Random

Help (and luck) of the Irish Needed

Jeromey Balderrama

Ireland

I would love some help from my well-traveled friends! In less than two weeks Bethany and I will be boarding a plane to fly across the pond and journey to Ireland for 12 days.  I am so excited in many different ways, particularly because this is the first time I’ve been out of the country longer than a day. 

We have been planning this trip for nearly two years in terms of budgeting and logistics, and while we’ve tried to do our due-diligence with research I’m we’re still afraid that we might miss something that we’ll regret not seeing.

This is where I need help from my well-traveled or Irish friends: What should we do in Ireland? We want to make sure when we come back and tell people about our trip, people can’t say “I can’t believe you went to Ireland and didn’t go there or see that!”

We’re going to be flying into Shannon and staying slightly north west of there.  We do plan on going to Dublin for a few days, but will be mainly based along the western side of the country.

I would love for you to share me any advice you may have, either in the comments here or on Facebook. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me!

My 6th blog-iversity

Jeromey Balderrama

When the weather starts warming up and the flowers start blooming I’m reminded once again that my blog-iversity – the anniversary of starting my blog.  It was actually this night back in 2005 when I drove home and decided to start a Xanga blog.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to post more of a personal diary in a semi-anonymous fashion.  It was soon apparent that I didn’t have the anonymity that I thought I had and over the years my blog morphed into a  personal column that I haven’t been as good about updating lately.

It’s crazy looking over the 660+ posts and realizing just how much things have changed.  When I started blogging, I hadn’t yet met my wife, and I wasn’t drumming with any bands at the time, and I was living in my apartment close to campus.  Now I have been married to my lovely wife for nearly two years, am doing two different bands and various music projects and we live in our beautiful house with Logan our Kitteh.  At the same time, I’m grateful for things that have stayed the same throughout my blogging tenure: I have been employed in a great job and am fortunate to have my health (also weighing less than when I first started blogging is never a bad thing either).

Thank you for continually coming back when I seldom post and for offering your support and your comments.  I hope that I enter into the 7th year of blogging, that I do a better job of keeping this updated.  If you have any ideas for topics, feel free to offer them! I’m just happy to ramble!

Reviving the blog

Jeromey Balderrama

Well after a hiatus of almost 2 months, I’m going to once again take up the blogging mantle.  My lack of writing hasn’t been due to a lack of activity, but rather the opposite.  I’ve spent some time playing with a new theme and am hoping to enhance things a bit.  Please pardon my dust, and watch for some more posts in he coming days.

Is the drummer wearing a woman’s blouse?

Jeromey Balderrama

One of my favorite songs of the 80’s has to be Toto’s “Africa”, I love the percussion that goes on in the background.  It occurred to me that I’ve never seen the video, and now those images will haunt me forever when I think of this song:

Seriously, doesn’t it look like the drummer is wearing woman’s clothing?  Also, I am forever disappointed that the flute/marimba solo is really a synthesizer, and they featured it like it was impressive or something.

Test Driving

Jeromey Balderrama

As you may know, Bethany and I are in the market for a new car, looking to add a crossover to our personal fleet.  We are looking to buy by the end of October, so as the month is half over, we probably should set out to test drive. Bethany had the day off of work, so I took a day of vacation and we set across the Front Range, visited 8 dealerships and ended up only driving 3 cars.

The test drive experience has been an interesting one. The environmentalist winds have blown into the auto industry, pushing fuel efficiency standards.  Unfortunately the result of that is that 4-cylinder engines rule the crossover class of cars, bringing fuel efficiency at the cost of power.  However, as Coloradoans know, the terrain of the Rocky Mountains isn’t very friendly for 4-cylinder engines.  If you’ve driven in Estes Park in a 4-cylinder car full of people – you know what I mean by being underpowered.  With our V-6 requirement, we’ve apparently limited our select – this is why we went 8 places and only got to drive 3 cars.  There was no shortage of 4-cylinders for us today, one of them which we drove.  I’ll admit that there was decent acceleration when I slammed the gas, but it still felt underpowered, especially when you consider going up a mountainous hill.

We don’t seem to be the only Coloradoans who think this, because the dealers for these cars that have V6 engines – they don’t have any of these cars in stock – yet they have plenty of 4-cylinders of that model on hand.

One pleasant surprise (at least or us): the salesmen weren’t as pushy as I remember from 6 years ago.  I’m not sure if it’s because they’ve unfortunately been beat down in this economy that they’re now changing their tactics, but it was nice to not have to fight our way out of the dealership. There were a few Jedi Mind Tricks thrown at us, but they were more comical than stressful.

We think we have it narrowed down, but we’re going to let some time and another test drive pass before we draw a conclusion.