February 22, 2009 - A nice day to go boarding… seriously. We took a trip up to Tahoe for the day and had a tiring, but great time. This is the first time bringing out the Flip Video HD out in the wild. Won’t be the last!

Music: Rip Rip by David Holmes

So my parents Sprint contract finally expired after two long years with them.  They literally use an average of 10-20 minutes collectively a month.  This is totally not worth it, given that I pay close to $70 a month for 20 minutes.  I moved them over to T-Mobile which is probably the best decision I have made… Ever…. How can you beat $100 a year for 1000 minutes? Nothing beats that.. Well..that I know of at least.

So it’s been close to a month that they’ve been on T-mobile, and they don’t have any complaints.  I go over to my parent’s house for dinner and, “Oh whaddya know…”, an envelope from Sprint.  Thinking that it’s probably a letter from them begging for me to come back, I open up the envelope and ….”WTF?!?”.  It’s a bill for $0.58.  Seriously? And that’s not the end of it.  I go online to my BofA Bill Pay to pay off that BS charge, and the system won’t let me because it’s “below the minimum payment amount”.  Mother f’ers!! So I have to mail out the bill with a check the old fashion way.  The last time I actually mailed an envelope was probably 1999. The stamps that I have are so old they don’t even stick anymore.  I lick them, stick them to the envelope, and a gust of wind takes them down the street.

So this $0.58 bill will actually turn out to be $1, with a $0.42 stamp.

See, this is what happens when you give someone like me time off.  I actually start thinking because I have nothing to do.  I have another week of winter nothingness, so we’ll see what other crazy things I can think of. Oh and please stop with the “See ya next year!!” farewells.  I hear it every. Single. Year. It wasn’t the funny the first time I heard it, and it’s not funny now.

1. Trains aren’t free
2. The money is coming from our pockets

So at the moment, are there no ways to get to LA?  From what I can recall, one can get to LA by car, bus, plane, and Amtrak.  Do we really need another means to get there??  If it was something like a bullet train to Hawaii, than I will be all over it…. but LA? Really?  How often is someone going to be taking that train to LA?  I’m gonna assume about 80% will be using it once or twice annually.  The bullet train from Paris to London is about $250 r/t (283 miles between them).  San Francisco to LA is about a hundred more miles compared to London and Paris.  If these numbers are consistent, that would mean that the cost would be roughly the same.

Having a train that goes to SF to LA sounds great, don’t get me wrong.  But money has to come from somewhere.  According to the estimates, building such a thing will cost us 45 billion dollars.  I would much rather see the money go towards the state’s education system and helping out lower income families trying to get back on their feet.  Teachers are struggling to get by and spending hundreds of dollars out of their own pocket a month to give their kids a better learning experience while a mother with two kids, a full time job, and a dead beat husband is struggling to make the rent each month.

But fuck yeah!!! We’re getting a train to LA!! Fuck everyone else!!  That was sarcasm by the way…  This is the type of stuff that gets me sick.

Our day started out as usual..making breakfast, getting dressed, etc, etc.  Only difference was that we had to check out at 11am and our flight was at 9pm!! After check out, we did some shopping at the Market 28 in downtown, which is basically a huge flea market.  The vendors here are super agro.  One after the other they try to persuade you into their section.  After about the 50th person barking at me to come in, I was ready to punch someone in the face.  Seriously…Saying shit like, “I have special deal just for you” and “Look here my friend.. good price” DOES NOT WORK and does not make me want to look at your crap any more than I would normally!! In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It makes me not want to look at your stuff.  Someone should seriously set up a community meeting with these people and bring up the fact that maybe… just maybe, their tactic isn’t working. It would be so much better if they weren’t so aggressive and just sit back and say something like, “Let me know if you have any questions.” This would be so much better than having someone try to make a deal with you just because you looked in their direction.

Anyways.. after that clusterfuck of shopping, we had about 6 hours to kill.  We hit every possible mega store there was in the area, Walmart, City Club, Sams Club, etc etc. Keep in mind that these places are a bitch to get to with the counter intuitive street layouts.

It was finally time to get to the airport and check in.  We have an eight hour layover in Mexico City before heading to SFO.  After three hours of waiting, for our Mexico City flight, we were off and landed in MC at around midnight, where we had to check out or bags for security reasons because our layover was so long. At this point I was dead tired and found a spot against the wall and laid on the ground and slept along side the other 100+ people waiting for the first flight to SFO.  We were actually fortunate to get such a layover.  Several people actually had a layover for 12 hours.  Not only did I had to suffer sleeping on a cold floor, but the airport was undergoing construction, so the area was reeking of paint fumes.  So after eight hours of tossing and turning on the floor, it was time to head out.

I’m so glad I get to sleep on my bed tonight.