Check out what happened this morning on our way to work:

All lanes of the westbound 60 freeway, near the interchange with the 57 freeway, were reopened after being shut for nearly four hours while a Caltrans crew cleaned up animal fat that spilled from a big rig.

And it didn’t help that this was Jeannie’s 1st day back to school and she was basically freaking out about being late.  Thanks to some lucky local shortcuts, we made it to Jeannie’s school 3 mins before school started.

I am not sure our string of bad luck is over yet…  But at least the car is fixed, phone’s replaced, and we are getting our replacement DishDVR today.

The summer is finally over as Jeannie started working yesterday, and what an unluckly last 2 weeks of summer it was (which was why I didn’t really feel like blogging for a while).  Now that most of the ordeal is over (hopefully), I guess I’ll do a summery recap:

1. The Murano got read-ended one Sunday morning on our way to Costco.  It wasn’t bad and no one got hurt, just that there’s a little hole on the rear bumper.  The driver, a middle age Asian man, was driving a loaner car because his car was in the shop due to an earlier accident (Figure That!)  He was very apologetic (good) but then offered us $50 for the “little trouble” that he had caused.  I chuckled and shaked my head, then asked for the insurance info.
2. Seeing that we are not taking the $50 bait, the guy upped his offer to a whopping $75!  We gave him the “Are you kidding me?” look and continued taking down the info.  Seeing that he’s not going to get off easily, he then asked if we can bring the car to his body shop so he can get an estimate.  Trying to be nice, we said yes.
3. The next day Jeannie brought the car over to the guy’s suggested body shop, which turns out is owned by his friend.  Seeing that Jeannie was there by herself (sorry, I had to work), they basically tried to scar/scam her into settling for $200~$300.  Good job for Jeannie for seeing through their schemes and standing up to those bastards, she left the place not taking their deal and angry (we were trying to do a nice thing for the guy but he ended up trying to scam us).
4. We immediately contacted State Farm (that guy’s insurance) regarding the whole accident.  A whole lot of phone calls later, we got approved for the repair and a rental when the Murano is being repaired.  Jeannie dropped the car off to the body shop and called Hertz to get picked up.  She ended up with a red RAV4 (brings back old memories) with a tired pressure light on.  She told Hertz about it and they said it’s ok…
5. Well, obviously it’s not ok.  Turned out there’s a screw in one of the tires, so we either had to drive it back for exchange, or fix it on their dime.  We chose the latter, but that still took more than an hour of our time…
6. A week later, the Murano was finally ready with a brand new bumper.  Jeannie called Hertz to arrange for a pickup/dropoff, but ended up getting a very rude dude (Chris) at Hertz Montclair, CA telling her that “We are too busy, so why don’t you keep the car for another day and we will charge you for it?”  Terrible Hertz service.  I ended up leaving work early so we can drop off the rental ourselves.
7. Unrelated to this whole car accident, I think our beloved DishDVR is failing.  It’s freezing up for no reason and requires frequent reboots.  We are in the process of calling Dish to get a replacement.
8. Oh yeah, and Jeannie Centro simply just refused to turn on after 2 months of use.  Apparently others have experienced this after 2 months of use, and you simply need to get a replacement phone since there’s no way for you to fix it yourself…  Had to talk to Palm’s India Customer Service, and they sucked.

I guess it’s a whole string of bad lucks all bunched up in a 2-week period.  I guess the only positive thing was Caliber Collision Center in Chino, where we got the car fixed.  A very nice/clean/high tech facility with a friendly staff and did a good job on the bumper. (The total repair + car rental cost was about $1,000) Other than that, we are hoping to put these whole 2 weeks pass us and move one (and get our replacement DVR before the new fall season starts).

Godspeed.

Well since my mini vacation is almost over (or is over depending on how you look at it), we decided to brave the hot SoCal weather yet again, this time to battle Huntington Library.  $20 per adult!  Geez… that’s almost at ripoff territory, but since we already spent the gas driving there, we decided to go in.  With all the shades it was alright in a hot day like today.  I really liked their Japanese garden stuff, pretty cool looking I say.  I believe this will be our last outing for the week, and also marks the end of my vacation.  Back to work Monday.

We took it easy after the trip since we were all dead tired.  Thursday we went out for a little lunch in the neighborhood and Lorelai made these funny faces:

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We are back from our 3.5 day trip to San Diego. Well, it was more of a trip for Lorelai and we were her personal servants.

Our 1st stop was to the beach, which Lorelai just simply loves (we were really surprised because we thought she would be scared by the waves, but it turned out that she loved them so much that she ran toward the waves instead).

2nd stop was to Legoland.  I guess we picked a bad day to go since it was super hot hat day.  It was kinda difficult since Lorelai still doesn’t meet most of the height requirements, so we ended up only on 3 rides with no minimun height requirements - they were all super intense rides!

After that we just went around to different parks and didn’t really do much…  We just mainly relaxed.  It was a fun little trip, even though Lorelai completely tired us out in 3 days.  Check out the gallery for the pictures!

There was a somewhat bigger than average earthquake (Magnitude 5.4) centered at Chino Hills (few miles west of us) that hit us yesterday (for more scientific information, check here).  It certainly was a big jolt, as I felt it at work and Jeannie felt it on the road in the car.  But we are glad to report that we are all OK, and our house, thankfully, is OK too!  Thanks to everyone who was worried about us!  We are still alive!!!  :)

Lorelai couldn’t stand staying at home doing nothing and demanded to be taken out for some sightseeing activities. Here’s a list of activities Sunday:

Front lawn photo op:

Just an example of what we have to deal with - She’s never tired and never wants to stop moving around.  Here she is emptying out everything under the coffee table.

She’s getting pretty good at it!