Fraud, neighbors, dogs and aftermath

Some stupid a$$ got a hold of my credit card number and went on a shopping spree. I got a call from my Credit Union saying there were some charges in dispute and wanted to know if I made them. NO! I didn't. Most of the fraudulent purchases were made in Hacienda Heights and Thousand Oaks. I have never been in those towns. I had to fill some papers saying I did not make those charges and was told to cut the card as I wouldn't be able to use it anymore. They will issue me a new card. I have already received notices from couple of business which are paid automatically with my card, saying the payment has been rejected. Now more work for me getting things straightened up until I get my new card.
Damn thieves!

I have written before about my noisy neighbors. Across the street, there's the Iowan brothers -I call them Sons of Anarchy- that have a side business fixing motorcycles, and they themselves own a few.
They come down the driveway like mad men and zoom up and down the street sooooo noisily! They do at all times of day AND night. It seems they have slowed down a little lately, maybe their next door neighbors complained? I hope so!

Then I have the neighbors that own 2 big dogs. They keep them in their backyard all the time. One of them "Cocoa" has the loudest, more obnoxious bark of any dog, and he barks constantly. They bark especially when nobody is at their home. They bark when I take Lulu outside, they bark if a car goes by, they bark at all times. It gives me a headache and it makes it impossible to take a nap. They also bark early in the morning. Cocoa should be named Cujo, he's that evil!

Yesterday, the family left around 6PM. From that time until about 9PM they didn't stop barking for a minute. It was horrible, gave us a headache, made Lulu upset. And still they barked and barked. I went outside and yelled at them to stop. I was at wit's end. Marvin thought maybe they were thirsty, so I went to the fence that separate our backyards and saw their water bowl was empty. Aha!!!
I went inside the house and got an empty gallon jug and filled it with water and went back to give them water.

AFTERMATH: I lifted myself up on the fence holding on to it with one hand and carrying the heavy jug of water with the other. Sooo stupid! The dog jumped high and scared me and I lost my balance, the water fell on their yard,and I tried by all means to hold on to the fence, but I started sliding down and was extremely lucky I didn't fall backwards.

However...I got my left arm scraped badly, it was bleeding and is now black and blue. My left breast is a big bruise, also scraped, is not a pretty sight. My waist is hurting and so is my right ankle. My whole body aches and I'm in pain. I am definitely not a young chick anymore.

But the damn dogs quit barking:)

90 day visa

N's Philippine fiancée has been granted a 90 day visa.

He bought her a plane ticket today, she will be here February 11, 8 days before his 59th birthday.

He waited till the 11th because his Mercury is in retrograde and it wouldn't be propitious to travel before that day. His next door neighbor is very much a zodiak expert and sort of advises him in stuff like that :)

By May 11, they will either get married or she will be back on her way to Manila.

If they get married, there's a 2 year wait before she can get her green card and cannot leave the US before that.

She will be staying with her aunt and uncle in Santa Ana, for the first 90 days. She and N will date and go places and get acquainted during this time.

I hope it works for both of them, but is going to be hard because of the age difference among many other things.

We will see....

Auschwitz

Yesterday marked the Seventieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Although 90% of the inmates at the camp were Jewish, there were also some prisoners of war, political prisoners, gypsies, homosexuals, and people from different nationalities that were sent there for different reasons.

One of them was my mother's brother Juan.

He was the only son in a family of 11 daughters. I am not sure of the timetable, but at some point he moved to Germany and married a German woman. I never even knew about him for a long time. He didn't keep in touch with his Spanish family, but I found out he kept in touch with tia Carmeta. I talked to my mother about him in one of my last visits to Spain and she told me a little about him, she told me he was in Germany during WWII and was at one point in a concentration camp.





I am friends with a relative of mine in Facebook. I had never met her. Her mother was married to a half cousin of mine. Through her I found out more things about my family (she started a family tree with My Heritage).

Yesterday she posted an interesting story in Facebook.

For  those of you that cannot read Spanish, she writes that he (Juan) survived the camp when the Russians rescued him and gave him food and money. Three day later he was robbed and was taken to a hospital where he stayed there for 14 months recovering.  He never forgot his stay in Auschwitz, he survived by eating dirt and sawdust.

I wonder  how was his life after that.

An almost perfect day

Weather wise that is :)

This morning it was sunshiny and the sky was bright blue and I just felt like getting out of the house and going to the beach.

I stopped by Norbert to see how he's doing, since I had not been to his house for quite a while, or seen him. We have been talking on the phone quite a but, but it's not the same. He had asked me to  clean up his computer which I tried to do. His computer is an XP so really nothing works very well, Windows has let it go and advised people to get rid of them because of virus etc. He decided to keep it and when (if) Crista comes, she can choose a new one.

We talked for a long time about how his life will change etc. I hope things work out well for him.
He wanted to go have lunch in Newport Beach, but I was not in the mood for it so I said I was leaving.

I went to Snapfish and had fish and chips and it was really good. Then I was going to go back home but thought it was a pity  with such a nice day to just go and not even see the ocean, so I turned around and drove down PCH and drove to Seal Beach.

The sunset was at 5:15, so I just sat around in the beach and got my feet wet and took pictures with my new phone, and just enjoyed the balmy weather.

Then came time for the sunset and the sky around the sun was bright orange and it was a beautiful sight.

Then it was time to drive home :)

i6

Well I finally did it. I upgraded my i4 phone for an i6.

I like it because is larger and easier to read, very thin too. But it's somewhat different from what I am used. I never did learn all the tips and tricks of i4 anyway, but I am trying to slowly learn more about this new one.

The good thing is I changed my plan, and is a little cheaper, I don't have a 2 year contract but I will be paying month to month, and I can upgrade at any time. Basically the monthly price is a couple dollars more than with the i4, but I didn't have to put up any money for the new phone, just connection charges and stuff like that.

All in all I am pretty pleased with it, It has different sounds than the old phone and that makes me sad because I was used to the alarm, and the ringing etc, and they don't have those ones anymore. Oh well nothing major lol. Also I need to learn how to d/l stuff. For some reason I go to iTunes and it won't let me add any of the free stuff like Candy Crush, but truth be told I get easily annoyed and just check out. I will have to go back to try it in the morning.


I wonder if they have an i6 For Dummies! :)

A Present!

Today I got a beautiful 24" TV from Marvin!!!

I have been wanting one for a while but I didn't think it would fit in my desk next to the computer. The TV I had was 18".

But it fits! And is very nice !!

Thank you Marvin, what a nice surprise :)

Elvis, Beatles, Rolling Stones?

I was reading the girls' blogs and they were asking if you are a Beatles fan or an Elvis fan (today was his 80th birthday) or if you prefer The Beatles to The Rolling Stones.

It got me thinking. When I was a young teen, my father travelled often and always brought me back 45's which were hard to find in Spain. One time he brought me a record player that was like a little suitcase and I took it everywhere, nobody else had something like that. I would take it to school in the bus, the metro, the streetcar and played my 45's. I would take them to the beach, really everywhere. I didn't know any english so I learned some songs phonetically, memorized them and listened to them over and over and over.

Most of my 45's were Elvis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

My favorite Elvis song was "Are You Lonesome Tonight"
My favorite Beatles song was "Love Me Do"
My favorite Rolling Stones song was "Walking the Dog"


Years have passed and my taste in music has changed, but I still love them the most. And I still love those songs a lot.

I would say I liked Elvis more because he was so good looking and sexy, and I loved his songs. I had pictures of Elvis all over my bedroom wall and I saw all his movies. My favorite is GI Blues. However I didn't like the older Elvis or his music very much.

The Beatles and The Rolling Stones I liked them more for the music than for the members of the groups. I didn't find any of them very attractive. But oh the music!

Perseverance

I've been thinking and thinking about a word. The one that kept coming to me was perseverance, even though I was not 100% sure of the actual definition. So I checked it out.

per·se·ver·ance
ˌpərsəˈvirəns/
noun

The quality that allows someone to continue trying to do something even though it is difficult at times

Perseverance is a positive, active characteristic.
Joseph B. Wirthlin

What do you think?

Los Reyes Magos

Today was a beautiful day, blue skies, 79F, and I could see the snowy mountains from Beach Blvd.
Tonight is the night of Epiphany. It is celebrated in Spain and is the day that gifts are given to all the good gils and boys. Nowadays Santa Claus puts on an appearance in December 25, so some people get double gifts. Like my daughters ;)

Since the Reyes Magos are too far away to bring me presents, I have made a point of getting myself something, just for me. In 2009 I got my Mustang, a couple of years ago I got an iPad, and the next an iPhone. Today I decided to go shopping and I was all gung ho to get myself something nice, but had no idea what. I went to Sam's and walked up and down, but nothing caught my eye, I did buy a set of sheets, but it doesn't count. The I went to WalMart to return a pair of jeans Marvin had bought, while there I looked around and again nothing caught my eye, but I bought a can of compressed air to clean my keyboard. From there I went to Rubio's and had a yummy fish taco. Next door was a Verizon store and I thought I would see about upgrading my iPhone, but I didn't have my password so I just looked around. I will probably get an iPhone5 which will cost me $135 more, we'll see. But it has Siri, and I thought it would be fun, the salesgirl show me how it worked and the b#$% siri didn't understand my accent! :(

I went to a couple of clothes stores but I left without trying anything, I sure was not in the mood. Shopping doesn't make me happy, it tires me and makes me grumpy. I also looked at a bigger TV to replace my 18" by my computer, but a bigger one would not fit the space.

When I got home, my next door neighbor was outside putting some stuff bythe curb, they had bought a new dining room set and were getting rid of the old one. I looked at it and I liked the chairs, I've been wanting a chair to replace the old one I've had for years, so  she said sure go ahead and take it, take them all, also a set of TV trays (wooden ones). I didn't have use for the table so I left it there and she helped me put the  chairs in the garage. They are from Ikea :) Next time we have people over those chairs will come in handy.

I think I found my WORD. I think.

Family Portraits

This February we will be celebrating our 50th Wedding Anniversary. WOW That's a long time, I feel pretty proud of this accomplishment, we've had our ups and downs, but all in all we made it and that's what's important :)

Our daughters decided their gift to us would be a family portrait. It was also decided that the best time to have it would be the day after Christmas, because is one of the few days we are all together. We had a photographer come to our house to take pictures. That was great because that way we didn't have to go out and look for places etc. and we were all more relaxed too. He took many many pictures in almost all possible combinations. Some of them were posed, many of them were not. It was fun!

I had been wanting a family portrait for a long time, I think the last one we had was when Tristan was about 4 years old. Of course we have had group pictures taken, but they were just snapshots we took with our iPhones etc.

There's lots of people that are very photogenic, for instance my friend Jessica. She cannot take a bad picture. And then there's me. I very seldom have had a picture taken that I've liked. The older I get the less I like them. Some people say, well it looks like you, well that doesn't make me feel any better!! lol

This time there were so many pictures taken that some maybe be pretty good :) I will post some at a later time.

For now...
This is an incomplete family picture taken at Sunset Beach this December. It was cold, about 45 F

A WORD - Both girls have chosen a word for the year. I have not read "Unraveling the Year Ahead", but thought I would choose a word to guide me through the year. So far nothing comes to mind.
Any ideas?

1st day of 2015

I also stayed home all day. I had a bit of a cold and took a couple of naps. Marv watched some of the games and enjoyed them.

I didn't have any breakfast although yesterday I had hot chocolate with whipped cream with ladyfingers to dunk in. Today I made the canalones, they were very tasty and I am sorry I didn't get the package when you all were here, it's a lot of work but they were very yummy. I also drank a whole bottle of Freixenet, well, Marv had a glass :)

I don't have any resolutions for 2015, but I am planning on organizing and purging a lot of stuff, I already started with the laundry room. I found a place in FB called Declutter 365 and it has all sorts of ideas and downloadable calendars etc. Also there is a website: http://www.home-storage-solutions-101.com/declutter.html I think that's one of my problems, clutter, so maybe this will help. another thing I want to do is to take Lulu for longer walks at least 4 times a week:)

Have a wonderful year !

I forgot to write the books and movies I read/watched in December, so here they are:

BOOKS

Juliette Fay - The Shortest Way Home

Melissa Senate - The Love Goddess' Cooking School

Sophie Kinsella - Shopaholic to the Stars

Lisa Jackson - Close to Home

Faye Kellerman - Murder 101


MOVIES


Leap Year (2014)

Shirin in Love (2014) Iranian/US

The Italian Trip (2014) English

Mr. Hobbs takes a Vacation (1962)

Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au Bon Dieu? (2014) French