It's About To Get Political Up In Here...

Here is my issue with Prop 100 - feel free to agree or disagree. State spending in Arizona has increased from $6 Billion to nearly $10 Billion over the past 7 years. They spent beyond their means during good economic times, and now want the taxpayers to help them dig out rather than taking a good, hard look at their wasteful spending practices. Need some examples of waste? The Arizona Republic recently reported that in Maricopa County, we pay $2.2 Million each year in additional car allowances to government middle managers who are already earning more then $121K a year (not to mention their awesome pension, health benefits, etc.) Or how about the $380K per year we spend for a 24-hour police detail to drive around Phoenix Mayor Gordon? I, personally, can think of a few other places I would prefer my tax money to go. Unfortunately, a vote to further increase AZ taxes will just encourage the state to keep making poor financial choices with OUR money and then expect us to bail them out. Try to make this work out in real (not government) life:

• Me (going in to work on Monday) = “Hey boss. Had a pretty crazy weekend. Bought myself a new BMW, had a pool installed in my yard, threw a couple of sweet keggers. Oh, and I put it all on my corporate credit card. So I’m going to need you to give me some more money so I can pay for all of that crap I just bought, and so I can keep buying more crap just like it. If you don’t, I’m going to stop answering calls from the customer.”

• My Ass = Fired

See how this could never work in real life? If you or I tried to pull this BS, we would be laughed at or, more likely, fired. But this is essentially what the AZ government is trying to do. When economic times are tough, you need to find ways to work within your budget by being resourceful and cutting waste. Nobody but the government has the option to say, hey, let’s just charge people more so we can keep on partyin’. They shouldn’t have this option, but voting for a tax increase allows them to do just that.

And shame on Phoenix for trying to guilt and bully the people – most especially the teachers in this state – into voting for a tax that goes against their best interest. Saying that classroom sizes will have to expand, school budgets will have to be cut, teachers will have to be fired. Save the schools! Save our kids! WTF, Arizona? You have the ability to do this as it stands. Cut the fat out of your spending and give that money to the schools. Why is education not already your top priority? If you truly care about our kids and the schools, why would it even cross your mind to cut school spending first and foremost when you have a deficit? Seems like you should look everywhere BUT education first when it comes to making cuts. Except that would be in the best interest of the state as a whole, and not in the best interest of the self-serving legislators who are interested in padding their own wallets. So, yeah, that’s not going to happen. Instead, they will pay their propaganda people to go out and preach Prop 100 as the ONLY way we can save the schools. Get all of the teachers in fear of their jobs and all of the parents in fear of their children’s futures. Then they can keep spending recklessly and let the taxpayers keep funding their ridiculous budget.

Well, I’m going to propose to you a better idea: according to estimates, the average Arizona family will spend $400 in additional taxes each year if this proposition successfully passes. Some of that money will go to the schools. More of it will go to government overhead. So I would say to those who were planning on voting “Yes” on Prop 100: Instead, write out a check for $400 and donate it to your local public school. This would essentially accomplish the same end goal – giving money to the schools that need it. Except you can avoid a lot of the legislative overhead and waste by giving directly. Plus, charitable donations are tax-deductible, so you’ll actually end up getting about 30% of your donation back in taxes!! It’s a win-win for everyone except for the corrupt politicians pushing this proposition in the first place. That’s what we’ll be doing and I hope you consider doing the same. Vote “No” on Prop 100, hug a teacher for putting up with this shit, and then kick your nearest politician in the balls.

Workin' On Our Fitness

Matt and I made a decision to quit our gym membership at L.A. Fitness. Why? Because we were too lazy to drive the 2 minutes to the location by our house :) Really, though, we didn't like making separate trips to the gym. But Matt hits his stride right when he gets home from work around 5. And since I don't get home until 6, he has lost a lot of his steam by the time I come around. Not to mention the fact that after fighting ridiculous traffic for an hour, I'm not really in the mood to get back in the car and go anywhere - especially not the much-loathed gym. So we canceled and instead bought a nice new Reebok treadmill from Costco to put in our living room. So far it has been working well - there is really no way to avoid it since that machine is staring at you while you're trying to watch TV in peace.

So I wondered what Jordan's reaction to this loud monster would be. Considering she is afraid of EV-VUH-RE-THING! Seriously, if she sees a "suspicious" box in the house, she will make a distinct arc in her walking path to avoid it. And not to mention the fireplace. She is terrified of that thing and we've never even used it. Anyways, Matt put it together on Sunday and surprise! She loved it! Hopped up on the thing right away. We plug it in to start walking and she can't wait to join us. It didn't take her too long to figure it out either. Look at the joy in her face while she's up there! We'll have to work on the staying up there part, but we're off to a great start!

Howlin' At the Moon

So... not sure how this started. But after dinner tonight, Matt and I were sitting on the couch chatting and enjoying a lazy few minutes. And for some reason, we decided we wanted Jordan to howl for kicks and giggles. What came next was about 3 minutes of Matt and I howling and baying together while Jordan sat there and stared at us blankly. I even tried to bribe her with some sauced vegetables to elicit a response, but no luck. If anyone would have seen this go down, I'm guessing we would have looked quite crazy. So either our dog never learned how to howl in pup school, or she likes to make fools of her parents. Probably the latter, she's a funny trickster like that.

Virtual Happy Hour

So, it's Friday night. Matt is in California for work and I am home with Jordan in Arizona. We were talking on the phone and he was considering going to happy hour at the hotel where he's staying. And since he has some sweet apps on his new iPod Touch, he can instant message with me while I'm on Facebook. So he's sippin his rum & cokes and I made myself a nice little Bailey's with milk. And we're doing happy hour together even though we're hundreds of miles apart. I love this idea! But I miss my man like crazy. Cheers!!

A Place For Everything...

I love me some organization!! I really find pure joy when everything is in its respective little home. So after Matt's shelf-making project, he decided to use some leftover scrap wood we had around the house to make me a new shoe rack! That was one area of our house that was... shall we say... struggling. Exhibit A:

So he measured, cut, drilled and nailed and voila!

A beautiful new place for my shoe babies. It makes the closet look a lot nicer and larger. Now I'm feeling motivated to check out the container store to see what I can do about our old laundry baskets... :)

Little town of Lompoc

Today I'm heading back out to California for work. I'll be out there for a couple weeks while we try to launch our rocket. We work at Vandenberg Air Force Base and we stay in a town outside of the base called Lompoc. I'm not surprised when I tell people where I'm going and they have never heard of it before. Lompoc is very small and you would only know of it if you've been through that area. For my friends in Arizona I thought I would put together a list of cities for comparison. Google page results may not be the most accurate way to judge a city, but it does give some sort of quantitative value to how big or interesting a place is.



If you've ever been to any of these cities in Arizona, or more likely, driven through them on the way to someplace else, you can get a feeling for what Lompoc is like. I guess the good news/bad news is that we are at work for most of the day and don't have to spend much time in Lompoc itself. Wish me luck for our launch and hopefully I wont get too bored while I'm out there.

Software Fail

So I was using this software application at work a while back and I guess I did something wrong or unexpected and this error message popped up. I suppose the software engineer didn't expect anyone would use the program in such a manner to get it to this state, but somehow I managed. At least he had a sense of humor, because instead of putting up a random numerical error message he put in the text "Something really bad happened." And for that, I'm glad. It turned what was quickly becoming a frustrating experience around and made me laugh. I took a screen shot of the unusual occurance and now I can look back at it to cheer me up whenever I'm struggling with a program.

Pamela wanted shelves...

So I made some shelves.


As is the case with most of our house projects, Pamela will have an idea for something and then I make it a reality. Recently Pamela decided that we need some shelves in our guestroom. When we don’t have guests over the room is unofficially Jordan’s room. So our nice bed sheets and pillows need to be put away so they don’t get covered in Jordan fur. We had just been shoving them in the closet and hoping for the best but there is definitely room for improvement.

Last week I stopped by Home Depot to pick up the supplies and this week I put in the shelves. My design for these shelves was simple. I put some thin wood pieces on the 3 closet sides for shelf support. Then the actual shelf pieces went in. I got this pre-finished composite wood piece that saved me some work. It was cheap and all I had to do was cut it to the right size. Unfortunately the closet was anything but square so that made things a little bit more difficult but not bad. Then a little bit of painting and finishing touches and I’m done. And just like that Pamela has her built in shelves, perfect for storing all of those guest bedroom extras.

Here is the before picture and a picture of just the shelf support pieces.

April Fools

I don't think I've ever pulled off a legitimately good April Fool's Day prank. Until today. With some inspiration from my hilarious co-workers, I set of to try fooling a few friends.

Prank #1 (The most involved): My friend Kristina and I had plotted this prank out a while back and this seemed like the perfect time to implement it. I got our co-worker Greg to "help me prank Kristina" by moving her car away from her parking space at work. We told the others on our team about the joke, and everyone was excited to see the look on her face when she thought her car had been stolen. So at lunch time, I sneak her keys out of her purse and give them to Greg, who then proceeds to move her car out of sight. 10 minutes later, while they're both eating lunch in the break room, I sneak out and move the car even FURTHER so it's no longer where Greg left it.

Then it was a waiting game - we wanted everyone to enjoy this twisted fun. Kristina was a stellar actress, walking out to the parking lot and pretending to be startled that her car was missing, then turning around to see us hiding and laughing. After some giggles, I instruct Greg to go show her where the car is as everyone else returns to work as usual. Only the car isn't where he left it. They come upstairs and inform our boss, and everyone seems to think Greg knows exactly where the car is and he is the one playing a trick. After over 30 minutes of "searching," everyone in the office is pretty fired up thinking the car is gone-so. We suggest filing a police report and our boss mafia-style suggests that we try to cover up the prank that led to the car's demise. Classic. So we make one last sweep through the parking lots, "find" the car, and then finally reveal the whole shenanigan to our co-workers. Everyone loved it and we got major kudos for our stealthy double-agent work. Pamela + Kristina = new Bonnie + Clyde.

Prank #2 (stolen from my creative co-worker Eric): Put up an ad on Craigslist in the "Free" section saying I had a ton of coffee beans that I bought in bulk and didn't like the flavor of. People!! You would be amazed at how many responses free coffee can get! Over 30 in the one hour it was online, that's how many. I confessed to my girlfriend Jody (the victim) and she thought it was pretty funny. The kindergartners she teaches thought it was hysterical. I owe her a dinner and I'll have to watch my back next year, but it was worth it!

Prank #3 (not received so well): Same as above, only the ad was for a $99 Wii and some other items "I" was selling of my cheating boyfriend's. Only trouble is, this girl keeps her phone off all day, so the ad wasn't pulled in an hour - it was up for about 5 hours! Can you guess how many people call about ex-boyfriend's stuff in 5 hours? If you guessed over 76, you would be correct. The kicker is the ballsy dude that asked her on a date in conjunction with wanting to buy the Wii!! Hilarious, no? She didn't think so... still waiting on forgiveness for that one... In all seriousness though, I wouldn't have played the prank on her if I thought she would be mad so I'm sorry and I'll know in the future not to play any more tricks on her.

So a day well-spent honing my prankster skills and having a few laughs. Happy April Fool's Day, all!!