It seems that the past weeks were our special spending weeks after our one-week long summer vacation back in July, which we visited Disneyland down in LA and Vegas, where our sizzling feelings cooled down abruptly when a California Highway Patrol officer ran after our vehicle on our way home.

I got a phone call from our handyman that he would like to collect the remainder of the service charge of our home project.  He came to our palce and collected the check and promised to help us with our project.  That remains to be seen and we will wait and see what he can do for us.  We have waited so long that hopefully he can do something positive for us. We were puzzled when one of our neighbors would suspect the identity and credential of a cable guy who was installing our cable TV from our local cable company.  A white female in her 50's came forward with a notebook and a pen.  She asked the credential of the guy and wrote down his number and his truck's license plate number.  What really was in her mind?  What did she think her neighbors were?

No one likes red tape.  However, we have to deal with it when it comes to you.  That was what happened to us when we tried to enroll SC to a swimming class in Saint Ignatius College Preparatory(SI) in San Francisco.  The staff told me to wait when I went there the first time.  I waited half an hour in rain and nobody seemed to care until I gave up.  FShell called them up as we would think that our information about enrollment was incorrect, but it seemed hard to get a good response.   I myself finally had to take a half day off from work on Friday to register the class after FShell's failed attempt to register it on Thursday, when she took her time off from work for that too.  They looked like a governmental bureaucrat to me.

We re-registered one of our cars,  idle and parked in the garage for more than three years.  This time we paid a much higher DMV registration fee than before due to the fee increase because of the financial meltdown in the California government.   In addition to that, we also need to pay for its insurance policy because automobile insurance is a must in California to register a car.  Since the car has not been driven for a long time, we need to purchase a battery charger to recharge the dead car battery.  Hope there isn't any problem restarting the car.  Otherwise, it will cost us more.

Our SUV has been driven for seven years.  Some parts started to wear out.  The tires and the battery were replaced last year.  Now it was the front brakes.  I had them done in a local shop that charged it for $200.  It was worked on for about an hour, the brake disks repolished, brake shoes replaced.  The rear brakes were about 30% left and didn't need to be replaced yet this time.  I thought the brake service was a little expensive.  I felt a little bit better that our car didn't have a serious problem like one of the customers I saw there, whose car, with check-engine light on, failed to pass smog-check and was estimated $1500 for repair.

FShell was upset when she received a reminder-call from her dentist that she was alway late for her dental appointments.  FShell said that she was never late for her appointments and the fact of the matter was that she would need to wait half an hour or more before she was seen by her dentist.  She was furious that she canceled her appointment this time.  I did go to see the dentist and have my teeth cleaned and paid the remainder of service charge from our last dental care that our dental insurance didn't cover. 

SC's summer school  will come to an end soon this summer.  It is also time to pay the tuition for his last session of summer school.  All these put an extra burden to our this month's budget.  Hope something positive will come out soon.