managing stress in a fast-paced world

I had lunch with Hitomi today, she’s always a fun person to hang out with. One thing she mentioned to me as we were saying goodbye was that I havn’t changed, I havn’t aged. I thought it was funny because she looks pretty much the same too.

Driving to work sucks, it’s just a huge waste of time in my opinion. Anyways, yesterday and today I noticed alot more CHP officers ticketing people. Too bad, it seems to me that they come out when traffic isn’t bad because people are on vacation. They end up getting the poor people who don’t get vacation.

I hear they keep closing and re-opening I-80 up in the Sierras. Greg called me a few minutes ago and he decided to spend new years with the rest of us in the bay area instead of up in Tahoe… I don’t have any plans yet, but it should be a fun yet relaxing new years for me.

8 of us got back from Tahoe pretty late Monday night. It was a fun trip, kinda expensive for how little boarding I did, but at least it wasn’t painful. I only fell twice in 2 days. We did leave a little late Sunday morning since I didn’t wake up at the right time, but we got to Alpine Meadows in good time. Jimmy and his caravan left earlier than us and we met up there in the parking lot. It was pretty empty, which is a good thing, lines were short and the although the snow wasn’t great (kinda icy) we had a good time.

We headed over to Reno where we stayed at the Eldorado Sunday night, had the Chef’s Buffet which wasn’t so great this time. In the morning we headed out to Northstar and boarded again. On the way home, it snowed alot… almost couldn’t see the road.

My dad is leaving for Vietnam tomorrow, the other day I was at home and he was telling me about some new camera he bought but it hasn’t come yet. I asked him why he didn’t just track it… anyways, eventually I asked him where he ordered it from, now here’s the funny part. His reply was, “oh you know… from the internet.”

To anyone who doesn’t have a christmas tree yet and really wants one, this year it seems like there is a big tree surplus. Home Depot in South San Jose was selling trees at 75% off, total at checkout a whopping $8.12 for a 6-7 ft. Doug. Fir.

Yesterday after work I ventured over to a sprint pcs store to completely change my plan and get a new phone. The salesman at the store was a little bit of an idiot. As I asked him questions and what was the best phone and all the specs plus plans, he answered with all the wrong answers. Eventually I decided on what I wanted and all he had to do was do the work, well so my account had 2 phone numbers under it, and it only had a $200 spending limit. What I really wanted was 5 phones under sprints new Fair & Flexable plan for families.

So the salesman told me there was a problem with my account and I could only have 3 phones… I even got him to try and get his manager to upgrade my account. Seriously I spend over $1,000 on sprint service each year for the past 5 years. Anyways, I told the salesman I couldn’t do it unless he could get me at least 4 lines, and then I left because he couldn’t.

When I got home, I called up sprint customer service and 45 minutes later I had an upgraded plan for up to 6 phones and unlimited spending. Now here is the funny part, 5 minutes after I finish doing all that work getting my plan upgraded, the salesman from sprint calls me and says, “hey, my manager must have upgraded your account because now you can get 6 lines.” I wasn’t surprised, when he asked if I wanted to come back to the store and pickup the phones I said, “No, not really…”

Eventually I did go back mainly b/c they had a really good deal on the phone I wanted. I got 5 Samsung VM-A680’s for $20 each, and a monthly service price of only $100 for all 5 phones.

I signed up to bring seafood stuffing to the company potluck, it’s surprisingly easy to make and is really good. I bought live crab at the 99 Ranch market, dirt cheap at $2.29 a pound! (only on the weekdays…) Anyways, it took me a few hours to prepare the crab, I was exhausted by the end.

Good news is I was told by several people that my stuffing was one of the better dishes there! Our office admin was so funny, a week before she asked me what was in seafood stuffing, to which I replied, seafood and stuffing. Eventually I told her shrimp, scallop, squid, crab, etc… It was so funny, her jaw just dropped and I could almost see drool coming out, then she said, “you are my new favorite person!”

So on the morning of the potluck, as I was cooking the stuffing and seafood, our admin came into the kitchen to setup all the other stuff. We started to talk and she told me she had a dream about seafood stuffing the night before. haha, now that is funny!

I fixed my car on friday, took it out for a test drive and it was great… same thing on saturday. Then on sunday I started it and make a u-turn, I heard a very slight pop… little did I know how serious the problem was.

As I started to merge onto the freeway I knew something was not right. The steering was all loose, I could turn the wheel 20 degrees and it wouldn’t make a difference. As I drove around I noticed there was alot more road noise than before and it was coming from the right side. I stopped eventually and took a closer look. The left wheel was definately loose somewhere, the lugs were on tight, but when turning the wheel it looked loose.

After I got home finally, I pulled the wheel off and immediately saw the problem. I knew something wasn’t right when I had that one extra nut laying around. I had forgotten to put the nut back on the tie rod end… for those that don’t know, this is the thing that connects your steering wheel to the actual wheel.

Whew, I was glad nothing permanently broke. The car is designed pretty well in the fact that if there is no nut on the bolt, it’s designed to still work.

I spent a good part of today at my grandmothers house picking fruit from her tree, it must have been 12 feet or so up the tree. She’s a short woman so I climbed up on the ladder and started to chop away at the tree and the rest of my family picked the fruit off of the branches. At one point I accidentally got stung with a needle from one of her cactus plants. It didn’t hurt so bad but then later when I got home my finger really hurt! it’s slightly swollen and is pretty numb.

I almost forgot to mention the neighbor who came by in the morning and was handing out invitations to their holiday party… talk about late notice, she left us an invitation and it said “Dec. 11th” at first I thought it was really nice, then I realized today was the 11th!

All day I thought, hmm how weird is that to get to know your neighbors… they are an older couple and I doubt I have much in common with them. We’re a pretty quiet group anyways. In the end we didn’t go over, it’s just across the street too. How lame are we!

I spent the last two weeks fixing my car, it really only took me 2 days to replace the front suspension and front brakes. Most of the time was spent figuring out what was broken and then waiting on parts. The best prices are always online.

In about 8 hours I replaced all the front suspension parts, axles, and brakes. The car does drive a whole lot better now, no funny noises or anything. Funny thing is how the only part that was making the noise was a $20 bushing… well that and one of the CV boots. Both parts are only $60 total, but I spent almost $1,000 for everything. Alot of stuff didn’t need to be replaced, but I figured I’d better get it done all at once.

There’s still alot of work to do on it, but it’ll be fun and a nice useful car to have and drive. I almost can’t wait to finish it. Sometimes I forget how much fun it is to work on cars.