6.7

I woke up to Dave telling me he thinks someone just came in our front door.  It was someone looking at the house!


After the people left that woke us up, we unpacked and headed to pick up Poly. My parents were watching here while we were traveling and we missed her. My family didn't send us nearly enough picture updates of her. I was lucky to get 1 a day and I had to ask.

When I got to my parents, we talked briefly before that had to head to taking my dad to a doctor appointment about his knee. I took a brief nap on the couch, then Timmy, Dave, and I went to lunch.  We went to Pizza Hut Buffet.  We were just wasting time. I said we had to hurry.  Dave said what for because we were jobless.  Then Timmy said he had to be somewhere at 7pm.  It was only 1 PM at that time. Oh the craziness.  It felt so weird to not be hurrying for everything.

Then we went to Walmart. We took turns on the blood pressure machine. None of our data is that good.

We got home and talked.  Then my parents had to leave for another doctor appointment. My mom enjoyed talking so my dad just went by himself even though his right knee was his bad knee.  It was nap time again.  This time Dave napped.

Then four of us headed to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Three of us got the same meal. We really like that pulled pork dinner. On our way home we went to DeLallo's but they didn't have any pepperoni bread.  Dave bought a few things but I thought we shouldn't since we're moving soon.

We hung out at my parents a little bit more and then headed home.  Poly liked to just relax on my parents chair.

Poly was perfect in the car until we were at the toll booths on the Turnpike then she liked to cry.

After we got home I put in a Stampin' Up order.  Then I didn't know where Poly was. She was hiding. At least this time she wasn't under the cedar chest. She was under the buffet in the dining room.

The day just disappeared. I don't know how it went so fast.

Poly also hid under the bed.

6.19

 

Outfit 1: Loft, AE Outfitters, Famous Footwear

Outfit 2: Bikini from H&M, Target

Outfit 3:  F21, Kohl's, Express, Famous Footwear

I woke up around 7:30.  Poly was hogging the bed.  She went to sleep when I did and stayed in that spot all night. 

My allergies were so bad. I was miserable and didn't want to do anything. I stayed in bed for ages.  Around 10, I convinced Dave to go buy me allergy medicine. He did that and bought me a bagel. Once the medicine kicked in, I took a nap. I woke up at 1 PM and we headed to lunch.

Dave wanted to go to Mexican but after the other mexican place that upset my stomach, I don't want Mexican for awhile.  We went to In-N-Out Burger. We came home and were going to immediately go to the gym.  That didn't happen. 2 hours later we headed to the gym. We wandered around and couldn't find it. We asked someone from the Leasing office and they showed us.

I did 5 minutes on the bike for warmup and then did weights. Dave did 16 (or maybe 18) minutes on the elliptical and then did weights.   After that we changed into our swim suits and went to the pool for about 20 minutes.

We showered and headed to dinner.  We went to Tomatina. Dave gone bolognese and I got pizza.  I wanted more dinner food but Dave hacked me.  He wanted to try the pizza too so that's how he tricked me. I had 4 other options I wanted before wanting pizza.   We went to Jamba Juice after. I didn't like it.
We went to sit down outside and dave put the drinks on the table then used the table to push on to sit down and tilted the table way up and 1/4 my smoothie spilled out onto the table and Dave's leg. I was disappointed. But then when I didn't like it, I guess it was OK.  Mine could have used more time in the blender. There were still fruit chunks that I had to chew. I don't like to have to chew my drinks.   We didn't want to just sit there so Dave suggested we walk around in the plaza.  We found this computer store. It was crazy. They had a row of fans, a row of motherboards, a row of this and that. Everything was for computers you could build yourself.  You don't have to order online to make a computer around here.  Dave was impressed.  The prices were also good.

I got home and put the load of laundry in the dryer but wanted to go to sleep.  I had to stay awake just so I could fold everything.  The dryer warning buzzer practically gave me a heart attack when it went off..

6.6

We went to In N Out Burger for lunch.  I had Dave take my daily picture by the sign.  I mean after we were in the place and some guy walked around the restaurant to check me out I figured I might as well have people look at me while I try to get my picture taken.  I didn't fully take into effect all the cars at the red light that would have people in them staring at me.  (Note the parked cars on the right side there. That guy parked so close. I had to drive because there is no way Dave could get into the car. )

After that we went to the park right near our new apartment.  It felt a little weird since everyone was there with kids and were just like the creepy old people.  I wish the park had a track or loop to run around.

Dave wanted to go on paddle boats so we looked it up and went.  It was very weird. We were very confused when we got there.  We overheard someone making teams. We didn't know what was going on. It was funny because we heard them try to group people by where they were from. They asked if they were from the US or what region of Mexico they were from.  That was so weird.   Also it didn't work so they still were finding ways to make teams.


We got in the paddle boats which was VERY interesting. Then we couldn't paddle right.  Dave commented that we were going to wreck into another boat on the dock. Then we did.  Finally paddling worked and we got out of the dock area.   We realized only little kids were out on paddle boats like we were.  We wondered why.  Then we realized it was because of some competition going on with adults. The teams they were forming earlier was for some relay race.  They did paddle boat racing and then canoe racing.  It was interesting to watch.  When there was a break in that action, we headed back.  We were only out there 45 minutes.  We paid for an hour but we had had enough.   Getting out of the boat was even more interesting than getting into it because we had to tie it off or whatever it's called to get the boat on the dock.  Paddle boats aren't really meant for Dave.  He was too big. Also his shoes were too wide to even fit so I ended up doing all the paddling.   We did follow some geese around just like we were one of them. 

We were on our flight and we actually had seats next to each other.  Then the guy to my left moved seats.  He moved to another spot that had 2 empty seats together.  I moved over and had tons of extra room.  Dave said he had about the same amount of room. It sure was nice to have an entire seat to myself though.

So good thing we had all that extra room because it was so windy that all the planes had to take off from the same runway. So we were stuck on the tarmac for over an hour before we got to even take off.

That meant our flight was arriving at 1:30 instead of 12:30. Or maybe it was 2 instead of 1. I forget the exact details.   We were just so tired.

Then we got home after 2:30 am and got into the garage and couldn't get in the door to the laundry room. Apparently someone looking at the house had locked the door to the garage.  My keys were in the house because I didn't take extra keys.  Dave had his car keys but he never put his house key back on the key ring. We dug through the tool box. We didn't have a pin to break in.  It was a very interesting night. We got in. We were tricky.

6.5 - Apartment Hunting

I woke up a few times too early. The time zone change is difficult.  I fell back to sleep around 6:15 and then slept straight through to 7:20 so then I didn't have time to workout.   We went to breakfast. Then we killed some time.

We met the Realtor at 9 to head to look at apartments.  By 2:45 PM, we looked at 12 different places. Well at some places we looked at more than 1 place so we really looked at a lot. It was quite challenging.

We went to some Hobee's for lunch. Many restaurants around here boast about their healthy choices. There are also many with vegetarian options or even vegan. I'm not used to that.

Then we went back to the hotel. We analyzed different apartments for over an hour. We looked into how long it'd take to drive to work, how long it'd take to bike to work, what all was close by (walk scores), and the ability for public transportation.  After over an hour of that, we headed back to the good place.  We spent an hour there.


We headed to have dinner on Castro. I wasn't a big fan of the place we went.  Then we went and had Gelato. 


After all that it was back to the hotel.  We had a busy day and Dave fell asleep right away.

6.12

We went through some stuff in the basement and I found the caricature from 1999. I threw it away after taking a picture of it.   We took a car full of stuff to Goodwill.

Poly took to hiding and being a little miserable because she was still traumatized from her vet visit.

We signed our lease for California. You sign it online so then the day of you can just go and get the keys and some information. There were 10 or so PDFs to read so it was good to do it at your leisure.

6.24 - New Apartment

I woke up after 4 hours of sleep.   I hung out with Poly but then went to start watching One Tree Hill.  Finally around noon we left and got our apartment keys.

The view (sliding door and kitchen window)

Add kitchen

Both bathrooms. The bathroom with the curtain rod is the hall bathroom.

The other rooms. You can't tell much from these though.

That took a little longer than I expected.  The apartment was nicer than I thought. The master bedroom was smaller than I was picturing.  We never saw the place before because it was under construction. The mail area is in the parking garage versus the main entry level like it is here at temporary housing.  I really wish we all our stuff so we could start staying there.
You can look at the photos in a separate album if you are interested. 

We went to Panera for lunch after. I was starving by this point since I hadn't eaten yet and it was 2pm.  We ate outside at Panera.  This was the view. There were other restaurants and stores there too.

We went to PetCo after to check it out. They had cats up for adoption. They looked so sad. We stared for awhile and realized that we better not go to that place often. It's within walking distance of our house.  We checked out the Safeway.  The temperature in that store was freezing. I felt like I needed a winter coat in there.

I came home and napped for a bit.
After that it was One Tree Hill time again... for many hours.  I had some grapes and bread and butter for dinner.  It was kind of late but I wasn't hungry so figured I better eat the grapes before they get old.

I watched all of One Tree Hill before but there is so much that I forgot.  Most of the stuff that I remember I realize it's coming and so I want to watch more episodes. The cliff hangers I totally forget make me want to keep watching too.   I remember so many things from Season 1 but seasons 3 and 4 I barely remember anything. Have you ever watched a TV series for the second time?  Did you find that you remembered more of Season 1 than the other seasons?   What are your favorite TV series?

I really liked this outfit but the pictures were crappy. I showed up all dark because of no flash and poor lighting. This is what happens when you forget a picture.
Short: Loft (2009)
Jeans: Express
Necklace and Earrings: Lia Sophia (2011)

6.4

Outfit 1: Express Shirt, F21 shorts, Sperry shoes, 

Outfit 2: Express Jeans, Express Shirt, F21 hoodie, Sperry shoes

Necklace and earrings: Target

Scarf that I wore a little is from F21

I woke up before Dave so I played Solitaire sitting on the bathroom floor.  I was trying not to wake Dave up.

At 6:30 we went to eat the hotel breakfast.

Then we went to a park to run/walk.  The weather was nice. We saw a crossing guard. Their outfits are different than around here. She had a stop sign with a flashing light.  Also by around here I mean by my parents. I've never seen a crossing guard up in Valencia.

We got home showered and wasted a little (or a lot) of time. I wanted to eat breakfast again at 8am but apparently I had to wait.

We went to Target to kill time then went to Fresh Choice for lunch.  It was nothing to right home about.   We went to Trader Joe's next to scope it out. We took pictures of limes for Timmy.

We went to San Jose and looked at the apartments that we will be staying in for temporary housing.  We also looked at some 2 and 3 bedroom apartments there to see what they are like.   Then it was time to go back to our hotel.  We decided to look up where to go next instead of try to figure it out on the way.

We went to the local mall just for kicks (We either did this before or after going to the apartment. I am writing this 5 hours later and can't remember the order.)  The mall reminded me of Ross Park Mall.  There were similar fancy stores. There were a few more fancy stores but the mall is larger.  I think it is Westfield Mall but my memory could be wrong.

I ended up taking a 30 minute nap while sitting up and using my computer.  We headed to a bar and grill for dinner then off to drive up to the mountains.  The view was nice but they didn't have nice stopping places and when they did, we couldn't photograph it well.
Then we went to Whole Foods to go in one.

Then it was back to the hotel and time to crawl in bed and use my computer.

The Target around here will stop having bags June 20. It is from some new law but I didn't read the entire sign.

Having a cat removes about 3/4 of the available apartments around here. I don't know why so many restrict. Poly is a little baby.

6.3

We woke up at 4:30. We left at 5am. I set my alarm for 10 minutes earlier than last time but I hit snooze. We didn't end up leaving any sooner. We didn't have to wait in line to check a bag this time so we had more time to kill.

At the airport we ran into JD! We ended up being on the same flight.

We headed to our hotel then went to In n Out Burger. Then we thought we should look at apartments. Instead we napped for 3 hours. Then we drove around a little and went to dinner.  JD joined us then we all went and got frozen yogurt. It's odd that I've been trying to have dinner with him since April and lunch since May and we never could make it work then we end up doing it all the way out in California.

Dave and I went to Target. Then we went to a 2nd Target.

Then it was Hotel time to watch TV and use our laptops.

During the day I wanted pictures of Poly since we were apart from her. The picture above is the only one my family sent. 

(I don't have any pictures of me. And I was up so many hours too. I wore jeans that you will see later in the week but they were so uncomfortable on the plane. I also wore my pink tank top that I use to workout sometimes.)

5.18

I telecommuted and Dave did not so Poly hung out with me.

After work, I watched TV with Dve.  Sheldon had on a Union Suit on Big Bang Theory. I got my brother one of those for Christmas last year.

We could hear the neighbors bass for over 2 hours. It was awful throughout the entire house.

I went through clothes to donate and I didn't even try them on and photograph them. I went by memory. It was a lot quicker going through my clothes this way but I was a little more indecisive and maybe got rid of less.

5.31 - My Last Day

Poly was still at my parents so I asked for updates. The picture on the bottom right is of Poly on my parents kitchen table.  My mom said she jumped up and my mom lifted her and put her down and then she got back up and did that.

Work was crazy.  I was crazy busy.  Some people came and said bye to me. Some people hugged me bye.  But for the most part nobody did anything. My manager wasn't even there to collect my stuff.  He signed the paper the day before and left it on my desk.  I felt like leaving would have more of a goodbye than it did. I just dropped my stuff off at my managers desk and left.  No big thing. It just felt weird. I thought there should have been more of something when leaving.  It actually made me a little sad.  The lack of goodbye made me sad not the act of leaving the company.  I left my desk a mess.  I did go through all the unread emails and forward them to my backup. I also forwarded the rest of the flagged emails.  I put an auto response up that said I no longer worked for the company.  I got a few emails after that from people telling me it was the best auto response they read yet.   I ended up turning my computer off around 3 to finish packing up my cube. I figured if I had it on, I would just get more emails and more work and I would never get out of there.  Work owed me 2 floating holidays anyway and I hear people don't even work a full day on their last day anyway.   Have you ever left a company? How was your departure?

After work we went to Johnny Carino's for dinner on the way to my parents. We hurried because we missed Poly.

After we got there and were talking Poly was on the floor and I thought she looked lonely. I went over beside her and ended up falling asleep.  Dave knows me and took my picture. I actually woke up and said "I fell asleep. Why didn't anyone take my picture?"  Then I learned later pictures were taken!  We hung out a bit after that.

Then we headed home.  Poly does not like car rides but she liked to be home.

(Dave complimented Jen on her clothes and asked if they were new. Then I asked about mine and he said I looked like 2005.  Well I bought everything I wore in 2006 so he was wrong.)

And this was the beginning of my new journey in life. Oh boy.

Laurel Highlands Ultra Relay Race Recap (6.9.12)

The night before I wasn't nervous at all. I didn't pick out my clothes and stuff in advance.  Megan and I only figured out what time we'd leave pretty late in the evening. 

Megan was picking me up so Dave wasn't without a car.  Poly waited with me for her to arrive.   We left around 5:30 if I remember correctly.  Then we had to drive out to Ohiopyle.

We had someone take our picture before the start.  I tried on the long sleeve shirt they gave all participants. The sleeves were a little short but it fit just like all the other ones.

Megan ran the first leg. I took pictures of her at the start.  Her segment was ~11 miles long.  She had a hill that was over a mile long. It involved a lot of walking on that hill.  Megan and I ran on trails once to prepare for this race. We were running 12 minute miles that day so we figured that was our goal pace.  Megan was slightly slower but the mile long hill and walking that hill accounted for all the time.

I took a few pictures of the trails but not anywhere that I ran. I didn't run with my camera. I wish I had. Sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes I just wanted to show how bad the terrain was.  In the far left picture, you can kind of see how the trail is rocky. On the top right picture the trail is much narrower but not nearly as rocky. The narrow trail was the third leg.  

I ran the middle segment. It was about 8 miles long. I got the short leg but I didn't even call that one first.  Jake called the 3rd leg so he didn't have to wake up as early.  Megan called the 1st leg so she had time before driving far. That left me with the middle / short segment.  I didn't mind.  Later I think I wished I had the 3rd segment based on hearing about the terrain.

Source

I'd say most of the segment I ran was not able to be run on. I did a lot of walking. There were a lot of roots but that wasn't the worst part. The rocks were the worst. They would take up the entire trail so you had no flat portion you could run on. My ankles would roll more times than I could count. I would also sort of trip and flail my arms often. At least I didn't fall.  I did a lot of walking on the steep downhills. I also walked on the steep uphills (but I don't think there were that many of those except the one in the last mile of my segment.)   I also walked across all the tree bridges or log bridges that crossed streams. Sometimes we crossed a stream that was 5 feet below. That was not good for my fear of heights. I didn't want to take a tumble so I ended up walking across those too.  People would catch up to me when I was walking across them. I was surprised how many streams there were.  At least all streams had the little bridges so you didn't actually have to walk in the stream to get across.

Source  (read this race recap too)

For 70 mile runners, the first main checkpoint is 19 miles in.  From what I hear a lot of people drop out in those first 19 miles.

Many times during my segment I'd just slowly be jogging or walking and not remembering it was a race.  There were also other times I walked when it was really rocky because I was afraid my ankle was just going to give out after rolling it so much.  I was trying to be careful since I don't have health insurance for a few weeks here in June.

During my segment I passed up 5 people. Also at one point when I tripped over a rock, the lady behind me laughed.

Near the end of my segment was a hill. It was a bad one. It involved walking really slowly. It also involved other runners having walking sticks to help them get up the hill. There were at least 2 points on the hill that I used my hands on the ground to the edge of the trail to help me keep going. My garmin said I was going at a 50 minute mile pace at this point.   I passed 2  of the 5 people on this hill. The one guy was talking to me. We talked after the hill leveled off and he told me now I'll be hooked to trail races.  I think he is right.    Even with this hill, I finished my segment in about 94 minutes which was a few minutes faster than I thought.

We started out the race knowing we weren't going to win. We didn't care about time. We were just doing it to be fun. I still had a fear the night before that I'd finish my leg and my relief wouldn't be there.  He didn't want to carpool with us so that he could sleep in longer.  Well I finished running my segment and he was not there. I never met him before so that was fun. At the exchange I was told he could be up at the aid station versus the exchange so I ran the few hundred yards back up to that. I talked to some aid station workers. I asked them where people park. They told me. I headed back down to the relay exchange. I still didn't find them. I talked to more people asking where people parked. This time I got the correct answer and headed towards the parking area.  I finally saw them coming.  I'd say we lost 5-8 minutes at this point.  It really wasn't a big deal but it was what my fear was so I did not like it.   (For your information, Jake wasn't late but Megan drove from our exchange to the finish to meet him at his car to drive him to the next exchange and that just took extra long.)

Jake had to run 12 miles so we headed to the finish but on our way bought gas and decided to stop for ice cream. We bought larges because they were only 10 cents more than the medium.  Well they were about as big as our heads.  We sat there and ate them. It was hard to control them. They melted so fast.  I got black raspberry. It was nice. I've never had vanilla soft serve with a flavor in the corners.

We both finished our cones but it was taking awhile. At first I thought we should hurry since Megan was late to meeting me but she didn't have to drive 2 ways to the finish so I thought we'd be OK.   I still was slightly worried but as we talked I thought that was fun so I got less worried.

Well we went to the finish parking lot. We parked right by Jake's car.  We headed into the trail to find the finish.  We walked 15 minutes or so and kept commenting how the parking was so far away.  We also kept commenting on how the terrain was so much nicer on this part of the trail than on what we ran on.   We finally got to the aid station.  We thought we were good. We sat down and waited. Then we realized everyone was going on and people weren't stopping. We were sitting there over 10 minutes.  We finally asked someone and he told us this was not the 50k finish.  We had to go walk to the 50k finish.  It was a 30 minute walk away.  We stayed on the trail.  We passed the parking area once and Megan suggested walking on the road but I said to stick on the trail (bad move).  We finally got to the finish and walked over to figure out if Jake finished.  He had finished over 15 minutes earlier.  We had no cell reception so we couldn't call him right there.  We decided to run down the road to get to our car faster and try to see if maybe we could catch up to him.   He didn't know if we'd be at the finish or not. He told us we could go home so when he didn't see us at the finish he just figured we had gone home.  I was so sad we missed him.

We finished with a time of 6:26:09. That would have been at a minimum 5 minutes faster if we didn't have the mishap at the 2nd exchange. You can check out the official results to compare how we did to everyone else.  Our team name was Zesty Westy's.

I'd do this race again. I'd even do the longer relay if we had more people.   Next time I'd want us all to carpool or figure out a different way to deal with the cars. I ran with my water belt and I'd do that again.  Megan didn't carry water and she wished she had.   I would also make plans for after the race to hang out as a team. For some reason running as part of a team was even better than running solo. I felt like if I sucked it just didn't affect me. I liked the team atmosphere.  Next time I will run with my camera or camera phone since we don't have to run super fast, getting some photos of the scenery would have been amazing.

The rocky terrain was so bad for my feet that they hurt for days.  My plantar fasciitis was quite bad.  5 days later I did body pump and holding the weights was killer on my feet.  I hadn't lifted in about a month and the actual lifting wasn't bad because my foot pain was so bad.   Because of the different terrain my calves were also sore the next day.  They were slightly sore 2 days later and when I ran/walked with Dave it was a little hard.

Temporary Housing

Here's what our apartment looks like for temporary housing.  It's a 1 bedroom apartment. The master bedroom has a walk in closet that it seems I forgot to take a picture of.  There is a little closet in the bathroom with a washer and dryer.

We'll be here about a week.  But we could be here up to a month but we will have our own place in about a week.

The view out the window is to the pool.  We are on the second floor.  Poly likes to look out the window.  She is actually doing it right now too.

Work Emails

I've posted about work emails a few times. Well this will be my last Westinghouse emails post but maybe I'll make graphs at a new job. I can start at 0 for them all instead of starting high. At least I ended with fewer emails than my maximum.

The 2012 graph is easier to see. You can tell days or times when I was really working on sorting and I'd go down. Also the slope the emails increases shows how I worked on them as I went too.   Not only did I keep track of emails in my inbox but I also kept track of unread emails.

The key with unread emails is that I did end with 0. I did that by marking all the emails as read that I forwarded off to my  new backups. I think I only sent ~20 to them though. 

I also kept track of emails marked for follow-up. I just dragged a ton over to new emails and sent it off to my new backups. I did realize I had a few that were flagged but that I had completed. Also some were dealing with trainings that I didn't have to do anymore so I unflagged those. I probably only sent 20-30 again to my new backups.  Not too bad.

It might seem bad that I sent about 50 to my new backups but compared to what I did have and how I got over 50 emails on my last day alone, I think it wasn't that bad at all. I spent a lot of extra hours.  The night before my last day of work I spent 2 hours at home doing more emails and handling the stuff so I didn't have to pass it over.   I also think it's good I forwarded things instead of just dropping them and leaving work.

Have you ever left a job?  How did you handle your emails or your other work in progress?