Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Cozumel – Saturday 11/26

After what felt like the longest line to check bags ever, we finally arrived in Cozumel! It’s hot and humid, everything Minnesota is not. Our hotel, Blue Angel Resort, is very… cozy. I got a kick out of the key (an actual key) and the locking mechanism on the door (a push button). The room is actually quite spacious. Maybe because there isn’t much in it. Like a desk or table (Nick brought in the one from the balcony). We have an adjoining room with cklahr. One door with a sliding lock on each side separates us. The view of the ocean is nice, and we are about 20 steps away from the attached, open-air restaurant. Most importantly, though, we have the free Wi-Fis.

Curtis, BRK, and I ate at the restaurant here for lunch, or whatever a four o’clock meal after a day of traveling is referred to. I enjoyed a banana daiquiri and delicious chimichanga, both of which I will be ordering again before the conclusion of this trip. The salsa was muy delicioso; very reminiscent of the ceviche in Belize. Where was Nick, you ask? He was napping. He declined an invite to eat with us, although he denies any knowledge of it. Delirious with sleep, that boy was.

After lunch, I took a nap. Nick and I ate dinner around eight. The Lahrs declined our invitation because we had to be up in 11 hours (#partypoopers). We wandered around in a straight line south and eventually came across Paprika Restaurante. We enjoyed hecho en Mexico Cokes, nachos, more ceviche-flavored salsa, and fajitas. I went with shrimp because the waiter recommended it. Best. Shrimps. Ever. I would definitely go back there, and it will probably be a good possibility because we walked for about a mile and only saw two restaurants.

Oh, and this place has the awesomest shower (which almost makes up for not being able to flush toilet paper). There’s a half-wall in the bathroom and the shower is on one side. Water gets all over the floor, but it kind of has this cool feeling of showering in an open room. I’ll post some pictures later on.

Speaking of pictures, I’m going to feel like a pro as I juggle three cameras on this trip. I’ve got my Rebel for srsbsns pics, my PowerShot for diving and quick shots, and my iPhone for posting on Instagram, Tumblr, and teasing people on the Twitter (thank gods for Wi-Fi).

I’ve created an album here where I’ll be posting all my pics. Bookmark it now for easy reference later.

Breaking Dawn, Part 1

Yay! It’s that time again! The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 came out in the wee hours of the morning, and I’ve already seen it twice. Of course I knew I would like it, because I’m blinded by all things Twilight, but I really thought they did a fabulous job. They hit on all the important scenes, and for once they really nailed the script. Perfect amount of banter, seriousness, and comic relief, and no spider-monkeys.

I’m going to include some photos from TwiSarah’s party last night (she made everything, btw). Then I’m going to talk more specifics about the movie after the cut!

***SPOILERS BELOW***

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Woot! Vampire Vineyards Pinot Noir

Guys, guys! We’re totally joking about the Vampire Vineyards being owned by vampires. We’re just normal people. With sharp cuspids.

When I saw the 2007 Vampire Vineyards, Dracula Pinot Noir on wine.woot!, I knew immediately that it was meant to be. Edward Cullen Vampire Vineyards, Pinot Noir… if my favorite fictional character and favorite type of wine were harmoniously coming together, well then it would be a crime not to indulge!

And along those same lines, the Vampire Vineyards 2007 Dracula Pinot Noir is definitely not made out of blood. I mean, why would we make a wine out of blood? That’s ridiculous! Maybe if we were vampires that would make sense, but, as has already been established, we’re not. At all. We’re totally normal guys. Just a bit pale.

Made from grapes picked before sunrise under the Master’s supervision, this wine highlights the incredible nuances and flavors obtainable from pinot noir grapes grown in the Santa Maria Valley. This cuvee was placed in French Oak barrels for 18 months prior to bottling, leading to a rich and concentrated wine with raspberry, dark cherry and pomegranate flavors–smooth and well rounded, with forward fresh fruit.

Now, when people talk about flavors or notes or whatever, typically I have no idea what they’re referring to. And when I do, I sure as hell can’t pick out the individual flavor. With this wine, however, there was something distinctly fruity about the flavor. Maybe my taste for wine is sharpening, or maybe it’s because of the wine itself (probably the latter). Either way, I tasted something. I’m not exactly sure what that something was, but my brain definitely registered it as a food of the fruit variety.

This red wine might just have the least amount of dryness of any red I have had the pleasure to drink. It’s got a very mild flavor, but it only took a couple sips to make my chest all warm and happy. So far, my first two purchases with wine.woot! have been better than most of my restaurant experiences combined. This only confirms my desire to stay home and drink in my basement as opposed to leaving the house.

I think I must go to vampire.com and check out Vampire Vineyards’ other selections as well. Also, they have a lounge in California, (Doesn’t that sound fancy? A lounge?) so next time I’m moseying through The Golden State, I am definitely stopping at this little gem for a quick bite taste.

Make Me Over 2011

In case you haven’t noticed (maybe you read my blog through a feed, or this is your first time here, or you don’t read it at all), jillapalooza has a new look!

I decided to go with the Simplo theme by Site5. On their site, it said their free WordPress themes were exclusively for customers, but since I didn’t have any trouble downloading or installing it, I’m not going to feel too bad.

It took me forever to find a theme I liked. The popular thing these days seems to be featured images, where instead if a static header, there is a rotating image associated to recent posts. That would be good if I had a dedicated photo or entertainment blog, but I don’t. It’s hard enough for me to post without having to worry about finding an applicable picture with the size requirements for every post I make.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that WordPress themes have become very simple looking. That’s fine, but I don’t want something boring, either. I like my blog to visually stimulating. When I settled on this theme, I realized even though it looked kind of cool, it was almost too simple. Very basic. I had to do a lot of tweaking.

Right away it irked me was that there was no default header logo. It had the little image that the browser displays when there is no photo. This especially grated on my nerves because I didn’t want to fire up The GIMP and create something before I was set on the theme, and something about the little non-image image is very distracting. Like it’s sitting there screaming BROKEN, BROKEN!

The first thing I tweaked was the social icons at the top. It came with Facebook and Twitter. That was it. Deciding the two just wouldn’t do, I made some adjustments. I probably could have just added some direct code in the header and been done with it, but where’s the fun in that? Themes nowadays have options in the dashboard, and i didn’t want to lose them. I ended up editing the header.php and functions.php files so I could add the links within the dashboard and have them appear automatically. Oh yeah, I also had to find a new set of social icons as well.

The next thing I decided to add were post tags. It went pretty smoothly as it was a basic task I’ve had to repeat on many themes. But while I was adding post tags to the single post template, I noticed BRK’s Wavatar wasn’t showing up. Gravatars were appearing, but they were circular, and while that’s cool and all, I just wasn’t feeling it. I found the mask code creating the circle and deleted it. Then I found the code causing the default Gravatar image to appear instead of the assigned Wavatar and deleted that too.

Now, while I was tackling the avatar issue, I noticed my style for inline photos was all jacked up. The first line of text was aligned with the bottom of the photo instead of wrapping nicely around it. I played with the style for a while and got angry with myself for not knowing the correct terminology to search for a solution. Eventually I found it. There’s an entire chunk of code that WordPress requires in the style sheet for version 2.7+ themes in order to comply with their built in media manager dealymabob. I added the code and it worked like a charm.

After I got the picture issue resolved, I was pretty pleased. For about seven more seconds. I was looking at my most recent wine post when I noticed all the blockquotes were no longer blocked or quoted. Once again, I opened the style sheet. I searched for the blockquote section only to learn there wasn’t one. Wtf? I was too lazy to create my own so I found one on the interwebs with a pretty little border and even an image file of… you guessed it. Quotes.

Once that was all squared away, I sat back and sighed with happiness at my new theme. Then I frowned. The pictures near the bottom of the posts were overlapping the horizontal line at the bottom. I added a quick br clear=”all” code to the two most recent posts in question to clear up the issue. It’s probably a crappy hack, but at that point I was too tired to deal with figuring out what needed to be added to what part of the style sheet.

I sat back and smiled again… until I realized my rss feed was broken. Turned out those lines were missing from the header as well.

So for now I think everything is in order. Hopefully I won’t find anything else that should be there but isn’t. I really can’t complain because A) the theme was free, 2) it’s way better than anything I could create from scratch, and c) technically I’m not a Site5 customer, so technically I’m not exclusive enough to have this theme in the first place. Maybe it’s karma…

I’m also giving the WordPress 3.3-beta2 a try. There are some little tweaks in the menus and media uploader that I am digging, like the condensed admin bar and automatic resizing of uploaded images to the predefined largest size.

Um… and that’s all I have to say about that. If you’ve made it this far, I am jealous of the time you have on your hands. And I’m deeply flattered. Thank you.

My New Canon T2i

Last week I decided my newest hobby would be photography! After using my friend Deanna’s digital 35mm SLR to photograph Charlie smudging cake all over her face for her first birthday, I decided I needed one of my own. Needed.


*Taken at a safe distance with a zoomy lens as not to get cake on myself.

After spending the next week researching different camera brands and models, I decided on the Canon Rebel T2i. It seems easy enough to learn on, but advanced enough that I won’t outgrow it any time soon. It’s lightweight and kind of on the smallerish size, which is nice because I plan on lugging this puppy around on vacays and what not.

I received the camera on Monday. Of course, I didn’t receive the memory card until Wednesday, so I didn’t really get to play with it right away. It was a torturous two days. I read the manual and felt like I had a good grasp on all the settings, when to use them, how to achieve desired effects, etc., but when I got the memory card and actually turned the camera on, I spent about five minutes staring at it blankly.

It was dark and too cold to go outside, so I photographed the next best thing: Boo. I hunted her down (she was in the bathroom) and snapped some shots. Between turning on the overhead light and the flash, she was less than pleased. Here I used the portrait setting (or maybe it was the macro setting) which focused on her face and put a nice blur on the background.

Boo got bored with my act pretty quick and decided she’d rather drink out of the sink. I used the action setting to take photos in fast succession. I think it will come in handy for great softball action shots next year. But what’s even more awesome about continual shooting is that it makes creating animated .gifs super easy.

Today I got home a little early and found Boo lying in the sun. I took the opportunity to experiment with the different settings, including the aperture, which has something to do with focus and depth of field. You’re probably sick of photos of Boo right now, but too damn bad. I like her feet.

I also worked on some extreme feet closeups with the macro setting. I think I’d like to get a macro lens next so I can capture little things, or maybe a macro attachment because they are a helluva lot cheaper.

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