Year: 2011

I can’t believe it’s Christmas eve. It doesn’t even feel like it should be the Christmas season. Odd. Less this year than I can ever remember it feeling.

My brother is in town. He, his girlfriend and her 22 year old son. They traveled here from WA to spend a day with us before leaving to spend Christmas and New Years at his girlfriends moms house. They did however run into some car trouble as they pretty much broke down on I-5. I waited up for them as everyone else as fast asleep. Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse! It was nippy outside. Or at least I thought so.

They made it to the house but probably not any further without some costly repairs. So now they are … well stranded at our house until further notice. On Wednesday they are going to look into renting a car so that they can get where they need to be. They are going to AZ to help her mom move her things up to WA. So I guess the wait now is for the unemployment check.

Last time I was going to update saying that I had prescreened quite a few movies and that I was starting to feel like a movie guru. Haha. It is so easy to prescreen films out here. Much easier than it was in AZ or OR. Among the recent movies I have prescreened: Mission Impossible, War Horse, Sherlock Holmes and even Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I was actually at the world premier of Sherlock Holmes so I got to see some stars like Robert Downey Jr and Rachel McAdams. She is quite small but just as pretty. I must say, every one of those movies Rocked. I recommend them all.

We ate at Hard Rock cafe in Hollywood cuz of some killer 75% off coupons my mom found. The food was… a lot less than everyone expected. Think prices were sky-high and food quality very low. Anyway.. I was glad that for 5 of us it only cost 20 instead of the 100 it would have normally.

Hmmm so here is some randomness. On the way back from one of our prescreens we stopped at the Hollywood sign and ended up at this gorgeous spot overlooking the whole city. Griffith observatory. If you ever visit it is a must do… And totally free. Hmm what else? A picture, this one doesn’t do it justice… Alas here you go:

Here is a pic of one of the signs:

I am still job searching. The work I had remaining at ILS is now coming to a close quickly so a job sooner than later would be great. I just feel so dejected, so blah. I am not hearing back from anyone but I am thinking that is because of the holidays. I feel useless. But like that reliant K song, ‘I’m a little more than useless’ I’ll resume looking for work after the first of the year. All job sources are saying that employers are on a winter break kind of thing from posting and looking for jobs until after the first of the year. I suppose that’s better news than just.. No news at all? 🙂

A little later on tonight we are going to go to a Christmas eve service. It has a candlelight service at 9pm. Should be fun.

Tomorrow is Christmas. I feel out-of-place even in my on home this year. I don’t like it but then again I don’t know what to. I’d like to offer myself some suggestions. Haha maybe it will come to me later. It feels like things have changed with my brother. It is weird. I don’t know how to explain it. Ah well.. what can you do?

That’s all I have for now. This might just be my last post for the year! Who knows.

Happy Birthday Sabrina.

Happy Holidays, Happy Christmas, Seasons Greetings.. Merry Christmas.

just Pray.

Lots of things to update on. Just don’t feel like typing them all out when its 3:15 in the morning.

Can’t blame me can ya?

just Pray

Hey

One thing I forgot to update on was school. This blog should be short and sweet as Maryia went to a TKD studio tonight and I need to go pick her up in a few minutes.

Asusa has accepted me at their school. That is quite ironic because now I am seriously considering going to school at Liberty University or elsewhere. I had blogged about Liberty a few years ago but decided against it and went to Cascade. Well anyway, I was checking them out again and their online school is quite a bit cheaper than even Azusa Pacific. I am reviewing a couple of schools as options. I’ll leave my options open this time. I am going through this school process because I really want to have a fall back if I am not able to find work somewhat immediately.

I need to be working towards something. You know what I mean?

Well, that’s all- gotta run!

just Pray

Lots to update.

First off, we have officially moved. My job searching has started for Southern California. I hope it is better than it was in Phoenix. There was a ton of little details that I have probably forgotten about by now- but I will try to give the best recap that I can.

So we started off with packing the U-Haul. That was fun. It always is though – right? Maybe not. But what can you do? I really hate dislike moving – I don’t think moving will ever be a ‘fun’ thing for me to do. It’s a hassle. Nuff’ said.

Just getting started…

Once we packed the U-Haul we spent the next day cleaning the house throughly. About halfway through that day (Thanksgiving) we started our trip on I-10 west. We got all the way to the outskirts of LA that day (it is a pretty short move when you consider the other moves we have made). We didn’t get to the hotel until about 8:30pm… being somewhat sore and tired we checked in ready to rest. My parents skipped out and went to I-Hop for dinner and Maryia and myself stayed in. Our thanksgiving dinner consisted of some crunchy cheetos that we had in the car along the way. It is the first time I can say that I’ve had that on Thanksgiving. At least for dinner. Our hotel ended up having a problem with the heater/ac so they had to move our rooms shortly thereafter. Fun stuff. As if being tired and sore weren’t enough. They did however end up comping our rooms. It was fantastic. I love when companies go above and beyond and that is exactly what happened.

It’s good though. We were able to get up a little early the next day and go to the nearby mall to check out some Black Friday sales. Nothing was good enough to pick up… and it was mass chaos throughout the mall. We ended up having a good nights sleep and even woke up to a hot breakfast. It was better than the previous night of sleeping on the tile. We ended up at the house mid day as expected. Once at the house and after checking the house over we started unloading the U-Haul. Also another fun part that I look forward to (yes, I’m using sarcasm).

After getting nearly everything unloaded (besides the tools that my dad had to drop off at his work the next day) we went out to eat at Carrows and everyone ordered a turkey dinner. It tasted good- it hit the spot. It even came with a slice of pie. Yeah, we ended up celebrating Thanksgiving a day late. At least we had our Turkey dinner as it is better late than not at all.

The next day was hectic. My dad and I took off in the morning to bring his tools to his work. Not before the Verizon guy showed up at our house to install FIOS Cable & Internet. It seemed to be going alright until the guy took his drill and went through a water pipe (I couldn’t make this up). So while that began to take flight my dad and I were off and unloading his tools. It seemed like the whole afternoon/day was a lot harder than it should have been. I don’t know why. During our unloading of his tools we noticed that someone had tagged the side of the U-Haul. I had texted Maryia and my mom and Maryia said she remembered it being there when we woke up a day earlier at the mall. We figure that someone was upset that the U-Haul was taking up 4 spaces and tagged it. That is the only thing/reason we can think of to explain it.

Needless to say, it didn’t really put anyone in a pleasant mood. On top of that… my dad & I had gone to like 3 locations to drop the truck off but the GPS was wrong on all accounts for the U-Haul drop off points. We finally ended up finding a place in the ghetto and returned the U-haul. It was sketch. They didn’t say anything about the tagging and we weren’t about to ask to be charged any additional money. Besides, it was a cosmetic thing. It didn’t affect the functionality of it, right?

We arrived back home to find out that the Verizon guy was pretty much an idiot. Plus the repair to the house would take a few days time if not more. We also had to call the owner, the realitor and the verizon manager to make sure everything was taken care of and was on the up and up.

Here is a picture of the repair guys truck and ID#.

I must say that everyone that we have dealt with in CA has been very nice.. but the Verizon guy was pretty much a DB (sorry to say). As anyone who knows me I generally always speak rather highly of Verizon but this whole experience was very bad. Still to this day it hasn’t been fixed 100%. Verizon has written out an offial paper saying everything will be taken care of yet we still are waiting for some final repairs. It’s good that they acknowledge they messed up and all.. but I believe some compensation should be in order considering the hassel a new customer was put through. Ugh.

Can’t top that huh? Guess again.

We recieved a T-Mobile bill that was some $80 higher than our normal bill. We called to find out why. They told us that we went over on our minutes. We explained that we were in the process of moving and if they looked they would see that every other month we had hundreds of minutes that were unused. They said it didn’t matter- the current charges were legit and not going anywhere. Calling again and speaking to a supervisor, we explained that when we were with Verizon and something somewhat similar happened but instead they had processed a credit of minutes to our account to use over some 90 days, plus they had informed us when we were nearing an overage.

It didn’t matter, it all fell on deaf ears and we were told that as great as it is that Verizon does it.. they don’t and will not. Plus, they won’t notify you if you go over your minutes. Tough luck. Pay $5 extra a month and they can notify you though. So aggravating.

During this week the tempatures were spiking to record highs. Day time temperatures were close to 90, as crazy as that is.

One of the warmer days…

So anyway as you can see we have been dealing with a few annoyances since we have arrived. It has pretty much all been dealt with now. Now we are just looking for a washer and dryer to do some laundry! It is much needed.

Hmm… well now that I think about it for this episode folks. One nice thing that came from this was Jake (our cat) has been super sweet during this extended time of stress. He would come up to us and sit on our laps (which is rare for him to do) and he would continue to be very social. No real rhyme or reason.. just out of the blue.

Jake with his HoHoHo thing on, sleeping on the couch.

So there you have it. We are now finally enjoying the California area. The traffic isn’t nearly as bad as people make it out to be- at least not when you are coming from Phoenix- and the traffic might be really bad in some areas *cough* Santa Monica *cough* but not so much in the area that we live in.

I guess that is all I have in me for now.

Until next time.

just Pray

I had a few pages worth of a blog typed up and then with one spaz it disappeared.

UGH!

I’ll retype it soon.

Just not now.

just Pray