Deal....Or No Deal??

This weekend was full of amazing deals...or no deal??

• Deal: Ever since getting a newly styled haircut in Peru, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do when I need another haircut. Do I got back to my $10 barber and have them attempt to recreate the genius, or do I (acckkkk!!!) try a new hair stylist, randomly choosing one of the throng of hair stylist on my block. I hate going to new hair places, who knows if it'll end up like a mop chop-shop, similar to the plethora of the car variety that we have in the hood. I found one that looked reputable, and the haircut was $15, not bad! So I went for it!
• ....Or No Deal? It was disastrous. First of all, the lady didn't hardly speak any English, wish isn't a problem for me except that she didn't understand what I wanted. In Peru, the lady didn't speak English, but she went to town and my five hairs looked like a work of art. This lady decided to use a hair trimmer and cut it super short in one spot and asked Erika "Is this hair long enough?" What? What, if it's too short (and it was) should I have her use a longer trimmer so it's all uneven? I didn't see the back of my head, but Erika was on the verge of tears and started telling the lady how bad it looked, and she just kept saying "it's because his hair is blonde." Uhh, no it's not. It's because it looks like crap.  Eventually, the owner of the place (who actually knew how to cut hair) came over to finish off my hair cut and make the wife (and me) somewhat happy, although the damage was already done. Erika tells me it looks fine now, but I think she's lying ;o).
• Verdict: DEAL. $15 is still cheap for a haircut and I know nobody noticed my hair (other than the lack of it).

• Deal: Last year, Erika was in search of some boots to keep her feet warm and dry during our brutal winter. We couldn't find anything even remotely affordable. Everything was over $200 and we eventually found some boots (not waterproof) that were somewhat affordable, but they are just leather and not exactly warm with sub-zero (C) temperatures. I saw some interesting boots at Clarks the other week, so while we were out we stopped by there and we found some boots that she loved! They are different than her typical medium-height, Brazilian-style heel, boots that she wears, but they were both waterproof and real-fur lined (and not Fugly Fuggs). They are from Canada and should do the trick for sure - all for $109!!!! Recession shopping at its best!
• ....Or No Deal? They didn't have her size. So we bought a half-size bigger and she was satisfied enough, until we got home and she realized they are just too big for her. We went to another Clarks store, but they didn't have her size either. Was this boot love story going to have a sad ending?
• Verdict: DEAL! The store said they would order her boots in her size and have them shipped (for free!!) to our house. And since the boots were just over in Queens, they should arrive shortly, hopefully in time for the impending snow-storm.    

• Deal: I found out that it is possible that insurance may cover a portion of the Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis lab testing. This will insure that any offspring that we have are Myotonic Dystrophy free, which is a relief.
• ....Or No Deal? The place that I got stuck with doing the testing is Out-of-Network. My Out-of-Network deductible is $3000. Ouch...
• Verdict: It's a lot of cash, but in the long run this is more important than cash. DEAL!

• Deal: 25% off at Banana Republic led to the resumption of shopping at my mecca for some badly-needed pants for work. I got a good five years out of a couple pairs of my pants and they were looking ragged and weren't fitting so hot. I did my due-diligence by checking out some pants at other places, but honestly I couldn't find any good deals on pants that didn't require tailoring for them to fit me. Not only that, but Erika found a nice wool layering sweater on the clearance rack. Not her favorite color, but it'll help keep her warm this winter.
• Verdict: DEAL. No qualms about this one, they were a great deal for pants that look hot and that fit my like a glove.

• Deal: My neighbors were moving out (I think) and ditched a cheap, light-weight, black coffee table at the curb. And what do New Yorkers do best? Go dumpster diving and pick up perfectly good things that are waiting to be picked up and delivered to one of the local landfills. The vacuum machine that I dragged all the way home from Jackson Heights (on the subway and bus) didn't end up working, but this table? AWESOME! Our TV no longer lives on a chair, it's on a sweet, perfect black coffee table. 
• Verdict: Duh, it was free and perfect and only had to be carried from downstairs to my apartment. DEAL!

Saturday was a great day, with all these deals, the fact that Liverpool beat their local rivals in a feisty match to continue their resurgence of form (finally), and that Saturday night we went out to the Sounds of Brazil (SOB's) nightclub for some Samba and Reggaeton dancing and drinks for one of our Dominican friends. Top top it off, we ate dinner at Pio Pio, which we haven't been to for a while. Alan and Andrea, this was a day for you!

Sunday, duh, was Super Bowl Sunday. With the real football over for the weekend, I got invited to the Bronx, but coerced Melissa to come down here since we could watch the commercials in HD. But Erika wanted to go to New Jersey. To a Chili's (where one of her friends works and invited us). Chili's + New Jersey = bad combination. Well, either of the two alone is bad enough, but a combination of them both is just vomit-inducing due to my snobbishness attitude. Thankfully, the other girl who was going to be the Jersey tour-guide had a vicious  hangover and wanted to hang out with us instead! Rather than waiting on hold to place pizza orders, we stocked up on Trader Joe's Rustic Italian Flat-bread and made some sweet homemade pizzas for us and our guests.


J. Riley, Overall, I can't complain about this weekend! Next topic will be about my latest addiction: KeyPass! The best way to protect your online accounts from getting hacked due to your weak passwords! :o)

We've Got Worms

Actually, they are more like visitors. After not having anyone visit me in the last few years after the initial rush, Summer and Mom & Dad have all visited us in lovely Astoria. Now, we've got Vas confirmed on a flight to come here for a week during Thanksgiving (my second Thanksgiving since I've been here, and my first where I can actually eat solid food) and on Saturday, Leif said "Hey what are you doing next weekend? I think me and my girlfriend will fly out to visit next week if you're around!" Uhhh...OF COURSE! It's about time! Anyone else? I would love to have to actually put a calendar to use to fill the vacancies on our futon!

If you're thinking about visiting us anytime soon, it is probably better for you to consider coming sooner rather than later because we've been having some interesting conversations in our household lately. Specifically, around the thoughts of the option to move to the Cincinnati region. WTF? I don't even know if it is an option, but I think that it may be. It won't be happening anytime soon, but you really just never know. For once in my life, I'm trying to think long term, but at the same time trying to appreciate the now and thinking about everything in between...

This past weekend, I was a volunteer at a kids soccer coaching clinic up in Harlem. It sounded like the perfect kind of gig for me, inspiring youths to take up the beautiful game and eschew other lame American sports like American Football ;o). It had so much promise, but it was actually one of the worst volunteer experiences I've had. Not because the kids weren't awesome, because they were. More so because the volunteers had a penchant for proving to everyone that they were awesome soccer players. Bragging about the position they played, how they used to take penalty kicks, and kicking the ball as hard as they could at the teenage goalkeepers, while "playing" with the under-10 kids.And the two teenage goalkeepers were so inspired to prove that they were awesome that they would block every single kick anytime one of the little kids tried to kick the ball. Clearly, there were some egos that needed to be massaged. It was definitely not about the kids, and that's just lame. By the way, I have a hard time just kicking the ball without falling down, so I certainly didn't have any point to prove to anyone :)!

Today I brought in awesome bagels from the local bagelria to work as part of the October birthday celebrations that we have. At the coordinator's request, I bought two dozen, plus the bagelria gave me four extra for free. There's only like 12 people in my group, so it was clearly a ridiculous amount of massive, warm bagels, so I thought I'd give one to the homeless guy begging for money on the subway stairs. He looked at me and said "I don't want THAT!" I said okay and put it back in the bag before he said "Fine, I'll take it". Yo, man, don't do me any favors just because you can't buy booze with a freakin warm, delectable bagel!

J. Riley, Vas and Susyash, I haven't seen any blogs in the required time, so this will continue to be the short feeds. You scratch some words on your blog, and I'll scratch mine! I'm waiting....

Twick or Tweet?

So I went and researched my options for getting my next dental adventure (two crowns) done down in Peru. It looks like they will likely cost me about a quarter to half the cost by going to one of the best doctors in Lima, plus my insurance will cover 50% of the work done (even in a foreign country, they'll even translate documents!!), so that will be half of THAT cost! So now I just have to figure out how to get it all done, logistically, and talk with the doctor about some more details (oh yea, he speaks fluent English, of course). I wonder if he'll have the awesome DVD goggles to keep me entertained while he's giving me new teeth....

Summer seems to have arrived - at least it did last weekend. So, we celebrated it in style, starting immediately at 5:00pm on Friday. We headed down to Brooklyn to catch a sushi dinner a theater performance with some friends of ours. I thought it was some nice classical music performance, and it was Bach, which was impressive. It was St. Matthew, the Divine. Ever seen Passion of the Christ? Yea, it was like the movie. Only it was all done in opera style, and there was no acting :o|. Three hours of chorus singing interspersed with solo performances, and only one intermission. Yikes, it was rough. No wonder two of the four of us fell asleep (not me, I survived through it, counting down each minute).

Saturday, we slept in a bit until 9:45, when I had to get up to hook my laptop up to my TV and watch the Liverpool game. There's been some pretty crazy games with them lately, unfortunately not in their favor, but they did the job on Saturday, knocking around the opposition in a 3-1 fashion. Afterwards, Erika went to get her haircut for the first time in the US. Being that we live in a heavily Euro/Brazilian immigrant neighborhood, she got a referral from one of her friends to get her haircut at a super-Euro, Croatian place called Gigi. It was great, full of fashionable gay guys with mohawks, techno music blasting, wine or beverages available to the guests and clients. And, to top it off, Erika got a great haircut and walked out looking like Paula Abdul. Which is not a bad thing!

We had some free time then, and it was hot out, so we decided it would be great to take a mass-transit road trip to check out some beaches. Three subways, one express bus, and two hours later, we ended up at the Far Rockaways, where we were met with cold gusts of wind and NO heat! We were lost in the middle of nowhere after cruising through some serious ghettos to get there. Every other building was either shuttered, an African braid salon, or a laundromat. Thank got I live in Astoria! We got off the bus and started walking and asked a guy we were walking by, "Where's the beach?". Of course, he didn't speak English. Having about seven languages covered between the two of us, we asked him what language he wanted to converse in and he said "Russian". We started doing hand-hyrogliphics and using words like "water", "beach", and "why don't you know English, you live in freakin Far Rockaway!" Anyway, after a very anti-climactic visit to a cold beach, we got back on the local bus and I proceeded to fall asleep until we got back - to Jamaica, Queens (another ghetto-fantastic neighborhood). That's a long ass trip home!

Well, at least there was one positive thing to do on the way home. Since we were taking the E-train home, we got off in Jackson Heights to try to find our Peruvian Restaurant of choice - Pio Pio. There are several elusive restaurants that we tried to find using phone-a-friend, but Jackson Heights is in desperate need for jacksonheights.citysearch.com . We walked all over JH trying to find Pio Pio and ended up really enjoying the neighborhoods there. Big, roomy, historically protected apartments, leafy streets, 182 languages spoken (fact!), more restaurants than you can imagine from more countries than you can imagine, and still relatively close to NYC. I think we decided that if we were going to settle down in the NY area (a BIG if), it would probably be somewhere like JH. A pitcher of sangria and a pollo a la brasa later, we were feeling good, so we got on another bus that took us to the ghettos of Astoria, from where we could walk home and crash after a long day.

Sunday was even hotter than Saturday, reaching a full 90 degrees! It was gorgeous, as was our plan for the day - entertaining out of town Vince by giving him a whirlwind tour of some of what Astoria offers the occasional tourist. Naturally, we started off with pitchers of imported Czech beer at the very popular Czech beer garden. There must have been at least 600 people there with the sun shining through the giant, overhanging Euro trees that provide just enough shade to prevent my chalky skin from changing into a pigment of red. Further stops included a self-proclaimed Greek-fusion restaurant for Greek beer, and a hip burger cafe aptly named Fatty's for some righteous, original burger flavors (that would provide me with 2:30am heartburn) and some fresh German hefe-weissen to whet my whistle (that would provide me with a 9:00pm bedtime).

A glorious weekend it was. And now, onto the subject of this blog. Twitter. Do I need it? No. Really, who cares what I'm doing every day? Who wants to read, "wow, just read an interesting article about industrial espionage" (besides Ryan), or "I just found out that E*Trade is paying 2% on their savings accounts" (besides Cathy and Melissa), or "Sweet, Adriano is going back to Flamengo!" (besides Daniel), or "Stefan just bought a new computer to install Linux on so that I can install an awesome photo album software" (besides Roland), or "Just finished an hour of downward dogs" (besides Paul). Really, do people want to read my "tweets"? If the masses want it, it will come! Comments please....

J. Riley, "just finished writing my blog"

Liverpool is Good For My Health

First of all, the wife has a blog. I suggest you brush up on your Spanish first!

If any of you have had the pleasure of gazing upon my "sleek" upper body (with a hint of jealously, no doubt), you would know that my arms and shoulders are built for typing on a keyboard, not doing push-ups. In fact, I often struggle with doing 10 of them, which is pretty sad. Add on my honeymoon weight to my belly's center of gravity and...you get the idea.

Well, recently I instituted a workout program that coincides with Liverpool's wonderful run of form at the end of this season. Whenever they score, I am so full of adrenaline that I immediately drop down and give them 15 pushups. When it's against a bigger team, I usually can do 20, which is quite a stretch. Well, lately, they have been the top form team in the league, on fire. 4-0 against Real Madrid, 1-4 against Manchester United (!!!), and then this Sunday's game, when they had a chance to go within one point of Manchester United at the top of the table after ManU lost the day before. Not only did they win, but they one emphatically: 5-0! Suffice to say that by the end of the game, my arms were shot - I managed to do 55 pushups over 60 minutes :-o , by far a personal record. If only Liverpool could play everyday, I would look like Mario Lopez...

I'm slowly adjusting to life with a laptop. I am quite happy about being able to clean around my desk now that I've gotten rid of most of the wires that are here and I love that I can hook it up via HDMI to my big screen TV and watch...ahem...borrowed movies. But: Vista sucks. DO NOT UPGRADE TO VISTA! I had to google to figure out how to change the folder settings! In fact, the only benefit that I see is that I can Alt-Tab to the desktop, which is quite handy. Other than that, it is bloated, slow, and full of incompatabilities with iTunes. 4 gigs of RAM should be enough to run Firefox and Thunderbird without the hard drive thrashing as much as it does, it's ridiculous....

J. Riley, you're welcome for the Liverpool update. I know you were all dying to know.... :o/

Thanksgiving Week: Wrapping Up the Rest of the Week

After our binge wine drinking on my first day in Peru, we had to wake up at 3:30am the next morning to hoof it to the airport to fly to Cajamarca and then take a "bus" (which is basically a minivan with zero leg room and about 15 people crammed into it) an hour and a half away to San Marcos, which is where Erika's mom's family lived. Erika has tons of stories about this place because it is where her mom grew up and where she spent a month every year while growing up.

We did a little walking tour of the town after we arrived and met some of her cousins in town. We went through the wonderful market that was full of fresh fruits and vegetables (most of which I cannot eat of course), nibbled on chicharron (fried pork, kinda like bacon), and checked out the farm market where horses, cows, and donkeys are sold. The market in general was funny because I am basically a giant in Peru, so I had to walk over all hunched in order to not decapitate myself with the clothes and tarp lines. We also saw a guy meeding some monkeys alcohol, for some reason. It was kinda random, actually.

Then, we went to the family homestead, which was a few minutes drive outside of town to meet the rest of the family and situate ourselves for the next three days. The house was basically up on the top of a hill with a few other houses, a "school" (one or two rooms), and a church and was known as El Cedro. The house was made from adobe (mud and grass mixed and baked), had dirt floors, and had a stove that was basically an adobe cube with a sheet of metal that was heated by a fire, a more-or-less thatched roof, and an outhouse up the hill with no toilet seat. They had one faucet that had running water that we used as our shower more or less and there were animals (like free-range chickens that would be lunch in a few days) running all over the place. It was kinda like camping, only we had misquito-infested bedrooms and a bed. Last year I remember Erika telling me that they were having a party because they had finally got electricity! It was pretty much like camping

In the interest of trying to catch up on my blogs, I will truncate the small details for the rest of the week and provide some insight into my psyche while I was there. But first some bulleted details of activities:

• I visited the grave of Erika's grandparents, which was way up on top of a remote hill. Interestingly, that was actually the first time I had been to a cemetary and, though it wasn't elaborate, Erika's mom and uncle took time to clean it up a bit and added some palm leaves (courtesy of graves nearby) to cover the entrance of the little tombstone house where they lit candels.
  
• On the way to the cemetery, at 9:30am, Erika's dad was hanging out with the neighbors drinking beer, community-style. This is where you have one cup that you pass around, filling it up with beer, passing the beer bottle to the next guy, drink the cup of beer, then shake it out and pass the cup to the guy with the beer. This activity can go on for hours, with other people dropping in and leaving as time permits. But people have time to stop by for an hour or two, pretty much no matter who they are. I thanked them for the invitation but Erika and I stopped by on our way back from the cemetery for an hour or two, drinking some brews.
  
• People just plain and simply have time for anything in this place. We dropped by the school house across the street one morning to say hi to the kids and it wasn't like we were interrupting anything. The teacher, Erika's cousin's wife, was holding her baby (who accompanied her to class everyday) and was more than happy to let us chit chat with the little toddlers. Another example of this was when we went into town to walk around for a bit. We ran into one of Erika's old friends (who we met the first day as well), so we started walking with her and a friend of her's. Further into town, we ran into Erika's cousin. So, we were talking with her cousin for a bit while Erika's friend and the other friend just hung out on the sidewalk and talked. For like an hour. I concluded that people here, unlike in New York, don't necessarily have a destination when they are going for a walk. They are just walking to pass the time and talking. I clearly have different intentions when I go walking. I am going somewhere. There is a destination in mind, something to do, time to keep. It made me wonder if I should spend more time just....walking.
• Towards the end of our stay, Erika's cousin took us and the family to some thermal baths nearby. When I think of thermal baths, I think of Yellowstone Park when I was a kid with my grandpa. A river with a swimming hole that had really warm water and people kind of chilling next to it. This thermal spring was pretty small, a very tiny creek where locals came to wash their clothes. Watching people wash their clothes in this water with their soap made me suspicious of the water quality, for sure. We went down to the river and hung out for a few minutes, since the water was comfortable and the scenery was wonderful. The water was moving pretty quick, but I jumped in and rinsed off, since I hadn't had a shower in a few days. I think I was the only one who could swim, and I fet kind of embarrassed about that. What do these people think of the gringo who can afford to fly the family down here, who uses an electric toothbrush and razor (when the others don't seem to brush their teeth, judging by the lack of teeth) and who has the waterproof boots during the torrential downpour? People there didn't seemed to be overawed with my gadgets and luxury, but I still felt out of place.
  
• The thermal baths were surprisingly nice, though. Or seemed to be. They were like little private rooms that you rented with a "hot tub" of hot water. It wasn't disgustingly dirty like I expected. In fact, after every use, they drain the water, scrub the whole thing down with soap and water, and refill them. All for like $1 a person, not bad.
  
• As nice as it was to clean off, I can't help but think that it had something to do with the terrible cold that I woke up with the next morning. Besides just a runny nose, I had sinuses full of fluid that I could feel all the way to my ears. Considering that we were leaving in another day on an airplane, I had to get some drugs to help me out because flying with ears like that is pretty painful. We went back to the main city of Cajamarca to check out the tourist sites and I was dizzy and more or less disoriented the whole day, feeling like I was in a daze. I think it was something with my ears, I'm almost positive. That night, I felt like I was feeling better but Erika told me I had a fever and rushed out to get some medicine for me. More mystery pills were ingested and I was feeling much better the next day, but the flight was indeed painful when we finally left town. Even when we got back to Lima, my ears were in and out of equilibrium for a few days.
  
• Before we left San Marcos, the "rich" cousin (who was the only one who had a computer), took us on a tour of the areas farms in search for fresh cheese and just for our interest. Well, really it was for my interest since the rest of the family already knew about the area. But the cheese was great from this area. I asked why it was special and apparently it's because all of the cows are organic, free-range, grass-fed, etc. You know, the kind that we pay $5 for a gallon of their milk. It makes you feel kind of strange that we have to pay so much for something that is so natural in a place like this. These people are not trying to make something special for a small sub-market of yuppies. But, I suppose they are still making it for a small market - the local area - hence the fact that they need to industrialize cow and cheese production like they do here.
  
• The final thing that struck me when I was here was just how disconnected people are from the rest of the world and how slow and difficult life is. When I left NYC, housing prices were plummeting, the stock market was in turmoil and my employer (the largest financial institute in the world) was on the verge of bankruptcy, which would have financial consequences around the globe. Down in San Marcos? I had a hard time even finding an internet cafe to find out what was going on up in NY. The people here were more interested in making sure there was food on the kitchen table (whether it be guineau pig or hens that were just running around the yard) and, importantly, having daily family gatherings. Each and every day, relatives were frequently popping in to say hello, stopping by for lunch, or bringing the kids over to run around the property. The kids didn't have toys to play with, there were dirt cliffs to climb, dirt roads to run around, and they were just playing random games with each other. As nice as all this is, life is hard here. One of the family members finally found a job as a teacher in a town that was a three hour walk away that had a monthly salary of $65. My jaw hit the floor when I heard that.
  

And I'm not sure why, but I just couldn't stop thinking about one thing that these people wouldn't have: dental insurance! And lord knows with the mouth I've got, I certainly need that!

After returning to Lima, we had quite a few wedding meetings to wrap things up as much as we could while we were there. The only other major event that I took part in was going to the Clasico football match between the two largest teams in the country with the most violent fans in the most dangerous part of Lima with Erika's dad, grandpa, and cousin. There something about being outside my comfort zone that attracts me to these kinds of events! The game was awesome and we were sitting close enough to the Ultra fans (basically hooligans) that we could hear their M80s explode when they lit them on fire, we could hear their chants, and could see the brawl that broke out at the end of the game. It was awesome! Erika didn't want me to go at first because people get knifed or shot at these games, but we didn't have any problems.

J. Riley, Life is simple in San Marcos, but life is hard.

High School Remixed

On Friday, I got my usual call at work from Erika, but this time it was a little different as she let me know that she had invited eight people from her class to come to our tiny apartment for a party. I thought that sounded like a pretty awesome idea, especially with the news that we'd be getting homemade Italian food, Chinese food, and sushi. It totally through me back 12 years (wow, that's weird to say) - back to my senior year in high school. Same idea, but different characters and different...beverages. That was my favorite year in high school because Stefan and I befriended tons of foreign exchange students and totally pulled off a coup d'état on the International Club, making it our own social club. We actually had a few parties back then - sans cerveza.

I can actually blame - I mean thank - that club for helping me meet all of my international friends not to mention my wife, who was now throwing a party of her own. But this time, the foreign exchange students came bearing not only food to cook, but three cases of beer and a bottle of vodka! Geez, am I in college again, too ;o) ?

Well, we were in for a treat. Roberta made amazing Italian meatballs and sauce that tasted just like Stefan's grandma's used to taste. We had amazing Asian noodles with vegetables that was so tasty I couldn't stop eating it, despite the fact I ate (bad) Chinese food for lunch. And later we had sushi that her Japanese friend made and brought over. I should have been shoulder surfing when all this was cooked rather than drinking the Sapporo and Asahi that the Taiwanese and Koreans brought. In return, we introduced Roberta to the wonders of American culinary trends - i.e. the street in Jersey that fabricates chemicals that makes things taste like the real thing: Nacho Cheese Doritos. It's hard to imagine life without Doritos, but apparently they don't sell them in the mercaditos in small town Tuscany. Lucky them!

So, as is predictable, cheap watery beers that taste like Coors Light but have foreign names were consumed and soon DJ Jazzy J. Riley had iTunes purring along with the many techno mixes and the guests who had their jackets on ready to leave amazingly didn't go anywhere and soon were dancing along with everyone else :) .

Good times, I'm ready for them to come back again, I want more noodles!!!

Saturday afternoon I got a call from Paul about wanting to celebrate Oktoberfest somewhere in town later that night. Despite being pretty tired still (for some unknown reason) I suggested that we hit up Lederhosen in the West Village for some authentic cuisine and dirndl girls. I Sent Erika home because she was ready to go to sleep after visiting Bed, Bath, and Beyond (which is an annoying store to shop in because they have too many clever gizmos that Erika wants to buy) and Paul and I got to chit-chat for for a few hours before we headed downtown to meet up with the rest of the quartet for some Hefe-Weissen, tasty Spaten, and a plateful of wursts. That place is great, they have some fabulous beers including the elusive German Rauchbier that tastes like smoked bacon. I thought about getting it for posterity (is that the word?) sake after drinking it in Alex's college town, the only place it can be found, but ended up getting Apfelwein, another drink of yor that I don't care for too much but drink because it brings me back.

After finishing up the bier and wurstens, it was off to find dessert on new streets that we probably haven't been before. Amazingly we couldn't find any place that would serve dessert at that hour except a little vanagan that was advertising a Diesel party and giving out amazing (in a high-pitch voice) blueberry cheesecake ice cream cones - for free! We're talking real chunks of cheesecake and real blueberries, people. Too bad all the drunks getting the free scoops couldn't remember it the next day, because god has reserved a special block of brain cells in my cranium to remember that stuff.

After that, we stumbled upon Lips, a theme restaurant/bar that features transvestites singing dirty, nasty, hilarious songs about things like getting sex change operations. It was off-the-wall funny and apparently "Erika would've loved this place judging by her bachelorette party" :o/ . Yes, she would have loved it for sure, cuz it was awesome.

I headed home shortly after that, leaving the others to bound about looking for more booze because the wife was alone at home and I pitied her soul. And because I had a Liverpool game to watch the next morning. It was one of the best games I have ever seen in my life, despite Liverpool's Slovakian ax-murderer defender Martin Skrtel rupturing his Posterior Cruciate Ligament in his knee. Ouch. But Torres did bag a brace and Liverpool came back from 2-nil down to take the game in the last minute. Excellent stuff.

J. Riley, the rest of Sunday was spent looking, unsuccessfully, for a pair of shoes for the wife for the wedding next weekend. How is it possible not to find shoes to match a black dress?

Visa Interview, and All That Jazz....

This week has continued the chronological trajectory of the past few weeks of being both amazing and busy at the same time. I arrived back in Lima on Saturday morning with the ultimate goal of securing Erika's paperworks that will allow her to come to the United States on her 29th birthday, Friday 4/18.

Because of the short notice of the trip, and a suffering budget, I quickly realized that I wouldn't be able to get a private apartment for the week and thus decided to stay at her parent's house and work from her small bedroom, where her internet connection is. My boss was generous enough to allow me to work from Peru all week and allow me to continue my stingy-ness with vacation that was honed over the past few years when I had two weeks of vacation per year.

Saturday we had to run a few errands around town before the evening plans began, which were of course going out with her friends to some discos. Last month, I had done pretty much the same, going to an all-night party after arriving fresh off a red-eye flight and I was fearful of the same this time around. But this time, they decided they wanted to go to a karaoke bar after the first disco was found to be a dud. Normally I'm not opposed to karaoke bars (as some of you Def Leopard fans know) and this time I obliged again but something about the combination of a dark constrained atmosphere and songs in Spanish that I never even heard of and that all pretty much sounded the same caused me to hit a wall at about 1:00am. Somehow I suffered through two more hours at this location nearly falling off my chair sleeping a few times. I just didn't have it in me! I did manage to croon out Come Together from the Beatles which woke me up for a bit before I failed miserably at Jack Johnson's Flake to end the night. I guess I didn't realize how hard that song would be - notably the ending!:o/

Sunday had a lot in store for us. Besides missing Liverpool's game at 7:45am in order to get some extra sleep, we had an 11:30 meeting with our wedding planner so that I could meet her and, more importantly for her I suppose, so I could throw down some cash as a deposit for her services. For those who haven't heard, we have changed our wedding date to 2/14 to coincide with my sister's school schedule. As a coincidental, accidental bonus (not to manage the added cheese factor), this happens to be Valentine's Day which makes is great for all the bleeding-heart romantics!

Post wedding planner reservation, we headed back home where I was fed very well by her mom (not for the first time, I should add!) before we had to depart for the mammoth event of the day - for me anyway: Allianza Lima vs. Sporting Cristal soccer match at the natinoal stadium! I'd submitted my request to see a pro football match down here to Erika a few weeks back because I know the crowds are crazy and dangerous and that makes it pretty exciting! I was hoping to see gangs of hooligans roaming the streets striking fear into the fans of the opposing team, fights, police in riot gear charging the line of hooligans, etc. While the atmosphere was tense outside the stadium, it wasn't quite as volatile as I would have wanted, but there were plenty of riot police everywhere and we got to see a cracking game that included a comeback from behind by the home team (Erika's dad's favorite team) against the Allianza giants. I wanted to attend another one on Wednesday night, the "Classico" match featuring the two biggest teams in Peru that surely would have been volatile, but apparently the stadium hosting that match is in the ghetto of all ghettos and Erika won't let me go. She basically said that they would steal the shoes off your feet before you stepped onto the street getting off the "combi" bus - their version of public transportation. I'll let it slide this time, though I'd love to go still!

On Monday, I worked from home during the day and after I shut up shop at 4:00pm, Erika and I went to a giant shopping center so that she could try to find some new jeans. Given the substantial price difference between clothing here and in New York, I relented and agreed to buy her two pairs of jeans that she could bring to New York. Funny enough, spending the evening at the mall together felt like the first "date" event that we've ever had. It even included eating dinner at the food court, which isn't much different than any other food court at a mall in the states except that it featured "Bembo's", which is a Peruvian burger chain with some interesting combinations like the Hawaiian burger and the Lomo Saltado (a typical Peruvian meal) burger which I ate. They had things like fried plantains, fried eggs, and other various intersting things on the burgers, The meat itself was strangely quite tasty despite being grayish in color and of course we got fries to share and all meals came with a cup of Inca Kola. I could eat at Bembos every once in a while though I'm sure it violates even more social responsibility rules than McD's or Burger King (both of which were also at the food court, of course!).

Tuesday morning I got woken up at 6:30am and I just did not want to wake up. I was soooo tired and slightly grumpy, so all the horn honking, rooster crowing, blasting reggaeton music and dog barking that defines this neighborhood wasn't the ideal way to wake up. But this was the most important day of the trip, the interview for Erika's visa at the US Embassy. So we crowded into the combi-bus at peak rush hour time, which meant that I was hanging onto a bar of questionable strength inside the bus with half my body inches away from the street on the outside of the doorway. Gotta love Lima! In any case, we made it to the embassy with all of our paperwork in hand just in time. The interview was going fine until the interviewer looked at my passport and asked what happened to my past passport (with which I had an incident last year where I kind of left it in my pants when I Washed them). I got amazingly nervous at that moment when she stared straight at me with a death-stare and said nothing for what seemed like five minutes after I told her my story. Apparently the National PAssport Agency had stamped "Replacement for a lost of stolen passport" in my new passport. Gee, thanks for the accurate statement, US Government. After taking about five minutes for me to stop sweating all over my body (and presumptively changing my skin tone from bright red to white again), things went fine and she was cordial, telling us stories about her experience with people "losing" (i.e. selling) their passports to drug dealers and stuff like that. But everything went on without a hitch and an hour later Erika's visa was approved and we were home free!!!


To celebrate after working the rest of the afternoon, we went to Miraflores that evening to try to find that second pair of elusive jeans (black) and I ended up buying her some footwear and then at Ripley bought myself an awesome spring/fall jacket and a wonderful, quality shirt for work that were both quite cheap. We went to a few more stores, but still could not find those black jeans, but we'll save that struggle for another day I guess. For now, it's back to work for your's truely!

J. Riley, Erika is out trying to find those jeans as I type!

Republica Dominica

I've got a few minutes, so I blog about some stuff. First of all, according to my car rental reservation, I am moving to the BX this weekend. After the massive Liverpool v. Chelsea match on Sunday of course (priorities, people!). Did I mention that the soccer season started? Yes, it did. And Liverpool, for the first time in five years, won their first match of the season. Why is it I always pick teams that suck in the beginning and then get better towards the end? Well, this year the A's sucked in the beginning and sucked in the middle and the end, but I digress. In any case, to celebrate Liverpool's win (and since I'm moving next weekend), I went to the soccer store and bought a new pair of indoor soccer shoes. But NOT Pumas! I actually bought Nikes. Yes, it's true. Before you crucify me (and I hate Nikes too, btw), these are red Nike Air Ronaldhino Rivals, complete with the Ronaldinho signature and all. And red shoes? That'll fill a void in my shoe department.

I've gotta visit Erika soon, but I didn't really want to go to Peru again because Latin America is huge and there are so many places to explore. So, she told me to pick our next destination and I have - Dominican Republic! Home of awesome beaches, awesome package deals, awesome direct flights for cheap, and Merengue (my favorite Latin dance!), here we come! I'll be heading out there for four days at the end of September. I will also be brining lots of paperwork with me because I plan on helping Erika get a visa to visit the U.S. so that everyone can meet her and we can see if we get along as we do right now for an extended amount of time together in person. I have very little doubt that this is the case, but I just need to confirm that this is the case. She will probably come up here next year, possibly around February, when I am going down to Lima to attend their annual Salazar family reunion party. Her dad has about 14 siblings, so that should give you an idea of the size of this party. That's going to be awesome!

J. Riley, that's two blogs in one day and hopefully I'll continue to get caught up this week!

Finally I Have a Social Life!

I've been madly irresponsible with this blog lately, and it's about time I start carving 15 minutes out of my week to update people before I lose my fan base! Of course, if you're using Google Reader, I'm probably just another person on your list and any of my posts are just a bonus to you. But I digress....

So, a couple things. First of all, the weather here has been just amazing lately, except for a few thunderstorms and some rain. Today was probably the hottest day of the year, the second time I've felt my back wet while walking home from the office - ahhh, summertime is almost here! Time to ditch the backpack and leave the laptop at work. Rather than putting my bathing suit on and heading to Central Park to sunbathe afterwork like most people (errr...like most people I am checking out on my way home from work ;o), I've taken a liking to running sans shirt. I am actually surprised that more people don't do it, it's quite liberating. I'm sure most people who happen to see me flash by them shirk in horror when they see me (or at least are temporarily blinded), but I figure that if I can't get tan this way (or at least skin cancer), I can't get tan anyway (and will probably still get skin cancer).

Last weekend was pretty busy, I went mini-golfing with my volunteer group and barely escaped the impending rain, but still had a lot of fun. As is typical lately, I had a flurry of cancellations a day or two before the event. I am fine-tuning my organizational skills and procedures to prevent this, but I guess sometimes there are things you just can't prevent. Last summer it was kids not showing up, but I'd rather have few volunteers and more kids, as has been the case lately.

After golfing, I ate a ginormous hamburger from a greasy diner that I've never tried before by my house. One of the kids had eaten a burger at the mini-golf course and I was salivating all over the ground watching him eat it, so I stuffed myself silly with one before I met up with Alan and Andrea for the rest of the day. We rode down to the Brooklyn Bridge and (gasp) actually enjoyed doing something people all over the world come here to do, walk across it. We hit up a chocolate place for Andrea and then got some awesome ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory, sitting next to the stormy water and getting fat. Awesome.

Being in Brooklyn, we could have gone anywhere in the city afterwards but decided to hit up the old stand-by neighborhood downtown, the East Village. We stopped at a very nice place (which we need to try brunch at) called the NoLita House for happy hour (2-for-1, 7 days a week!), waiting for our appetites to pick up. Well, really Alan and I since Andrea is "practicing" being pregnant and not drinking anymore :o/ . I wasn't convinced.

With our whistles whetted and our appetites lubricated, we headed to a noodle place that we'd all read about called Momofuku Noodle House for a simple noodle dinner at a tiny place with a single bar-style table right down the middle of the room with people lined on either side eating their noodles. It was alright, but I think I wanted Alan's spicy kimchi bowl rather than my "mystery pork" dish (I suspect there was pork throat in there, since I saw it on other dishes), but it was a cool place nonetheless.

On the verge of throwing up from gluttonous feasting that day, we went to another chocolate place so Andrea could get a melted-bar of hot-chocolate (que richo!) while I contemplated the best place to vomit within a proximity limit of six feet. I had "that taste" in my mouth before deciding that it probably wasn't the best thing to do in public and distracted myself with people watching instead.

With the English Premier League finished, I was stuck watching Spanish La Liga soccer on Sunday morning before taking a jog and then entertaining Melissa while I was doing chores around the house like laundry and waiting to meet up with my family's good friends Frank and Sally. They came to town to see their daughter and generously offered to take me out to dinner anywhere I wanted. I guess they didn't know what they were getting themselves into with an offer like that, so I whipped open my plethora of guides before remembering that I'd always wanted to go to WD-50 but it was a little too trendy and creative for an average night in the LES, my neighborhood away from neighborhood. It is well known for it's inventive tastes and I thought they would enjoy something a bit different than the norm. Somehow I managed to get reservations the day of and it was good eats-on! Wow, this place was like a palette amusement park between the quinoa with...some...taste, shredded brussel sproats with apples, tagine-spiced lamb broth, scallops, apricot cous-cous, etc. etc. etc. It wasn't a lot of food, but it was very interesting. The desserts left something to be desired with more style than substance, but they were good conversation pieces, if nothing else.

Being in the neighborhood, we capped the night at Teany's tea shop of course and tried out the latest teanychino (candied apple teanychino!) and now Teany has a few more massive fans to go along with my parents!

Like all good things, the night had to come to an end however and I had to head home to make my nightly phone call before getting ready for the busy week. I had a root canal to wrap up on Thursday but, more importantly, had the Champions League Final on Wednesday. I wasn't sure how to leave work early two days in a row, so I made up a story how they had to create a mold of the hole in my tooth on Wednesday and then Thursday they would put the custom porcelain crown in and though I doubt my boss bought it, he didn't care. He probably wouldn't have cared if I said I was leaving to go to a bar to watch my team, but I didn't want him to think I'm not dedicated to my job (I'm not, really ;o).

I got lucky though when my dentist said they had an opening an hour and a half before the game started, so I got my filling (no crown necesito!), jumped in a cab and hauled but down to the Liverpool bar, only to find out that it was already at capacity!! Arggghhh...I could hear them singing inside and everything. With my Liverpool scarf wrapped around my neck, I hopped back in the cab to go to a bigger place, the "overflow" bar. It was also packed and I saw so many people wearing red running towards bars around town, it was great. Liverpool has the best fans in the world, there's little doubt about that. So I joined the throngs of people at Slainte, a big Irish bar with lots of flat-screen TVs and hundreds of fans. There was singing, drinking, cheering, jeering, and lots of Scouse accents in the bar, it was an awesome atmosphere. Too bad we didn't win, I'd probably still be there singing You'll Never Walk Alone, their theme song and famous Kop classic. Next year, boys, we'll be back....

J. Riley, BTW, I'm growing a beard just for the hell of it. I like the nasty beards that the stylish Brits have at my work and you don't see many shaggy people here in the UES. Once you can see it (stupid blonde/red hair cross-pollenations), maybe I'll take a picture.

Surprise! I'm Abnormal - for an Upper East Sider

One of the things many people struggle for in New York (methinks) is an identity. Something that makes them unique. Obviously everyone is unique in their own way, but you wouldn't know it by looking around in the neighborhood that I currently camp in, the Upper East Side (UES). The demographics of this part of town are as follows:

1.) Inhabitated by a.) recently graduated frat boys and sorority girls, b.) young professionals who most likely went to Ivy League schools and work in finance or another high paying job, c.) young families, d.) old money aristocrats.
2.) Most common ethnicities: WASP or Jewish.
3.) Income: Middle Class (for New York, ha!) -> Extremely Wealthy with Trust Fund
4.) Common social events: fine-dining, wine tasting, binge drinking, exercising in Central Park, black-tie house parties (depending on where you fit in #1)
5.) Dress code: Business Casual to Professional, Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Bloomingdales

Hello, identity crises! Where do I not fit into this narrow guide of the UES? I'm a young professional making a good income, WASP as WASP can be, securely Middle Class, enjoy fine dining and rollerblading in Central Park, and have a closet stocked with Banana Republic and other business casual clothing (for work). Well, the other half of my closet is soccer clothing, but still.

Ahhhh, but there is one attribute where I deviate from this classification. And I demonstrated this at Alan's SURPRISE 30th birthday party on Saturday night! I like to expand the horizons of us sheltered UESers by venturing to new parts of town. There was Astoria (Little Greece, Queens) and Greenpoint (Little Poland, Brooklyn) for my birthday last year, there was Jackson Heights (Little Columbia, Queens) for my end-of-my-social-life-for-the-year party in late October last year. Not to mention trips up to Melissa's in the Bronx (Little....well, Melting-Pot-minus-WASPs?). So when Alan's wife was planning the party and was considering a bowling party downtown, a light went off in my head: Harlem Lanes! I had been there during the day with my volunteer group and it was supposed to be a hopping place at night. We ended up standing in line in the middle of Harlem at 10:45 at night on Saturday to get into this place, it was so popular. And we were the ONLY non-African-Americans in the place. A couple white kids, some Asians, some Indians and a WHOLE BUNCH of bruthas and sistahs. Awesome, I was in my element. Alan was surprised to see all of his friends inside and they all asked us "how in the world did you get Alan to come up to Harlem to go bowling?" It was easy, he 's never surprised when I show my true colors below that standard UES outer shell :o).

J. Riley, disco bowling to hip-hop and watching "The Fight" (boxing match between Mayweather and De La Hoya) while bowling and drinking beers for two hours was awesome.

We're Going To Athens!

I use the word "we" pretty liberally, as in "we" - Liverpool FC. For the second time in three years, they have beaten an arch-rival in the semi-finals of the premiere football tournament in Europe: The Champion's League. In their 100+ year history, this is the seventh time they have reached the final, so two times in three years is pretty significant! The finals are in Athens on May 23rd and, cough cough, I can already feel food poisoning from a terrible lunch coming on the day of the final. I wish I was going to Athens instead, but I'll have to put that on hold this year.

So where in the world have I been? In New York, actually. Since recovering from my standard Tupac Amaru's Revenge from South America, I have reignited my running passion and my nights now consist primarily of a good +1 hour of exercise three to four times a week (yoga included) as well as 1/2 hour Spanish lessons four-five times a week from my illega...I mean downloaded "trial" lessons ;o). If I manage to make it through all sixty lessons, I'll probably be fluent. But there's no way I'm that smart! We'll see how far I get however. Add nightly phone calls down to South America as well as the typical errands like shopping and EATING and it's a wrap for the night.

On the social front (i.e. the weekends) I once again embraced Nana's genes and established my dominance in Texas Hold'm poker a few weeks back, wiping the table clean of chips up until it was me and my former roommate. He managed to prevail in the end but it was quite a comeback for me since I was down to just a few chips at one point and I at least got the money that I put in back in my pocket for coming in second place (a whopping $10). I think they're going to stop inviting me to these poker events ;o).

This past weekend I headed down to Brooklyn to experience the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. This is a massive event to celebrate Japanese culture and checkout the 50+ varieties of Cherry Blossom trees in full Spring bloom spread all through the gardens. Since we were so far into Brooklyn, we decided to head down to the classic old-school Coney Island amusement park afterwards. I had never actually been there and a portion of it will be torn down later this year probably so that they can build some expensive high-rise eyesore apartment building in this historical place. It was quite a run down place, probably not somewhere you want your teenager to work at but we thoroughly enjoyed hearing the game hawkers yelling out their deals, palm readers attempting to lure us in, signs for things like "Shoot The Freak" and burlesque shows, the wide assortment of fried food available, and of course the classic "Cyclone" rollercoaster which reminds me of the Big Dipper in Santa Cruz. Next time I'm in Cali, I gotta go back to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, that's a place I never really spent enough time at (probably for the best ;o). Anyway, if you want to see pictures of all this, check out Alan's pictures here.

Last week my Shakerika was terribly sick with a bacterial infection which caused her to stay home every day from work and get daily injections - yikes. This couldn't have come at a worse time because her mother is also going to the doctors daily for a more significant reason - she found a lump in her breast :o| . It has been removed and biopsy results come back tomorrow, but prognosis is not good at this point. I'm sending positive thoughts and energy down to her and her family right now in this time of need....

J. Riley, blame my employer for my lack of posts, they're blocking blogger again!!

Keeping up with the Haines's

Now that half of my family is marked up with ink, I've been thinking about joining the crowd. The question is, what kind of manly tattoo would I want to get? I was thinking about getting something that demonstrates the pride I have for my Native American heritage (1/16 Cherokee), so I checked out some designs that are available for that. Cathy suggested that I check out the lead singer of the Red Hot Chile Peppers because he has a nice Native American eagle that spans the width of his shoulders and I think that it would look great on my bony shoulders :o/ . It is a pretty neat design, but it's a bit too complicated for someone with conservative tastes like my own.

Naturally, my next thought turned to another source of pride - Liverpool FC. Afterall, it is the most decorated club in the English Premiership and their fan base is known as being extremely passionate. Anybody who's seen me wake up at 6:45am on a Saturday to go watch a game on TV or who has made the mistake of asking me about their history knows that I'm as hooligan as it gets when it comes to Liverpool Football Club. There is no doubt in my mind that I will always remain true to the club, and so I'm thinking about demonstrating my dedication with a simple design of the Liverbird (at right) and the club's slogan - "You'll Never Walk Alone".

These words have special meaning for both the club and myself (I can almost hear myself talking to the Miami Ink camera crew right now). Before every game, the supporters at the Kop end of the stadium sing the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" to the players as they walk onto the pitch. It's is the rally cry for the team and when the team is getting beat, the fans will again launch into the song in a voice of passionate defiance and dedication. This is the only team in England who have fans that are so passionate, despite what some Manchester United fans say.

On a more personal level, I think that it makes a statement about one of my (in my opinion) greatest attributes - loyalty. This characteristic has kept me in touch with many special people in my life over the years and I owe a lot of who I am to these people, so a small patch of skin isn't too much to ask for.

J. Riley, I honestly don't know if I'm going to do this, but my friends in Peru say that they know a really good tattoo artist in Lima who actually sterilizes his needles...

Apocolypse Now

Anybody who knows me knows that I love Becks and I love soccer, so this is huge for our poor-excuse-for-a-league MLS:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=reu-beckhamhollywooddc&prov=reuters&type=lgns

J. Riley, I'm going to order a ticket for every game that he plays in in NYC