In my last post I talked about how cool I was for fixing my air conditioner… well, as it turns out, I’m not so cool. I spent many hours under the hot California sun lying on the passenger side floorboard ripping my knuckles up on tiny little japanese screws that are exposed under the dash board. My legs flailing out the door in a dance choreographed to the grunts and groans I uttered on each turn of the screwdriver or ratchet or wrench.

I got all the parts in just the way I thought they should be (yes I followed instructions), then traveled to my local air conditioning shop to evacuate the air and refill the refrigerant… this is where things got bad. I actually wanted to make a quick run to the shop on my lunch hour. I was possibly being a little overly optimistic on the schedule… but after all the work I had done I felt invincible. So at the stroke of 12 I raced for the car and headed off to “Tom’s Radiator and Air Conditioning”. This place had been highly recommended to me by a co-worker.

I must have angered the gods that day… or maybe Mickey Mouse simply knew I wasn’t going to make it back from lunch in time… so he cursed my car with that freaky Fantasia broomstick voo-doo magic. anyway, to make a long story short I heard a quiet pop then hiss, then the temperature gauge went ski high. I think I knew what was wrong before I even opened the door, and my suspicions were confirmed when I stepped out of the car into a giant green puddle. My radiator had sprung a leak.

Lets fast forward now past the tow truck and it’s corresponding bill. I finally arrive at my original destination “Tom’s Radiator and Air Conditioning”. My choice of establishment seemed perfect since both my problems could be taken care of in one super expensive stop. I’ll try and get all the details of that visit into this paragraph… to make it short. The radiator couldn’t be patched, but needed to be replaced. It would take at least the rest of the day to even get the car in the shop. And the air conditioner has some sort of problem that this shop didn’t have the ability to fix. They couldn’t even diagnose it.

While I waited for all that information I spent a delightful day in down-town Orange California. I had lunch at a little sidewalk sandwich shop where I talked to a wonderfully kind fellow who loved to talk about Disneyland. He was imparting all kinds of “inside information” to me (I left the fact that I work for Disney out of the conversation). I also found a pretty little park to lie on the grass… the same park I was in a little while later when a passing train nearly sent me into cardiac arrest with it’s air horn. But… moving on.

So then next day I used some savings money to pay for the brand new radiator (thank the lord they had one in stock) and I drove off in my extremely hot car being no more ahead then where I was when I started the whole project. Gotta love it eh?

Well my friend Ray is in town this week, so I hope we have a good time.

I will try and do another update soon.

Well I am LONG overdue for a little update here on this blog. I hope there is somebody out there still checking this site… cuz I really do have things to say 🙂 But really I have to make and update to make sure my family knows what the heck I am doing.

Let’s see… where do I start? I would talk about work, but there’s not much that has happened that I’m able to talk about in any detail on the internet. I’ve been doing some interesting VIP events for special guests of Disneyland. It’s been fun, and it seems it’s only been the tip of the iceberg. As soon as one event is almost planned the next one is hot on it’s heels so my to-do list is growing every day. No matter how hard I pick at it, it still seems to grow. I really am so far behind right now that I don’t know how I’m going to dig out. I just have to take a deep breathe, relax, and remember they are just parties. Granted, they are parties with guests that would be nice to impress… but just parties nonetheless.

I will say that Friday couldn’t have come soon enough this week. If one more person scheduled me for one more worthless meeting I think I could have just lost it. I don’t remember where I heard it, but every time one of those damned MS Outlook meeting invites comes my way I think of the quote: “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” Anyway… the meetings came and went and now it’s FRIDAY!!

I got most of my playtime activities out of my system after work hours during the week. Janey and I saw “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, and another fantastic movie called “Crash”. Both were highly entertaining. I have no intention of reviewing those movies for you, but if you see only one movie for the rest of the year I would encourage you to choose “Crash”. It was a very powerful and touching group of stories very artfully assembled into a great film.

So since I’m not planning on a movie or anything this weekend, I’m calling it my project time. I took off work a little early today and actually got a lot of things done that I have been procrastinating for a very long time. I first rushed off to the DMV to renew my car registration. I spoke to a very large and very funny black woman at the DMV. Let me give you an idea of how things work down here at the CA DMV. You walk in to what is usually a very long line (this time I was very lucky to only have about 3 people ahead of me). When you reach the first desk you tell them what you have come to do. The give you a little ticket and you are invited to sit and wait for the number on your little DMV FastPass to pop up on one of many TV screens placed around the room. It’s the Disney in me that makes me call this my little DMV FastPass. I got a bonus since I was at the DMV for two reasons. The car registration, and to finally get a CA drivers license. Thats right, I’ve been driving on my Utah license for the two plus years I have lived in CA. But thats another story that I may tell later…. so getting back on track I had two little DMV FastPasses.

I filled out the three foot long form that I was given at the first desk while I waited for my number. I was actually surprised at how fast it came up. I was instructed (by a voice recording in the room and the tv screens) to go to window number 14. When I arrived at window number 14 I was greeted by the only smiling face in the entire building. This woman had to be one of the friendliest people on the planet. She greeted me and the first thing she told me when seeing my form was that she had never been to Utah and she asked what the DMV was like there. I laughed out loud at the question then realized she was totally sincere… she wanted to know what the Utah DMV was like. It made me smile.

So we chatted about how small the DMV was near where I grew up and we compared it to the massive lines of the CA versions and she said “well california has a lot of damn people who wanna drive”

Anyway… she made me laugh and was very fast at getting all the forms done and I was done with my registration about 8 minutes and $83 later. Since my second number had come and gone, the nice lady gave me a new little FastPass and I waited for round two.

When my number was up I was told that I needed a birth certificate to get my license. “Damn” I didn’t have it.

So I ran home… played on the computer a bit… then went back to finish the job. And only about 15 minutes after I arrived at the DMV I was in the exam room taking the written test for my CA license! WHAT!?! A TEST!?! Who knew this was going to happen? In hindsight I realize I should have been prepared, but I wasn’t really thinking about the reality of things. I just wanted to get this job out of the way that I had been letting go for more then two years. So I faked it through the test. It was sort of a mix of common sense questions, and some of those tricky ones that have everything to do with the way the question is asked. things like “Backing up a vehicle is: A) always dangerous B) only dangerous in a large vehicle C) never dangerous. My thought is “well who’s driving” Reversing for me is no problem, but I would dig myself into a little bunker if I had to stand around while any of my sisters reversed. No offense girls, but the time Geina backed into the van while Nick and I were in the back of the car just ruined it for all y’all.

Fast forward about 10 minutes and my test was being graded. Each time I saw the little red marker flick I sunk a little bit more. I hadn’t been careful at all, or even gone over the questions a second time. What if I failed!?! As it turns out a person is allowed to miss 6 out of the 40 + questions. and I missed exactly 6! WHEW. So I got a photo taken and walked out a real live California Driver.

You’d think I’d have called it a day with that eh? No way… I was out to kick ass and take names today. So it was on to the next project!

As you may already know, we are hitting our season high temperatures in SoCal right now and it is crazy hot outside.
In all this heat it just rubs in the fact that the Air Conditioner in my car has been dead for the better part of two years. It actually died when I was on a trip from UT to CA and I’ve just never been able to afford to fix it. Well I decided it was time to do something about it. I still can’t afford to take it into a shop for a what could easily be a $600 AC job, so I’m going to do it myself. I’ve been slowly deducing what the possible problems are for months now so I knew just what to do once I was ready to dig in… and DIG IN I did today.

I spend this evening ripping part after part out of the under-side of the dash in my little Camry to finally end up at the AC Evaporator. I pulled it out and found just what I thought there would be. A big ‘ol hole in the fins that was leaking coolant as fast as it could be pumped in. Now that I know what the problem is I just need parts. everybody says this part is at least 4 days out… that will be past my window of free time, so I’m determined to find this part tomorrow. I’m going to get up at 7:00 and head down to a junk yard I pass fairly often and see if they have a camry I can pull a used one off of. Hopefully this will help with the price tag on the part too… since it is quite pricey.

So thats my week in a really short nutshell.. more stuff happened as you can image, but those are the highlights from today :-)..

so till next time
R.

I am sorry about the total blogging silence. Just in case you haven’t heard my company has reason to throw a lot of parties this week… so I’ve been in overdrive an unable to blog much.

I will return soon.

It’s as if he pulled these words right out of my brain.

… burnout, creative or otherwise, is a common problem, especially for those who work hard and function at a high level. You simply can’t keep working without resting. Burnout happens for a reason.

[thanks to-done]

Click here to read: How To Deal With Burnout

It’s funny that I completely forgot to blog about this when it happened.

Yesterday at a little before 2:00 PM I was sitting at my desk. I was deep in thought about an up-coming event. I was thinking hard about how I was going to solve an interesting challenge with a few Herbie cars.

I heard some sounds that I would describe as a quiet, but deep, booming. Like you might feel/hear if someone was running down a hallway next to the room you were in. Then everything went really quiet and my chair started to shake. For a second I actually thought somebody in the next cubicle over was just jumping around or something. Sometimes, up here on the entertainment floor, people do strange things. Then… the shaking got a little heavier and it was clear that this was an earthquake.

I could hear a few surprised “is that an earthquake?” sort of noises coming from some other cubicles in the area. Then all of the sudden my heart started to pound. You see… I have been in many kinds of weather related scary situations. A hurricane, driving in blizzards, torrential rain, flooding… but none of them made me as shaky as this quake (no pun indented). It honestly made my palms sweat.

I spun my chair around and contemplated running to a doorway while I sucked my thumb and cried like a little girl. Thankfully my adult brain kicked into gear as I asked my cell mate cubicle roomie if he had been in an earthquake before. He’s lived in CA all his life so he laughed a bit and said cool as a cucumber “ok… this is where it’s either going to go away, or get worse” I gulped dryly and he said “ok, it’s over”. But friends… it wasn’t over. The building was still rocking back and forth when he said that. I was still fighting off the thumb sucking when it finally stopped.

All in all it was about 30 seconds out of my life. It was my first quake (this point is actually not true since there was one on Sunday… but I was asleep when it happened and didn’t believe Janey when she told me about it) and it convinced me that I should stock up on bottled water and gasoline. Maybe I will start hoarding canned goods as well.

For now though friends, I am ok. No more shaking for me, and life is back to normal.

Thanks for reading.
R.

Info for event ci14155260

I’m posting today… with no real intent at all. I find writing content for this little blog very therapeutic though, and that is sort of what I need right now.

Normally I’m just a positive care free kind of fellow. Things roll off and I don’t take life to seriously. I certainly try not to take myself to seriously. And it all normally adds up to pleasant days just content with life, love, and lemons.

(for the record, I’m not really a fan of lemons, it was just that or lettuce that would make a rhyme and lemons is certainly the lesser of those evils)

Today, however, seems to be something different. I’m in a bit of a funk[see #3] and I am having a hard time pulling out of it. This state of being is thankfully much less common then it used to be in my life. If I remember correctly I spent the entire year of 2000 in funkish blur. Of course if I really think hard about it, I know that a years worth of the blues is and infinitely deeper seated problem then what I am having now.

So lets think hard about what got me into this… There are some things going wrong. There are some things that worry me. There are other things that I fear may go wrong soon.

The things that are going wrong are not terribly significant. They are mostly littleish annoyances stemming from some of the side projects I’m doing. (these are usually web design and IT Consulting projects I take on in addition to my normal work-day) There are circumstances that lie both within my control and well beyond my grasp contributing to the problem. Somewhere inside though I feel as if I could have prevented the problems entirely a month or so ago. I guess there is always a chance to look back with perfect hindsight and critique mistakes, but does it really get you anywhere. I’m much more a fan of just learning, and not making them again. But every once in a while I get stuck thinking “oh, if only I had…”

The things that worry me mostly live in the financial world. As much as I love what I do, the company that I have chosen to do it for has a reputation of paying under the industry standard. Granted, when the entire compensation package is taken into account (benefits, perks, discounts, etc…) the numbers look quite good. But I can’t pay the bills with my health insurance card. I don’t want to make this part sound worse then it is though. I’m living fine, and those who have seen me in the last 6 months know that I certainly haven’t been missing any meals. I just think some years down the road… sometimes only months… and wonder how things are all going to shape up. Like everyone I have obligations and desires. Sometimes it’s a thin tightrope to walk if you try to satisfy both.

In recent days I have been worrying about some things that have shown signs of going wrong in the near future. This is something I can’t really speak to with any specificity, it’s just a general anxiety.

I know all of this just lives in today. And it won’t be long before I’m back on top of my game. It’s just a gripe… you know? This funk is a pain-in-the-neck and it’s time is done. So… be gone funk and let me smile.

Thanks for reading

R.

I know I’ve been a terribly neglectful blogger lately, and I really don’t have any excuse for it. I have been listening to my new CD set, and I have been messing around with some pet projects. But all in all I’ve just been slacking off. I have made some changes around here though. I’ll just jot down a few things that come to mind today:

The MiniBlog
During a recent upgrade to the blogging system that this site runs in (WordPress) I broke the mini-blog. I had such high hopes for the thing when I implemented, but it just turned out to be a hassle. I’m still on the search for a good Miniblog or linkblog plugin for WordPress. I haven’t realy looked to hard in the past little while. I will get on the ball this weekend and see if I can make something happen.

LPE Utah
My good friend Ray who was my drumline coach, percussion ensemble director, and really realy great friend has a few new tricks up his sleeve. What he is doing now is exactly what we used to talk about during our “if only we could…” sort of daydreams. It’s been a very long time coming. Ray has started the Layton Performance Ensemble. As of right now it sounds like a hodge podge of different people who have come through Rays paws while he was at Davis High School. Looking at the list of names he has signed up I have no doubt that LPE’s first year will be very successful. Right now just the Drumline is functioning… but down the road this could be a full on Drum & Bugle Corps.