I’ve had a few people asking my about my diet while Kallie is away.  It’s not great, but I’m getting by.  The nice thing is, I asked Kallie not to go grocery shopping before she left.  First, just so she didn’t have 1 more thing to do before she left, but also because I’m not that pathetic that I would need her to do that for me.  A nice bonus to not having new stuff in the fridge is the sense of accomplishment I get from finishing things.  You might not know this about me, but I have a strong affinity for finishing things so they don’t go to waste.  Kallie surely has a different perspective from me, but I see us throw out a lot of food because we’re too blessed and move on to the next meal without using up left overs or have items in the fridge that didn’t get used up, but only have limited applications.  My personal goal in the fridge is always to use up what’s there and consolidate.  So I’ve done that so far.  Chicken salad from a salad left over the the weekend, a burger with the rest of the head of lettuce from before the weekend, enchiladas, nearly empty packages of cheese, italian dressing, buns, bagels, etc, etc.  I’m making sure I get some fruits and veggies in there.  I’m actually enjoying the sense of manageability of the contents in the refrigerator and freezer rather than seeing them as an abyss where we’ll hopeless never go hungry.

so back to my day:

4:45am  – wake up to make breakfast for the labor halls.

7:00am – back in bed for a 1.5 hour name before going into work.

5:00pm – back home, start finishing up the final touches on the lair in the basement.  Kallie’s not going to like it because it’s very much my space, but it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  With all this stuff moving around, it’s becoming apparent how close we are to outgrowing this house already, and we don’t even have the daughter yet.  A lot of what we store should go in a garage, attic, or basement.  There’s a George Carlin bit about buying stuff until you fill your house that rings all too true. here’s a link to the bit [explicit language]

6:00pm – I get a call from a friend from out of town that’s in for the holidays and he invites me over to a mutual friend’s house to hang out.  I decline because I do have to work tomorrow, I have some motivation to get things done, andd the weather is kind of crappy.  It felt somewhat redeeming after last night’s rejections though.  I’ll go back to the mon valley tomorrow to hang out with him.

9:00 pm – Kallie facetimes me on her phone.  I make her cry by expressing my feeling interrupted when she calls me unexpectedly.  I tried not to come across like I don’t want to talk to her, of course I do, I just want to focus on getting stuff done here, and when we end up with dead silence on the phone, or in this case, just staring at each other, it’s frustrating.  Maybe I’m a bad cold hearted husband, but I want to get stuff done around the house for US.  Having to drop everything from those distractions when she calls only reminds me that she’s not here and I’m alone.  It’s kind of an all or nothing thing.  I’m just not skilled enough to multitask doing things here and taking care of my wife there.

10:00pm – deflated and defeated.  bed time for baxter.  so much for running.

I’m being super proactive and structured while Kallie is out in California for a week.  My default has been to do nothing, get mopey and grumpy, and sleep a lot.  I’m going to try to have a very productive and also entertaining week while I’m by myself.  The reality of this probably being one of the last weeks on my own for a very long time is certainly in the air.  I’ve had many people warn me to get any projects done around the house, because once the baby comes, you have no time for anything.  Here’s a recap of Day 1:

5:45am – Wake up to drop Kallie off at the airport

7:00am – Arrive back home, take a nap before work

9:30am – Wake up and realize you should already be at work.  Oops.

5:00pm – Come home, watch the movie ” The Number 23” – A quick review:  This has so many qualities of the psychological thrillers I love.  I am so inspired to write stories after watching this movie.  I identified with the character so much, and having the premise of the movie being the main character identifying with a “fictional” character in a book just drew me in further and deeper.  No way Kallie would have enjoyed that one.

7:00pm – Do the dishes, tidy up a bit.

8:00pm – Build the LEGO Ferrari Racer – My mother in law is basically my LEGO supplier, and she’s usually good for awesome bulk collections, but this collection had the book and pretty much all the pieces to this amazing set, so I put it together.  It’s so awesome.  It’s hard to tell the size from the picture, but it’s a hefty foot long.  It looks and feels just like a model.  I think I’ll even leave it together for a bit.

9:00pm – Sort the rest of the LEGO bricks I got for Christmas while watching the SNL Christmas special.

11:00pm – Do some pushups, write some emails, surf around a bit, quick devotional, bed by midnight!

Look for a daily log for the week while Kallie is gone, hopefully to keep me honest and motivated by fear of man…or something.

I’m sure you probably heard by now, but Pittsburgh was ranked on of the best places of the world by National Geographic.  I, too, am a little skeptic and possibly embarrassed.  Sonoma Valley, Ca was the only other US location selected.  I mean, Pittsburgh’s great n’@, but I don’t think it’s worthy of the 7 world wonders or anything.

here’s the complete article:  http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/best-trips-2012/#/botw-main-gallery-pittsburgh_41334_600x450.jpg

I had a dream Kallie and I went to California to visit her family. Only, her family was an african american family. She had 2 half brothers and a half sister. Kallie is a halfrican. It was weird. They were throwing a picnic for us, and Kallie hadn’t seen them much, and I didn’t know much about them. I kept thinking, “I don’t remember these people at our wedding. I wonder if they even came.”

Kallie was joking around with her half sister, saying that Kallie’s dad was back in down, and her mom overheard and said, “wow, I didn’t know he was back in Michael.” As if the town they lived in was Michael, Ca. I didn’t realize until after I woke up that Michael is the name of Kallie’s biological dad. Anyway, the whole time it was very awkward and I wondered why Kallie kept in touch with these “siblings” because she obviously had nothing in common with them but an african american mother, that wasn’t even all that nice to us.

I woke up thankful for my mother in law

Today, we’re going to talk about tri-tip.  It’s a popular cut of steak in the Central California area.  It was originally prepared with “Santa Maria Seasoning” (of Santa Maria, Ca), but it’s basically just a great streak to use on grills.  The popular use now is in a tri-tip sandwich covered in barbecue sauce.

Kallie has been talking about it a lot since I’ve met her, but I got to try an authentic sandwich at Firestone Grill in San Luis Obispo, Ca.  It truly was a unique sandwich and definitely worthy of praise.  Something about it was very familiar though, and I’m fairly certain i’ve had *something* similar to it here on the east coast.  I’ve head some other possible names for the cut, like “tip steak”, so maybe it’s just known by something else here, but I haven’t been able to find a restaurant in the area where you can get a tri-tip sandwich.  If you can, let me know!

Well, some of you already knew, but now that it didn’t pan out, we’re allowed to talk about it.  Back in April, Chemistry.com (where Kallie and I met) contacted us and wanted us to be interviewed by a “national magazine” about our story.  Turns out it was People Magazine.  So they called Kallie, asked her a bunch of questions and asked for “our story” and I guess they interviewed a bunch of other people as well.  After a long waiting period, we were told we weren’t selected for the article, but it is cool just to be able to say we were interviewed by People Magazine.

I’ve also been selected by Pittsburgh City Living to be the Ambassador to the Hill District!  Not sure what that means exactly yet, but it’s a city program to showcase all the individual neighborhoods of the city.  Hopefully I’ll be able to contribute to the growth of the Hill!

This summer has been a whirlwind of activity.  We’ve been to California and back twice in July, a couple weddings around the state, heading to Canada/Yankanuck next week, went camping in Ohio and went to Cedar Point, back to Bedford for our 1 year anniversary, and just a bunch of other stuff that filled our calendars and put smiles on our faces.  I think next year we’re going to really protect our weekends and time together.  We had fun this year, but it was way too chaotic, and we even cut out a lot things as it was.

Back to real life, Kallie’s down to part-time work and full time student to get her NP license.  Since she’s doing that, I am also heading back to RMU for my masters in organizational studies.  We’re looking at 2-3 years for us to finish those up.  Work is reimbursing me as long as I get above a C, and I need above a 3.00 GPA to graduate, so I should have some motivation there.

I’m training for the urbanathlon again in October.  Probably doing a 5k in Charleroi and the Great Race 10k before then in preparation.  I’m going to try to fund-raise for the L.i.v.i.n.g. Ministry again this year too.  A lot going on with the ministry, and they could surely use the support!

I think after the race, I’m going to focus on music, playing out, writing songs, etc to carry me through the winter.  Hopefully I’ll be able to follow through on that one…I’ll keep you posted

Avis customer support has exhausted my patience, so I’m considering this the final chapter.  If Avis is your cheapest rate when you go to rent a car, take a second to think about the risk you might run of having to deal with customer service.  I am not going to be a loyal Avis customer anytime soon.

I used Travelocity.com to book the cheapest car I could find for Kallie and I to use on our flight to California over Thanksgiving.  Avis was the cheapest, but not by much.  We picked up the Pontiac G5 at Sacramento airport on Nov 25th on our arrival.  It was the smallest rental car I’ve ever been in, which put me more in a contemplative mindset as I wondered why I’ve never had such a small car even though I’ve always rented the cheapest before.

The car worked fine until Friday evening in San Francisco.  While sightseeing, I parallel parked but was not able to turn the key to power off the car.  It was if it was locked in the on position.  We couldn’t leave the car running and unlocked to sightsee.  We tried all the obvious things, then called the 800 number listed with the rental docs, and they had us try the obvious stuff again, then we told them we’d just go to the nearest Avis center and return it.  We were near empty on gas, but there was an Avis location in town, not far away.  We got to the location shortly after 5, and it closed at 5pm.  That meant that we would have to drive ~30 minutes to the San Francisco airport.  We got there, with less than a gallon of gas left, I’m sure.

Upon our arrival, I had the 2 employees and a manager sanity check me and they could not turn the car off either.  They said to go inside and talk to customer service to get a replacement car.  They initially said they would have to charge me for returning the car with an empty tank, but since I couldn’t turn off the car, it wasn’t safe for me to fill it up before returning it and they let that charge go.  The desk representative also volunteered a $25 voucher for our inconvenience, and asked her manager to bring the voucher to the desk for us over the walkie talkie.  ~20 minutes go by, the very nice desk rep pages her manager again.  We use the rest room, talk about the car, wait around, until the desk rep then physically goes to the manager’s office to find the manager had left for the day and locked the office with the voucher inside.  When the desk rep came back to us, she said that she would leave notes in their system for our reservation so that when we returned the car in Sacramento, they would give us a voucher for “more than $25″ since we had so much trouble and had to wait.  We got a replacement Ford Focus, and went about our lives.

…until Sunday, when we realize we may have left Kallie’s Macbook under the passenger seat with our only copies of wedding photos on DVD.  We called the San Francisco airport location, and they said they don’t see any notes on a laptop, but the car is at their repair facility off site, and no one would be able to look for it until Monday, but they would have someone call me back once they were able to look.  By 4pm Monday, I hadn’t heard anything back, so I called them again, and they asked me where to look for it, so I said, “in the car”, and they wanted me to be specific, so I said to try under the passenger seat or in the trunk.  They called back after a few minutes and said they were not able to find it there.

Fast forward to Tuesday, Dec 1st at 4:00am.  We drop off the car at the rental location to catch our 6:00am flight.  The receiving employee only has a hand scanner that prints our return receipts and she has no access to a computer or vouchers.  She said that we would have to wait until the desk representatives come in at 7:00am.  So I decide I’ll have to pick this back up once we get home.

I give a phone call to the customer support number.  I explain the voucher situation to them, and they say they’ll send it in the mail to me right away.  Seemed easy enough.  I also called the SF location again to have the search the whole car, thinking it might have moved or we put it somewhere else.  They said they will leave an open case in the lost and found if it ever turns up, but it’s not in the car.

A week or so later, I receive a letter from Avis with a voucher attached to the bottom for $25.  The letter is your basic canned apology letter, but the voucher, at least, had something identifying on it…an expiration date of 12/31/09.  They had given me less than a month to use the voucher.  That’s pretty much insulting, and I said that in my letter to them.  I used the contact form on their site to send it to them.  I could repost it here, but it’s basically the same as this post and carries the same tone.

A few days later, I get this response via email:

From: “Avis Customer Service” <custserv@avis.com>
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 10:31 AM
Subject: RE: Avis Rental U142826294 / Case 7737785 (KMM2651002I5371L0KM)

RE:  Avis Rental U142826294 / Case 7737785

12/28/09

Dear Mr. Hall,
Thank you for contacting us through the Avis Website.

In viewing the above Avis rental and your case I find that you have
phoned into our Avis Customer Service Department and the agent that you
spoke with has sent you an Avis Customer Service Certificate.  I do
apologize for the problems that you experienced with your Avis rental
car and if we can assist you in the future, please let us know.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us, and we look forward
to assisting you with your future rentals.

Sincerely,

S**J***
Avis Customer Service Representative
custserv@avis.com

Wow.  First, they’re not going to do anything.  Second, they obviously didn’t read my letter very well if they failed to notice the part where I said I was insulted that they would send me a voucher that expired within a month.  I put about as much effort in my reply as they put in to theirs:

Perhaps you missed the part where I was given less than a month to use the certificate?

I received this reply today:

Case #:7737785
RA#:142826294

Dear Mr. Hall,

Thank you for contacting Avis via www.avis.com.

We apologize for sending a coupon that expires that soon. 
We value your business and as a courtesy we will honor your request to
replace your coupon.

Please mail the coupon to my attention to the addressed noted below.

Avis Customer Service
P.O. Box 690360
Tulsa, OK  74169-0360
ATTN : CASE 7737785

I appreciate your cooperation and await your response.

We appreciate your taking the time to report your experience to us.  You
have helped in a continuing effort to provide you, and all Avis
customers, with the service you expect and deserve.

Warm Regards,
 
K*** L***
Avis Customer Service Representative
custserv@avis.com

They want me to pay for postage and mail them back a $25 voucher that expires by the time it reaches them.  WTF.  I’m not even sure I have the voucher any more, since it was worthless to me.  That’s ridiculous, and that is why Avis can not expect to see my name on their customer sheet any longer.  If their customer service strategy is to make users feel frustrated and eventually just get tired from getting the run around and jumping through hoops and give up, then they’ve succeeded.

Updates have been few and far between around here!  I can’t remember the last time I did a personal update, but i don’t think it’s been this year!  I was trying to make an update at least once a month before.  Let me see what I can recap for you…

The wedding plans go well.  We set up TallHalls.com for the wedding blog and information leading up to the event on September 5th, 2009.  I guess I need to get around to posting there as well…

I sold the truck last week.  Moved Kallie’s car onto my insurance and we’re officially a single car couple.  Kallie will be driving to work once she switches jobs, but I walk, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to manage fairly easily with just 1 car.  I barely drove the truck anyway.

We’re heading to Sacramento for Easter for a week.  Should be fun to spend time with everyone out there again!  I think they’re planning Kallie a bridal shower, so everyone should be in.  With that in mind, there are so many events planned in the next few months!  A friend’s wedding this saturday, Easter in California, Greek Easter with the Galis family the following weekend, talks of going camping sometime, another bachelor party in may, then the wedding the last weekend, an Avett Brothers concert or two, maybe a trip to DC or two, and i’m sure work is going to take away some weekend time as well.

Work goes well.  Finally got the bump in salary I was waiting for since last year.  That will help out with wedding funds for sure.  Especially since Deirdre’s the only one living with me in the house now.  Plans are to start moving my desk and other items into the room across the hall from me and turn it into an office/guest bedroom.  I’ve actually been A LOT of time in my room trying to get crap cleaned out and make room for Kallie.  I want to get started on that as soon as possible because it will make it a lot less stressful when she’s ready to move in.  Right now, I’m able to go at my own pace, little by little.

I’ve also purchased P90x. to get my butt in shape for the wedding/beach season.  I don’t want to start until we get back from California, but I’ve done a few sessions of it just to get the feel for it, and it’s perfect for me.  It’s very intense and very scalable to fit what shape you’re in.  I lack the motivation to come up with my own routine, and certainly lack the dedication to stick to a program that I created.  It’s so easy to just pop in a dvd, do whatever he does for an hour, and then be done.  I know a bunch of people that have gone through the program and they love it.  The biggest problem for me will be the nutritional side and eating.  I don’t eat.  It comes with a nice guide there, and Kallie says she’ll help take responsibility for that.  I’ll be sure to take the pictures, but I’m not sharing them until I see results.  I’d really love to be able to dunk again this year, finish a 5k under 20 minutes, and do the urbanathlon again, but under 90 minutes.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the music front.  I have a few tracks done, that i just need to polish and post to myspace, but it’s hard to find the time to dedicate.  I’ve been trying to set up a time to go play open mics with Ben Beitzel, so stay tuned for some live dates.

The LEGO class wrapped up, and it was a total blast.  They said the kids loved it too, and they want me to come back next year.  I plan on doing that, but I’d also like to take a stab at making art using bricks as a medium.  That whole idea is laced with legal problems, as I’ve heard from Nathan Sawaya, but I think I want to start of donating pieces for auction and seeing what kind of feedback I get.  We’ll see how that goes.

Other than that, I feel great, staying positive, staying motivated, staying productive, growing in fellowship and communion with Christ, growing with Kallie, learning from Kallie, enjoying life for what it is, and trying to keep it all going.

New blog topic!  This category will be for the short posts where something particular made me smile.

Kallie and I flew from California to Philly Friday, and Saturday all my family was getting together, but I wasn’t planning on flying back until Sunday night.  I called my family while Kallie and I were in the car, and Deirdre thought that I was on my way there to surprise them.  After realizing how bad I wanted to be there, Kallie and I decided to make an impromptu road trip and got home around midnight.  Kallie and I get to spend an extra day with eachother since she’ll leave Tuesday morning, but the essence of this post was the text message i got from US Airways saying that I would have been stranded at the Philly airport until midnight Sunday since the flight was delayed more than an hour.  I love how perfect everything worked out.

Alright, first things first.  I ran my first ever 5k on Saturday.  I finished in pretty much 30 minutes flat.  I crossed the line at ~30:09 and I was in the back of the starting line, so take some time to cross the line.  It was on mount washington’s grandview drive, and then part of that hill that connects it to the liberty tunnel, so there were some crazy hills that i was not prepared for.  I definitely walked some of those hills.  I also ran 6 miles in an hour last thursday, so I’m feeling a little less worried about Urbanathlon.  My goal was just to finish it without being last, but if i keep going like this, i might actually be able to build a goal time and work on shaving time off of that.  I know the stairs are going to kill me, so i might start practicing on the 44 stories of the office building.  Wish me luck!

Now, as some of you may be in the loop, i’ve encountered a wonderful lady friend.  Ask me someday about how we met and i’ll tell you the story in person.  Anyway, we’ve had nothing but fun in the past month or so.  We’ve got a lot to learn about each other, and a lot of tough ground to cover, but I think she’s amazing.  I’m flying out to the state of california this friday to meet her family and such since her brother is getting married.  We’re going to go to disneyland and have a great time.  I’ll report back when I get back. 

Finally got my raise i was expecting at work too.  I’m going to keep trying to make more than twice my age, then i can retire with my goal of making 6 figures.  I’m not driven by money, i would just like to say that i made 6 figures.  Work’s getting better too.  I’ve got a lot of projects, so i’m keeping very busy. 

Going to the warped tour with erik on tuesday.  I havent been there since i was in high school I think.  can’t say that i’m excited to spend my day off there, but oh well.  Maybe i’ll take a book and read on the lawn.  How old would that make me look?  fun stuff.

Josh Hall project show coming up on august 24th…and we have yet to practice.  tim is talking about staying out in philly for an extra week.  I’m going to be away until the 11th, and andy has family coming in around the 15th or so and they want to take a trip that would have carried into the show, but he’ll come back for it, even though he wants to be away for as long as he can before…so basically it comes down to us MAYBE getting 1 or 2 practices together…this is going to be interesting for sure.