Isabella Again and Lowriders

My day started early this morning, when my niece (who is now apparently obsessed with the telephone, according to my brother) called me... again. If you've ever tried to talk to a four-year old at 7:00am after working on an Islamic Law presentation until 1:30am the night before, you will know the difficulty one faces in attempting to be cheerful and kind. However, being the loving and wonderful aunt that I am, I tried to keep the conversation going to the best of my ability...

Me: So... are you going to school today?

Isabella: No, Kit, my school is locked. (Apparently it's spring break for her pre-school)

Me: Oh, so what are you going to do?

Isabella: Kit, I'm going to watch Dora the Explorer. There's a party for Boots...

Long awkward gap in "conversation" while I try to figure out who the hell Boots is and what party she's talking about.

Me: (feigning recognition) Oh, yeah, Boots. Cool...

Isabella: (Silence... I fear she's on to my ruse).

Me: (Waiting for Isabella to talk).

Isabella: (Waiting for me to talk).

Me: (Closing my eyes and wishing I were asleep again).

Isabella: Kit, I'm four.

Me: Great! (Dreaming of sleep, wondering how parents do this every day)...

The conversation went on, but I don't think we got much beyond Boots (who, BTW, is Dora's monkey friend), Cabbage Patch dolls (again), and something about making strawberry cupcakes for someone's birthday. My brother said Isabella has become so phone obsessed that she called around 10 relatives yesterday "to chat" and used up all the batteries on both of their cordless phones!


This is Boots the Monkey.
Clearly more entertaining than me at 7:00am.

After I hung up the phone, I couldn't fall back to sleep so I lounged around a bit drinking coffee and reading. I mean, really, this is the life of a full-time student.

Around 10:30, I headed out to economics class. As I sat on my bicycle at the intersection of Park and Speedway en route to campus, I feasted my eyes upon a highly decorated Mexican lowrider pick-up truck stopped at the intersection across the way. The Mexican driver, seemingly amused by the interest he was attracting from pedestrians and other cars at the light, decided to put on a small show for all of us lucky enough to be gawking at him.

He reached toward what looked like a Raiders football helmet on his dashboard, but it was actually his well-hidden hydraulics control system.

After perusing several "lowrider" websites, I discovered
that Mexican "vatos" are quite fond of the Raiders...

This is a picture from a lowrider car show in California.

After flipping a couple of switches on top of the helmet (which seemed very "Austin Powers-esque" to me), his car started going bananas... front up, back down, back up, front down, right side up, hopping a few times, right side down, and hopping a few more times.

I'm going to admit something... it really looked like fun. I kind of wish my old Honda had hydraulics, and I could start freaking people out at traffic lights. I would also like an obnoxious horn that plays musical sounds.

His truck looked something like this:

Although not quite so tricked out.

Until next time... Adios Muchachos.