Breanna is the boss
Mood:  bright
Breanna is doing a great job reminding AJ to do her chore.

Piggies were out of water last night, as usual. Of course, AJ wouldn’t know until I tell her. But this time, Breanna went and checked the bottle before I did. She took the empty water bottle to AJ and told her, “AJ, piggy water!” It was hilarious that Breanna knew what to do and AJ didn’t. Soon Breanna is taking over everything from AJ and she will be promoted to a supervisor.

Seamus loves to play with Breanna’s shopping cart and kitchen. He’s going to be a lady’s man like you; he will go grocery shopping and he will cook. Breanna will go to work and manage the household, and she will be reminding everyone what to do, just like I do.

Phone problems
Mood:  irritated
I was so pissed yesterday! AJ ran up the cell phone bill and I was charged $350! She made over 670 text messaging and several phone calls. Since we ran out of roll-over minutes, half of all the calls we have made were charged at $.45 a minutes or so. One of the calls AJ made was more than $20. I am having AJ pay for the bill since she has some money in her savings. But she doesn’t value the money and she doesn’t care anyway, and it’s not fair for these people who gave her money in the past. So when she gets a job, first $200 has to be paid to me, and I am going to put the money back to her savings, possibly the account she can’t touch for a while. And needless to say, I had the text messaging service terminated on her phone.

Then today, I had another phone problem. AJ was wondering where the cordless phone was, but of course she didn’t try to look for it. She was busy doing nothing as usual. After I finish my project with my class and came out of office, I found the phone in piggies’ cage. Seamus probably put it in there. And guess what… All the key pads were gone because piggies ate them!!! Even though it still works, it’s hard to push the keypads when they are half eaten. I’m selling this phone to AJ because she wasn’t watching kids and she was letting them do whatever they wanted. Now her savings account wouldn’t have much money left. She probably doesn’t care anyway.

Busy days
Mood:  caffeinated
You can tell that I have been pretty busy last few days. In fact, it was the busiest day yesterday. Not just me, but everyone and everywhere else. I had so much of catch up to do with school, kids, gym, sleep, and even work! Everyone else was busy too because it was the beginning of the months. Then the freeways were pretty busy and I almost got stuck in the traffic.

By the way, I received your anniversary card finally. It really was a perfect card, as if it was written in your own words. Thanks!

Breanna has been talking a lot, and more of the things she says make sense now. I still need to figure out what she is saying sometimes, but we have been communicating better. She is having fun with the learning machine with letters, numbers and shapes. When it asks her to locate shapes, she gets most of them correctly, and she looks very proud when she hears the applause from the machine. She’s still learning letters and numbers, but she will master them eventually.

Party is over...
Mood:  sad
Well, Joey left here today. I drove him up to Pendleton tonight. He is heading out your way in a few hours. He really didn’t want to go, but who would want to?

Anyway, we had been partying last couple of days. Joey and I went to the Filling Station Friday night. Since Joey was recovering from the party he had in TJ the night before, we didn’t leave until midnight. We called a cab around 11:30 and it finally showed up around midnight. We still had a little over an hour to drink. The bar had changed a lot since I went there last time. It was like a hip hop night and people were dancing. Joey had a beer first, but he was ready for Long Island after that so I went up to the bar and got it for him along with my second AMF. When I went back to the seat, he told me that a fat chick was hitting on him; she asked him, “What are you doing alone?” That part had never changed!!! It was pretty funny. Yes, there are bunch of fat chicks still hanging out as usual. Joey definitely noticed that. Good thing that I was there to protect him from these fat chicks.

After the bar closed, we just decided to walk home. I don’t mind walking at all especially when I’m drunk.

On Saturday, Yukino came over. So three of us drove down to Qualcom and parked the car there and took a trolley downtown. I didn’t know until I spoke to a cop at the trolley station that the Street Scene was going on that night. He told us what station to get off to get to the event, so we went down there and just listened to the music from outside for a while. We got to see the big screen there too, and I think it was Foo Fighters that was playing.

Then we hit the Gaslamp and went bar hopping. We went to this Irish pub that Joey really liked and we were talking about going back there when you guys get back. We, or at least Yukino and I got pretty good buzz going on by then.

We decided to go to the F-Street after that. Joey couldn’t find a porn DVD that had with his favorite actress so we didn’t buy anything. When we came out of the store, it was almost 2. Joey still wanted to drink and he asked around if there was any after hour bars, but we weren’t able to find one. Joey suggested going to TJ, but Yukino didn’t have her green card or passport so she didn’t want to take a chance getting stuck at the border. She promised to go with us when Joey gets back.

Well, both you and Joey had left, now the party is over… I can’t wait to have you guys back home. Joey would like to join us going out and hitting all the restaurants Downtown!

Class has started, and I'm partying!
Mood:  bright
My new class is starting today. I’m moving up to the upper division classes now and I’m in one of the management classes. I checked in and found that students are posting messages in the news group, but there are no course materials and no post by instructor yet. So we are just hanging out and chatting for now. Looks like we are so motivated that we couldn’t wait for the instructor to post the message. I still haven’t satisfied the general education credit requirements; I have 11 more credits to go, but my counselor told me that I could probably knock them out by taking CLEP. I’ll see how it works.

Joey’s deployment date has changed and he is not leaving until Monday. So he’ll come down on Friday and we’re planning to go out partying. Yukino comes down on Saturday so all of us can hang out together. I might end up partying 2 days in a row. Well, the first week of the class is light usually, I should take advantage of it.

AJ isn’t happy because her band is having a beach party on Saturday but she has to baby sit. She was complaining because she missed the party last year also. I’m not saying that I don’t feel bad for her, but I need to go out and have fun once in a while. I hope she understood after I spoke to her last night.

People bought a lottery ticket at work and they won $10, so they are buying another ticket. I never pitch in, even a dollar. I told them that I don’t like to have too much money. I’m happy as is.

I slept in
Mood:  caffeinated
I was late for work this morning. I didn’t wake up until AJ walked into the room at 8. I went to bed around 1:30 a.m. or so as usual, and I triple-checked my alarm before I went to sleep. I don’t remember turning it off. I do this only once in a great while, maybe once in 2 or 3 years, so it’s not bad. Plus people at work know that you are absent and I’m dealing with 3 crazy kids. No one complains about my occasional lateness.

I think I was exhausted because I cleaned up the garage last night. I wanted to make some room so I can park another car in the garage. I didn’t start it until 10:30 because I had to wait for AJ to come home from the band camp, then I had to run to get the water bottles filled. I moved everything including the pull up bar and tread mill. I think I made enough space for Joey’s car to fit in. You know it’s smaller than Jeep.

By the way, Clara is leaving Spectrum as of Friday. She is going to work as a real estate agent from Monday selling residential properties. I will keep in touch with her so maybe she can hook us up with a nice house!

Kids' kitchen
Mood:  a-ok

Breanna and Seamus have been following me everywhere I go in the house. They don’t leave me alone.

I moved their kitchen out of their bedroom and moved to our kitchen. Now they are finally playing with the kitchen. I guess they knew that kitchen didn’t belong in bedroom.

CD from NZ
Mood:  special
I received the CD from Reuben today! I love his music. He inserted lyrics with some artworks too. They are awesome. It would be great if I had a chance to see his performance live. Or maybe we can jam together. We have to make it to NZ one day!

By the way, Jon called today, just checking to see how we have been doing and if I had heard from you. I gave him your Yahoo address, so he might email you. It was nice to hear from him.

I'm working out tomorrow morning before I go to work, so I'm going to bed early tonight... yeah, it's 11:25 p.m. Isn't it early?

Don't rip me off!
Mood:  irritated
I went to the airport to pick up Joey last night. When I approached the parking lot, there were 3 or 4 cars lining up at one gate. But another gate had a green light on, so I drove up to that gate. There, I realized that the gate was left open and the machine wasn’t working so I couldn’t get a ticket. I never had a problem like that before and I didn’t think I could back out and get into the other lane to go through the working gate. So I just drove into the parking lot and tried to figure out what I could do. I thought of walking up to the cahier booth to talk to someone as soon as I parked the car, but all the booths looked pretty busy and I didn’t want to take a chance to get run over. I decided to talk to a cashier on my way out and I went into the terminal to find Joey.

It was about his scheduled arrival time, but I couldn’t find the flight number on the monitor in the lobby. I looked over and over, and I gave up and decided to call AJ to see if she gave me the correct flight number. Then Joey just showed up out of nowhere.

As we were leaving the parking lot, I drove up to the cashier booth. There was one car in front of me and the driver seemed to be having some problem paying for the parking. I waited for at least 10 minutes or so behind this car. But I didn’t want to move into another lane because I too was going to spend some time with the cashier to resolve my problem, and I didn’t want to hold up all the cars in another lane.

When the car in front of me finally left, I moved forward and told the cashier what had happened, and I told her what time I came in. She told me to talk to the manager over the intercom, so I yelled at the microphone inside of the booth, repeating what I had just said to the cashier.

Then the manager said, “If you don’t have a ticket, we charge you $18.” Of course I didn’t want to pay $17.50 more than I should have paid. So I told him that they should have fixed their problem instead of ripping me off. The gate had a green light and it was inviting me to come forward, then the machine ended up not functioning.

Then the manager told me that there was a “Help” button on the machine and I should have used it. But how the hell did I know, the machine might have had a button or two, but I didn’t see any signs or instructions on it. Maybe the word “Help” had faded or something. The manager insisted that all the gates were working and none of them was left open, and he could prove it because the camera had been on and he had been monitoring.

So I yelled at him that if the camera was on, he should have been able to find me passing through the open gate at around 8:15 p.m. I demanded the investigation right then. The cashier wrote down my license plate number as she was told by the manager, but soon he gave up and told the cashier to charge me only the amount I should have paid from the time I claimed that I came in.

As I was paying the cashier, I asked if the person in front of me had the same problem. She said yes, so I told her that it definitely was their problem. I think the other person ended up paying $18 though. Joey pulled out $20 while I was negotiating with the manager, but I told him not to pay. So he saved it for later to buy some beer.

By the way, I’m finding everything you were looking for before you had left, and they were not hiding anywhere. Aquaphor was on the floor in Breanna’s room. The registration renewal notice for Jeep was on the shelf at the desk, and it wasn’t even in the piles of letters, but it was sitting there by itself! My eyes are smaller than yours but I can see better (even without contact lenses).

Busy Day
Mood:  rushed
I slept in until 9 or so, but I could sleep more. I just had to get up and go to the bank to deposit the big check I got for the balance of student loan, and then went to the 32nd Street to get my uniforms. Fortunately, my cracker jacks top still fit, so I only had to buy pants. But I needed to get a hash mark, and a new rocker sewn on, so I took the top in anyway. I’m having them dry cleaned too.

After the uniform shop, I went to the furniture store and bought the sofa and love seat set for $750 including the delivery charge. Not bad at all. They will be delivered in a week or so.

Oh, they were selling BOSU, the balance trainer, for $89 or so. I didn’t buy it but now we know what to get it. I’ve been using it at the gym too.

Then I went to get a hair cut. Kelly and I happened to be wearing exact same skirt, and we both had black tops and sandals. She said her husband is retiring in October and she’s going to the retirement ceremony. She had never been to one before so she wasn’t sure what to wear. Her husband told her to wear whatever she wears to work, but she wouldn’t be wearing mini skirt! I told her that she could wear daytime dress and she would be fine.

Then I came home and took kids to Carl’s Jr. Seamus was cranky, but when a girl brought our food to the table, he shut up and looked at her, and his eyes followed her when she left the table. It was like, “hey, what’s up girl?” That little Seamus is a stud! And I was wrong about waiting for a few months to let Seamus eat the Chicken Star. I tried to feed him a baked potato, but he didn’t want it. He saw Breanna eating the Chicken Star and he wanted the same thing. Breanna was nice enough to share it with him today, so he was happy when he finally got what he wanted. Of course, three pieces of Chicken Stars weren’t enough for two kids, so I had to buy a couple of extra to make them happy. Next time, we’ll be buying two kids’ meals.

I bought a pair of new running shoes after that and came home, then I did laundry with the new washer. It was a nap time for everyone except for Breanna. When I woke up from nap, she was ready to combat. I think she wants to help her daddy…

My day is not over. I am going to pick up Joey from the airport tonight. And before that, I have to pick up Piggy food because AJ, of course, didn’t tell me until there was none left.