Tag: Constantine

Prague Wrap Up

Ok, So where to start with this trip! This is going to be one long as entry probably. Unless I get lazy!

Wed Nov 14th we packed up and headed to the airport. Got there and got through security with no problems. We were extra early because of the shuttle bus thing, but it really wasn’t much of a problem. We got the inner row (no windows) of the plane, but one of us had the isle, so that was good. I was sitting next to this older lady who was pretty funny. The flight was 10 hours from LAX to Paris. The TV screens on our seats didn’t work and about half way through the flight my glasses broke. Thankfully the old woman next to us had a nail file, so Constantine was able to screw them back together. At one point the turbulence was soooo bad that the old woman was praying! So Cute! Landing was HORRIBLE! We bounced and on the second time hitting it felt like the plane was going to tip over! Like EVERYONE was suddenly jolted hard to the left!

Got to Paris and had to take a bus to our next plane. Got on that and that flight was pretty good. Got into Prague and our luggage was no where to be found! We filed a report and headed to the hostile. Since our luggage was missing, that basically killed our plans for going out. Thankfully our host at Shelter Pension was very nice and stayed around so that we could go out for a little bit. I didn’t have my jacket on me (it was in my luggage) so I borrowed Constantine’s light jacket and we explored a little. We were very close to everything so that was great. We could easily walk to Wenceslas Square which was just perfect!! Spent most of the night in our hostel room though.

The second day we got up and our luggage still wasn’t there. They said it might be delivered at night, so I hardly slept at all because every sound I heard I woke up thinking it was them. The hostle guy came again at 9:30 and said they called him last night saying they would deliver at 2am, I guess he told them not too and what not. He again agreeded to stay for a while and Constantine and I headed out in the opposite direction from our hostle. We found a neat park and some other cool stuff in our area. Came back to the hostel because the guy had to leave and we waited an hour or so for our luggage. I finilly just decided to go to one of the THREE H&M stores within walking distance of our Hostel and bought some warmed clothes. Of course, once I got back our luggage was there! That afternoon we headed out to the Dvorak Museum. We also got very lost, saw lots of interesting squares and other stuff in the city. Saw a wonderful sunset from the banks of the river.

The third day we headed out to Prague Castle, which was just amazing! We saw St. Vitus Cathedral, Dailbor Tower, Powder Tower, Golden Lane, the Old Royal Palace, and lots of other stuff in the area! The whole thing was just overwhelming! From there we headed over to the Loretto and some other churches in the area.

Day four was a good day, but a little light on things. We basically went to Little Quarter and saw some churches, Charles Bridge, the Kampa Museum of Modern Art, the Hunger Wall and the Memorial to the victims of Communism.

The last day we had to fit in both the Old town and the Jewish Quarter because of the luggage mishap. We started off with the Old town and the Powder Gate and then wondered around the old town square area while waiting for the Astronomical Clock to go. That was totally a waste of time, but I guess it was probably reall cool when it was built 1410! We also saw the Church of the Holy Ghost. The day was very clear, so we climbed the tower at Charles Bridge, headed over to the Jewish quarter and saw a few synagoges and the jewish cemetery. We walked from there over to Prague Castle again and this time walked up the steps from the Little Quarter and saw the Cathedral again. The inside was just AMAZING this time! We also climbed the tower and it was a wonderful view of the city. That was our last night out so we went to this really nice place to eat which was in a basement but it was done up really cool! I can’t remmeber the name of it right now, I have the card or something at home. On our way back to the hostel we stopped at this cute little street vendor who was selling Staroceske trdlo

I was a little sad that we didn’t get the 6 inches of snow they had forcasted, but on the third day it snowed a little bit in the morning. On the flight in and the trainride out, there was SNOW everywhere! Idon’t know why it wasn’t in Prague! :'(

If you want to see our tracks that we did here’s a few different ways:

1) Download the GPX file and load it into your favorite program.
2) Download a Google Maps static image.
3) Download the Google Earth KMZ file. Download Google Earth here.
4) Or view it directly in your browser on Google Maps.

You can see all 959 photos from our trip to Prague on the photodump.

Apartments in Prague
Provides a variety of cheap and luxury serviced apartments for short term rental in Prague.

LACMA Dali and Petersen Automotive Museum

Another good weekend.

Friday night Constantine, Sirin, Chris and I all went out to Nunsense at the Torrance Theater. Sirin wanted to see Constantine’s new car, so we rode in it. It’s a really nice car, but still…. I will admit I’m a very jealous of it now.

Anyways, we also went out to this really yummy restaurant called Bluewater Grill. I had the prime rib, which was very yummy!

Came home after that and went to bed.

Saturday we got up and drove up to LA to see the Dali Exhibit at LACMA. It was a really good exhibit. Who knew that Dali did a movie with Disney?!?! Crazy stuff! I hated all the people there though.

After that we walked across the street to the Petersen Automotive Museum. I’ve been wanting to go to that for a while and it was nice, but not exactly what I was expecting. Way too many ghetto modified cars and not enough historic cars if you ask me. But it was still good to finally get to go. Walked up the street to the farmers market and ate lunch/dinner and then drove home.

We watched Chicken Run and made some of this crazy infused Vodka stuff! It’s gonna be delish! 🙂

Sunday we got up and went shopping for a while, then went and I got an eye exam, going to be getting new glasses hopefully before we leave for Europe! Came home from that and went for a walk on the beach and then took a nap before the Sunday night dinner.

Met up with Sirin, Jason and Steve about 7:30 and had dinner at Sirin’s place. She made some REALLY good food! 🙂

Today/Tonight I must finish the planning of Vienna, start packing, and do a bunch of other stuff.

OH! Friday I also officially created our LLC! 🙂 Yay! Fucking expensive though! :'(

Photos from the weekend are here.

Halloween Night

So Wed night I went out to West Hollywood for all the crazyness that was going on there. I was in a pretty annoyed mood about a lot of different stuff which I’ll go into later.

Const and I got to Steve’s place about 5 and then we had to wait around for him to get there. We (including Jason) walked over to Trader Joe’s and bought some stuff.

Steve finally showed up after a long time of us thinking he was dead. And then the crazyness started. They were having a party at the house and lots of people were there all dressed up crazy and what not.

Headed down the street to the huge fair. It was SOO packed you had to shove your way through. I have NEVER seen that many people in one place! Insanity. We walked around and took pics. Not the best night ever, but it was alright considering how pissy I was.

West Hollywood Halloween 2007 pics are here.

Sooo, about the reason I was so pissy…. Monday, Constantine bought a new Infinity G35 car. He’s been talking about it since I met him. I’ve always thought he was just joking cause he keeps saying he’s going too and then he says, “I’ll wait till my car gets to 100,000 miles” or “I’ll wait another year” or something like that. So I didn’t think he’d randomly go out and buy one on what seems like a whim.

I know it shouldn’t bother me. We’ve only been dating about 3 months now, it’s not my money, it’s his. The right thing to do would have been to just act happy and congratulate him about his purchase. However, as we all know, I don’t hide my emotions very well. As Jason says, I’m as easy to read as a children’s book. So he of course knew I was unhappy. Wed on the way to Steve’s he brought it up and we got into an argument over it.

Honestly, I’m over-reacting a lot. There was just so much going between that and some other stuff at the office and in my personal life that I just couldn’t let it go.

I have these very high expectations for my life and my future partner’s life. I want to eventually own a Maserati. I want to have a nice life, with a condo in Europe and a cottage in Montana and the house we live in day-to-day. I want to be able to pay for Kiera’s college, I want to be partially retired by the time I’m 40. And at this point in my life, I don’t think that spending $33k on a car is really needed, or a very wise financial thing to do.

Between now and next year (when he would have purchased the same car), it will cost him about $10,000 extra. In additional payments, insurance, gas, maint etc over the life of the car. To me, that’s not just $10,000 that’s $33,000 over 15 years, or over the next 50 years that’s $538,782!! Without making an additional contributions.

Honestly, if he had waited a year, I would have felt better about it, I would have voiced my opinion more. Or if he had just bought one that was a year or two old now that would have been fine as well.

I want to eventually lead a nice life and be able to buy a nice car without even having to think about it. But like I said, at this point I don’t think it’s the thing to do.

So anyways, I was annoyed about that, we got into it about that. Then during the party we are standing outside waiting for Jason and Steve to come out. I’m trying to lighten things up and I just say. “Hey, What’s up?”. It’s something I’ve been doing since the day I met him. I always do it jokingly and as a cute little thing. I thought between us it was one of those little couply cute things. But then replies with “Don’t say that to me, I don’t like it”. Which was just like punching me in the chest. Seriously, if he didn’t like it he should have said something about it 3 months ago and told me to stop.

AND to make the night even worse, I had bought him a present, this really cute white shirt. So I buy it and have the lady wrap it up and everything. When I gave it to him wed night, there’s this huge yellow stain on the sleeve! UGH!

Things appear better now, he came over last night and everything was good. However, I’m still going to be a little upset every time we talk about the car, ride in the car, etc. It’ll take me a little bit to get over it. Not just about buying the car, if we hadn’t gotten into it, I’m sure it’d be fine by this weekend, but now it’s going to be on my mind as our first fight for as long as we are together.

Yesterday, I bought our train tickets for Europe and I accidentally purchased return tickets from Vienna to Prague on 11/27. Our flight back to the US is on 11/26! Opps! We’ll have to figure that out, hopefully I can change the date on the tickets.

Leopard, No Trespassing, Old Houses, GHETTO!

I bet you are all sick of hearing.. “What a weekend”! But it’s been another adventure packed weekend! Sooo much fun!

So, lets start. Friday I got off work an hour early and headed home, stopped by the gym for a quick run which was nice. There was some really hot guy wondering around the locker room completely naked. You could tell he shaves his ass.

Got home after that and cleaned and then started cooking for the Ghetto Dinner. The menu included tater tot casserole, corn casserole, Sloppy Joes and Peanut pie! Yum yum! My favorite foods! 🙂 Jason and gang were a bit leary of the food to start, but ended up loving it! We also had some excellent sangria from Sirin! We also watched Marry Poppins

The night was tons of fun after a bit of a rocky start, we played card games and laughed and got very very drunk. I was really pissed at Oksana though cause she NEVER called me to let me know what was going on. So she missed out on all the fun!

Saturday morning Constantine and I got up and I made Banana Nut Muffins. After breakfast we did some random stuff and then met up with Jason and Steve to go hiking at Sunken City in San Pedro, CA which I’ve been to a few times before. But for some reason they have it all fenced off now! So you can’t get there any more! Very sad, instead we went to Korean Bell of Friendship and Bell Pavilion which was alright.

Ended up spending an hour doing really nothing. Constantine and I came home after that and bought food and then met up with Erick, he needed a strainer or something, so we ended up driving to target. He let me drive the new Audi A3 that he has on loaner. I LOVE it! I wish I could afford one! From there we headed to his house and watched Nightmare Before Christmas. Came home after that and ended up spending the night at home. I don’t even remember what we did, but I’m sure it was fun!

Sunday morning we got up and went for a walk to the Pier and back. After that we headed up to this Haunted thing at the Heritage Square Museum. I really liked it there! The place is soo cool. If you like victorian houses, you should go check it out. Along with Carroll Avenue here in Los Angeles.

Came home after that and I installed Leopard on my laptop! AMAZING! Is all I can say!

While that was installing we watched The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie. It was such an good and moving movie! It was so sad!

Speaking of…. Ever since I met Constantine, I’ve been becoming more and more emotional again. Like I used to be, I cry during movies and TV shows and what not. It’s very strange. However, my tolerance for people in general has been going down. It’s very strange.

Anyways, Constantine left after the movie and Jason and Steve came over to install Leopard on his mac. He had a bit of a hickup because he has something called Application Enhancer installed on his laptop. Thankfully we were able to find instructions on how to delete it and now it works great!

Went to bed about 10 because I was busy playing with Leopard!

Photos are on the Photodump

Adios!

“Improvement”

The other day I was stumbling and found this thing called “Flash Earth“. Basically it takes all the different satellite sources out there and merges them into one. So I looked up the area behind my parents house… Yahoo has the oldest maps, back before they started building that giant horrible golf course. Then check out Google. It’s so sad that they took all the wonderful farm/forest land and turned it into hundreds of ugly cookie-cutter houses.

Along the lines of maps. I found a Google Blog post about the wildfires here in Southern California. The Maps offer a really neat look at there areas that have burned, evacuation data, etc.

As you all know, my trip to Europe is coming up quick, and we all know I love taking pictures. However, I _HATE_ having people in them. A while back I found this neat way to do it in photoshop, but it was very manually intensive. The other day I found a site called “Tourist Remover which does it for you! I can’t wait to get back from Europe and try it out!

I’m sure you’ve all heard it already, but Dumbledore is GAY!. It’s amazing what the right wing is doing about this. Get over it people, it’s a FICTIONAL person! My god, who cares!

I was also reading the other day about how some woman’s husband was riding in a porsche going over 100mph that slammed into a concrete wall… She sued of course and won 4.5 Million!. Just redic. The guy even signed a waiver! He voluntarily participated in a dangerous event, he KNEW the risks when he started! WTF was this woman thinking. And she’s just putting even MORE grief on the family of the driver who also died because they are paying 49% of that 4.5 million! UGH!

This story also reminds me of another article I read in which a woman was $135,000 in CC debt, spent $400 a month on Starbucks, had 3 cars and SIX kids! I just don’t see how people get into this kind of mess! How can you be so freaking stupid and live like that? I currently have $1,400 in CC debit, of which I could EASILY pay that ALL off in just a couple days… But it still freaks me out that I even have any money on my CC!

The other night Constantine and I watched Mrs Henderson Presents. It was a very interesting movie! I thought it was very funny. I highly suggest going to watch it.

Last night I had my meeting with the Admissions Counselor at the CSU Long Beach for an MBA. Anyways, it seems like I should be able to get in with no problems as long as I do well on my GMAT. The only issue is that I’m not sure I want to be in Cali long enough to get it. Because we’re looking at starting NEXT fall and then a min of 2 years after that. Perhaps I should just stick it out, do my MBA here, then as soon as I am done I will look for a new job and move. Because I am sure that my current company won’t have any use for my MBA nor will they be able to pay me enough to support it. We shall see. I am going to work on filling out the paper work today, I bought a prep book for my GMAT so must start on that. My goal is to take it in early Feb. Filing deadlines is March 30th!

Tonight I will be cleaning my apartment, then tomorrow we are having “Ghetto” dinner party! I can’t wait!

Adios!