I had written this huge long post, was nearly finished and had to save it to finish later. When I come back, what's happened? Apparently it never saved. OMGeez, really?
Ok, here's round two of part deux!
The next day we were going to Universal Studios, and we were excited 'cause there were some new rides there that weren't there when I was there before and Jordan had never been there before.
The park opened at ten, but we decided to not stress about getting there right at ten. Our GPS said that it would take about an hour and a half to get there "with traffic". So, we left around tenish. Of course "with traffic" was a nice way to plan to be safe, we should have planned for getting lost, ridiculously lost. We lost faith in our GPS and decided to not follow it, and that was our downfall. In our defense Universal Studios is already impossible to find. I don't know why they don't make it easier, but they sure tuck it away into the most hidden away spot of land they could. Granted the lot was there before they built the park onto it, and I'm sure they weren't concerned about tourists at that time, but really- when they build the park they could have maybe put some signs on the road telling you where it was. I dunno- maybe we're just retarded.
So, we're driving around downtown LA and we kept getting stuck on one way streets, and couldn't make our way back to the freeway where we were supposed to be. We were sitting at a red light and I notice that there was a sign above a business written in Chinese. I thought that was weird, and then I was looking around and I was noticing that all of the signs were in Chinese! And we started to see that everyone out on the streets were all Chinese as well. I felt like everyone knew a secret that we didn't, and that I was in some Twilight Zone. Then we realized what I'm sure you had already figured out- we were in china town! It was like we had stepped into a whole different world.
It was about 1:30 by they time we made our merry little way to the park. Phew. Because the park closed at 6:00 (lame) we were majorly pressed for time. Right when we got there we instantly saw a ride that didn't have a line, which was exactly what we needed. We then found out it didn't have a line because they were closed. The guy standing in front suggested that Water World was about to start, and they would be back up and running when Water World got out.
Water World was awesome, I remembered a little bit about it from when I was a kid, and it was cool to see it again. After that we snagged some lunch, and was anxious to get back to the line-less ride before a line formed.
This ride was called "House of Horror" I believe. That should have been a red flag, but I think we both had in mind a ride like Haunted Mansion, or maybe it was a really scary indoor roller coaster. As we sauntered up to the door of the ride there was fog pouring out of the entrance, and as we got closer there was the world's creepiest man standing in the entrance in a very realistic mask, and a tux with white gloves and cape. He looked like that man from Texas Chainsaw Massacre decked out for the opera, and he was beckoning us to follow him. That should have also been a red flag, and while everything inside me was screaming not to follow this man, we plodded on.
Once we go inside there still was no line. You know how rides have the inside themed for whatever the ride was going to be? We thought that's what we were in; really creepy tight corridors fit for the theme of "House of Horrors". We kept expecting to hit the end of the line, when suddenly this evil man jumped out at us and scared the poo right out of me. It finally dawned on us, this was no ride. We were in a haunted house that you have to walk through. Talk about going into it blind. I don't want to go into major detail, I did that on the previous draft and it brought up terrible memories and I broke out in a cold sweat. Let's just say it's was the scariest haunted house I've ever been in. The blessed no line that attracted us was the worst part because we didn't have anyone in front of us screaming to warn us what was coming up, and there was no one behind us to give us a protected from behind feeling, and the idea that there could be some creepy man following us was horrible. And heaven knows I was too scared to look behind and check, afraid of what I might find. At one point I saw a guy about to jump out and I yelled "No!" and he jumped out and I yelled at him saying, "I said NO! You're mean!" It was traumatizing.
We made it out alive, but just barely. I was ready to blow off the rest of the rides and just sit on the steps in front of the ride and tell people NOT to go in!
Fast forward: The park closed, and as it was only six, we decided to explore the City Walk, which is basically a strip mall outside the park. We walked around, and perused the shops, got Jordan some sunglasses, and decided that we should go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, but had some time to kill until we were actually hungry. We had already been all over City Walk, and there wasn't anything else to keep us busy for another hour or two, so I suggested a movie. Jordan's wasn't a huge fan of the idea, as a movie is something that you can do anytime, and we were in Cali! But, my argument was a pretty good one, considering there really wasn't anything else for us to do, but see a movie. We saw Star Trek, which was good, and by the time we were out, we were very much ready for dinner.
Hard Rock Cafe was awesome. I have been to Hard Rocks in Salt Lake City, Orlando, Nassau Bahamas, Nashville TN, and I think Hollywood was my favorite. The atmosphere is always great, the food fantastic, and I got a souvenir glass, and we both got some souvenir clothes.
What a long fun and frustrating day! We got lost, loved ourselves some Universal Studios (minus the House of Horror) enjoyed the City Walk and we were exhausted, and ready to get back to the hotel and crash.
Friday, July 3, 2009
What the Flood?
Things have been kinda crazy lately, and I haven't kept up on my blog at all! So maybe I will hopefully be able to update it a little bit . . .
A couple weeks ago Jordan and I both had the day off, which is nothing short of a miracle, as he never has Saturdays off. I woke up with the possibilities floating through my head of all the many things we could do.
Then I got out of bed and the dream was killed. It took two full steps for it to sink in, or maybe for me to sink in. There was about an inch of water on my floor. My first thought was the water heaters. I opened the closet that had the water heaters, and sure enough that was the source of the water. I had a small panic until I realized that it was actually dripping down from the ceiling! I'd be lying if I said my first thought wasn't "Hurray, it's not our fault!" Assuming the upstairs neighbors' water heaters were directly above ours I thought something had gone wrong with theirs.
We got dressed and Jordan went upstairs to ask the people if their water heater was leaking. He came back down saying that they weren't home, and there was a lock on their doorknob. Great, they were moving, so how the heck were we going to get in touch with them? Obviously we're not the greatest neighbors in the world and don't talk to them, so we had no contact information, or even a name. I called my dad for advice and he suggested that we contacted the HOA president. But, I remember my realtor saying when we moved in that the HOA president lived above us. Perfect. My realtor lived in the same area, under the same HOA so I thought he might have the president's number, but I didn't have my realtor's number anymore. SO I called my mother-in-law (who used the same realtor) and got the realtor's number from her. I call the realtor, and he didn't have the guys contact info, but he had the HOA vice-presidents number. So I called that guy and he had neighbor guy's number! PHEW!!! I was finally going to reach the guy! Meanwhile our ceiling is still leaking. So I call neighbor guy . . . and get the voicemail. For real? Ok, granted if I saw an unknown number I probably wouldn't have answered either, so I left a voicemail, and tried not to sound like a bratty neighbor as I explained that my ceiling was leaking and that it was most likely their water heaters.
Luckily we didn't have to wait too long for a call back. Neighbor guy said that he had just replaced the water heaters, so that probably wasn't the problem. I wasn't about to count anything out and thought that we were about to have a confrontation when he said that he was at a family reunion and would leave now and should be there in about a half hour. What a relief.
He got home and said that it was his swamp cooler that was leaking, and said point blank it's his responsibility and that he was going to make sure that we were taken care of. I was floored, 'cause most people don't want to admit to being at fault like that. He was true to his word and got a guy over to check damages and clean the place up. We got the walls dried really quickly and decided that there was no damage in the walls, but the carpet was another story. We had lighter carpet and the water that was leaking was less than clean. To get the carpet dried ASAP he sucked up all the water and cut out the wet part and laid it out in the sun to dry. I was a little surprised he did this when I figured you could just lift it up and stick a fan under there, but hey- he was the expert I suppose.
Once the carpet was dry we put it back in sans padding (since the padding was a lost cause), and we wanted to cover the carpet tacks that were all over the floor so we could let the cats out (they were locked up all day, poor dearies). Overall we were really lucky that the damage wasn't extensive, We were able to dry the couch out and there wasn't any watermarks on it (only one got wet). We moved the DVD shelf out of the way since it was in the water a bit, and there was no damage to that, but it was a pain in the butt to take all our DVDs off the shelves!
A couple days later we had a guy come look at the carpet to see if it could be reinstalled, and taking one look at it he questioned why the heck this other guy cut it out, and said that he could have just stuck a fan under there, (interesting) and because it was cut and it was an older carpet he could put it back in, but there would be seam very visible. SO WE GOT NEW CARPET! I was very much pro-new carpet, and Jordan wanted to just have our current carpet reinstalled 'cause he thought it would be a pain to get whole new carpet 'cause we would have to move everything out and put it back. Of course it would be a pain (and it was) but it's also FREE carpet! Definitely worth the hassle. I pointed out that eventually we're going to want to sell or rent and we would have to get new carpet then, so we might as well do it now while it's free. So that's what we did.
A couple weeks ago Jordan and I both had the day off, which is nothing short of a miracle, as he never has Saturdays off. I woke up with the possibilities floating through my head of all the many things we could do.
Then I got out of bed and the dream was killed. It took two full steps for it to sink in, or maybe for me to sink in. There was about an inch of water on my floor. My first thought was the water heaters. I opened the closet that had the water heaters, and sure enough that was the source of the water. I had a small panic until I realized that it was actually dripping down from the ceiling! I'd be lying if I said my first thought wasn't "Hurray, it's not our fault!" Assuming the upstairs neighbors' water heaters were directly above ours I thought something had gone wrong with theirs.
We got dressed and Jordan went upstairs to ask the people if their water heater was leaking. He came back down saying that they weren't home, and there was a lock on their doorknob. Great, they were moving, so how the heck were we going to get in touch with them? Obviously we're not the greatest neighbors in the world and don't talk to them, so we had no contact information, or even a name. I called my dad for advice and he suggested that we contacted the HOA president. But, I remember my realtor saying when we moved in that the HOA president lived above us. Perfect. My realtor lived in the same area, under the same HOA so I thought he might have the president's number, but I didn't have my realtor's number anymore. SO I called my mother-in-law (who used the same realtor) and got the realtor's number from her. I call the realtor, and he didn't have the guys contact info, but he had the HOA vice-presidents number. So I called that guy and he had neighbor guy's number! PHEW!!! I was finally going to reach the guy! Meanwhile our ceiling is still leaking. So I call neighbor guy . . . and get the voicemail. For real? Ok, granted if I saw an unknown number I probably wouldn't have answered either, so I left a voicemail, and tried not to sound like a bratty neighbor as I explained that my ceiling was leaking and that it was most likely their water heaters.
Luckily we didn't have to wait too long for a call back. Neighbor guy said that he had just replaced the water heaters, so that probably wasn't the problem. I wasn't about to count anything out and thought that we were about to have a confrontation when he said that he was at a family reunion and would leave now and should be there in about a half hour. What a relief.
He got home and said that it was his swamp cooler that was leaking, and said point blank it's his responsibility and that he was going to make sure that we were taken care of. I was floored, 'cause most people don't want to admit to being at fault like that. He was true to his word and got a guy over to check damages and clean the place up. We got the walls dried really quickly and decided that there was no damage in the walls, but the carpet was another story. We had lighter carpet and the water that was leaking was less than clean. To get the carpet dried ASAP he sucked up all the water and cut out the wet part and laid it out in the sun to dry. I was a little surprised he did this when I figured you could just lift it up and stick a fan under there, but hey- he was the expert I suppose.
Once the carpet was dry we put it back in sans padding (since the padding was a lost cause), and we wanted to cover the carpet tacks that were all over the floor so we could let the cats out (they were locked up all day, poor dearies). Overall we were really lucky that the damage wasn't extensive, We were able to dry the couch out and there wasn't any watermarks on it (only one got wet). We moved the DVD shelf out of the way since it was in the water a bit, and there was no damage to that, but it was a pain in the butt to take all our DVDs off the shelves!
A couple days later we had a guy come look at the carpet to see if it could be reinstalled, and taking one look at it he questioned why the heck this other guy cut it out, and said that he could have just stuck a fan under there, (interesting) and because it was cut and it was an older carpet he could put it back in, but there would be seam very visible. SO WE GOT NEW CARPET! I was very much pro-new carpet, and Jordan wanted to just have our current carpet reinstalled 'cause he thought it would be a pain to get whole new carpet 'cause we would have to move everything out and put it back. Of course it would be a pain (and it was) but it's also FREE carpet! Definitely worth the hassle. I pointed out that eventually we're going to want to sell or rent and we would have to get new carpet then, so we might as well do it now while it's free. So that's what we did.
I am definitely for seeing the silver lining in every tragedy. For example last year I got in a really bad car accident and my beautiful Jetta was completely trashed. That sucked horribly, but the car that I got after that saved in $150 a month in payments and insurance. So, I still say that getting in that car accident was the best financial move I've ever made. No one wants a flood, but- I got free carpet, so hurray!
I absolutely love my new carpet! And I leave you with a beautiful pic of Bella, and you can see the carpet in the background. It's a twofer.
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