Are you kidding me?!

Our tans have nearly faded and we’ve stopped saying “Hola” to everyone we pass (including the pizza delivery guy), but the photos of our annual winter vacation will keep our memories of our annual winter vacation alive just a little bit longer!

This year we ventured to the “other side” of Mexico to Puerto Vallarta. We stayed at the Barcelo la Jolla de Mismaloya, a resort about eight miles (and a 30-minute cab ride) south of Puerto Vallarta proper. Having become accustomed to the beautiful beaches of the Mayan Riviera and Dominican Republic, we were a bit disappointed with the small, shady and cold beach at this resort, so we spent our days by the pool. But really, how bad can lying by the pool, reading good books with a frosty beverage in one’s hand for seven days straight really be?

Our room was quite nice — the nicest accommodations we’ve ever encountered in all of our tropical travels. We also were on the 9th floor so had a beautiful view of the resort and surrounding area, including the ocean. The resort’s buffet was standard fare, with breakfast providing the best options. Unfortunately, I became sick for a portion of our trip, although I can’t for sure attribute it to anything I ate.

We ventured out of the resort one day to the small town across the street, La Jolla. There we took a tour of the local tequila factory (not much of a tour — just the two of us who found a staff member who showed us around and gave us a few shots) and also experienced the Puerto Vallarta Zoo. Our very close encounters feeding the animals was certainly something to behold, which you’ll see in a few videos in the slideshow. I would have included more videos of Roger feeding the animals, but in his excitement, his language became a bit colorful and sadly my video editing skills do not include standard bleeping. As it is, you will hear Roger ask “Is this where camel toe comes from?” in one of the videos … bad enough, but not that bad that I’d sacrifice the entire video!

When we returned to Minneapolis we were met with 45 degree temperatures, but only for a day. Last week’s frigid weather made us wish we’d booked our trip for two weeks! However, it is good to be home and both of us feel well-rested after a much-needed vacation. And that’s just how it should be.

I added the photos from our New York City trip to our web site quite a long time ago—but I never made mention of them because I hadn’t quite finished captioning them nor had I figured out how to add the video snippets I’d also taken (our new Canon Digital Elph comes with the ability to shoot video). Well, the wait is over! Captioned photos and videos are here!

I recently installed SlideShowPro Director, the content management system that nicely complements SlideShowPro, which I’ve been using happily for quite some time now. Well, with the recent release of Director and other enhancements to the tool, re-ordering and captioning photos is now a breeze, and I can now easily incorporate videos into my photo slide shows, too. While I’m no Martin Scorcese, my favorite snippets are the Party Shuttle tour guide describing how Wall Street got its name, and the video of a Navy recruitment rock band singing some crazy song by Korn. My Christmas wish will soon include a somewhat more legitimate video camera, so perhaps I’ll be posting more video soon!

By no means are we on Al Gore’s donor roll, but every once in a while we try our best to be good to the planet. Our local grocery store (Festival Foods) started offering these re-usable cloth bags for purchase. We bought half a dozen (and should have bought more since they quickly sold out), and keep them in the car. They’re good at hauling lots of junk!

Roger and I awoke to a huge clap of thunder early Saturday morning, followed by horizontal rain and incessant lighting. It was all we could do but crawl back under the covers and say a little prayer that our tree wouldn’t fall on our house. I did consider whether or not the dog’s crates, located in the living room, would be sturdy enough to withstand a falling tree and collapsing roof and protect little Kozmo and Newman; I determined they would and promptly fell back asleep to the sound of the whistling wind.

Saturday morning we awoke to no power, the sound of chainsaws and this—devastation throughout our neighborhood. Seeing as though we had no power and didn’t know when it would return, we got ready for the day and headed out for breakfast (along with the rest of Bloomington and Burnsville; the wait at our new favorite breakfast place, Jensen’s, was over 20 minutes). On our way there, we snapped these photos of the damaged trees throughout the neighborhood, some just within two blocks of our house. Fortunately, we were spared: our tree lost only one branch, and it lodged itself nicely between the four trunks.

After cleaning up the deck and yard, I ventured into work Saturday afternoon—to work on a project in an air conditioned office and with a computer that would last longer than the 120 minutes my laptop would give me. When I got back to the house around 6 p.m., there was still no power. So, Roger and I called up the folks and asked to crash at their new home in Savage. After obtaining the security code from my dad (and explicit instructions that included turning off the phone so that if we did trigger the alarm, it wouldn’t send a signal to the security company), we packed up the fridge and freezer and headed south with our thousands of condiments and pork tenderloin. When we arrived at their home, I transferred those explicit instructions to Roger, and on the count of three we entered the house to the sound of a screaming alarm. Assuming that it always did this and that silencing it only required punching in a simple code, we quickly punched in the digits and high-fived each other, proud of our accomplishment. Then, the phone rang, and I finally had my “Oh, shit” moment of the day.

“This is Kim from the security company. Is everything OK?,” a somewhat friendly but stern woman asked over the phone. As she drilled me for details, I couldn’t offer her the password that would end this nightmare (despite his explicit instructions, dad had forgotten one minor yet slightly important detail). She threatened to send out the cops if she couldn’t get a hold of my mom and dad for the code; all I could think of was on top of not having power, losing half the food in my freezer, and wondering if the power could come back in time for the TiVo to tape Glen Close’s Damages on Tuesday night, was that I was going to jail. A jail with no power.

Finally, the alarm was shut off, my mom and dad called to assure me that everything was OK, and Roger and I ventured out in a somewhat unfamiliar suburb (in the pouring rain, once again) to find dinner. We collapsed in an unfamiliar but welcome bed Saturday night. Yesterday morning, Xcel Energy had finished their job and our electricity was restored. We were home again and our fridge has never looked so clean.

While the weather we had this past weekend was nothing like the tremendous tornado in Kansas, we did get some high winds gusting as high as 60 mph. Our 50+-year-old tree in the front road took a beating:

Ever since we moved into the house five years ago, we’ve always known the tree in the front yard would have to be significantly trimmed back—or eventually come down all together. Not only is there the risk of the entire thing falling on our roof and leaving a gaping hole in the house, it already yearly causes our main sewer line to back up. But taking care of the tree is not a cost we’re looking forward to. When I asked Roger what the deductible for our home insurance was, I stated that it might be cheaper for us to let nature take its course than pay for preventative medicine!

Tulips blooming on the south side of the house.