teresa

One of my clients, Brian, asked if Elliott and I would be interested in going to the Giants game.  His wife is pregnant and they are moving so its been tough for them to go so he was looking for a good home for his season tickets.  I looked and we were free for the game last night so he sent us the tickets.  He was kind of funny about it too because he said they are great tickets – now your not going to give these away to someone else are you, and I reminded him that we had no friends, which isn’t true but we do feel a little isolated sometimes.   We have only been to a few games.  Once when one of the contractors we work with gave us his season tickets, another time when work bought tickets for everyone, once when we bought tickets and now again last night on free tickets.  But what I have learned is everyone says these are ‘great’ seats.  So while I thanked Brian for the tickets I had no idea what he meant by great tickets.  He did say something about being on behind home plate but there are a lot of seats behind home plate.

So we left work a little early, took the BART in.  Stopped at a bar we had found last time and had a watermelon wheat.  The 21st Amendment opens up an area on the side of their building and serves food and beer.  We had had our first watermelon wheat when we went to a game with Marlon, this time it was sans watermelon slice so it wasn’t as good, but still a nice light beer, kind of like drinking lemonade.  About 1/2 a beer in our troubles melted away, my eye twitch subsided, we both relaxed a little.  We reminisced of how me met some of our current friends.  These are my favorite times with Elliott.  We have been together a long time now, over 6 years, so after awhile it seems as if you have heard everyone of their stories.  We laugh about certain stories being our story number 3.  But every once in awhile one of gets to a time or a place with our memories that we haven’t gone before with the other and its like we get to know each other even more, its always a special treat!

After we finished our beers we walked the rest of the way to the park.  Brian was the second season ticket holder to tell us we had to get a Cha Cha bowl.  I didn’t listen the first time someone suggested it because when we got there no one was in line so we decided to try something else.  Anyway this time I decided to listen.  So we walked first to go get our Cha Cha bowl which we decided to share.  I saw people taking their bowls to a counter of dispensers, like the ketchup ones at Costco with the spicket and the big red button, so I asked the guy at the counter, should we put something in this.  He smiled and said the BBQ sauce is great in it…wait… I just realized my title is wrong.  Because at this point I ordered a Corona, because that was about all they had, which was my second beer and there is another beer in my future of this story, oh well I am leaving the title as I like it as it is and I think my 3rd beer might have been borderline dark anyway so technically the title is still correct.

So we politely shared the ChaCha bowl which has white rice, jerk chicken, some sort of veggie dollop and BBQ sauce… I think that was it.  We sat on the edge of a sectioned off area that is normally open but there was a private party.  We lamented our curiosity of who this company was because as many companies are hunkering down because of the economy they were hosting a buffet dinner at the Giants game which can’t be cheap.

After our dinner we walked around the other side of the park to see the view of the water before making our way to our seat.  So this is the part that became interesting.  We go through the doors of the lower level and show the gentleman our tickets, he says “go all the way down to the end”.  Well I am a couple beers in so I am not paying attention to what this means, meanwhile Elliott is asking what did he say?  So we go to the end and show our tickets to another person who points to even further down the aisles, and another person checks our tickets and walks us to seats that are literally one row away from the field.  We are in a dug out essentially eye level with the field.  Crazy!  Quickly I decide these aren’t Brian’s personal tickets these must be his company’s tickets.  Which isn’t fair to Brian, but I can’t even imagine the cost of these tickets or that they are even readily available to the general public.

I jokingly say they probably deliver you drinks and food in these seats.  At that point a lady comes by and takes the order of the kids in front of us.  Elliott quickly snatches some pictures so that in case they were to find us out and move us to the real seats we could  prove that these seats exist and we were indeed in them.  Eventually we settled into our reality for the evening.  We did eventually order a burger, cracker jacks, and 2 beers, mine was an Anchor Steam (a deep amber beer… but still no headache today!).

The game was great except for the end, they lost in the 13th inning – yes it was a long game.  The Giants made a triple play, which was amazing to see in person.  It turns out you don’t see one of those everyday, the last triple play the Giants made at home was in 1980!  We left after the Padres scored 4 runs in the 13th inning.  The problem with taking the BART is if you miss the last train around midnight you are stuck so we wanted to make it back so we could come home.  The bummer is they had fireworks after the game last night, and the big booms are my favorite, but we missed them…

So pretty much I will never be able to watch a baseball game in the same way again.  I will always remember those seats.  I think there is a chance we will get those tickets again, Brian thru out some other dates when we talked.  Now I owe him dearly, I felt like I bent over backwards for them already as client, but now I am indebted.

I wrote a blog about our half marathon on our work blog.  You can see it at www.responsivebydesign.com (actually Elliott hasn’t posted it yet but it will be up this week he says).  Now Elliott and I have two outlets for blogging.  So anyway I won’t rehash the run here since I already captured the story, although I did set the story to a business analogy.  I really enjoy doing things like that, I did a lot more thinking and evaluating of experiences when I was in Toastmasters.  I do miss Toastmasters.  After the wedding I will go check out a few more clubs here and see if one is a good fit for me.

I do have a few random things that I have thought of lately that I will share.  First is I am working to get the word ‘try’ out of my vocabulary.  We all know what ‘try’ means.  I am going to try to eat better.  I am going to try to go the gym more often.  I am going to try to leave work earlier.  It means I am not really going to do it, because for one reason or another I am not fully committed to the idea, but if I say I will try to do it, at least that shows effort and I don’t have to feel bad when I don’t succeed, well at least I tried.

The other funny word in my life is ‘just’.  Elliott and I use this one all the time. I am just giving you a hard time.  I am just asking.  I am just saying.  These statements usually follow an otherwise rude comment that then is washed away by saying I am just giving you a hard time.  Now that we are aware of it we are both trying to stop…

Other than that I feel like crap today and I look like I got hit by a bus, not really sure whats up with that.  My eyes are all puffy.  And I slept for almost 14 hours!  We had some early PF Chang’s for dinner, I gorged myself with chow mien and crab wontons!  And I had to drink this crappy beer that Elliott accidentally ordered.  It is an inside joke between us that I like the heavier beers.  Normally our servers will hand the light colored beer to me and the dark colored beer to Elliott and we will switch.  So last night I order a Fat Tire, a darker but not real dark beer.  And Elliott orders some beer I have never heard of, think it was called Chimay, he says its some fancy light Belgium beer he has had before.  Well he sees the bartender pouring it and says oops thats not what I thought it was.  It was darker than my Fat Tire and had some strange particulate matter in it that kept fizzing till the end.  So I took one for the team and said I would drink the darker beer.  But I think those particulates did something funny to me.  Anyway I was out like a light when we got home, first asleep on the couch and later moved into the bedroom.  But seriously I look like I stayed up all night crying to Steel Magnolias not like I slept a lovely and well deserved 14 hours.  And I feel like crap.  Oh I forgot to tell you I have an eye twitch!  Thankfully it is my left eye which Irene says in Chinese culture is the lucky eye to twitch, apparently the right eye twitch is unlucky.  So the eye twitch is back this morning too.  Last night the beer made it go away.  Perhaps a bloody marry is in order…

Oh man, I am tired of wedding planning.  One of the girls at work emailed me and said I am so excited, my boyfriend and I got engaged.  I may be asking you for wedding planning advice.  I emailed her back, not even sure if I said congratulations and said my advice is elope.

What is wrong with me, that is a horrible attitude.  It is my honest opinion but still no need to be so rough.

The process does make me laugh though.  You read articles in magazines and on the internet of all of the crazy things people do at their weddings.  I wonder if they realize they are setting themselves up for disappointment.  I mean do you really think its a good idea to ride into the moment when you are going to commit to spend your life with someone on horseback, or perhaps even on a yaught (I mean seriously I don’t even know how to spell yacht, I had to look it up, thats how ridiculous it is).

After listening to my rant on this topic our photographer called me pragmatic.  That sounds so boring.  I don’t want to be boring.  But I also don’t believe setting up a wedding to be like a fairy tale is a good idea.

The only fairy tale I wish for is the happily ever after part.  I know not every day will be easy or even wonderful.  But in the end knowing that Elliott will love me even after I through a tissy fit and that I will love Elliott even if he won’t go running with me, is what means the most.  We love each other unconditionally, and we put up with each others crap.  We wallow in the good times and persevere through the hard times.  I hope only to be wallowing during our wedding, with just enough sangria ingested, all the right music, dancing till our feet hurt, a few belly laughs, and our friends and family there to enjoy the day with us.

Well I have plenty to update the universe about, but I am going to focus my energy on our recent problems that got us into hot water.

You see our shower was working fine but slowly overtime the availability of hot water was less and less.  About a week before Krista was coming to visit it plain ran out of hot water!  It was funny because on Friday we could barely get any hot water but neither of us thought it was a major problem, we just thought our neighbors had gotten up early and done all of their dishes and enjoyed a bath.  So we went out of town for the weekend.  On Monday morning I got up to take my shower and there wasn’t a drop of hot water.  At this point I realized we had our own hot water heater and it indeed was not working.  I called the emergency maintenance number (we live in an apartment so all of this stuff is part of our over priced rent which is nice) and a man answered as if he wasn’t out of bed yet at 7am.  He said he would come but he was in Livermore so it would be 20 mins.  I dressed and waited for him.  He relit the pilot light and said it was probably the thermostat.  I would have hot water if I gave it a bit to heat up but it would likely again stop working.  I took my hot shower, went to work, and he did come back and replace the thermostat, but the hot water has never been quite right.  About 1/2 way through the shower you have to turn the valve all the way over to hot to get any hot water.

So Elliott and I lived with it functioning poorly the rest of the week when I realized Krista was coming and as house guest would probably not be as excited about the hit miss hot shower.  I called the maintenance department and they said they would come by while we were at work.  When we got home there was a note on a “Notice of Entry” stating “checked all of faucets for hot water, all are fine and water heater too.”  Well that wasn’t very nice.  I call and say its not working, they come by and say, yes it is.

We got through the weekend ok, with the valve turned all the way over.  Although I Krista thought where am I staying, in fact she said that out loud once when she realized we didn’t have a coffee maker.  On top of that, no TV…. 

Monday we called maintenance again.  This time I asked the lady to please not let the guy just leave me a note that says its working, because its not, perhaps he should try showering to see what it does.  I think she understood my frustration.  So the next “Notice of Entry” says “tested all faucets and water heater, no problems was found.  Please call me @ 555-1212 (number changed to protect the innocent) if any more problems.  Note I set the water heater t-stat on hi”.  The changing of the t-stat temp was my idea, which was a nice touch. So now what, the shower is really really hot before it turns cold and we have to turn the valve all the way over to hot half way through the shower.

So… we are signing our next year lease, yes we have been here 1 year, crazy, and have committed to stay in this apartment another year, crazy.  And the lady asks how is everything going?  I tell her what an ordeal we have had with the shower.  She says our head guy will be in tomorrow I will send him over.  So 5/13 “Notice of Entry” says “replaced the bath shower mix cartridge, replaced A/C filter and fixed the front lock.”  The filter was a nice thought.  The lock we asked them to look at as well.  The mix cartridge, have no idea what it is, but apparently it has something to do with letting water leak out of the faucet when it is turned off, so I have relocated my tupperware to the shower so I can collect the leak as evidence.

This morning it was barely leaking, right now, one drop drop after another.

Can’t wait to see what the next notice of entry says, but I have a feeling we may get but another mix cartridge.