Blake's Blog

When you read the title for this blog: "Thankgiving Bowl", you're probably thinking about one of the many football games being played this week including the BYU/UTAH game (which by the way, even though we've got mostly BYU fans in our family, we have a few stinky ute fans--including my brother and sister in law.) That said, when I talk about the 'thanksgiving bowl", I'm really referring to our family going bowling this morning. We took the kids and went over to a new bowling alley here in Tooele. You might think our family would turn this into an incredibly competitive event, but with 2 kids doing bumper bowling and two grandparents (who probably should have done bumper bowling) we just got out and had fun. You could count on 1 finger the number of people who broke 100, so that tells you it was a pretty low-key bowling outing. that said, it was awesome to see and help the little kids bowl. Tons of fun!!!

One of the best parts of thanksgiving (besides the food and family) is that every year we do a Lowry Family Project on thanksgiving day. Because I only write in my blog 1-time every year, you can quickly scroll down a few entries and you'll see a home movie about last year's project--water rocket building. This year's project was a little less explosive (to my disappointment)--we built bridges on the kitchen table. The rules were that we gave each family member 30 strands of uncooked spagetti and 20 gum drops. We gave each person ~20 minutes to build a bridge that could cross a 12-inch gap on the kitchen table. Each bridge had to be able to hold a plastic cup that we filled with weights (quarters) until the bridges broke. The bridge that held the most quarters won.

Well, Lorisa's bridge held $29 in quarters, so she won the bridgebuilder's prize. The rest of the builders came in below $20 in quarters, so Lorisa won with a healthy lead. It was a cool project and put our architecture skills to the test.

One of my goals for the year was to take a cooking class and learn to cook some new dishes. I'm an okay cook when it comes to dishes you might find at Denny's but I'm definitely not as versatile as I'd like to be. In the spirit of the departed chef Gusteau's book, "Anyone Can Cook", and in an effort to check off one of my goals for the year, I figured it was time to learn a few new recipes. Since I have some time off of work this week and am in UT visiting my folks, I decided that we should try a different Thanksgiving tradition--out with the turkey, stuffing and cranberry jelly and in with something a little more exotic.
We decided to cook a Thai thanksgiving dinner which included an appetizer of shrimp spring rolls, a green mango salad, beef Pho and a main course of Green Curry w/ chicken. Most of the meal turned out amazing--the kind of meal that you'd get at any of my favorite Thai places in NYC or LA. Of course, instead of paying $10-20 for a good meal and having it ready in 20 minutes, we spent significantly more than that and the meal was ready in a little under 3 hours. It was really cool learning to cook something new.

I don't think we're ready to swap turkey for Thai in the future, but it was cool to try something new and it was fun to learn to cook some dishes i've never tried before.

Every year around new year's I put together a goal list--a long list of new year's resolutions I want to accomplish during the year. For example, one of my goals this year was to exercise 150 days out of the year. I'm on day 134 right now, so if I keep up the current pace i think i'll make it to 150 by 12/31. I keep a list of my goals in my pocket and check things off as I go. I'm feeling really good about progress toward this year's goal list!
One of this year's goals was to restart piano lessons (after taking the last 17 years off). Last April, I started taking piano lessons again and I've been surprised by how quickly piano basics have come back to me. For the first time ever, I'm working on learning some clasical music--mostly Chopin. This past week, I had the first recital of my life--along with a bunch of young kids that take from my teacher. It was fun to perform a song that took a few months to learn, and i'm really happy that i decided to take piano lessons again. Click here to listen to my recital song.

Well, after threatening to buy a new car for the past 3-4 years and looking at every model out there, I finally decided to spontaneously splurge and purchase a new car. My first choice was the BMW 330I, but it really wasn't practical (I liked the convertible, but it didn't have enough trunk room for my skateboard and I could haul my bike) so I decided i'd have to go with another option. I ended up going with a 2009 Acura RDX. I wanted something that drove like a classy car but i really wanted the functionality of an SUV. I test drove a bunch of SUVs and they all drove like trucks. I didn't love cross-overs, but when I test drove the RDX i decided it was the perfect combination of SUV and car. I'm loving the new car!

Next month I'll hit my 5-year anniversary for living in the LA area. After 5 years of living in my condo, I finally decided to make some changes--yes, more drastic changes than just removing moldy food from the fridge (although it is probably time to do that again). This weekend I'm up to my eyeballs in a painting project in my bedroom. Although the painting is a challenge and has given me a sore painter's muscle (for those that haven't taken anatomy, the painter's muscle is the muscle that runs up your right arm, across both shoulders, up your neck, down your spine and down both legs), the toughest part of the project has been choosing a color--and I think I chose poorly. I started with 4 options--shades of blue, brown, green and slate. Unfortunately, I'm colorblind to greens and browns, so three of the colors didn't look quite right to me... so I ended up choosing the shade of blue.
This is a picture of the before shot...
This is a picture of the after shot...
For those who plan on painting in the future, remember this wisdom: colorblindness, determination and bordom are a bad combination. I think I was about 10 minutes into the project before I started thinking "this doesn't look quite right--it isn't really the color I thought it should be..." It was in that moment of doubt (I know myself well enough to know I shouldn't trust my eye for color) that should have put the paint roller down and back away; however, that is exactly when the deathly combination of determination and bordom kicked in—5 hours later, the whole room was painted (except for a little touch up needed). True, the color is blue (which I like), but it also has enough green in it to make me feel like I was aquaman waking up in a fish tank this morning. I could repaint the whole thing, but at this point, I think it is going to just be easier to go and get a few fish stickers and pin-up mermaids—then i'll feel like this wasn't an accident and I intentionally turned my room into an aquarium. Oh well... paint is cheap and labor is free. Since my bedroom is now in my living room, I might as well try it again and get it right...

It has been months since I've posted a blog... (when it takes 10 minutes to remember how to create a new post, you know it has been too long or you're not very tech-savvy). Life gets busy, and then you realize that you've let months slip by without letting people know what you've been up to. Well, without a question, the highlight of 2009 so far was a surprise visit from two of my closest friends, Jared and Ryan. I say 'surprise' in that it was a real surprise when Ryan emailed a week before coming and let me know that he would be out here to hang out. The real jaw-dropping surprise came when Jared showed up from Minnisota too. I was flabbergasted when I showed up and got two best buddies for the price of 1. I have the best friends in the world!

Well, the weekend was incredible! The weekend included a visit to Griffith Park Observatory and a night-time vista of the LA valley. The next morning, we went hiking in the Malibu Palasades area (Will Rogers Park) and got an awesome daytime view of the LA valley and the pacific ocean. We grabbed lunch on the 3rd-street promenade, drove by the LA temple and got home in time to grab dinner at In-N-Out. What a surprise and a great vacation! I've always been blessed with the best friends!

Usually when we get together as a family, we play games and watch movies. Sometimes, we do projects. This year, Scott brought a project to us to build water-powered rockets; we also took the guns out shooting. Luckily, we captured some of the day's activities on film and we turned into a fun home movie--it was a fun thanksgiving together. It has been a long time since I've updated my blog, it is about time...

So i've returned to work and Spain & Italy are just a blurry memory. I did want to capture the end of our trip if nothing else for my own memory.

After leaving the running of the bulls behind in pamplona, we finished up our trip in Madrid. After sleeping in 10 different hostels over 12 different nights, and after walking dozens of kilometers, we arrived in Madrid ready to relax... that said, we spent the first day touring the royal palace, a bunch of other architecturally brilliant old places, going to the Prado Museum and ending the day in the Retiro park. On our first relaxing day in Madrid we only walked 7-10 miles.
By Madrid day 2, we were ready to take it easy. We tried to catch a train to toledo without luck... in Italy the trains weren't exactly on time and we missed a lot of connections... in Spain the trains ran exactly on time, but the waiting line to buy a ticket was 2 hours long. We liked our train experience in Italy much better.

Day 3 we caught church in Spain and zipped off to the airport. 17 hours and 4 cramped legs later, we landed at LAX ready for the work week to begin. What a trip!

We're still working on getting all the pictures pulled together, but here's the link to the current photo album.

We ended the day in a differ way and place than we started the day. Our plan was to get up late, see a few museums in Barcelona and then catch the night train to Madrid. Plans change.

MONDAY
The first thing we noticed and most prevalent feature of the city of Barcelona is the resurgence of the mullet--a hairstyle generally reserved for honkys and doublewides. There was a guy on the plane with us that had a mullet. We thought he was an isolated case of tacky Spanish WT, but as we got into the city, we realized that 1 in 10 people have mullets. Disturbing.

We had no idea what Spain had to offer when we arrived, but we lucked out and had a roommate from Argentina who had the whole day planned. Her name was Elenora, but we renamed her Marta because we liked the name better. With Marta we went to the Sagrada Familia church and the Park of Guell ("go home tourist" sign, mega escalators & mosaic dragon). After lunch, we went to Montjuic--an area developed to support the Barcelona Olympic games when they came through. We took the tram to the top of the hill where we found a castle, a great view of the city and some Austrailian girls that we ended up running into about 10 more times during the day.
We ended the day by going to the park/zoo, rowing in a rowboat, seeing the arc de triumph, grabbing dinner and walking the promenade area. It was a good way to see the city. Thanks to Marta for planning the day for us.

TUESDAY
Today was kind of a take it easy day. We spent the morning sleeping in and changing hostels. We went to the train station and worked on arrangements to get us to Madrid in a day or two. In the afternoon we spent a short while at the beach. We went to the local public beach, but we found that European swimwear is quite a bit less modest than the compartatively modest suits sported by people on Malibu beaches. What was supposed to be a full day at the beach turned into a much shorter visit. We ended up spending the afternoon at the maratime museum instead and really enjoyed seeing the old ships and the boat building process. It is the end of the day, and we came back to the hostel for a nap and then on to dinner for the evening. It was a little more relaxing day and we saw a lot--perhaps a bit more than we'd hoped.

VENICE 2 SPAIN

Trying to see all of Italy in one week and trying to see all of Venice in 2 hours (today) is like trying to cram 2 liters of soda into a 12 oz can--filled to more than overflowing.

We started the day by catching an early train from Ferrarra, the coolest town in Italy, with the intent to arrive in Venice with a full day to see the city of canals. Of course, our bad luck with trains is consistent... there was a bomb scare at one of the stations, so they had to reroute us to another region delaying is by several hours. While we waited we met a cool local couple. The misses was ~50 year old, white gal originally from the British colonies in Zimbabwee; however, she had lived in Los Angeles for 15 yrs and had retired to Italy-she has a daughter living in Thousand Oaks. She and her companion helped us understand the bomb scare and for extra credit they explained that there was a metro strike about to start. Finally, they provided some tour pointers for Venice.

We ended up having time to run up and down a few streets in Venice, take a few pictures with water in the background (just so it looks like we were really there) and eat a tourist-special lasagna meal. We wrapped up the day by proving our travel nimbleness--we caught a boat to the train station, then to the bus, then to the plane. We landed in Spain and were on a bus again to the metro then to our hostel. Talk about a variety of transportation methods... ever seen "trains, planes, and automobiles?" yeah, same thing, but we won't be sleeping in the same bed.

We ended the day by eating some chicken at KFC then hit the sack with our German and Argentine roomies-same room, different sacks.

From dinner, we grabbed a Gelato, walked across one of the town squares where they used to kill people during the inquisition and walked up to a lookout over the city. We spent the walk talking about gas prices, motorcycles, and culture of italy. Because Patrick is well educated and could help us understand (in english) some of the things we've seen in italy, our evening with him was a highlight of the trip.

This morning, we got up early, helped Patrick move some things, grabbed breakfast and headed out the door. We barely made it to the train and caught the train up to Bologna. After a quick lunch, we caught a connecting train to a little town called Ferrarra.

Ferrarra has been the highlight of the trip so far. It is a little town that barely showed up on the map. We dropped in because it is expensive staying the night in Venice. We found a beautiful town with tons of green space and bike trails that ran throughout. The student hostel we stayed at rented bikes and we spent the evening riding around the city. I haven't been on my bike for months due to a shoulder injury, so I think half of the thrill was just being out on the bike again. Anyhow, this was the most surprising stop along the way and really a diamond in the rough.

SAN GIMIGNANO
This was an incredible town in the middle of Tuscany. It is very small, old midieval town in the middle of vineyardville. We went to a museum about torture through the ages. It turned our stomachs. The visit was short and focused on enjoying the view.

POGGIBONSI

On our way to San Gimignano we both fell asleep on the bus. We awoke in such a stupor that we thought we'd arrived at San Gwhatever and disembarked the bus in a ghost town called Poggibonsi. Only noteworthy points worth mention were that ALL the town observes the siesta, there was an iron artwork in the town center (I am ironman), and we found an open supermarket and played with the plastic gloves in the produce section again.

We were told that Siena was a mini-Florence which may just mean that it is all the tourists packed into a smaller town. What we found was a pretty cool medieval town with narrow stone streets and an interesting main square. The main square looked like a massive drainage area in front of a church. Aparently the town is known for its horse racing/rodeos. While we were in town some of the fans marched through town cheering on their favorite horses by waving flags, and singing along to a drummer--everyone wore scarves with baby binkies tied on the ends. It was like a pep rally for a horse race-interesting. Other memories include:
+Gloves in produce dept.
+Post office with trainee
+Woman who refused to move her car.
+Turtle, duck, fish pond

I think I could write a whole blog called "trouble with trains". We left Naples early and caught a train up through Rome along the coast. The train driver took his own sweet time and our train was delayed for our connection to Siena. Luckily we had a smelly, heavy set teenager and a nun (who later we found stole our lunch bread) to keep us company. We ended up catching a local train instead of the express. It took us right to Florence in 5 hours instead of the 2 hours we'd hoped to spend. Though it was a little too long, I don't mind trains. Nice place to sleep and the train toilets empty directly onto the tracks and create an interesting sucking feeling while you use them-a sensation you don't get much at home.

It was dusk by the time we made it to Florence. René's family friend lives in the city and he offered to let us stay with him. It turns out he owns bed and breakfast and a whole apt building. He is renting a whole floor out to an art school but they haven't moved in so he let us have the whole floor. It is 8-9 huge rooms and 3 bathrooms. We've stayed out of Patrick's hair and it has been paradise for us. The first night we washed our laundry (although we started it too late and got kicked out of the laundry mat, so we had to dry everything at Patrick's house on a makeshift clothesline. We spent the night catching up from the week.

We started the next day by walking right out of Patrick's front door to the main church and dome of some saint. We climbed the dome which put us high above the city and had some sweet views. The hike was so high that our legs were quivering and we were covered in pints of sweat well before 10.

We spent the rest of the day hiking around Florence seeing some of the local attractions and people watching. By the afternoon our legs were so sore we just caught local busses and rode around town.

In the evening we walked through some famous garden, crossed some famous bridge and ate dinner at a restaurant called santu espiritu. The whole time we agreed that Florence would be better spent with lovers and is not the best destination for a dude adventure.

A few other memory triggers:
+Street vendors running from Godzilla
+Left a message for the operator instead of Patrick
+KKK meeting
+Scary Egyptian statue
+6€ cokes
+Egyptian oblisks
+Tourist markup/tip
+Speedbump sign and speedbump woman
+benardos' steps

Need to update with the following:
Hostels in Naples-lots of cute girls as roommates--renè's favorite!
1.50 tren to pompeii and back
Showers in hostel
Girl on the train
Best pizza in world is in Naples
Lunch on the train (salami and bread hold the bread because a nun stole it out from under our noses when we were in the train car)
Then gypsy cab ride with stupid brothers
Surprise with a hostel planned
Room to ourselves Pompeii-
stepping stones and cross walks, counters with holes in them, lots of tourists but no your bus, huge, untouched wonders
Underground tram
Naples-julieta,
political protest,
old town stunk,
another night at the hostel,
town shuts down at 9.
At elmos, big building like a train station, castles, walked a ton.

Roman soldiers and colleauim
Speak louder doesn't help us
110 degree hostles.
No pictures in train terminal in Rome
Adapting to timezones. I only know one schedule. My body is very resilient.
Got to the station and they couldn't understand our Italian.
Check in at a restaurant
Gelstos Room was totally on lock down. Could have bought air condi, but that would have been the cost of the whole night stay
Pantheon mcdonalds
Cartoon maps
Dinner in Brooklyn
Vatican tour-cutting in line for a tour,
sistern chapel,
Jet lag the first day-pushing ourselvescolleauim, pantheon, Spanish steps, inescapable castle, discussion about why they have castles, forum, churches, your of real government bldg, trevi fountain, bathed in a few fountains, popes piazza, dinner in Brooklyn, stumbled home in a sleepy stupor
Statue of liberty inside st Peters, piazza nova, Catacombs and got lost
Hostel move then transferred, then cancelled, then late train to Naples

I had the best intentions to keep a blog up to date... what I didn't count on is that my phone doesn't actually work over here and we don't have internet at our hostel. That said, I did want to let you know we are alive and well.

We are wrapping up a long day of walking and siteseeing. I think we probably walked around 10 miles today. i will give more credit to the sites in a future blog, but sufficient to say, we saw lots of buildings, marble statues and ruins. The unfortunate fact is that with the jetlag I experienced and the poor sleep courtesy of hostel world, I am not sure how much of the day we'll remember. Thank goodness for pictures.

Tonight we are going to eat a little spagetti and then glide into a carbohydrate-induced comma in the hopes that we'll overcome jet lag by tomorrow. We are working what tomorrow's plans will be. More to come.

We landed in London on Saturday morning for a quick layover.

Walking around London airport

Green machine-Italia air used a putt-putt to cover the train

We had the annual chili cookoff at work and our theme focused on Elvis in Hawaii. As advertising we dressed like Elvis and drove a 4-seat surrey around during the lunch hour. One of the joys of being in HR.

I participated in a habitat for humanity project. I've never done that before, so it was a cool new experience. We worked on building a house over in Semi Valley in 107 degree heat. Despite the heat, it was a ton of fun.

Costa Rica Trip--March 2008

As I probably told most of you, my dad and I took a short weekend trip to Liberia, Costa Rica to do a little diving. I think we chose Liberia as a compromise between my first choice, Libya, and Glen's preferred vacation spot, Siberia—-I hadn't heard of Liberia before going there. Here is a link to the pictures.

Friday: Travel
Saturday: Scuba Diving & Bull run
Our most active day was Saturday. We spent the morning scuba diving off the pacific coast. Glen warned me that visibility is low and the water was cold when diving in the pacific--he was right. We were lucky enough to see some silt covered rocks, a few sting rays, a sea turtle and multiple varieties of sushi swimming in schools. As a rookie diver, I just enjoyed floating around, fighting the current, trying to clear my ears, and keeping my wetsuit as warm as possible.

The highlight of the trip was the afternoon/evening of Saturday. We went into Liberia for their annual city carnival. The spotlight of the carnival--in addition to a concert, carnival games, and sundry deep-fried pork parts-- was a WWF-style bull fight in a hand-made arena (see pics). In this event, the whole town shows up and piles into a huge, rickety, multi-level arena made from the plywood stripped off their own houses. All the macho youth of the town (boys ages 15-50) get drunk and pile into the middle of the arena, and then they release an angry, wild bull that is wearing a flank strap around its 'waist' to ensure it is in the worst temperament possible. The boys take turns trying to slap the bull's butt without being gored. Those who are gored by the bucking bull get carried and shoved through a lunch-tray-deposit style medic box on the side of the rink (again, the picture says it best). The game goes on until the bull slips into a learned helplessness state and gives up; then they bring out the next bull.

If that weren't fun enough, in the dead center of the rink (while the bull is busy stomping on people), the have a finely sanded, 50 ft tall telephone pole covered in lard; a 200$ prize safely awaits anyone that can scale to the top of the pole. Those who are waiting their turn to be gored by the bull take turns unsuccessfully trying to climb the buttered pole. The smart kids--those who have rolled themselves in dirt to make sure they stick on the pole--slide down the pole slow enough to avoid the bull's sharpened horns. The unskilled climbers slide down right in front of the charging bull, then do a short pole dance for the bull before being carried to the medic drop box.

Sunday: Church & Nicaragua
On Sunday we went to church in Liberia—it was a Central-America-wide area conference and two of the 12 apostles, Eyring and Ballard spoke via satellite. It was sweet to see the church in full speed operation in the middle of smallville Central America. After church, we drove the coast up to Nicaragua. We didn't stay for very long (3 minutes total)... it was just enough time to see Nicaragua's highlights including a border crossing, money exchangers and an immigration center. We turned around after deciding the view wasn't worth the climb.
Monday: Mount Arenal – Volcano & Hot Springs
Monday was the other high-adventure highlight of the trip--a visit to Mt Arenal Volcano. Although the volcano was 'active' it was mostly smoke--not a lot of fire. We did see a few molten boulders thrown down the hill and felt a mighty rumbling (although, I'm still unsure if the rumble was the volcano or if it was my stomach after 2 days of poor dietary judgment). In the afternoon, we took a zip line Canopy Tour. It was AMAZING! One of the lines was 1/2 a mile long another was 650 ft above the ground. We ended the day with pork ribs dipped in pace-picante salsa for dinner and a stop at a natural springs hot tub at the base of the volcano (not on the side of the volcano that was hurling balls of molten magma).
Tuesday: Home
Anyhow, that is it for the trip. It was an eventful and adventurous way to skip town, spend some time with my dad (the "old, grey haired mountain-climbing, ocean-swimming dog"--Glen's name from the natives) and see a part of the world I look forward to visiting again.