Yes, Virginina there is a Santa Claus because Brett Michaels is still single and will be seen in his new MTV show "Rock of Love II". Brett Michaels is so hot, even though he has a long hair. He is totally buff and tanned and not some scrawny hippie boy with long hair, which is what one usually sees when a man has long hair.

Memo to guys - if you absolutely must have long hair, you better be a rock star or frickin' look like one. Get thee to a tanning salon and to the gym and lift weights, so you can be hottie with your long hair.

I am alive but not writing in my blog. So funny because I was just thinking about my blog yesterday and how I've evolved from someone who was really into my blog and keeping it up to someone who only writes occasionally.

It's not that there aren't things happening in my life because there are. I am going to South America in February to visit Machu Picchu and then on to Easter Island to see the stone heads with a tour group. The actual tour is called "Power Moon at the Andes" because there's a full moon during one night of the tour and there is a ceremony planned in the House of the Moon. The tour will visit Incan sites at the Sacred Valley, Lake Titikaka and the Crystal City - Machu Picchu.

I only wanted to go on this tour because I had the idea to place part of my elf novel on Easter Island, and I thought well, if I'm going to write about Easter Island I'd better go and see the place. Two months later and I received an invite for this tour and a couple of weeks ago I told my new boss about it and he encouraged me to go. He said "it is a once in a lifetime experience and if I didn't go I was crazy".

So I'm going. The tour is booked, I have permission to take the time off from work, and now I'm busily shopping for items I need like waterproof hiking boots, a new camera and a new pair of running shoes. I can't believe I'm going because the tour cost a ton of money due to the Easter Island trip. Flying to Easter Island from Chile is so not cheap! Plus it will be the high season in February since it will be summer in South America.

My new boss is so great. He is such a nice guy and very appreciative of me and encouraging. I'm so glad I moved departments. But you know it's still an 80/20 world out there as far as work goes. I love my new boss and new department and the people are so nice, and I believe that's the good 80% of my job. Then there's the other bad 20% being that I'm still doing the same stuff and having to to work with my evil old coworker, who hates to work because she's a senior manager. But my new boss knows and he told me to let him know when I'm unhappy. I don't know how to tell him it's all the time.

I hate the 80/20 rule. I woke up thinking I am finally in a job I really like where I like my boss and the people I sit and have to interact with on a daily basis. Then right before I leave for the day, I feel like if I had all the money I would so quit this job tomorrow. People really make for a good or bad working environment. 80% of the people I totally love at work and 2o% of them absolutely make me miserable to point of me wanting to quit.

I was kvetching about something and our assistant says to me, "You're always whining, why don't you leave?" That really got me. I think she was having a bad day because she messed up on something, so she totally projects on to me. I mean, that woman is the biggest complainer on the floor. But it only got to me because she's right. I should stop bitching unless I'm willing to do something about it.

I'm never going to get away from the 80/20 rule. I let myself fantasize all day that I was 100% happy with my job, and then I got bitch slapped by the universe to remind me that the 80/20 rule is a cosmic universal law.

Where are u?
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Memo to Trader Joe shoppers. Never get in a line without a bagger. You'll be in line for an hour even in a short line.
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So this is my San Francisco Towing story. I was in my car on Saturday running around doing errands. I had to go to Fed Ex Home Delivery in South San Francisco to pick up a package, then since I was in that part of town I decided I needed to go to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Marshalls to look for things to buy. I found the cutest Spode Christmas plates at Marshalls and some really cool storage boxes, when the lights in the store went out. Talk about scary! The clerks made everybody get out of the store, and I was so bummed because I finally found items I wanted to buy. It had been raining all day and I guess something happened with the section of the mall stores. Then I headed over to Nordstrom Rack and ended up picking up some undershirts for $8 a piece. I drove back to the city and went shopping at Andronico's for groceries and when I came back, some jerk had parked his car so I couldn't get into my driveway to park my car.

I was so freaked out. I've lived in this place since 2004 and no one had ever blocked my driveway before. I knew they were new neighbours living next door so I buzzed their door bell thinking it was their car. No one came out. After about five minutes, I got so mad I just started screaming for them to open up. Still no once came out. Keep in mind that it's still raining a little and I'm getting soaked despite being under an umbrella.

I guess I was so loud my downstairs neighbor heard me and came out to see what was going on. He told me I needed to call San Francisco Parking and Traffic to get the car towed. So I go upstairs call SF P&T and thinking that they would get here quickly. In the meantime, some guy who lives two houses away comes over and talks to me about the parking offender. He had seen the car before and told me about his own getting cars towed out of his driveway stories.

Of course, SF P&T doesn't come right away and I had to call them to find out if someone was being sent. The neighbour guy felt sorry for me and called again for me. I think SF P&T didn't come right away because I kind of felt bad about getting someone's car towed, so I told the dispatcher that I wanted the vehicle cited but not towed. Neighbour guy told me I needed to get the car towed because the vehicle owner had parked in his driveway once before.

A SF Parking and Traffic person finally shows up an hour later, and talk about being in small world, neighbour guy recognized the P&T person as some he had met a party 10 years ago. How weird was that. The P&T person ran a license plate check and told us that the car was registered to someone in Santa Ana. I was like thinking that if the car was local, meaning the owner lived in the neighbourhood, then I didn't want to get the car towed because I didn't want to get hassled by my neighbours. But once we found out the car was from Orange County, we called for a tow.

Then downstairs neighbour guy from my building came downstairs and asked me if I was getting the car towed, because if I wasn't going to do it then he would. Honestly I still feel so bad about towing that person's car. How freaky would that be to go to the spot where you thought you parked your car, and then seeing your car gone. I know my first thought would be "OH MY GOD, someone stole my car." No way would I think that I got towed, unless of course I was parked in a very iffy spot like this dumb jerk who parked in my driveway.

And it's not cheap to get your car from out of San Franciso Towing. Besides the $75 blocked driveway ticket, I think it costs about $300 to get your car out. Talk about welcome to San Francisco for someone from Orange County; block a driveway and get your car towed and pay around $400 to get your car. That's an expensive lesson in San Francisco park etiquette, don't you think?

It's been so long since I'v written and the year is flying by. I think I picked up a bug last week from our department assistant who had been sick for three weeks. I came back from lunch on Wednesday and I was sitting at my desk, when all of sudden I just wanted to throw up. I was in the bathroom talking to our assistant and she said her symptoms started out the same way. I woke up with a headache, which didn't go away and my stomach was so quesy. The director of my department became very concerned about sick germs being spread, so she said I should go home.

I left and got home around 3 pm and slept till 6:3o am the next day. I didn't sleep the whole time, but I kept taking 2-3 hour naps. My stomach was quesy the whole day. I couldn't anything with oil and nothing would stay down. Finally I ate some yogurt and that seemed to be okay. I went to the work the next day, but my stomach was still quite quesy and I didn't really normal until Sunday.

Our poor assistant had no PTO to draw on when she was out of the office for 15 days, so she didn't get paid. Thankfully our company has a short-term disability policy so she'll be able to get paid once she fills out all this paperwork. That's the bad thing about getting sick and being on a PTO system. If you don't manage your PTO right and keep some in your bank, if you do become ill and you don't have any PTO left you won't get paid. And if you do have PTO and you become ill, they will use it first.

I like to carry over at least 10 days from PTO every year for illnesses, and it's not like I don't take any time off. I take over 10 days of vacation a year, and some years more and some years less, but never the full 20 days. Some people at work look at their PTO as 20 days of vacation which it's not if you think about it. On the PTO system your vacation and your sick time is something you have to manage. When I left my last job, I had about 30 days of PTO left and received 6 weeks worth of extra pay when I left. Talk about a nice little bonus of sorts.

At the Oakland airport on the way to Burbank. There are a ton of people walking around in USC gear because it's homecoming for USC, and people are flying down south for it. Someone just spilled their large cup of coffee in the walkway. And something I haven't seen in ages, policepeople walking around with a drug-sniffing, bomb-sniffing dog.
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