I came home today to find a beautiful arrangement of flowers waiting for me in front of the door. I opened the car and cried because it was so touching to receive flowers from my best friend, Randi, to brighten my day! (Pictures are in the gallery.)
I drove 13 miles today to find a Wal-Mart. I do not foresee needing to go there again considering how long it took to get there. Besides, I’m a Target girl anyway.
February 4, 2003
In minor celebrity news, I saw Trishelle and possibly Frank (although it wasn’t a 100% confirmation) today in front of MTV Studios in Santa Monica. This marks my first absolute celeb sighting. The other was last Friday and was at an intersection in Beverly Hills. I’m fairly certain I saw Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston in their Mercedes boxy SUV thing. I can only hope but with sunglass it’s kinda hard to tell.
Another day, another inspection. The elevator was inspected again today and failed because the elevator guy made the fire alarm do the opposite of what it should. Friday they’re supposed to come back out again and install it the right way. We’ll see.
February 5, 2003
Thursdays for now, are all about Survivor. As a matter of fact, now that Friends has reached it’s last season and we’re going to have to download most of them, it is all about Survivor. We went to Nicky’s to watch the latest episode. Rupert is still in the game and for those of you who are still actively or sporadically (like me) playing HSX, I did see that you can buy stocks of who you think will get the farthest. I have to say I’m sad to see Rudy go and am hoping Jenna goes next. We watched C.S.I. tonight. It’s only my second episode and I’m not too impressed. It’s entertaining but not something I’d set TiVo for.
February 6, 2003
Today I spent the majority of it at the DMV. Now this DMV is like nothing you’ve ever seen. They recommend that you make an appointment and with good reason. I showed up at 10:30 (thinking I got there early) I had to wait 30 minutes just to get a number and then another 3 hours waiting to get called and then another 30 minutes to get my vehicle verification. I already have a valid Colorado drivers license but I have to take the written test AGAIN and show my birth certificate AGAIN. C’mon now. I can show them a military ID, a drivers license, and a social security card. Why do I need a birth certificate? Ugh. And three hours this is ridiculous, like everything else in this city. After waiting that long and finding out I couldn’t get my incense I also found out that to get the new registration for California, I needed to have Casey’s signature since he’s on the title too, which means I have to go back. This time I planned ahead and got the paperwork for the car. Well at least it’ll all be done on the 24th. What a way to spend your day off. I just renewed my registration on the 4-Runner in November and now I have to pay again and this time it’s 4 times as much from $27 to $101. I can only imagine what a new car would be. Last night we went to California Pizza Kitchen and got dinner then went looking for me a new coat. I’m in desperate need of one and L.A. has prompted me to get one. When Casey thinks I’m out of style, I KNOW I’m in bad shape. 😉
February 7, 2003
A day to sleep in and the phone wakes me up. It’s just like being in Colorado. Casey managed to get back to sleep but I stayed up and read my book – “The Millionaires”. It’s a review copy so I don’t know how different the final copy is but it’ addictive so far. We took the car to Midas to get the brakes checked out and after being worried for a month that they might fail (because they squeak so bad) we find out that they’re fine but the muffler needs to be replaced. Which we already knew since it stopped us from being able to get the SMOG certification on it. Fucking California and their rules and taxes! They don’t just screw you on one thing, they screw you on EVERYTHING. We had Mongoian BBQ while the car was being inspected, my first time. Although I was put off my the way it’s all mixed together the final product turned out pretty good and even though they received a ‘B’ it was worth going back except for the heartburn afterwards. We finally received all of our tax information today and wanted to get a start on our taxes. We had to go to Lulu’s and get broadband to get all the updated information before we could get started. After a tedious 3 hours it was done, at least for federal. It wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t have had to itemize which seemed to be unnecessary considering the amount of the standard deduction. For now, we’re ahead but I don’t look forward to filing state taxes. We’ll have to wait for another day for that so we can do it online and get instant gratification.
February 8, 2003
We had a coupon for Coogie’s Cafe of Santa Monica so we decided to try that. We regret doing that, the food was palatable at best and the service was even worse. And I can complain about the prices even with the coupon. We had so much laundry backing up that we took it to the laundry mat and got raped on the costs. This place was nasty and infested with bugs and Mexicans. I can’t wait till we can use our washer and dryer. I finally got some Cold Stone and it was SO good. They have this new sinless ice cream that’s made with Splenda so it has no fat or calories. It’s Atkins friendly. Yummy! Randi called me back and we seem to be in similar situations with things not going our way. At least we have each other to talk to about it. We were going to go see a free screening tonight of the movie that won best picture at Sundance but it was “all the way” in West Hollywood and since we hadn’t confirmed by that morning we decided against it. We need to start taking advantage of those free offers.
February 9, 2003
I had to watch “To Kill a Mockingbird” today and it was just as painful watching as the last two movies I’ve watched for my class. I”m hoping that the films will get better as the semester progresses.
I searched the internet today for a site that listed upcoming movie premiers but couldn’t find anything. The only thing I found said that they were having the 50 First Dates premier in Westwood Village on Wednesday but didn’t list a date or a time. Casey seems to think it was last Wednesday but the movie doesn’t open till Friday so that’s kinda early. Since we don’t know for sure I wonder if we’ll be hanging out in the village to find out.