No one will ever match up to this kind of talent.

RIP Michael Jackson. Your legend will never be forgotten.

Bleh…I’ve been trying to juggle between studying for board exams, starting up a new job, and battling the beast that is known as the corporate world. Which all adds up to putting this blog on the the backburner. I wish I were on vacation again already. Anyway, back to Alaska!

So after we visited Davidson Glacier in Skagway, we were back on the ship, where we’d be sailing off to Glacier  Bay. There’s nowhere to dock in Glacier Bay…it’s completely natural land with mountain scapes, and as the name implies - glaciers. My sister and I were getting dressed to grab breakfast with the parents, when we hear the following over the intercom system:

*bing bong*…”As a snowflake falls…it rolls and tumbles, and slowly evolves into a glorious wonder of…”

Some dude was reciting random poetry over the freakin’ intercom. It sounded like someone had stolen the mike from the ship captain and decided it was time for open mic poetry. My sister and I looked at each other and said “What the f*ck was that??” After the poem was over, the mike clicked off, and then we heard the following:

*bing bong*…”Good morning passengers, this is Julie your cruise director, and you just heard Ranger Kevin recite some poetry for us, and he’s going to guide us through beautiful Glacier Bay today!”

And that wasn’t the last that we heard of Ranger Kevin (I actually don’t remember if his name was Kevin or not…we just called him “Hippie Ranger”, but we’ll call him Kevin in this post)…because after our cruise director introduced him, he must’ve clicked onto the mike like every FIVE MINUTES. Continuously. And always opening with a new poem. *bing bong*…”The wonders of nature are beautiful, wild, and breathtaking…now if you’ll look to the right side of the ship, you’ll catch a glimpse of a gleaming mountaintop in the distance, a truly amazing sight….” It started off as being extremely annoying, but I actually started to like it, just because it was so freakin’ goofy. While the Ranger’s poetry and tree-hugging descriptions of the scenery were cheezy and amusing, on the other hand, he really wasn’t kidding whenever he rambled on about how gorgeous it was out there:

This photo seriously doesn’t do it justice. The crystal clear glacier water, the utter silence except for the occasional arctic tern flying by, the crisp, clean air…you really feel like you’ve been swept to another world. We actually got lucky, because Alaska’s weather SUCKS…it’s almost always cloudy and rainy, but the day that we were in Glacier Bay, the sun came out, and the mountaintops literally glowed in the sunlight….they already looked pretty enough even with clouds misting over them, but once the clouds cleared and the sun came out, it looked like someone had flicked on a flashlight and aimed it right at the mountains.

The flashlight effect.

We sailed on, and then we reached the big kahuna glacier: Margerie Glacier.

You can’t tell in this photo, but this thing is actually the size of a skyscraper…250 feet high. My standards for glaciers were being raised higher and higher every time. First I thought Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau was awesome, then that was dwarfed by Davidson Glacier in Skagway, but this one took the cake. It was huge, and absolutely gorgeous. Lots of contrasts between stark white ice, studded with sapphires of blue, with a few bands of grey from where the tides had left their mark.

I loved how that blue chunk in the middle stuck out like a blue crystal embedded in ice.

I had mentioned in the previous post that glaciers had quickly become my favorite natural landscape, because of their sheer beauty and how they change by the minute. But here’s the biggest reason that set my love for glaciers in stone:

THEY GO BOOM. How cool is that?? Seeing this bit of calving was already cool enough, but see that huge ice tower? Everyone was kind of joking about how cool it would be see that one fall, but no one really expected it to happen…AND THEN IT DID. The entire ice tower came crashing down, and made a huge thunderclap as it splashed into the water. The splash was so huge that the ripples actually rocked our 15-deck cruise ship a bit. IT. WAS. EPIC. Keep in mind that that huge chunk must’ve been the size of an office building, so to see that tumbling down into the water was like watching a building getting demolished. It was just plain COOL. And after it had all fallen, it had revealed more blue ice underneath, which slowly turned white as the ice was exposed to more air. The thing goes boom AND it changes color and shape. Too awesome. I was fortunate enough to catch it on film, but I’m too embarrassed to post it here, because for some unexplainable reason, my voice got REALLY deep and manly when I was geeking out over it, haha. So you’ll just have to picture that ice tower falling sans manly voice narrative. We never left the cruise ship once for our tour of Glacier Bay, and it was easily the highlight of the entire tour for me. Absolutely breathtaking.

All smiles in front of Margerie Glacier.

Our second offshore stop on our cruise was to Skagway. Remember how there was nothing to do in Juneau? There’s  REALLY nothing to do in Skagway. The population is only about 700 people or so, and their entire “downtown” consists of 5 blocks, and it’s all the same shops over and over again down the entire street. Our tour guide said that if it weren’t for all the cruise ships arriving in Skagway on a daily basis, the town wouldn’t survive. Anyway, our main attraction in Skagway wasn’t Skagway itself, but a spot a short boat’s ride away from Skagway, off to Glacier Point.

Our tour guides for Glacier Point was a group of 11 20-something hippie kids…they told us that they all live alone up in Glacier Point for about 5-6 months out of the year while they’re on the job as tour guides. There’s no one else up there, and they sleep in cabins with no running water or electricity. You’d have to be a real tree-hugger if you can stay up in the middle of nowhere for half a year with no running water or electricity, and the only other population is your other 10 coworkers. They drove us out on a rundown bus to the shore where we’d be getting into canoes to row our way to see a glacier. While we were driving through the woods, our tour guide talked about spruce tips, which were these lil’ bright green buds growing at the ends of the spruce trees…he proceeded to tell us that they were high in vitamin C, and picked some off for us to try:

They didn’t taste too bad…kinda like someone dipped a leaf in lemon juice. The interesting part is that apparently they make beer out of this stuff in Skagway, so you can get a beer with a healthy dose of vitamin C in it! Woohoo! I duly made a note to visit the one brewery they had in Skagway to try some of this spruce tip beer.

Anyway, we reached our shore, they suited us up into goofy raincoats and boots, and we got into some canoes to row our way to see a glacier up close.

Davidson Glacier

Now this isn’t my first time seeing a glacier on this tour…I actually visited Mendenhall Glacier when we were in Juneau, and that seemed like the shizzle to me at the time. But after seeing Davidson, my photos of Mendenhall weren’t even worth posting anymore. I’ve pointed out the canoe in the photo to show how huge this thing was. I thought it was pretty massive at the time, until I later learned that Davidson Glacier is actually considered pretty small compared to some of the other major glaciers in Alaska. I’ll definite write about the big kahuna glaciers later (easily the highlight of the trip for me), but at the time, Davidson Glacier was the coolest thing in the world to me.

I loved the brilliant blue color of this ice cave. The crazy thing is that our tour guide told us that just the day before, that ice cave wasn’t even there, and she believed that the blue ice chunk floating nearby probably broke off to create that ice cave. Glaciers easily became my favorite natural landscape because 1) they’re gorgeous with all of their brilliant colors and patterns, and 2) they’re constantly changing, so you never see the same glacier twice. Absolutely gorgeous.

After we finished oohing and aahing at Davidson Glacier, we rowed back to our drop off point and went back to downtown Skagway (ie. the 5-block tourist trap). While we were wandering around to make our way to the brewery (in which the spruce tip beer was actually VERY good….I wished they bottled that stuff), I noticed a little old guy with long bushy beard…I immediately thought “Hey, that lil’ old dude is rockin’ a Santa Claus look”…then I saw him turn around, and I noticed that he was wearing a jacket that said “Lone Star Santas”. Then I saw MORE little old guys who looked like Santa…did I miss something? Christmas in May? Then I spotted one who was fully decked out in a Santa hat and all…I fulfilled every 5 year-old’s dream:

It’s Santa!!

This particular Santa was from Florida, and he had an ADORABLE Mrs. Claus wife too…she had twinkling blue eyes, a sweet smile, and a warm storytelling voice…I wanted a photo with both, but Mrs. Claus volunteered to take the photo for us, so we obliged. Turns out there was some sort of Santa conference going on or something? It was pretty funny to see all the little tourist kids freaking out…they were looking around like “Holy shit, there’s MORE THAN ONE Santa?? WTF??”…haha, fun stuff. After I got this photo, I saw the Claus couple getting stopped left and right…I even saw a guy hand Mrs. Claus his cell phone to talk to his son/daughter. Too cute.

Mood: Busy
Music: Playing for Change - One Love (Bob Marley cover)

So last week I went on an Alaskan cruise with my family, and it was every bit as incredible as I thought it would be and more. I’m going to steal Linda’s idea of breaking it down into separate entries…it’s just a lot more manageable this way. I’m trying to knock out all of my vacation blogging as soon as I can, cuz I’m about to get into a whirlwind of work, with training for work, studying for pharmacy boards, moving to a new apartment, etc. etc. So on to the good stuff.

Our first offshore visit on the cruise was to Juneau. What the hell is there in Juneau? Not a whole lot. Small little town with no roads in or out of the city…the only way to get out of Juneau was either by boat or by plane. They’ve got just one Wal-Mart, and our tour guide told us that the place completely sold out in its first day and had to shut down for 3 days afterward until its new shipments came in. So what IS there in Juneau?

…there’s these guys.

Yup, I saw humpback whales. My dad signed us up for a wildlife tour in Juneau, where you get to see all sorts of animals, and it guarantees humpback whale sightings, or you get $100 back. I was pretty excited about the tour, but I was also slightly skeptical too, because I thought they’d show us one whale with its tail poking out of the water, and count that as a “sighting”. I’m glad the tour proved me wrong, because it was worth every penny. At first it seemed like the tour was going to be a bust, because it was cold, rainy, and all we saw in the waters for a while was a few seals poking their heads out of the water. Then our tour guide told us that the captain was going to take us even farther away from the usual tour trail for “something special”, and they hoped that whatever it was would still be there…people started wondering where they were going to take us, because 1) it was cold out, and 2) we had rain slapping in our faces. Finally we get to our stopping point, and our tour guide instructed everyone to look out of the right side of the boat…everyone silently looked out towards the water and waited. A black fin rose up from the water…and another. Then the fins rose higher, and I saw white markings…it was an entire family of orcas. I saw freakin’ Shamu in the WILD. Sure, you can claim that you can always see these guys up close at Seaworld and whatnot, but it’s really a different experience seeing them in the wild, watching them travel without the constraints of a tank, without all the cheezy tricks, and seeing how they communicate with each other without the instruction of a whistle. These lil’ buggers move fast too…I don’t have any good photos because whenever they dipped back down into the water, they’d end up WAY farther from where they had originally sprung up for air. Kinda hard to randomly point the camera when you don’t know where they’re going to pop up. Very cool stuff.

We departed from the orca point, where our tour guide excitedly reported that orcas are actually a pretty rare sight on this tour, so once they heard that there was a pod swimming in that general area, they thought they’d take us all out there to see ‘em. After the orca sighting, we started back on the trail, where we found some sea lions…again, I was expecting to see just a few out on a rock…instead, we were greeted with an entire swarm of them:

This is literally only about a fifth of the number of sea lions that we saw out on this rock…I had to crop the picture by a lot to fit in this blog. The thing about these guys is that they were LOUD. And they don’t make those cutesy “arf arf” sounds…they make these horrendously loud grunts that sound more like a herd of angry buffalo. The huge Fatty McFatty sea lion on the left side of the picture cracked me up. At first we were all just watching the sea lions hang out on this rock, and then suddenly this Fatty McFatterton pops up from the water and just flops himself down on the rock…on TOP of all the other smaller sea lions. All you saw was Fatty –> PLOP –> massive chaos. It was pretty awesome.

Then came the humpbacks…I remember my family joking with another vacationer on the cruise about how “seeing” a whale probably means only seeing the blowhole and the tail. The other guy joked back and said that if he saw a whale breeching (having the whales completely jump out of the water), THEN that would really mean seeing a whale. I wasn’t expecting to see any breeching, since it’s a pretty rare type of behavior to see out in the waters in Juneau, but as you can see from the photo above, luck was on our side. Not only did we see multiple whales, but they were breeching too. Humpbacks moved a lot more slowly than orcas did, so it was a lot easier to predict where they were going to pop up next, hence the photo. Seeing these guys leap out of the water was a pretty amazing sight…one of the whales was just a calf, and it looked like the little guy (I use the term “little” loosely) was just having the time of his life out in the water. Kinda like watching a kid play in a pool…just that this “kid” was the size of a friggin’ boat. Hehe, it was cute.

I’m not that much of a wildlife geek, but it doesn’t take much to appreciate the experience of seeing these animals in their natural habitat. Considering that I’m in Texas, my idea of wildlife consists of deer, gators, and armadillos…so seeing these kinds of animals out in their untouched habitats was easily one of the coolest things that I’ve ever seen. I’d do it again in a hearbeat.

This is what I got to see all of last week:

I just got back from a weeklong cruise to Alaska on Sunday night. Just thought I’d post a quick preview photo…still trying to figure out how to condense the week into one blog post without writing a novel. The photo above was taken in Glacier Bay, and is not doctored in any way whatsoever. Absolutely stunning. You know you wish you were there.

Mood: Relaxed
Music: Zee Avi - Honey Bee

A long overdue update. First things got super-busy, then I got super-lazy. At any rate, since I’m a fatty and I like food, this post is mainly talking about two items that I can cross off my list of 100 things to eat before you die: lapsang souchong and huevos rancheros.

I’ll start with the lapsang souchong. There’s a teashop that I frequent, and I noticed that they had this stuff on the menu, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I’d read before that lapsang souchong is noted for its smokey aroma. They seriously weren’t kidding when they said smokey. You know that nice smell of smoke that you get when you walk into a good barbecue joint? Now imagine someone shoving your face into that smoke. Yeah. It was kinda like that. The smell was so potent that the bf actually got kind nauseous sitting next to me and had to go outside for a bit. Anyway, the scent of this stuff is UBER-potent, so I was bracing myself for sipping a cup of liquid smoke. Surprisingly enough, the taste isn’t nearly as smokey as the scent. Actually, the taste of it wasn’t really smokey at all…just tasted like generic chinese tea. Huh. Who woulda figured? Either way, the verdict: I’d drink it again if someone offered it to me, but I probably wouldn’t order it on my own accord.

Then comes the huevos rancheros. You can’t see it in the picture, but I swear there’s some eggs buried somewhere in that massive mound of cheese, onions, and salsa. One way or another, I’m slowly earning my title as a Texan by expanding my Mexican food resume. Because dammit, I’ve been in the Lone Star State for 13 years now, and somehow - regardless of how much I love food and trying new foods - SOMEHOW, I ended up with an absolutely MISERABLE history with Mexican/Tex-Mex food. Considering that huevos rancheros were on the list of 100 things to eat before you die, I thought I’d hit two birds with one stone by 1) crossing something off the list, and 2) attempting to further solidify my Texan-ness. Turns out the stuff is basically the innards of a breakfast taco, just that you slap it on a plate and eat it. I personally prefer all that junk wrapped in a tortilla with some potatoes and bacon, but either way it was a pretty simple, down-home type of meal. All I can say is that the South is definitely not a place for counting calories. Gotta love it.

And one final note - I finally got a picture of that oyster shooter that I had tried a while back:

I swear it’s not a fetus.

Pretty hideous, right? As much as I like this stuff, I’m convinced that if you left that thing sit for a week, it’d probably grow into its own lifeform.

As of yesterday morning, I can now put “Dr.” in front of my name. WOOHOO!! I’m gradumacated!!

Funny enough, yesterday was my very first graduation ceremony. I never went to my high school graduation because I simply didn’t care enough to go, and I never graduated from UT (no degree, went straight into pharm school). So since this is my first (and probably my only) graduation ceremony that I’ll ever walk, I thought I’d get a pair of shoes to make the walk a little more fun.

And by fun, I mean painful. High heels and I have never gotten along. But dammit, it took me 3 years of undergrad and 4 years of grad school to get to this point, so if I’m going to be dressed in black robes like everyone else, I wanted SOMETHING to be a little brighter. And with a clacking of red heels across the stage, I’m now officially a Doctor. Woohoo!

That’s Dr. Cindy to you!

I’ve had this song on repeat lately.

Mood: Relaxed
Music: Oasis - Live Forever

Dr. Pepper like yo’ grandma used to drink.

Before I had visited the drive-in theater this past weekend, my friends and I went for some good barbecue at Rudy’s. While I’m convinced that small town bbq joints are king, Rudy’s is probably the best that you’ll get from a bbq chain. I was standing in line, chatting with my friends, until I noticed that one of my friends had grabbed a glass bottle of Dr. Pepper from one of the iceboxes, and he looked REALLY excited about it. Having Dr. Pepper in a glass bottle isn’t a big deal, because almost all of the drinks they serve at Rudy’s come in glass bottles (it’s one of the things they do there)…the part that WAS a big deal was this:

…it was CANE SUGAR sweetened Dr. Pepper.

What makes this special is that cane sugar Dr. Peppers are considerably rare, because all sodas have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup since the 70’s. There’s only one plant in the country that makes cane-sugar Dr. Pepper, located in Dublin, TX, and even then they’re only allowed to distribute to a certain 40 square-mile radius in the lone star state. Apparently there’s even a black market for cane sugar Dr. Peppers, since the supply is so limited, but the demand so high (you can read all about the bootlegging in this article). Intrigued, the bf decided to buy one too, and of course I bummed off a taste of it. I popped open the top (Rudy’s has plenty of bottle openers hanging on the walls for this purpose, haha), and took a sip. To be honest, it tastes like plain Dr. Pepper, but the aftertaste is where I felt the difference. I don’t really know how to describe it other than the fact that it really tastes more like sugar left in your mouth instead of the corn syrup. I never knew the difference until I actually tried cane-sugar Dr. Pepper…the actual Dr. Pepper taste is the same, but the leftover sweetness is distinctly sugary instead of syrupy. Next time you drink a soda, try tasting a spoonful of sugar…there’s definitely a difference in the type of sweetness you get from the sugar vs. the syrup. It was good, but I can’t say it turned me into a diehard fan who would drive to Dublin, TX for the express purpose of purchasing an entire case of the stuff. I guess it’s because I was brought up on the corn-syrup edition…my friend on the other hand grew up in a small town outside of Dallas, so he drank the cane sugar edition as a kid, so it brought back good memories for him. Final verdict: I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy some, but I’d definitely pick up a bottle if given the opportunity, if not based on the taste, then based on knowing that I’m drinking something that’s considered a true Texan pasttime.

Mood: Oldschool
Music: The Platters - Twilight Time

Lights out!

On Saturday night, I went out and did something I’d been meaning to do for a while: visit a drive-in theater. I managed to find a drive-in theater outside of Houston called The Showboat Drive-In, out in Hockley, TX. I rounded up some friends, and we were off on a nice triple date in the middle of nowhere for some drive-in fun.

When we pulled up, there was a paybooth to buy your tickets, and there was a sign describing some general ground rules…don’t park in the walkways, don’t let children run around, etc. etc. It also asked you to turn your radio to 88.1, so while we were in line to buy our tickets, I flipped the radio. Old 50’s music started playing, and I got totally geeked out. The music really sets the mood of the whole thing…I felt like I shoulda been wearing a poodle skirt, and the bf shoulda been in a leather jacket, haha. We pulled up, paid $5.00 for our ticket (yes, FIVE BUCKS), and drove our car out to our designated screen. Let me clarify something about the $5.00 that we paid…not only is it just a $5.00 ticket, but $5.00 will buy you not one, but TWO movies. We ended up seeing Monsters vs. Aliens/Hotel For Dogs, but we only stayed for Monsters vs. Aliens. 5 bucks for two movies! Subway and their five-dollar foot longs can suck it.

When my friends and I arrived, we realized that we were clearly rookies at this whole drive-in thing. All of us drove small cars, while it seemed like everyone else who was there had brought out their trucks and minivans. Then we noticed that what people did was that they’d open up the trunks of their trucks/minivans, and lay out entire setups of blankets and pillows to enjoy the movie. All of this looked awesome (it’s like a portable slumber party!), but the problem for those of us in smaller cars is being able to see the movie screen past all the trunk doors that block our view. But that problem was solved when we all drove up closer to the front where there was more space and fewer minivan trunk doors obstructing our view. The other great thing about The Showboat is that even the concessions are cheap. When nowadays we have to pay close to 3 dollars for a small coke at a regular retail movie theater, seeing a price tag of only $1.85 for a small soda was a steal. They had other goodies like fried brownies and bananas fosters too for only $2.50 per order. Since the weather was slightly chilly outside, I bought a hot chocolate, and an order of dippin’ dots ice cream for the bf, since he’s never had them before. Both of those items together only added up to around $5.00. Meaning altogether for the movie ticket, a cup of hot chocolate, and an order of dippin’ dots ice cream, it was only ten bucks…that’s practically the price of a ticket alone nowadays at a regular retail theater. Too awesome.

The movie(s) started, and we flipped our radio station to the appropriate frequency so we can pick up sound for our screen in the car. While the trailers were rolling, the bf and I made comments to each other about them (”Oh man, Will Ferrell…”, “Holy crap, the Star Trek trailer!”, etc. etc.)…and that’s when we realized that this was a movie setting where we could yap all we want, and no one would care. Kind of a cool feeling. And since we had buddies in the cars next to us, we’d text snarky comments to each other during the movie, and no one would be bothered by it. It’s a pretty cool experience…you’re out at a theater, and at the same time you can do everything that you would do on your couch at home. Another perk is that all crying/rowdy children wreak their havoc in the privacy of their own cars, so you don’t have to worry about that either. For a dirt-cheap movie ticket, dirt-cheap concessions, and a cool added level of privacy to your movie-watching experience, it’s DEFINITELY worth the money you pay for the experience. I’ll definitely have to do this again, maybe next time with a bigger car and with an even bigger group of people. Super fun + Super cheap = all sorts of awesomeness.