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whappy happy nea land! |
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My own spot to rant about my day.
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wFriday, March 29, 2002 |
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I'm a little annoyed at my company. Every holiday this year we have left early the Friday before. President's Day, MLK Jr, etc. Today, do we get to leave even an hour early? No. I'm also a little annoyed that my supervisor didn't tell me she would be out today (courtesy?). For March billing, which we start April 1st, I have an ENORMOUS load. My desk is going to be overflowing and I'm going to need a cart or two to hold all of it. What's stupider is that they're giving this to me right before the wedding. In fact, most of it won't be finished by the time I leave nor will my April stuff be started. Does anyone think of this? Nooooo, that would make sense.
I'm also annoyed at Macy's. Today, the teacups we registered are no longer available on our online registry to purchase. You can buy them online normally, you can buy them in the store. But on the registry, where people will be looking? Noooo, that too would make sense. argh
On a brighter note, it's Friday! I am totally looking forward to this weekend and the next. Lots of fun activities going on. yay yay yay
posted by
nea at 2:22 PM
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wThursday, March 28, 2002 |
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I went to the most interesting Seder I have ever been to. My family went over to Ron and Dolores's, who are friends of the family. They have a daughter that is also getting married at Calamigos, two weeks before us, as a sidenote. Dolores had created a Seder with her three year-old granddaughter, Alexis, in mind. The first part was really entertaining. I came late due to work, and when I rang the doorbell one of the kids thought it was Elijah. We went through the stuff very fast, hitting all the higlights. This made me very happy, as the last time I went to a Seder it took forever and we didn't get to eat until 11 at night. You have to start at sundown and finish eating at midnight, so you can guess how boring some people's version of the holiday gets. We heard Alexis's story of Passover:
Dolores: "What can you tell us about Passover?"
Alexis: "There's a Pharoh."
Dolores: "And who was Pharoh?"
Alexis: "A very mean guy."
And so this continued until Alexis got to the part where all the princes and princesses married and lived happily ever after. I think she's seen one too many Disney movies. After this we ate, at which point things got a little wierd. Dolores' mother, Faye, got sick (she's very old and in pretty bad health to begin with), so they ended up calling the paramedics and taking her to the hospital. It looks like she will be fine. Dolores and Ron went with her, with specific instructions to finish the Seder for the kids. My dad was given the responsibilty of having them search for the hidden matzoh, getting through the rest of the rituals and cups of "wine," and basically finishing off stuff. Realize that my dad has never performed a Seder, so the two of us skimmed through the workbook of stuff in hopes of doing okay. We messed up quite a few times, but I don't think the kids noticed or cared. They were too excited about getting money from my dad for looking for and finding the Afikomen (sp?) We finished by my dad singing the goat song. My dad sings about an octave higher than he speaks, so it was pretty funny. Halfway through, all the kids disappeared in search of the dogs and my dad gave up. In the meantime, the adults were cleaning up and washing all the dishes. There was a TON of food leftover, so Dave and I now have dinner for tonight. woo-hoo!
Even with Faye getting sick, I had a good time. I was entertained and got to spend time with my family. Tonight I have a feeling I'll get the highlights of the Seder of the family I tutor for. I bet theirs was really boring. :)
posted by
nea at 10:09 AM
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wTuesday, March 26, 2002 |
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Last night Dave and I were discussing Jewish holidays when we got to Yom Kippur.
Dave: "You have to remember the end of the service, at least."
me: "Why?"
Dave: "It's the part where they blow the shofar."
me: "They blow the chauffer!!!!?!!?!?!"
posted by
nea at 9:22 AM
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wMonday, March 25, 2002 |
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My favorite part of the work day is right about now, when everyone is off at lunch and I'm back already. No loud people talking to each other or on the speaker phone, no constant noise of phones ringing and machines going, just a happy quiet. I like spending this time being completely unproductive because I am one of the few here and people think that I am working through lunch. Why they think this I have never figured out, because I eat between 12 and 1 (noon=lunch in my head) and you would figure at least some people would notice that I'm gone for an hour. Whatever, I like my quiet time.
Wedding land is gearing up in my office. Last count there are at least five people engaged and actively working on their wedding. I used to feel a little guilty doing things like looking at dresses online, until I caught someone printing out ones they liked on the color printer. It will be interesting once wedding season (May) starts and we all start going on vacation in droves.
posted by
nea at 1:15 PM
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My weekends are slowly becoming a random amalgam of wedding stuff, being social, and doing all the stuff I can't get to during the week.
We had our engagement session (it came with our photography package) with our photographer this weekend. It was a little tiring (now kiss, now smile, now sit in the middle of the garden and look cute) but also a lot of fun. I kept making Dave smile by making him laugh between shots. Hopefully some of the pictures will actually turn out well. After our photo shoot we went over to Robbins Bros. and dropped off our rings to get engraved. Engraving there is cheap! I will have to remember this if I ever have other jewelry that needs engraving. Dave and I were estimating that our rings, which had to be hand engraved because we're putting hebrew letters on the, would cost like $75 each to be engraved. Instead it will cost a whopping $21 apiece, plus tax. Oh no! Saving money is good.
Although we missed Neil's party because we were lame asses and fell asleep, Dave and I did make it to Oliver's thing. All I have to say is poor Oli. We got there around 11, and festivities had probably been going on for a little less than an hour. By midnight Oliver was wasted and went outside for a bit. By the time we left he was just a total drunken mess, falling over everywhere, threatening all the guys, and trying to get cheap feels off of all the girls (bad li'l bro.) We went to this new place called The Pointe out in K-town. I liked the setup and such, but their service was lame (kept telling us we weren't going to reach the minimum in order to make us buy alcohol quicker) and they ran out of like EVERYTHING. A few people actually went to another bar afterwards because there had been nothing for them to drink. The best part of K-town is getting flavored soju. This place had a whopping two flavors, and ran out of one of them before one am. argh. The night was still a lot of fun though. I got to see a number of my friends that I rarely get to see. Line of the night: "This money is from Dave, Linnea, and Greg." "Who?" "The white people." "OHHH, okay."
posted by
nea at 8:36 AM
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wFriday, March 22, 2002 |
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Had my free night at Disney California Adventure last night. Very good for free. Not good for the $45 admission price. Dave doesn't do rides, which turned out to not be so bad because there aren't a lot of rides at DCA. Most of the rides that do exist are all in one part of park that is designed to look like POP/Manhattan Beach/random fair rides. The only ride we thought was missing was a bumper car ride entitled "405." There was enough people in the park for there to be lines at the big rides, but the rest of the place was empty. We got into all the shows, walkthrough stuff, and out of the way rides in five minutes or less. Private parties are totally the way to experience theme parks.
What's wierd is that DCA totally has parts of all the other parks in Disney World. It was totally taking stuff that fit and tossing it in. For example, parts of the MGM park were copied into the Hollywood section of DCA.
I also like the random pieces of California all throughout the park. One of the stores in "Hollywood" is modeled after the Crest theater on Westwood. They have a vineyard (currently planted with CA poppies. whatever) and serve both wine and margaritas. Yay drunk parents!
Ok, I'm rambling. We got home late and didn't get much sleep. Maybe more on DCA later.
posted by
nea at 9:01 AM
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wWednesday, March 20, 2002 |
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I just want to be able to go home after work. I am tired of tutoring more or less every night. I feel bad for Dave, who has totally been stuck acting like the domestic bitch.
I feel like such a tattle-tale today. We have this scanning system at work, and because it is being used so often, we broke the four teams in our department into two shifts: morning and afternoon. If you are on the morning shift, you can use the scanner only in the (oooh, you guessed it) morning. This is not hard. The problem is, everytime I've been down to the scanner, I find people from the wrong shift. Every time it's, "Well, no one was here and I'll be really quick." So I gave up and told my supervisor. I need to get my stuff done and don't want to deal with people who can't tell the difference between AM and PM. It was funny though, I thought nothing of telling at the time. I realized afterward that it was totally like when you're waiting in line to play handball in elementary school, someone cuts in front of you, and you go tell the teacher on recess duty. I'm so lame.
Tomorrow night I get to go to DCA after work! woo-hoo!
posted by
nea at 4:13 PM
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wTuesday, March 19, 2002 |
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I am so fucking annoyed by my commute this morning. I have grudgingly accepted that it takes an hour in regular rush hour traffice to get to work. Fine. I can live with bad talk radio and smelly cars and such for an hour. But one accident and the whole thing goes to hell. It took me an hour and forty minutes to get to work today. What the hell was I thinking moving to the valley. I hate this. I really really really hate this.
posted by
nea at 9:14 AM
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wMonday, March 18, 2002 |
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I have too many invoices! There is well over a thousand invoices coming through my desk this month. Add to that all the techy stuff I do for our apartment, and it is just getting crazy. I hate this. And will anyone help? Noooo, they're all too busy getting the past six months out of their desk. argh!
posted by
nea at 2:16 PM
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I messed up my old template and have started afresh. I will fix the colors and make pretty some time at home. I just wanted my page to view right again, which hopefully it does. Sorry for those of you who have had to deal with my messed up page for a week.
Our apartment is STILL full of gas, paint, and bug poison fumes and it has almost been a month. Dave and I are now trying to do a hard-core airing out of the place so that I stop getting sick after being home for long periods of time.
posted by
nea at 9:03 AM
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I am in the process of trying to get rid of the defunct comments section. This may kill my page, but I hope to have it all fixed soon.
posted by
nea at 8:50 AM
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wFriday, March 15, 2002 |
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Hollywood and Highland will be way cool once everything is open. The best part: at the end of this tiled walkway called "Road to Hollywood" is an enormous casting couch. Something only those from So-Cal will really appreciate. Dave and I thought about making a silly scene on it, but decided not to. Most of the restaurants are really shi-shi though, so we ate at CPK.
Tomorrow is my first dress fitting! Last night I pulled out my slip, so that it could steam and unwrinkle in the bathroom. The thing is huge! It's probably four feet long (it spreads out when you put it on) and has yards and yards of crinoline. I couldn't help but laugh at the thing. It's wider than our doorway. Man, they're going to have to make the aisle at Calamigos extra wide just to fit my dress, let alone myself and my dad.
posted by
nea at 9:09 AM
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wThursday, March 14, 2002 |
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It seems like every other time I go to blog, the system isn't working. argh. But now finally I am on.
Are Faithy and I the only ones still writing anything? I kinda miss the blogging hey-dey where everyone was writing about their life and I could see what was going on with everyone. This no longer seems to be the case.
Today I made a new record at my office--I had a 2433 page report to print. Since we had to print it in pieces, and broke the mainframe four times, it took me three and a half hours to print. What a waste of trees. I have been very busy here at work, since I now have way more responsibilities than I used to. I work as the billing department IT person, more or less, and have been very busy testing systems and doing training and such. Much more fun that inputting, but since I still have this big workload of billing stuff I've been falling a bit behind on that. I'm about four days later in the billing cycle than I'd like to be. However, I'm still ahead of almost everyone else, so it's all good.
So glad that tomorrow is both Friday and payday. It has been a long week and a broke month.
posted by
nea at 4:36 PM
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wWednesday, March 13, 2002 |
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So anyway, my day has improved. I won tickets (all for naming a process where we scan invoices in order to upload the image "image scanning") to a private party next week at Disneyland California Adventure. woo-hoo! I haven't been to DCA yet, so I'm looking forward to heading down there and checking the place out. Hopefully the stations putting on the party didn't get cheap and close most of the rides--it's totally fun to have private parties at amusement parks when all the rides are on and there are no lines. I've been to ones at Disneyland and Knott's, the Knott's ones being by my high school district, which was very cheap about the whole thing, and a grad night thingy at Disneyland that was actually really crowded. But I am excited about this. It should be lots of fun.
In other news, Dave and I are going to go on the metro to check out Hollywood and Highland tonight. We want to see if it's any good, and have a dinner-date down there. I hope that it's not a total cheesy touristy thing but, if so, whatever.
posted by
nea at 3:31 PM
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Dammit, my post from this morning didn't go. So hi. This morning I discussed at length how I was sad because between my commute, job, and tutoring, I don't get to spend much time with Dave anymore or have a social life during the week. But obviously I just discussed this with myself. Oh well.
posted by
nea at 3:26 PM
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wTuesday, March 12, 2002 |
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Yesterday I made a new tutoring record. Four and a half hours at one home. This means $90 for me though, which is more than I get in a day of work (after taxes) so it's all good.
We sent out the invitations on Saturday, and yesterday my mom got the first call of "So and so wasn't on the invitation. Can we bring him?" My mom called us and so now I get to call her and say "No." and make her call them back. I forsee this happening regularly for the next month or so. I have even got some great reasons going in my head, which I might make into a spinning wheel. When people call, I'll spin the wheel and give the reason of the day. Oooh, maybe I'll put some of the free station stuff I've gotten from work on the wheel too, so I can tell people, "No, you can't come, but you just won a free FX hat!" hahahahaha
posted by
nea at 8:56 AM
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wMonday, March 11, 2002 |
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This weekend involved a lot of unpacking and putting up stuff. We tried to put up our shelves, and learned that 17 lb. shelves will not go into drywall or studs. If fact, they decided to fall out and leave huge holes (now covered by a painting). They fell directly on myself and the TV. Luckily, the TV didn't break and, although it did do something funky to my shoulder, I'm more or less okay. We will be attempting to return the shelves to IKEA.
Our attempts to be social over the weekend failed miserably. Dave didn't want to go to the hip-hop club our friends were going to Friday night, so we didn't see anyone. The rest of the weekend it just seemed like no one was around and available. Sneef. However, Dave and I got to spend lots of time hanging out and being productive, which was good. Our apartment is really starting to come together. We managed to finish a whopping one section of the apartment: the balcony. We learned that we have enough space for two bikes, the plants, a table, and two chairs. We had dinner outside last night and watched the sunset. It's great to have a place where you can sit outside and look at the view. From our old place, all you could see from the patio was the surrounding apartment buildings. Now we have the LA river behind our apartment (ooh, a river view!) and can see all the surrounding mountains and stuff. Very pretty.
posted by
nea at 10:47 AM
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wFriday, March 08, 2002 |
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Dave handed over the keys today at 3:37 pm. woo-hoo!
posted by
nea at 3:47 PM
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I am done with the apartment in Santa Monica!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good ridance.
Tonight Dave and I are Being Social. This means we are leaving our apartment and doing something with the friends we have not really seen in two weeks because we've been so damn busy moving. Tonight is not a night for unpacking. That will be this weekend. Happy nea.
Did you know that it costs $42 in Orange County to have Animal Control come and pick up your dead dog? Dogs are too big to bury in the backyard, unlike the three or so cats in ours. And no, you can't put him in the trash. Can you imagine the trashman on pickup day--
"Ew, what's that smell? Ahhhhhh, I think it's a body!!!!"
"Dammit, Mel (I thought Mel was a good name for a trashman), that's just a dead dog. Stupid people will throw out anything."
Of course, in Garden Grove, Animal Control probably doesn't get a lot of calls. But that's a different story.
posted by
nea at 10:40 AM
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wThursday, March 07, 2002 |
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Tonight is our last night cleaning the old apartment. Jason is coming to take Big Red (APhiO's faithful BBQ, which I have had for the past four years) away from us, and Dave and I are going to clean like mad people. It will be so nice to be done with the apartment. Dave and I really want to work on unpacking, but it's hard with all this stuff to do in Santa Monica. We just have to get through tonight.
I'm tired. Hour-long commutes suck.
posted by
nea at 8:47 AM
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wWednesday, March 06, 2002 |
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My dog died last night. His name was Chip, and he was 13. RIP
posted by
nea at 11:09 AM
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wTuesday, March 05, 2002 |
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I think tonight we will actually empty the apartment. This is very exciting. I can't wait to have it totally empty and clean and be rid of it!
posted by
nea at 9:54 AM
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I haven't had a quiz on here for awhile. Been too worried about moving and stuff.
Red: 14/100 Blue: 16/100 White: 13/100 Yellow: 2/100
Take the Color Code Test
by Dano
posted by
nea at 9:54 AM
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wFriday, March 01, 2002 |
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Dave's car must be some sort of copycat. Two days ago, I had coolant problems. Yesterday his car felt left out and decided to have some too. His, however, are due to the idiots at Firestone (Dave also had a flat tire patched yesterda). During their "courtesy check," a very intelligent mechanic topped off Dave's coolant. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, except Dave's car takes the red kind of coolant and the mechanic put in the blue kind. This is similar to giving a patient the wrong type of blood during a transfusion. Car went "PBFTTTTTTTTTTTTT" to the new stuff and made a mess of itself. The car is now at the dealership, but the bill will be going to Firestone.
Even with all these car problems, we are slowly getting the last odds and ends out of our apartment. The guest closet (AKA kitchen appliance storage area) is almost empty, and we have made great progress on the kitchen. Tonight is more of the kitchen, and the clothes out of our bedroom. Hopefully we can get enough stuff out of the apartment to do some serious cleaning this weekend, because both of us are sick of having to enter the apartment. It's not a home anymore, it's an abandoned mess. And our new apartment has become cardboard box central. I would love to be able to do some serious unpacking, someday.
posted by
nea at 11:42 AM
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