Project Luca

Here's a picture. Luca is the codename for our little baby that's on the way and the great Disturbance is set for February 11th.

I mean, our lives will be completely changed! I'm excited about all of this though and I can't wait until little Jacques or little Evelyn comes into this world. But at the same time, it is a very scary thing. Everything we have known will change.

Enjoy the picture. It is my wife with her four months pregnant belly. Her head was cropped by request...

Talk to you all later!

Immigration almost done

Yeah, 8 days in-between posts. I'm lazy, what can I tell you. I hope you've been checking up regularly for updates or that you have and RSS feed to my blog.

Anyway, as the title says, I'm finally in the final stages of my immigration process. My case was completed at the national visa center and is now bound for Montreal, where they'll schedule me for an interview at the end of which I'll receive my green card. Yay!

I can't believe we started all this a year and a half ago.

Bu-bye!

Back home

Well, I'm back home.

Reality is slowly setting back in... and I just cut my last credit card. I used it way too much during the trip, throwing out the window months of payments. Oh well.

Continental airlines lost my bags, for the third time this year. This is bad because my wife's bags made it to Corpus Christi. Maybe a security guard thought my bag would make a fine gift for his nephew. Thanks God my wine bottles were with me on the plane! That would have been a major bummer had they been in the bag.

My brain is still off right now. I slept only about 2 hours last night and 4 this afternoon. I swept the floor, ate salmon croquettes, read emails from work and my family. Reality, good ole reality. Bed... sleep... zzzZZZzzzzzzzzzz...

Last day of our surreal life

Some have asked for a map of my trip, and I can only say: Go to google maps, type in "San Francisco". From there (you can drag the map around with your mouse) take highway 1 all the way to San Luis Obispo, then take the 101 north all the way back. That was my trip.

Every vacation is surreal. That's the conclusion I came to in San Francisco. Next time I visit a city, I'll rent a house for two weeks or a month and "live" there. It's the only way to get a glimpse of the reality of a place. Otherwise, you just visit the tourist spots with hundreds of them, eat at the same overpriced places and miss out on a lot. I'm sure San Francisco is a great and fun city to live in. But being a tourist, I find it a little boring.

What is there to do here? The aquarium, the shops by the water, the parks, the museum. Sigh... boring! It's like that in every city in the world.

So this is our last day in Arnold's state. We fly back home at 12:30am tonight. That's right, a red eye flight. We'll be so pooped tomorrow! I have to say though that I liked this vacation a lot. San Luis Obispo was great, Monterey was great, the road was amazingly beautiful, the wine country was... hmm... tasty!

The highlight of my trip was definitely San Jose and Silicon Valley, where we knew some friends. They showed us the reality of their lives and I'm jealous. I want to live there. Everybody there is like me, a computer geek! They all work at Apple, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Cisco, and more. They all hang out together and share ideas. They all eat at Apple's or Google's free cafeteria. And when they have an idea, they start a business. Some people told me that Silicon Valley was ugly. Its not true, don't listen to those people. Of course, if you compare it to San Luis Obispo, it is. But then Corpus would be ugly compared to the prettiest piece of paradise in Hawaii. But hey, Corpus is beautifully to me.

If you are in San Jose one day, visit the Winchester Mansion. It's crazy! 166 rooms, thousands of stairs and doors, only one shower, 4 floors. The lady that built that house kept building to appease the spirits of those killed by a Winchester riffle, produced by her husband's company. I also went to the Ozzfest and I saw Ozzy sing with Black Sabbath. Amazing! Amazing... enough said.

San Francisco is crazy. Every piece of land is built upon and their is no room left for anything. It seems like everywhere is downtown, buzzing with activity and tourists walking here and there. Let me show you some pictures. I'm tired of writing.



All right, that was my trip in California. I enjoyed it, enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading this blog. I plan to continue to write now and then about my life. So if you think your life sucks and enjoy reading about mine, visit this page often!

See ya!

El Zoco is my name and nobody will care

Thanks for the info about the meaning of Zoco. Based on what you guys told me, it doesn't mean squat. I shall make it my name.

Before I continue on with my stories, I want to tell you that I found the fabled cheese curds! Yes!! The cheese that we use to make Poutine. San Luis Obispo's Farmers Maket is the place. For only $4, I could indulge in this great delicacy that makes a "squeak squeak" sound when you chew on them. Good times!

On the way to that little college town, we saw some elephant seals. I didn't know they were seals at first. I thought they were round rocks on the beach. They were way too big for my brain to register them as any living thing. But then one moved and I thought "Oh my Boudha! Those are huge seals!"

It's amazing how quickly something becomes boring... It was great to look at those monsters for about 10 minutes. At that point you start feeling an urge to go back on the road. So we did.

We got to San Luis Obispo early in the evening and found our host's house. This little town of no more than 47,000 people is quite cute. Yes, the C word. It's also a little bit warmer here, which is good, but still chilly. When the sun falls, it feels like it's late September in Montreal, or December in Corpus Christi.

What to do here? Well, being only 20 minutes south of a wine producing region, Paso Robles, I had to go visit a few vineyards and buy some good bottles. I took the rental car and drove over the mountains on the 101 to Templeton. A sign welcomed me when I arrived: "Welcome to Templeton. Temperature: 104". What?!? One hundred and four degrees? It was barely 70 when I left. Man... The temperature gets a lot warmer the farther you are from the coast, which makes sense if you think that the neighbour states are all deserts.

I stopped by two vineyards and I highly recommend their wines: Wild Horse and Bella Luna Estates. They had excellent Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon at Wild Horse and you might be able to find some at your local liquor store. As for Bella Luna Estates, a very small wine producer, I highly recommend their Estate Riserva III, which you will only find on the internet. They ship pretty much anywhere. Go ahead, order some right now.

The girl in the picture below works at Bella Luna and hold a $480 bottle of wine (3 liters).


I bought more bottles than I can afford. I'll keep them for at least a year before drinking them. Its also learned a lot about wine in general. First of all, don't try to compare wines based on their types (Merlot, Pinot Noir, etc.) Just know that Pinots are light, Zinfandels and Merlots are medium-light and medium, and that Syrahs and Cabernet Sauvignons are full bodied wines. Then, when you know what you want to drink, choose between the thousands of different combinations. Some Merlots I like, some I don't. Some Pinots I like, some I don't.

You know whats funny? Since that movie "Sideways" came out, Pinot sales have gone through the roof and Merlot sales stalled according to the people working at the wineries. Pretty sad how most people are influenced by somebody else's opinions...

Every Thursday night, its Farmers Market here. Very nice. The farmers are on the street to sell their fruits and vegetables. All the restaurants also have little booths right outside their establishements and sell samples of their menus. I had a Gyro. Hmmmm!

Talk to you all soon!

Monterey to San Luis Obispo

Hello from San Luis Obispo!

I left you all last time wondering if I'd commit suicide without an internet connection. Well, fear not, I found a connection. Our host doesn't have one, but somebody around here has got one that isn't secured. Connecting to it was a piece of cake.

Now if you take a look on the right, you will see Monterey with fog floating over. The sun is hot, so I had to change from a long sleeve shirt to a T-shirt, but as soon as the sun hides behind that fog, you need to change your clothes again. So here is my guide on what kind of clothes to bring to California.

You need your whole freaking wardrobe!
And a jacket...

We stoped at the Cannery Row Inn for the night. Perfect little place, near the water and pricy restaurants, yummy! They also say Monterey is home to the best Aquarium in the Country, so we didn't stop to see it, even though it was within walking distance.

This is a picture of the scenery near the Cannery Row Inn.

We hit the road at 10am sharp the next day after an okay breakfast and head south where we hope we won't need our sweaters anymore. I mean, it's August! Okay, okay, I'll stop complaining about it. It is actually a nice change from the "blisteringly hot" weather of South Texas.

We stopped in Big Sur to hike some trails in the National park. Pretty. Enjoy those pictures!


Talk to you all later!
Enjoy your life at work!

Calif'onia dreaming

7:15 am, Houston, Tx

Well, here we are. Let me explain the situation for you. It's very early in the morning and we have been up for a few hours without eating anything. The restaurant next to McDonald's serves fat fried donuts and non toasted bagels. Let me tell you that a sausage & egg sandwich sounded very good, compared to the alternatives.

Anyway, with our bellies full, we continued on to our gate for our flight to San Francisco.

It's very interesting to see the landscape change a few thousand feet down below. From the luxurious vegetation of east Texas to the desert of west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona you finally get to California where the brown landscape become a little paler, with forests appearing here and there. Very pretty from up there in the sky!

We landed at around 10am. It's foggy outside, but I expected that. I also knew it was cooler in California, but I was in for a small surprise. Being from Canada, I thought I could endure 60 degrees temperature with a T-shirt, but I guess my last three months in 95 degree weather changed me a little. It's not cool here, it cold!

But the show must go on and we hop into our grand am rental car and hit highway one south toward Monterey, where we have a room waiting for us. Images like this one just above is what you can see along the road. Pretty (and cold.)

Stay tuned for some more stories about our trip. I don't know when I'll be able to write some more as our host south of here isn't connected to the world like we are. See you all later!

10 hours 'till takeoff

Califo'nia, here we come!!

My bag is ready and my head is weary, eager to empty itself of all that useless junk it accumulated during the year, like good programming habits, the Patriot act or cooking at home (cooking at home? Ha!)

Well, it'll do me good.

See y'all soon!

P.S If any of you guys know what "El Zoco" means, please tell me. That name poped out of the top of my head and I have no clue if it means anything. Perhaps its a name for some old Mayan wizard that used to kill young virgins before they could start thinking about feminism...