To Mac or not to Mac

As most of you know, we take a while to make decisions. At least after the lengthy debates, we end up making good choices.

Our latest debate: Do we totally indulge and get a laptop when we have a perfectly fine running PC? I think our answer is yes, toys are fun. The harder question is which Mac do we buy? You can get the old Pro for $1450, the new Macbook for $1550 or the new Pro for $1860. Keep in mind we'd still have to get the Apple Care on top of it and probably other accessories.

There are pros and cons to each. The newer, greener, cooler (literally), fun Mac doesn't have some hubs - it's been getting crappy reviews on Amazon. The newer Pro is probably more computer than we'll ever need (but one of us thinks the basic editing on the new Macbook isn't enough for him). The older Pro is surely the best bang for your buck, it's just not the newer model and doesn't have the fun, new features.

Anyone have an opinion?

My Newest Addiction

My newest addiction is out of the ordinary. I doubt you could even guess it. I'm not even quite sure how it started - like most addictions, I guess. At least it’s something that's good for me. My addiction, Soy Milk. Mmmmm, soy milk. It comes in a couple different flavors and it's yummy. I haven't had a glass of milk since I was a kid and my mom would make me drink it for dinner every night. Now, I'll just poor a glass of soy milk at any point and sit and enjoy.

We had a soy banana shake Sunday before we left the resort…it was so good. And on the subject, getting away for a night was a lot of fun. The pool was great - very relaxing (when the crazy, screaming children weren't running around). It reminded me why we prefer resorts with a 16 and older age policy. Good food + good pool = good weekend.

Oh, we stopped by some apple farms on the way to the desert. That was fun. We brought home some fresh cider, yum. I wonder if soy and cider mixed tastes good?

Fire on the 405

It took me an hour and 45 minutes to get to work yesterday. Now, this is not just another I hate LA blog, so keep reading.

A fire broke out in the early morning in the mountains along the 405. It burned a large section and the 405 was closed for hours (it was re-opened during my drive). While I was in stopped traffic, I saw some pretty cool stuff. Now I'm not a looky-loo, but this wasn't a car broken down or something equally stupid. Water dropping helicopters were doing drops one after the other literally 50 ft away from me. There were also lots of firemen all over the mountain clearing brush and putting out hot spots - some parts were still smoldering. Ash and burnt brush was falling all around. I've seen it on TV so many times, but it was really impressive to see the fire crews/water drops so close.

It's sad to drive by today and see all the dead trees. It reminds me of our Colorado trip where the beetles had killed thousands - millions of trees. It's sad to see the wide destruction. Wonder how long it'll take for life to start growing again there.

Have I Ever Mentioned I Don't Like Earthquakes?

Another one. Not the big one.

I wish I could do a re-enactment of looking up at the ceiling, skeptically, as it was creaking over my head. If it continued much longer, I was about to dive under my desk.

And still no calls from a job...

Happy Birthday Man!

Hope you have a great day, Man!

In other news, we have some Marriott certificates that are about to expire. Since it's hard to leave at a reasonable time on a Friday, we're just going to go overnight on Saturday. So we had to pick somewhere close, which actually isn't too hard to do - once you get out of LA there really are some nice places to visit. There's Coronado/San Diego, Orange county beach locations or the Palm Springs area. Our goal for this trip:
A) Get out of LA.
B) Sit by a big pool all day with attentive wait staff to bring us drinks/food.
C) Stay at a nice resort - no need to site see.

There is a very nice Renaissance in the Palm Springs area that meets our requirements. A couple years ago it made Condé Nast's Gold List, which is a good sign. And it's gonna be sunny and 90s this weekend in the desert - perfect pool weather.

A friend told me about this cool place to check out on our way to the desert - looks like fun. I can't wait for the weekend.

18 Days to Go

Everyone around here seems to be talking about the upcoming election. It's interesting to get different opinions. One girl who always makes fun of Bush and now McCain/Palin just told me today she's never voted. I kind of feel that if you don't vote then you have no room to talk about how bad things are, but I resisted the urge to say that. I felt a glimmer of hope that she's thinking about voting this time and I didn't want to impede on that. Instead, I gave her websites to read and offered different ways to look at voting.

She's one of those who thinks the president isn't going to do any of the things he talks about doing, so what's the use in voting. I commiserated with her thought and then pointed out a very clear example of one thing that has a 99.9% chance of happening in the next administration - the fate of Roe V. Wade. There will be one or more supreme court justice appointments in the next term. Depending on who the President will choose, the court will then have a very real opportunity to overturn the Roe V. Wade ruling. I explained all of this without putting in my own bias, but explained that if that's something she feels strongly about, one way or the other, then there is a good opportunity for her to vote on something that very well will be happening soon.

She's a pretty smart girl and she's going to look at some websites. She said if she did vote, it'd be for Obama. Hopefully she'll be one more vote for Obama on election day.

Random Stuff

Quick quiz - will an earthquake destroy this city or will a fire? It's kinda crazy to live in a city where there's always a fire. Are the fire Gods trying to burn down southern CA? I think it's a sign.

Job update: NC never called back, so it must not have been Speed. Ugh.

Check out this website. Margaret and Helen are pretty humorous. I've read the latest couple entries and I was laughing out loud. And did you hear that Obama is advertising within video games? Pretty cool plan.

UGH!

I was going to blog about resuming my beach Friday policy today. I was also going to tell everyone that the NKOTB concert was beyond fun. I guess I'll blog more next week when I get the pics off my camera. I was also going to mention how the blogs are slow going because I really am spending every free moment looking/applying for jobs for the two of us. So far the record is 14 applied, 0 calls. :-(

All my good blogging intensions where quickly changed when I called my husband this afternoon. First of all, let me say that there's a chance I could be partially psychic. I had a huge feeling he was going to get a call from a job yesterday. Didn't happen (that's why I said partially psychic). It may have happened today though. But it might not have. Confused? Yeah, so are we.

Ok, so Ryan didn't have his cell on him for like 5 minutes today and during that time he got a call. But they didn't leave a message. The number on his cell was from out of state. He looks it up online and it's a cell phone from an hour outside of Charlotte. Charlotte, where he's applied for two jobs at Speed Channel. One other item to note: he never gets random calls on his cell phone from telemarketers, so this is very rare. What are the chances it's from so close to the job, but it's just a wrong number? Why would a job call and not leave a message? Most importantly, how can we not drive ourselves crazy all weekend wondering if it was a call from Speed?

Felons

We have lots of felons living close to us (shocker). Do you?

Out of Office

Isn't setting your out of office message at work the best feeling? It's like saying, "Screw you people, I'm not gonna be at this crappy job today." I wish I could write more out of office messages, but with only 10 vacation days a year, it can't happen too often.

I checked the Continental movies this month and going to CLE is some movie I've never heard of and coming back is Get Smart. I'll probably try to sleep as much as I can anyway. If I can't sleep, I'll have our DVD player with a season of The Office. I decided on season 3, which has my favorite episode: Beach Games. Remember that season finale where Michael took everyone to Lake Scranton? A thing of beauty. I love when Jim and Dwight are sumo wrestling. I also have our IPOD and the latest issues of Conde Nast and Domino magazines to keep me occupied.

Have a good weekend everyone. You know I will!

So Close

I've just been tortured. Our lights flickered a couple times this morning and then at 1:45 everything went dark*. We all just sat around chatting as the poor office manager was on the phone with the power company. He was on his way to our president's office to tell him the power would be off for an unknown amount of time (and we'd be sent home) when what happened? Yep, the power came back on. Damn.

I was envisioning a nap, some packing for CLE, eating dinner before 8:00 at night, watching GH and beating the horrible Wednesday night traffic (not in that order). But no. Now I have to sit here and try to look busy for the next 3 hours. At least the cable is back on.

On a related topic, doesn't time go by so slowly when you're at work? I mean really. I'm sure you've noticed how the hours suspiciously fly by on nights and weekends. I blame the government.

*When the power went out, I thought for a split second that it was the Big One. I hate living in a place where at any moment the big one could come and we could be crushed under tons of concrete.