was very happy to be a part of the family reunion that would happen that night and I wanted to know if we could celebrate another thing as well. Bling! The only thing I remembered was Erika covering her mouth and her eyes looking huge and her shaking her head. I thought to myself "Is she saying no, not right now, it's not appropriate, this isn't how they do it in Peru"? But I was half way done and wasn't about to stop there to find out! When I finished my translation, she said she didn't understand the last line, which was when I asked for the permission. She didn't understand it until I took the ring and rock out of my sunglasses case :o)

J. Riley, the party story comes next!

Special Report - Happy Holidays!

When home for the holidays, I got plenty of comments from the myriad of relatives that I saw that my blog has become lame because I never update it - my bad! This is a somewhat true statement and I have no excuse really. Sure, the Bronx isn't exactly the kind of environment that influences my creativity or makes me the envy of my loyal readers, but there is plenty of time for me to sit and think up here, especially since there is nothing to do except ride a half-hour to the city or go to the gym. But, I made the choice to live up here for a reason, I just gotta do what I can to continue motivating myself I guess!!

But the new year has come. Maybe it's time for me to turn the proverbial leaf and try to write more. We'll see what happens!

After today, the holidays are officially over. My holidays were a good way to end a year that has touched both highs and lows, from my introduction to a special person in my life to the introduction of difficult health circumstances that I will have to deal with in the coming year. But I suppose that this is life and it is what everyone has to appreciate or deal with.

I spent the Christmas season in California getting a chance to visit many of my relatives, some for the first time. We had a good four days of Christmas this year, with fantastic food on Saturday at my grandparent's house, a Christmas tradition at my grandma's house next door with all of the relatives from my dad's side of the family, a Christmas-eve traditional crab feast at my house, and then a Christmas traditional leg o' lamb meal at my house. It was fairly quiet around my house this year since it was just my family who was around, but that's not a bad thing. My dad and I got to do a grueling two-hour hike up in the hills around my house, my mom and sister and I got to do some "shopping", and my remaining Los Gatos friend and I got to do some nerdy server and web photo album setup (stay tuned for details on that!).

Unfortunately, I had to miss out on my sister's 21st birthday bash because of my work schedule, but the lack of anyone around the office gave me time to finish up paperwork and also to prepare for the upcoming trip to Peru at the end of February for myself and my parents, with whom Erika and I will travel to the wonderfully historic and cultural capital city of the Inca's, Cusco. With this paperwork completed, hopefully Erika can be with me next year at this time and get to meet everyone!

For New Year's, I joined in on the annual traditional pub crawl, this year starting in Little Italy and wondering up into the East Village. We started at the Australian establishment Eight Mile Creek before stops at the dive Tom & Jerry's, DBA, Three of Cups (where we celebrated the New Year) , and the pinnacle of the evening, The Bourgeois Pig. This is a place that I had always wanted to visit but never actually made it to, so the fact that we happened to come across it on our pub crawl made it especially nice. We sat at the aristocrat location of the place and drank our drinks in awesome little metal goblets and ordered a Bailey's chocolate fondue that came with an assortment of fruits to dip. It was definitely the high spot of the evening and capped a wonderful holiday season!

J. Riley, Good Luck to all in the new year!

The Recovery

I guess last weekend caught up to me after all, I've come down with a nice little head cold that is driving me crazy. New Year's Eve was pretty fun (see the pictures below), we ended up hanging out downtown in TriBeCa hitting up dive bars, Being John Malkevich sized bars, authentic Japanese karaoke bars, and capping the night off with a 3:00am Corner Bistro burger that was damn tasty at that hour.

For reasons unexplained (I'm sure it had nothing to do with the Hypnotiq drinks at the karaoke bar) we were given an extra hamburger and I decided that I would definitely polish it off because I was so hungry. These are monster burgers though, and after finishing the first, I dove into the second and only finished "half" (debatable!) of the sucker. The meat is the girth of a burger, and if I finished at least half the meat, I think that that should count, though my friends didn't exactly agree with my assessment and calculations. Nonetheless, I was going to finish that burger, so I got a doggy bag, packed the meat up, and took it home to feast up the following morning in a delicious omelet (sp.). Now that I think about it....a hamburger omelet? That kind of sounds disgusting. What was more disgusting was waking up four hours later with your stomach chock-full of meat and your throat cooking like a Weber grill from the burger-generated heartburn. Suffice to say that the burger is still in my fridge and I don't think I'll be making that omelet anytime soon :o/....

The rest of the week has been so busy that my new exercise regimen has been relegated to at-home workouts only. Tuesday and Wednesday I had a major headache that I believe was caused by the rubber bands in my mouth. I noticed on Wednesday that when I took them out to eat dinner, my head didn't bother me. But when they were in all day and night, I think they were causing a small stress fracture in my skull. Yea, I'm looking forward to getting these things off. Every day a different part of my jaw or a tooth hurts, so I know that they are moving something around. I hope that I've been putting them on the right teeth this whole time! :ox

Wednesday we went up to Melissa's for some awesome homemade enchiladas, rice, and beans and Thursday was a post-holiday party with my former boss that he was invited to. He's a funny Israeli when you get a few drinks in him and he starts talking to geek-product vendors about his opinions and views as a security professional :o) . I could learn a few things from him...

J. Riley, and tonight there will be rest (I hope)

Feliz Años!

Well, another year done, another year to look forward to in the center of the universe!

Although I make a point of not making New Year's resolutions, I am making a more committed effort to going to the gym more frequently, starting last week when Summer took me to her school's wonderful gym and put me through a few painful runs on some weights. I came home on Tuesday night and attended a fitness class on Thursday like I used to do back in the past. I also hit the gym on Saturday (!!) and gasped at the lack of proper equipment for my body sculpting, but hopefully that won't hold me back too much. I guess some of the equipment is working because I'm having intense pain in a new area of my lats and in the front of the elbow joint :o/ ....

Friday night I finally caught up with an old co-worker friend of mine who has been in the city for his masters since August but has neglected my phone calls or has generally not been able to meet up with me because of his course requirements. So I met up with him and his girlfriend for a drink and catching up downtown. With my yet unscheduled impending relocation down to 10th Street, we headed down in that direction and ended up at my favorite bar, the 11th Street Bar. It happens to be where the Liverpool Support Club meets up whenever a game is played and I actually haven't been there at night to check it out, but I've now found my local joint of choice. This place was totally local, playing some jazzy music in the hazy, wooden back room and being a very neighborhood-y place in the center of the Village, which is typically overrun by NYU kids.

Sean had friends in town who stopped by as well and Sean was tossing the idea of taking some other visitors who were in town to SOB's for dinner, and that got my brain in motion for a night of Latin dancing on what was a three-day weekend (i.e. I could go out late on Saturday, sleep in Sunday, and still get back on schedule in time for work to resume on Tuesday). So I gathered the masses and we decided to meet up there at around 10:00-11:00 Saturday night. As usual, I got there way too early and arrived at almost exactly 10:00, when it was still pretty much dead with people finishing their dinner and listening to the salsa music over the dance floor. I pretty much hung out alone (in the corner) near some Latin ladies that had come in at the same time as me and admired their ability to dance with some form of rhythm. Eventually, I broke out of my shell and struck up a conversation with one and then the others, finding out that one of the three was fresh off the boat from the Dominican Republic and the other two were her friends from the same. By the time my friends had arrived, I was enjoying my new dance partners and suffice to say that it was the most awesome night dancing ever. I had three legitimate dance partners the whole night for the axe, samba, salsa, and electronic latin music. I think epic would be a good word to describe it!

About my new "friend" that people seem to want to know about, let's just leave it as that. Friends. I have nothing new to report on that front, but the idea of a lovely Dominican Spanish/English language partner who lives ten blocks away from me sounds interesting. We'll see what happens after this weekend!

J. Riley, I am so ready for the Peruvian discotheques!

Back to the Liquid Diet?

Yesterday, I got the annoying wire with the hooks taken out of my mouth, which makes eating and talking much more comfortable. Unfortunately, this feeling of freedom and comfort only lasted for a few minutes as I was told that I'd be getting rubber bands that I need to wear for the next five weeks :o|. Besides making my mouth immobile, by dinner time last night I realized that my mouth was in more pain than I was after my surgery! My teeth are killing me, I hope that they settle down in the next few days because eating is just not something I look forward to at the moment.

Last week was the annual holiday party at work, which I was looking forward to (free food and drinks? Sign me up!) . Since I've been in consulting the last few years, I typically don't attend holiday parties and I know that there are always lots of good "day-after" stories filled with juicy gossip and bloodshot eyes, so I was definitely going to attend this one. It was held at the Grand Hyatt in Grand Central station and there were probably about 1500-2000 people in attendance. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), none of my work buddies were going to be attending, so I figured I'd just show up, get the free dinner, and then take off. Then I found out that one of the guys I went out to Little Columbia with was going, which meant that the night could end up being pretty fun after all. And it was - and the next morning I had a quite a reputation as being the salsa dancer in my department ;o). I don't know if I would have gone that far, but I'll take what I can get!

This weekend some of Paul and Cathy's friends were in town and I was part of the entertainment package, so we took them out for Portuguese (one of them has family there) food
at Alfama on Friday and capped the night with the nearby Magnolia Bakery, savoring some of their amazing banana pudding and plethora of seasonal cupcakes. I couldn't stay out late because of an early Liverpool game on Saturday morning, not to mention the fact that I had my volunteer activity for the month all lined up - ice skating in Central Park. The game turned out to be good (since they won) and ice skating was awesome, one of the best events I've had with this group yet.

I was basically exhausted after expending so much energy on the ice in the early afternoon so I crashed at home, watched "Seven" on DVD, and took a nap before the evening began. I met up with Cathy and her friends and we headed downtown to The Back Room, a hidden speak-easy that isn't so hidden by the masses anymore, but is still worth a trip. After downing a couple there, we headed up the block to meet up with Alan and Andrea and friends who were out celebrating their friend Liz's engagement. We coerced them to meet up with us at China 1, which I had heard was one of the new East Village hot-spots for dancing and lounging. We even got Sean to meet up with us, since he lives across the street from the place. I can't wait to move down to the East Village....

J. Riley, my desired apartment on 10th Street became available while I was in CA for Christmas and was already snapped up :o(

Tis The Season...

...for Atkins diet treason (what else rhymes with season?)! Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and let me tell you (although Susannah already did) that there was no shortage of carbs in my dinner this year - even turkey didn't make the cut because it doesn't have enough carbs (and I was feeding a vegetarian and and a mush-puppy). We're talking about creme fraiche mashed-potatoes, sweet potato soup, Stove Top stuffing (only the best for this tummy), homemade cranberry sauce with equal parts water and sugar, and gravy that resembled refried beans, which must have a lot of carbs (maybe the missing ingredient was part of the problem). But it was pretty darn good for a thrown together meal. And not to forget the half-pint of Ben & Jerry's oatmeal cookie dough ice cream for dessert (yea, I bought that later Susannah). I highly recommend inheriting high metabolism and having jaw surgery (I can't really milk that one anymore though ;o) !

I topped off the nice evening with a wine-induced comatose nap during a recorded Miami Ink - I'm loving that show. Tatoo in the near future? "Yes, I would like to get a dragon that morphs into a kettle-ball around this bicep to represent the transformation from being a skinny guy into this hulk of a man that I am now (in about a year I'll be able to say that). Every morning I can look down at my bicep and admire the muscle and remember the effort that it took for me to start doing 100 pushups and 50 lbs of kettle-ball lifts (??) a night." Then I woke up. And then I got something stuck in my eye that made my eyes water during Mad Hot Ballroom (Netflick it). Yes, I am that beastly man with the dragon tattoo.

Frugalitarian. This is the Bushism-adjective that I came up with tonight somehow to describe myself. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I've had $40 in my wallet for two weeks and still haven't spent it all. Or maybe because today's Black Friday and I'm wishing that I went down to Best Buy last night in the 35 degree, raining weather and stood in line so that I could get a $250 laptop that I have little or no use for. In any case, it is a big shopping week and I made the most of the sales by buying an assortment of cotton sweaters from Mexx (cotton doesn't keep you warm in the winter, but still) and a plethora of goods from the old standby, H&M - uniquely selected goods with little-or no-chance of shrinkage or stretchage...stretchege...stretching. Like $5 thinsulate-lined gloves for this winter, $12 multi-colored 50% wool scarves, and the elusive $5 white belt that I've been searching for for the past two+ years. At the same time, in the spirit of Christmas, I began trying to find websites to spend my money on Liverpool gear, like this one. The retro items and the new Adidas long-sleeve (Carra-style) jersey are certainly eye-catching. As are the damn-fine Pumas on Kitbag's website. Decisions, decisions...

Although I don't entirely agree with Susannah's anti-consumerism attitude during the holidays (stated while wearing the trendiest of trendy expensive jeans - five finger special or not ;o), I heretofore declare once again that I do not want ANYTHING for Christmas - except for Mom's coat-pole thing which I agreed to accept and see as a valuable investment. And a new pair of High Sierra pajamas (the current pair only have a hole in one the knees, but I'm willing to take the preemptive measure and get a new pair). And dryer sheets (I'm almost out). Other than that, I'm traveling light this year. Got it?

J. Riley, yum and yum.