Mariachis, El Pollo Loco, and the Millenium Falcon

Dear all,

The auto-format that Blogger apparently has built into it is giving me fits; please excuse this (and other) posts if the spacing is weird.

Well, we're back from another weekend in Orange County. This time, we were down there for the wedding of our good friend, Elena Rhoads, who is now Elena Baeza. Melanie met her in Illinois when she (both of them) were attending grad school at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaigne(sp?). Elena actually got baptized on Melanie's birthday, thus making November 10th Mel's birtday and, simultaneously, Elena's rebirthday.

The wedding was quite a hoot--her husband, Jose Baeza, is Mexican, and they had a full-on mariachi band blasting away throughout the reception. I mean, three-and-a-half hours into the reception and they still hadn't even cut the cake--they were in it for the long haul. I don't know Jose very well, but the guy can throw a party.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Here is the happy couple at the reception--along with a very zealous mariachi sawing away at that fiddle.

There was champagne and sparkling cider available for every guest--the groom's family spent a pretty penny on that shindig, here you me. Sorry about the blurry picture, but this was about the time when the reception started heating up...

Again, sorry about the blurry picture. These were the mariachis, a real talented bunch. I want one of those bass guitars--I'd just sit out on the balcony on sweltering summer afternoons and pluck the hours away.

Here we all are. Both Jose and Elena are studying to be doctors (indeed, Elena's earning a joint MD-PhD, which earns her infinite respect in my book), so, once they pay off their student debt, they'll probably be high-earning specialists.

All in all, a good trip, especially when we got to eat lunch at El Pollo Loco and drive around in my dad's new Lexus, which I have christened the Millenium Falcon, since it goes so fast that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity gets tested. (During one period of intense acceleration, I felt myself not aging; indeed, Mel and I arrived at our destination a few seconds before we left.)

As always, more will come.

-Z

When the Tuckers Come Back to Capistra-ah-ah-no

Dear all,

Last week, my sister, Courtney, graduated from El Modena High School (School Motto: "Due to budget constraints, we have abandoned the school motto"), so Melanie and I went down to witness her graduation. It was great--I'm one proud brother.

I confess that my opinion of high school isn't, well, high. I generally feel that high school is something that we trudge through so that we can go to college and receive an education in things we actually care about. Nevertheless, this doesn't diminish the fact that graduating from high school--especially El Modena High School (School Alma Mater: "Welcome to the Jungle," Appetite for Destruction, Guns 'n' Roses)--is an enormous accomplishment, especially when you've been president of the National Honor Society, taken boatloads of AP credit, etc., like my sister has.

So, Courtney, you deserve a Tucker Boo-Yah: Boo-Yah!

We also got the chance to maraud around Orange County for a couple of days, since Courtney had parties and such to attend.

Here're some of the pictures we took. Enjoy!

Behold: Courtney and her best friend, Elisse Ota. They're both geniuses.

Here's the whole group that attended graduation (please pardon the cheesy smiles--it was hot). My grandpa and uncle, Biron, are also pictured.















My mom's cousin, Patty Smith, was there, along with Patty's family (George, her husband, pictured here, and her daugher, Carrie, not pictured). They really got a kick out of my orange tree--apparently, those don't grow in Tennessee.
















Here's Mission San Juan Capistrano, one of the first Catholic missions built in the late 1700s in southern California. It's still a functioning church--well, part of it, at least--and the grounds are really quite striking.















Here's my lovely wife sitting by one of the mission's fountains:

The next day, we went to the Richard Nixon Birthplace and Library. Did you know that Nixon was from Orange County? It's yet another reason to like the place, right?

They've got Nixon's presidential helicopter there:

That morning, we went to breakfast with our good friends, Chelsea and Michael Christensen (notice the Danish spelling, Petersens?). We went to Ruby's, one of those places that's as much a part of my youth as El Modena High School (School Disclaimer: "El Modena High School may or may not be an actual high school").

The baby is Talon Christensen, their little babe. He's a fun kid:

Isn't Orange County a great place? Now I just have to strike oil, pioneer a successful technology IPO, become a plastic surgeon, and sell arms to rogue nations, and Melanie and I can afford to live there. (The budget would still be tight, though.)

More pictures will, as always, follow.

-Z

Shoshone Falls, et al. (Part two of "Idaho: The Reckoning")

Well, I still haven't been able to collect all the pictures I want from family members; thus, my plan to present our Idaho trip photos in chronological order seems, presently, difficult. However, reality doesn't preclude my posting several additional nifty photos (and, right now, I'm having a hard time remembering what day we did this, so I guess the chronological thing is a moot point) (I'm pretty sure we did Shoshone Falls on Saturday, though).


So here is a picture of us at Shoshone Falls, billed as the "Niagara of the West" by the park's promoters. It was very nice, don't get me wrong--and this was on a day when the water level was deemed "low" by park officials. It's kinda hard to tell, but the falls wrap around a little on the cliffs, so the camera doesn't capture everything.



Melanie makes genealogical breakthroughs all the time, so I don't want to say that one breakthrough is any better than another--I mean, a breakthrough is a breakthough, and I recognize them as full-blown miracles, all of them. I'm very grateful. However, every once in a while, Melanie finds something that's just a little more interesting to me, and this was one of them--see, apparently my mother's side of the family DID have a member of the church in it back in the pioneer days. He would've been my, what, great-great-great-uncle? Turns out that James (I think that's his name) is buried in Filer, Idaho, just outside of Twin Falls, so we visited the cemetery, which was, for many years, operated by the International Order of the Odd Fellows.

On Sunday, we made it up to Sun Valley, the famous resort north of Twin Falls. (My dad used to go there quite a bit when he lived in Utah, so I've heard stories my whole life--I wanted to see it.) It was nifty (read: posh). The Petersens were very nice to accomodate my wish to visit Ernest Hemingway's grave, who is buried just outside of Sun Valley in Ketchum (well, it's really just a marker, since his ashes were scattered on the hillside behind the cemetery).

Now, bear in mind that I'm no Hemingway devotee; on the contrary, I really don't care for his writing all that much. I like even less what the man stood for, a philosophy that was largely anti-religious and anti-deistic, and which, I feel, ultimately did him in, along with his depression. There was, though, something noble in his quest for meaning in life; he had a determination--albeit misguided, from the Latter-day Saint viewpoint, but a strong determination, nonetheless--to find purpose in his mortal existence, a desire which I wish more people shared. Perhaps because of all this, I wanted to see his grave. Here it is, with Ryan in the foreground:

I've been told the coins are for wishes. There's also supposed to be a bottle of Jack Daniels on the grave (according to Erika's mom), but someone must have been thirsty.

Well, as always, more will follow.