Staying put for a while

So, as I had expected, staying in Oviedo at my Mom's was very temporary. I think we were there only about 2 weeks before things started getting crazy. Thankfully something that I had found online, back when we were in Miami, finally came through and we found a new place to stay practically the same day. I had been browsing Craigslist and noticed they had a bartering section and came across a listing for an apartment in Orlando, in trade for a professional organizer. My new landlord is one of the nicest people I've ever met and my apartment is gorgeous and since I actually enjoy organizing other peoples houses I think everything worked out really well. Within a week of being moved in, I found a job as a Pet Councellor at Petland, and Brent got a job at Subway soon after. We both worked our jobs for about a month, but I didn't really like the idea of making money from selling puppies and Brent was already tired of Subway, so we both got a job through a temp agency at Shades of Green Military resort at Disney. We both were hired as Buffet Attendants, but they ended up moving me into Room-Service, Omelet Station, Pizza and Cold Side Cook which I liked because it's always good to get more experience . All of the managers and the Chef seemed to like us alot, but unfortunately Brent, whom I've never know to get sick more than 2 days, ended up getting sick with the flu for about a week, and even though I covered all of his days, they fired him, a week before Christmas. Since I wasn't very happy about the fact that I had just worked all week for Shades of Green pulling doubles with little or no sleep and they had just fired Brent even though he had called out every day and was going to bring in a doctors note, I decided to find a new job. I found a job the same day at Seito Sushi, which I really enjoy working for and quit on Shades on Chritmas for being such a nice employer. The last piece of the puzzle was for us to get 2 cars, since Orlando's public transportation sucks, and out the blue my Mom decided that she wanted to buy me a car for Christmas and gave me a check for $5000. We spent about 2 weeks hunting and I decided to buy a 02' Mazda Protege5 for $4500 which I'm really excited about and can't wait to take on a road-trip. It's a nice little hatchback, basicly like my old Aveo on steroids except it'll probly live alot longer. So, now, all we need to do is find Brent a job, finish fixing the truck, get Brent in school and everything will pretty much be perfect. I'm just crossing my fingers that things keep going this well because my luck hasn't been this good in a long time. Well, that was a long ramble, so I guess that's it for now . . .

Syd-

Current location- Oviedo, FL

So, Brent and I had to give up on the Miami situation after having 3 jobs in a row dick us around about paying us and our living situation not working out. We did eventually get paid, but I just don't like working anyplace where I have to fight for the money I earned, especially when I'm already underpaid. We decided to move up to Oviedo with my Mom temporarily, so we can scope out the job and apartment market of the Orlando area. I found a job flyering in downtown Orlando that pays cash daily, so no problems getting paid, and I started work only a day after moving up. If all goes well, Brent wants to start taking some classes at a community college so that it'll be easier to get into a good college in Texas when we move. Right now we're just kinda going with the flow and hoping things work out. Well, wish us luck and we'll keep you posted . . .

Syd-

A few changes in plans

So I'm still going all the same places, just for different lengths of time and on different dates. Brent and I ended up moving in with our friend Brian over off of County Line Rd. in Hallandale, right near Krop, when we didn't have enough money to leave. Right now Brent and I are working at Las Palmas restaurant in Hollywood beach just trying to save up. We'll still be going around the state to spend time with everybody whenever it is that we leave South Florida and I'll post when I know.

Syd-

On the move again . . .
I really can't believe that after all those years of freely backpacking around the state and never really staying in one place for any longer than a year, that when I finally settled down someplace for 3 whole years it had to be Melbourne. I feel like I've been trapped in a hole for 3 years and now someone has finally set me free. So now I'm back home in Miami and I'll be here until the 12th or 13th of June. After that I'll be going up to Cape Coral for a few weeks and hopefully I can make a trip up to Tampa while I'm there. After that I'll be staying in Oviedo for a few weeks and hopefully by then everything will be set up in Texas for me to move. Brent is going to be in Miami for a few days this week then he'll be going to Houston to try and set us up an apartment for us and start applying for jobs. It would be too hard for us to go out there together because I've got the 5 cats and the dog, which can't exactly just live out of the car. So, after everything's set up, he's gonna drive back to get me, and we're gonna go down to Melbourne, get our stuff out of storage and then we have to bring our stuff to Orlando to a shipping crate that'll be sent to Houston, then we ship ourselves out. I'm so excited, I've never lived outside of Florida and I'm ready to explore somewhere new. Houston's even a bigger city than what I used to, and although there's no decent beach there,  but I think it'll be a fun change. I just hope I can get some good temp jobs while I'm doing all this moving around, cuz we're really short on money and that could really impede our plans. If anyone has any side work that I can do to help them, give me a ring, I up for almost anything. I hope I can get a chance to see everyone before I go because I'm really gonna miss everybody here and it's not exactly gonna be easy to come and visit after I leave. If I haven't hung out with you yet, give me a call, and if you don't have my number, look for it on my Thursday, 3 August 2006 post. Hope to see everybody soon . . .

No longer on the market

Brent and I just got married! We were planning a trip out to Vegas to buy a 93' GMC Typhoon and just figured since we were already going out there, why not get married. We had been putting off getting married due to expenses for over 2 years now and there was a cutoff for me to get on his insurance which was on the 31st, so we just went ahead and did it. Since it was Halloween, we decided to dress up. Brent was Shannon Hoon, (from Blind Melon), in his Woodstock get-up, and I was "the bee girl", (from the "No Rain" video). We had gotten plane tickets to fly out to Vegas 1st thing in the morning, but, we missed our 8:00 flight and had to take one at 10:00 with a 6 hour layover in Charlotte North Carolina. Then the flight took another 6 hours because we had been taken father North, so we didn't get to Vegas untill about 9:00 at night. The guy selling us the truck picked us up from the airport and we drove to the strip in our new truck. At first it seemed to be running great, but after further inspection we realized that there was alot of electrical issues and it was having trouble switching into the 1st gears. Thankfully most of what we found wrong with the truck wouldn't be too expensive to fix, and since we only paid $8,000 for it when it's blue-booked at $14,000 we decided not to take it back. So then it was time to find a chapel. We wanted to get married by Elvis, or maybe Billy Idol, but apparently there was only about 3 chapels open after 11pm and the 1 with an Elvis was too expensive. When I had looked up places with Elvis' online they ranged between $300-$1,000 so chances are, even if we had gotten there earlier, we wouldn't have been able to afford him. We ended up going to Cupids Wedding Chapel because the people were very nice there and it was cheap. With the license, flowers and everything, it came out to only $150. It was pretty funny because the guy kept joking with us while he was reciting our vows saying "do you take this bee to be your lawful wedded wife" or calling Brent the virgin bride because he was dressed in a white skirt and shirt. After we left there we decided to get some food, but realized that all the casino buffets close at 11 as well, so we ended up just getting gas station food. After that we tried to find a hotel, but unfortunately Halloween is the second busiest day of the year in Vegas and there was a medical convention and a car convention that about a million people were in town for, so needless to say it was tough pickings. If there were any rooms to be found, they were $200 or more or else they were in crack town. We finally found a nice concierge that gave us a list of all the hotels in town and were able to get the 800 number for the Crowne Plaza hotel, (which is the hotel I work in back in Melbourne). I asked the 800 lady if I could get an employee discount and she said we could at a Holiday Inn Express, which is within the company. Unfortunately, after we got there, the girl at the desk wanted to see my employee discount card, (which I don't have because I only work at a Kilwins ice-cream shop in the hotel). I left a message to my boss asking if he could help us out and told the girl I'd have it in the morning. The room was awesome, it turned out that the only one left was handicapped accessible, so it had a huge bathroom and 2 queen-size beds. My boss called me back in the morning and got the hotel manager in Melbourne to fax a discount card over for me. They really didn't have to do that since I'm not really a hotel employee, but thank god they did because it changed the room price from $160 to $49. I brought Brent breakfast in bed from the free breakfast buffet and then we sat out in the hot tub and and enjoyed the nice sunny but chilly morning. After we left there we went to one of the casino buffets for lunch, but I was dissappointed because they didn't have shrimp cocktail. After that we got on the road, our 1st stop was the Hoover Dam, then we passed through Arizona. That night Brent stopped at a gas station to put some gas and oil in the truck, but since he'd been driving for 10 hours straight and was also talking to someone asking him for money, he accidentally put in too much oil. Fortunately only a few exits away he realized what he'd done and drained the excess oil out, but the damage was already done. After that the truck was very unhappy and was getting horrible gas mileage. We stopped at a gas station and asked if there was anyone anywhere near that could help, but it was the middle of nowhere and the closest thing open was Walmart 30 minutes away. We bought tools at Walmart and tried to fix it, but it was going to take alot more than we had available, so we returned the tools and drove on. At about 7 in the morning we found a mechanic in some middle of nowhere mining town in New Mexico. They ripped us for $260 to clean out the oil in the pistons and change out the spark plugs. After that we drove almost straight through to Texas getting lost, not being able to find gas stations and getting stuck in rush hour traffic. We were finally only about 4 hours away, but neither of us could drive any longer so we pulled off. I couldn't sleep because the semi-trucks kept flying by us so fast it'd rock the truck and scare the crap out of me. Brent finally woke up and drove a little further and then pulled over again. When we woke up the fog was so bad I could barely see the car parked in from of us, but I figured the sun would burn it off as soon as it rose. So, I drove nearly blind for about an hour and the stepped on it as soon as the fog started to clear. We were about 5 minutes away from Brent's Aunt's house in Houston when I cop pulled us over for not having a tag. After she saw that we had a small piece of paper on the front windsheild which is the costomary temp tag in Nevada, she let us go. Finally we got to Brent's Aunt's house and got to relax and have breakfast. They threw us a little family party that day and Brent's cousin helped him to fix some things on the car. We found out that the mechanincs had only changed half of our spark plugs and didn't clean the oil out, so hopefully we'll be able to dispute the charge. We got some real sleep that night and left at about 3 in the afternoon. We drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, and made it to my friend Lori's house in Mobile Alabama at about 12 at night. I only got to hang out for about an hour, even though I hadn't seen her in about 6 years, because we were going to be late getting home. We made it all the way to Ocala, but, for lack of any close gas stations ended up running out of gas. It was 45 degrees outside and nobody would pick us up. Finally a young girl, (probly the person most at risk picking up hitchhickers), took us to the closest gas station. Then of course nobody wanted to bring us back. A guy in the gas station agreed to take us even though he wasn't going that way, because nobody else would. After that a truck on the highway with gravel in the back flung a rock at us and cracked our windsheild. We finally made it home around 11:45 and were both several hours late to work. Thank goodness for understanding bosses.

In other news, I got a dog named Kirra and I dyed my hair blonde, black, and aqua.

Sydney Andrews-

Back Online
Finally . . . I've got the internet again. It's so nice to have the freedom again to look something up without having to go on a mission to the library or someone's house. So, I'm still in the apartment I moved to in Downtown Melbourne, but now I'm working at a computer parts warehouse. It's a good job, decent pay and lots of overtime. I'm planning a trip to Miami on the 21st and 22nd of April for my bithday, (which is on the 7th). I was thinking of going to Mai Kai for happy hour and Club Dada after that, or if not, maybe just go by Gulfsteam, which might be easier. I haven't been to a club in years though, so I figured it'd be a nice change of pace. Well anyway, I'll keep everybody posted on what's goin on . . .

Syd-

Brevard again . . .
I love my new apartment! It's definetly small, but it's really cute, the neighborhood is awesome, and it's walking distance from my new job. I work at a coffee shop called The Sun Shoppe which kinda has the feel of an indie, college-town coffee shop. Unfortunately it's still Brevard, so there's not a dammned thing to do, but I'm working most of the time anyway, so I suppose it's not that big of a deal. I just always find that I drink alot more when I live here, for a lack of better things to do. I've been running into alot of old friends and acquaintances working where I do, so atleast I'll probly have people to hang out with. Unfortunately though, there's alot of people that I don't want to run into, that I probly will, but oh well. Anyway, gotta go, only at the library . . .
Syd-

No more internet for me . . .
So, once again, my site is going to be relatively inactive. I'm moving into my new apartment today and probly won't be able to afford the internet for a while. I'll be checking both sites on atleast a monthly basis, but if you can call me, that would probly be more effective. Anyway, wish me luck, I gotta get back to packing . . .

Syd-

Updated
I just updated some of the links on my page. There's alot of interesting and useful stuff in there, so check it out. You can skip over most of the "things that I want" though, because alot of those sites are there because I don't have the internet at home and don't have a favorites list to store them on.

Syd-

By the way . . .
I finally broke down and set up a Myspace page because I wasn't having much luck finding anyone with this page. I check both, but I update my Angelfire page more often. http://www.myspace.com/lostsyd

Syd-