A Sunday without a Plane ride

For months, I'd been going off of the idea of leaving for Illinois on Sunday after Christmas for Illinois. We get up at 6:45 and leave around 8am. We stop for some fast food breakfast just cause it was cheap and we had some time to kill. We get to the air port around 8:40 for a flight that would leave around 10:45. We park in satellite parking since it's cheaper to park there then take a Super Shuttle to and from the airport. We go in to check in at the kiosk and come to find out we're not scheduled till Monday at the same time.

Erik had even printed everything out and sure enough all the date are for our tickets and even our rental car were tomorrow the 29th. I didn't get mad at him, I just started laughing hysterically at the situation. We decided to just head back home. The shuttle drivers thought it was hysterical and so did I. I took advantage and decided to take down our Christmas decorations so i wouldn't have to do it when I got home on the 4th.

We decided to call it our trial run. We will be leaving tomorrow and I hope our trip is less eventful then our none trip.

Family Chirstmas Party

For Christmas, my Aunt bought all of us matching one piece green and red striped pjs, and we all wore them. It was hard to stop laughing while one by one we succumbed to putting them on. Here is the evidence.

I love Erik's hat, and the rest of my crazy family.

Oh and today, I finally broke down and cut off my hair. It's mid neck length now. I'll post pictures later. I just couldn't take the split ends any longer.

Shopping, Shopping and more...

Last Friday,

Erik and I decided to go out to dinner. Since we hadn't been to an Olive Garden in forever, we decide to enjoy some italian. I ordered one of the specials a stuffed chicken marsala, and Erik and braised beef tortalini. We loved both our dishes and each of us enjoyed a glass of red wine. After, dinner our weekend shopping extravaganza began.

The Olive Garden was in the parking lot of the Brea Mall so we decided to walk around. We didn't find much there sadly, but were still tired from just browsing stores. It didn't seem that crowded for a Friday either. Saturday, we were planning on driving out to San Bernardino to meet up with our friend Justin so he could help us get some deals at the Game Stop he worked, so while we were at the Brea Mall we thought.. lets go look in Game Stop so we know what we want.. just as we're walking up to the store, the start closing. Oh well, we'll just have to browse tomorrow.

Saturday, we meet up with Justin and we treat him to lunch at a hole in the wall Mexican place. He doesn't have to be on the clock till 1:30, so we head over around 1pm to start browsing. We're picking up a PS3 for about $300 thanks to Justin. It's also buy two used games get one free. We grab a few PS3 games, and pick out a few Christmas gifts. We still spent around $577 after everything, but still saved $150 on everything. We'd been saving up for this and couldn't pass up the $100 off. Everything is now wrapped and under the tree LOL.

Sunday, we hit up Big Lots, the $.99 store, and Mervyn's (I'm sad they're going out of business, but I couldn't pass up 60% off).. We got a lot of gifts at Mervyn's. I still need to wrapped all of them, but surprising, we've done pretty good this christmas so far. I still have a few more things to buy for people. Need to get something for my sorta bro, a couple more items to add into my White Elephant gifts, and a lot of folks on Erik's side, which we'll do when we head out the Sunday after Christmas.

It's been a pretty boring week otherwise. I'm still working my 10 hour days, so I'm so tired when I get home. Today is my last real day of work and I get 2 weeks off. Tomorrow we just have a meeting. The rain and driving in it sucked and my poor mom got snowed in at her house, and my dad didn't even make it home yesterday.

I'm looking forward to my annual family party this weekend. I don't know if my parent's will be making it. I could have sworn I talked to her about it, but she didn't know it was this Saturday, and my dad is scheduled to work that day. I need to keep them in the loop more. It's hard enough keeping myself in the loop sometimes because I not a phone person ;).

And one last thing. My left hip is hurting and I can't really see a doctor about it till after the holidays. I'm hoping it doesn't get worse. The strange thing is it hurts when I sit or lie down, but not when I'm up and moving around. I'm also trying to get workouts in. I really want to do this half marathan, so I hope my hip doesn't hold me back too much.

Working 12 hours Sucks

Today was Options for Youth December graduation. I'm on the graduation committee and assigned to head the check-in table and flower hand out. I started work at 7:30.. got off at noon, and had to be at the ceremony site at 1pm. I managed to shove some fast food in my mouth as I drove over to Azusa from Chino. My minions and me set up the table and we had one person assigned to each location. Students were supposed to be there between 2:00-2:45.. of course, many students didn't arrive till late. There was even a student from my location who thought it was just rehearsal.. At least she arrived early enough that she was able to head home to change.

After the check-in table, my minions and me had to run the Flower table. During the ceremony, they do a presentation where the students take two cards with a flower attached to both and present them to those in the audience that helped them get through high school. It's my favorite part of the ceremony and this year, I was put in charge of making sure the cards were all put together and in order. After the students were done with rehearsal.. they got snacks and then they picked up their flowers and cards.. by this time it was after 5pm and I'd been there since 1pm.. Many staff just floated in at 4pm. It was nice to be more involved, but it would have been nice to be done with the check-in table. I have a feeling at our June graduation, they will have two separate groups.. one for check-in and one for flowers.

The ceremony was beautiful. I was talking to a coworker after and realized it was my 10th graduation ceremony that I've attend for Options for Youth. That is including my own graduation as well. Even though I sometimes complain about work, I truly feel inspired with I see students make it through and receive their high school diploma.

Annoying Driver

I want to get in the habit of blogging about the random things that happen more regular instead of just a play by play of my days.

Today, I had a problem with an annoying driver. It happens frequently since I drive 44 miles round trip to and from work.

The annoyance occured when a work trunk two lanes over from me decided to change lanes and cut off the SUV in the lane immediately to my right. The SUV had to tap his brakes and he immediately flashed the work truck with his brights. I'm in the "fast lane" averaging between 75 and 80 mph and keeping a safe but not a huge amount of following distance.. Just as I'm about to pass the SUV, he pulls into my lane causing me to hit my brakes. I must confess that I didn't get off his ass immediately, but the SUV did cause me to lower my speed to 70.. for the next 5 miles at least, the SUV kept pace with the work truck that had cut him off in the first place. The vehicles infront of him continued to pull away and I was stuck. Needless to say, I was having a slight road rage issue over this. We finally get to the 60/57 merge and the SUV doesn't even bother waiting for the break in the line and just changes lanes a few times to get on to the 60. I wasn't about to get stuck behind him again. I had my chance to pass him and I did.. I had to go about 90 to make it into the spot infront of him. I got past him and continued on to work at my usual 75-80mph with no further irritations and I never saw the SUV again.

Driving Pet #something: being cut off and having my following distance taken.

Didn't realize It's been so long

Wow.. I'm slacking yet again. I haven't Blogged since well before Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was great at my Aunts. I brought my meatballs and supposedly everyone liked them. Most everyone was staying the night but as usual, I don't even think about it until I'm asked when there, so Erik and I didn't stay, but head back home.

I was in the process of reading the last two Twilight Books that weekend as well. I finish Eclipse Thanksgiving night and Breaking Dawn Saturday, and then the Partial of Midnight Son Sunday. Erik wasn't very happy with me for spending so much time reading, but he understood my obsession. I ended up talking him into going to see the movie with me that night and his response "It didn't Suck". It was better the 2nd time around too.

We had rain damage to our ceiling so I couldn't put up the tree till after it was fixed. I hated putting it up later than I normally do. We finally started putting it on Wednesday and I finished putting all the ornaments on it last Friday.

Work has been annoying too. I've been working the later days, but last week M-W.. I had folder searches for CAHSEE results dropped in my lap that everything else had to be shoved to the side. It took a lot time and I usual I started falling behind again on everything else.

Friday, we had our annual company holiday party. This year it was in the Grand Ballroom at the Disneyland hotel. My best friend and his fiance got cheap tickets to go to Disneyland on Saturday, so I didn't go into the park.. decided not to go two days in a row. I knew Freddy would want to spend all day there.

We had a lot of fun as Disney on Saturday though.

Sunday, I spend the entire day cleaning and organizing. Erik and I went and purchased our big gift for Christmas.. I even made him wrap it so we wouldn't be tempted to open it till Christmas..

Monday, I played video games for the first time in over a week. I used to play a little everyday, but not anymore.. Not as much fun as they used to, but i still like hanging with my friends on there occasionally.

Twilight and more...

So I can practically say, I spent most of my time either watching or reading Twilight books this weekend. If you don't know the premise of Twilight, you're probably a guy. I had fought the urge to read the Twilight series for years. I knew about it, but I have 3 bookshelves of books at home that I'm still in the process of reading. I told myself, I wouldn't buy more books till I finished the ones I already owned. I don't know why they have to lable books "Young Adult". I've been into young adult books since I was technically in children's books. One of my favorite authors is considered a young adult writer.. Christopher Pike. I grew up on his books and own almost every single one. Alrighty back to Twilight.

One of my coworkers finally picked up the books after hearing a bunch of teens in her student teaching classes talk about them. She only picked up the first 2 since they were the only ones in paperback and she didn't want to spend the money on the hard backs. She came back and had to tell us all how she couldn't put the book down and read the first one is 6 hours. I'd been fighting the urge, but on Wednesday, I finally gave in and stopped at Target. I only picked up the first since it was on small paperback.

I couldn't find much time to read it Wed or through Thursday. I started it Thursday during my lunch. I had plans that night so I couldn't read much, and then on friday, I had a lunch meeting, so I couldn't even read during lunch. I did get off work early, but I drove up to my mom's, so there I was trying to hand with my mom and read a little here and there. I took the book with me when I met up with my best friend and his seriously Twilight Obsessed fiance (Edward is her Vampire Lover) obsessed. We went out to eat and I read there, we got to the theatre and I read while we got in line. By the time, we got in the theatre, I was halfway through the book. I really enjoyed the movie outside of the overly screaming girls and the two sitting next to me that were complaining about them changing the story. I do wish there had been more in there getting to know you phase, but it was still a great movie. I didn't finish the book till Sunday movie because we had a potluck on Saturday and I spent Saturday morning with my mom.

The first book also included the frist chapter of New Moon, so of course I had to continue reading, but didn't have the other books. I decided to go find them. I stopped at the closest bookstore first. Borders. They only had hard backs and I knew the 2nd book was available in soft cover. I picked up the 3rd one for 19.99. I tried the mall book store and decided to drive to Barnes & Noble. It's a farther drive then the others. I went to the young adult section and nothing but hard backs. I looked around and found a table devoted to twilight and sure enough they had New Moon in soft back. I made one more stop at Costco where I purchased their very last copy of Breaking Dawn they had. As of this afternoon, I just pasted the 200 page mark and already cried in it. Not as good as the first one, but I do look forward to the next movie. I'm starting my later nights at work today so I won't be able to continue the book till much later.

Wednesday already...

The weeks are just flying by. I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week. I feel like it was just Halloween. Christmas will be here before we even realize it.

This past weekend we had really bad fires near where I lived and the smoke and ash was swarming our apartment on Saturday. We decided to get out for a little while on Saturday to go see the New James Bond flix "Quantum of Solace." Daniel Criag is definitely my favorite James Bond. He's just so much more physical then any of the other Bonds were. That night Erik and I drove out to North Hollywood for our friend John and his buddy Greg's combined birthday party. We had cake, Rock Band, and a rotating game of Load Questions. We got there about 9pm and left around 2.. I practically played 5 hours of Loaded Questions and mostly with people I didn't know at all. It was a lot of fun.

Surprisingly, I didn't have any kind of hangover on Sunday. I guess I'd stopped drinking soon enough and had enough water. Erik and I were fairly lazy and played City of Heroes and the only productive thing I did was laundry.

It looks like Mick will be moving out over the next 2 months. I will miss having someone else to talk to but it will be nice to have an apartment for just Erik and I again.

I've been having some great news at work lately. Last week, I finally submitted my California 30-day Substitute credential. It's the credential you need to qualify as a substitute teacher. With it at my current job I will get a $2 an hour pay raise and qualify to help out when they have bonus opportunites for certificated staff. And one of those just started this week. I'll be starting next week and for 8 weeks, I'll be getting a pretty nice bonus. The only thing that sucks is I will have to add 5 hours to my work week, but it's an extra $350 a week and I just can't pass that up. My work is also allowing us to cash in any PTO accumulated that is over our mandatory banking about of 120 and we'll get that check before the holidays. Even with Mick moving out, we'll do just fine without the extra rent help.

I've also been getting my workouts in for the Half-marathon. I still do not like running on the crowded streets outside by myself. I wish I had a park close by or Erik had time to run with me, so I've been mostly doing cross training inside.. It won't prepare me as well as just running will, but it's something. I'm thinking of buying a treadmill or an elipitcal with some of the extra funds coming in over the next couple of months. Or an membership to the gym that is just down the street from me. I really enjoyed working out in the gym in the past. Hmmmm.. maybe that's what I'll do.

And a last note, I gave in and picked up the book Twilight last night. I haven't opened it yet because I'm finishing another book, but I know once I do open it, I won't be able to put it down. I'm planning on seeing the movie on Saturday and friends are pushing me to read the book first.. we'll see.

I don't know when the last time I had a weekend that didn't have something on it.

I always have something going on.. on the weekends. I might have one day of my weekend to go somewhere other than what is planned, but since I'm doing something on the other day, I tend to just want to be lazy. This past weekend I had a 3 day weekend. I could have been a lot more productive, but I wasn't.

Saturday began with Erik having his swimming class and I did a workout. We'd been planning to attend the Bats Day Market, but I couldn't get my booty off the couch. The Hallmark channel was doing a marathon of the Love Comes Softly movie series and I'd never seen them, but knew if I ever did, I would enjoy them for their sappiness. For those who like fairly religious movies, they have good messages. I myself am not very religious, but even though at times, these movies really push it towards you, the stories are enjoyable. I want to read the books now because I know they are different then the movies.. There are 8 books and currently, 6 movies have been made. I spent my entire Saturday after my work out sitting on the couch watching these movies.

Sunday was Bats Day in the Fun Park. The Unnofficial Goth Day at Disneyland. I'm not goth but a lot of my friends are so I've been in the culture for almost a decade. When I go out dancing, I prefer a goth club because they're not meat markets and I honestly like the music. The fashion can sometimes be fun as well. Some people really go out of Bats Day. I tend to be more casual, and just wore a Bats Day limited edition tee shirt and official Bats Day ears. It was the 10th anniversary for Bats Day and the 3rd one I've attended.

This was the first Bats Day in November. It's always been in August up till now. Noah, the creater of Bats Day, decided to move it to a cooler climate. Next year, it will start it's new home in May. Since it was Veteran's Weekend, it was pretty crowded, but it didn't feel overly crowded.

We headed over there around 10:30 and we ran into our friends Arielle, John and Missy inline for the tram. It wasn't even planned. Once we got into the park, we met up with Mike, Steven, Lacey and Ryan. Our first stop was Thundar Mountain Railroad. We were odd numbered so they made 3 of us sit in one of those seats. John, Lacey, and Arie being the thinest, squeezed themselves into the front car. Even though I go to Disneyland fairly regular, it'd been a while since I road Thundar Mountain.


Afterwards, we met up with Arie's friend Sarah and her daughter Emily. We headed over to Winnie the Pooh. Where little Emily met a life sized Winnie and Eeyore.



It was getting close to the 1pm castle photo so we headed back toward the castle. There were thousands of Goths hanging around and everyone started lining up. We're near the front so hopefully, I can find us in the picture. Bobby met up with us there.

Once the photo was taken, all the goths dispersed and we headed over to Space Mountain to grab fast passes and eat lunch at the pizza Port. At this point, we lost Emily and Sarah. At the Pizza Port, I decided to have a salad and it was pretty good. While eating, I get my first Scream Prize alert on my cell from Twitter. Noah had decided to have a sort of scavenger hunt using twitter.. he would announce his location and the first 1-3 people to him with the password would win a prize. Erik headed over there. However, my SMS is really slow to update so He only got consilation prize pins. There were still 14 more scream prizes to be won through out the day though. John's phone updated faster, so we decided to keep an eye on twitter with his.

John and Arie met another group of Goths and they tried to cut into the Buzz year line with us. There were way too many of them and they decided to head off on their way, and we never saw them again that day. After Buzz, we headed back to Space Mountain. There were 12 of us at this point. At the castle, Missy ran into a friend and her cousin, Natalie and Jennifer. Natalie and some cool Nightmare Before Christmas tattoos on her forearms. We almost had our own car. John and Arie's lap bars weren't working properly, so they had to wait. When we got back around, they decided to let us all ride again because of the technical difficulty. It was pretty cool.

After Space Mountain, our group split again. Ryan, Steven, Lacey, and Mike all stayed in DL and the rest of us headed over the California to ride Tower and the new Toy Story Midway. Arielle, John, and Missy hadn't been on Toystory yet. We got fast passes at Tower and headed over to Toystory. We waited about 25 minutes, but everyone loved it. It's such a fun ride. Someday, i will get a good score on it. We headed back to Tower but Our Fast passes were still 5 minutes from time so we were told to wait. I looked over and saw my friend and old roommate Christine also at the gate, she let us in 3 minutes early. It still a fun ride. We stopped and to watch Turtle Talk. And it was a lot of fun. Arielle asked how global warming was affecting his environment and Crush said that he like warm water and asked what she wanted him to do about it. She told him to send all the fish to the surface to sing and dance and scare all the humans. Crush told them all to go Sing. It was a pretty fun
program.

We headed back to Disneyland to eat and had dinner at the Birthday plaza. Ryan the rest met up with us there. Arie and I shared a Pumpkin Cheese cake and it was good. We got a Twitter from Noah saying to be prepared and "Toon" was a quotes, so we assumed he would be in Toontown. We started heading there and most of the others wanted to go on the Matterhorn. So Arie, John, Erik and I headed on to Toontown, we really wanted a scream prize at this time. Just as we pass infront of an on coming parade, we get the text that he's infront of Honey I Shrunk the Audience. We take off running. Arie and I stop and walk at a more casual pace sending the boys on. I get a bunch of texts on my phone, but we don't know whats up until we get there. They both won! Erik one a limited addition Pocket Watch and John won the bats day ears. We went back to Toontown to get him the hat portion and then met up with the others at Alice after that. It was time to head to the Haunted Mansion meet. Ryan and the others decided to leave at this point, so by the time we get to the mansion, there are only 5 of us left.

The last two years we've had 30+ in our group so it felt really weird only have 5. We ended up in overflow in the fast pass area. It was so packed with people. I was 788 inline when we finally got into the main count. We lined up at 7:30 and finally got into the mansion at 9:30. While inline, I finally ran into my friend Elizabeth. I still regret never running into Talon.

After the mansion, we hit up Pirates. We decided to head up after that. We stopped for Hot Chocolate and hit the tram. That was some good hot chocolate too. Overall it was a fun Bats Day.

Monday, I slept in, caught up on DVR recordings and did an hour of strength training. After that, I only did some shopping errands, but of course I spent more then I wanted to at Target.

The rest of the week, I've been catching up on my work and I finally see a dent which is why I'm able to blog today. Saturday, we'll be hitting up John's Birthday party. I just wish they all didn't live in North Hollywood. Why can't I have friends that live close to me.

Halloween 2008 and the rest of the weekend

This was a pretty decent Halloween weekend. At work I dressed as a Pirate for Thursday and Friday. Some of us decided to dress on Thursday because we don't normally have kids on Friday and one of the teachers wasn't going to be there. She found out another center was dressing as Cowboys, so she decided to dress as a Native American and invade them during lunch. I wish I'd gotten pictures, but it was hysterical.

Friday night we drove up to Apple Valley to spend Halloween night at my Best Friend Fred's place. It was only Him, his fiance Judy, their friends Kevin and Ceyanne, and his Mom. Erik and I of course dressed as Pirates once again. It was a nice casual hang out for the most part. The only snag was when Kevin decided to go on a political rant. He and I have opposite views on many things so it put a small damper on my evening. I don't usually like to discuss politics with us. Fred's brother and nieces came over when they were done trick or treating and we sat around eating candy. We headed back over to my Mom's house and 10 and spent the night there.


Saturday we woke up at 9:30 and Erik realized he was missing his Swim class. We both completely forgot he has a class on Saturday mornings LOL. We spent most of the morning hanging out with my mom. I got in a 35 minute workout on my mom's elliptical and is said I went 5.25 miles. The funny thing was I didn't have any clean work out clothes or even socks.. so I wore a bar, my chemise from my pirate costume, underwear and my shoes.. Erik said it looked pretty funny with me working out like that. Only Erik and my mom were there so I didn't mind. I still have 10 minutes to go and Erik was up to the lights so I had to give up the chemise to get washed for our party that night. I finished my work out in nothing but my underwear, bra and shoes LOL. After my workout, I showered and by that time, there were some clean clothes. While our last load was drying, we joined Fred and Judy for some Chinese food. We started heading back down to Fullerton around 4pm.

Saturday night, Erik and I had a party to attend at my old roommate and friend Mary's. I've hardly gotten to see or hang out with her this entire year and she lives like 4 miles from me. We get dressed up in our usual pirate threads and head over a little after 8pm. The party was supposed to start at 8. As we're heading down the road, we see cop lights. We get closer and closer and I realize, the lights are from cops hanging outside our Mary's place. We ended up driving around the block because we were a little surprised by them. Erik ended up parallel parking right behind the cops. Bobby, Mary's husband, was outside talking to a couple of band members. It turned out that during the band's sound check, someone a couple of house's down already decided to call the cops on a noise complaint. After that though the party went off pretty smooth. I got to see old friends. Mary and Emily were both there. I got to see Rebecca, who is pregnant with a little girl, and meet her boyfriend for the first time. I met Mary's old high school friend Alina and her fiance Sean. Bobby's really good friends with the brew master at Taps (a restaurant in Brea), so he provided all the beer. I don't like beer, but thankfully, so one had wine. Erik and I didn't leave until after 1:30. We got home and just before going to sleep, I watched all the clocks reverse back to 1am. I was nice to watch time reverse itself.









Sunday, was a really lazy day. I slept in till 9:30 and didn't do much of anything. I didn't get a work out in like I should have. I know my cousins are a lot more diligent with their work outs than I. The important thing was I registered for the half-marathon. I'm really excited about completing it, even if I walk most of it because I didn't train hard enough.

No turning back now!

Tonight I registered for the Surf City Half-Marathon. It will be the longest run I've ever attempted. I'll probably end up walking most of it, but I'm glad I'm going to do it!

Pictures from Nick & Rose's Wedding