SNOW!!!

Yup, it was the first snowfall of the season. Actually, I was snowed on yesterday on my way to work but today was the first day it stuck! Here are a couple of pictures. The one on the left is looking straight at our apartment, we're the sec

ond floor. (See Juan's bike on the balcony?) The one on the right is looking out from the balcony. Nice eh?

Also, I thought I'd just go ahead (since I'm finally blogging) to put up some pictures from last weekend.

Saturday I went with Rachel to pick out her tree and decorate it.

And here's Juan and I at the mall (no, not Christmas shopping) on Sunday. Look closely at the Washington memorial behind Juan, is it Air Force One or a UFO?

Road Trip - Day 2: Wasatch Range

One of our major concerns for this trip was our two cats. Though curious and adventurous at home and around the immediate landscaped alley siding against the long side of our old apartment building, they never picked up an interest for climbing aboard a vehicle and spending a few hours on a Sunday afternoon drive. Instead, they associated car rides with vet visits, which were infrequent but regular enough to mark their memory with the images of needles and barking dogs in a crowded waiting room. Of the two, Bollito suffered the most to the point he was physically unable to hold his liquids; it was not surprising to find him caked up in a dried mixture of cat litter and pee inside his kennel after our first day on the road. On the evening of the 5th, we gave Bollito a bath, washed his kennel, and pampered him with hugs and kisses. I guess this old grandma recipe worked since Bollito made the rest of the trip inside a dry and fresh kitty kennel. Let us not forget Cookie! She was a champ too all the way to DC.

The second leg of the trip involved driving north along the Wasatch Range and cut the mountains through a gorge just east of Salt Lake City. The scenery changed dramatically as we drove east while descending in altitude toward Wyoming. From an arid plateau, the landscape turned greener and rugged reminiscing of the Swiss Alps. This alpine impression was further echoed by road signs routing skiers to the local resorts. Please check out the pictures and click on them for a larger view.

While on the road, one can become quite disconnected from news events. Fortunately, we freshened up on the state of a affairs from a glance at a national security update posted on the front door of a local gas station.

Wyoming border, hooray!!!



Juan is making sure the strap securing the front wheels to the vehicle transport does not slip off again...ouch.



Check out the size of this windmill!


Guess what were we racing for several dozen miles? A carrier transporting radioactive waste.

Road Trip - Day 1: Desert Zone

We hit the road on 9/5/07. It did not take long before the landscape turned from an urban composite to a vast desert modestly populated by tumble weed and Joshua trees.

We approached the Nevada border early in the afternoon. To prevent the engine from over heating, we agreed to keep the AC unit turned off and the windows rolled down. To our surprise, the temperature in the cabin was quite comfortable.

The city of Joan became our first stop in Nevada where we checked on the kitties (they were doing fine) and refueled the truck (for economy car owners, it takes some getting use to accept the price meter won't stop at $35). We also indulged in ice cream sandwiches, yum.

Rita and I are not into gambling, but we were not immune to the peculiar charm of Las Vegas. Maybe some day we will return to the city in the desert and stay at the New York New York Hotel. Wait a minute! We are now living 3 hours away from New York and Broadway, why would we want to go back to Vegas!?!

We drove past Vegas in the middle of the afternoon, and pressed forward to our checkpoint for the day: Cedar City, UT. As the sun was setting on the western horizon near the Arizona border, we stumbled upon a green valley irrigated by a healthy meandering creek.

Late in the evening, we sighted the state sign for Utah. Please note the picture is out of focus; it was an intentional effect to give you a sense of how tired our eyes were.

Sunny California

California had been home for us since we first met in 2001 and also the stage where our friendship slipped into romance, turned into a pledge and matured into a wedding vow. We nested for three years in the city of Glendale, an urban community landlocked between Griffith Park and the Verdugo mountains, from which one could see the Los Angeles skyline on a clear day.

California was also the stage for a number of our much anticipated get-aways. We consider ourselves fortunate now to have trecked the sunny foothills of the Santa Barbara mountains and gasped before the cold beauty of the eastern Sierra Nevada.

However, what made California very special, was the proximity of family. It is primarely to you that we dedicate this and upcoming posts. We love you and we miss you. Juan, Rita, Bollito, Cookie, and Caramelo.

In the beginning...

there was Rachel, and Rachel was with Rita though she was not Rita. Thanks to Rachel, the first post was made possible.