Pumpkins and joy

I have really been enjoying my time with X lately.  Not that we never do, but usually we hang out with friends when we don't have the kids. For 2 weekends in a row we have just been acting like newlyweds.  This past weekend we went to the movies on Friday then we had dinner.  I don't think we've ever done dinner and a movie kinda date before.  I like the movies but I hate opening day.  I don't like that many people around me when I'm trying to watch a movie.  I like to wait a few weeks after it opens, but most times I wait too long and by the time I'm ready, the movie is gone.  This weekend we finally went to watch Devil.  I liked it and I liked the fact that there were only 3 other people and no children.

Then we went to dinner.  I don't understand the whole dinner and a movie in that order.  I say it should be a movie and dinner.  First off I would probably fall asleep after having dinner and most likely drinks, then going to the theater.  Full stomach in a cool dark place?  Yeah, nap time for sure.  If you watch the movie before dinner, you have at least that one topic of conversation.  It's later in the evening so you can have your drinks and a light dinner.  We went to a 5.45 pm show, right after work on Friday.  We were out by 7 pm.  Just in time for dinner.

First we went to Hayashi.  I was looking forward to some entertainment, a few drinks and just a good ol time.  They sit us down in an empty hibachi table.  I'm thinking oh dear lord, it's never gonna fill up.  Who knows how long we'll be here.  Well we were not alone for long.  A family of like 8 showed up with 2 kids and what looked like a 3 year old asleep in the dads arms.  HA!  Thanks but no thanks.  I told X, sorry dood, we gotta go.  That's probably the con in going to a restaurant that early.  Kids eat early.  So off we go to Red Lobster. I wanted fish or shrimp, which is why I chose Hayashi to begin with.  Red Lobster was nice.  Not a lot of people, room in the bar area and a championship baseball game on.  Perfect.  By the way, I have to say that X is the most patient man I've ever met.  He always lets me choose the restaurant, even when I don't want to, because he knows that as a woman I'm "special", whatever that means.  I'd like him to choose every now and then but he says he's happy going to Whataburger or Pizza Hut.  So when I choose a burger, pizza or wing place, I mostly do it for him.  I like it too, but I know it makes him happy.
** Sidebar - X just asked me what I was doing right now.  He looks over my shoulder and sees that I'm blogging.  He's like: "What you blogging about?"  I told him that it was about our weekend.  Not the greatest topic to some I know, but I'm getting tired of going to my blog and seeing tits.  I needed something to push it down.  He thought that was funny.  I guess you had to be here.  :p


Saturday we did nothing but watch movies and play WoW.  We went shopping for pumpkins and window decorations for our little patio.   We did some dancing with the a Wii game called Just Dance 2.  You don't need to go to the gym.  You wanna break into a sweat and have fun doing it, get that game, I highly recommend it.  In fact you look forward to doing it again the next day.  It is the best exercise.  We were exhausted.  After a nice shower, I made a pasta with meat sauce and  we ended up watching Star Trek, which X had never seen.  I saw some parts at a friend's house, but didn't pay too much attention.  I really liked it.  Didn't think I would, but the nerd in me approved it and gave it 4 stars out of 5.

Sunday, after we woke up I fixed my fantasy football team because it was a damn mess.  Half my players are hurt and half of those are can't cut.  Annoying.  So then we started carving the pumpkins.  Got the seeds out, gutted it, then took some meat out which I do intend to use for some pastry.  This made the walls of the pumpkin thinner and the carving a lot easier.  Well, be careful with that.  This town is so damn hot all the time so pumpkins outside all day long.  NOT a good idea.  Then, the thinner the walls of the pumpkin are the sooner it will shrink.  I might carve a couple of more this weekend as my pumpkins will be non existent by Halloween.

This is how our pumpkins looked that night.  The first one is the one I carved and the second one is the one X did.

This is how they look tonight and it's barely Tuesday night....

They got old!!  LOL.  I still think they look bad ass.  I guess, I'll put them inside during the day so they don't completely disappear by Sunday.  The little ones were done by the kids.  They're fine, as they were only painted on and not gutted.  I'm sure I can use their meat as well when the holiday is over.

I was sad to see the weekend go.  As Sunday night nears, I get sad because I remember that I have to go to work the next day and really, who likes to go to work?  I love my home, my boyfriend, my son, my family and my pals.  Then again, work makes me never take for granted my weekends.  So I guess it's not so bad.  I need it to be able to enjoy what I have now and a little more.  

Local politicians gone nuts

This whole local political race is crazy.  I haven't read up on all the candidates but from what I've seen, any moron can run for well... anything!  I've only seen the Mayoral debate and that was just incredibly stupid.  I didn't go to college and I don't use big words, but I consider myself smart enough to understand that I am not qualified to run for Mayor.  Well, after watching this debate I realized that somebody forgot to tell these candidates that in order to run for any kind of office, you need to have taken at least ONE speech class in high school.  Salinas is the only one who is somewhat capable of speaking in public.  The rest REALLY suck.  Then again, what can you expect when we had a president like George W.?  Crazy.  It's like this country is going backwards or something.


By the way, I tried looking for that video of the debate so I could post it here, but Pro 8 news didn't post it on their website.  Sad because it's the best comedy I've seen in months.  


And the supporters for all these politicians are nuts.  Yesterday I was at a stop sign on Calle del Norte and Springfield and there were tons of people with signs.  I usually ignore them, but I kept hearing a man scream, I mean he would stand out from the rest.  I turn to the side and I see he's screaming at me!  "VOTE VOTE!!! YEAH YOU!!"  He said other things that I couldnt understand bc my window was rolled up but he looked like a monkey jumping up and down ranting AND pointing straight at me.  I was like WTF?  He had a Madeline sign up.  Crazy old man.  


Then theres that troll Arechiga.  Bullying a blogger for not agreeing with him on trashing Belmares.  That guy is stupid.  He stalked this person until he got her information and then he posted it on his Facebook.  Fucking prick.  Imagine if Raul Salinas had to stalk everyone who talked shit about him or didn't agree with him, he'd be wasting so much more time in bullshit.  This guy gets someone who disagrees with him and he goes fucking nuts.  Creep.


It's all the same though.  Some of these fools get elected and they all do the same thing.  STEAL.  ALL OF THEM.  Bunch of thieves.  They don't do a goddamn thing for any of us.  Well some do, for their rich friends.  So I usually vote for the person opposing the one I dislike the most, or the one who I think deserves to live the life of a king for a while.  


One thing is for sure though, running for office really brings out the UGLY from most candidates.  I don't understand why you cant win a battle by offering solutions and making sense rather than be an ass and waste time investigating your opponent on his faults, then blowing them up and exposing it on ads.  What a waste of fucking time and money!!  Politicians for the most part are just UGLY people.  I used to think that being political meant that you were smart and would debate your ideas in an intelligent way.  Now you have your Sarah Palins and George W. Bush's and a whole bunch of morons that follow them and VOTE for them!!  And they don't even make sense!  Then you have your uglies who use the opponent's mistakes and instead of using them intelligently on a debate, they use them on ads.  Showing their ugly.  Their greed.  Local politicians are the worst though.


Sigh. 


I know this is everywhere in the country, but I'm just really bored of this place.  Maybe one day I can finally leave.

USE CASH!

And here I thought that I'd be dormant on blogging for a while. Guess not.

I can't believe what restaurants and other businesses are putting the public through. For some reason they put in a charge twice to secure the bill or they charge the first charge without the tip and then again with the tip. They retrieve only one in the end, but they freeze your funds for at least 3 days. So unfair because it's YOUR money and you can't use it.

The bank says that it is a way for businesses to protect themselves. Maybe so. OR it could be a way to play with your money. I really don't know how exactly it works but even if the restaurant can't touch it either, it is ridiculous. In this day and age there should already be something more accurate than this bullshit. It screws the client no matter what. It is of no benefit to us whatsoever. It sucks that the government keeps telling us to turn the wheels of the economy by spending as much as we can outside our home, especially in restaurants. How can we do this if they screw us this way. Why should I go out of my way and go to an atm to take out cash just because of their thieving ways? It should be illegal.

I have had several different experiences of this kind. These are the 3 that I remember at the moment:

1. Gas station - Not sure but I think it was a Valero. Paid outside with my card. Used 10 dollars only as that week I was running low on funds. I usually check my bank every day and luckily this was one of these days. To my surprise, I see a pending charge of 50 dollars plus the 10 dollar charge on my card. I'm like WTF? So I call the store and the lady (very nice lady) tells me that I need to call the 1800 number as they have nothing to do with those charges. They use their cashier but it's the gas company's card policies so I have to call them. I get the 1800 number and call them. The lady that answered very unsympathetically told me that it's the way it is, they have to protect themselves from fraud and if I don't like it to use cash next time. That there was nothing I could do but that it would clear soon, so not to worry about it. I felt the racism in her tone. I felt like she was telling me that they needed to protect themselves from thieving Mexicans like me. So I told her very politely, "I wanted to buy 10 dollars of your prestigious gasoline, not 50. If I wanted 50, I would've charged 50 and had I known this would've happened, I would not have used your company, there should be a sign warning people about this." She tried to interrupt telling me the money would come back to me; so I told her that it didn't matter because until I got that money back, I would starve since that's pretty much all I had left. It's MY money and they're taking it from me, they're taking away MY food. If I wanted to save 50 dollars and use them 3 days later, I could do that on my own. I don't need to be forced into something I don't want. I told her that I wanted to talk to a manager and that the customer service she was giving me sucked and that I worked in media and this could be bad for them if it go out, at least in the town I lived in. She told me she'd get a manager. She put me on hold and left me there for 15 minutes until I decided to hang up. The next day the hold was gone. So I KNOW they CAN release it as soon as 24 hours. 50 dollars to make sure you have funds, even though I only charged 10 was just ridiculous. They either changed gas companies at Valero or they changed their policy because I charged there again (on purpose) and it hasn't happened yet.

2. Cosmos Bar & Grill - Now don't get me wrong, this is a very decent place. The drinks are nice and the food is very tasty. A little on the pricey side but worth it. That is until they screwed us by charging us twice. Well, not really twice, they froze the amount we owed without the tip and they charged the amount with the tip. Bear in mind this was on a Friday so all weekend long we had 2 pending charges, the correct and the incorrect one. This was, of course, unbeknownst to me as I had perfect calculations of how much money we had left (which wasn't much). It wasn't until we tried to charge something with that particular card, something stupid like lunch, that we realized something was wrong because it didn't go through (I purposely have that card arranged to not make any overdraft charges). We used the backup card thinking it was the restaurant's mistake. I go online to our bank account to see that OH surprise, Cosmos fucked us. I was a bit miffed about this because being a party of more than six, we automatically got charged with the tip, so why did they go ahead and make both charges? It made no sense. X called Cosmos to check WTF happened and they told him that it happens sometimes. BLAH BLAH, same story. Well, the charge with the tip (the correct one) went through late Monday afternoon, but the other charge didn't come back to us until Thursday morning. Almost a WEEK!! TOTAL BULLSHIT. I swore never to use a card at a bar again. ANY bar.

3. Stingray Alley restaurant - PURE STUPIDITY. We went this past Saturday to take the kids to this place. We had been there before and they have decent food, but it's the place that makes it nice to eat there. The place is decorated like Daytona, drag race, etc.. (not too familiar with the sport, so I really wouldn't know a correct title for it). Beautiful place. You can tell they really invested a good chunk of money into it. They don't serve alcohol because they don't have a license, so we knew with no temptations for a beer it would come out cheaper. And it did. Or so we thought. The bill for a party of 5 came out to 43 dollars so imagine my surprise when I saw 2 charges pending one for 43 and the other one for 433.00. WTF????????? Of course I saw this until Sunday when the place isn't even open. So today I called my bank first thing and they told me that I needed to fix it with them. So THEY fuck up and I need to fix it. Jeez. Today I had a training I needed to attend at work so X had to take care of it. I believe they were doing everything they could to drop that charge immediately. I'll check the bank in a bit to see if they have. I, fortunately, have some money saved up and I transferred some to make sure the rent check wouldn't bounce. But what if I didn't have that backup? I'm sure the restaurant would've paid the bank charges and my landlord if it came down to it; because if they didn't I would have involved the police. Still, most people don't have savings or emergency money backup. I was also very pissed off about the way they handled it. They KNEW what happened and they said NOTHING and we kept charging that day. It is a known fact that most banks will let the big check in and let the small charges follow, that would've been at least 150 extra in overdraft charges. I think it was very unprofessional of the waitress not to inform us. According to the manager when X spoke to him, he remembered what had happened and he said that he really thought it hadn't gone through, since they immediately retrieved it. Well, apparently they need to get some sort of training on it because they have no idea how their own banking works. And they should.

So to sum this up, I will try to use cash more. That sucks because I like using the card. It keeps me organized. It allows me to see exactly where my money is going and I like that. I have more control this way. I'll save the card usage for grocery and apparel shopping; at least as much as I can. Just be careful out there. You might want to ask what the policies are before you swipe your card next time.

Nice or creepy?

There's a sweet lady that comes here every week to talk to her case worker, drop off her job search, get gas vouchers, etc.. Very nice lady. Very quiet and shy, but nice.

In the 6 months that I have been here, she has seen the shit I go through. She hardly talks to me but she has always been polite.


She calls every now and then and I give her information on what's going on with traffic, if it's going to take long, for appointments, etc..(just like I do with any other client).


She seems to have recently taken a shine to me. And it's weird because I have never sensed anything weird about her, except for the fact that she whispers a lot. But not creepy, more like shy.


So I get a call one day from her and she tells me that she really likes me. That she always thought of me as a very nice girl and she has a gift for me. I told her thank you and gifts aren't necessary but she insists that it's just a little something because she likes the way I treat people. So I said ok, not really thinkging about it too much. This was on Friday.


Come Monday, she walks in and she hands me a Victoria's secret bag. I was like, wtf, did she buy me underwear? But no. I saw a very nice necklace and earrings. Very cute color. And a bag of Dove dark chocolates. She called me back later that day and asked me if I had liked it. I told her yes and I thanked her again.


**Sidebar- There's a lady here that keeps talking to me. And she's always been nice to me but I am in no mood to entertain. She's telling me her problems (like I don't have any right now). She's giving me a headache. To make matters worse, people keep calling and walking in, but not enough to keep me busy and mindless. Oh thank God Melissa called her in already. **

Anyway, a few days go by and she brings me really cute earrings that I can really use with almost everything and they kinda go with a bracelet I own.

I'm flattered but at the same time a bit concerned because I'm just not used to people JUST being nice. Especially not in this place. And she has never given me a bad vibe of any kind.

I gave her my thanks and told her that she really doesn't need to be so nice. I am merely doing my job, but that I appreciate it.

So I have to ask. Is she just extra nice or is it just plain creepy?