Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Comment spammers please curl up and die

Am I being harsh? I mean, they’re just trying to make a living too, right? Well so are theives and dictators. Doesn’t make it right though. In the last few months, I’d guess about 80% of the comments I’ve been receiving are from fucking spammers listing their stupid links to sites nobody cares about. I can block all the IP addresses I want, they just change IPs and go right on spamming.

I can’t really tell if it’s automated or not.  It’s usually one or two here and there, but sometimes there will be 5 or more at a time. It’s weird. Isn’t the word verification thing supposed to eliminate the automated spammers? I even added on random numbers, not that it changed anything. I still get comment spam, and it’s very irritating. I’m guessing they actually hire flunkies now to manually enter these spam comments. I think I’ll call them “spamments”. If the phrase catches on, please remember that I coined the term and send me money, thanks. (And if the phrase already exists, please ignore me. But feel free to send money anyway, heh.) I need to do a little research and figure out how to put up a tougher wall, or else I might have to require memberships to comment. I wouldn’t mind feeling all exclusive and important and stuff, but that’s just deluding myself. The most likely outcome would be people start thinking, “What? I have to register and log in to comment? Forget it. It’s not that important. See ya.” And there goes my little bitty fan base. Ha. Haha. Fan base. Like I’m a celebrity. Yes please kiss the ring and swear your allegience! No wait that’s being a queen. Nevermind. If you think of ways to make spammers eat shit or at least leave my blog alone, please do share your thoughts. Thanks!

Update: After some initial research, I’ve discovered that the goal of these annoying spamments isn’t to advertise to bloggers or blog readers, but to increase their rank on search engines. For example, a Google bot might find a post of mine and scan its contents, including comments. Any links also get indexed, and the more links you have going to your site, the better your rank in the search engine. Sneaky. So my first step in squashing spamments is to remove automatic linking in comments. Expression Engine (the thing I use to run my blog) has a toggle setting for automatically turning URLs into links. I’m going to turn that off. I’m also going to see if I can prevent links altogether. People can still post URLs, so if anyone is really interested they can copy and paste it into a browser. But a search engine bot won’t be able to follow that anywhere. I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Another update: I’ve turned off HTML in comments altogether. So it sucks you can no longer bold or strike-out anything, but you can’t create links either. We’ll see if that works to deter spammers.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Nerd or Designer... can I be both?

In all my previous jobs, my title usually involved something along the lines of web developer or HTML programmer or something similar.  This new job is the first one I’ve had that was an actual design position. Web Designer. It sounds kinda glamorous, doesn’t it?  Any kind of designer automatically has some cool points associated by default.

In all honesty though, I do feel a little out of place. The other designers are more than 6 years younger than me and are so much better at what they do than I am. They also like to drink and party. At the Christmas party they each had at least 10 gin and tonics and were wasted by the end of the evening. Is this where creativity stems from? Being wild? I am so not wild, and when it comes to web design I am not very creative or fresh. I never got any formal training in design or graphics, so maybe that’s why. It makes me feel a little insecure sometimes, like maybe it was a fluke that I got this job.

I’ve learned more about new web technology in my first 3 weeks here than during the entire 3 years at my last job. I think the company will see that I’ve been putting in the effort to catch up and be a team player. They pay for training, so maybe I can finally get that formal design training so I too can design cool things despite my ability to draw only stick figures. The nice thing about these web designers is that they are not trend-setters by any stretch of the imagination. They may be able to design circles around me, but they’re still nerds and can talk about video games all day long. I dress better than they do too, believe it or not. All is not lost.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

It's Vegas baby

Has it really been nearly a month since my last post?  Oops. Well the company holiday party was this past weekend. Remember when I mentioned they were going to put us up in the Mandalay Bay casino hotel? Well it turned out they even upgraded us to some VIP suites! Check them out! Huge marble bathrooms, plasma TVs, floor-to-ceiling windows, comfortable beds… it was awesome. I think it’s the nicest place I’ve ever stayed at, ever.

Winter seems to be the best time to go to Las Vegas. Most of the times I’ve been there in the past, the heat was so intense we could never walk very far before feeling like we were going to pass out.  This time the air was pretty cold, but it was easy to bundle up to go outside. It was nice to finally walk down the street without succumbing heat exhaustion.

I’m not a gambler, at all. I didn’t spend a dime on a single game of chance. (Though my sweety did drop a quarter into a slot machine and tripled her investment, heehee.) I prefer to spend my cash on sure things… like buffets. Ooh the food… By the way, Sundays are the worst day for buffet breakfast, because all the casinos charge double for the food! What a ripoff. They claim it’s “champagne brunch” and justify the extra cost. Bullshit. Who the hell drinks champagne for breakfast? (You lushes keep quiet.) But Monday morning we went for the buffet breakfast at Bellagio. Yuummmy. Money well spent, I think. Better than losing it in a round of blackjack, that’s for sure. Breakfast at the Paris casino buffet is also scrumptious, with fresh breakfast crepes made to order.

Is it funny that the highlight of my trip to Las Vegas was the food and the room? The company party was okay. They went all out and hired a magician who was pretty good, and two supposedly hot musical acts who were so-so. The food was so-so as well. It was very disappointing to see my meat-eating coworkers have their slab of meat accompanied by veggies and fancy mashed potatoes, and all the vegetarians got was grilled veggies sandwiched between medium sized portobello mushrooms, cut into a round mini-burger shape. It couldn’t have been more than three inches across. What, do vegetarians not eat potatoes? Do vegetarians require less food than everyone else? What the hell?

One fellow web designer that I sit next to, whom I shall call “Chatterbox”, was especially irritating. He’s kind of annoying every day already, but he usually has some level of tact. He doesn’t know how to shut up and will waste half an hour blathering about one topic while only repeating one point over and over and over, but if he disagrees with you, he’ll at least be polite about it. I expected that plying him with alcohol would only remove his internal filter and amplify his obnoxiousness. I was right. He must have had about 10 gin and tonics, made fairly strong by a generous bartender near our table. An open bar has that effect on those who like to drink. By the end of the party he asked me like three times, “So what are you doing after the party?” It wasn’t in the sleazy pick-up line kind of way (thank god, eww, that would’ve been awkward), it was more of an inquiry from an overly social idiot who wanted find people to party and drink with. That’s so not my thing. All three times I told him I was just going back to my room because I was tired (we walked for hours up and down Las Vegas Blvd earlier in the day). All three times he would reply, “What?? No no you can’t do that, you’re in Vegas! You gotta drink and party! There’s an open bar for christ sake, live it up! Going to bed early is such a waste.” For the record, I don’t think 11:30 PM is early.

So I put up with his crap all evening, waiting for the party to be over so I could go snuggle up in the posh hotel suite again. People like him think people like me are totally boring, and I accept that. But when those people try to make me feel guilty for being a homebody, that’s when I start entertaining thoughts of planting my fists into their inebriated faces. Or at least telling them off. “Look, Chatterbox, I’m not like you, nor would I ever want to be like you. You’re a loser who needs alcohol in order to feel good about yourself. So fuck off and leave me alone.” I didn’t say any of this, of course. I just nodded and smiled. I still have to work with the guy when we’re all back in the office. There’s no chance of him getting fired for climbing up on stage during one of the band performances. Heh, that was some other guy. He got pulled off stage by the CEO himself. Talk about losing all dignity.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Tofurkey

Isn’t that a fun word to say? Tofurkey! TOFURKEY! If I were 7 I’m sure I’d say it over and over and over. Or if I was a blogger. Heh. Tofurkey!

I had some over the Thanksgiving weekend because my sweety and I have given up meat.  Multiple videos about how animals are processed like non-living factory parts really turned us off. We were apalled at how inhumane people can be, so we’re not going to contribute money to those atrocities anymore. Ideally we should become vegan since egg-laying chickens and milking cows are also horrifically abused, but I don’t think I could go that far that fast. I don’t think I could give up eggs, cheese and *gasp* ice cream. Besides, without that stuff, I’d be stuck eating nothing but beans and tofu for protein. I have nothing against beans or tofu, but every day? No thank you.

Back to tofurkey. (TOFURKEY!) So we tried this stuff while everyone else had turkey. It was all right. It comes as a prepackaged rounded ball, kind of like unsliced deli turkey, but with the stuffing already inside. The stuffing itself tastes very much like your standard Thanksgiving stuffing. But the “meat” itself wasn’t that great. It was mostly the consistency. Have you ever had extra firm tofu?  It was like that, except even harder. Instead of making the consistency like tender turkey, it was more like overcooked chicken. What a disappointment. It could have been a fantastic product if only they would not press it so hard. Such a shame. I was so looking forward to calling it Tofurkey Day instead of Turkey Day.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Maybe I should go into music video production

Because this new job is from 9am to 6pm, I eat breakfast at home before leaving (rather than eating my cereal at my desk).  That way I can fry up an egg to balance out the cereal. Anyway, I usually watch TV while I’m eating. This morning I saw a music video for some song I’d never heard of by Feist called “1234”. It’s a cute little song. My sweety says she likes it a lot, and was surprised I’d never heard it before.

So we’re watching this video… WTF… and my sweety is thinking the same thing. What the hell is this? It’s a bunch of people running around inside an empty warehouse in what I assume is a series of loosely choreographed “routines”. There’s some people wearing yellow, some wearing green, purple, etc. I suppose it’s kinda cute in a rainbowy, elementary school kinda way. But these are adults. We’re watching this video thinking, “Somebody got paid to produce this?” It’s like it was created by a volunteer parent for a troop of fourth graders.

And then, get this, on my way to work this morning, I hear it on the radio for the first time. That stupid video was inserted back into my head. Good grief. 1234…

Monday, November 12, 2007

Catching up with The L Word

What a wonderful relaxing weekend. For once we didn’t have to visit anyone, buy anything or go anywhere. And people pretty much left us alone. Which meant we were able to spend hours cuddled in the bedroom watching DVDs.  We were finally able to rent Season 4 of The L Word. Since I don’t have Showtime, we had to wait until it came out on video in order to watch it.  If you haven’t watched it yet, then you should stop reading since the rest of this post contains spoilers.

First disappointment - they got rid of Carmen. Come on. She was cute, didn’t have bizarre issues like most of the other characters, and was quite a hottie to boot. They got rid of her and decided to replace her with some ghetto girl from the hood who acts worse than most of the cholos I see around LA. Can you see my eyes rolling? Please can we just have a normal character to keep the rest of the crazy cast grounded?

Second disappointment - Only 12 episodes? Come on! I feel cheated. I waited this long and the entire set didn’t even last us the weekend. Boo.

However I am quite glad they decided to cut down on the number of whacko head trips from Jenny’s demented mind. Seriously, I had to fast forward through too many of those last season. If I wanted artsy fartsy, I’d go to a freaking museum.  It’s kinda cool sometimes when she says the things that everyone is thinking but is too polite to say, but her behavior is just inexplicable sometimes. So she’s now floating out in the open ocean without paddles (and likely without her mind as well). Will she disappear? One can only hope. But probably not. She’ll come back to civilization with some new epiphany and a new set of head trips to share with everyone. Ugh. Jenny, get a therapist already.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The bitter with the sweet

No I haven’t been consumed by the fires, but I have been consumed by work.  Ugh. It went from being really laid back to “oh my god we have ten million things to do in a week!!!” As is the nature of the web development business, we often don’t get all the information and content we really need until it gets really close to the deadline.  The bastards take their time, change their minds a thousand times about everything, and then expect us to magically pull a working website out of our asses by their ridiculous deadline. And because this site is supposed to be ready for some convention, the deadline is tighter than my pants after Thanksgiving.

Normally we can push back and say, “Nuh uh, you gave us this crap late, so we have to adjust our timelines accordingly.” Not this time. This time, we had to work long hours AND come in on the weekend. Friday I worked 12 hours. Saturday I worked 10 hours. Sunday I worked 7 hours. Not. Fun. At all. Of course the company doesn’t mind doing that to us because we’re salary, so no overtime pay. *grumble*

On the bright side, the company’s Christmas party this year is going to be in Las Vegas, and they are paying for everyone’s room for one night at the Mandalay Bay! Woohoo!  I’ve never stayed there before, so it should be fun. I wonder if it’s as shiny on the inside as it is on the outside?

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

What's all this dust?

I never watch the news on TV, so the only current events I ever know about are the ones I hear on the radio in between song sets and from other people. This past weekend was just another relaxing, normal weekend for me, spent mostly inside the house. Imagine my surprise Monday morning when I went to my car to go to work and found it covered in a thick layer of dust (kinda like this blog sometimes, heh).  I had just washed it a few days ago. It wasn’t until I heard mention of the wildfires on the radio that I realized where all that dust came from. That wasn’t just dust, that was ash. I didn’t realize the severity of it all until I looked it up online. There are like 12 different fires going on all throughout Southern California!

Lucky for me I haven’t been affected other than the extra-dusty air. Those hot winds blowing in from the east are making the fires a lot harder to contain, and are also causing a brown haze to form in the sky. (Here’s a satellite photo of only one small section of the fires.) Last night as I was walking the dogs around the block, I could smell the smoke. Not sure if it was a fireplace or someone barbecuing, but I don’t think so. Who lights up their fireplace when it’s 70 degrees outside at night, and who barbecues on a Monday night?

I was just reading that over 500,000 people have been evacuated. Wow. I never realized how many people live in the sticks.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Everything I know about golf I learned from my Wii

Golf has always been one of those esoteric yet boring sports, somewhat like pool in that you hit some balls into some holes with a stick, but with a lot of strange terminology like “par” and “birdie”. Whenever I encountered it on TV I’d roll my eyes, wonder who the hell watches this stuff, and immediately change the channel.

Well last week we decided to buy one of those highly sought-after Nintendo Wii consoles. Because it was cool and everyone else wants one? Nah. I’ve never been one to follow trends. In fact, I resist crazy thoughtless trends. In this case I decided to go get one despite the trend.  Here’s why…

The weekends are usually the time my sweety and I get to relax and spend time with each other. Typically a lot of time is spent catching up with our Tivo recordings and watching movie rentals. This is very relaxing, however sometimes you get a little bored sitting on the couch in front of the TV all day long. Sometimes we want to do something different, but there aren’t a whole lot of alternatives. Going to the mall means having to get out of PJs and leaving the house, and then risk buying things you don’t really need. Going to the movies is spending quite a lot of money doing something we could easily do at home. So one solution I thought of was video games. My sweety isn’t into the whole run around and shoot things kind of games. She actually doesn’t play much at all, just some puzzle games on the computer. The only time she’s ever touched my Xbox controller is to move it off the bed.

The Wii seemed very different. The games are much simpler, and best of all were the wireless remotes. The Wii ships with a compilation called Wii Sports, which is suprisingly fun. When I first saw the commercials, I was grossly underwhelmed by the simplistic, cartoony graphics. But it’s the engrossing gameplay that’s the fun part. You really get into it! To the point where you can actually get some sore muscles.

Back to the golf thing. We tried all the sports games, golf being last because, come on, it’s golf. At first I was a little ambivalent about it, especially since it was throwing words like “triple bogey” at us without explaining what they meant. After awhile, I started to get the hang of it and enjoyed it a lot more. It’s an excellent activity to do with my sweety, and it definitely gets us off our butts. Will I watch golf on TV now? Hell no! But if I’m stuck at the dentist’s office with that on TV, maybe I can at least follow what’s going on. Actually not really. I’d read a magazine instead.

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The game of golf has been right on the top in the past two decades. The interesting feature of this game is that it has the maximum flexibility regarding the age and physical fitness of the golfers. Sky rocketing repute of the game has given a unique promotion of the accessories involved in the game. For example the golf shoes the golf sticks and the golf bags have surmounted over all the other sports being played today.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Cancun Day 6: Where I finally get a bit of a tan

Okay, back to my vacation… The day after our exhausting trip to Xcaret we were scheduled for a boat ride to Isla Mujeres.  This was another of the little trip packages we “earned” for putting up with the timeshare people bending our ears.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Spanish, Isla Mujeres means Island of Women. Sounds promising right? Funny thing is, all the tour guides and locals like to joke that it’s a place where you can find everything… except women. One guy we were talking to, who was a charming and funny salesguy, said, “So Isla Mujeres is Island of Women, right? Well, the funny thing is, there are no women… I looked!”

There were two kinds of boats you could take for this trip to the island. There’s the noisy and fume-belching ferry, and there are the quiet and sleek catamarands. We were lucky enough to be booked for a catamarand ride. The crew liked to call it the party boat because of the nonstop reggae music and the free-flowing drinks. There were about three boats that left around the same time. We were the second to launch.

The crew was a funny bunch. They told us all the different alcoholic drinks we could order, and when they asked me what I wanted to drink, I said orange juice. You should’ve seen the man’s eyes roll around. Free-flowing tequila shots and I wanted plain ol’ juice. Next they took my sweety’s drink order. It went something like this:

Her: What are the available drinks again?
Crewman: Coronas, Rum and punch, Tequila Sunrise, and Sex on the Beach.
Her: I’ll have sex on the boat!
Crewman: *laughs his ass off* Wherever you want baby!

My baby is so cute when she flirts. With her charm she could have just about anyone she wants, but she wants me and only me. Maybe I am awkward, goofy and a bit socially inept, but she chose me, y’all! With her I always feel like I just won the lottery.

Anyway, it was a great boat ride, especially since we were able to sit in the shade of the sail. The wind felt good and the sound of the water whooshing by the boat was relaxing. The water was amazing, just look for yourself:

Yeah yeah I’m still a blinding white ghost at this point. Just look at the water dammit. Isn’t it pretty? It was five miles from Cancun to the island, and the trip was about 45 minutes on the boat. I enjoyed it a lot, can you tell?

When we got there we had about an hour to roam around the shops. The prices were still not as good as you would expect in Mexico, since they know a tourist trap when they see one. But the worst thing was the heat. It was so. hot. We kept going into the upscale jewelery stores because they were the only shops with air conditioning.

Afterwards we got back on the boat to be taken to a different part of the island where they had a buffet lunch set up on the beach. There were beach chairs, hammocks and everthing. The stupid part was finding out you had to pay for drinks… including water! WTF? Thus far everything has been all-inclusive and now we have to pay for water? I was quite miffed and decided to just drink the warm water in my water bottle. Screw them.

Some people ask about hurricane damage and luckily for us we saw none. The last hurricane to really tear into Cancun was hurricane Wilma two years ago, where the storm blew to Cancun, then sat there crunching on it for three days before moving on. The only sign I saw of that were these shipwreck that we passed by on the way to the island:

The ride back wasn’t quite as fun. There was no shade this time, and they started passing tequila shots around to everyone. They had some folks chug from the bottle, much like they do at those bars near the border. Then they started the dancing on the deck. This madee for some interesting people watching for me, but I ended up being completely annoyed by the drunk idiot who decided to dance directly behind me. He stepped on my drink (the dumass didn’t even feel it!), kicked me in the back, and kneed me in the side. I hate drunk people. I wanted to grab his foot and pull it right out from under him. The fool probably wouldn’t even feel that either. But no, I moved off to the side and let the asshole have his dance floor. At that point I was getting way too much sun, noise and idiots in my space. I like relaxing, not “partying”. Getting drunk off your ass is not my idea of fun, ever. I just wanted to get off the boat.

When we got back to the hotel later, I found all the places where I had missed with the sunblock. I had some patchy sunburns here and there, but a light tan in other places. Those patchy burns soon turned into patchy brown spots, which made me look kinda dirty. No really, I did shower! Overall it was a good trip, but would have been made much better if we had more shade and fewer idiots.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Working instead of blogging

There are still more vacation updates to be posted, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.  Believe it or not, I actually enjoy my new job more than blogging! *gasp* It’s kind of a weird feeling really. It’s been an awesome Friday.  I got my first paycheck, the company provided lunch to everyone along with some birthday cake, I got my parking pass, and I got to blow up some coworkers playing Halo 3 in the Xbox lounge. Okay I’m not really any good. They blew me up more than anything else, but it was still fun. If you’re going to get blown to bits, it might as well be on an HD plasma big-screen!

Monday, September 24, 2007

First Day at the new job!

We interrupt my day-by-day how-my-vacation-went report to bring you this piece of current news!

Friday was my last day at the old job, and today is the first day at my new job! Very exciting let me tell you. I like first days at new jobs. Even though I’m meeting all sorts of people I’ll never remember, I get to see what kind of computer I’ll be using, I get to customize my desktop and shortcuts, find out what programs they use, and best of all, there’s never any actual work that needs to be done.

There are already some improvements over the previous job—the computer is much faster and not bogged down with so many security measures, slow network connections and other limitations caused by overly bloated IT management. They gave me a 19” LCD monitor too. My last job I had to get a freaking doctor’s note to make them order me an LCD monitor to replace the aging and massive CRT monitor, and even then they only gave me a 17” because it was cheaper. I hate working with tightwad management.

As they were giving me a tour of the place, they showed me a brand new lounge that they built this year… it’s got a massive plasma screen TV in there connected to an Xbox 360 and wireless controllers. Imagine how big my eyes got when I saw it. Now that’s a lounge!

I’m still getting to know the people here.  So far everyone is friendly, but we’ll see if they stay that way later as their true spots start to show. I still have a nice window seat, although the view has changed quite a bit. I used to have a 13th floor view facing the ocean:

No really, it is facing the ocean. Look carefully (click for bigger view)... see that slight shine at the horizon just above the industrial sprawl of the oil refinery? That’s the ocean! Beautiful huh? Okay, so I couldn’t really claim “ocean views”. At least the park was nice to look at. Now I’m down on the 2nd floor with a fantastic view of… the parking garage. Oh well, who cares. It’s not like I live here.

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Friday, September 21, 2007

Cancun Day 5: Adventure in Xcaret

Up until now the vacation had been fairly low-key. All that changed on Tuesday when we scheduled the first (and most expensive) of the free trips that we’d earned from listening to the timeshare thing.  Xcaret (I hear the locals pronounce it “esh-caRET") is a theme park of sorts—not the kind with rides and roller-coasters. The best way I can describe it is that it is part zoo and part water park, with some Mayan cultural flair.

The part I was most excited about was snorkeling through some underground caves.

The brochures made it sound like it would be amazing. It was very disappointing actually. These weren’t actual caves. They were man-made tunnels and there was barely anything at all to look at. Just a lot of rough-textured concrete trying to look like a cave wall. Towards the end where the ocean fed into the stream there a few fish here and there, but that was it. The worst part was we had to rent the mask, snorkel and towel! You’d think they would be included in the cost of entry.

All the neat stuff cost extra, like swimming with dolphins or a snorkel tour that actually included things to look at. One thing we did decide to pay extra for was called Sea Trek. You wear one of these helmet things that sits on your shoulders. A tube runs from it up to a floating air compressor to keep it pressurized and full of air. It’s a little freaky and so completely cool I can’t seem to get over it. The weight of it sinks you to the bottom, allowing you to walk across the ocean floor. I totally felt like a spaceman walking on the moon. It was $45 extra per person (ouch!) but worth it, at least once. There were guys in scuba gear to guide everyone and make sure no one was freaking out. There were handrails down there that we held onto as we walked along their designated path, and at one point one of the scuba guys opened up some fish food and attracted huge smarms of tropical fish. It was awesome. Had I known it was this awesome I would have bought an underwater camera, if only just to capture ourselves on film looking like aquanauts. So unfortunately there’s no photo of this slice of awesomeness.

There were a lot of free things to look at, like tapirs, spider monkeys, and these jaguars:

There was also a butterfly farm. The big ones were everywhere and would often land on you. Here’s one next to a dead leaf. This particular one has camoflage with eye-spots that make it look like an owl when its weings are spread:

Inside the butterfly enclosure was this beautiful waterfall:

There were also a few wild things running loose in the park. We saw lots of birds, a couple of feral cats and this guy:

The park also had a few Mayan ruins laying around. Here’s me pretending to be a rabbit coming out of its Mayan ruin hole:

And if you aren’t water-logged yet, you can always spend some time in their lagoon:

By the end of the day we were exhausted, from both the heat and the physical activity. All we could do was sit back and enjoy the scenery…

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Cancun Day 4: Checking out the locals

Actually we were checking out their wares, not them. Heh. Big difference. There’s a huge club scene at Cancun, but we were totally not interested in getting drunk, dancing with strangers, or getting hit on by gross people. We’re more about browsing through shops, seeing sights, and eating authentic food.

There wasn’t a whole lot I needed for myself, just a nice souvanir tank top to remember the trip. Oh, and sunglasses to replace the ones I misplaced somewhere in Mexico. But there were a bunch of people we wanted to buy gifts for. My mom, a couple coworkers, my sweety’s nephews. My sister and her two babies are visiting my mom this week from Houston, so I got something for them too, for when I drive down to see them this weekend.

There are a lot of things we discovered about these shops. They may be in a flea market environment, but damn do they charge a lot of money for their wares! Cancun is expensive, very much a tourist trap. After all, that is their entire industry. Luckily we went during one of their slow seasons, so the shopkeepers were much more willing to bargain down their prices. If you can go with a charismatic people-person like my sweety, then you let them do the talking. Another thing about these shops is they all pretty much have the same inventory. You’ll see the same cowboy hats, shot glasses, blankets and jewelery everywhere. There is some variation, but chances are good if you can’t find a good price for the thing you want in one place, you will someplace else.

One of the weirder things I saw for sale were aprons with some penis-related phrase on the front. You lift up the top layer of cloth and there’s a big ol’ stuffed johnson hanging under there. I actually saw a topless lady wearing it at the hotel, out by the “sexy pool”, showing it off to people. I guess there is a market for it!  Sorry, forgot to take a picture.

One place had a cart full of what looked like little dolls. You look closer and they’re actually hot sauce cozies.

Although the buffet restaurant at our hotel was okay, it wasn’t great. It’s typical buffet food prepared en masse. You can’t go on a trip to Mexico and not have at least one meal with some authentic Mexican cuisine! That would just be wrong. So we found this place where the food looked yummy and chowed down like a couple of starving tourists (well we were).

And finally, the towel art of the day:

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Cancun Day 3: Getting to know the place

Since Day 2 was spent mostly getting to know some other place (so we could get free stuff!), the third day was a leisurely unplanned day where we wandered around the resort to see what they had available to us. Most of the time was spent in the pool and on the beach. I had no interest in getting a tan by baking under the sun like drying laundry. People who do that habitually will eventually have a lot of sun damage on their skin and look 10 years older. Everywhere we went we carried our bottle of tropical-scented SPF 70 sunblock.

Could I use some color? Sure, but I figure I’ll eventually get a bit of a tint from just wandering around. Here’s one picture my sweety took while I went to go see how warm the water was on the beach.

Note the vampirically pale white legs.

The sand is amazing. I’m told that it’s made of white coral so it never gets hot. It’s an incredibly fine powder, nothing like the coarse rock-based sand along the California coast. Even in the middle of the day, with the sun at full strength, the sand is still cool to the touch. I want to insulate my house with this stuff.

We discovered that housekeeping likes to leave behind cute “towel art” pieces on the bed after they tidy up the room. They take your used towels and replace them with clean towels, but instead of putting them in the bathroom, they twist them into adorable little shapes. We didn’t get any the day before because we had the Do Not Disturb sign out, but when they finally did make up our room the first time, we got a swan:

Towel oragami is so cool, and soooo much harder than paper oragami. I unraveled one and attempted to put it back into its original form, only to fail miserably.  You have to be able to roll the towel tight and neat enough for it to retain its shape. Bravo to the housekeepers!

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