GrumpysMonkey

John and I had a very odd Christmas being snowbound in Seattle. My mom sent us a Christmas gift though that we just got today. Yes. Today. Now that part wasn’t Amazon’s fault. With all of the snow, UPS deliveries were horribly delayed. There are reports of trailers just lined up at the UPS centers unable to be unloaded because the centers are full.

So when the package arrived today, I was thrilled. A Christmas present! Yay!

Until I opened it.

Amazon… this is not the way you wrap a gift. Note the ripped paper, the askew and loose ribbon, and the card that’s pretty much detached from the package by the gift receipt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hate New Year’s Resolutions. Really. I don’t make them. I do make a few goals though every year. How are goals different from resolutions? Well, they aren’t really things I want to change about myself. They are definitive things I want to do. I think of resolutions as things like eating healthier, working out more, cursing less (or more for that matter) or getting organized.

My goals are a lot more specific.

1. Save X dollars (in addition to what’s in our savings account now). I know what X is. I don’t feel the need to post it here.

2. Grow Cook Local to the point at which it earns at least $10/month.

3. Help my husband get a new job. His job sucks. Really sucks. Anyone want an online community expert? A technical author? (Seriously, he wrote a book and everything). 

Those are my goals. Of course I always want to lose a few pounds, and I always want to eat healthier and work out a lot, and as for swearing, well, I could care less about the damn swearing.

Can you take a couple of minutes to go to Shorty Awards and nominate @cooklocal for an award in Food? Thanks!

All you need is a Twitter account and about 2 minutes.

You can even tweet the following directly from your Twitter client and bypass the website completely.

“@shortyawards I want to nominate @cooklocal for a Shorty Award in the #food category because…”

Thanks! 2009 is the year that Cook Local explodes, and any help will be much appreciated.

I am very glad that I sold the house in CA when I did. My ex-husband apparently emailed my father with a link to a real estate listing. My former house is for sale for less than half of what it was sold for when I sold it. Wow.

It’s very likely a foreclosure. That’s too bad. It was a good house. Not the right house (or the right marriage for that matter), but it was a good house. Hopefully it is still in decent condition for whoever buys it next.

We were supposed to be in central Mass today. In fact, in about an hour we should have been going out for dinner with John’s family to celebrate his parents 50th anniversary! Unfortunately, we are home in Seattle. Why?

That’s about a foot of snow on our patio. It snowed last Wednesday night. We got about 3-4 inches and lots of ice. This meant that on Thursday (the day we were supposed to fly out), we couldn’t get the car up the hill. So we called JetBlue and moved our flight to Friday night (for free… they were allowing anyone flying through Boston that day to reschedule for free).

On Friday, we put chains on the car and drove up the first street and parked. Ok, all good, we can use the chains to get up the second hill. Except for the fact that the chains fell off. Apparently we have crappy chains and we didn’t put them on very well. So we got stuck again. We trudged back home, resigned to lose some money on our flight since we’d have to cancel. But then… the phone rang. It was JetBlue. They CANCELLED our flight to Boston that night. So, we got a full refund! Turns out Boston had a ground stop and they weren’t letting any inbound flights take off.

At that point, we resigned ourselves to spending Christmas at home, alone. We’d love to be in Central Mass. We’d love to be with John’s family.  I love his family. I would love to be with them for Christmas, even moreso since we haven’t seen them in a whole year (well, we saw his parents this summer, at least that’s something). But we haven’t seen the kids or his sisters in a year. But, at least we got a full refund on the flight so we can find a time this spring to go back.

Sunday was supposed to be the day that Seattle basically closed for business. Winds, snow, freezing rain… it was supposed to be Snowpocalypse 2008. For what it’s worth, every time we get snow here in Seattle, they dub it snowpocalypse. Seattle just doesn’t operate in the snow.

So yesterday morning, we bundled up and went walking for coffee, lunch, and supplies for the next few days. It was lovely out. Cold, clear, and very icy. But I managed to walk about 2 miles without falling, a huge feat for me.

We split up after lunch, since John walks a lot faster in the snow than I go and he went to the grocery store. He came back home carrying a Christmas tree! My wonderful husband carried a 4 ft Christmas tree home (along with a huge and heavy bag of groceries) well over a mile!

We’ll decorate it today since… well… we’re pretty much trapped in the house. It started to snow about the time I got home after lunch yesterday (3:30) and it just kept snowing most of the night. We’ve got about a foot total so far and it’s off and on snowing again today.

Hopefully we’ll be able to leave the neighborhood in a car by Tuesday. Reports are that it should warm up just a bit by then. Right now it’s 30 and that’s the warmest it’s been in a few days. But we’ve got enough food, enough liquor, and plenty of blankets and logs for the fire. I’ve got a few days to figure out what to make for Christmas dinner. It will be a quiet Christmas, but we’ll be together, and that’s what’s important. It’s too bad we can’t spend Christmas with either of our families, but we’ll be with both of them in spirit.

Overnight, Seattle turned into a snowbound white winter wonderland. This would be absolutely wonderful if we didn’t need to get on a plane in about 7 hours. But we’ll deal with that in a few more hours.

This morning, however, I managed to fulfill my snow fantasies. See, growing up in California, I’d never gotten a chance to make a snowman. So John and I went out and played in the snow for about half an hour.

Well, if you’re thinking about the G1 (the Google phone), buy our book! It’s almost done and should be on the shelves in a little over 2 months. John did most of the work writing and he did a great job on it!

Finally, it’s Sunday and our flight is leaving at 11:40 am. Not a lot to say about the travel day other than a few random thoughts.

1. JetBlue… you need a easier way to get from Seattle to Cancun than through JFK or Boston.

2. JFK airport… STOP BLASTING THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC!!! You want to play a little bit of Christmas music, fine. But not ALL CHRISTMAS MUSIC ALL THE TIME.

3. JFK airport… whoever thought it would be a good idea to take a plane load of people from Cancun and make them exit the plane ONTO THE TARMAC in weather that was (with wind chill) around ZERO DEGREES was not thinking.

4. Annoying people on cell phones… Get off the phone long enough to READ THE SIGNS THAT SAY NO CELL PHONES IN THE CUSTOMS AREA!

5. JetBlue… your TVs are in serious need of repair.

6. Lady across the aisle from me on the flight to SEA… You do not get off the plane any faster by leaning against me with ALL YOUR WEIGHT trying to push me forward.

7. Travelers in general… the term Carry-On means that you must be able to CARRY it ON. If you’ve got a carry on that needs to go in the overhead bin, make sure it isn’t too heavy for you (or your traveling partner) to actually lift.

8. To my bed… I really love you. I love you even more after I’ve slept on beds other than you for a few nights.

Do we have to leave?

This morning, John got up a little early so he could go for a run on the beach. He wanted to do this so he could eat more of the great fruit and juice at breakfast. He ran, I walked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breakfast ensued and then we packed up and left Tulum. I have never felt as relaxed and unstressed as I felt in Tulum. So, some closing thoughts on Tulum…

I was worried about Tulum. I worried that it wouldn’t be safe, or that the bungalow wouldn’t be clean, or up to the (rather high) standards I tend to have for hotels. But I was wrong. Yes, there is crime in Mexico. I didn’t swing my purse from my arm or go walking down the deserted road late at night. But walking on the beach a little at night from hotel to hotel? Not worrisome. Walking  down the streets in Tulum? Not scary. I didn’t want to venture much off of the main drag, but I felt perfectly fine there. I think if I’d known more Spanish I’d have felt even better.

So it will definitely be back to Tulum we will go someday. In all likelihood, we will go back in almost exactly 1 year as it was absolutely wonderful. Only next time, we’ll probably stay almost the entire time in Tulum with no more than 1 night in Cancun.

Playa del Carmen, here we come! (again)

On the way back from Tulum to Cancun, we again stopped at Playa del Carmen for lunch and a little shopping. We wanted to get our niece a little charm for her charm bracelet and we wanted to get coffee and vanilla beans that we’d seen in a coffee shop there.

We walked around for about an hour, and then got some great tacos at one of the restaurants (can’t remember the name though). It took a while to get the charm, and some dickering occurred, and I think we did decently well. Probably not as well as we could have done, but not bad at all. We also bought a bottle of the Xtabentun. Yay!

Playa del Carmen had a much different feel on Saturday than it did on Thursday. The shopkeepers were still pretty aggressively trying to get people into their shops, and the Mr. Whiskers moniker was brought out again by several, but I was a little surprised at the number of offers of weed we got. No one was accosting or anything, they were just all calling out from their shops, so it certainly wasn’t scary or worrisome, just a bit odd.

Back to Cancun we went, filled with tacos and Coca-Cola.

The Hilton was no Marriott

I purposely booked two different hotels for our nights in Cancun. I figured we might as well try two different ones since we needed them for non-consecutive nights. Well, the Hilton was a nice hotel, but I just didn’t find it as nice or as comfortable as the Marriott.

Here’s the view from our room.

When we got to the hotel, we almost immediately went swimming. We were hoping to go back into the ocean, but there was a red flag warning that advised not to swim. So instead we swam a bit and then soaked in the hot tub.

For dinner, we asked the concierge for a good, low key, local spot that offered a good selection of tequilas. He recommended Casa Maguey. It was in a ritzy mall and we weren’t all that excited about it, but they did make guacamole right at your table and it was truly excellent.

We asked the waiter there to recommend a very good tequila and he brought us their top three.  He let us smell each of them. The first two were more than we wanted to pay for the entire meal, but they did smell pretty darn good. We opted for the third, which was like $10/shot. It was quite good. We left after the guacamole and drinks though as we just weren’t feeling the restaurant for dinner.

We went to a tequila store in the mall and ended up with a bottle of the second most expensive tequila we’d just smelled as well as a bottle of what we ended up drinking.

Now, here’s where we had the one and only problem of the trip. Turns out, there was a marathon going on in Cancun. And it also turns out that the marathon closed one direction of the road that goes around the hotel zone. And it turns out that there’s a lot of construction in Cancun. And it turns out that the signs aren’t all that great in Cancun. And we ended up lost in Cancun for almost an hour trying to get back to our hotel. But, we finally did get back (thank you GPS for making sure we were going the right way… though it really was John who figured out where we needed to be). Then, since the road was open again, we ended up mere steps from where we ate dinner for a final shot of tequila at La Distilleria.  La Distilleria is a chain and I’d liken it to something like Chilis or Applebees. But they were so nice to us at the bar that we’ll go back. They recommended tequilas and were just generally very nice and accommodating.

Back at the hotel, we decided that we needed a little food so we ended up at the hotel sports bar. I had another shot of the Xtabentun and a little food. Then it was early to bed and we’re headed back home.

Food, Sun, Walks on the Beach

There’s not a lot to do in Tulum. Well, that’s probably not correct. There’s not much you NEED to do in Tulum. We got up around 8 so we could relax a little before breakfast.

Breakfast was delivered to the room.

That’s two big plates of fruit, 2 glasses of freshly squeezed OJ, bread, yogurt, and granola. Oh, and coffee. We ordered some Mexican eggs and beans to go with the spread, so John would have some more protein.

We ate with that same magical view and then did some sunbathing.

Follow that with some nice, leisurely beach walking.

The beach in Tulum goes for quite a ways. I’d say at least 3 miles total. We were about at mile 2 (I think). It’s possible it went even further, but we walked about 2 miles of it total. The weather was perfect, and we took a few pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere in the afternoon (I don’t even know what time it was), we drove into town, still in our bathing suits (me in my pareo and John did put a shirt on) for lunch.  We ended up at Casa Tacoqueto where my small amount of Spanish knowledge came in sort of handy. Turns out they have no menus and you just choose from whatever they have in the 5 or so pots for the day. I ordered Camarones (shrimp in a red sauce) and John had chicken in some brown sauce. It was excellent. The shrimp were huge, at least the size of a small child, and they just fell apart they were so tender. The tortillas were fresh and delicious. Total bill? $10 or so.

Back to the room and more relaxing. Hammock, reading, walking, hammock, reading, walking, etc. When it started to get dark and the lights came on (there’s only electricity from 5:30pm through 6:30 am or so) we took a shower and decided we’d go to dinner.

Our original thought was to go back into town, but there was this restaurant just down the street that we wanted to try for a drink first. We ended up there and didn’t leave until we were full. Oh well. So much for driving into town that night. La Zebra makes their drinks with muddled sugar cane and they were amazingly tasty. We each had a margarita, and then I tried a couple of other mixed drinks while John stuck to margaritas. Dinner was tasty and at least partially local.

At the end of the meal, John ordered a shot of tequila and I had a shot of a Mayan liquor, Xtabentun. This was like liquid honey flavored with anise seed. It was fantastic. So fantastic that we bought a bottle to bring home (but that’s getting ahead of ourselves to the next day).

Back to the room and onto day 4.