you may recall that last month we started looking for a good mexican restaurant to replace our favorite lunch place in ga.  sunday night, on our way home from al, we stopped in town at a place called locos.  we could tell from the outside that it was not going to be very authentic fare but we’re not nearly as concerned with authenticity as we are about finding a place we like.  the chips were very good.  they were super thin and hot and salt stuck to them well.  the salsa was the right consistency for us (we like non-chunky salsa) but needed a lot more spice to it.  i ordered my norm – beef and cheese nachos – and hubby ordered his norm – taco, burrito, and refried beans.  the nachos were infinitely better than what i got at los rancheros.  like i said, the chips were really good so that made the whole dish better.  the cheese sauce was a little thick and rubbery, not bad but not great either.  the meat was fine but there could have been more of it.  hubby liked his taco but didn’t care for his burrito at all and he said that the refried beans were too dry to eat.  i could eat the nachos again but i wouldn’t go out of my way for them.  hubby would rather just go to taco bell than to eat there again and i can respect that.  i think there’s one or two more places around here to try so we’ll keep searching but i’m starting to lose hope.

apparently exercising so late at night does not please my legs.  they were achy all night, which significantly impaired my sleep.  i guess i can’t complain too much since i did get more sleep than i normally do when hubby is gone.  here’s hoping that’s a continuing trend for the week.  when i talked to him this morning, he said that he didn’t sleep well either.  clearly a sign that he shouldn’t leave me.

i don’t much remember my sister’s sixteenth birthday (gimme a break, i was four – it’s possible that it was the big surprise party thrown at her boyfriend’s but i’d have to ask her) but i do remember when my brother turned sixteen.  my mom took the day off work and kept him out of school for the day.  they went to the DMV to get his driver’s license, they went out for a nice lunch, when i got home, we had a cake for him, and then she turned the car keys over to him for the rest of the evening.  it was a big deal.  not to the point of tiara’s and poofy dresses but there was definitely some pageantry to it. 

three years and two weeks later, i turned sixteen.  my mom went to work.  i went to school.  after school,  my friend jori stopped by the house and sang while handing me a slurpee with a candle in it.  it was the first, and was to be the last, birthday sentiment that i received that whole day.  my mom got home from work and there was no card, no cake.  i was pitifully reminiscent of molly ringwald.  sure, they all realized the next day that they had missed it and expressed their regret but that was little condolence.  heck, it was a month or so later that she finally found the time to take me to get my driver’s license.  i guess i just wasn’t sweet enough for sixteen.  maybe that’s why those birthday calls were so special to me after i moved out. 

anyhow, i never knew anyone to have a big soirée of a sweet sixteen party.  of course, i did expect a little more out of mine but it wasn’t to be.  so, how about you?  did you have a special day on your sixteenth birthday?

I got hit on by a sixteen year old kid today. He followed me around, asked my age and whether I was single, and lamented that I am not. I was amused. Especially when I walked by later and he pronounced, “there goes one smoking hot fox.”. It’s the little things, you know.

that is the most uncomfortable bed I think I have ever tried to sleep on.

we have had the windows and doors open since yesterday morning.  even though i wasn’t able to sleep well last night (it might have helped if i had gotten to bed before midnight), i woke up feeling marvelous.  there’s just something about cool, fresh air that perks me up.  today has been cloudy (not stormy clouds, just lots of white/blue fluffy clouds), which is perfect because i can enjoy my view of the backyard without having to close the curtain to keep the sun from burning my retinas out.  the breeze is constant and refreshing.  i’m loving it.  i really hope that it is here to stay for a while but i’m a bit dubious.  it seems like we had some more hot days this time last year.  which reminds me… as of last week, we have lived here a year now.  i cannot even express how much i have enjoyed my home this year.  i was not 100% certain when hubby talked about making this move but this was absolutely the right decision for us.

i had a lot of fun writing my getting to know me page, formerly a very weak “about” page.  enjoy.

there was a lot of commotion in our backyard sunday as the superboat national finals championship race took place.  the boats were fast and very, very loud, lasting probably thirty minutes or so.

Start of the race

the clip really doesn’t do the noise justice.

Passing by

the race started to the east of us and was a big loop. we had a great view and could feel the reverberation of the noise.

Poor attempt at capturing how far they came out of the water

it was interesting to watch – for the first five minutes or so. after a few laps, it just felt like watching nascar and i couldn’t take anymore. it was too hot anyhow.

Turn two

i did peek out the window a few times to see if bud light was still crushing the others.

Bud Light dominated from start to finish

if nothing else, it certainly broke up the monotony of a sunday afternoon.

a post over at brandon’s puppy reminded me of a funny story that i probably never ranted, although i’m sure a few of you have heard it.  it has to do with my time as a goat–mommy.  in february of 2005, i had my first experience with midwifing.  my brother-in-law had several goats that he had to induce labor on and those kids had to be bottle-raised because of some disease that could have been passed on through the milk. 

i batted my big blue eyes at hubby and, next thing you know, i had two precious little kids to take home to ga. i don’t know if you’ve ever had a goatlet, but they are just the cutest and most playful little things!  they are also a little noisy when they feel insecure.  their bleating sounds just like a crying infant.  a loud crying infant.  they required several feeds a day at first so i worked from home a couple days and then we were able to ween them down a bit and we just went home for lunch to feed them during the day.    while we were home, we’d let them run around the backyard or garage but while we were at work, they stayed in a playpen in the tiled useless area off of our kitchen.  hubby was very concerned that someone was going to see us with them in the backyard or complain about the bleating and call the county because we were certainly not zoned for farm animals.  he worried over this quite a bit.  Read the rest of this entry »

i know that i have been neglectful in my ranting the last few days, but i promise there is good reason.  i have been working on transferring my old travel log into a travel blog.  the mexican cruise that we just got back from is fully recapped there.  maybe, just maybe, one day i’ll even post about the west carribean cruise from 2006.  anyhow, it took a lot of time to get it put together so go check it out and let me know what you think.  and i’ll get back to trying to find more interesting things to rant about here.

along with the new and improved rant URL, i’ve undergone a much-needed redesign as well.  i hope you enjoy the new look.  it is subject to change as i play around more but i think i like it pretty well for now.

i’m starting to post about the cruise. it’ll probably take a few days to get all of it up because, while i did make sure to write up each day, typing it up and organizing pix takes time and my attention span doesn’t last very long. the first five days are up but you’ve got to scroll down for them since posts are newest to oldest. no, i don’t know how to reverse the order for a single category and i didn’t want to mess with the date/time stamps to get them in ascending order.

the weekend has been restful. after work on friday, we went for a four mile walk on the beach (it counts!). saturday i woke up feeling very dizzy and the spinny-sensation persisted all day. i suppose it was probably delayed land sickness but it sure was annoying. still a bit dizzy today but not nearly as bad. we made it down to the pool a bit this morning and watched a speed boat race (pix in another post to come) in our backyard. mostly, we’ve been working on our respective websites. i’ve been organizing pix and trying to figure out the best way to post them in a blog format since i can’t really do my travel logs on this pc.

we’re back in port for a few hours, marking the halfway point in our cruise. It’s been a wonderful week filled with rest, relaxation, snorkeling, and way too much eating. The coolest thing was an
excursion from calica (which isn’t really a town, just a port in the middle of a quarry – the nearest town is playa del carmen ten miles away). We snorkled underground in a cavern called chaak tun. I think we have some good pix of the underwater stalactites, stalagmites, collumns, and even some fishies. We also met some great people, including a girl traveling by herself from Russia (siberia to be exact). She was very interesting and we spent a lot of time hanging out with her. Of course, pix and full recap will have to wait until we’re home at the end of the week and I have my computer.

we are moments away from heading out to catch our cruise ship. since i am very excited about this cruise and getting away, i’m not even going to rant about how terrible i felt last night when i was trying to fit into my old “formal” wear. i’m not going to tell you how devastating it was to my recent exercise mentality. i won’t even tell you that if i had had a half-gallon of ice cream and a bag of cheetos, they would have been gone. what matters is that i’m going on a cruise and that’s something to be happy about!