Arizona for the Holidays-Part Deux

After enjoying a few days in the Tucsonic sun the clan motored north to Flagstaff for a few days at altitude. I had forgotten what 7000 feet does to one's ability to climb stairs, carry luggage, and tear wrapping paper. Despite the rare atmosphere we enjoyed some fine spirits and food (prosecco and gumbo to be specific) and opened a few gifts.

Gingee (short for Ginger) scored a very fine faux mouse

One gift note: Aurelia received a few music albums from Santa. One that we've been enjoying a great deal and recommend is Christina Branco's Ulisses. Check it out.

Arizona for the Holidays

AJ and I are spending a bit of time in Arizona soaking up as much sun as possible and enjoying some time with the western branch of the Hidalgo/Rain/Fox family. We're currently staying at the Western Look Resort in Tucson, located in the city's foothills. The resort originated in a 172 acre homestead built around the turn of the 20th century. The resort is a little long in the tooth but has a certain lived in charm. And quail wander across the paths, their tiny feather tiaras bobbing in unison.

the pool, where our best work is done

too cute


moonrise from the valley floor

Westward Look Resort is also the place where Haddon Sundbloom, a graphic designer and artist who designed such memorable icons as the Gerber baby and Aunt Gemima, crafted the modern image of Santa Claus for Coca Cola.

image borrowed from Today' Inspiration Blog

Tis the season for...Babies

The Hidalgo family is looking to expand pretty substantially in 2008. My brother Fidel and his wife Karen are expecting a baby too- and soon. With luck we will have our first new Hidalgo some time this January. Here's the two expectant parents. They look like they're glowing to me.

Vegas!

Ponti di Vegas

Two weeks ago I was in Vegas for a conference with the grand title of AutoDesk University. Autodesk is the company that produces the software my office and thousands of offices around the world use when designing, analyzing and documenting their work (i.e. buildings). AU, as it is know to the nerderati, is attended about about 9,000 people each year and has been held in Vegas for the last two. The mass of people was pretty overwhelming as can be seen below between class sessions.


You might ask what kind of space can feed 9,000 people for breakfast. Why an endless space, of course. Deep in the bowels of the Venetian Casino is this cavern staffed by sleepy butlers.


The classes were quite good and the tools to facilitate more sustainable design (e.g. low energy consuming buildings) are finally rolling out. A plus is that these tools finally have a good visual component and don't require a degree in mechanical engineering to use.

"Ecotect" application being used to analyse
energy use relative to building orientation

With all the classes and events there was little time for gambling but I did manage to leave about $40 at the blackjack tables. I caught some pros playing for a television audience (and got yelled at for my pains).

19 week ultrasound

Aurelia and I just came back from our 19 week ultrasound which is known as the "Anatomical ultrasound." The technician, who turned out to be a a friend of ours, spent most of the time scanning the wand around checking for anatomical mileposts that indicate normal development. The result was a resounding "perfect," much to the relief of AJ and I.

A little left foot.

movie-little one from the side

But the anatomical scan is also when the sex of the baby can often be determined (unless the baby is cranky or demure and refuses to show their stuff). Our child had no such compunctions and let us know it will be a...
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spoiler alert-stop reading if you don't want to know
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A little girl! Woohoo!!!!!!!

The Little Explorer

Aurelia and I are extremely excited to report that the Hidalgo family is expecting another addition during the spring of this year. We are stoked, tickled pink, jazzed, buggin', worked up, on fire, keyed up and every other synonym for excited that you can imagine.

We are still a a few weeks away from the second set of sonograms that will tell us about the sex of the baby (though we are not 100% decide yet if we will find out) but here's a picture that was taken in early October. For scale, the baby is about the length of your thumb (6cm).

Whistle theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey here

This image left me speechless as I was unprepared for the resolution of the scan. I was expecting a grayish blur that required a great deal of imagination to decipher but instead we got to see individual fingers, toes, vertebrae and proto-ribs. Things are looking very good, besides some morning sickness, so we are proceeding with the important parenting tasks of securing a Red Sox onesie and selection of a video camera system.

Futbol and Waterfalls

One might wonder what futbol and waterfalls have little in common. But here at the dinner table they are connected by my birthday. Lest you think from the pictures of Vancouver that Aurelia is the only one treated well on her birthday here are a few pictures from some of our activities around the 10th of August.
First Aurelia surprised me with a trip on a jet boat down the Willamette river. While the pilot's jokes were predictably tired, the 360 degree spins at 60mph were refreshing. We traversed up river with about thirty fellow travellers visiting a remarkable set of locks still used by boats heading North. (The Willamette is one of the few rivers in the world that flows North. Don't ask me why).


After a few more spins we reached the base of the Willamette falls where the indigenous Portlanders hunted for eel. Now there is a large paper mill with a Piranesian tangle of armatures and rusty catwalks.



We finished with a sprint back to the dock, six more spins, and very wet shirts.

The next day we organized a group of about 15 people to attend an exhibition match between two ancient Mexican futbol rivals: Chivas de Guadalajara and Club America. The former is the team of the pueblo and the latter the team of the city. So this was a grudge match (or Super Clasico) and the fact that the players were old has-beens did not prevent the overwhelmingly Mexican fans from showing the colors and making their allegiances clear. PGE park was packed to near capacity (~15000) and the banner and bugles blared.

A few of the many Chivas fans

As I said, the players were a bit rusty and put on a rather slouchy performance but I think the fans just wanted a slice of home and roared with every goal and screamed at every perceived injustice.

In the end Chivas beat Club America (whom I rooted for as a city slicker with his thumb on the pueblo) 2-0. Poo. Below are a few pictures "borrowed" from the local website Soccer City USA as I got caught up in the game and forgot to take pictures after the starting whistle. As you can see, the players are losing some hair and kinda chubby (not that there's anything wrong with that).

picture from Soccer City USA

picture from Soccer City USA

All and all, an excellent birthday.

Kitchen remodel...someday

We've been discussing what to do about our tiny galley kitchen (fit for a pirate no doubt) since we bought our house. The solution has always been simple: tear down all the walls, put in a few new windows, move the door and slap up a few cabinets. What could be easier. But there have always been other projects like leaky roofs and collapsing fences that push the kitchen to the back of the cue.

Now we've resurrected the concept and have gotten down to conceptualizing. I'll ultimately draw this up in Revit (a program I use at work) but I thought I'd give Ikea's kitchen design software a test. The interface is pretty simple and they have much of their furniture an appliances as ready made objects for insertion. Below is on version we're considering. For orientation, the door on the far left leads to the back yard.

According to Ikea, the cabinets and appliances for this design cost approx. $7.5K. It will be interesting to see what the final design looks like and costs.

All Hallows Eve

It is an annual tradition at Aurelia's work for the managers to dress up on Halloween and parade around the floor for the amusement of the staff. Last year they went as witches (I'm not sure who suggested that one) and this year they went for pirates. Aurelia spent a moderate amount of time searching for the appropriate swashbuckler attire and here is the result. (She's the timber shivering pirate on the far right applying her sword cheerfully to a scurvy ridden knave).



I, being less organized, ended up dressing in last years' costume (actually purchased for a bachelor party) which is why I'm publishing last years picture. Any different between this image and how I appear now, one year later, is purely a digital artifact.

Viva Las Vegas!

Oh Canada!

Here's a few more images from Vancouver, BC:

Aurelia being silly at the airport.


Typical collection of glass, steel and stucco condo buildings. As can be seen from the image, we saw very little sun for the three days.

Downtown political rally sponsored by Humanrighsttorch.org
protesting the human rights abuses in Myanmar and
using the 2012 Vancouver Olympics as a platform.

Extremely small ferry.

We ended up crossing the straight in a slightly bigger barc but since the trip lasted all of 45 seconds either size would have been fine.

Dodgy character near flowers at the Market on Granville Island

Granville island market olive section

The dark squirrels of Mordor (um...Vancouver).


Enjoying the transnational goodness that is Goldilocks.
A Filipino restaurant with an huge selection of foods,
from meat skewers and noodles to portrait cakes and other delicacies.

Vancouver is a fine city with an incredibly diverse population. The skyline is full of glass towers that seemed a bit chaotic and mercenary to me but the city feels open and clean (except for the block or two near Chinatown where we witnessed crack smoking and police actions). Three days was barely enough time to land and I hope we go back and sample the city in the summer.

Canada. Eh!

A at Vancouver aquarium

A and I are chillin' in Vancouver BC for Aurelia's birthday. We spent yesterday cruising around the city putting some serious miles under our belts. We spent a while enjoying the sights and smells of Granville Island market and then took the smallest motorized ferry across the straight to the downtown. Vancouver has a pretty full skyline, a collection of glass towers. It's a bit chaotic. I would love to show you pictures but I am having an issue with image file size so the images will have to wait. Today, A's b-day we are going to spend in Gastown (named after frontiersman Gassy Jack) and the Vancouver Chinatown. Should be fun.
Have a great Sunday!

M

Ecuador- Chapter 5- The Wedding Fiesta!!!

Drum roll please! After a great week in the North of Ecuador we returned to Quito and hopped a plane to Cuenca. Torcasa and Juan Manuel picked us up at the airport and drove us to our hotel downtown-The Santa Lucia.

Central court of the Santa Lucia

Through a bit of planning and some good luck we were staying in the same place as much of the rest of our family (the Seattle clan in particular). This made coordination before and after the wedding so much easier. We had arrived on Thursday and the wedding was to be on Saturday. I could go on and on about the fun we had walking the beautiful city of Cuenca (an UN World Heritage site) but the wedding was some much fun I'm going to skip forward with just this image of a church in the center of Cuenca and the flower market that resides next door.




The morning of the event the gang was at the hotel getting pretty. I even managed to get the wrinkles out of my suit. Before we left a few pictures were taken.

Torco holding court with the lovely ladies of Seattle

After a quick taxi ride we arrived at the hacienda near Cuenca where the marriage was to take place. When the wedding began at noon, Fidel and I walked Torcasa, radiant in a gown of her own design, toward the small gazebo where the ceremony would take place. He and I stood on either side of the gazebo as Torcasa and Juan Manuel said their vows and the witnesses did their duty. The completed the ceremony by planting a tree.

JM's last few moments of freedom

Then we all followed the newly married couple towards the hacienda where a magnificent spread was prepared for us. There were easily one hundred and fifty people at the tables when everyone was seated.


Aurelia and I were seated with Sarah, Fidel, Juan Manuel parents, brother and his girlfriend. The food was wonderful and the favored drink of the evening, "whisky", (whisky and water) began to flow. As a musician it is not surprising that Juan Manuel's wedding would be full of good sound. A number of bands played with one high point being a duet between JM and his father. The dancing began with Torcasa dancing with her uncle Gary, then Fidel and then me. Wonderful.


Soon many people joined in and the dancing got underway in earnest. Food continued to arrive at the tables: beef, chicken, salads, Cuencano sweets and the drinks flowed. Fidel and I took a break from the dancing and were caught being the boyz.

The happy couple. (What a lucky guy!)
More dancing and more whisky...



After eight hours of dancing and drinking the party turned its attention to a series of delicate tissue paper balloons that are held aloft with hot air generated from a tiny ball of alcohol soaked cotton suspended below their bottom. The rise slowly into the night sky carrying the name of the newlyweds into the thin Andean air.

The party began to dissipate but since we still had energy a bunch of us headed to a downtown hotel for after party whisky and food. After more eating and drinking and joking Aurelia and I crashed into our beds with sore but happy feet. Torcasa and JM headed off to a nearby resort for some much needed rest (ahem).