screaming peacocks - parte dos

As referred to in this post, the nearby ITESM is home to deer and peacocks. I babbled a bit about the screaming peacocks, and was lucky enough to witness it again this afternoon. Lucky for you, I also had my camera, and enough smarts to take a video, so you too can enjoy this lovely sound...

((Hey, what's the natural habitat of peacocks, anyway?))

hahahahahahahaahahah!

At this very moment, Rob and I are on campus at ITESM, escaping our concrete cave and soaking up some gorgeous weather. Rob is also hard at work on a paper, and I've managed to snag the computer for a few precious moments.

I've decided that, given my limited amount of time, I need to share this with you: Rob got shit on by a squirrel! HAH! I don't know a single person on earth who can claim as such...

Would I be a bad person if I said that it made me laugh?!?!?! : ]

company visit

On Thursday, I was invited along for a visit to Mexico's (un-named insanely popular washer/dryer/stove/oven/etc company) factory. In a brief synopsis, it was pretty cool. I love checking out assembly lines and job sites and the like, so I was excited to go. After procuring an appropriate pair of shoes, I woke up (way too) early on Thursday to get moving...

Sad side-note: I've found almost acceptable coffee. It's absolutely pathetic that this coffee comes from a mecca referred to as 7-11. Ugh. Sad. So sad. I may need to call it Siete-Once so it sounds more exotic than a place that sells Slurpees and questionable-looking hotdogs. Annnnd, for the record, there is a Starbucks near by, but I'm not that desperate yet. Let's hope it doesn't come to that...

Back to the visit...a bus ride and PowerPoint show in a meeting room later, we were ready to check out the plant. We hit a huge snag before we even departed for the tour, when a risk-management guy caught sight of our flats. Six or seven of us did what we could to follow the rules, only to discover that "no high heels" loosely translates into "steel-toed work boots". AGH! After a bit of bitching and heckling, we snagged some socks from some of the boys on our tour to shove our feet into...somehow that was enough protection...

Let me tell you, wearing another person's socks can teach you a lot about them, or better yet, confirm/negate things that you already knew. After scuffling around the plant with Tanner's socks stuffed into my new flats, I successfully broke 'em in and streched 'em out.

It was cool to get a behind-the-scenes look at how things that we more or less take for granted are created. I imagined what that plant might have looked like 50 years ago...thank God for technology!

in search of decent coffee…

So far, this search has borne no fruit. I’ve checked out several little shops, the on-campus cafeteria, the grocery store…nada. Yes, I could buy a coffeemaker for ~$100USD to use for the next 4 weeks, or I could switch to solely drinking tea, but I’m too cheap and too stubborn for either of those. One of our buddies picked up a Nescafe Cappuccino mix, and it smelled REALLY good. I thought, “Okay, maybe that sort of thing will get just enough caffeine in my system, and it’ll be all sweet and frothy too…” and bought a can – yes, a can – of powdered Nescafe Café con Leche mix.


In comparison to my beloved Barefoot and the creamy, delicious goodness that oozes from that coffee bar, this stuff is crap. Swill, I tell you. Am I desperate enough to A: not waste my 15Pesos and B: have anything remotely close to coffee to drink it? Yes. Will I bitch and moan and complain about missing a decent cup o’ joe? Yup.

Thank God for bubble-teas. These may be the only saving grace I’ve found thus far, but I know they’ll get old soon.

Today, I did see from a distance a potential oasis de java-liciousness…but, given my track record to date, I might be getting my hopes up...

cinco cumpleanos!

Two family birthdays and three Thunderbird birthdays in one week!

On Monday, groundhog Punxsutawny Phil checked for his shadow as he does each year on Mimi's birthday...looks like winter'll stick around for six more weeks. I got a fun Skype-call from mi familia on Saturday, celebrating Mimi's birthday with tacos and margaritas!

Speaking of sticks, on Wednesday, we were summoned to a rooftop birthday shindig. In attendance was Tigger, a gi-huge-ant (it's a word!) pinata that we beat the crap out of with a stick. Sadly, a hanging light also fell victim to the stick.

the paper-mache'd beast

Jennifer, attempting to annihilate Tigger

On Friday, Pam (Rob's Mom) had a birthday, too - although, after repeated email and Skype attempts, we never did get a hold of her to sing...

On Saturday, in honor of a classmate's birthday, Rob and I headed to the roof for more shenanigans...instead of a pinata this time, there was a taco stand (no joke!). We'd intended to play beer-pong, official game of the T-bird West dorms, but there's a shortage of ping-pong balls in Mexico (I seriously couldn't make this up...this place is so weird), so we settled for my personal fave, flip-cup.

Trompo, a leg o' beef that's marinated and sliced, kebab-style from the spit, then further grilled like carne asada...soooo yummy

birthday boy Matt with our taco pro and Chris

Yesterday was one of our roomie's birthdays. Unfortunately, the entire Thunderbird population was hard at work on an impossible Finance assignment, so no hilarity ensued...

4x4

I'm one of those people that doesn't really care for those 146 question questionnaire thingies like this one, but I'm at a loss for anything worthwhile to post...so here's a VERY short one, something I've created called a 4x4:

4 things I hate

• having a stuffy, runny nose and being sneezy in a class/meeting
  
• confrontation of any kind
• that I'm not as good at photography as I wish I was, and have only myself to blame for not practicing
• when my feet are cold

4 things I'm completely neutral on

• tattoos/piercings (if you've got 'em, cool...if not, cool)
• pizza toppings - I can handle one topping or 12...whatever
• the color highlighter I use when reading
  
• um...I don't know...it appears I'm quite opinionated
  

4 things I love

• caramel...on anything (seriously, put it on my hand, and I'll happily chew my hand off)
• sleeping late and then getting a good workout
• when Kali-Lou lays on her back like a little otter
• not working...hehehe...

4 things I'm surprisingly anal about

• having an awesome ringtone on my cell phone, even my cheap-o Mexican one (I'm not anal enough to actually buy a ringtone, however)
• having matching towel and dish sets...okay, so maybe that's not much of a surprise to some
  
• using a good pen, with a healthy supply of paper underneath the sheet I'm writing on, to serve as a perfect little cushion
• knowing where my Nikon D70 is, at all times

two new addictions...or maybe three...

Wow...I'm on a ROLL with the posts today, huh? Besides my current obsession with posting (#1), here are two new things that I'd like to thank/curse Summer for bringing into my life:

(#2) IMEEM.com
Okay, so maybe this one's not directly Sum's fault...but I did find out about it while reading one of the thousands of blogs that we share an addiction for, so that counts, right?
IMEEM.com is a rad radio website that helps you find stuff you'll like based on what you listen to, lets you create playlists, and search for songs left in the dark years ago. I call it Pandora on crack, but parts of it remind me a smidge of Kazaa, Yahoo radio and Facebook/MySpace. It even has a lil Twitter-esque box, too. You can 'friend' people and what not, but I'm just here for the jams, folks...

Currrently playing from my creatively named "mix 1" playlist: Picture Perfect by Chris Brown
Up next: Renegade by Styx

(#3) FML
A totally inappropriate website where people can send their short "f*** my life" stories. There's a max of something like 100 words, so people get right to the point...example: Today, I was eating ice cream and I noticed some on my jeans so I wiped it off with my finger and licked it. It was bird shit. FML
Yes, some are sad, but totally addicting...