We need some hobbies!

We love our apartment. When we were looking for apartments, it was an adventure for us. It was our first time looking for apartments and, I'm ashamed to admit, we didn't really know the best way to go about it. We looked at some around my school and actually put a deposit down on one. We decided to look at other apartments while we could still get our deposit back to make sure that we were getting the best deal.

That's when we decided that looking on the internet is not the best place. Surprisingly, very few apartments actually put things on the internet and those that do never have the actual price of the apartments.

However, we found one that looked to be way out of our price range, but we decided to go anyway. And, of course, fell in love with the apartment. It has two bedrooms, 2 baths, a decent kitchen, 3 walkin closets, a porch with a fantastic view, a swimming pool, beach volleyball, a workout room, and even tanning beds. Plus, with the apartments providing water and cable, it was someplace we could afford.

However, we got new owners. And they brought new changes. Change number one was that no more free water. When they built the apartments, they didn't build they in a way that they could easily split up the water. This was why the other owners just paid for it; they didn't want to deal with the hassle of splitting up the bill. The new owners have some company that does some formula that makes it so we (with only 2 people living in the apartment) don't pay as much as the people across the hall (with 4 people and a dog) but we still worry we're getting a crappy deal.

Then they randomly decided to throw in sanitiation and garbage disposal in on top of the water. grrr....I guess that's what you normally pay with your water bill, but still!

So last week, Carl and I come home to a nice note that basically says that we were informed when we signed our year lease that the cable contract was going to change (we weren't). The new owners didn't like that they were providing "free" cable to the residents and so were going to work out a new contract with the cable company. They finally decided to basically increase our rent by $40 MIDCONTRACT in exchange for cable. They say that they weren't happen with the outcome, but make sure to point out that this was about a $25 savings compared to what we would normally be getting.

Understandably, Carl and I were upset. We talked to his parents and found out how much they were paying for their cable. (they have the same cable we have, minus the HBO.) They were paying about $45 dollars. We got online and found out that to get all of the channels we currently get, plus the HBO package (which includes like 10 more HBO channels than we get right now) was only about $40. And shouldn't the apartments be getting a group package seeing how there's about 150 apartments? Basically, the apartments are ripping the residents off.

Carl talked to them on Monday, told them they were ripping us off, and said that we couldn't pay the extra $40 a month. So, they're disconnecting our cable on Sept. 1. I told Carl we need to find some new hobbies, because we won't have TV anymore. We'll just have to watch a lot of movies I guess...

On some different news, school started for me yesterday. I think this is going to be a harder semester, with lots of pointless homework. Wish me luck!

It's about time!

Yes, I know. I've been a failure. You have all anxiously been checking my blog waiting for one of us to update and we've both failed you. I'll just give you a quick update and then hopefully we'll do better.

Let's see...My last day at the bank was last Friday. I couldn't get my 20 hours in with school, so had to leave. And to tell you the truth, I was relieved. I was getting sick of working at the bank. I enjoyed the people I worked with, but was getting frustrated with the work.

I have another job lined up. I'll be teaching ACT prep classes for Kaplan. It'll only be a couple of nights a week and maybe some tutoring during the day. It'll be much more flexible with school and I won't ever have to decide between school and work, which I had to do sometimes with the bank.

The only crappy thing was that I had to retake the ACT. ACK! I did that this morning and managed to pull off a 28. The math about killed me. I don't remember any geometry.

Carl started school on Monday. He's already had two quizzes and had to study lots. Today, I took a nap while he studied for about 3 hours. Not fun at all! He's not doing research on a daily basis, but just doing a little bit here and there.

In big family news, Shanda and Jared finally welcomed baby Eli. He's almost a month old, so this is a little belated, but welcome baby Eli!

Also, my favoritist cousin, Aislinn, came home from her mission on Monday. I missed her while she was gone and am so excited she's home. Welcome home Aislinn!

More Birthday Fun

Now that blogger is cooperating, I can finish delighting you with tales of my birthday. Amber, Carl got me a necklace, a camera case, Mancala, and game called Blink, Batman Begins, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Sunday was our good friend Brock's birthday, so we celebrated our birthdays on Saturday with pizza and cake, followed by go-karts and an awesome game of Mini-Golf (often called Putt Putt out here). Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so didn't get any pictures.

On Sunday, we went to the in-laws house and Carl made me a wonderful banana chocolate chip cake. It was very yummy.

And yes, I look funny. I just barely woke up, so my hair is all nice and creased and if you look closely, I probably have what is commonly called "Waffle Weave Face" at Colleen's house.
I almost got them all out, but the one's at the bottom of the 'T' were hard to get too...

So remember my oh-so-selfish post about work not doing anything for my birthday? Well...

Ta-Da! My birthday party at work. They did it on Monday and had yummy pizza and caramel brownies and fruit with a yummy fruit dip. They got a bunch of medical supplies and decorated the table with them.

Also, on Monday the 14, Carl's brother and his wife, Phil and Bonnie, had a cute little baby, Alisa. I was hoping for one on my birthday, but so far I have just have Tressa on the 13th and now Alisa on the 14th. Maybe one day somebody will get it right. Happy Birthday Tressa and Alisa!

Sunset

The other day my cousin, Brent, showed me a new technique on how to combine pictures to account for the short-comings of digital cameras. Many of you have probably taken pictures that either the sky looks beautiful and everything else is black, or the people in the picture looks great but the sky is just this non-descript white color... Well, my cousin taught me a method of combining 5 pictures (or as many as you want) to get the "perfect" shot. I have been keeping my eye open to find the perfect test to see if the technique works. The other night, as we were leaving my parents house (and to Tiona's dismay), I saw the perfect picture. The only problem was that I didn't have my camera. I stole my dad's camera and took about 14 pictures. After about 20 minutes of aligning 7 pictures and manually combining them (I don't have photoshop, which does it automatically...) I had the finished product: my first picture of a sunset that looked like what I saw. I hope you enjoy the picture!

Happy Birthday to me!

I apologize for the lateness of this post. Yes, I know my birthday was 11 days ago and you guys have all been patiently waiting to find out what we did. Well, on Friday, we woke up, opened presents and then went to fabulous Kings Island!


Kings Island is an amusement park about 45 minutes away that's much bigger and better than Lagoon. I love it! It was a beautiful day, not too hot or too humid. It wasn't too crowded so we had very nice lines:We rode some awesome rollercoasters:We did have to wait in some lines.But we got to watch people get soaked on the log flume for a while. (Mainly because Carl wanted to take pictures of the big splash.)We ended the night watching fireworks by the wannabe Eiffell Tower (I don't think that's how you spell that...)


The next day Carl went to a service project for the church at a school for the disabled. They did a lot of yard work and reshingled a couple of pavilions and did a lot of other work. He came home so dirty! I took some pictures so you could see how dirty he was.

Here's his feet. Yes, notice he's not wearing any socks. And no, he's not tan. That's the DIRT line. He was one dirty boy. We had to soak his clothes for about 6 hours in OxyClean and then bleach them. The shirt is still stained.

I have more pictures from my birthday, but blogger is being stupid right now. so this is all you get. I hope it satisfies for now.

Crazy, Crazy Day

Thursday was quite a crazy day. It started out with me not being able to eat my breakfast. I have these days where, for some mysterious reason, I can't eat breakfast. (No, I'm not pregnant!!) I will gag about 5 bites down and then finally give up. On Thursday, I only made it about 3, before almost throwing up and deciding it wouldn't be a good idea to keep going. So, I threw the rest away (Yes, it's a waste, but Carl can't eat it because it has nuts in it) and headed to work.

Now, this next part might sound a little bit selfish, but just read me out. Last week was the bank manager's birthday. We all pitched in some money and got her a nice present and had a little party complete with some very yummy lunch. So, yes I was expecting a little something for my birthday. Not the same extent, but maybe a little cake seeing how it was just a week later. Nada. No luck. My manager and Pam wished me happy birthday as I was leaving work and that was the only time my birthday was mentioned. Yes, I was slightly disappointed and yes, it is selfish, but I was only expecting something because we had done such a huge thing a week before for somebody else's birthday.

Oh, and somebody ate half my lunch. Grrr...we have a community fridge and everyday I put a fruit cup and a yogurt in there. Every day. And they're stacked on top of each other, so it's obvious they're together. I eat that a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. That's it. Just enough to hold me over until dinner and sometimes it makes me positively full. I was really looking forward to lunch because I didn't eat much breakfast. And somebody ate my yogurt! If you didn't bring it, don't eat it!

After work, I had an interview at Kaplan. They teach prep courses for the MCAT, LSAT, ACT, SAT and all those types of tests. Carl taught for them out in Utah. Well, because of my school schedule next semester, I can't work at the bank and thought Kaplan might be good, especially if I could get qualified to teach the NCLEX, which is the nursing licensure exam. Now, the interview was more of an audition. I filled out a little application online and told them my test scores and they called saying they were very interested in me. I had to go teach a little 5 minute lesson so they could see my teaching skills. I was very nervous and worried about getting there on time. It was up by Norwood, which nothing to most of you that read this, but I had to drive through Cincinnati during rush hour. Needless to say, I hit no traffic and got there a half hour early. It went very well, she seemed very impressed and I have an interview on Tuesday.

After my audition, I headed to youth conference. Carl had gotten a call that afternoon asking if he could come chapereon that night. After he got there, he found out they needed another female chapereon, so I got dragged into it as well. I got there right after dinner and so had a tiny tiny dinner, so Amber, I lost 3 pounds on Thursday! Hah! I was way overdressed, but that's okay. We ended up going swimming. There were some kids who were on swim team, and so challenged the leaders to a couple of relays. We did a 100 medley relay, which does backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle, and a 100 freestyle relay, where everybody does freestyle. The youth originally tried to get Carl and I onto their team, but then the leaders found out we used to swim. We changed sides pretty quickly, even though the youth offered to pay Carl. Well, we managed to drag up 8 leaders that had all been on swim team in their younger days, and so we had enough for two teams. My favorite was when we were planning who would swim what on the medley relay and the kid in charge of the youth team looked at me with the leaders and said "You're an adult leader?" and the color just drained from his face. I guess I don't look my age...

Well, we managed to stack one relay team by having a lady that used to swim for Skyline do back, a guy that was the state champion breaststroker his freshman year do breast, Carl doing fly, and for some odd reason, me anchoring doing free. (I think that was only because Carl's a better flyer that I am) Well, both of our teams beat the youth soundly. By about half a length. And we were only doing 25 yards each.

Well, the youth wouldn't have it, so we switched up the teams a little bit and did the free relay. And it was repeat. Once again, the youth's three teams couldn't take us on. They were quite upset, if I recall. So, one of the youth challenged Carl, the leader from Skyline, and another leader to a 50 free. I'll just say he lost. He was outtouched by Carl and that other leader (I think his name was Brian) and the lady from Skyline beat them all soundly. It was quite satisfying to know we all had in us and could beat youngster working out on a team everyday.

It was a very busy day and I didn't get home until about 11 that night. Details about my birthday to come!

Fourth of July Fireworks

Here is the picture that Tiona wanted me to post (see previous post). I was amazed at how well this picture turned out. I had the settings on my camera set up different than I wanted and it ended up that this was a 30 second exposure. The fireworks in this shot were mostly during the first 5-10 seconds, but then I had to wait for 20 more seconds for the shutter to close. I was surprised at the result! I did have to do a little post processing, but all I did was take out an annoying power line. If you want to see the unadulterated version, let me know...

Oh, just as a side note, these were fireworks from our neighbors on a street next to ours, this wasn't from a professional show.