Reflect Back....

1 more day we will start a new year 2009, and saying goodbye to 2008. Many things happened this year - Real Estate, GM, Ford, Stock Market etc etc

Other than those things, we:

* Got a New Camera
I gave away my old camera (Sony) and got Canon this time - could not believe that I would betray Sony like that.

* Chicago and Bento
Found the best bento place in Chicago and totally love it.

* Traveled to Indo together
For a first time, my Russian husband went back with me to my country.

* Got married
Surprised a lot of friends but we decided to do a civil ceremony.

* Went camping for a first time (real camping - no electricity and shower)
A day after our really small wedding, we decided to test our marriage in the real environment.

* Learned to swim
Took 7 lessons, and I am now able to swim backward and short distance forward swim. Decided to cancel the rest of the lessons because it was getting cold outside.

* A lot of Hiking
This year we started being outdoors and enjoyed MN more than last year but we still don't like winter in MN.

- Flood at our kitchen
See previous blog.

* Bought a new townhouse in only 2 weeks and then canceled it the next 2 days.
The our lease was expiring the end of December and we hate living without our own washer/drier, so we decided to get a townhouse. We found this townhouse near Blaine (brand new) which was really nice and big enough for both of us + our stuff. There were couple of other people also interested in the house, so we were impulsive enough to get it and later decide to cancel it after showing it to a couple of friends. 1 week after we canceled it, the mortgage interest went down and this house price also went down (by 10,000$), so it was lucky that we canceled it.

* Bought a Wii
First we were planning to sell it for profit but we could not hold back the temptation to have it for ourselves.

* L2 Got a New Job
Still adjusting to the new environment but really excited to learn new things/experience from this place.

- Russian Got sick and ride the ambulance
Read previous blog.

- Russian Got towed
Check previous blog.

Sooooo HAPPY NEW YEAR guys, hopefully next year will be better for our economy and environment and for all of us in general.

3 movies all with sad endings

For our first Xmas in here (our city) we did not have any fancy plans. We just went to see 3 movies (1 with a few friends on Xmas Eve and the other 2 on Xmas day just together) and had dinner on Xmas Eve with our friends. Every single of the movies we watched ended with tears - what was wrong with this Xmas? Why did Hollywood premiere these tragic movies on Xmas day????

1. Seven Pounds: two things I learned from this movie - the lifespan of a Great Dane is only around 7 years, and everyday we take our health for granted, never realizing that we are actually quite fortunate to live a healthy life every day.

2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - it sucks to outlive someone you love and it's better to live forward instead of backward. But Brad Pitt is really hot.

3. Marley & Me - I liked the book better, the movie was not funny enough and sorry Jen, you are not funny and have no chemistry with Owen Wilson :( By the way, both V and I met John Grogan at a Borders book signing in Lenox three years ago. I have the photos for proof! :P

Every one of these movie really made me think about health and life this weekend.

Bleeding again

Guess what mode of transportation is as expensive as an ambulance...............? Well? While you are thinking I will start giving you some clues:

Last Friday (19 Dec) we decided to hang out with V's work friends so we drove downtown, but we arrived 2 hours late...long story... ok, ok, I'll explain it. I went with Jal shopping on Friday instead of Saturday, because I decided I would like to work from home Saturday and spend Friday shopping around.

So I came back a bit late from the shopping (and by "a bit" I mean 0.5 hours late) a bit after the time when we should have already left. V was not happy, he was pouting like a little boy, and we started leaving around 9. Btw the party started at 8 actually (Indonesian time == 9 pm).

Along the way, I was telling him everything that happened that day at work, taaalking talking talking non-stop, and somehow (who knows how), he missed his exit and decided to take the path using his own internal GPS. His internal GPS is either very very reliable or about the same as driving around and taking random turns until we get somewhere sort-of familiar.

At the end we found the place, but we were 2 hours late already. When we were turning into the street we were supposed to turn into, we actually missed the turn and took a different back alley.... a small road behind a rental building - but by the way, no, the answer to the question is not about getting a ticket for going the wrong way.

But we could see his friend's house from the parking lot. He decided to park behind someone's else car, under a tree, where there wasn't actually a parking spot, near a window and with no towing sign. Of course I told him to park somewhere else, but he convinced me that it would be ok since there was no sign and we would be able to see our car from his friend's place just in case anything happened.

We had fun at the party - learned a new card game (cribbage) and got to know V's coworkers. Then around 12 we decided to leave since everyone else had left, too. We walked to our car, and he noticed that the remote did not open the car -- not long after that he said "omg, our car is gone" ..... yup yup yup our car got TOWED. So in the middle of the really cold weather, in the middle of the night, we were looking for a phone number of the car towing company. Finally found it, and I noticed the minimum price of the towing "$280" - bye bye Christmas gifts and dinners and lunches.

His friend was nice enough to drive us there, but we didn't see any ATM on our way to the towing company location. V decided that he won't use credit card since they will charge 15$ extra while using ATM is only 3.50$ extra. Turned out we have to pay exact cash $276.31 - we had to withdraw cash twice from the ATM (there was a 200$ max per drawing). So altogether it cost us $7 to withdraw the cash (but at least it wasn't as bad as the $15 "convenience fee" for credit cards). He was being stingy to the towing company - no more extra money for them.

Then his friend had to go back to his car and scrape out $6.06 but we still needed 25 more cents. Thankfully there were 2 ladies who needed to pick up their car too and they had extra cash, and donated us 25 cents. Those jerks behind the bullet-proof glass at the office were just smiling to themselves as we tried to count out the change. We walked to the car and the guy in the compound told us that he just towed the car an hour ago.

So our car got a $276.31 Christmas gift - a free ride to the middle of nowhere, being held hostage in car-prison, and probably being molested by some of the dirty old trucks there. I don't know if his car will think about it that way, but for me it was definitely like his car going to prison for an hour. I think the car towing tops the price of the ambulance. Hehehhe we will find out soon when we get the bill from hospital :) That's our generous Christmas donation to the medical industry and the car-towing industry, to boost this economy. If the economy turns around next year, trust us, it's not Obama, it's our $1 billion stimulus package for the Minneapolis/St.Paul area.

December has not been the best month for V :(
Hopefully I can keep him out of the trouble next year...

Ambulance + Emergency Room == common cold

We spent 5 hours in the emergency room last Thursday for a common cold. Wondering why?

V got sick right after I felt better - seems the common cold has been vacationing between us the last two weeks. It started from a flight to Atlanta, which got him sick, then it came to me and then inside of me, the common cold got stronger and more powerful, became uncommon and extraordinary, so when it got back to him, it took much more time to cure it.

Thursday he stayed at home from work since he didn't feel well - I made him a porridge (a really good one, full of rice, carrots, green onions, fish and shrimp, really tasty and delicious) then I went to work. Then around 1 pm, he was feeling worse with the fever (NyQuil doesn't do aaaaanything to it) so I decided to take him to the doctor/clinic since his condition was getting worse.

At first, we went to Allina hospital, but they said they had no walk-in clinic, only the emergency room, and of course we didn't think we needed the emergency room so we asked where the nearest walk-in clinic was. They told us to go to a small Allina clinic nearby. We went there, but there we were told they could not provide us a walk-in treatment before 5pm, only by appointment. And all the doctors were already busy. So finally we decided to go to my old workplace building since they have a Minute Clinic over there. All of this driving around for 1 hour was not pleasant at all, we had to park, walk in through the cold, get rejected over and over, and V was running a fever of 102'F (39'C) the whole time.

When we got to the clinics, the nurse checked him out and she said nothing serious and he just have a common cold which usually suck for the first 2 days. His temperature was pretty high, so he needed to take Tylenol or Ibuprofen. He got checked for flu and strep throat and meningitis and it was none of those things. Good, right?

We were at our last minutes of visit, the nurse was printing us the prescription, V buttoned up his coat nice and tight, getting ready to stand up when suddenly he told me that he needed to lean his head on my shoulder and... whoops, lost his consciousness. The nurse told me to hold his head while we kept calling his name. That time I knew the procedure at my work when someone faints, ERT team will be summoned, then the ambulance will come. So the nurse called ERT, and a pile of ERT people just came. They took his name and his condition, then they put him on the floor and gave an oxygen mask.

Note: ERT == Emergency Response Team - the people at my work who volunteer to be called when any medical emergency event is triggered. They have knowledge of CPR and basic first aids. They also carry emergency bags which contains bunch of first aids (such as bandage, glucose paste, oxigen, AED, etc etc - many many things - each bag is quite heavy and big). Each bag is located near exit area/printing room, so they just grab the bag when they are summoned. How do I know all this stuff about them? Because I am one of them!! :) Yup yup we are fully trained, everyone!!! with many skills, how to help injurer people, how to use an Automatic External Defibrillator... and don't worry, you can always reject our help - we are just good Samaritans.

Before the ERT team got there, V had regained consciousness, laying down on the floor. After he gained more consciousness, the ambulance and medical guys came - they asked what happened and his history. They asked if he wanted an ambulance to hospital or not - Actually I was so sure that V was ok and no need to go to ER at all. But the medical guys scared us by saying it could be a heart problem or a blood-sugar problem (diabetes) and that he could faint again randomly and fall in a parking lot and injure his head, etc. etc., so they convinced him to go with them, on a stretcher, into the ambulance, and BACK TO THE SAME EMERGENCY ROOM WE HAD JUST VISITED EARLIER THAT DAY! Tragic irony.

I followed him to hospital and wondered why everything became big big huge expense/event suddenly.

I parked my car and was pointed to his room asap. He was laying on the bed and couple nurses were sticking 3M labels on him for ECG reading. They asked him same questions again (btw we had been answering each question 3 times by now) and they were doing more tests to him to ensure he was ok and his fainting was not caused by his heart or other factors. So while they were doing those things - we realized that the fainting was probably because he has not eaten any lunch and wore tooooooooo many layers of clothes - which were way too warm to be wearing something like that indoors.

They gave him a bag of IV fluid and attached him to many wires. V just felt dizzy but overall he looked fine. I asked him if it would be necessary to get all the tests - and finally told the nurse to hold off any further tests and request a doctor. The nurse was finished anyway, and then the doctor came in and asked the same set of questions again (4th time), and she said V just needed to take Tylenol and Ibuprofen for the fever and drink a Gatorade, wait until the IV was done to check if he would be better by then.

So we stayed several hours longer and a few of our friends dropped in to visit. They just wanted to make sure we were ok and no more help needed at that point. V was embarrassed of course.

After another 2 hours, they finaly released us. Nothing dangerous/serious, just needed couple small pills, our heroes - 600 gm of ibuprofen and 600 gm of Tylenol which would have cost us less than $4, actually, but now we have to pay a few times that...

Speaking of payments, the bills have not arrived yet - but this is a really nice experience for us. Ambulance ride for V was his Christmas gift. We still could not believe "600 gm of ibuprofen and 600 gm of Tylenol" would co$t u$ thou$and$ of dollar$ -- I will blog more when I receive the bills from hospital. That blog will be in all capital letters.

This incident has also caused us to cancel our flight to Atl. the next day since V was not feeling better yet - even now, he's still got achy muscles and chills. We had to cancel our tickets, suckkkkkk big time, more dollar$ flying out. The car rental was gone. We were bleeding money on Thursday hiks hiks hiks...

One day we will read this and hopefully laugh about it. I just hope we're not living in a cardboard box at that time.

Pictures

We took two pictures today:
1. Current weather in MN .... snow everywhere
2. Number of laptops at our apartment (not all ours, only 3 - the rest are work computers)

New Job + Sick

This week is my last week at work - It was hard to say good bye to everyone especially to my manager. He always joked with me - our remarks to each other were always sarcastic but never actually hurt each other's feelings. I wrote him a card (with some jokes in it) but I didn't get a chance to say good bye to him. So I left him a note :(

Everyone at work was really supportive and some told me that I probably will come back since I would miss the environment so much - and the good thing is that I am always welcome. Hopefully I could keep in touch with them and they will reply to my email.

So it was a really busy week since I also have to plan another trip to Atlanta (for my cousin's wedding) - getting a present, tickets, car rental, dress and buying stuff that my mom and sister asked me to get from US. My aunt will deliver those items back to Indonesia. So almost every night I was out to get something. MN is not warm anymore like Atl - we have a pile of snow already and I still haven't bought my gloves. :(

My last day at work I was not feeling well and water running down my nose all day. I don't know if I will get better this Monday :( my new work starts already - I have my new work laptop but I still have to setup bunch of things.
Hopefully I will get better...................

I blame my Russian for bringing this cold from Atl. He blames me for finally being more wimpy than he is (usually he is the wimpy one).