Looks like we’re getting cooperation from Orange County. Paperwork should be in the mail tomorrow and then hopefully that will straighten out the DMV fiasco. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I caught Tuck today (unsuccessfully) trying to spring the dog door. Sigh. Looks like he’ll be spending his nights in the office for a little while longer. Damn.
In California, buried somewhere deep within a secret underground nuclear-proof concrete bunker, the state DMV is being run by a little department called the Mandatory Actions Unit. The true function of the DMV’s vast bureaucratic remainder is to ensure that the average citizen stays as far away from that department as possible: and preferably, doesn’t even know it exists.
I had discovered this little band of Illuminati during last week’s flurry of pissed off phone calls. I didn’t get very far – a rather rude, loud woman (who was obviously annoyed that someone broke the DMV Omerta) told me that it wasn’t their problem, go talk to the insurance company again, nothing to see here, move along, this isn’t the DMV you’re looking for.
Kristi had much better luck with them when she called on Monday (I love you, babe). We might – repeat, might – have a breakthrough. They’re telling us now that if we can provide a letter from Orange County, Florida, on official letterhead and stamped with the county seal, testifying that I was assessed zero points for those tickets, and if we mail it to the MAU Black Iron Fortress buried deep under Yosemite – along with a vial of golden dragon’s blood and the coveted +10 Scroll Of Inexpressible Exasperation – the High Priests will take the points back off my license and I’ll be blessed to rejoin polite society as an upstanding citizen once again. So I get to call Orange County again today.
Meanwhile, Tuck’s behaving himself (so far). He’s been locked in the office overnight for the last two nights, and yesterday he went the whole day without even once messing with the dog door. If he behaves himself today, we’ll let him roam free in the house tonight. Hopefully he’ll forget all about his outdoor adventures for another six months or so.
Client business is going well. We’re getting a lot of regular work from a small handful of clients right now, exactly what you want in November – we won’t be seeing much in the way of new clients before the start of the year now, so the regular assignments mean we likely won’t be dealing with an end-of-year billing gap.
I think what’s happening is that more businesses are laying off, and even the ones who aren’t laying off people are still putting hiring freezes in place. But businesses still need to market if they want to stay in business. In a recession, we’re a much more affordable alternative to developing marketing materials in house, so we’re starting to get more wholesale department outsourcing. God I hope that’s the case: if that’s what’s happening, just 5 or 6 of those kind of “long” clients will mean a very, very busy and profitable 2009. With the state budget fiasco happening in Sacramento (and its impact on public school spending) and our lingering wedding debt, we could use the money. I’m not above profiting from a financial collapse; someone’s got to do it.
In other news, the last of my stuff arrived last night from Florida: five boxes of books, papers, office stuff, odds and ends, the flotsam and jetsam that we crated up last weekend in Orlando. My bike’s almost fully reassembled. So now it’s just a matter of figuring out where to put everything.
So it’s a better day. Hopefully tomorrow will also be a better one. We’re working on it, anyway.
This week has been a roller coaster ride. We got home from Florida to find our insurance agent called while we were gone. Our premiums were set to go up to almost $3400 a year because the California DMV assessed Rob points on his license because of fix-it tickets from Florida. From 2 years ago. Tickets that were fixed on time and never assessed points. He spent all day Wednesday on the phone with Florida’s DMV, California DMV and basically, no one had any answers as to why CA would assess points when Florida didn’t. We are still fighting with our insurance company and the DMV.
In a highly dignified move, I called the insurance agent on Friday to talk about everything. I ended up in tears, nearly yelling at her while I sat in a gas station pumping gas before going back to work that night for the busiest and final football game of the year. Her advice? Come in and talk to a manager. We do not hold out hope for much. Our only solution thus far is to take Rob off the insurance and have him not drive next year. Not what we were looking for.
THEN (because you know it gets better), Tucker discovered the outside world. Twice. In the same day. The first time, Samson went bonkers barking at something. Rob looked outside to see what was up and lo and behold, Tuck was on the front porch. In a panic, he rushed outside, pulling the front door behind him. But oops! He locked himself outside with Tucker at 7:20am. He called me from the neighbour’s house and luckily, my mom is off-track this month and could swing by to let him in. When things finally calmed down and few hours later, Rob did a head count.
Samson? Check.
Veruca? Check.
Tucker? Uh, wait.
Rush around outside in a panic again. 3 HOUSES DOWN THE STREET, Tucker ducks under a car. Rob gives chase and Tuck runs. Good thing Rob is faster because Tuck was on the move. Apparently, he’d gone to visit our neighbour’s house (she had the door open and he just wandered inside) before ambling over a few more houses.
So Thursday meant a trip to the store for batteries for the dog door and then another trip to Target for the special lithium battery for the dog’s collar. We couldn’t find the manual for the door so the internet to the rescue. Rob read instructions to me and I sat on the filthy kitchen floor to program the door. Situation returned to normal. Tucker cannot figure out why the door no longer holds any magic for him and Samson has only gotten stuck outside once (at 6am this morning).
Yesterday, I was intent to scour the house. I woke up with a migraine and after a few hours of trying to fight it, I had to take drugs. I laid down and Rob brought me a cold cloth for my head. That was at 12:30. I woke up at 4:45 when my mom called from LA to say they’d arrived safely for their cruise. (Their 40th anniversary is in February and with the grandbaby coming that week, they decided to go on an early celebration trip.) It has been a frustrating few days. Housecleaning has been put on hold until today.
We’re back safe and sound in Modesto, and really, really happy to be back.
God, yesterday was a long day. We were showering and getting ready to go at 3am (Kristi had been up since 2am, unable to get back to sleep) – we had to get our rented Pathfinder back to Enterprise when they opened at 4, because United Airlines told us to get to OIA a couple hours before our flight to ensure that we could get the bike onboard. So we’re driving across Orlando at 3am, running on about 4-5 hours of sleep.
We arrive at the Enterprise depot near the airport, check the truck in, and take their tram (along with four suitcases and a boxed-up bike) to Orlando International and are in the check-in queue when they open at 4:30. Irritable airport workers, new airline nickel-and-diming luggage policies, and then finally coffee and danish before it’s time to go through TSA and get out to our 7am flight to Los Angeles.
Five hour flight to LA. We really lucked out: someone had booked for Economy Plus (better seats, more legroom than standard economy) with their children, but it turned out that their seats were in an exit row. Airlines don’t let kids sit in exit rows, so they got reseated and we got upgraded. That was nice – few things in life suck more than flying across the country aboard a packed flight, crammed into standard Economy. And it helped too, because between a crappy movie (Mamma Mia) and just being way tired, it was the Flight That Would Never End.
So we land at LAX at 9:30am PST. Our body clocks are telling us it’s 1pm, time for lunch. Nope. Another round of morning for everyone.. and at lovely, relaxing LAX! Only one of the busiest (and probably largest) airports in the world. We had an hour layover before our next leg took us to San Francisco.
SFO’s a much nicer airport than LAX or OIA – smaller, much cleaner, better restaurants, just a better overall place to lay over. Which was good, because our United Express flight from SFO to Modesto airport kept being delayed. And constantly moved from one gate to another. They just would not.. let.. us.. leave..
We finally got onto the UE puddle jumper at about 2pm PST (5pm EST, aka Hour Fourteen), somehow managed to finally get off the ground, and were on our way home. Twenty minute flight before touching down at our little local airport – one gate, five minutes from our house – and by then we were just uber-exhausted. Got the car, got the luggage loaded up, got home at around 3:30p, and then it was all the other stuff: fetching the animals, unloading luggage, showering off the airport muck, figuring out what the hell to do about dinner. By that point we’d been up and going for about 16 hours.
We crashed early, slept well, still feel like we’re missing about 24 hours of sleep but very happy to be home. Kristi just left for work and I’m trying to charge up to get work done. It’s good to be home.
It was a good – albeit hectic – weekend in Orlando. We got the storage unit cleaned out and closed down; everything I own is now either here in Modesto, in UPS transit to arrive next week, or entrusted to safe hands until we ship it at a later date. We had a wonderful dinner with Em and Jason at their home and had a great time. We went to Cocoa Beach and had dinner in Merritt Island, celebrating the one year anniversary of our engagement. We hung out with my brother Chris and gave him back his copy of Burnout Paradise.
Best of all, Kristi finally was able to meet my parents. We all had lunch on Sunday afternoon at Bahama Breeze in Altamonte. Mom turned up with my official dossier, containing baby pictures, report cards, baby book, everything. I was sincerely surprised that she still had all that; Kristi wasn’t surprised at all. We all had a good lunch and had a good time.
Photographic evidence:
More of the story coming, but it’ll probably be a few days. We both have a lot of rest (and work) to catch up on.
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