Boricua en la Lima

This one is a bit long (15 min.) but worth every minute. P.S. Thank you Chelita for sending this to me!!!

I just learned there are cell phone discounts for Cingular and Verizon to P&G employees. No need to renew a contract or anything. Just go to the sites, enter your work e-mail, click on the link you'll get e-mailed, and follow to discounts for existing accounts. Super easy. Here are the links for Cingular and Verizon: Cingular 12% discount on all plans $25 off total order Many phones are discounted more than normal Verizon 6% discount on all plans Many phones are discounted more than normal And just for kicks I'm attaching this Cingular ad which I just love, I think it's so freaking funny. I'm a Cingular customer through and through, especially now that they're coming out with the iPhone in June/July.

I got the following email this morning: Do you like to Travel? Please contact the email address in the body of the announcement with questions. I am casting a show for the travel channel called "5 Takes Latin America." We are looking for 5 Travel Journalists/Hosts between the ages of 30-39 to go to Latin America and explore the country while making a video journal and blogging about it. No previous experience is required -- Just a dynamic personality and a love for travel!!! The pay is $1000 a week + per diem and travel -- you can check out the show on the travel channel website (check out the previous seasons "5 Takes on Europe" , etc). It is a NICE, fun show. The guidelines are as follows: MUST BE BETWEEN THE AGES OF 30-39. MUST HAVE A PASSPORT THAT IS VALID THRU JANUARY 2008 WITH AT LEAST SIX EMPTY PAGES FOR VISAS. YOU MUST BE AVAILABLE TO BE AWAY FROM THE UNITED STATES FROM MAY 15, 2007 TO JULY 16, 2007. We are casting all over the United States, so if you know ...

Today was the most beautiful day...ever (that's a Mara -ism). The weather forecast said it was going to be a high of 80 degrees. We agreed to go to breakfast because I am a huge breakfast fan but my husband isn't so much so when he goes to play golf on Sundays I go to have breakfast with friends. Knowing that I was going to do some damage around 9 am I went for a walk from my house to Hyde Park and back - Gabi slept the whole time in her stroller since it was so nice and cool. Now that it's getting warmer that's the best time to walk because during the afternoon it gets too hot. The only problem with Gabi sleeping the whole way was that she skipped her afternoon nap and was pretty beat by the end of the day. We met at our house and went to Sugar & Spice which is a great little diner that Tariq found on Reading Road. It was Manuel, Gigi, Tariq , Elika , and me and Gabi. Elika ordered chocolate chip pancakes, I ordered banana pancakes, and we shared. The combination...

In the last week, I've had to make friends with two types of snakes...the professional kind and the garden kind. The snakes that had come out of hibernation to show up on my patio a few weeks back are back, thank god not in big intertwining masses like before, which I guess is how they spend the winter, all cuddled up with each other keeping themselves warm. Which means the snakes I saw a few weeks back must have just come out of their winter homes. We called about every pest control phone in the book and searched on every web site known to man, and here's what we found out: The ideal conditions for these garden snakes include: flat rocks so that they can sunbathe (hmmm...check), a pond so that they can take a swim every once in a while (check), food for pets (check check) lots of nooks and crannies so that they can hide (double check). Hmmm....I wonder why the previous owners didn't mention a word about garden snakes... There are no poisonous snakes in Cincinnati (phew). ...

It's official...I'm a "lady who does tea". On Saturday afternoon we had "high tea" at The Bonbonerie , one of the cutest places in Cincinnati. We went to celebrate the Cincinnati edition of Elika's wedding shower ( Elika will probably have like 5 wedding shower/ bachelorette parties when everything is said and done!). Originally we were going to be six but we ended up being only three - Elika , Gigi and I (pictured above). Mara decided she'd rather be skiing with her brother, Monica was on her way to Mexico, and Bea had to babysit like 5 kids (yikes!). Even though the first time I went to The Bonbonerie with friends of mine from work like Kandis and Tom they said that the food was too fancy and gross (where's the mac and cheese they asked), I thought it was delish . When you first get the tray of finger sandwiches and pastries you think this is never going to fill me up. But somehow little by little you keep eating those fantastic sc...

I consider myself a pretty good English speaker, as my dad is a bona - fide gringo (although he considers himself 100% Puerto Rican ) and for some reason I enjoyed US TV a lot more than Puerto Rican TV when growing up so I really started picking up the language quite early. I also have spent about 6 years living in the US, but I often get popular American English sayings mixed up. Whenever this happens, my friends and co-workers will quizzically look at me, think for a second on whether I'll be offended or not if they say something (I'm not) and then try unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh, at which point I usually say "That didn't come out right did it?" and have a good laugh. Here are some of the highlights throughout the years (some of them I shameless stole from my good friend Valeria). "Get off your sandbox " instead of "Get off your soapbox " "There are bones in my bag " instead of "There are skeletons in my closet ...

I was recently contacted by my two stepsisters who I haven't heard of in about 15 years or so. They're not really my stepsisters I guess. When my dad married his second wife she had two daughters which I guess means they're not actually stepsisters because there's no blood relation whatsoever. However, we did spend an incredible amount of time together "growing up" and went through a lot together. Our parents basically got married one day after the break-up of a 13-year marriage to my mom and said "go and be sisters". I was about 5 years old at the time, and we ended up being 4 "sisters", all 3 years apart of each other. Our stepsisters were the oldest (11 at the time and quickly approaching her teenage years) and youngest ones (about 2 and of course the recipient of all the love from my dad which I'm sure made me jealous to no end, especially since I had been the "baby" up until that moment). As many children of divorced pare...

Gabi woke up in the middle of the night last night and she was covered in puke from head to toe. I don't know what happened but I guess exhaustion had taken over me, because it overpowered that motherly instinct. I didn't notice she had vomited at all, I had heard her coughing through the baby monitor but thought it was normal coughing. My husband who I normally consider to be paranoid beyond words and a hue pessimist said something's wrong and went into her room to find her covered in puke. It was nasty - we had to give her a bath at midnight because she was literally covered in the stuff, we had to take everything out of her crib which included all her favorite plush toys, blankies , etc. Yes, judgemental parents, that stuff you're not supposed to have in her crib to avoid SIDS. She loves to sleep in it and she's over 16 months old so that's it. Anyway, it was pretty disturbing for me to think that had my husband's 6 th sense not kicked in she would...

So it finally has started warming up a here in Cinci -nasty. It's supposed to get cold one more time next weekend but at least we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. For a moment there it seemed like Spring would never arrive, despite the Groundhog's prediction. After having what will potentially go down in history as the worst day at work in the last 10 years, which is essentially the length of my entire professional career, I decided to leave early and my husband did the same. Around 4 pm on Friday, we went to the park right by our house and enjoyed the sun and the warmth for a super long time, which was in huge contrast with the previous weekend where we'd gone to the park in the middle of what seemed like a mini-blizzard and had to leave after about 5 minutes or so! Here are the highlights of what our first Spring weekend brought to us: Rediscovering one of Cincinnati's "greater" treasures (pun intended), Graeter's . Gabi has proved y...

One of the main reasons (OK so it might be THE main one but I'm too proud to admit it) I started this blog was because my friend Lety got her own, and if anyone knows me they know how technologically savvy I usually am, and I felt that if Lety , who's one of the least techie people I know, was able to get her own blog, then by God I guess it was time for me to get my own! What propelled Lety to get her own blog was the fact that she was taking a year off from work to go on sabbatical and travel the world. Her friends gave her the blog as a virtual gift so that she could update us all on her travels and to basically help us ensure we could live vicariously through her. After all, not many of us have the option of taking a year off work and traveling the world... So I guess that you could say we're a TEENY bit jealous of Lety , but really much more than that we're simply amazed that we actually know someone who's not only got the money but also the guts to leave ev...

My good friend Ervin used to always say "everything is relative" way back when we used to work together. It's funny because he would always say it whether the context lend itself to the saying or not, so of course it was always hilarious when I would say something like "I'm hungry, let's go to lunch" and he would respond "everything is relative, Ivette" in that not-so-subtly condescending tone all of us who are friends with him got to know and love. No Ervin, I'm hungry, PERIOD, there's no relative, but you might lose a relative if we don't go to lunch soon! I miss working with Ervin and having "everything is relative" peppered into any and every conversation he could fit it into. By the way, Ervin and I are on the far right of the picture above. This picture was taken at the 2000 Company Holiday Party - we're here with Dervin, Lety , Jaime and Chelita living in an era that seems long gone but never forgotten. Today, a...

Last December I had a little Christmas dinner party at home with all our friends from Puerto Rico who are currently residing in Cincinnati (or as Graciela likes to call us, the Hotel California guests). That night after getting a little too full with the Smores we were making outside on the fire pit, we decided to come back inside and start playing board games, namely Cranium which we love! We decided to do guys vs. girls. The girls unfortunately took a huge beating, which at that time we believed was due to Tariq's smarts combined with the fact that apparently Jero was temporarily possessed by our trivia fact genius, Jaime. Because our lives have been a little too hectic in the past few weeks with all the traveling and partying, I invited people over last night for a relaxing evening (i.e. only 3 beers instead of 20!). We decided to have a Cranium re-match, the line-up: 4 girls/3 guys. We could have thought it would be an unfair disadvantage for the girls since we had one mor...

Well it was way too cold in Cincinnati so after two straight snow days we decided to make a quick trip down to Puerto Rico. Even though it was mostly rainy (our visit apparently ended a 2 month drought!) it was still 80 degrees or so, we can't complain about that. I visisted a day care right next to Abuela Marta's house for a while (shout out to my Peek-a-Boo friends!), and then had lots of great food at yummy places, and also had a chance to go to the beach for a little while and the pool at titi Charmin's house to see friends of mine like Mauricio, Camila, Nico and Mariana. The picture above is me at Ocean Park. Can't wait to go back in April for tio Jero's wedding! - Gabi-Wabi

So after months and months of planning we finally made it into warm and sunny Miami...NOT!!! I meet up with my girlfriends in Sushi Samba down in Lincoln Road, I am in full puertorrican "jibara" gear with my suitcase in the middle of Miami Beach, how uncool! I am dressed for 80 degree weather and it's -- wait, what??? -- freaking 45 degrees! If I was in bachelorette party hell before then I guess that means hell has frozen over...The cold has caused all those Miami fashionistas to pull out their leather coats and Ugg boots which they never get to use unless they're skiing in Aspen. What will all those purse dogs wear now! Oh I know, a Burberry coat to match the Burberry purse they're being toted around in. :) I had a lot of catch-up drinking to do since my friends were about 5 mojitos ahead of me. Luckily I'm quick at many things -- I'm a quick talker, quick walker, quick drinker and more importantly (and unfortunately), I'm very quick to judge. Which ...

My husband took me to a really nice restaurant tonight that we hadn't been to before, Cumin. My friend Mara offered to babysit and we luckily found a place. I think it's because people have been canceling their reservations left and right because of the damn snow/ice in this city. Anyway, I was too exhausted to even want to go out because I've had to stay home with Gabi for 2 straight days due to day care being closed (again, because of the snow/ice). But it was a must to get out if only for a little while! Now, and I never thought I would say this, I can't wait to go back to work tomorrow. Only 2 days til Miami! This image is from a Coors Light ad that was placed in Puerto Rico today for Valentine's Day. My husband's good friend Juanchi works for Coors Light and emailed it to him. It says "even though on the outside we may seem different, we're the same deep down inside". Cute. Anyway, hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day!

This friend of ours (the one who is getting married in April in Puerto Rico and is the fiance of our honoree from our bachelorette party weekend in Miami) has been called "Borat" at work lately by his co-workers. Mind you he's Spanish, his name is Jeronimo, and he is probably as far removed from Borat as anyone can be if you're thinking Kevin Bacon's degrees of separation...but that's gringos for you. I guess the name Borat is easier to pronounce than Jeronimo, but whatever the case may be they have even started to call him Borat in work-related emails! They also changed his nameplate on his cubicle at work to Borat. Oh, and did I mention my friend doesn't even have a mustache? Anyway, I posted these short video clips on Google Video recently, it's from a dinner party where we all had a little too much to drink. Maybe Sacha Baron Cohen will actually pick these up for his sketches? Maybe he'll create a Spaniard character called Jeronimo. Maybe...