My Life Blog

anniversary
Originally uploaded by bill_eisenhauer.

I know this rare post will shock you. What can I say, once I go dark, its hard to get the words flowing again. Let’s see how this goes.

We spent Labor Day weekend in the Riviera Maya area of Mexico. This area is about 30 miles outside of Cancun. The occasion for the trip was the celebration of our 1st Wedding Anniversary.

Our accommodations for the four nights were at the Iberostar Paraiso Beach which we booked through Funjet. We highly recommend it if you have the means.

Our trip began bright and early on a Saturday morning — well, more early and less bright. I think we had a 4am wake-up time in order to catch our flight. We had no complications in the travel process and were actually at the resort by mid-morning.

One way to tell you are in Mexico is to observe the many ways the natives try to get your cash. We saw this immediately in the airport as we were asked if we were in the Funjet group and then channel to an information desk. Unfortunately, they weren’t looking to get us to our bus, there were just trying to book additional events and they were not affiliated with Funject.

In the confusion, our bags were commandeered by a uniformed Funjet person and taken about 50 yards involving one left turn — $2. Then at the hotel, we noticed that we were not put in a king-sized bedroom. An ocean-view room with a king-sized bed was made available to us for a mere $100 — but the transaction had to be in cash…wink, wink.

But alas, that transaction was actually key to our enjoyment of the rest of the trip and worth every dollar that went home with the concierge. We were in close proximity to both the beach and the pool and could see the beach from our window. Awesome!

We found the resort to be uncrowded due to it being off-season. Note to self and to my dear readers: off-season is the only way to go to Mexico. We had ample room at the pools and the beach and we received an extra dinner night at the specialty restaurants. And it was just plain nice not to have to avoid people.

We mostly enjoyed the pools during the day. Oh yes, the swim up bars were nice too. Then at night, it became a familiar pattern to go out to the beach and pull the chairs out just short of the water’s edge. Once there, we drank a beer, listened to the waves crash in, and celebrated past, present, and future moments of our marriage.

The restaurants were adequate, but not superb. I think after 5 days we just got tired of the same offerings at every meal. The specialty restautrants definitely met expectations — the Japanese restaurant was probably enjoyed the most.

As you can see from the picture, we made friends while there. We met a few folks from the Grapevine area and also met a honeymooning couple from Vancouver. The Toucan and I were fast friends — just fast enough to take the picture and have him be scooped off my shoulder before anything bad happened!

It wasn’t Kauai, but it wasn’t too bad either. The price was great and the travel logistics were even better. We plan to do this again sometime when we’re jonesing for the beach, but have only a few days to play.

I have an "old" 20GB iPod which no longer holds its charge for very long.  I had pretty much retired it in favor of a new 60GB iPod.  It had previously made its way to work with me every day, but since it only remained charged for an hour or so, it soon lost its appeal.

At the same time, I’ve been wanting to get access to all my music in my car.  I have a six CD changer, but I rarely change out the CDs.  For whatever reason, I never think about it and its inconvenient to find a CD that I want.

So I combined these two scenarios by buying a cigarette lighter power source and a cassette tape interface for the old iPod.  Now the old iPod travels in the car with all my music and its charge capacity is not a factor since it has a constant power source.  Sweet.

I think its only a matter of time before CD changers go away completely.  And even iPods probably have a limited life span in that environment.  It seems like some sort of wireless solution must be around the corner.  As in, I’ll have my own channel out in the ether of the Internet and my car (or my home equipment) will be able to access it.

In the words of Kip, "I love technology."

A rare post on music.

I was a big fan of the band Bush in the mid and late ’90s. I hated to see them break up as I really liked their music. However, Gavin Rossdale (the leader singer of Bush) has now put out a CD under the band name Institute.. All I can say is its EXCELLENT! My favorite track is “Boom Box”.

I might also make mention that on DirectTV I saw a documentary for Audioslave as they became the first American band to perform in Cuba. I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with their politics, but its hard to beat Chris Cornell.

If you have a chance, check these selections out.

I guess I’m the only one who didn’t see anyone else relate Hurricane Katrina with the precosiously named 80’s band Katrina and the Waves.

Not too take this too far, but as I was readying for my jog yesterday, I turned on my iPod Shuffle and soon heard these lyrics from the Counting Crows:

i will wait for you in Baton Rouge
i’ll miss you down in New Orleans

The melancholy of Adam Duritz’s singing voice took me to a dark place and stopped me dead in my tracks.

On Tuesday, Norah Jones released Feels Like Home.

I think I’m in agreement that it doesn’t have the magic of her first CD, but it sounds pretty good to me. I’ve listened to it probably a dozen times already and still like it.

Too bad she will be going on a European tour for the next few months as I’d like to see her in concert.