Louis de Barraicua

Pure Joy

As the boys grow, there’s more competition for the good food in the house.   I do about 20 percent of my grocery shopping at Whole Foods because they carry some products others stores like Trader Joes, Ralphs and Sprouts don’t.   Things like 12-Month-aged Manchego Cheese, Authentic Spanish Chorizo, Boquerones and even things like Stevia sodas.   They also carry a line of unique ice creams that I enjoy.   

Let’s face it, Whole Foods is expensive and to me, it’s a bit of a luxury.  I do it because it saves me from going out to eat and I save and control my diet in the long run.  

But one thing I have noticed is that my three-year-old is catching on.  I might be like a Spanish Chorizo, and he’ll take the whole stick and eat it.  I might find the wrapper lying on the living room carpet.  Or he’ll want the expensive cheese…and even though they’re my sons, and I love ‘em…I still feel protective of this food because I’ll enjoy it over a week…and they’ll just devour it in one sitting…and it’s expensive. 

It just amuses me because there’s a part of me that feels guilty about not wanting to give my kids what they want…and they’re very picky eaters…so it amuses me that their pallets are similar to mine…pretty much the way it works is if I’m eating something, they’ll snatch out of my hands and eat it themselves.   I never minded that, really…but I think it’s getting a bit out of hand.  

It’s time to start thinking about when I slice up my Spanish cheeses and meats. 

(family Laptop Photo)

Now that summer is coming to a close, I tried my hand at waking up early this week…and it was pretty painful.  The Iphone would ring, I’d stagger out, go to the bathroom barely able to open my eyes, I’d fall asleep on the couch…seriously, it was like getting punched in the face.  

Despite this, the week turned out to be unexpectedly one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time - a lot of good news about a few things I wasn’t thinking about much or had forgotten about…and it just feels good to have given it my all, and actually see results. Sometimes, I find myself exhausted after some of my endeavors…wondering if it was worth it…but success is certainly reinvigorating.

I want to be more specific, but I’m not ready yet…to describe.  I just feel satisfied, happy…and sometimes those feelings can elude me a lot more than I’d like.  

I’m thankful.  I want to say “muchisimas gracias.”

My three year old starts playing soccer.  He’s a runner, he’s aggressive, he has all the characteristics of a great soccer player…but he’s just not that interested.   Soccer camp was a humbling effort this year as a parent.   I’m sure when soccer season begins in the Fall, I will continue to be humbled. 

Yesterday, I rented a Chevy Suburban to run a few errands I could never get away with doing in our Prius - like shopping at Ikea for Bunk Beds and taking my bikes to the bike shop to get tuned and peddles swapped.  

It costs me $15 in gas to back and forth to Ikea.  For a Prius driver, that would’ve been maybe $4.00.   As much as I enjoyed the commanding view and all of the space for my kids to enjoy, I realized long ago that before I bought a gas guzzler, I’d rent an SUV 1 or 2 times a year whenever I needed it for family outing or transporting things…so that’s what I did.  I also found myself slightly uncomfortable driving such a gas guzzling vehicle, a first for me.  

The cool thing about Enterprise is that if you rent a car for a week, they’ll let you swap out a car everyday so I also tested out the 2012 Ford Focus, which was nice and impressive touch and feel wise.  I don’t know how many horsepower that car has, but it was just really gutless…it had very little power.  It felt significantly less peppy than the Prius and it gets 20 mpg less per tank…so as cool as the new 2012 Ford Focus’ are…they don’t feel particularly engaging because they have so little power.     

In the end, I ended being more thankful for our own vehicles, which is a good thing.   Even though my rental was to transport things, I also rent whenever I get an urge to buy a new car.  Budget Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Blvd. is usually has the coolest and latest models.  Sometimes a weekend with a car that Im lusting after is enough…I don’t have to buy it after all…and that’s kept me driving my paid-off car for a long time. 

the things we never see

(via staroftheseaa)

A Prophetic Painting by My Calabrian Grandfather almost Fifty Years Ago

There’s a darkness to creativity, I guess, it’s kind of like a burden to see the world so wildly different from other people.  That creates a distance, and that makes things dark…and often times I wonder where my will to be so needlessly creative comes from.  I think on so many levels it’d be easier not to be creative…or have the desire to be creative.  But maybe that’s a naive thought…that there are people who don’t want to be creative or people who would rather do things the same…none of this really makes sense, I’m sure…it could, but I just don’t feel like it’s even worth elaborating. 

The point is that when looking at my grandfather’s paintings in my aunt’s house, I understand a bit where the so called “creative madness” comes from…my complexion…the genetics of my mind…my grandfather did such amazing things it is quite astonishing…however, he never broke through like he could have…nor did he care, I think…he lived his life in a controversial way, doing mostly what he wanted, creating mostly what he wanted…and he left twelve kids behind whose kids had about sixty kids (I’m one of them) and whose kids will probably have about a hundred kids.

But he was this creative guy…and he had this creative orientation that was quite phenomenal…people didn’t understand his mind and he did things like twenty years before it occurred to anyone else.   I know his creative gene is a part of me and a couple of other my cousins…and now I gotta live with it…harness it in a modern world…a part of me wonders what the heck I’ve accomplished…but I don’t let that part come out and play much…I just do things mostly…in a strange way trying to accomplish something just doesn’t seem organic…just “being” seems enough of a challenge to me on most days…it’s amazing how a total lack of plans or effort, in retrospect, has lead to so many good things in my life…in other words, just doing things that seem interesting and fun and hanging out with people who are seemingly authentic..that just seems like the happiness that I’ve found…or that has found me.

A Japanese Design Discussion:  Back in the day, I used to work for an area in the Infiniti/Nissan North American company that was called “Advanced Planning.”  Basically, we worked with designers to come up with vehicle designs and concepts.   

Designers are interesting people - vastly talented.  You can’t tell them what to do though, you can only explain the customer to them, show them images…but you can’t say, “Make the interior like this…with a 12” screen…or put a storage compartment here.”  The way you have to do it is show them how the person might live, and how storage is important to them, and how they have an opportunity to do something unique.  

One of the vehicles that was being developed at Nissan was the Infiniti G35.  It was an accidental sort of car…exploratory.   Nissan Design globally was up to capacity so Nissan did something very unusual…the hired an outside design company to explore the design.  However, it turned out to be not just any design company - it was Porsche design in Europe.

They were given complete independence and creative freedom at a time when they never though Porsche would build a four-door car.   They built the original G35…without focus groups…without intervention…and when they showed it at the international auto shows, the press loved it so much Infiniti fast-tracked it into production, very unusual.   

However, that’s where Porsche Design’s role ended.  The original g35 is true Porsche Design.  From there, the Japanese took over…and arguably they started screwing it up. As you look at the details you can see gradually how the essence is being lost, the original Porsche Design that Infiniti seems to have forgotten.  

It’s frustrating to watch because, to some extent, the G35 is an affordable Porsche…but nobody really knows it (and Infiniti doesn’t want you to).

The thing is that it is an affordable Porsche.  It’s actually reliable like most Nissans and Toyotas.  I know some Porsche owners who spend 15k a year just on maintaining their ten-year-old enthusiast machine.  That’s quite a burden, if you ask me.   European cars are beautiful, but they’re heart breakers.  You can’t own them for very long without taking a hit.   The G35, year 2003, is the purest form of fusion between European Design and Japanese reliability…and you can own this vehicle without sacrificing lunch money.