Tag: LAX

Christmas in Iowa

Sooooo.

Here I am back at work! 🙁 Ugh. I so don’t wanna be there.

Yesterday was so long. Got up early to do stuff and ended up not having to leave the house till 10! I could have slept in. I’m not sure why, but the last few days I have been UBER sleepy! My dad and I went to look at some houses, which I think are really cute! The only problem is that the guy is asking WAY to much for them. $185k. He needs to drop it to the $150k range to make it feasible. Went to the airport and had no problems getting checked in and through security in like 10 minutes. Sat around the airport and watched The Color Purple. Which was pretty good.

Got on the flight from DSM to STL and slept pretty much the WHOLE flight. Got into STL and my flight to LAX was delayed like an hour.

So anyways, the rest of the week was great. Christmas night I went out with the gang as per usual to The Blazing Saddle. It was of course a fun disaster! 🙂 We even had a new person join this year! Amanda F from our HS. She was tons of fun! We ended up getting home at like 3:30ish. Made a fool of myself I’m sure at the Saddle but, who cares it was fun! 🙂

Friday I got up and just lounged around the house, I was pretty hung over. Wasn’t going to go out that night but I had met this really cute guy who wanted to hang out. So I headed over and picked him up and we went out to dinner at Java Joes and then met up with a bunch of his friends. Meeting his friends was a little AWK but I still had a ton of fun. We went to a few different bars including Locust Tap, 101 (SCARY!), El Bait Shop (tons of fun, including the attached 70’s bar!) and again the Saddle where we lost the girls, very annoying. I also found this really good beer called 312 Wonderful!

So anyways, I drove him home and spent the night there at his house which was a total crazyness. His dad was still up when we got there so it was like an undercover operation to get me into the house! LOL. Got up early the next morning and found out that we got a TON of freezing rain overnight. My car was COVERED in ice! So I had to drive home in that shit.

Got home only to find out that we weren’t going to go to the farm for Christmas, meaning I could have slept in more at his house. Instead I just lounged around the house all day and did nothing. That night I met up with the Adam again to go see Valkyrie. It was an amazing movie! Drove him home again and sat in his living room talking for a little bit. Got back to the parents house around 2ish.

I really enjoyed the guy, he’s very nice and very cute… I think he intrigues me most because he really compliments who I am. He’s artistic and outgoing and what not. Problems are that A) he lives in Chicago and B) has no money to come visit. He honestly reminds me a lot of Andrew, which I’m not sure good or bad? I’m hoping that maybe I can go to Chicago to visit for a weekend. I’m not to sure what will come of it all..

It was also a very sad trip home for me. First time being back to the family since Grandpa’s passing and I had a pretty hard time dealing with it. There were many times where I was holding back tears. Even at random times as I was out with friends or just sitting at home. Opening presents at Grandma’s house one of the last ones was a gift for the three grandchildren. It said “From: Grandpa” and it was a 50-state quarter set. My grandpa always collected coins and one thing we always knew we’d get was a mint set every year. This was the last gift from him, it was only 3 quarters away from being completed when he died.

Anyways, I wish that I could have spent more time back home and had more free time. I didn’t get to see many of the friends that I usually hang out with, never got to sit in the hot tub, and didn’t get to do some of the stuff that I typically do back home.

Overall it was a great trip home!

I Should Fire Myself!

Sooo a few annoying things!

First I just found out that I don’t get to use any of my vacation time for a full YEAR at my company!! What the fuck. You have got to e kidding me! I should be able to use my vacation time as it becomes available! This seems absolutely ridiculous that the company would have such a policy. I hate American companies with this sort of shit. We need vacations to relax and live. It’s not our fault that people are stuck up assholes.

Second I gave a presentation to the CFO the other day about my plans to save the company $110k over the next year. He said, and I quote… “I should fire myself”. I wanted to burst out laughing SOOOOO badly! I could not believe it! He really should fire himself this kind of horrible mis-management is just inexcusable. So I gave the same presentation to the CEO yesterday and he was PISSED! He kept demanding to know who was in charge of this before I started and etc etc. Thankfully the Executive Assistant was in there and she’s the one who placed the blame square in CFO’s lap! So hopefully something will become of this and things will get better. I have my fingers crossed that we’ll get a new CFO, but I highly doubt that’ll happen.

Third, my trainer is almost over, which I’m sad about, but also glad because I can’t afford to keep paying for him. I’m defiantly seeing the results that I want now, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with that.

Fourth, I have two people pursuing me, one I actually like and one I like as just friends. But I’m to afraid to act on the one because I don’t want to risk losing the friendship there as well. It’s all very confusing and very annoying! Damn boys!

Other then that, not much has been going on this week. I hung out with Kris/Jason pretty much every day this week. I’ve been very very tired all day too. Tuesday I went to Jason’s for dinner and then Kris joined us. Jason even made cookies! How nice of him. Last night I went to Kris’ and we watched the final two Freddy movies. Tonight we’re going to watch some other scary movie as well.

I’m getting a little over whelmed at work right now. Two HUGE projects going on at once, and only ME to manage the whole IT infrastructure of this company. Including helpdesk functions, etc. I just don’t have the time to do anything else!

Ok. I’m out.

San Diego and Dreaming!

Another trip to San Diego and another great time! I love that city and it makes me want to move there even more every time I visit!

Last week was VERY productive! Aaron got here early on Thursday morning and we went out for breakfast and then came to the office. We analysed everything and worked through the numbers and what not and found out that we can save my company 43% per-month on phone costs, which amounts to around $65,000 over the next 12 months! Insanity! I was basically unable to believe it for most of the time. I kept sitting here saying, “We have to be missing something”. Thankfully we put a line item in for a monthly cost called “Fluff” @ $1,000 and we also built in 50,000 talk minutes @ $0.035 so hopefully that’ll absorb anything we missed!

Friday night we all went out to WeHo and I got WAY to drunk, but oh my god was it tons of fun! It was a good time just like what we used to have. Got home about 3ish and was up till around 4am. Got a call Saturday morning from work about something not working which was very very annoying.

Got up about 9ish and was planning to leave for SD much earlier, but everyone was slow and the drinking was crazy, so Kris and I went to breakfast and then picked up Aaron and off to SD we went. Got down there and I was going to take the scenic route down and just chill in the beach cities and what not, but Aaron wanted to go to TJ, so we headed there. It was a very interesting experience to say the least. I got some really cheap shoes and Kris got some really cheap Alc! Yay!

After that we headed to the hotel room which ended up being a Euro Style hostel! We were NOT expecting that at all but it was a REALLY cute place and had it been in Europe and wasn’t so fucking expensive it would have been perfect. When we got there Aaron apparently knew the front desk clerk guy which was a little AWK.

Went to the room and relaxed for about 30 minutes and then headed out to the house of blues for appetizers and a drink. Aaron said he was tired and went back to the hotel. Kris and I metup with his friends at the Yardhouse for dinner and we were there forever. It was a TON of fun, but they all just kept talking and talking. After that we went next door for a drink and then headed back to the hotel room. I think we got back at like 1:30ish or so and slept till 9:30 the next morning.

Got up and ate breakfast with some of Aaron’s friends and then headed to Cabrillo point which was just amazing! From there we went and toured Kris’ old college which was CUTE as hell and then headed back to LA. Dropped Aaron off at the airport and then went home for a few hours, took a nap then Jason, Kris and I watched 2 more freddy movies.

First Week!

Well, the first week of the new job… It’s been interesting.

Everyone here is very nice, but I really do need to learn Spanish as it seems most of the employees know it here and they like to speak it a lot! There’s already been a slight language barrier between me and some of the people’s names… IE: Hymay = Jamie, apparently?

Other then that lots of crazy stuff. This company pays nearly $25k a MONTH in phone bills! Redic! Of course nothing is documented, the contractors are complete idiots who have been doing all this work. I asked them on Tuesday for a list of all the passwords, the guy says he doesn’t know any of them then gets on the phone and says that his people are “working on it”. It’s Thursday and I still do not have that information. They sent me passwords to get onto one of the systems they have and I tried signing in, no luck. So I email them and tell them that the passwords do not work. I get a reply back with the SAME username and password. I ask them THREE times to change it and they do not. It still doesn’t work!

THEN I get the password for another of their system and they are like: “Include the quotes in your password”… WHO THE FUCK does that? Redic!

Other then that, life has been good. I spent last night hanging out with Manny up at the gym. That was very entertaining, this crazy lady who was working out there came over and started talking to us and she said. “You boys should come see me sing tonight, I’m going to be signing tonight, at this bar, I’ll be singing”. Hilarious! She had TONS of make up plastered on.

I also started my personal trainer again. I was in lots of pain on Tuesday from that, he had me do this hand-bike thing for Cardio. The sucky part is that his schedule is changing, so now I have to go in at 6am on Tuesdays!

This new schedule of working 8-5 has me feeling like I have far less time to do stuff around the house! I feel much more pressed for time and not as relaxed as I used to.

I cannot wait for my first paycheck! 🙂 Did I mention the $1,500 thing with WR? Anyways, a few days after my last day there I get an email saying that they needed me to repay the $1,500 loan for moving expenses up to Redondo. When I moved up here, they said they would “Pay for moving expenses to compensate for being asked to move up to LA”.. Well now they are saying it was a loan?! I think NOT! Ugh, very annoying. If they take it out of my last paycheck, I will be taking them to small claims court. This is unacceptable!

Other then that, things have been going great, life is good, friends are great, and I do enjoy the new job, but it’ll take some time to get used to. No throwing up this time!

Weekend Recap…

Ok, So I am on the plane now and thought I would take some time to write about the weekend.

Lets see, I really didn’t do to much during the week. I went to the gym with Dustin one day and no gym the rest of the week. Iw as pretty lazy. Friday I went out with Sirin and Christian to this place in downtown LA called Seven Grand. It’s a whiskey bar that Guerrilla Gay bar was hosting at. Tons and tons of fun! We hung out and talked and played pool and what not. Matt was there and I tried buying him a drink, but he declined. How sad! 🙁 OH well.

Drove back to my place after that and the three of us drank the bottle of wine that Constantine and I brought back from Austria. It was not very good. Christian spent the night and Saturday morning I drove him home and then was getting my car washed when I got the first of many bad news phone calls during the weekend. I had planned to hang out with a bunch of people and go to a gallery opening that night, but I cancelled all those plans and just ended up sitting at home all day reading and doing random computer stuff and debating about what I should do.

Sunday I got up and went rock climbing. It was just me and Jerry setting up so that was fun. We talked a lot and he taught me some interesting stuff. Jenny and Megan showed up and some other guy. We all did some rock climbing on three different climbs. I made it to the top of two of them and then failed on the last one. The last one is called Birdshit crack and I have yet to make it up that one. There’s this weird move you are doing because you’re coming out of this crack and have to turn and get yourself up somehow. Anyways, it’s hard to explian, but I just can’t keep my footing on it. Very annoying.

Had a great time rock climbing, but I got two calls during that with more bad news. After climbing we went up and had a picnic up on this mountian thing and just chatted and stuff. Lots of fun!

Drove home after that, called Constantine on my way home and of course he didn’t answer. I was debating about what to do and ended up just calling my boss and he said to go home and work from there. So I bought the tickets and then freaked out because my flight left at 5am Monday morning and this was 5pm Sunday night. So I had to arrange someone to take care of the cats and drive me to the airport and I had to pack everything. What a mess. I was freaking out.

My friend Rob came over and we hung out for like 45 minutes and watched some TV and caught up. It was relaxing to have him chill with me. He’s very laid back and cool.

Called Constantine again and left another message about me being in Houston on Monday for 3 hours and seeing if he wanted to have coffee or something.

He called back a little later and we talked. I was very angry with him and with everything else that’s going on and called him an asshole. As soon as it came out I felt so horrible. I wish I could have taken it back, rewind the tape…I didn’t know what to do. We talked about a lot of random things. Sounds like he’s having a great time in Houston, sounds like he’s moving on and forgetting about me and all the great times we had together. When I got back from Lone Pine….(stop me if I wrote about this already??) anyways, I noticed that someone from houston opera house and Halliburton had both spent a LARGE amount of time reading EVERY entry about Constantine and I all the way back to when we first met. I find this very very strange, why are they reading about all this a month after it happened. Why are they spending so much time going back and reading about everything that’s happened… I don’t get it. He said he knew they had done it. Sirin has her theory, but I am guessing that’s not the case.

Anyways… Being in Houston, being so close and yet so far away from him. In the short month I feel like we’ve already grown so far apart. I’m moving on very well, but with all this shit going on, I just want him back. I want to hear his voice and have him comfort me. After readin “Call me by your name”. I keep hoping that he’ll show up in Iowa, we’ll see each other from across the room, run into each other’s arms and kiss and swing each other around and be so happy (ala the wedding scene). I kept hoping while I was waiting in Houston that he would show up at the gate and say. “I’m comging with you”. I know that he won’t, but I need support right now, I could really use someone to lean on. To cry on his shoulder, to hold him and have it feel like everything will be ok. I wish he could be there in Iowa, to sit in the hot tub, watch the sky and talk about my grandpa with me.

My crying has been so random lately. I just can’t stop it. It’s very annoying.

On a funny note. There is this spanish couple in the seat infront of me on this flight, they have lunch on this flight (amazing!) anyways, they don’t speak ANY English, the flight attendant was aksing everyone if they knew how to say “Turkey” or “Ham” in spanish. No one knew. She had chicken, beef and fish on her little translation card, but no Turkey or beef. Anyways she started making farm sounds. It was really funny. Then they answered by mimicing the sounds. Very entertaining. lol. On the flight from LAX to Houston, I had the whole exit row to myself. That was very nice. 🙂