Baby Journal - Page One

Considering the fact that the baby isn't born yet, there isn't too much that we can scrapbook yet. But we can at least do a little background work for the little guy. We have decided to dedicate  two pages to this subject, leaving lots of growing room for the future. Drum-roll please......

Page One (click for full size)

So what we've got here is the first (title page) of the journal. Using the color laser printer at work and our Hamermill Color Laser paper (acid-free, 32 weight, 94 brightness), we printed some wedding pictures, a nice little heart, and a picture of one of the ultrasound pictures from October. I could certainly tell that the printer at work is built for printing graphs and charts because the colors in the photos wasn't quite right and overall I was slightly disappointed. However, the paper weight was nice and strong and considering the cost and the fact that I could print any size that I want, the flexibility is worth it. Plus, if we ever decide in the future to switch out the pictures, we've using double-sided acid-free tape so that should be do-able.

On the left-hand side is a strip that we cut from one of our full-size pages of visually-textured $0.99 paper. I think the colors go well with the album cover and we added two billowing cutouts from construction paper for the "dedication" passages written by Erika and I. We linked everything together with simple lines from our acid-free (get the theme here?) pen and wrote our wedding dates in the middle of the heart. Erika added some aging effects to the construction paper using our set of color pencils. We added one our our stickers to the upper-left corner of the ultrasound picture just to add some color (and so Erika could break out the sticker packets and put them to use ;o)

J. Riley, craft blogger (as Summer eloquently put it)... 

The Joys of Journals

Ahhh....baby journals. I don't really know how to make one, but Erika
actually has (and uses) the creative side of the brain and made a
shopping list for us on Saturday. We splurged for the Kolo scrapbook,
one that is worthy of gracing shelves of some SoHo boutique
scrapbooking store, but of the up-most quality. I mean, this thing
needs to last several lifetimes, right? And then there were the clear
plastic sleeves, the extra pages, the tape, the acid-free pen, etc.
etc. The idea of buying a $29 journal at Barnes and Noble was sounding
better and better every minute.

And then off to the paper store. We had to have the baby stickers,
right? And the animal pictures. And the lettering stickers. And the
cute patterned sheets to decorate and border the pages. I was not in a
good mood when the pile of sticker packages were getting rung up and I
saw $5 per package. Luckily, Erika likes the clearance stuff as much
as I do and we did find some deals towards the bottom of the pile.

The biggest problem was when we got home and actually opened the
packages and looked at the mess we were creating. Where the hell do we
start??? First, we need to come up with a list of "facts" and
information that we want to put in the book. We decided that a title
page wasn't really an option (considering the cost of page real
estate) and we'd start with a little background. Extended family,
wedding pictures and hearts (add acid-free color laser printing paper
to the list), and memos to the baby from mom and dad (add color
pencils and construction paper to the list). Naturally, it needs a
cute border so we came up with a stinjenius way to not have to buy a
designer exacto knife and god-knows-what accessory to cut paper in
straight lines: a box cutting knife (from my urban tool-kit), a ruler
with a metal edge (thanks PWC), a flattened cardboard box (thanks
Amazon), and two pairs of hands. It works much better than trying to
cut straight lines with a pair of scissors, though it remains to be
seen if we have all of our appendages by the end of the project....

J. Riley, maybe I'll consider making a guide for this project on the
ol' blog...

Circles of Life

I'm hoping that this post will help me fall off the wagon when it comes to not writing, and with the events recently I think it's time!  The last two weeks have been pretty bi-polar around here. The phrase circle of life is very cliche (thanks, Lion King), but it really has hit me like a capoeira roundhouse recently.

Two weeks ago today, I attended the first funeral visitation in my life. I've been pretty lucky up to this point in dealing with the ends of life, i.e. I have not had to deal with it! My co-worker's wife passed away after about five years of battling lung and brain cancer, and although I didn't ever have the chance to meet her, just attending the visitation was fairly traumatic to me. I was confronted with feelings that hadn't really hit me before, but I put on a brave face and got through the visitation unscathed. But I felt like I had totally disrespected the experience by trying to be wooden with my emotions and dwelled on it for the rest of the evening, trying to understand the pain and loneliness that my coworker would be going through, knowing that they had no children and by his stories in the past how much he had loved her. I had a really hard time with it all night and actually lost quite a lot of sleep over it. I attended the funeral mass the next morning and felt like I was able to connect a lot more to my emotions and, thankfully, that awarded me with a sense of closure that was missing the day before. It made me think a lot about my relationship with my wife and how lucky I am to have someone that I can talk to and experience life with, although she was out of the country for the past month!

Fast forward just two days later, and the point hit home when I was told that my own grandmother had passed away after years of battling her cancer while waiting for Erika at the airport. I don't know if it was better or worse that I had gone through so much in the previous few days, but I definitely felt farther away from my family than I had for a long time. I yearned to be back in California and since I had moved to New York I knew that this day would come, especially recently as hospice had been coming to her house to let her go painlessly and peacefully. No matter how prepared you think you are for this event, and knowing that it's going to happen soon, knowing that you won't be able to have a conversation about their life with them again is hard, obviously. I definitely feel like I missed out on being there at the end, but I hope to find some closure for this event at Christmas time when I can be with my family and visit my grandma for the last time. I won't forget her voice and my memory of her will always be of her healthy years when she swing danced with me on the family ranch so many years ago!

As chapters end, so chapters begin. After six weeks of talking to my in utero "daughter" and wife over Skype, we found out that "she" was actually a he. If the ultrasound technician can't really tell the gender of your child, isn't it better that they say "we don't know yet" rather than "we think it's a girl, but we can't guarantee it yet"? It's going to take a while for me to come around to him being around in the belly, but like the doctor said, of course I'm happy it's a boy :o) . It's fun to think about all of the permutations that our child could have, but of course I assume that he will have olive skin, be handsome (i.e. look more like his mother), blue eyes, and thick blonde hair, but I have a feeling that I'm going to be his biggest fan even if he looks like a little cholito from South America :o).

We're in fully baby prep-mode around here and are beginning to think about baby journals. We looked at some at Barnes & Noble but they just seem to artificial and lack the personal touch, so we are thinking about going the creative route with making our own. Having done some research, I think it's going to be a lot of work, but if I'm going to be documenting it on paper and in pictures, I think I can at least do it online via my blog as well! Maybe I need a new blog :-$??? We'll see about that. In any case, if anyone has experience with scrapbooking baby journals, by all means let me know!  

In other news, there is a lot going on with our friends. Alan and Andrea just had baby boy number two!  Melissa and Jonathan have begun planning their wedding for next summer - in Aruba! Priya and Manny are engaged and are planning their wedding for next summer - in Jamaica (rumors)! Yinety and David are engaged and I can only assume that they are planning their wedding for next summer as well - in the Dominican Republic! Thanks a lot folks, couldn't you at least space your weddings out a year, or are we going to have to move down to the Caribbean for the summer? Not to mention Sean and Roberta's potential "wedding" in Italy - next summer. When else??

Season's greetings to everyone, stay in touch!

J. Riley, send in those baby journal ideas all of you Martha Stewarts out there!

Ambitionz as a...Drivah?

Since I'm half-baked at the moment (my favorite B&J froyo), I figure that I can dedicate a blog title to the great, late rapper Tupac Shakur, who was a visionary, who sought change, and died trying. But he didn't change his lifestyle enough and was eventually gunned down after getting involved in the east/west hip-hop gang wars. I suppose Tupac was named after the last Peruvian Inca Tupac Amaru, who resisted change until the end and eventually succumbed to the Spanish conquistadors, who tied each of his limbs to a horse, and then unleashed the horses, who tore his body literally apart in front of the remnants of the Incan empire in their capital city of Cusco. Visuals aside, both Tupacs resisted the change that was necessary to survive.

Although not quite so extreme, there's gonna be some change in my life to come, and regardless of the outcome, there will be a car involved, and I will be a "drivah". I spent the last four days of last week up in Massachusetts with my mom, sister, and wife and became reacquainted with relatives, checked out some of the tourist hot-spots in the state and region, and spent some time in a great city and it's charming residential areas. I thought I had a rough sketch of my future residence in California, but Boston wooed me with it's perfect weather, it's urban and academic atmosphere, it's houses with marvelous and historic character, it's New England charm, and so many wonderful distant relatives of mine. I'm not sure if I can say that this has thrown a wrench in my plans, but it is an intriguing option that appealed to both of us. Of course, ask me in six weeks when it starts snowing there, and things can change in a hurry!

I'm at a cross-roads in my family life, and things are just not falling into place perfectly. But can they? I'm not so sure they can. No matter where I end up, I will miss everything that New York City offers. I've been saying for a while, why stay here when I can't enjoy everything it has on offer? But we do enjoy so much of what it offers with it's melting pot (or at least a salad!) environment that I take for granted until I visit somewhere that doesn't offer that to the same degree (like Boston). Public transportation is the best thing ever invented, but in seven months it's going to turn into a huge pain in the ass.

And where do I go from here? Just today I had a conversation with someone who had moved recently and whose children missed their old neighborhood, it's shopping centers, it's bread (??), and other things like that. It seems so easy just to pack it up and move out to California, but things will be so different there! We will miss walking to the grocery store and being able to buy almost any ingredient that we want. We will miss having every clothing store in existence a mere 30 minute subway ride away. Of course, we will have family there, which is a huge, huge bonus that can't be measured. What about moving to Boston? We would be in a charming environment, have to deal with snow and more of the same weather that we deal with now, and uncertainty as to whether family bonds could be established after thirty three years of neglect. But at least the option is there and we could settle into something and establish a home that would be our own. And then there is always international destinations like Peru, where we would have countless family members, certain employment for Erika, fresh fruit, vegetables, and all types of food from neighborhood markets. The language issue and the culture change wouldn't bother me too much, but I wouldn't know too many people (which Erika has had to deal with here as well!), my profession would most likely have to change, and I would need to deal with the crime and pollution that Lima offers. We could even stay more or less local and relocate to Long Island or (gasp!) dirty Jersey. We would be able to maintain some form of relationship with our current environment and our friends, but we know absolutely nobody in those outer regions and would be just as far (or farther) from our family then we are now! So, there is no perfect scenario, but what is certain is that there will be change in store in the future.

On the other fronts, it seems like Erika is progressively getting better and starting to feel human again, though it could change at any moment! I've been delving into my local libraries and reading some great books, such as "Born to Run", "Freakonomics", "Shadow of the Wind" (a good read before and after Barcelona!), "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman", and a few others that I've already forgotten. The idea of getting an eReader is becoming more appealing to me, especially as I've discovered that I can actually check out eBooks from the library. One of my biggest issues with the eReaders is that I don't want to have to buy books. I don't buy them now, I'm never going to read them again most likely, so why should I pay $10 for a book? But if libraries, an tax-paid-for asset that many people don't take advantage of enough I think, can rent me a book for a Nook (sorry Kindle and iPad fans), that has some appeal. Of course, I don't really have an issue with carrying a book now, so I really don't see any reason to buy an eReader in the first place! But it would be nice for trips.

J. Riley, I have to admit defeat - I most likely won't finish Barcelona and Germany! Maybe I'll publish some cliff notes!  

Barcelona Observations

While I continue to work on the detailed stories of our trip to Barcelona (a long time coming, but I shall persevere!!), I thought I would share some observations that I jotted down throughout the trip in my ultra-trendy faux-moleskin notebook that I carried along to document things while sitting on planes, trains, and automobiles. Here we go, bullet-point style:

•  On our second day in Spain, we hit up some stores to replenish our clothing supplies due to the lost luggage incident. One of the things I noticed pretty quickly is that the Spanish are much more laid back and informal than the people in Peru are. Everywhere we went, we were greeted with "hola!", which I only hear in casual settings in Peru. I think the very prevalent Peruvian service industry is trained to be more formal and offer up a "buenos dias!" when greeting you. I don't think we got a "buenos dias" once during our trip. Using "hola" seems to make the human interaction more personal.
• On our first night in town, we hit up the Born neighborhood for a late dinner and we immediately noticed that we seriously under-dressed. Shorts and t-shirts were definitely inappropriate, but what was I really thinking? I guess I wouldn't go out in a hip-part of Manhattan at night for dinner in shorts and a tee, but in Spain they did it up nice with slacks, nice shirts, and a lot of white. It was a reminder that in urban environments, you must dress to impress - even if you're married ;o) .
• Speaking of dinner that night, I quickly realized that people eat late! We went out at about 11:00pm and every place that we walked by was so crowded that we couldn't even walk in in our shabby clothing. Then again, it was a Friday night, so I suppose that might of had something to do with that fact. But I guess Spain has a reputation for late dinners and drinks anyway due to the sweltering heat during the day. Maybe that's more relevant in southern Spain than in Catalonia, though. It was almost contradictory, however, that the subway stopped running at sometime around midnight. 
• Wine is very cheap in Barcelona! In fact, I found most things priced very reasonably regardless of what we were buying. Maybe after spending so much time in New York I've gotten used to overspending when it comes to drinks and food. I think that might actually be true too, now that I think about my time in Germany as well, where the beers were very cheap relative to what we pay here. But, anyway, the wine was pretty good to my non-developed palate and at 3€ a glass, you really couldn't go wrong. Likewise, the tapas were great in Barcelona and could be surprisingly cheap, depending on where you go. It's like a buffet - all you can eat, you just pay per item. One of our favorite spots was around 1.50€ per tapa, which was quite a deal when you consider that you fill up after about six of them.
• Barcelona was surprisingly cosmopolitan. There was a strong contingent of Africans there (mostly selling fake designer purses and watches, shockingly ;o) as well as some elements of South Americans. Erika said there were quite a few Bolivians there, although we didn't really come across many South Americans. Catalonia is known for having a robust economy, which I guess would draw people from around the world to move there. Erika and I certainly felt the pull!
• The style for the younger generation is similar to what I envision Argentines being like - shaggy and hippy-like. Beards, overgrown and unkempt hair, and hemp necklaces and bracelets were the norm among the hipper crowd - and they were everywhere that we went. 
• It's so ironic that local produce is so trendy in the United States when the plethora of markets in Barcelona (and the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world?) would find it ludicrous to sell anything but local, seasonal produce. In New York, we think that it's great that we have access to wonderful green markets and Whole Foods. But in reality, it's really difficult for us to live that kind of lifestyle with companies like Walmart going "local" and putting those "local" farmers under intense price pressure!
• The subway trains in Barcelona, which were surprisingly clean (again, maybe I'm jaded by New York's), actually wait for you! We were about halfway down a long staircase trying to catch a train, when it closed its doors. We slowed down and waited for it to pull away when all of the sudden the train reopened it's doors and waited a good five seconds longer for us to run and jump in. Five seconds! How outrageous!
• I had heard that sometimes people from Spain had a superiority complex when it came to Latin Americans and I was interested to see how they would treat Erika with her Castellano Spanish accent. The reality was that they didn't even react to her accent and, in the odd circumstance that they used a different word in Spanish than she knew (such as at our local market when talking to the deli meat specialist), they would laugh and joke together about the different words and would take interest in her words. 
• The shoes. Ohhhh, the shoes. One thing I really regret is not taking advantage of the reasonable prices in Barcelona and buying some hot Euro-shoes. They really had a nice urban flair to them and were totally unique compared to what I have here in the states. But, with my shoe rack already overloaded, I couldn't justify spending the $80 on them. Oh well, next time!

J. Riley, just a taste of what's to come!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy birthday mom, you've got twins on the way! :-x

España and Deutschland: Churches

By the second day in Barcelona, we had the whole luggage escapade our of our system and we were ready to start checking off the boxes on our itinerary of amazing things to see in Barcelona. But where should we start? After doing some quick reading in our tour book, we decided to ponder it further over some variant of ham between two slices of bread at the Barceloneta mercado. Erika had had a coffee con leche with her breakfast the day prior and, although I am not a coffee guy, I decided that one was in order for the first day to really get me going. This was a sign of things to come and let to an incredible addiction that I am still fighting in my heart and mind to this day. Being a coffee culture, I got used to drinking some good stuff, which has set me up for disappointment whenever I indulge on the weekends in midtown.

But I digress. We decided that our first order of business was to check out the insatiable, incredible, one-of-a-kind Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudi in the early 20th century. He died without seeing it completed, and I will also likely die before it's completed because it's still very much a work-in-progress. Now that I think about it, I find it ironic that we Americans use the term "goddie" (spelled phonetically) with a negative connotation to describe a material thing that is over the top, embellished with thick, ornate, outlandish decorations (much like my definition of the word itself :o). Perhaps this term came from "Gotti" (as in the head of our local mafia family), but more likely it came from Gaudi, who's designs were in fact ornate, outlandish, and over-the-top. Which is what makes this place so controversial, I suppose. Some guidebooks describe his designs as "cake in the rain", which I found pretty accurate.

According to the length of the line and our Rick Steves Snapshot guide of Barcelona (highly recommended, by the way), we arrived right at the worst time, with a line snaking around the corner for the entrance. But, not for the first time, we found the line to be quick moving and in a few minutes we were standing in front of this impressive building in all of its glory. It was almost overwhelming just standing there, so, armed with our audio guides, we took a seat at the base of one of the columns near the entrance (conveniently in the shade since it was toasty) and just took it all in for a few minutes.

It's basically impossible to describe this place. Where's a Graham when you need him? The columns inside the church were unsymmetrical trees of concrete (literally, trees) and the exterior was just breathtaking. I could say that he incorporated nature in his design with spires built like honeycombs and native plants and animals from the Holy-land throughout the exterior, and you would probably cross it off your list of things to see in your lifetime, but that would be a mistake! I literally cannot describe the place, you just have to see it to believe it.

Following a few hours of drinking from the cup of Gaudi at the Sagrada Familie, it was time to see the next church. Euros, they always complain about how Americans love churches and how boring they find them, which I can totally understand. But when we picked up Leif at the Plaça de Catalunya, he was actually excited to see the next church on the list. After mentally mapping out our plan for the rest of the afternoon, we decided that the best thing to do would be to purchase day-passes. Of course, we'd already used our $0.70 metro card ticket twice that day, but surely we would ride it at least six more times that day. I mean, how long can you really stay at a church (especially after just finishing up with the Sagrada Familia)?    

So, we headed off to the next place of worship, which was a bit on the outskirts of Barcelona and a further ten minute walk from there before it appeared before us. This is a place where legends are created and nurtured from a young age until they are released against inferior opposition as teenagers. One of the largest of its kind in all of Europe (nearly 100,000 people can praise the Hand of God on an afternoon), a place where nationality was celebrated and defiance against fascism was practiced on a weekly basis for nearly a half-century, the Camp Nou: The house of FC Barcelona, the best football team in the world. I feel lucky to have been able to visit this place now while they are nearly at the peak of their ability. Where a boy (Leo Messi) who will likely be called the best football player of all time is plying his trade at the tender age of 23.

I haven't been to many football stadiums in Europe, but if I was to pick one to visit (other than Liverpool's Anfield, of course), it would have to be the Nou Camp. While it would be much more exciting to actually go there while the season was in full swing and experience the noise of 97,000 patrons, this would have to do for the time being. FC Barcelona is actually an important cultural icon for the nation of Catalonia. When the fascist Franco plunged the country into civil war and struck down Barcelona and the Catalans, FC Barcelona was one of the last places of refuge for the citizens. Franco outlawed the flag of Catalonia, but the flag was incorporated in the club's emblem, so it really was, and is, a way for them to display some pride in their nationality. Little did I know that the club's slogan "FC Barcelona, More Than Just A Club" is not just some marketing moniker that Nike came up with after all.

We toured the stadium and locker room (as exciting as a locker room can be I guess), we got pictures holding a mock Champions League trophy, we held a press conference in their media room, I got my photo taken with Messi himself, which was amazing since he was actually in South Africa at the same time!), and generally payed homage to all of the greats that have graced the colors of FC Barcelona.

After a few hours at the church, it was basically time to meet up with Leif's girlfriend Melanie (who, conveniently, was in town for a girl's weekend) and head out to the Olympic Port for a seafood dinner. This area, which felt like it was at least a five mile walk from the subway) was basically built for the '92 Olympics and was at the end of the incredible Barcelona beach (which, by the way, we never got to enjoy thanks to the weather and the luggage incident).

So we wandered along the beach, along the snack shacks, clubs, and all sorts of interesting things going on until we got to the pier that held giant outdoor restaurants stacked full of fresh seafood and greasy, over-sunned menu hawkers. I have no doubt that these guys are definitely the Jersey Guidos of Europe (minus The Situation's abs) judging by the way they haggled and got a little too cozy to girls walking by.

We were pretty tired by this time and so we settled into a nice paella plate after dining on appetizers. The ironic thing about it was that we had just walked for over an hour to this place way out of the way based on one of the German's book's recommendation when we learned that none of the Germans, in fact, liked seafood :o). Suddenly, Erika and I become the "experts" on recommending which fish they should eat when they don't like any fish at all. Leif made things easy by ordering a steak, while I hastily described what a monkfish looks like when Melanie asked me what I thought about that for dinner. I recommended the cod, which they found relatively palatable. :o)

It was one of our longer, dryer days (and hot!), but we enjoyed the Germans company for the night. Next time, we'll take them for awesome tapas instead of seafood :o). We took the brisk subway home and crashed pretty hard after wandering around our little village neighborhood's narrow streets a little bit more.

J. Riley, we used our day passes exactly twice, which means we wasted about $15 on the day pass :o|

IVF Cocktail Party Invitation

We're having a party at our humble abode, anyone want to stop by for an evening of indulgence and gluttony?

Snacks Available

After the party is the after-party...

J. Riley, Oven opened, bun inserted

España and Deutschland: First Day in Barcelona

Friday morning, and Barcelona awaits us. I spent the last month studying the city and all of it's sites, but somehow it doesn't feel like we are on vacation. After all, we had no luggage. No clean clothing, no appropriate shoes for exploring, and no desire to get the day going. We hung out at the apartment hitting F5 on the laptop keyboard, hoping that British Airways would miraculously change the status from "We have no idea where your luggage is" (I paraphrase) to "Hey, your luggage arrived as expected at 10:00am, our first flight into Barcelona".

By 10:30, I was fed up and it was time that we start making the airlines pay and at least get enough clothing to last us a day or two. It is very frustrating not knowing when your luggage is going to come, or even if it is going to come, because I didn't want to waste money if I didn't need to, but I just wasn't feeling confident that they had their act together. But Erika was clearly in more dire straits because I at least had some underwear and a shirt that didn't stink too much, but Erika had shoes giving her blisters and no clean clothes. Luckily, we lived spitting distance from a modern shopping center, which I was hoping that we wouldn't need to explore, but it became inevitable.   

We did pretty well, actually. They had an H&M in the shopping center and I was able to get a shirt while Erika found some nice shirts, shorts, under-roos, sandals, and a nice lightweight scarf to get her accessory fix. Prior to going to the shopping center, I was sweating the "Euro tax" thanks to the negative exchange rate, but Barcelona was surprisingly...reasonable! I was expecting to pay one euro for every dollar that an item cost (i.e. a $15 shirt would cost 15 Euros, or about $20). But we found that the prices were more along the lines of costs in the U.S. Maybe a benefit of visiting a country in a major recession?

With the shopping out of the way, we hightailed it back to our apartment to drop the stuff off and change because we had a date with life, and a date with Leif! My German friend is a pilot and had managed to get scheduled to fly out of and into Barcelona for the next three days, which meant he could hang out with us and see the city in the afternoons. But first, the luggage. Of course as soon as we got back from shopping, the airlines said that our luggage had arrived that morning! A few quick phone calls later, and they said that they would deliver the luggage sometime after 6:00pm. That sucked that it would be a while before we got it, but as long as it was coming we were happy.

After getting marvelously lost on the way to our meetup spot in Plaça de Catalunya, we finally met up with Leif for the first time in five years, and Erika finally got to meet one of the Germans that I talk about incessantly. She got her first taste of the Euros with Roland's visit in November, so of course she was looking forward to meeting Leif Knappy.

So, we're hanging out and talking, but what should we do? All of the guidebooks focus their energy on the epicenter of tourism, La Rambla. La Rambla is a long, sweeping pedestrian street that travels from the Plaça de Catalunya all the way to the ocean. It's just the kind of place that I despise, but I figured we had to at least see what all the hooplah was about. As the impromptu tour guide, I explained that La Rambla came from the Arabic word for "stream", which it was back in the days that the Moors owned Barcelona. Of course, as the city grew, the "stream" turned into a sewage system and I guess they got tired of the smell and paved it over. Now, it's a place for street performers, bird salesmen (???), tourist giftshops, and pickpockets. As you travel down along the neighborhood of the Raval on the right-hand side, you come across prostitutes and other questionable characters, which is interesting since this is tourist centro. 


So, we cruised down La Rambla and headed for another prime tourist location, La Boqueria, which is the biggest, baddest, and most awesome market in Barcelona. This place was massive, full of colorful fruits, vegetables, ham, drinking holes, and little tapas bars and restaurants. I was looking forward to checking out the other markets, but I was very very impressed with La Boqueria. After smelling all of the wonderful products, we had to sample some, so we picked up a table at one of the tapas bars and gave the local malted beverages a try and snacked on anchovies (or sardines?), croquettes, ham, and a few other interesting small plates of food. They were good, but a little greasy to be honest. Of course there would be more tapas and better tapas later in the trip, but this was a nice way to ease into the local cuisine.


Sitting in the blazing sun while snacking and drinking, I realized that I had no sunscreen on, which would be definitely be a problem. I usually slather myself with sunscreen, but seeing as how it was in my luggage and my luggage was coming that night, I was determined to work on my skin cancer rather than pay a few bucks for sunscreen that I didn't even need. That's logical, right? Despite the fact that I would demand to be reimbursed for it from the airline (along with the rest of the stuff we bought that day)? Okay, maybe it wasn't such a cerebral idea, but I actually wanted to see if my epidermis was truly dead and dusted and would refuse to get any color. The result? No color (which is better than red)!!

After exploring La Rambla, admiring and trying to figure out how the hell the levitating men floated in the freaking air, and going up and down La Rambla searching in vain for Palau Guell (one of Gaudi's first designs) and some famous theaters, it was time to head down to the waterfront and relax on our way back to meetup with our beloved baggage. We hung out on some steps leading down to the smelly, polluted water (or maybe it was the cruise line exhaust we were smelling?), and eventually started heading back to Barceloneta and bid adieu to Leif until the next day.

Back in our apartment, it was time to figure out what was going on with our luggage. Lucky for us, our "roommate" was a pretty awesome guy and let us use his phone so that we could make all the phone calls that we needed to in Barcelona to get the information we needed. We had dinner plans that night with one of Erika's friends and, sure enough, the airline decided that that was a perfect target for the delivery time. So our luggage arrived at 10:00am, but they wouldn't deliver it to us until between 8:00 and 11:00pm. Although it was going to cause problems in our schedule, getting our luggage was priority number one, so we cancelled our plans and begrudgingly rescheduled for later in the weekend. It almost worked out better this way, because we had some pig shopping to do.

One of the things that Spain is famous for is their legs o'ham. Much like Italy has their prosciutto, Spain has their Jamon Serrano. I've head a lot about this, and had black pigs jumping over fences and landing between two pieces of buttered bread in my dreams at night. It was definitely on my agenda to eat at least four portions of fatty jamon for each meal, so we embarked on a trip to our local mercado to go pick some up.

Usually, when I visit a city, I try to find out the local customs and visit some more authentic areas (isn't that the dream of every traveler, though?). Typically, it doesn't happen, but we lucked on this trip because our apartment was situated in just such a place. Overlooking Passeig de Joan Borbo and it's constant flow of tourists and locals flocking to the beach, who would believe that just one block deeper into Barceloneta was a  feeding ground for local residents. The mercado, just a few three or four minutes away by walking, was my destination of fairy tales because it was a meeting place of families of the area and inside they had a lovely little market with several jamon stands. We ended up picking one to stick to and it became our ritual to visit this place on a daily basis to pick up a variety of ham to eat for breakfast, snack on, or make sandwiches with. Our meat cutter (scientific term ;o) told Erika all about the different varieties he had such as regular serrano vs. serranita vs. black pigs that were fed only chestnuts, etc. He let us sample the different types and was in no rush to get us out despite the fact that the place was closing down by this point. This: is the life! We matched the jamon up with some cheeses that he had and went across the street to Barceloneta's top bakery where for a small pence, we were able to get some delicious fresh bread that would be our breakfast the next day.

Back at the homestead, we waited for our luggage some more. Finally, at 9:00pm, Ricardo got the call that our stuff had arrived and we rushed downstairs to embrace my handicapped  bag (it desperately needs some new wheels!)!! It was such a relief to finally be able to change into something cool and fresh after two days of offending the people around us ;o).

After our things arrived, we decided to head out to get some sangria and maybe a bite to eat in the immediate area, but Ricardo recommended that we head of to the Born neighborhood, which was the next neighborhood over. We were met with more narrow streets, dark alleyways, and throngs of sharply-dressed people in this burgeoning and fashionable neighborhood. We felt totally out of place with my sandals and baggy shorts when everyone was dressed to the nines, but we wandered around in search of anything that was not jammed pack with people and that had some outdoor seating for us to enjoy in the comfortable weather. The tapa bars in this area were amazing full and it brought a great energy to the area.

At the same time, I felt like the neighborhood had a dark side to it. There were some really dark streets that we walked down and some shady characters that seemed to be around us all the time. After being warned repeatedly about the pickpockets, it really unnerved me when people would walk like two feet behind me. Luckily, I was with Erika (haha!) who had no problem in these situations, which was why she was the one in charge of carrying the cash and any valuables :o).

In any case, we eventually stumbled upon a culdesac that had several restaurants and we settled on pizzas and fresh sangria at Pizza Paco. This area was really hopping and it just felt great to finally be carefree, relax, and enjoy the sites and smells of Barcelona :o)

J. Riley, it was a long first day!

IVF Update

Thirteen embryos have been created. Now they're off to the lab for PGD testing! Assuming it all goes well and statistics are realistic and achievable, the embryo transfer should take place early next week. Erika, for one, can't wait to get this over with, these drugs are horrific!