Well I can honestly now say that I’ve failed in my January goal of posting at least once per week here on PablosPlace.  I held my own for about 5 months, but the hectic pace of the last month or so has left me with precious little time, (and also a fair lack of motivation) to sit down and bang out a couple of words here on the site.  It’s also not as if my life has been flipped upside down either, but rather there have been so many activities with the kids, and the job consuming so much of my time lately, that I just haven’t had the ability until this morning to sit down and reflect, which is when I do most of my writing.  Read more…

This is one of those “force it” moments where I don’t really want to blog at all, but I’m willing myself to do so.  There’s only a few things that I have to talk about, so I’ll make this one pretty quick.

The new job begins on Tuesday.  Technically it starts Sunday, but because I have Sunday and Monday off, it really begins at noon on Tuesday.  I’ve got some mixed feelings about it actually, but overall I’m happy and excited.  Everyone keeps asking if I’m excited about the new gig, and honestly, I don’t know that excited is the right word.  I’m more feeling a sense of relief that it’s finally happened, and I’m eager to get the new thing underway.  But I’m lacking in excitement over the commute, which I hope will be easy.  Anyway, there is a bunch of e-learnings that I need to take for the new gig, so I’ll get started on those in a bit. Read more…

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be road blocks.  I’ve had them; everybody has had them.  But obstacles don’t have to stop you.  If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up.  Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”  Michael Jordan

There is a story about how Michael Jordan failed to make the cut of his High School varsity basketball team as a sophomore.  At 5’11”, the adolescent Jordan simply wasn’t good enough to play ball with the best in his school in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Motivated by the fact that he wasn’t “good enough,” Jordan went on to lead the Junior Varsity team while tallying several 40-point games, grew by 4 inches in between his sophomore and junior years, and would return to make the team, and be selected as a McDonald’s All American after averaging a triple-double in his senior season.  Oh, and then he went on to be a six-time NBA Champion, winning the NBA Finals MVP award in all six times that he was there, along with all the other accolades doled upon what would be the greatest basketball player that anyone has ever seen play the game.  Read more…

Do you ever make obligatory phone calls to people that you haven’t spoken with in a while, only discover that you really don’t have much to talk about?  The call goes something like:

“So, what’s new with you?”

“Nothing really.  How about you?  Anything new?”

“Nope…pretty much the same here too.”

That’s kind of been my life the last few weeks, and a major reason that I’ve been unmotivated to blog about it.  Perhaps that’s the difference between the skilled writer and the ones that are just blogging hacks (*raises hand for the role of the latter*) is that skilled writers, and to some degree conversationalists, find areas of interest to talk about when there aren’t any new topics.  And while I suppose that I could have written about how I’m totally geeking out on my PlayStation 3 with NBA2k12, and how that game has me simulating a ton of basketball in a mock 62-team tournament, I don’t know that it’s really a topic that I want to write about (regardless of the amount of enjoyment that I’m getting out of it).  Read more…

I’m willing myself back to blogging as it can sometimes be a daunting task.  For those that have ever ventured into the arena of writing, you know that motivation is largely the biggest reason that one places pen to paper (or in my case, fingers to keys).  The other major factor has to be time.  And while I seem to have a few minutes of the latter here and there, I’ve been severely lacking in the former for quite some time which has lead to very few posts on PablosPlace as a result.  But I remind myself of my yearly goals, one of which was to get a post onto here each week, and I press through my lack of motivation, and here I am.

When last I wrote, I talked about two topics, and left out a ton of details.  One detail of the past week that I want to revisit was a couple of times where I felt fantastic about being a husband and a father.  Traci and I took advantage of a couple nights stay at the Palazzo Hotel in Vegas, a gift she had received by being a member of the studio audience of the CBS Television Show “The Talk.”  She wrapped up the certificate this past Christmas for me to unveil, and we were finally able to make use of it while the kids had the week off for spring break, and they could all be taken care of.  So Traci and I spent a couple of great nights in Las Vegas, and we had a blast.  Read more…

It’s been an extremely busy week filled with a ton of activities.  Even my days off weren’t really days off so much, as they were busy filling mundane activities and driving people around and running household errands.  But we survived the week and then some, and we’ve had our share of joys and sorrows during the events.  When last I blogged, I wrote about the whole Time Warner Cable fiasco.  Since then, we’ve experienced a death in the family, a vacation, an interview, a resolution of the Time Warner Cable situation, Open House at the kids school, and tonight we’re heading to see Beauty and the Beast at the Pantageous Theatre in Hollywood.  There’s a lot to pack into a blog…most likely too much for one, but I’m going to do my best to catch up so that I can reflect.

I want to begin by finally wishing a farewell to Traci’s Grandmother Lucille Jaeger.  Lucille has been holding onto life for more than a year, suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia and being bed ridden for that entire time frame.  Finally early on Friday morning, she breathed her final breathes before passing away at home, where her husband of roughly 60 years was with her, as was her son Phil (Traci’s dad), and her daughter Sue (who had been staying with them for nearly the last month or so. Read more…

“Fool me once, shame on you;  Fool me twice….”

Back in December Traci and I switched our home telephone, cable, and internet provision from AT&T U-Verse to Time Warner Cable.  The transition was absolutely brutal and was filled with countless flaws.  I wrote a blog about the complete mess that Time Warner made of the transition, posted it on PablosPlace (you can read it here) and when it hit online, I immediately got a response from Time Warner via their twitter, apologizing for the mishaps and “escalating our matter to corporate.”  The subsequent escalation resulted in a conversation with a lady named Glenda, who did what she could to make the situation better, and for the most part, she was able to put a band-aide on the situation.

Bottom line, Glenda addressed the issues that we had point by point, scheduled a technician to come back out to the house to provide the correct equipment, and adjusted our bill to a closer to promised rate, and we made peace with the fact that they weren’t going to own up to the $89.99 per month rate that the flyer clearly indicated.  It was a concession on both of our ends, but ultimately we were going to have the service that was promised to us at the beginning, and we’d be ok with the rate that we’d be paying as it would still be saving us roughly $20 a month by switching services.  If we’d only have known how much of a bargain with the devil that we would have made…. Read more…

After what has felt like months, probably because it actually has been, the gang assembled here at PablosPlace for some Friday night poker action once again.  It’s not as if we’ve abandoned the home game altogether, but rather that I have been bust working most Friday nights, and there are a lot of us that just seem to have different things happening that make it tough to convene.  But the stars aligned for this past Friday as Tim, Andrew, Ben, and Robert joined Traci and myself, dusted off the thick layer of dust on the chips, and got some action together on the felt for some poker.

I feel like I’ve lost my lust for playing the last year or so, where I just don’t have the same passion for it that I once used to.  This blog was originally put together with the intent on sending out messages to everyone about the home game, and reporting about the results.  This was long before Facebook was a dream in Zuckerberg’s head, and long before we really communicated in mass texts or through GroupMe.  In the beginning, PablosPlace was somewhat of a joke that happened to manifest itself as my private little sanctuary that became a public journal of sorts that everyone seemed to enjoy.  And so I continued writing whatever was on top of my head, and people seemed to like it, presenting me with inspiration to continue writing here and sharing my life experiences when I was motivated to write about them. Read more…

I mentioned in my previous post that the next two weeks could present some change in life, and it may a little.  Firstly, our Federal Tax Return is set to be deposited on Wednesday according to the “Where’s My Tax Return” app that I uploaded.  Traci and I filed our taxes on February 7th, but it supposedly takes 21 days to get the return back, even when filing electronically.  In actuality, it’ll take closer to a month.  But we’ll be happy to finally have it.

We’ve been putting off the repair work on our cars until we had the money to actually repair them.  We borrowed some money to repair the van the last time that it had some troubles, and we also need to repair that one.  But now, all three of our vehicles are screaming for work, and it’s way overdue.  But when you’re short on cash, there isn’t much that you can do other than hope that they last, and that when the money finally comes through, fix them up again.  The 99′ Nissan Maxima needs new brakes and rotors, as well as some engine work and spark plugs.  The 02′ Ford E-150 needs to have some belts worked on, as well as check the suspension.  And the 02′ Mazda Protégé needs the same work as the Nissan.  In all, we expect the repair work and the loan repayment to exhaust roughly 70-80% of our return.  It’s a huge chunk, but hopefully this will get the cars all healthy enough that they’ll continue running for years to come on regular maintenance.  Read more…

Over the past week or so, there really hasn’t been all that much change in anything in life, but the next two may be a much different story.  I’ll chat about that more later and in another blog, but here I want to talk about being letdown, and giving up on a dream.  This week, we went out to visit Traci’s Grandparents in Camarillo and the visit was as good as could be expected.  Lucille, who is clearly closing in on her end with us on this earth was actually in very good spirits.  She was smiling and responsive, and was actually asking for things with clarity to Traci who spent the majority of the time of our visit at her bedside.  There was a moment when Lucille asked Traci if she could teach her to speak Spanish, and it came pretty much out of the blue considering that Traci doesn’t really speak more than a couple of words of the language.  But it was good for a chuckle nonetheless.

The visit was somewhat marred for us as we finally came to the realization that the house that her Grandparents live in really wouldn’t be a reality for us.  Traci’s Aunt Sue is staying with her parents while her mother is in her final days, and had told us that she has received an offer of $575,000 for their home.  The home itself is a beautiful house that was built by Traci’s Grandparents themselves back when Traci was born 35 years ago.  It has some structural problems with the foundation, and had a bout with termites that would require some fixing, but overall, it’s something that has been lived in for the past 35 years, and continues to be done so today. Read more…