I Heart Guanabee!

Many months ago, my sister, A, told me about a Web site called Guanabee. It's a blog about Latin culture and if you know me, you already know I have been talking about it a lot.

The first day I visited the site, I was hooked. For the first time, I was able to read things about Latin culture that was intelligent and still had a killer sense of humor. They understand that as Latinos we have to be able to laugh at ourselves, better ourselves, and still make fun of people from time to time.

I do comment on the site regularly. I use the screen name Latin_Princess. Remember when I worked at that one place and I was the only minority? And my white coworkers were always on pins and needles and watched every single word they spoke. I jokingly demanded that we celebrate the feast day of the Lady of Guadalupe and they did it! I was like their Latin Princess so I've always used that screen name. It's been with me for a long time - back when underscores were still used.

Around Christmas, Guanabee had a give-away for a new Razr2 phone. And if you've seen my current cell phone then you know why I was eager to enter. You had to creatively express to Guanabee why you are a good Latino. So I wrote them about a few things that I have been doing over the last year and Papa Guanabee gifted me with one of those new phones. Hot damn!

Then, this week, they gave me a "Commenter Shout-Out!" It's a very cool thing to get from a kick ass site. Not to get all sappy, but I really respect their work so to have them give me a shout-out was balls-out-awesome! Thanks, G-bee!

This time next year...

Well, it's time for the New Year's Resolutions. I'm not gonna lie, I don't do the usual resolutions like joining a gym, not cussing as much, only one glass of wine a day, or anything fancy like that. I do the kind of resolutions that usually take me all year long. So that by this time next year, I will actually complete my resolutions. (Because there's no way this germophobe could join a gym.)

You see, a loooong time ago I created the "101 Things To Do Before I Die" list. The 101 list is in no particular order - I just thought of things I really wanted to do and randomly assigned them a number. And at the start of each year, I pick a few things on the 101 list and resolve to complete the few things within that year.

As the years have gone by, I've managed to complete 67 of my 101 things. (Yikes - I might need to die soon!) And yes, some things have changed on the 101 list. Seeing Nirvana live in concert isn't gonna work. Neither is going to the top of the World Trade Center. But for the most part, the remaining items on the list stay the same and I do a few each year.

One of the things I resolved to do in 2005 was to see Oprah in person. Done! One of the things for 2006 was to go to The Price is Right and cheer for Bob Barker. Done! In 2007 one thing on my resolution list was to live it up in Vegas and let it stay in Vegas. Done and done! While all of those kicked ass, it took a lot of planning to pull them off along with the other resolutions for that year. They tend to take a while to do.

The resolutions I chose from the 101 list for 2008 are not that bad but they all involve some cabbage. So here they are:

• Go for a ride in a hot-air balloon
• Go to the top of the Space Needle in Seattle
• Buy a hutch and fill it with dishes I actually like (I already got half of the dishes!)
• Get a lawyer to finalize my will ... because the 101 list is almost over