Monday, July 31, 2006

Problems with Electronics

This weekend was not a fun weekend at the Bodine house. There will not be any pictures to go along with this post and it will be explained why later on. On Friday night we came home from dinner with our friends to find out that our DVR was not working. To be honest this really was not a huge surprise to me since about 8 months ago we canceled DVR but it continued to work (along with movie channels). I notified the cable company but they never did anything about it . .. .so then we just kept quiet and enjoyed it! So Rob played with that machine for a few hours on Friday night trying to revive the shows he had saved up on there and had not watched but it was to no avail. I'll have you know though - that we are calling today to get DVR connected again since Rob has gotten so used to it then he can't imagine life without it. Makes me laugh.

On Saturday I got up and cleaned my house, went grocery shopping, got ready and then was sitting around wasting time watching some tv while I waited for a friend to pick me up to go to a baby shower. All of a sudden out of the blue - the tv just turns off! My dogs were sitting next to me so it wasn't them knocking something out. I fiddled with it for a little bit and Rob stopped in to pick up something he forgot (he works most Saturdays) and he played around with it a bit but we determined that it was a goner. Once again - not too surprised about this because it was a huge console tv from the 80's at least. Not my favorite tv by any means but it was a tv and it worked.

Rob turns 30 this September and I wanted to do something really nice for him so I've been saving up all year to get him a nice new tv. So when ours broke on Saturday, I agreed to let us get the new tv early but it was going to have to be a 32" inch instead of the 44" inch that he wanted because I had not saved up enough money yet. He agreed and off we went to Costco to get our new tv. We also made a stop at Walmart to get a basic black tv stand to hold our tv until we find the furniture that we really want.

Everything is going great and he's putting together the tv when he decides to go and look something up on the internet. Now keep in mind I have been using the internet all day to work on my primary sharing time for the next day and had used it right before we went to Costco. Well, something had happened to our computer now too! What are the chances of all this happening in one day? I was beginning to think that maybe we got hit by lightning with the storms last week but I know that didn't happen. Our brother in law is a computer whiz so he stopped by and thought perhaps we had a power surge which could fry our computer and other electronics. Great. Not a good thing. There was even a surge protector on the computer but it might not have been strong enough. So our brother in law took the computer for us and is looking at it this week. I'm praying he is able to fix it! The computer is less than a year old and was working fabulous! Not to mention it's really not in the budget to get a new one. And I have pictures that weren't saved to Snapfish yet. Not good. School starts in 3 weeks for Rob so we have to figure out something. I'm still hoping for the best! Luckily I have my computer at work but that doesn't help Rob out much.

As you can see - we had some adventures this weekend!

Friday, July 21, 2006

Some reasons to live in Mesa, AZ

With the addition of a Cafe Rio now in Arizona, I have started to be reminded of some more reasons why it is good to live here. Most particularly - why it is good to live in Mesa, AZ! In the news this week - Money magazine's top 10 list came out of places to live. Coming in at number 3 on the list was Mesa, AZ (for cities over 300,000 people)! They did the rankings based on job opportunities, good schools and activities. It was especially nice to see that Mesa was above San Diego even! And then later in the week - I saw on the headlines that Mesa, AZ was number one for the safest city to live in the US. Meaning Mesa, AZ is one of the cities least likely to be affected by a natural disaster. Now if this is the case - please tell me why a microburst managed to hit my neighborhood in Mesa, AZ last year and tear off a section of my roof? Overall though - it's pretty true. So today I'm proud to be a Mesan (I don't know if that is the right word to use - but oh well!).


Monday, July 17, 2006

Another Reason to Live in Arizona


In these hot summer months - it is really hard to remember exactly why I live in Arizona ....but I found another good reason to stay here. They finally opened my favorite restaurant - Cafe Rio!! Those of you who went to BYU or who live in Utah are probably really familiar with this very popular Mexican restaurant. The food is hard to describe since it seems to be a cross blend of different tastes. But basically it's very yummy and addicting! During my senior year at BYU - I know my friends and I ate at Cafe Rio AT LEAST once a week - if not more! I would usually skip my lunch meal on the days we were going to Cafe Rio so I could try and eat even more of the wonderful food. And afterwards even though we were stuffed full - we would usually head off to Sonic for a root beer flurry! Good times. Since moving away from Utah - I have craved the food from Cafe Rio and missed it more than anything else. Every trip I have made to Utah since graduation I've managed to fit in a stop to my favorite restaurant! And over a year ago we actually got a Costa Vida restaurant which was pretty similar to Cafe Rio but not quite as good. It worked to help fill the cravings though! But now this girl is one happy camper and perfectly content to stay living in Arizona since I know there is now a Cafe Rio in town. So if you get a chance to visit Cafe Rio and you haven't been - I can give you a few suggestions! The shredded chicken salad with the creamy tomatillo ranch dressing and the chicken burrito with smothered in the green enchilada sauce are my personal favorites. But I've never heard of anything bad at this restaurant. Now I'm just counting down the days until Wednesday night when Rob and I have some free time in our schedule to head over to the new Cafe Rio on Gilbert and Baseline in Gilbert, AZ.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Thieves!


I'm sorry that this is going to be more of a venting post than anything else! But as I reviewed my checking account this morning (a daily event for me in my morning routine at work) . . . I noticed that there was a semi-large charge for some Amazon Gift Certificates. Now I haven't bought anything on Amazon in a while nor did I buy any gift certificates. But I called Rob to see if he might have bought any (I didn't know why he would either but we share the account so I had to make sure). It was an unknown charge to him as well. So I started getting pretty upset. I called up my bank and got a hold of a customer service rep who helped me file a claim and was only able to tell me that whoever did it - used MY debit card or at least my debit card account number. I canceled the card and now have to go to my bank and pick up a new one. The bank will decide in a few days whether or not to credit me back the money that was taken out due to this purchase that I never made.

Arizona had the highest number of cases of identity theft in the US last year. A really scary statistic. As a result - I feel like I'm on the overly cautious side! I bought a shredder a few months ago and shred everything that has personal information on it and have a locked file drawer for the important documents that I need to keep. I am really not sure how someone was able to get my bank account number and make a purchase! I try and do all my online bill paying using a credit card with identify theft protection on it even.

Nothing really angers me more than people stealing. It just makes you feel so violated! We had a couple of things stolen off of our back porch last year (Now keep in mind that we have a high fenced in yard and we only had the items on our back porch for 2 days while we redid flooring in a couple of rooms of the house) and filed a police report on them. A few months after that - Rob's truck was broken into and things were stolen from it. And a few years back when I was on vacation with my family - our rental van was broken into and I had my whole back pack (journal, purse, wallet, etc) stolen. Now that thief really upset me because items were stolen that were only valuable to me - they had no monetary value. As a result of these things - I have become an extremely paranoid person in regard to anything that could be potentially stolen from me.

Friday, July 07, 2006

4th of July Weekend

It was very nice to have a 4 day weekend! Although I had so many things planned out to get done and I maybe got through a quarter of them . ...I guess it made for an even more relaxing weekend! Rob's family had some relatives in town from NYC so it was a busy weekend!

Saturday morning there was a birthday party for my nephew Steven who just turned one. Due to the heat - the party was a breakfast swim party from 8:30-10:30 in the morning. The weather was probably in the high 80's even at that time of day but nice enough to enjoy breakfast outside without being too uncomfortable!

On Saturday night - the Bodine clan met for dinner at Tia Rosa's (a popular local Mexican food place). After dinner the girls headed off to watch the Devil Wears Prada movie and the boys went to Superman. I thought the Devil Wears Prada was a pretty good movie although with all the cute clothes in the movie - it just made me want to go out and do a bunch of shopping!

Sunday night - the Bodine clan again met for dinner but this time at my in-laws house. We had a fabulous Sunday dinner and afterwards the adults played the charades like game of Guesstures and then ventured over to my brother in law Warren's house for a few hours of karaoke. Quite entertaining with the Bodine's not being the most musically inclined in the voal area!

Monday night was the large Bodine family home evening. I am still not sure who all of the people were there! But then again - I don't think Rob did either and they are his relatives.

Tuesday (the 4th) was a busy day. Rob got up and went quad riding bright and early while I slept in. That afternoon we headed out to the Arizona Biltmore where the Bodine cousins were staying and relaxed in the cabana and pool for the afternoon. We hurried home from there to get ready for a barbecue with some friends in the ward and then headed out after that to Tempe Town Lake to watch the fireworks. Rob's family met up with us there. Now keep in mind it was over 100 degrees still at night and humid due to a storm that was rolling in. The fireworks show was probably 50 minutes but I think all of us were ready for it to be done after 20! It was so hot and stuffy outside. And we were in a very crowded place. It took us over an hour to get home which is crazy since it is normally only a 15 minute drive home from there. I decided that next year we are either going back to Seattle for the 4th of July or we are staying inside and watching the fireworks on tv. It just wasn't a good experience with it being that hot and crowded out!