Some of my RECIPES
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1ST FISHING TRIP
Ok, so… let me bring you into my first fishing experience. It was sometime in 2003, we stayed at the Jamaca Resort by Marriott in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic and as one of our “fun” adventures was to book a small private deep sea fishing excursion for 6 people at the most. And, I booked it, it was very expensive, cost us approximately $300 per person for about 7 hours out in the deep waters to catch some exotic fish from the Caribbean Ocean, everything included.
The day was cloudy, we were told the water was bit turbulent, but, the scheduled trip was still happening. The guide picked us up around 10am, walked us through the private beach onto to the public neighboring beaches, a 10 minute walk till we got to the private yacht that would navigate us through rough Caribbean waters. When we boarded, it was us two, plus 3 other strangers from our hotel. As the guide is loading us, I grab the yacht handle bar and noticed it was loose, in fact off the screws. I asked my fellow Dominican, in Spanish, if that was safe, he said yes, perfectly fine. That should have been clue No.1. And, you already know, it was not a good start.
We all sit and begin to travel through the beautiful crystal clear waters, most amazing views of the hotel from the Ocean, a good 60 minutes of travel. The day was hot, waves a bit strong at some points, our captain and shipping guide decides to take us out further, something to me, seemed very off and soon I began to see the island of Puerto Rico, at that point, I told all of us, that being out that far was not normal. I began chatting in Spanish with the aka captain and guide, asking him about where he was taking us and why were we so far out and going out of International lines. Something inside me, my intuition was telling me to get out of this dangerous situation. I was the only Spanish speaking guest in the yacht and felt we were heading into a very unsafe situation. After almost 3 hours out and no fishing. I began to ask the guide, where is our fishing destination, and enquiring about the owner of the yacht. He seemed both clueless and unable to manage the match properly. He had told us, during our beach walk, he owned the yacht, but I had noticed the name of the yacht was in Italian. I asked him about the meaning of his yacht and why in Italian. He then admits, the yacht belongs to his friends boss, who is Italian and he was borrowing the yacht.
Soon after, my body got very tingly, I got very ocean sick and anxious. I alerted the rest of our group, telling them how dangerously far out we were and how our guide was a lier and that we could be facing a scam and dangerous situation at sea, most of all, we all knew how that match was falling apart, one more screwed popped of and we would have nowhere to hold on to.
I requested to go back, the guide did not want to. The other people got sick as well and wanted back to land, the guide refused. I began vomiting so he can how serious I was, I asked the others that if we want to see land again, we needed to force the guide to take us back immediately. We were almost 2 hours away from any Dominican land. I had to convince the guide to take us back because the other guest were planing to take over the navigation and that we were all going to vomit all over the yacht if the did not take us back immediacy. I had to make something up, which we all agreed to in order to get back safe.
The guide decided to throw down the lines and with limited materials for proper fishing, we understood that guy had no intention of deep sea fishing. With no land in sight, I knew which direction we came from and was stying focused on which direction to go back. Tides were stronger and we all were fighting to stay alert, we were very sick. I began vomiting and getting dehydrated super fast, I began yelling at the “captain” that I needed medical assistance immediately and that we all wanted to go back. I told him I was dying. I told him to turn around, he began asking me my name, I gave him my first and last name and he looked at me and asked if I came from the Trujillo family, I said yes, the president was my great uncle, he quickly apologized, in shock, turned the yacht around and headed back to shore. After over 70 minutes of silence on the yacht, the guys was speaking and we were all holding onto our lives, also holding on to each other, just incase. I had fallen asleep for about 10 minutes and when woke up from the harsh wave splashes minutes later I began to see the hotel from miles aways at a distance. A little over 2 hours later we get into calmer waters and then arriving on shore, exactly where we had navigated from.
We arrived at our hotel, we all run to front desk, I asked the manager, went to our room to clean up. Hotel manager knocked on our door, apologized a lot, asked me if he could give us a tour of the hotel while spoke. He told me that my great uncle owned that property during his 32 years of Presidency and that the property was one of his private homes and now a hotel. He continued to apologyzed about our unfortunately deep sea fishing experience, that they had no idea who the guide or fisherman was, because our original guide had cancelled to fishing trip due to dangerous waters at se that day, he took it off our bill and also took off an entire week off of 2 weeks stay. He was very sincere. But the entire experience was a nightmare. I also requested he take off the excursion from the other guests.
2nd FISHING TRIP
This experience was much better and enjoyable. My Russian Ukrainian friend invited me on his Lake Ontario spear fishing and camping with his closest friends.
How dare I go away without my parents and sibling?
Look the feeling was nerve wrecking, I felt very scared. I thought my parents were 100% going to disown me.
One day, I mentioned in a conversation to my bestie Adah (still today), I want to go on vacation and she tells me “let’s go away.” I was like “yeah, let’s do it. Where are we going?” I got excited of course and even offered for us to stay at Marriott hotels, where I was working at the time and got super awesome Marriott Employee rate at any hotel.
Ok, but, here is the truth, I had no idea Adah was serious about going away. Until, one night after work, she called me and told me to stop by so we can book our trip. I went over to her apartment where we went on Priceline travel booking site, which was the it place for risk takers and being heavily advertised. That night changed my life for sure. We placed super low bids on Priceline and booked a trip, my heart was pounding hard, because we couldn’t cancel our trip with he site. I was freaking out, asking Adah, how am I going to tell this to my parents and her answer was “you’re an adult, you’ll be fine.” But she knew how strict my parents were. I was 24 and still living at home with a 10pm curfew. How the hell, I was going to pull this one off????
Well…. I was soooo nervous to tell my parents, every time I wanted to tell them, I saw a life of punishment. I called them that same night after booking our trip and all I said to my parents was “Adah and I are going on vacation to Las Vegas.” my mother freaked out, telling me, you’ve never been away without your family, you did not ask for permission and your’re not going and I said we booked the trip already and will loose all of our money.
THANK YOU ADAH AND PRICELINE!!!! You saved my live. My bestie made me break the ice with my parents and Priceline’s restrictions made impossible to cancel any trip. When I got home that night, my parents were not too happy with me and in shock (mostly my mother, my father was more relaxed about it). The next day, my mother would ask me over and over if I wanted to take that trip without the family, what was I going to do? My mother was sad, upset and couldn’t believe what I was doing, then becoming very flexible and telling me to be very careful, that I was an adult and knew what I was doing.
The experience was a lot smoother than I anticipated, and had I known, how very cool and understanding my parents were back then, I would have gone away soon. Everything worked out great.
However, we booked our trip for 10 days to Las Vegas, we stayed at our beautiful Marriott Las Vegas hotel, which was on the side off the main strip, it was brand new and my employee discount was beyond amazing, which made our 5 star hotel stay a total success. I love Marriott hotels and always will, they have the greatest and best customer service ever, even as a Marriott employee, the services are always excellent and side note and an ex Marriott associate, we were highly trained in customer service and they don’t take anything less, an absolutely amazing company to work for.
In hindsight…… 10 days in Vegas is just too much, we had a great time, but also wanted to kill each other by the end of our trip. We walked everywhere, visited some night clubs, I don’t like alcohol, but Adah got me drunk in the hotels jacuzzi, where I almost died, practicing her bartending skills on me with a chocolate sweet drink she knew would be perfect for me. She made me Kaluak and it was delicious and almost killed me too. I did not drink again for many years after that. I just hated the feeling of an uncontrollable suffocation, out of my hands.
Overall, I had such a great time, we walked everywhere, visited museums, took photos everywhere, spent time in the pool, ate a lot, visited the top clubs, made new friends who took us horse riding in the Nevada mountains, some that took us boating in Lake Mead, we observed the street landmarks and night scenes, we had great fun. The only down side, with my no family excitement was that I wanted to be sightseeing all day, I would wake up at 6am and wake Adah up nice and early and she wanted to rest, while I was ready to go, that was the down side, so Adah was annoyed with me and I was annoyed with her for staring the day at 12 noon. In all honestly, I am still the same way, I like waking up super early and exploring. But, as an experienced adult now, I can understand why a vacation is also for sleeping in a little late and relax and then go explore. To go around my explorer mentality and I now like to go away for at least two weeks so I can find a great resting, relaxing and exploring balance.
All in all, they say Las Vegas, is sin city, and I thought I would come back home married, but not at all, the hub was more relaxing and fun than I imagine, I lost $20 dollars in gambling and I was horrified, but went back and I made $725, which helped me recuperate some of my expenses. Between the $20 casino loss and drinking alcohol and getting drunk for the second time in my life ever was the riskiest most sinful thing I did. I loved my trip! I have my bestie to thank for this experience, thank you again, my dear Adah, love you hb.
“Style is about having fun, being bold, making statements and establishing your own unique look that identifies with how you’re internally feeling at that moment. Style is about being comfortable and feeling good, it’s being uniquely you.” Giselle Trujillo
THE GREATEST 16TH CENTURY VENETIAN ARTIST
TIZIANO VECELLIO aka TITIAN
1488/1490 – AUGUST 27, 1576
Tiziano Vecellio aka Titian (1488/1490 – August 27, 1576) was one of the most important and greatest 16th Century painter from Itlay. Vecellio had worked under two great Venetian artist, Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione, both whom died within six years apart. His actual birth year is yet to be confirmed. Vecellio was born in the town of Pieve di Cadore in the Republic of Venice. He was married to Cecili, the daughet of a barber from his village Cadore. Cecilia was his housekeeper and mistress about five years. They had two boys together Pomponio and Orazio, in 1525 Celia fell seriously sick, wishing to mary her to legitimize their children, he married her, they had two more kids, two daughters, only the girl Lavinia survived in 1530, however Cecilia died giving birth to her. Vecellio decided to move to a new home with his two boys , convincing his sister Orsa to take charge of the household, which was a mansion in fashionable suburb in Biri Grande, at the edge of Venice with beautiful gardens on the sea facing Murano. Vecellio was known to be one of the most versatile painter of Italy with a profound use of colors and strokes that contributed from mythologies, painting altarpieces, renaissance art, portraits to landscapes with figures. backgrounds. Vecillio established a place as a leader of painting when he was commissioned for his first public masterpiece for the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of Santa Maria Gloriosa di Frari church in Venice, which took him three years to complete from 1516 – 1518. Vicellio achieved notability and international fame though his many portraits of Pope Paul III, Emperor Charles V (whom did not wanted to be painted by no other artist) and many others. While alive many fake copies of his work was being produced and sold. His paintings portrayed depth and psychological dimensions. During his last years Vecillio mostly worked for Phillip II as portrait painter. Vecelio died from a fatal plague in Venice on August 27, 1576. He was the only Venice Plage victim to have been given a church burial, was interred in the church he wished, the Frari. Vecellio rests close to his very famous painting, the Madonna di Ca’Pesaro. Unfortunately, no memorial marked Vecellio’s grave till Austrian rulers of Venice commissioned Canova to provide the large monument until much later. Sad to say, his favorite son Orazio, who was also his assistant, immediately died after his fathers death, due to the same Venice Plague. Vecellio’s most influential altarpiece was burnt in a fire at the SS. Giovanni e Paolo church in the 19th Century. His work has been an influence to many artist around the world. Tiziano Vecellio “Titian” is know as the Italian Renaissance Master.
Check out some of Tiziano's masterpieces:
The Venus of Urbino 1538
Portrait of Pope Julius II
Diana and Actaeon 1559
Diana and Callisto (detail 1)
Venus with Organist and Cupid 1548
Venus and the lute player
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino 1536 -38
Venus and Adonis
Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantura
The Andrians (Bacchanalia) c. 1525
Portrait of young girl with feather hat – a young women wearing a reddish burgundy (possibly leather) hat with a large feather to the left. She is removing formal wear off left shoulder and exposing her right shoulder in undergarment. She seems to wear a pearl necklace.
Portrait of a girl 2 – an elegantly dressed lady with braid in her hairs and elegant beige outfit.
Portrait of Empress Isabella of Portugal 2 – A women dressed either in silk or velvet brownish Burgundy elegant dress, with a long pearl necklace that drapes from the middle of chest from an oversized jewel.
Portrait of man in rec cap c. 1516 – A young man with an overused slouchy hat and oversized shoulder cape that seems to be of cheetah or henna fur. He also wears a sword which rests in front of his chest and seems to be wearing fitted off white leather gloves.
Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love wearing high heels, I’ve been wearings them since 18 years old. Plus, when I worked at Salon Shoes in Nordstroms Paramus, New Jersey, all I wore were high heels, five days a week and on my feet for 8 hours a day. Don’t ask me how I did it, but I did, for the sake of style, feeling mature, sexy and dolly. My shoes were expensive and sexy and made me feel taller with great posture. For me… high heels are a must. And even after I left my job at Nordstroms, nine months later working at the front office of the Glenpointe Marriott in Teaneck, New Jersey, even with our cheap gray pin striped uniform with name badge, I mostly wore high heels for the first couple of years and I felt like sexy employee of a high end French boutique. Again, wearing heels gave that great posture and height boost.
However, years later, once I entered my forties, something switched and I became a flat shoe, open toe sandal lover and it’s all I wear now, mostly. I can’t believe I’ve even become and UGG and Crocs lover. These brands are just sooo super comfortable, regardless, if they like trendy styles, which is is perfect with me, because I am your least trendy stylist.
Soooo….. now, as you all know I am a newly mom and comfort is top property for me. However, I can’t help but to wish to attend some fancy gathering, just so I can feel that sexy booster again. Do I miss wearing high heels daily? Absolutely not. Do I fancy wearing high heels? I bet I do. But, will never again trade comfort for style. This is the switch many mothers adjust too.
With that said, by January 2022, I will find new comfortable footwear brands that will still give me a little sexy booster while hanging out with my son. Cannot wait to discover them and share them with you.