Ikea on the Way

I love that Ikea is on my way home ‘cause there are so many things I want to get.

Tees I Like

Here are a few tees I want to eventually buy for myself:

A special thanks to Thomas for finding most of these.

Unpacking Day

Today we started really unpacking boxes and man is that a lot of work! I think we’re pretty close to having all of our “major” stuff in place. It’s starting to look pretty good but it’s weird having all this space to ourselves. LoL, I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon. A special thanks to my brother for coming by and helping us out the entire day. Thanks bro!

Moving Day!

Moving is a lot of work! This entire weekend was dedicated to moving, ugh! We got super lucky today with the weather because it has been storming in L.A. all week and this morning it cleared up just in time for us to load up the moving truck and unload it at the new house. After dinner it started to storm again, *sigh* close call. We still had to drive back to Northridge in the rain to pick up the kitties, but that wasn’t so bad.

A special thanks to Allan, Ernesto, James (seen above), Rose(seen above), and Thomas for helping us move. Thanks guys! Also, a special thanks to Susana, Chris, and Chris’ parents for the amazing work they did to make sure the new place was looking beautiful for us. Thanks!

Freaky Friday

LoL! I love when people around the office get creative like this! Today Enoch just about had a heart attack when he came across this cardboard cutout of Joe.
Other things that happened before:

- We had Brazilian BBQ to lunch, YUM!
- The rain poured down like crazy today. At one point I thought it was going to bust through my windshield! It’s nice to see it rain in Cali again though.

New Home-New Baby-New Year

In a few days Marco and I will be moving into the new place, woohoo. Packing is sooo much work though, I think next time we’ll have to pay for someone else to do this.
Other things that happened today:
Janice and Andrew had their second baby earlier today! Congratulations guys!!! I don’t know all the details yet but as soon as I do I’ll have to post again.
We also celebrated Jim’s B-day at work today with a big chocolate cake and some cold refreshing milk. Happy Birthday Jim!

Lunch at the Dept #2

Another meeting with clients, and another yummy lunch at the Depot. This time I had the Club Med salad. Mmmm….

Lunch at the Dept #1

One of the perks to meeting with clients is the yummy lunches we get to have! There’s a picture of the fettuccine with calamari dish at the Depot.

Urgent Care & Matress Shopping

Thank god I finally got myself to Urgent Care. After getting a cold in Holland I returned to the US and developed a sinus infection. I was hoping it would clear up on its own but after two solid weeks of sinus headaches, I finally decided to go to Urgent Care.Boy am I glad I did. I normally hate dealing with Urgent Care clinics but this time the experience was totally different. I was in and out in under an hour AND I saw an awesome doctor, which normally NEVER happens. On my way back to the car I saw this unopened cereal box sitting on a bench by itself. LoL! I love finding random stuff like that, ‘cause it gives me the opportunity to come up with my own explanation of what happened. Here’s my story:

Kid had to see the doctor but was screaming and crying on his way into the building. Mom pulls out a box of cereal to calm the kid down. Kid hates the type of cereal mom brought for him/her so he/she leaves it on the bench unopened. Cereal box is left abandoned in front of the medical building. The End.

Marco and I went back to the new place to drop off more stuff and visit a mattress place our landlords suggested. It was a little far (Anaheim) but worth the drive. Custom Comforts turned out to be the best mattress place we have been to. We have looked at so many places already, so it was nice to go to a place where they didn’t use the car salesman method. From the moment we walked it, they were nice, informative and we even got a private tour of their mattress factory. Yes, they make their mattresses at that location.

Long story shot, we bought an awesome mattress for less than what we would have paid at the other stores. Thanks for the tip Susana and Chris!

Washer/Dryer/Rubick's Cube

I was up early and got myself down to the new place just in time to meet the guys from Best Buy who were delivering our new washer and dryer. It was exciting to see some of our new stuff arrive, and the washer and dryer look pretty good in the freshly painted laundry area. The guys at Best Buy did an awesome job delivering it on time and getting it all hooked up.

After dropping by the new place I went home and found the most amazing Christmas gift ever, waiting for me. Allan and Marco had gone shooting that morning so Allan left my Christmas gift with Marco to give to me. Yay! I am now the owner of a Rubik’s cube! WooHoo!!! You may be wondering… “Big deal, what’s so special about that?!” OMG, it is a HUGE deal…I have wanted one of these suckers for years and now I finally got one! Thank you Allan!!! I guess creating a Wish List on Amazon paid off. Marco and I spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how to solve this sucker. I figure, if someone can solve it in 9 seconds, it should only take me a couple of years. LoL!

Weekend At Last!

Wow, I’m so glad it’s the weekend!
It has been a hectic week and unfortunately, it’s going to be a hectic weekend as well.

I plan on going by the new place a couple of times to drop off some more of our stuff so that things aren’t too crazy on moving day (next Sat.). I will also waiting be for our new washer and dryer to arrive so hopefully that will go well.

Pimp My Laptop

Marco found this great deal through Skin It.com for a free skin for your laptop. Of course I took advantage of the deal and today I pimped out my laptop with the new skin, w00t!

Before

After

Lords S&C

Today we met up with our new landlords, Susana & Chris. We had breakfast at Mimi’s Café, yum, and then worked out the details of our new lease. We should be moving into their house by Jan 26. Woohoo!

While they were out here, we got the opportunity to meet Susana’s sister, Adriana and her two lovely boys, Diego and Phillip. They’re so cute!

Chiquita & Cutie

I love it when fruit makes me smile!
The people at Chiquita Banana and Cutie Tangerines have come up with a new way of making fruit fun. In the past few months, I have noticed that my bananas and tangerines come with fun messages on what is normally a boring fruit sticker. Here are just a few of the many cleaver messages I have gotten so far. The one that looks worn out is the one I placed on my forehead and wore around the office a couple of times. LoL!

Manda and I have started collecting these fun stickers and decorating our work computer monitors with them.

Fun fruit stickers rock!

Pictures of Pablo in Europe

Uploading the pictures from my European trip is going to be a BIG job! Today I started by uploading the pictures I have of Pablo in each city. Follow the links below to see them. I still have about 2,980 more pictures to upload so stay tuned.
Pablo in Holland
Pablo in Berlin
Pablo in Prague
Pablo in Cesky Krumlov & Cesky Budejovice
Pablo in Budapest

Back to Life, Back to Reality...

Ugh! Vacation is over and now it’s back to work. It wasn’t all bad though. The day started with this lovely sunrise and then got even better when I got to see my buddies from work.

As a bonus, Amanda and I found gifts under our office x-mas tree from Santa Enoch. They turned out to be super cool Sudoku players. Woohoo! Although the day was a little busy with “work stuff,” I had some time to share my trip experiences with others and hear about how they spent the holidays. In all, it was a good day back. I’m surprised I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of the day since I’m still trying to get used to the time difference.

Natalie is Here!

While I was on vacation I learned that my buddy Xiaoyu had her baby girl. Yay! Her name is Natalie and she was born Dec. 20 2007, weighed in at 6 pounds 11 ounces. This is Xiaoyu’s first baby and she’s just adorable!! Congrats to Xiaoyu and Wei!!!!!

Day 18: Europe Trip: Carting and Saying Goodbye

Our day started early and by 10am we were at Marco’s sister’s (Jacky) house. His sister and her family (the Boelen family) invited us to go indoor go-cart riding with them. We met up at her house and then went by Gouda to pick up Skip before heading to Zoetermeer. We were there by noon as scheduled. We got suited up, put on our helmets, and listened to a quick breakdown of the rules. Each race last about 15 minutes so we decided to go for 2 rounds. I came in last place, LOL! Even the kids beat me! Of course my arms were cramping most of the time and my inner thighs were bruising since I was too short for the cart and had to be pushed all the way forward in order to reach the pedals. Yeah I guess those are not really excuses…I just suck at go-carting LOL. I was surprised they let me ride at all since before we left the house Marco measured me and found I was too short to race. Ugh! I feel like such a shorty when I come to Holland, or as I call it, The Land of the Giants.

We picked up a quick lunch at McDonald’s and headed to Jacky’s house. We hung out for a bit, did some grocery shopping, and Jacky made us some fabulous pancakes for dinner. After dinner we had to say goodbye and headed to Marco’s mom’s house. His other sister (Karin) and her husband (Arie) came over with the kids to wish us a good flight home and to say goodbye. The kids (Vince and Sven) were soooo sweet! They made us Mr. Potato heads out of real potatoes as going away gifts. It’s a shame we have to leave them behind since we can’t bring them on the plane with us. I’m going to miss the kids so much! Every time we come back to visit they’re older and older and I always feel like I’ve missed out on a lot. Too bad California can’t be next to Holland.
The kids (Vince and Sven) took a liking to my camera while we were here and took several pictures of their own. Below is an example but I will have to upload the rest when I get back to the States. They’re excellent photographers for only being 9 and 6 years old!

This picture was taken by Sven (age 6)

This picture was taken by Vince (age 9).

Day 17: Europe Trip: Farm, Family & Friends

Today was a very busy day. We got a later start because both Marco and I are still fighting off a cold. Once we were up, Marco drove to Skip’s house and the three of us joined the farmer (Marco’s mom’s boyfriend) at his farm, since he agreed to show us around. It was so much fun! Sure it was super cold, and snowing, but we got to ride in a tractor, feed the cows, watch him milk a cow, and check out all the other animals.

After our farm trip, we got home and quickly changed for our family dinner. Marco’s mom and her boyfriend invited the entire family to a restaurant close by called Maxima. There were 16 of us total! I was a little skeptical about going to the restaurant that was Mexican/Argentinean/Italian food. After watching Gordon’s Kitchen Nightmares even I know you should focus on one type of food when you open a restaurant. The food turned out to be very good, but the service was CRAP! We waited 2 hours before our food started to arrive and before that, it took the waitress forever to bring our drinks. We went through 3 rounds of drinks before the appetizers arrived, and if you’ve ever been to Holland you know there is no such thing as refills! Even when you order water, LOL! Anyway, everyone seemed to have a great time once they started to eat. Ordering dessert also took forever but lucky for us it didn’t take 2 hours. Marco, Skip, and I had to bail early because we had promised our friend Ronald we would come by to see him. From what I heard, the rest of the family didn’t leave the restaurant until 10:30pm, which means dinner lasted 4.5 hours! Gordon Ramsey would have screamed his lungs out if he had witnessed this dinner service!After dropping off Skip in Gouda we headed towards Ronald’s house (which is also in Gouda).

Although we were a little bit late, due to the ever-lasting dinner, they (Ronald and his girlfriend Simone) were kind enough to stay up and wait for us to arrive. It’s always awesome to see Ronald and Simone!! We hung out at their place, talked, had snacks, and before we knew it, it was passed midnight. I hope we have more time to hang out with them next time we’re in town. It always feels like we run out of time to do everything we want to do! I think next time we’ll have to have a clear schedule before we leave the States so that we have enough time with everyone and actually get to see some of the friends I haven’t seen in years (including all my buddies at Nike).

Day 16: Europe Trip: Got Sick

So it finally happened; I got sick. Ugh! I usually get sick while on vacation so I guess I was expecting it. I’m just glad it happened while I was in Holland and not while touring Europe. Although I felt like just sleeping all day, we had a ton of things to do so I had to get up and get going. Wa!

We first went shopping for the groceries we want to take back to the US and then, stopped by the bank to take care of some business. We also stopped by the Trekpleister to visit Marco’s sister at work.

After shopping, Marco’s mom was sweet enough to make us some yummy tomato soup for starters and then some endive with potatoes and meatballs…omg it was so yummy! After a fabulous lunch, we picked Skip up and did some more shopping in Rotterdam. We ended up buying a few more things we need to take back to the US.
And because we were in the neighborhood, we visited Marco’s brother and checked out the new boat he’s building.

Later, for dinner, we stopped by the supermarket and cooked a nice little dinner at Skip’s.
I hope this cold is gone by tomorrow because we have 2 busy days ahead of us.

Day 15: Europe Trip: First day of 2008

Although we had a few close calls, we all walked away in one piece after the crazy firework war. We waited for the craziness to die down before we took Skip back to his place.

This morning we got up a little later since we didn’t get to bed until 3am. Marco and I had breakfast and stopped by to visit his father’s grave. We try to go every year we’re here. After that we went to visit his sister Karin and I finally got the opportunity to meet her younger boy, Sven. When we moved to the US Sven had not been born yet and for some reason or another never got the chance to meet him until today. After a short visit we drove to Skip’s house to plan out the rest of our day.

Day 14: Europe Trip: Happy New Year!!

The countdown to midnight came quickly and after toasting with Kinder (child’s) Champagne (Apple juice with bubbles) we ran outside for the huge firework show. The sky was filled with fireworks from all the homes. Holland gets insane on New Years and Marco loves it!
Happy New Year Everyone! I wish you the best in 2008!