in my own bed

canon digital rebel xsi

If all goes well, tomorrow I will sleep in my own bed for the first time in over three years. Please don't misunderstand, I've been sleeping in a bed since we have moved back to California - just not my own.

It is one of those things most of us take for granted. A bed of your own. Your own space, even if you share it with someone else. It is where you start and end most days. It is where you have dreams and nightmares. It is something you probably can't fully appreciate until it is taken away, although you might miss it if you travel.

We recently reached platinum level again at Starwood. Reportedly we have stayed over 100 nights since we joined. So clearly that is where some of my nights have been spent. And I am sure at least 200 more have been spent in hotels that were not nearly as nice.

And here at the house I have gotten to feel like Goldilocks, despite my brown hair. There are two twin beds, a full, and a California king. I have slept on all of them at some point while here. They are all approaching the 30-year old mark, and even if they weren't none of them feel "just right". We have been thinking about getting a new bed for a while, but I have been a bit resistant because it would feel like we were giving up the goal of moving out of here. Also there is the issue of actually buying a bed. Mattress shopping is nerve wracking.

There are two discount mattress stores here in the LA area that run competing ads on late night television. The skinny blonde one is always trying to outdo the overweight balding one. The latest ads are about dust mites. At least they are cartoon dust mites, but still not images you want in your head before climbing into a bed that according to them, must be crawling with them. Their claim is that after eight years, a typical mattress doubles in weight due to sweat and dust mites. They don't say if it is expodential if your mattress is over three times that age. Honestly I don't want to know, but I think it did push me towards the idea of getting a new bed, although that wasn't the only reason.

Several months back I woke up one morning, and could hardly move. Somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed to go pee. I thought to myself that if I could just get back into bed and stretch, everything would be fine. I was so wrong.

I did managed to get back, but then really found myself in much pain, and truly unable to move. B heard me moaning and came in to check on me. He started laughing when he saw the contortion I had managed to form myself into. Of course I did manage to get up, and after a few hours, was fine. Still it was a bit disconcerting. But as I said, that was several months ago. It really was the images of dust mites (now with Christmas trees) that were the last straw.

I know that this bed isn't going to solve everything. It will still reside in a place that doesn't feel anything like a home to me. But hopefully I will sleep better, and my back will feel better.



on the night stand :: Last Night by Hyewon Yum.

then the mail went astray

canon digital rebel xsi

November has been a bit bumpy - and we are only three days in. Yesterday our mail got delivered by UPS to an address three miles away! How is that even possible?

We have a PO Box at a UPS Store in Northern California. We got it when we first came back to California, and have kept it for three years now since we are still technically "between residences". If we are not up north, then once a week or so, they forward our mail to us. So how a UPS Store shipping a package via UPS gets lost is pretty daunting indeed.

B noticed that according to the tracking information sent by the UPS Store, the package was delivered at around 10:30am yesterday morning, and signed for by Edgar. He checked the porch, and the places our UPS guy usually hides packages, but found nothing. Given that B was downstairs around that time, having just returned from the car repair shop that ordered the wrong part, it seems like he would have heard the truck or the knock on the door, but didn't. He decided to give UPS a call and see what was up.

There was a problem with the phone connection, which certainly didn't help with getting the tracking number straight. It took them several tries, but the woman on the phone was able to look it up and sure enough saw that the package had been delivered. B told her that while that may be the case, it wasn't delivered here. She looked more closely, and sure enough it was delivered about three miles away to a business park.

The UPS rep asked B if he knew the area where the package had been misdelivered. He explained that he had a general idea where the address was located, but had never been there. He was then told to go pick it up himself. Seriously.

This is where the problem began. Apparently what must have happened was that a group of boxes were delivered to that address, and our box must have accidentally been in the pile. A quick search on Google revealed that there were more than one businesses at that location, so it wasn't like B could just walk in and claim his box. The correct answer would have been to send the UPS driver back to the location to claim the box from Edgar, the guy who signed for it.

We made a few phone calls (oh the magic of Google), and tried to find Edgar without any luck. At one point, I actually was talking to someone in Fremont (okay, so Google isn't perfect), where one the companies is headquartered. No one I spoke to could understand what I was talking about. They all thought either they were shipping me a package, or I had shipped them a package - they couldn't get that UPS could misdeliver a package to a completely wrong address.

B then called the UPS Store, which is probably where he should have started. Even they had trouble understanding what he was explaining. But since they were technically the shipper, and have a relationship with UPS, they were really the only ones who could do anything, which really makes no sense, since they were 400 miles from the package, while we were just three.

The good news is the package showed up on the doorstep this morning. We have no idea what happened in between the calls to the UPS Store and UPS calling to tell us they were on the case. I am just glad this story had a happy ending.

Don't get me wrong, I still love UPS. They deliver millions of packages every year to the right place. It is just seems that the few that get misdirected take quite a bit of craziness to get back on track. This is not our first experience with boxes going to the wrong address. When we lived in Emeryville, a replacement battery sent from Apple, accidently got delivered about a mile away to the CompUSA store (reportedly the label fell off the box). In an even more bizarre twist, the guy who normally accepted packages for CompUSA was on vacation, so in the end Apple just shipped another battery.

on the night stand :: A Gate at the Stairs by Loorie Moore.

fire escape

I know you are not supposed to yell "fire" in a crowded room, but that is what it feels like everyone is doing right now. Currently I am in lobby of a hotel in Rancho Cucamonga. There is a bar, and it is probably a good thing that I don't drink.

The fire that started around 10pm last night in Sylmar turned into quite a force. Almost 24 hours later, it is under 50% contained and over 500 people are now homeless.

Meanwhile A fire that started in Corona this morning, became the Yorba Linda fire when it crossed into the city limits. Across the freeway a brush fire started in Brea. It jumped the 57 freeway and joined the Yorba Linda party. They closed the 57 an exit up from us, and we decided it was time to leave town.

Actually we had already made plans to leave town. We just decided to leave town earlier and with a lot more stuff than one would take on an overnight stay.

I am still not sure how I didn't have a full on panic attack trying to figure out what to put in the car. You can answer the question all you want in theory, but when it comes down to it, you never really know what you would take if you thought there was even a possibility of coming back and finding your house had burned down.

I have my passport, and my social security card. I brought my Teddy Bear who is over 30 years old and has survived fire and even decapitation. My favorite clothes are all in the laundry basket - I left them. I am however, wearing my $80 bra.

Choices like these bring me back to that night in Chico. The night we left our father. The night we popped the screen from the second story window and tossed down our stuffed animals and clothes. In our haste we left our school shoes.

My mantra is, "we are safe, and that is all that matters." Things are just things, and can be replaced (for the most part).

From what we have seen on the news, the house should be safe. But where this fire heads is uncertain because of the winds. Even 15 miles away, we can see the red flames in the hills. It looks like an unhappy dragon, slithering around the hillside. Let's hope it is not too hungry. Homeless sucks.



on the night stand :: A Way Home

poor in the usa

Today is Blog Action Day '08. This year's topic is poverty. The idea is to use your blog to talk about this topic in any way you choose, ideally in a way that fits your audience. It made me think about what it means to be poor in the United States, arguably one of the richest nations in the world. That doesn't mean I am not thinking about the impoverished living outside of the US. Instead I am writing about something I know a bit more about.

pov . er . ty : the state of being extremely poor.

My Mom told stories of growing up poor. The one that hit home the most was when her seven siblings and parents - 9 people - lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. It didn't have a bathroom. The toilet was in the hallway, and they shared it with the thirteen people who lived across the hall. Toilet paper was truly a luxury. The "tub" was basically a large sink in the kitchen. Once a week, the women of the family took a bath. On a separate day, the men got the same privilege. They often went to bed hungry. A program at school provided lunch, but required students to present a large pink card, which got them teased. Often my Mom skipped lunch rather than be ridiculed for being poor. Certainly things must be better now over a half a century later?

In a land where it seems there is a television in every room and (at least) two cars in every driveway, who is really poor among us? Are the homeless the only true poor? In a nation where obesity is on the rise, how can there also be a hunger crisis? Who is really poor in America? If you believe what you see on the average sitcom, you would believe no one is poor. Of course that isn't the case, so who is living in poverty in America?

The truth is that the largest group of poor and homeless are children. Of course if you ask people to describe what the homeless population looks like, most often they will talk about the crazy drunk on the street, pushing his shopping cart, collecting bottles to recycle. And while no doubt this is part of the poverty story, it doesn't paint the whole picture.

One way the federal government defines poverty is in terms of household income. In 2008, a family of four was considered living in poverty if they had a household income below $21,200 (this number was slightly higher if the family lived in Alaska or Hawaii).¹ That works out to about $1700 per month. Of course that is before taxes, so take home pay is probably closer to $1200 per month. Trying to live on that anywhere in the US would be challenging to say the least, especially given that in many major metropolitan areas the average two-bedroom apartment is within that same range. Again though, this doesn't include everyone.

Recently I heard a piece on NPR about the growing number of homeless families and students as a result of the housing crisis. Many of these people facing homelessness were recent homeowners, so definitely not part of the impoverished in America. The story specifically talked about the impact homeless students have on the public school system. Students are protected by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which allows students to continue attending the same school before they lost their home. Of course not all families are aware of this law, and not all schools abide by it. Still to a homeless child, the routine of school can offer a sense of normal when the rest of their world is falling apart.

Of course, while not all homeless were poor, not all poor are homeless. Another story on NPR shows how easy it is to fall into poverty when unemployment knocks on your door. In this case a mother caring for six children (three her own, three her sister's) takes matters into her own hands and stands on the street corner in Las Vegas with a sign in an attempt to get their electricity bill paid. She was lucky and within a few minutes a social worker pulls up and by the end of the day her lights were on.

Oftentimes people find themselves in dire straits because one problem sets off a chain of events from which they cannot recover. For example, a family living paycheck to paycheck can't keep up with the rising cost of gasoline, and as a result, bounce a check. That bounced check leads to overdraft charges of a few hundred dollars, which results in not being able to pay the power bill. When the lights are turned off, the food in the fridge goes bad - yet another expense. Furthermore the electric company may require a deposit on top of the late and reconnect fees. Meanwhile, the rent is now due, and the family is several hundred dollars poorer, potentially facing eviction. It really isn't hard to get there, but can feel impossible to get out from under.

After hearing about my mother's childhood, I never felt that we were truly poor, although there were certainly tough times. One of the worst was after we "escaped" from our father. We had left Chico, California in the middle of the night and found ourselves the next morning in Long Beach. My sister, mother and I moved into a small one-bedroom apartment. We had remembered to toss our toys into the backseat of the Ford, but forgot our school shoes. The apartment manager found us a couch and a table and chairs. After my Mom found work, the first thing she bought was a queen-size bed. My sister and I took turns sleeping with my Mom. On alternate nights one of us slept on the floor, until we replaced the couch with a sleeper sofa from Levitz, and then both of us slept in the living room.

Technically were weren't even supposed to be living on that side of the complex, which was designated for single adults. The address was 5050 Linden Avenue. My mother thought it reflected our situation - that we had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. She didn't know how close that was to the truth until one weekend we managed to take an overnight trip to San Diego. While we were away someone was shot not far from our front door. Thankfully we were able to move shortly thereafter to a better place, but times were still tough.

When my father stopped making child support payments, the system failed miserably because we did not live in the same state. So despite that my father worked for the same company for nearly two decades, it was still impossible for my mother to collect a dime.

On the other hand, when my Mom realized the local public school was merely a baby sitting service - and a bad one at that - she threw herself on the mercy of a nun who ran a local Catholic school. Both my sister and I attended St. Athanasius for two years at a significantly reduced rate.

There is hope. There are things we can do to change this. Education is key. Learning about poverty is the first step to ending it. With this knowledge, vote accordingly.

There are many people out there hurting because of the current state of the US economy. Small steps like cleaning out your closets and donating gently used business attire can make a big difference. With Thanksgiving quickly approaching (in the US), now is a good time to make a donation to your local food bank. Help a friend looking for work with her resume. Invite a family who is struggling to dinner. You get the idea - act instead of judging.

_________________________________________________________

¹Source: Federal Register, Volume 73, No. 15, January 23, 2008, pp. 3971-3972.




on the night stand :: How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum

last night we bought a dishwasher

How crazy is that? Our mail comes once a week from UPS and there we were comparing models and brands and trying to figure out what the big deal about a hidden display was all about.

The truth is that the tenant emailed to report a leak earlier this week. He wasn't sure where it was coming from, but the carpet between the living room and kitchen was wet. We were hoping that maybe it was something going on above, then we could just have them deal with it, but someone came the next day to say they thought it was the dishwasher and an expert confirmed it the day after that. So there we were suddenly trying to figure out what the difference was between a $400 model and a $600 one.

I thought that I was smart by making my first stop to the PG&E website. I figured that there was some possibility that we could get a rebate, and I was correct. It seemed though that there were two levels of rebate - one for $30 and one for $50. It all hinged on this .68 number. A quick comparison on the Internet revealed interestingly enough that some of the level 2 efficiency models were in the same price range as the level 1, so why not get the larger rebate and help the environment a bit more?

So although that narrowed things down a bit, the question remained as to how we could order this from down south and deliver it up north. Also we didn't just want it delivered, we needed it installed and the old machine needed to be hauled away. This quickly eliminated buying from the on-line stores. B didn't think that the maintenance staff at the homeowner's office would install a dishwasher, so that was out - I wasn't about to add finding a plumber to this list (I would ask if the guy suffered from plumber's butt).

BestBuy certainly has a large selection of dishwashers on their site, but it was near impossible to determine which model they were actually selling. And as we were trying to focus on the rebate, this was getting confusing and frustrating. All of BestBuy's details included a snapshot of the bright yellow Energy Star sticker. Only one problem - the number that mattered was no where on it. And just because a model had an Energy Star sticker, didn't mean that it would qualify.

What was even more frustrating is that no site that we looked at allowed you to narrow your search by size of the dishwasher. Everyone had brand, price and color once you selected "built in". We did learn that a couple of brands were simply too deep for our needs and so were able to eliminate them quickly. Still it often left over 100 models to chose from.

Bosch had been given pretty high marks, and all of their dishwashers that qualified for the rebate were level 2. Of course, BestBuy doesn't sell Bosch. We did learn though that Lowes did. And there was even a Lowe's within the 20 radius of the delivery point, so that was seeming like our best bet.

Sears also sold Bosch, but after the refrigerator disaster, I really didn't want to deal with them. So off to Lowes we went. Bonus that there was a BestBuy in the same shopping center, so I figured we could get in and out.

Well, we did get right out of Lowes. B described what we needed and the salesman was a complete jerk. He told us that we needed to go to the actual store that would deliver the dishwasher because we had to sign paperwork. I of course asked if he had ever heard of fax machine. The jerky salesman quipped back that it was a CONTRACT. B grabbed me before I explained the merits of FedEx and caused a scene and we drove over to BestBuy.

Despite the 100+ dishwashers I had to chose from on 'Internets', there were maybe a dozen on display at the store. One of the things I noticed on the website was that if you bought a dishwasher over $499 AT THE STORE, they would install it for free. Then of course there was a sign that said if you spent $299 on a dishwasher (which basically meant anyone on display) they would install it for free. When I tried to get a straight answer from the sales people, it seemed that you had to spend the extra $200 to get them to do a complete install and haul away, $299 only got the dishwasher to your kitchen - maybe. It still isn't clear if you paid for a model that was only online AT THE STORE, if the deal applied.

They had a model that was a level 2 rebate qualifier, but it was $699. Also neither of the two people who were assisting us had ever done something like we were requesting, and I was getting anxious about the whole thing. These people were nice, but a bit dense. At one point (just after B told her what we needed to do) the woman tried to sell B an opened box dishwasher, so he had to explain again that we were having it delivered in northern California. I hated to admit it, but maybe we should go to Sears. The Boshe dishwasher I was interested in was less than the one there. Plus now I had names if anything were to go wrong.

We took the long way to Sears, sort of unknowlingly. We found a parking space and both had the same thought how it felt like we were at the Barton Springs Mall in Austin, Texas where we purchased flooring (both carpet and linoleum) for this same property several years back. Overall that went well.

We went downstairs and found the dishwasher and then tried to find a sales person. I forgot that these guys specialize. So there are fridge people and dishwasher people. The dishwasher person was on the phone having to talk to a manager about a problem about something that sounded similar to what we were about to do. My stomach did a brief flip. At least this guy was making progress and trying to prevent disaster.

Another sales person approached us, but once I explained that I knew people, and how awful our previous experience had been, he wanted nothing to do with it as he was a fridge guy. Really I don't think I am a bad customer - I just know what I want. I didn't blame him, and was actual thankful that he didn't try to take on something he wasn't qualified to handle. He did at least know that this would be a local delivery and not Sears national delivery, which is what caused the nightmare last time.

We ordered the dishwasher. It should be with the installer tomorrow. I am really hoping this goes off without any problems. We got white, by the way. That was harder than it should have been. The old one is black, but it never really did anything for the kitchen. We considered Biscuit for a moment as the cabinets are off-white, but the new fridge which Sears finally did locate and deliver is white, so I figured it would balance things out.

pre-order today :: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows