Updates on this and that.

I'm still not having any luck with the DMV. Every time I have called in the last few days the system has been down. Not that they tell you this at the beginning of the call though. Instead they wait until you've given all your piles of information (via an annoying voice recognition system which doesn't always understand my accent) and then they say they're offline. Grr! So I will persist.

On the apartment front I saw another really nice place tonight. I also saw another two I liked on Saturday morning so now I just need to wait to hear from all three. It's a bit frustrating but I'd rather spend a bit more time and find the right place rather than rushing and ending up with an icky place/wierd roommates!

America is all about the Olympics at the moment. I watched the whole opening ceremony on Friday and I was really impressed! Except for the fact that the SA team marched on just before the USA team so they cut to a commercial here to be ready for the USA team. I've been watching bits and pieces including the mens 100m freestyle relay last night. I was sad America won because it's really funny when they lose! Their commentators get all indignant! They always expect to win (in fact they are worse than the Aussie rugby commentators) but I must admit the relay team were definitely impressive.

The DMV drama continues...

I passed the written portion of my California Drivers license test! This morning I went to the DMV (again) and the line was ridiculous so I was really glad I had an appointment because that meant I got to skip the queue! It didn't mean that I didn't have to wait however - I got to do a fair amount of that inside the DMV. Anyway I eventually wrote my test and passed which is awesome! So now I just need to pass the driving portion which I'm not overly concerned about seeing I've been driving for almost 7 years! (Oops, I'm giving away my age here!). The problem is that I need to make an appointment to do my test and there aren't any available for the next 30 days at any of the 4 DMV offices in San Diego! It's really frustrating. So I basically have to keep on phoning every day to see if anything changes.

I have no new news on the apartment front either - I just need to keep looking there as well.

On a brighter note I've finished posting the pictures from my trip so here are the links.
New York photos
Boston photos

I also got my laptop and hard drive back from Jen (as well as my ipod, jewellery, documents and everything else I didn't want to leave at the apartment with Sarah) so I should have some more pictures from SA and the Rotary International convention up soon.

It's now 2am and I'm off to bed! Marge is back home so I had to wait to use the computer tonight as none of her neighbours are nice enough to have left their wireless connections un-password protected.

Growl! (and some photos finally!)

So today I was very well behaved. Sure I woke up a bit late but then I sat in the sun and studied the silly California Driver's Handbook (which for me means I read through it once). I then went off to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and got there just after 3pm. When I was registering my car I discovered that this is quite a good time to go as the people who've gone on their lunch break have finished and the after work crowd hasn't arrived yet. However, today I discovered that due to budget cuts (thanks a bunch Arnie) you have to have an appointment to go to the DMV after 3pm. So so much for that. instead I stood in line and made an appointment for 9:40am tomorrow morning. What a waste of time! So I went home and started posting pictures of my travels on Facebook.

Here's the link to the 2 albums of Washington DC pictures.
#1 - General Washington Pictures
#2 - Washington Monuments and Memorials

New York and Boston will follow shortly (hopefully tomorrow).

In the meantime here are some pictures from when Nick stayed with me in San Diego. We went to the zoo (where I fell in love with the meerkats) and Seaworld. Seaworld is awesome! It's the first time I'd been to the one here and I really enjoyed it. We were there from about 11am until 10pm and saw all the shows and animals including Shamu (the star Killer Whale). The have some seriously cool animals there including gorgeous sea otters, the only 2 performing pilot whales in the world, beluga whales, walruses (walrusi?), puffins, emperor penguins etc etc. The list just goes on. The shows are really slick and well done and there's a huge variety - we even went to see the pets show where they had trained cats and ducks! It was really cute.

So here are some of the pictures from those excursions. There aren't that many because I didn't feel the need to record every single thing I saw - I only took pics of what interested me.

Seaworld and the Zoo

Chicken, Apartments and Dentists.

I think American farmers must feed their chickens steroids. Seriously, the size of the chicken breasts I grilled for dinner this evening were just plain ridiculous. They could be sliced up and feed a family of four quite easily with enough left over for seconds! Having been here for almost a year now I suppose I should have gotten used to the size of things but as far as I'm concerned it's just not normal!

Aside from that apartment hunting is going ok. It's quite a pain really but I guess it is an evil that must be endured because I'm sure Marge will kick me out sooner or later. Although I haven't managed to kill/permanently disable/damage anything while she's been away. Aside from a box of parmesan crackers which had an unfortunate meeting with the floor and are now both more numerous and smaller than before.

But back to apartments. I've seen 3 so far this week. One was really nice but with utilities was going to end up being too expensive (I'm slowly reconciling myself to the fact that I am a poor student). One was amazing and I would move in there tomorrow if I didn't have to sigh a year lease which is a bit of an issue seeing that I finish my degree in December and I have no clue where I'm going to be after that. I'd quite like to stay in San Diego but that all depends on getting a ... *gulp* ... job! The last place I saw was a bit run down and the carpet was a bit manky but it's the place I could very well end up in as it's definitely in my price range (remembering the poor student bit). So we'll see. I'm going to carry on looking for a while anyway.

Otherwise I still haven't managed to do my California drivers license. That's now tentatively on the cards for tomorrow. Everything's just been taking much longer than anticipated so I'm falling a bit behind schedule. Like today - I volunteered to take my friend Nicky to the dentist because she doesn't have a car. She was supposed to take an hour and a half but it ended up being 3 hours! By which stage the majority of the afternoon had flown by. I couldn't be too grumpy when she was eventually done though because after having a crown and some fillings she definitely had a worse afternoon than me.

A bit of this and a bit of that

I am finished moving! Well, for the next couple of weeks at least. All my stuff is in storage (I've acquired a surprisingly large amount since I've been here) and my room and bathroom are sparkly clean. I even have my deposit back and I got it back with relative ease which is fairly astounding. So now I am happily ensconced at Marge's. In fact the only thing I'm not too happy about is that my friend Jen is up in Santa Barbara so I have no hope of getting my laptop, portable hard drive, GPS or ipod shuffle back for at least another week. The GPS is the most serious of the lot! Have you got any idea how tricky it is to drive around the maze of San Diego freeways without one?

Another thing I'm not too happy about is that I've finished 'Breaking Dawn'. I was very well behaved yesterday and only went out and bought it after all my moving and cleaning were done. Once I got home I didn't put it down until I finished it and as a result I went to bed at some odd hour this morning. It was totally worth it though! 'Breaking Dawn' was excellent! It was on a par with 'Twilight' which is the 1st book (and until yesterday the best book) in the series. But now it's over *sigh*. I'll just have to content myself with reading the books over and over again. Until the Twilight movie comes out that is!

I was even more distraught earlier today when I discovered that the new series of 'Gossip Girl' (a tv show I watch) is not starting until September 1st! I was under the misguided impression that it was starting in the 1st week of August and I was quite excited about it. So now I will have to sit through all the titillating commercials and sneak-peaks for another whole month! It's just not fair.

On a slightly better note - I've finally done some washing so I'll have clean clothes to wear tomorrow and I'm going to look at an apartment tonight so we'll see how that works out.

How to dismantle an atomic bomb

Well - not really. It's more like how to dismantle and ikea desk. I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to take my desk apart! Especially since ikea gives you instructions on how to put it together initially but doing it in reverse sans the instructions is much trickier than it sounds! It was quite a complicated puzzle and took nearly an hour but my perseverance paid off and it's now it pieces on my floor. Which is a very good thing because it's big and heavy and doesn't fit in the lift otherwise. Now I'm just going to have to put it back together which could be interesting!

Aside from that I'm largely moved out! It's taken 2 trips to the storage place, one to Marge's and every box I had but it's almost all done! Then of course I'll have to repeat it in reverse in a few weeks when I find a new place to live but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Tomorrow all that remains is for me to move the big stuff (like my bed etc) and clean (ugh). Then I will be free of my nutty roommate which is an endless exciting thought!

Oh and FYI... I'm officially staying at Marge's now which means I have a computer again! So when the moving is completed I'll get on to sorting out travel pics. That could be minorly delayed however by the release of 'Breaking Dawn' tomorrow - the 4th book in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. Actually it's today now! If I wasn't already in my PJ's I'd be tempted to go and see if I could find a 24hr bookstore.

Back in San Diego!

I'm back in San Diego! I flew in this afternoon after getting to the airport in New York very very early this morning! Well it wasn't actually that early it was just quite a while before my flight actually left. But when you consider that last time I went to NY I managed to miss my flight that's probably a good thing.

I'm half asleep and typing this at the moment because it's about 4:30am NY time and I'm still awake, sort of! The reason for this is that I need to move tomorrow. Technically my lease ended today but Sarah hasn't organised a new roomie yet so I have a couple of days grace (that I have to pay for of course). I haven't found a new place yet so I've rented a storage locker for my stuff and am moving it all in there tomorrow and I'm moving in with Marge.

As I'm moving I need boxes to put all my stuff into. In the year I've been here I've accumulated a lot of stuff! If you don't want to pay for boxes (which I don't) then you need to go to the grocery store when they're restocking shelves and they just give them to you. Vons closes at 1am so that means you need to get there around 12:30ish. It's also a great time to go grocery shopping! In fact, I fell asleep on my bed earlier and woke up just after midnight. I contemplated getting up to go and get boxes but that wasn't really enough of a motivator. What did get me out of bed was the thought that if I didn't go to Vons then I wouldn't have any milk for the morning and then I couldn't have cereal. That would have been a tragedy! So now I have milk and boxes and my bed is calling me!