Juan of Words

De Shopping At Walmart for Dial™ #NutriSkin ™ Lotion

Lotions aren’t really my thing.  Maybe that’s because my earliest memory of using any lotion is of my mother rubbing it all over my face before church or something.  It was Texas, it was summer, and it was hot!  That lotion just made me feel like I was suffocating.  Anjelica, on the other hand, can dedicate a good chunk of her shopping time to finding just the right lotion for herself.  So when I told her I was participating in a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and that I would have to try out the new Dial™ NutriSkin™ lotion line at Walmart, she made it pretty clear she wanted to come with.  ”Okay, vamonos…”

Heading to Walmart, Anjelica driving.

Usually I’m the one driving.  This time, despite the rain, she wanted to take my Dodge by the wheel.  Desde luego, I did not protest.

Pues sí ...enjoying the ride.

Los noticieros had said there was a chance of flooding, but what do they know?  Besides, as sad as it might sound, sometimes for us parents and married folks Walmart is as good as it gets for a night out.

In store demo with Miss Coco.

We had been told to find the in store demo table and try out some of the new products.  Miss Coco, who was actually the one handing out samples, was very sweet and great with the shoppers explaining how this lotion is great for sensitive skin.

Display at the demo table.

She had just about sold everything on her table.

Found them on the shelf space too.

So to check out the entire new line we went down the lotion aisle to find the new Dial™ NutriSkin ™ line.  It was a little hard to spot all the way down at the bottom of the shelf space, but we managed to find it anyway.

Scoping out the lotion.

Anjelica had to do the always useful sniff test.  Her verdict: “it actually smells pretty good.”

Of course... the makeup aisle.

She especially liked the personal-sized bottle, and of course, once we were done she had to mosey on over to the makeup and beauty area.  I usually never accompany her down these aisles, but this time I did.

"Can we leave now!?"

For those of you that don’t know, Anjelica is really good at crafting and every time we go anywhere where they stock ribbons she always has to go look at the patterns.  By this time I was ready to checkout… hence the comment above.

Thank goodness for the electronics section.

At the electronics section, though, I can always spend just a little more time scoping out all of the new merchandise.  I think we need a 60 inch flat screen for the house…

At checkout with bolis & fideo.

Finally, we made our way to the checkout line with just a few basics for the house.  Bolis and fideo… you can’t go wrong with these two items in your cart.

Anjelica, her new nails & the lotion.

At home, Anjelica decided she needed just a little more of that Dial™ NutriSkin ™  lotion to test out.  This was a pretty interesting trip to Walmart, what with everyone staring at us and wondering what in the world we were taking all of those pictures for.  You can see the rest of our pictures from this trip on Google+.

If you want to try Dial™ NutriSkin™, check your coupons from 2/19/12 for a $1 off coupon. Like Dial™ NutriSkin™ on Facebook or follow on Twitter to stay up-to-date on coupons and special offers.

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. #CBias.  All opinions are my own #DialNutriSkin. 

The Interrupters: Battling For Young Lives – Film Review

At 18, Caprysha Anderson has been in over 15 different homes, she’s single-handedly raised herself and her younger siblings, she’s been in and out of jail, and will readily admit she’s turned to selling drugs to put food on the table for herself and her family.  Caprysha is only one of a handful of troubled teens and young adults in Chicago who were featured in the award winning documentary The Interrupters.  The film follows a group of ex-convict, ex-gangster activists known as the “violence interrupters” who work for the organization Cease Fire at the University of Illinois as they walk the streets of some of Chicago’s roughest neighborhoods trying to minimize the violence in these communities one young person at a time.

Ameena and Caprysha in 'The Interrupters'

In one scene Ameena Matthews, one of the violence interrupters, takes Caprysha to ride a carousel at a local carnival after learning she had never done so before in her life.  She then treats her to a manicure and the young girl nearly breaks down in tears because she’s never experienced this before.  Another interrupter, Eddie Bocanegra confronts the guilt of having murdered a rival gang member as a teen by visiting the grave sites of other gang violence victims as an adult and by using his experience to rescue other young people.  One of the young people he’s working with is Vanessa Villalba, a 14 year old who watched her 15 year old brother die in her arms after he was shot in the head.  She’s not doing so great in school and is guilt ridden about not being able to do more to help her brother.

This film, which aired last night on PBS’ Frontline, hit very close to home for me having grown up around both gangs and the poverty that many times leads to desperation.  Suffice it to say there were more than a couple of times I got all choked up from the raw emotion and honesty of the documentary.

Gang violence and the risks of gang affiliation are something we definitely don’t talk about enough in our communities.  Until it affects us personally, we don’t understand how devastating it can be not only to the individuals in a gang, but to their families and our entire society.  What this film does best is confront us with the reality of this epidemic, the tragedy that it can cause and the raw emotion of not knowing what else to do when gangs and violence are all you know.  In characters like Lil Mikey, an ex convict who struggles to find a job after serving three years in jail; Flamo, a 32 year old ex gang-banger whose spent 15 years of his life in jail; and Caprysha, we experience the personal struggle of starting over and vying for a second chance… in some instances a first chance at actually living life.

One scene that’s especially poignant is when Lil Mikey goes back to the barber shop he held up three years earlier to apologize to the owners.  The owner of the business, a mother, scolds him through tears for having traumatized her family and finally forgives him with a hug.  The testimonies of the violence interrupters are pretty powerful as well.

The Interrupters is a beautiful and important film that will make you laugh, cry and think.  If you haven’t already watched it, do yourself a favor and watch it now!

Watch The Interrupters (Graphic Language) on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

This is not a sponsored post. I did not receive any compensation for the content of this entry. All of the opinions are my own.

Mexican Grocery Store Shopping For The Masses at Mi Tienda

There’s a new store in the neighborhood.  I know, “so what!?”  But this isn’t just any other store.  It’s Mi Tienda!  If you’re still staring at the screen blankly, it’s okay.  Let me explain.  Mi Tienda is supposed to be sort of like the ultimate grocery store-panaderia-taqueria-refresqueria-carniceria-and-more-in-one place for all of your Mexican grocery store shopping needs.  The store is 100 percent catered to a Latino and mainly Mexican clientele… so we had to go check it out.

The new Mi Tienda

The store itself is actually owned by Texas-based mega grocery store chain HEB.  You know, “Here Everything’s Better,” according to their own marketing.

Pan dulce del que quieran...

Gotta say, I was impressed with how much freshly made sweet bread they actually had on hand.  We were good and only looked.

Edgar: "Look, is that a cow?"

Edgar really got a kick out of the meat department.  Guess you can’t get any more fresh than beef hanging in that cooler in there.

Here we go, acting like a freaking tourist... now I'm thirsty!

Sadly, in order to complete this post it was necessary to make somewhat of a spectacle of myself.  I’m sure the other shoppers were like “miralo… este guey, tomando fotos… ¡jajaja!”

So much masa!

This was seriously chingon!  I didn’t even know there were that many variations of masa out there.  There were just as many different tortillas too!

All shades of color! Wow!

If you don’t have access to any of these products in your city, desde ya, accept my apologies for the cruel and unusual punishment in these pictures.

My cheese namesake, tocayo

Now I know there is a monument, several cities and even more churches with my same name, but had no idea there is a San Juan cheese too.  ¡Arriba los San Juanes!

¡Ay Tutis-Frutis!

These just look good, and for some reason I always here people making fun of someone who is “acting” extra delicado by saying ¡Ay, Tutis-Frutis! 

Hasta pa lavar los chones...

Y’all know the story of how we did everything with ZOTE for a while!  Well, the Ariel and Suavitel are just as good.  Just don’t use them to shower.  Trust me on this one!

Stop the traffic, what's this!?

Now you know when I saw this selection of Mexican beer I had to stop.  “¡Perame, Perame, Perame, Jelica… look!”  They had all the beers you can usually only get on the other side of the border… and it was so hard to choose!

Too hard to choose just one!

Finalmente Sol and Tecate were the winners for me.  After this I was ready to go.

Even the restrooms tan bien mexicanotes!

Even the restrooms are bien mexicanotes, jajaja!  There was no way of taking a picture of the music, but believe me when I tell you they were blasting the norteñas. 

Nomás que la hora de pagar...

When it was time to pay… ¡nombre, ya no queria ni las cervezas!  

But it wasn't so bad... y hasta pronto, Mi Tienda!

In case you’re wondering though, I did buy them anyway.

Finally leaving la tierra... oops, I meant tienda!

I think we’ve found the place where we’ll be buying groceries from now on.  Their prices are pretty reasonable (even the prepared food is pretty cheap), and they have so many cool Mexican products… stuff I hadn’t seen in years.  Mi Tienda brought back a lot of great memories for me.

This is not a sponsored post.  I did not receive any compensation for the content of this entry.  All of the opinions are my own. 

My Favorites So Far at the Detroit Auto Show!

Let me get right to the point.  There are literally hundreds of cars… beautiful cars!  And even more hundreds of people from across the world.  Todavía ni recorro la mitad de este auto show and already I am overwhelmed and tired.  Me hubiera traido un par de chanclas, jajaja… ¿se imaginan?  Anyway, here are my favorites so far!  Hope you all like the pictures.

It was a little crazy after the big Ford reveal this morning!

Everyone wanted an up close view of the new Ford Fusion.

Yo estaba en relax mode... divirtiendome con la locura.

Here's a closer look at the actual model. It is actually a very nice car!

Since I'm here, pense, might as well look at other cars too... eh? This one you might recognize from the commercials with one, JLO... La Lopez, lol!

Hmm, now if I were carrying JLO out of this car, what would be the best method?

I am in LOVE with this car! So beautiful!!

Though I could also learn to live with this one...

Y yo con la carcacha que tengo en casa. I think that Selena song could now officially be about me! Look at this beauty!

Edgar would have LOVED this one. The Hot Wheels Camaro in real life!

He would have also thoroughly enjoyed seeing the KIA hamsters in actual size.

I really got a kick out of this new prototype by Toyota. It takes Facebook status updates to a whole new level. You can change it's outer appearance based on your mood... much like a wallpaper. Wow!

Equally impressive, this prototype by Chevy. Think of it as a mix between a car and a moped that opens from the front. Max speed I think is between 25 and 35 mph.

If you're more into class and elegance, this Bentley Mulsanne might be more up your alley. Gorgeous, every single last detail of this car!

I'm just digging all of the muscle cars! ¿No me regalaran uno?

Totally unrelated... this local reporter was trying to say her lines while riding this simulator and it was hilarious to watch her mess up, over and over again!

And finally, this button that I made for Edgar at the Chevy button-making booth. Very cool! Gotta go make more!

Look over there, that's Canada on the other side!

Cricket’s Local Global Number Connects Across Borders

¡En el Chisme!

So a couple of months ago the folks at Cricket contacted me with a proposal. They were ready to roll out their new Global Local Number feature and were wondering if I’d be interested in trialing this new service for the final quarter of 2011. Naturally, I said yes!

For one, I remember growing up my mom used to have to wait months in between calls to her family in Mexico because it was just way too expensive to place those llamadas any more frequently. Later, when those handy little calling cards came out it was always hit or miss trying to figure out which ones actually worked, and then keeping up with how many minutes they had left. I can’t tell you how many emergency runs to the local corner store we had to make to purchase another calling card. And then only certain ones would actually connect us to Cerritos, San Luis Potosi. Up until a couple of years ago there was literally one phone in the entire rancho! If you wanted to use it you had to pay Doña Leonor cinco pesos for every couple of minutes. Now, I think there are about four or five people with phones in El Sauz (our actual ranch in Cerritos), but you still have to pay to talk. Cell phone service only works in the loma at certain altitudes and directions.

Anyhow, at first I was a little confused about how this Global Local Number thing would work. Would they have to install new software on my phone? Would I have to carry a second phone around with me everywhere? I did not want to do either and it’s been years since we disconnected our land line. We never even had one at our current house. As it turns out, though, it was all very simple and I didn’t have to do anything besides tell them which city and state in Mexico I wanted a local phone number for. They did the rest. Somehow across their network they assigned my local Houston cell (the same one I’ve always used) a local number for San Luis Potosi. Now all I had to do was give that number to my relatives in San Luis and wait for them to call me. I was pretty impressed they could give me a local number en mi rancho, jaja!

The only thing I couldn’t do was call them directly myself because my phone after all was still a Houston phone. In essence I guess, they were forwarding the calls to the local San Luis Potosi number assigned to me to my Houston cell. That’s just me guessing, so don’t take my word for it.

So then it was time to chismear. A quick side note here, I actually did not have that many calls because, as I’ve discovered, most of my family is now here and there really weren’t that many people over there to call me. The few calls I did get, however, were pretty clear and non-problematic. They lasted longer than usual because there wasn’t the typical concern about how expensive the call might turn out for either party. I filled up my morral with puro chisme and really found the Global Local Number pretty useful. The only thing I wish I would have been able to do was make some calls to San Luis Potosi myself, using this same feature.

All in all, it was a great experience. Not too mention a lot of fun hearing all of the chisme from the rancho so easily.

For more information about Cricket’s Global Local Number visit mycricket.com.

Disclosure: Cricket’s Global Local Number was made available for me to use for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

Parrandas & More with Luis Fonsi – Christmas Special

How does Latin Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Luis Fonsi celebrate the holidays? Which holiday tradition does the boricua most look forward to each year? What is the one thing he is most grateful for? All this and more, the cantante himself answers on this video interview made possible by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as a Christmas Special for you, the readers of Juan of Words!

Fonsi was recently honored by St. Jude at their ninth annual FedEx/St. Jude Angels and Stars Gala for his support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and his contributions to the entertainment industry, and as part of that honor the singer/songwriter participated in a video interview series with St. Jude.  This video highlights the questions he answered specifically for me, for you. I really hope you enjoy the video & kudos to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for all of the wonderful work they do around the world!

Vocero del buen trabajo de St. Jude, Luis Fonsi.