Landlord update:

She refuses to admit any wrong doing. She insists she was nice, letting us out of our lease. Yes, she was nice for that...but not for lying to us to begin with and not telling us about all of these issues. Let me clarify...there are 2 she's in this story, and they are sisters. The moral one let us out of our lease. The untruthful, deceitful one lied to us to get us to rent the place. Now it's all a matter of she said, she said, she said...because not everyone was involved all at once. We dealt with lying sister most of the time, and after we got so frustrated and fed up, we involved decent sister. Wish we had done that from the beginning, despite being told not to.

Looks like we are going to court. I'll be filing the claim within the next week or so. Hopefully a judge will see what a pain this has been for us, and we didn't move just to spite them. We did it after getting tired of their lack of integrity and respect. Our rental history will speak for us, and the neighbors are willing to tell their stories of her lying and being dishonest. Keep your fingers crossed we get our money back!

Books, books....everywhere!

Here is the stack of books I plan to get through this summer in lieu of watching television. I'm already half way done with one of them. Say hi to the little guy who is guarding them for me. Lori, does he look familiar? I'll admit...I couldn't help it last night, J was gone, I was bored...so I turned on SYTYCD. I actually looked forward to it almost as a sort of treat because I haven't been watching tv at all. It was something to do, rather something that was keeping me away from things to do. I'm lazy and I'm a procrastinator...so I put off doing everything. Yesterday I got the mail, then figured since I was out and about anyway, I took out the trash cans (which are larger than me), pulled out the hose and watered the yard and all the plants around the house. It felt good to be outside in the fresh air. It's actually been nice here for a change!

In other news, I sent a final email to our old landlord today telling her to return our deposit or we were taking her to small claims court. Enough is enough. She may be shady, but I'm not letting her get away with it. All we want is our deposit back, but according to the court websites, we are entitled to $7,500.00 if we take them to court (if the costs are justified). So give us our small deposit, or we go after the full amount. Simple as that. I'll be sure to post bad reviews on them every where after court is over too. Unless they do the right thing.

Wednesday already?

Based on your last comment....you better hurry up and come out here and visit then mom!! Don't worry, we'll still have the tv for you. Like I said, I'm weaning myself off slowly. The television was only on for a few hours yesterday and that was because my friend Candis came over to watch P.S. I Love You. We then watched tv for a bit while we studied, but that was it...for the whole day. Not a big deal to you? Well it is to me! The tv has been on for all of 3 hours in the past 2.5 days. Normally by 3pm it's been on 3 hours every day of the week....and it stays on until 9 or 10pm. Lucky for me, I woke up this morning and had to drop everything as a wave of nausea hit. It was terrible (and no, it's not morning sickness). That means, I had to cancel plans with a friend today so I could lay here in bed and take a nap. That will help me pass the time without turning on the tv. I had to go into school today for a test, but now I'm home in bed and soon to be sleeping.

Did I mention before that I finally finished Eat, Pray, Love? I have been trying to read it for months and just couldn't get into it. Well, after turning off the tube, I finally finished it and now I'm on to bigger and better things. I'm now reading Tender at the Bone that I received for Xmas and have been wanting to get in to. Hopefully I'll have this one finished by the end of the week.

Stay healthy out there...and remember....tv is bad um...kaaaay.

Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth

I think maybe I was a bit over zealous in my need to quit watching tv yesterday. Yes, I do need to quit watching tv and get out more. But I think needing to quit was the wrong approach. I get home from school today and I suddenly go into full blown panic/anxiety mode. Oh my God...what do I do? I cant watch tv. If I watch tv, I'm a huge failure to myself and those rooting me on. Well, with that attitude, I'll never succeed...so, I've decided to gradually quit. I think making my goals a little more reasonable, will make me more of a success.

The tv did not get turned on once yesterday. It is sitting downstairs sulking right now thinking it's done something wrong. No, tv...my good friend, it's not you...it's me. I need to change, I need to find myself....you'll be ok without me. WAIT!!.....I was wrong...don't go....I need you tv!

So, yesterday we drove down to the beach, and also got a ton of errands done on top of everything I posted about earlier. Not bad for one day. Today...well, like I said, I went into full blown panic mode where I felt like I couldn't breath. What? I cant turn on the television....ok, breath...sit down and breath. I'm going to fix some lunch, read a little, and my friend Candis is coming over tonight to watch PS I Love You, so maybe that will be my television fix. I don't know...the tv may get turned on for a little bit today so I can breath and relax. But it wont be on from 12:30 until bedtime like it usually is. Baby steps people....baby steps.

Addictions can rule your life

I've been contemplating starting a new experiment in the B household. Television is the suck according to J. I'm starting to agree. He doesn't watch TV at all, unless I force him to sit down and suffer through a show with me. See, I'm an addict. I cant stop watching. I watch about 100 shows and trying to keep up with them all is killing me, and wasting my time. Since all of "my" shows are now over for the season, I'm thinking of giving up cable television, and all television in general.

See, there are so many other things in life I could be enjoying. Like sunny (or not so sunny lately) So Cal. We can hike, go to the dog park, go to the beach, read, take motorcycle trips, etc. But no, my butt is glued to the couch gaining weight and not experiencing anything. Plus, do you know how much money that would save us? I would say about $60.00/month if not more.

Rather than quiting cold turkey (I tried that with smoking and it didn't work, but the power of choice did work), I'm going to give myself the choice to watch TV or not for the first week or so. The TV has not been turned on once today. Granted, it's only 11am. Oh Lord, what am I going to do? So far, instead of TV, I've cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed, read, surfed the net, and now I'm writing about my soon to be struggle. We are going to drive to J's work later to pick up something he left there, and then it's off for frozen yogurt. Not sure how to fill the time after that, but I know I want to finish this book I've been trying to read for months now.

So, as I struggle through weaning myself off television completely, I'll keep you all apprised as to my status. If I can quit smoking (2.5 years ago now), I can quit television. I figure chronicling my new adventures here, may make this site less of a bore. I may actually have a life to write about.

Here are the rules. No television or cable. I am still allowed to watch movies via my Netflix subscription (which I'm going to keep to a minimum, except if J is away). We are keeping our internet, so come the height of the new season, I will allow myself to watch ONE show only via the internet. But that isn't until September, so I'll worry about it then. I can tell you now that it will most likely be Grey's Anatomy. But who knows, come September, I may not want to watch it anymore. We are keeping the cable for a week or so, and then it will be gone completely. No more SYTYCD. :( But I'll live. (By the way, J doesn't know we are only keeping it another week....it's MotoGP season and you can only watch that on cable, so I'll have to discuss how we'll wean him off that, since it's the only thing he watches willingly).

Wish me luck people...I'm gonna need it.

To sue or not to sue....Beware...this one is long.

Where does life go? In the blink of eye it seems a year has passed. I've contemplated what to do with this blog. Believe me, I know it isn't the most entertaining blog on the planet. I started it so my family could keep up with my life here in CA, while they are still living in MN. I don't like having a boring blog, know that, but there are people who read this blog that I don't want to offend. I've just decided I'm going to be myself from now on. I want to look back here and know who I was and not some watered down, censored version that doesn't show who I really am.

Things have been crazy busy lately. First, we moved from Sacramento to Fullerton due to a relocation for J's job. This in and of itself was quite the undertaking. We had movers come in and pack our house up in Sac (rough having movers I know), but it's more than just that. You have to quit your job, pack up your house, and physically move everything. You have to disconnect utilities at one house, spend hours searching the new utilities companies and paying connection fees and setting them all up. You have to move in, unpack, and try to adjust to life in a new city. That by itself is enough to stress anyone out. Especially when you do it so frequently. You would think you would get used to it, but you don't. Well, on top of all of this, our house in Fullerton was lacking to say the least. I found this house online and J went and saw it in person. I never saw it and we signed a lease. Have you ever seen Pretty Woman when Julie Roberts is denied service at a high end store and later goes back in to rub it in their faces that she spent a lot of money some where else? Yeah, well, that is exactly how I feel about my decision to not see the house. "Big, BIG mistake....HUGE." What the hell was I thinking?

Here is a not so quick synopsis for you. We move in. Hmmm, none of outlets in the kitchen work. The garbage disposal doesn't work. What the hell? We check the breakers, the disposal everything. We finally figured out it was one of the individual outlets that had popped, but it wasn't any of the broken ones...it was some odd random outlet. Needless to say, the house was wired by a blind man. Let's see...what else. Well, when you ran the water in the bathroom sink, a rotten egg sulfur smell came out of the drain. This is bacteria in the drain I guess that was permanently clogged. Before we discovered this, the shower backed up within the first few days of us using it. Would not drain at all...not one little drop. We had another shower on the other side of the house...also clogged. The plumber comes out and pulls out what looks like a dead rat (but was just gross hair) out of the drain. Then, we started finding droppings all over the bathroom. I would find them in the shower, rinse them away and the next day, they would be back. Crap, we have mice. We call the exterminator. Sorry ma'am, that's not from mice, it's cockroaches....HUGE cockroaches. Looks like you have American Cockroaches. Did I mention they fly? OMFG. WHAT? We had them in the bathroom, and kitchen...oh, and in my closet on my clothes.

WTF, I'm paying this slumlord $2k a month to live like this? I don't think so. She knew about EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE THINGS before she rented the house out to us. How did she know you ask? She lived there before us. She knowingly rented that house out to us in that condition. She knew about every single thing and I have a feeling, she thought the house was falling apart, and that's why she rented it out to us without disclosing these things. BITCH.

Well, needless to say, I don't live like that, and certainly not for 2k a month. So, we asked to get out of our lease. After arguing back and forth, they agreed to let us out of our lease, but they kept our deposit. Can you believe that? I'd love to take those assholes to court, but it would just use up my precious time that goes too fast anyway, and cost more money.

So, after all that, if you are still with me, we moved again. So not only did we go through the stress to move to OC, after all the hassle, we had to disconnect, and reconnect and pay connections fees all over again. We also had to move ourselves our this time. Now that I'm writing this, maybe we should take them to court. Try to recoup our connection fees, and have them reimburse what the movers cost, our deposit, and all our rent. I'm not the type to sue, but I'm so angry over this.

Ugh, anyway, other than that, I cant complain. Life has been good. I'm back in school, etc. I'll post more about that later as I'm sure you are tired of reading this much right now.

Hope everyone is well!