new year, new place

I seriously suck at keeping a blog. I started this post over a month ago but I guess I was just never in the mood to finish it. I don't even have an excuse because I have literally had nothing to do all of February. So here is how the post originally started... (P.S.  This post turned out to be super long. Sorry!)

I planned to post sooner than this but it was crazy at my house in the last couple weeks of 2011 and the first week of the new year. Rick (my dad's friend) was staying with us for a week, and the day after he left, my sister and her boyfriend Ben arrived, so the house was a lot busier than normal.

We spent Christmas Eve at my house instead of my Grandma's for the first time in my entire life (and apparently for the first time since my parents met). Everyone was kind of tired so we didn't even do that much but it was nice. I got to meet Ben's dog Loki for the first time and now I've gotten to know him very well. (He is currently nudging my leg to play with him and running around the room like a crazy dog as I am writing this post).

Christmas Day at my Grandma's was not a total disaster as we all expected. My Grandma actually seem to be on her best behavior, which means she still said some not very nice stuff but we didn't want to strangle her by the end of the day. The one bad part was that it turned out that Ben had developed something called dry socket, because he had just gotten his wisdom teeth removed a few days before. He was in a lot of pain but he was also on pain medication and apparently doesn't remember anything that happened Christmas morning. Even this:

I also (stupidly) decided to crochet everyone (like 15 people!) these little cute Christmas stockings. It was fun at first but got super annoying after awhile. Especially when I had to do 3 in one day. But I think they turned out great and I'm proud of myself since I had just barely learned how to crochet.

We had the annual Artinger/McCrary Christmas/Hanukkah party a couple days after Christmas. We had two extra people (Rachel and Erika's bfs) there plus an animal (Loki) so it was a little crazier than normal but still great! I got these great boots from Kelsey and I have already worn them in the snow a bunch!

The pre dinner vegetables. I was proud of my "artistic" picture.

The awesome boots!

The next day we went to the Santa Anita Racetrack and it was fun but not as exciting as I hoped it would be. It's not that much fun to only bet $2 at a time and then lose most of it haha. My mom and dad got to go where the photographers go so my dad got a lot of cool pictures but here's one I took. I took it on my phone because I broke my camera literally 2 minutes after we got there. So dumb.

Also, Seabiscuit once raced at Santa Anita so they had one of the horses that played Seabiscuit in the movie there. It was a little sad because they just had him in this little pen for people to stare at and pet all day, but I guess that is the price one must pay for being "famous" haha.

The horse that played Seabiscuit. He wouldn't really pose for me, but we did get to pet him!

Rachel and Ben at the races!

 On New Year's we had Bev and Sandy over as usual, but also Kathy and Tim and a couple of Rachel's friends, so it was a lot of fun! Playing Taboo has become our new tradition (if 2 years in a row counts as a tradition) and it is so funny playing with 2 different generations. The highlight of my night, however, was that Sandy and Betty got me these awesome things!

I'm a zebra!

A couple days later we took Loki to the beach for the first time. He had SOOO much fun!

Another of my "artistic" pics. Too bad Loki wouldn't pose.

Then a week after New Years, Rachel, Ben, me and my mom drove to Colorado. It was not as much fun as I thought it would be because it snowed a lot of the time and it took us 4 more hours than we expected on the second day. Here's a picture of one of the snowier moments.

Snow! It looked prettier in person.

So we finally made it to Colorado (alive!) and then my mom and my sis both left a couple days later. My sis returned after a few days but I only had a few days to spend with her before I had to fly off for my 2 weeks of interview adventures. My first stop was in Boston where I got to stay with Kelsey. We had sushi the first night and explored the city a little the second day. The interview went well and I had a lot more fun than I thought I would!

In front of the famous Mike's Pastries. The cannolis are amazing!

Me and Kelsey

Me in the snow the day I left. I had to drag my suitcase through 4 inches of snow.

Next I took the bus to New York and I stayed with my aunt on Long Island for a few days. I spent most of my time there watching TV on Hulu except for the one day I went into the city for my interview. The interview day wasn't as exciting as the one in Boston, but as of right now I am planning on attending the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry next year so I'll probably be posting a lot more pics like these!

I got to the city early so I took an early morning stroll around Times Square. 

Here is the school! It's right across from Bryant Park and the New York Public library and only a couple blocks from Times Sqaure!

From there, I flew straight to LA and spent almost a week by myself in my house because my parents were in Hawaii (so not fair!). My interview at the school in Fullerton was pretty boring and uneventful but I got to see Brittany and Laura while I was there so that was great! Unfortunately I don't have any pics because we always suck at taking them!

After that I flew back to Colorado and was there for only one day and two nights before I had to fly back to California for my Berkeley interview. Of course, stupid Colorado decided to have the worst snowstorm they've had in 6 years and my original flight was cancelled, but luckily I got a later flight and eventually made it to Berkeley late that night.

The funniest thing that happened on this trip was actually the first night when I went to take a shower. First of all, the hotel was the weirdest hotel ever. I'm not even sure you can call it a hotel.... It was literally above an Indian restaurant. You had to walk through the restaurant to get to the hotel haha. They even gave you a key to the front of the restaurant in case you got in after 11pm.

So anyway, the room we were in (oh btw, I stayed with a girl I met at the Boston and NY interviews in order to save money) supposedly had the best shower. It had a big square tub with 2 shower curtains that came from the 2 walls and pulled toward the center. I got in the shower and naturally I went to pull one of the shower curtains closed, but apparently the screws were loose and the pole came off of the wall and the whole shower curtain slid off onto the ground. So I am now naked and standing on the edge of the tub trying to put the curtain back on the pole and the pole back in the wall, when the other side of the pole falls off the other wall and the other curtain comes off! I spend a few minutes trying to fix the other side but eventually I realize that standing on the side of a tub, naked, for half an hour at 10:30pm is not the best way to spend my time so I just take a shower without the curtain on. Luckily the tub was big and the shower head was in the far corner so nothing got wet, but it was quite an end to a very busy and stressful day.

The interview at Berkeley went well. There were over a hundred people interviewing that day and even more faculty, staff, and students from the school there helping out, but it went really smoothly and didn't feel incredibly long. I'm still waiting to hear back from them though, which is annoying, but honestly I don't think I'm going to change my mind from New York even if I do get in.

Since returning from interviews, I started looking for jobs. I applied to over 20 jobs, and each one took an hour because apparently online "assessments" are the new thing. They are sort of a combination of personality tests and "what would you do in this situation at work" tests. It was really discouraging at first because I never heard back from most of the jobs, so I started making profiles at babysitting and tutoring sites too, but I finally got a couple of interviews. Just today I was officially hired at Lowe's to be a cashier! Because of my "6-7 years of customer service experience" (really??) they are going to pay me $10.96 an hour! That's the most I've ever been paid at a job; even more than the CTO where I worked for 3 years. So I'm pretty excited about that!

So I think that is pretty much it for now! I finally got caught up on the last 2 months of my life. Up next: pics of my new pets!

-E