The Walla Walla airport

I touched on the airport earlier, but I am still amazed by the over-complexity of this tiny airport. On a really busy day this airport handles 100 outbound and 100 inbound passengers, yet it has a restaurant and 2 rental car agencies. For my outbound flight, there were 20 people and 7 TSA employees in addition to a police officer. WHAT? Why would they possibly need 7 TSA employees to scan 20 people?

1. Well, they had one lady check my ID and boarding pass.
2. The next guy put all of my stuff in the bin for me and walked me through the metal detector.
3. There is another employee viewing the x-ray machine screen.
4. Another person to check you with a wand if the metal detector goes off.
5. One to hand me back my belongings and restack the bins as my stuff exits the x-ray machine.
6. Another person search luggage if the x-ray scanner sees anything.
7. And one last person to stand back and watch.

This must be some silly Homeland Security thing. The other funny thing is there was a lady making numerous announcements over the paging system. There were only 20 of us.

Other than an extra stop in Yakima on the way to Seattle due to another plane breaking down, the flight home was uneventful. We did hit some good turbulence going over the Cascade Mountains where the plane would drop and I would grab onto the seat in-front of me. I have flown hundreds of times and I am generally pretty good with turbulence, but it’s a little different in a small plane going over the mountains.

The last couple of days have been dull. I have been working extra hours this week (got to work at 5:00 am this morning). I am looking forward to picking Vanessa up at the airport tonight.

P.S. Vanessa – Here is the link to the “Best Place to Live”. Strangely when I answered the questions for my ideal place to live, Walla Walla came up as the place the site suggested. Try it for yourself…

Walla Walla part two…

Sunday was Easter, so like any nice young man I went to church with Vanessa and her Grandma. Is was fairly painless, except the pad I kneeled on was worn and hurt my knees. The service only lasted an hour. Afterward we went to Aunt Maria's. Vanessa wanted to show me the Whitman Mission. Here's the short story... The Whitman's came to Oregon via the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800's. They built a small mission in Walla Walla. Immigrants passing trough would sty at the mission and inadvertently passed the measles onto the Indians, killing half of their tribe within two months. The Indians blamed the Whitman's and slaughtered the family. The Oregon trail goes through the grounds so I took some pictures (mostly for my mother’s sake).

For dinner we had lamb (raised on their property), ham, whipped sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. It was tasty. For dessert the choices were apple pie, cherry pie, and/or brownies (all homemade of course). I opted for the brownie with a scoop of ice cream and hot fudge on top. Mmmmmmmmmmm...

The rest of the night was spent playing a card game that was tons of fun. We played for about an hour, but I could have easily played for the rest of the night. Vanessa's uncle Chuck and his two kids came back to Grandma's house to spend the night (foreshadowing).

The next morning we all ate breakfast and we lounged around for a while. Aunt Linda stopped by for a little bit to visit before driving back to Portland Oregon. Uncle Chuck through in a load of laundry, but did nothing about his kids clothes. After he disappeared for his 17th consecutive nap, Vanessa added his kid's clothes to the washing machine while his stuff was still in there. When he realized this about 20 minutes later he went off on Vanessa. He started cussing and screaming at Vanessa in front of his kids about how the only reason he's still sleeping and not out hiking is because he doesn't have any clean clothes and his kids clothes have delayed his clothes getting done. Surprisingly, he's not up for any parenting awards this year.

Vanessa took the higher road and tried logic with him, but he wasn't going to listen. My flight was leaving at 12:45, so Vanessa and I decided to stroll around town and grab lunch before my flight. We walked around the nice downtown area and stopped at a great deli for lunch.

Walla Walla part three tomorrow...

My weekend in Walla Walla…

I left work early on Friday so I could pick-up Vanessa from work and get to the Orange County airport around 1:00 pm. On the way to get her I had another accident happen right in front of me. Some teenager ran a red light and clipped the car in front of me. The teenager didn’t speak English, and neither of them had a cell phone. I stayed for about 45 minutes until the police arrived, gave them my info, and dashed off.

The flight to Seattle was painless and went by quickly as was the second flight in a prop plane to Walla Walla. I flew into the Wenatchee airport about 2 years ago and was surprised with how small it was. It was great. I was a little disappointed to see how large the Walla Walla airport is. There are only 3 arrivals and departures each day and each plane only holds 38 people. How big of an airport do they need?

Saturday we went wine tasting with two of Vanessa’s aunts. We were all surprised with how bad the wine was. Winery after winery was disappointing. The last winery we went to (Pepper Bridge) turned out to be a great place. We ended-up buying a nice Cabernet Sauvignon and headed back to Aunt Maria’s house for dinner. I heard Maria mention they were having problems with their computer, so I spent some time working on it. I didn’t spot anything obvious, so I downloaded Ad-aware to check for Spyware. It turned out they had over 2,600 Spyware files on their system! Wow! I’ve never seen even close to that much. I spent the next couple of hours cleaning everything off and changing some minor settings. It seemed to be working much better.

More on Walla Walla tomorrow…

Too much garlic

I ate way too much yesterday. Lately I have limited myself to a small snack around 10:00 am and a sensible dinner. Yesterday, I had breakfast, a snack, lunch, another snack, and a huge dinner. I feel like crap today. I guess the beer probably aided in my demise as well. We had our Wednesday BBQ at Travis’ place this time. He has been living in his grandmother’s house since she passed away. It’s in Corona Del Mar (South Newport), overlooking the ocean. Nice place. It just sold (I think it was a couple of million) so he has a month before he needs to be out.

Dinner was great. There was wasabi snack mix, tortilla chips with a pesto basil ranch dip, sushi, salad, chicken, pork, garlic bread (more on that later), steamed garlic cabbage, cheesy rice, homemade brownies, and ice cream. Ugh. I ate way, way, way too much. James made the garlic bread. It had whole pieces of garlic and some stinky type of cheese on it. It tasted good, but I am paying for it today.

I called James at 5:15 am this morning to thank him for driving. He called me back later and started swearing, so he must have had the wrong number. :)

Everything is going to be A-OK

It’s been a slow couple of days for me. On Monday and Tuesday Vanessa and I carpooled to work so I could go with her to a couple of doctor appointments and be there for support. I wont go into detail since that’s more her business than mine, but yesterday we found out that she has nothing to worry about and that everything will be fine. We were both relieved and went out for Chinese food to celebrate. I was only at work about 5 hours each day and spent the rest of my time in a waiting room or kicking back at home.

Vanessa has had a bad week overall. Friday was a bad day at work for her. On Saturday Vanessa got a call from her mom to let her know her Great Aunt Sis had passed away. She spent most of the weekend working on a Midterm paper due today. She is still working on the paper today (woke up at 1:00 am).

On Friday we’re flying to Walla Walla, Washington to visit her Grandma, Aunt Maria and Uncle Byron (and kids). It will be good for her to get away for a couple of days, see some family, and relax.

Do bearded dragons explode after being dead for a week?

Friday night Vanessa and I went to Lucille’s BBQ with some of her co-workers. I grabbed a 22 ounce beer from the bar while we were waiting for everyone to arrive and it made the teacher stories more digestible. If you haven’t been to a Lucille’s BBQ, make it a point to go. The tri-tip and St. Louis ribs are amazing.

Saturday I had a quick bite for breakfast and headed out to get some stuff done. I went to PETCO to grab some cat toys. Mr. Pickles has been bored and my hand has become his latest toy. He seemed genuinely happy with what I got him. I picked-up at bulb for the truck’s taillight. I don’t think it’s the right one, but I’ll figure that out later.

Saturday night I went out to dinner at Market City Caffe with Ryan, Raul, and Anne Marie. I would love to tell you everything, but I never know who will be reading this… Ryan told us that his roomate's bearded dragon died. the rommate put it in a box and wrapped it with plastic, but hasn't done anythig with it. I told Ryan if it sits there long enough it might explode. That's when Anne Marie decided to stop eating.

After dinner we stopped at Cold Stone. Ryan pulled out the Slam Book from 1997. It was a questionnaire for 20 of the people we hung out with at the time and it has about 20 questions ranging from favorite color, to sexual things you swore you would never do. It was funny to see what has changed in those 8 years and what people have done despite saying the opposite.

Afterward, Ryan and I saw Sideways. It’s about two guys that go to the Santa Barbara wine country for a week before getting married. Great movie. I love wine, so I found myself laughing at some of the inside jokes no one else was laughing at. I really enjoyed it and it was one of the few movies I would see again immediately. I’m a fan of Paul Giamatti. Favorite line from the movie: “This wine is tighter than a nun’s asshole” and “If anybody orders Merlot I am leaving. I am NOT DRINKING ANY MERLOT! I guess you have to see it to enjoy it.

Sunday I went to visit my Mom. I took her to a Japanese restaurant – Wabi Sabi in chino Hills. It is a lot like Benihana and it was fun to watch her reaction to the chefs doing their show. I’ve seen it so many times I had become indifferent. We both had a great time. Afterwards, I fixed some things at her house before heading home. Vanessa and I went out for sushi last night. I didn’t see her much this weekend, because she has been working on her mid-term for Fullerton and some other stuff for her class. We’re flying up to Washington next weekend so we’ll have a chance to relax and spend time together then.

Just some advice...

Staring blankly at the programmer and having him stare blankly at you does not impress the VP. I had another meeting today to present a project to the VP. We have run the program many times and presented it several times now. To be cautious I tested the program this morning, but there are some background programs which I do not have access to run. I suggested to the programmer that we needed to test these before the meeting, but he didn’t.

Needless to say, the program didn’t work during the presentation. I glared at the programmer sitting next to me and he starred back with a blank expression. It turned out that in one of the fields I had to enter a KCO if I am in the live system and a TST if I am in the test system. Who knew? We’ll try again Monday, but I’m sure something will happen in the next meeting too. Frustrating.

This weekend marks the beginning of a busy 4 weeks.

This weekend
Dinner with Vanessa’s co-workers
Haircut
Dinner with Ryan and Raul
Lunch with Mom
Pick-up something at Jennie’s parent’s house
Dr. appointment on Monday

Accidents, car horns, and SWAT teams... oh my!

On my way home yesterday I was getting into the left-turn lane about a mile from our place when someone ran a red light and plowed into a car two ahead of mine. It was a pretty good one, as one of the cars got tossed into the air. I pulled off to the side and called 911. The car with the guy who ran the red was up on the sidewalk, but he got out of his car and looked okay. The girl that got hit was dazed and had a bloody nose from her airbag, but looked like she was going to be okay. I was impressed with how fast the police got there (about 2 minutes).

Vanessa was on her way home and was a little concerned when she saw me standing in the middle of the accident and didn’t realize the truck was around the corner, but was relieved to see I was fine. The guy in the car in front of me was a retired police officer and saw the accident much better than I did, so once I saw everything was okay I headed home.

Vanessa made an amazing dinner last night – Rotini pasta with pesto, shrimp, mushrooms, pine nuts, and sun-dried tomatoes. Yummy!

This morning I got to sleep-in until 7:15 because I was taking my dad to the airport. Unfortunately some person’s car alarm (which was actually the horn) started going off around 5:00. I normally get up at 5:15, but when I get to sleep-in during the week and something wakes me up I am NOT HAPPY! After 5 minutes the alarm stopped, but then the cat jumped on the bed and started kneading on my leg. After “gently” setting the cat down in the hallway and “gently” shutting the door I laid in bed for another hour before falling back to sleep. Vanessa was considerate and barely made any noise while getting ready for work. I think she knew I wasn’t in a good mood.

There was a ton of traffic at LAX today and when we pulled up to the Int’l terminal there was 4 police cars and a SWAT team Suburban parked outside. I still haven’t figured out why. He is off to Thailand for a rough 18 days – 13 of which will be spent at an island resort. While he’s there he is planning on making a decision on when he’ll retire. My guess is it will be soon.

I'm #1!

If you type "Halloween Schoolgirl" (with quotes) in Yahoo, my site is listed 1st and 2nd!

Spaghetti and meatballs, and meatballs, and meatballs.

I planned on writing something Friday, but after my 11:00 meeting I was told I could take off. Within 5 minutes I was on my way to my dad’s work (on my way home) and met him for lunch. We talked about our normal topics (work, retirement, Thailand, and investments) which is good, because there aren’t too many people that we can talk about work with and have them have a complete understanding.

After lunch I headed home to relax. I had good ideas for what to do with my time, but ended up on the couch watching Tivo. Vanessa came home and we watched Man on Fire while eating pizza, buffalo wings, and garlic knots. The movie was good even though I figured out the twist that would happen at the end of the movie five minutes into it. [Side note: We watched Passion of the Christ on Thursday. Not that amazing, not that gory, and not the best movie ever.]

Saturday, Vanessa had to go to work for an open-house type of thing for 5th graders and their parents who are considering going to her Jr. High next year. I slept all morning and then some. I think I go up about 11:00 am. Lazy. Once again I had plans, but I was lazy and Vanessa had papers to grade. Ed and Tiffany called later that day and we met them for dinner.

Sunday, I wanted to get our taxes done, so after breakfast we started getting all of our documents together. My dad has the software and our tax files from previous years on his computer, so we went to his place. This was by far the most confusing year for us. We got married. I changed jobs, rolled a 401k, and was a private consultant. Vanessa had deductions for tuition, teacher expenses, union dues, student loan interest, and savings account interest. There is still a couple of things we need to get more information on, but the good news is that we’re getting money back. The credit card companies will be getting their yearly bonus and we will be one step closer to being debt-free.

I picked up my dad’s mountain bike while I was there and took it home so I can start getting exercise again. I’ll pick-up my bike from my mom’s house next weekend so Vanessa and I can start riding a little on the weekends.

Last night Vanessa made the largest pot of spaghetti and meatballs I have ever seen. It was delicious and we each had 2 helpings. I think there were 35 meatballs (using 2 pounds of ground beef) and 4 quarts of sauce. But that’s good, because we have such a large family… oh that’s right, there’s only two of us. I’ll be eating spaghetti and meatballs for the next 6 months. Okay, in all fairness it will only last a couple of days and it will be great.

How people find my site ...

Recent Searches

1) Shaved or Unshaved
2) Foundphotos
3) Is Cafe Lago good for weddings
4) Pathfinder Presidential II

Another movie and another “BBQ”

Last weekend, Vanessa and I rented a couple of movies. So far we’ve watched The Ladykillers and The Butterfly Effect. The Ladykillers wasn’t bad. It won’t rank amongst my all-time favorites, but it wasn’t bad. I did laugh pretty hard at a couple of scenes, but most of it was pretty predictable.

The Butterfly Effect was better than I thought it would be. There were some parts that seemed to drag on, but not for long and Ashton Kutcher did a good job. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it and it rated pretty high amongst IMDB voters. Tonight we’ll watch The Passion of the Christ. I’m curious, but I don’t expect to be very cheerful after watching it. The most important thing is it will be another movie I can mark off of my list. Passion is 1 of the 7 remaining movies on my “Highest International Box Office” list.

Last night’s “BBQ” was at an Irish Pub in Costa Mesa. The menu looked good and the food was okay. Afterward James, Steve, Diane and I stopped at McDonald’s to grab some dessert. It was fun to kick back and talk about embarrassing stories. The best part was most of the stories have already been told, but since we are getting old everyone is forgetting.

Damn, I was cute! 

I guess iieeeluvtori must be depressed...

With Vanessa’s birthday approaching fast, I wanted to get her something special. She isn’t fond of shopping and very rarely is there something she wants or needs. Something having to do with the theatre is usually a good bet, so I started down that track, but without much luck. At some point I saw that Tori Amos was planning at Royce Hall at UCLA in April. Perfect! Now all I had to do was get tickets. Once I got over the sticker shock and realized I was going to have to spend over $100 per ticket I started getting serious. It’s not that $200 (for both us) is a lot. I’m sure many of you have paid much more than that for a concert. I have only been to 2 real concerts and there are only 2 or 3 bands I would be willing to pay that much money to see. Tori Amos isn’t one of those for me, but I know it definitely is for Vanessa.

After looking at some ticket brokers I quickly realized they were overpriced by $20 or more per ticket from what I could get private party. I checked out Craigslist, but there wasn’t much. Some guy wants $750 for 2 tickets on the right side of the stage. No thanks. Everyone else was using the site to beg for tickets. Ebay seemed to be the best way to go. There were about 20 postings and there was a good selection of seats/prices. The negatives: 1) The two auctions I was watching ended Saturday morning, so I would have to watch and bid while Vanessa was in the house. 2) The one I really wanted ended 15 minutes after the other one, so if I didn’t get my first choice, I was SOL. 3) There is no guarantee I would get anything if some crazy bidder was willing to go crazy (foreshadowing).

The last thing I wanted to do is give Vanessa a birthday card saying "IOU Tori tickets". That would suck. So, Saturday morning Vanessa tells me my cell phone alarm is going off saying “Reminder: Ebay 9:30 am”. I didn’t even try to explain that one. Who knows what she started guessing at that point. She had to go to the store, so I had the house to myself. I watched the 1st auction to see what happened in the last couple of minutes. I have never won anything, or gone after something aggressively on Ebay before, but I had some ideas I had heard from others. Sure enough the price on the first auction spiked about 20% in the last minute with 3 different bids.

Now I was ready. I was hitting the “refresh button” every 10 seconds or so with 8 minutes left. Until the phone rang. It was Vanessa. She needed help carrying groceries. I couldn’t help her and I couldn’t tell her why, so when she guessed I was in the bathroom, I just went along with it. With about 3 minutes left there was some activity between the current high bidder and the person who just lost the 1st auction. The price went up about $30. With 2 minutes left my pulse started racing. I decided to bid extra high, since Ebay will automatically bid low for you (over the high price) and then bump your bid up as needed. So with 45 seconds until the close, I decided not to take a chance and bid $90 more than anyone else and counted to 15 before confirming. Imagine my shock with 16 seconds left in the auction when I was notified my $90 wasn’t enough!!! WHAT???

I panicked and bumped it up an extra $20. With literally 1 second left in the auction I won and outbid someone named iieeeluvtori. Wow! My bid was confirmed at 10:36:14 and the auction ended at 10:36:15. Whew!

I controlled my excitement, wandered downstairs and greeted Vanessa. Later that night she was ecstatic when she opened her card and saw a small note:

Monday – 4/25
Royce Hall
5th Row Center Stage

Girls don't poop!

Thursday I had another foot appointment. The x-ray looked the same so we both agreed it isn’t going to heal anymore. He thinks there is scar tissue built up in-between the bones, so short of surgery, nothing will fix it. It doesn’t hurt, so the plan is to use my foot like normal. If it breaks (the scar tissue), then I will have surgery, otherwise it will hold.

Friday night I played Texas Hold’em at a neighbor’s house. Vanessa had homework to do for her CSUF class, so she stayed home. It was a $20 buy-in and there were 6 of us playing. Everyone else had played together before, except for me. To add to my embarrassment I hadn’t played in over a year, so I forgot about little things like to burn one card before the flop (I burned 3 on my first deal). It was stuff like that, which made me look like a complete amatuer. Anyway, I was out fairly quickly and spent the next hour watching everyone play. The host ended up winning the 1st round. The guy that ended-up in 3rd had pocket Ace’s and went all in. He was taken out with the host going for a long-shot straight. The host had 6 and 10 and picked up an 8 on the flop. The turn was a 7 and the river was a 9. Lucky.

I did so poorly in the first round, that everyone underestimated me in the second round. I wound-up in 3rd because of a stupid bet I made. Anyway, I had a great time and only needed to walk 10 feet back to my place.

Saturday we got the place ready for Vanessa’s 30th birthday party. People started showing up around 4:30 pm and I was filling drink orders as fast as I could. Apple Martini’s, Cosmo’s, Blowjob Shots, wine, and beer was all going fast. After about an hour we headed towards the restaurant. I’ll save you the details, but there was some bad information given to us by the restaurant, so after an hour of waiting for a table and Vanessa talking to the manager, the manager offered to pay for our appetizers. Vanessa was wearing a "Girl's don't poop" shirt that I gave her earlier in the week, so we're supprised the manager was keeping a straight face. She also gave Vanessa and me a card for free dessert the next time we go. Other than that, the service was fine and everyone had a good time.

There were 16 of us at dinner, so I only picked-up on some of the conversations, but listening to James trying to gross out Tiffany (a doctor) was hilarious and didn’t work. Her “digital disimpaction” stories made his jaw drop.

After dinner we all went ice skating. Most of us hadn’t ice skated in 10 years or so, so we were wobbly to say the least. James, Steve, Kari, and Tiffany seemed right at home, but the majority of us went the first time around waving our arms frantically trying to find our balance. After a couple times around everyone seemed pretty comfortable. We were supposed to be there for 2 hours, but since we got seated late at the restaurant, we only had 45 minutes to ice skate. This turned out to be fine since most of us hadn’t used those muscles since gym class in high school. After 45 minutes my calves were in pain and I was ready to go home.

After this everyone headed back to our place for more drinks and dessert. Our place was packed with 17 people. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but we definitely ran out of places to sit. After everyone’s thirst was properly quenched, Vanessa and I opened presents. We didn’t celebrate my birthday in January (my choice), so Vanessa secretly had people bring stuff for me as well. I gave Vanessa the new Tori Amos CD and tickets (5th row center-stage) for her upcoming concert. She was ecstatic – which was the response I was looking for. It was an adventure getting the tickets, but I’ll fill you in on that tomorrow.

The anti-mall???

Last night we met for our weekly Wednesday BBQ. This time we went to the Gypsy Den in Costa Mesa. I had been to the one in Santa Ana before and I liked it. I had a good time, but I just wasn’t feeling comfortable. I have gained quite a bit of weight lately and although I have started losing it again, some of my clothes don’t feel right on me. So that was part of the problem, but when I was sitting at the table I felt self-conscious about how I was sitting and my expressions. Another problem was the table was low and the chair I was in was a little small. The Gypsy Den has mixed-matched furniture. Reina seemed like she was uncomfortable with where she was sitting too, so we switched places. That helped some.

After dinner we stopped by a couple of stores. The Gypsy Den was located at The Lab, a self-described “anti-mall”, whatever that means. Urban Outfitters was the first. I had never been there before, so it was new to me. They had a lot of funny books and T-shirts, but nothing I would wear or buy. That look just doesn’t match my personality. That and I couldn’t pull off that look. The next stop was a “shoe store” named Blends, which had expensive shoes displayed in cooling units with glass doors (like the kind in the frozen food section of a grocery store). Odd.

I stopped for about two minutes in a sunglasses store (Eye Five) until I realized the stuff in there was over $200. No thanks. Our last stop was the Buffalo Exchange. This was new for me too. It was basically a nice Salvation Army. Most of the items are used and customers can trade items for others. I did see a shirt I liked, but after walking around with it for 10 minutes, I put it back.

Everyone else seemed right at home in these stores and probably some people reading this know these stores too, but I felt like Rush Limbaugh at a NIN concert. I guess I was unusually uptight last night. I’m looking forward to this weekend…

Congrats to Mike, Caroline, Brian, and Kelly on their new place. Too bad it’s 56 miles away from my place. :(

How people find my site…

I find it really interesting the keywords people search for in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. that direct people to my blog. I’m going to start posting these at the end of blogs like this:

Recent Searches
1. nude sushi aspen colorado
2. a page’s costume

Vacation decision…

We’re going to Estancia Hotel in La Jolla. I read reviews on the other places and they weren’t nearly as good as this one. Thanks for everyone’s input.

Frustrations at work…

I feel like I’m running in a hamster wheel at work. I’m running hard, sweating a lot, and burning calories, but not going anywhere. Once a week I have a meeting in which I present everything I have been working on for the previous week. The work I do never seems to be enough and the VP is never happy with the progress or direction of the projects.

For example, I was asked to complete a project which was originally started before I worked here. I started the project, met several times with the people involved, and had the programming completed. I presented the project to the VP in mid-December (the day before I left for Europe). He found about 7 things he wanted fixed or answers to and one programming error. Last week we re-presented the project with all of the fixes in place and the answers to the questions he had. During that meeting he found more things he wanted changed and suggested some major programming changes. It will be another two weeks before that programming is done. It just continues on.

Three weeks ago I presented a new project named 20/20. It will have the system look at orders coming in, when they need to be processed, how long it will take to process the orders, and when they must leave the building. It then assigns priorities to the orders and suggest appointments. Everyone in the meeting was enthusiastic and I was given the “thumbs-up” to start programming. I created mock-up screens for the next meeting. Now the VP doesn’t want to include any of the intelligence behind the screens. He wants the supervisor to see where the order is in the system, but not give the supervisor any view of when the product is coming in or how soon it need to go out. He asked if I had anything else to show him, so I brought-up a screen I had designed in November that he originally shot-down. Now he has approved my original screen from November.

Nothing is getting done.