Got Hitched, Yo

So we left WLA around 8:30am to head off to the LAX courthouse.

Our appointment was at 10:00am, but we were told to come 30 mins early to wait in line to register. But there was no line!

There were two couples + witnesses in front of us.
One couple went in ahead of us. I guess their appointment was at 9:30am.

The other couple was after us, so the retired judge(?) asked if we wanted to start early. Since じゅるる's family showed up a little before 9:45, we decided to start.

And it took less than 15 mins.
He did the ring ceremony for us too (asked if we had rings. I guess some people come w/o them).

Both mothers signed as witnesses... bad idea, since they both don't understand English much. Lots of interpreting between the retired judge(?) and the mothers. Good thing we do this for a living.

And we posed for pictures, and the end.

Photos may or may not see the light of day.
Depends on how fat my arms look.

Lots of UPS Deliveries

We've been getting lots of deliveries at Koge House.

I realized they're all addressed to じゅるる, though. I guess that's how it's set up in the hitched registry, but it's the Yama residence.

Which wouldn't be a problem, except...

Mr G had to make sure he was delivering stuff to the right address. And the reason why we had set up the Koge House as the delivery address was b/c Mr G already knows us (and when we'll be home)... but it doesn't work if it's not addressed to one of the Yamas. Hmmm...

There's already a bunch coming this way, so it's kinda late to change it now.

Thanks to all of those who are sending stuff.
I'm keeping tabs on all the in-and-out spending, so I will repay w/ what's due when you get hitched. Or have offsprings. Or if none of those, double or triple-up on birthdays and holidays.

Finally DSL!

じゅるる Skyped me that we're finally connected at the new place.

Of course A*&T was supposed to mail the DSL modem to Koge House, but it ended up on the front porch of the new place. Hmmmm.

Good.
Now I don't have to keep walking over to Koge House & asking じゅるる to come pick me up in the middle of the night. (Cuz it's still dangerous to walk 4 buildings down at 2am in the morning)

Hair Cut in K-town

Ichigo & I met up in K-town in the morning to get our hair cut.

All of my split ends are gone.
And Ichigo doesn't have hair covering her ears.

The lady fluffed up both of our hairs, but we know we'll never blow dry our hair ourselves.

Meanwhile, じゅるる did laundry at the new place.
And someone stole his laundry basket.
Already!?

Do people steal laundry baskets these days?
I thought people just used other people's laundry detergent when they are running low themselves. What kind of neighborhood are we living in!?

So we now have to look for a hamper or get a new laundry basket. *sigh*

Search for Cheap Furniture

Since the new kitchen doesn't have a lot of cabinet space, we decided we could use a china cabinet near the dining area.

So off to IKEA we go.
After looking at different kinds of furniture we could possibly get, we ended up settling with a... Billy. Gah! I'm a bit upset that we ended up settling w/ a Billy, but it was the most decent size.

Did you know that Billy bookshelves now come in a different size? They still have the 31-inch wide ones (the wide one), but they no longer have the 28-inch one, and now have a 16-inch one. I guess they decided to make it so all the doors can be used for the wide shelf & the half-width shelf. Which makes the 1.5-width one useless. Okay, no one cares this much about Billy bookshelves & the info is taking up too much space in my brain. *delete data*

We also found a computer desk that seems to work nicely as a bedroom table (vanity?). So there's a place to keep our cellphones as they charge at night.

When will we be able to go to K-town to buy a couch?
Yes, yes. After SDCC.

Move to WLA

We woke up early to wrap up some cleaning before the movers arrived.

And then it was 5 hours of hauling boxes & stuff.
Ichigo met us in WLA and did a lot of hauling too.

The apt is full of boxes, especially the 2nd bedroom.
And it'll probably stay this way until SDCC is over with.

Gah!

Cleaning w/ Ichigo

I tried cleaning yesterday, but I gave up and requested Ichigo to come over to help me clean the new apt.

There were two really gross shelves in the kitchen that I was gonna demand they replace, but Ichigo was able to get them looking brand new. Amazing!

I cleaned the main bathroom.
Ichigo noticed that the sink is leaking... more things to email the management company about.

We didn't mop the floors b/c we figured that the movers will come in w/ shoes tomorrow. So our feet keep getting black.

Tomorrow is the big move!

PS. Phone line working, but DSL apparently won't start working until Friday. Boo!

No DSL modem either. Boo!

Fridge Arrived

Since the new apt doesn't come w/ a fridge, we bought one at the Santa Monica Sears. I decided to go w/ the fake metal color instead of the standard white, eggshell or black. Only b/c the one I really wanted at Best Buy was the fake metal color. It was to compensate for my heartbreak.

The delivery time was set for 5pm - 7pm, so I headed over to the apt around 4:15pm. Since I had to mop up the kitchen floor anyway. Lots of footprints.

The guys arrived early... around 4:45pm.
Took off the front door, easily carried the fridge up and down the front entrance stairs, and installed the fridge in 10 minutes. That was fast!

I spent the rest of the afternoon vacuuming the entire place. And wiped down half of the kitchen cabinets. Some of the cabinets (the ones on top) were gross, so I have to call the management office to get them replaced. I would have taken photos, but I forgot the SD card in the mini Dell. Boo.

I will go take photos tomorrow.

PS. DSL modem still hadn't arrived, so I had じゅるるcall AT&T. Apparently the DSL doesn't turn on until 2-3 days after the phone service starts, so we won't get our DSL modem until Friday. Hmph! Then we would have requested the phone line earlier!

Maybe we can try connecting from Sat's WiFi... heheh.

Bday Gifts Arrive, Updated Other Wish List

I got three packages in the mail today.

One is from America's Test Kitchen.
Season 9 DVD and book came. I never know what to do w/ the book, and I used to give it to Dee's mom... but maybe I'll keep this one & try making some of the stuff on the show.

The other two packages were from Amazon, courtesy of Ards & Sasami.
Of course I didn't think the bigger box was from Amazon & assumed it was our new DSL modem. So I opened up the package from Sasami thinking... Ards got me a DVD? Sat said she mentioned something about a knife.

Sasami got me Bolt ^__^
You know, the animated movie by D*sney about an actor dog? I liked the commercial, but never got around to seeing it. Was it released for a long time?

The other box from Ards contained the upside-down tomato planter and cupcake molds. Yay!

Sat said to take the planter to the apartment... but we don't have a balcony or patio. I guess I'll keep it on my bedroom side of the balcony at the condo.

Cupcake molds are nice, since they're stack-able (= compact). And I kinda wanted to make muffins for breakfast or snacking. Cuz I'm home all the time these days... for times when I don't feel like cooking. Which is always.

Anyhoo, Bolt was in my getting-hitched registry, so I had to update the list. I had to take off Planet Earth too, since じゅるるgot it for me. What DVDs to add to the registry!? (What? You're not supposed to have DVDs or entertainment stuff? I included a PS3 and Wiimote...)

BTW, here's the registry.
We've been working on adding things... but there aren't a lot of things we want or need. So some are to replace old ones じゅるるhas, or things I have to leave behind. Like the Magic Bullet.

Picked Up Keys

I went to pick up the keys for the new apartment.

The welcome packet said to take photos of all the "before" photos, so I took a ton of photos. Although the only things that are going to help are the photos of broken or semi-broken places.

Like the burnt kitchen cabinet door *laugh*

Or the bad caulking job on the top of the bath tub.

The apartment has new carpet & stuff, but it's awfully dusty. I guess they had a lot of maintenance work done & the workers brought in lots of dust.

So I'll spend all day Wednesday vacuuming & wiping everything.
Fun, fun, fun.

Getting Ready to Move

I helped じゅるる pack up all the CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes (yes, he still has those) today. They filled up 9 boxes... -__-

We still have to take care of the kitchen stuff and daily-use stuff.

The big move is the 17th.
This is the only weekend we have... but it's better to plan for a move in a short amount of time, so everything gets boxed all at once & unboxed before we forget what's in the boxes, right?

My stuff won't be moving until August.
It's because I don't really have time to move my stuff. Plus there's no need to move my stuff when it's only four buildings away. Plus we can pretend we're not living in sin until our civil ceremony. Okay, I just made that one up.

In the afternoon we went to eat Chinese for the 9th Symphony wrap up party. Pretty good food. Sat would get jealous. We brought home the leftover duck b/c no one at our table seemed interested in taking any of the food home.

Birthday Concert No. 9

So I turned 34 today.

When you look at that number... boy, that's really old. Thank goodness I don't look THAT old! *boastful laugh*

Anyhoo.
Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes on Facebook. I only got one text message (Steph) and one email (Dee) and one e-card (Ichigo), and all the rest were Facebook. Sign of the times?

I didn't have anything planned for the day, so I opened up all the bank related mail I got during AX weekend. I knew that one of my IRA accounts was maturing around this time, but it just matured yesterday! So I decided to run errands & do all sorts of banking needs. I went to the post office and two banks. All before 11am. Mighty productive morning, I must say!

Then I took a nap until I needed to get ready for a concert downtown. The T family were performing Beethoven's 9th Symphony at the Disney Concert Hall w/ all the other Japanese or Japanese-descent folks from S Calif.

So no cake for me so far.
I believe Ichigo ordered cake from H-san, so I'll be eating that when I go home to WLA on Monday.p

Picked Up Marriage License

We went to the LAX courthouse to get our marriage license.

I think I waited too long. I was watching the Michael Jackson memorial on TV & thought there wouldn't be a lot of people in line if I got there before it ended... but the memorial ended right as I got to じゅるる's office. Grrr.

There was a long line at the county clerk's office, but it went pretty quickly.

We also made an appointment for the civil ceremony.
7/31 (Fri) at 10:00am.

The chapel is a tiny room to the side of the county clerk's office, so we won't wear anything fancy. I hope.

Fat Fingers

I have chubby fingers.
Which is why I stopped wearing rings after college.

Of course I'm not really a believer in the institution of wedding rings. Esp engagement rings, which I think are a waste of money. Unless it's to be used as emergency funds when there's a major disaster in the world & you lose all your assets and need to exchange the ring for water or other necessities.

While we both agree on the engagement ring side, someone (I won't name names) insisted we get wedding bands. Fine, fine.

We both don't like yellow gold color, so we were thinking of going white gold. But someone (who I won't name) has sensitive skin & the sales guy said white gold has some metal that people are allergic to. So we went with the other silver colored metal. Although I think titanium would have been awesome because they're kinda dark silver. I realized I don't like that polished chrome color, but too late now.

Anyway, the rings were re-sized & I tried it on.
But my hands were puffy from being exhausted from the con... okay, they're always puffy, but they were puffier than usual! Anyway, my ring finger looked like a ham tied up with string. le sigh.

I took photos, but I decided not to subject myself to such humiliation.

If I wrap my fingers with plastic wrap, will they get thinner?

Missed Fireworks Again

When you're not living a schedule like most working people, you forget when holidays are happening.

Not that I forget the existence of Independence Day, since AX always falls on that weekend.

But I completely forgot which day was the 4th of July.
And I spent the entire evening at a V*caloid panel (2 hours of Miku videos) and C*rcus panel. Then went straight to the ANN party, so I missed all the fireworks lighting up the sky.

I heard from Sat who heard from Ichigo that Koge was scared of the fireworks.