okay, so as promised, the california/garrett turbos lj update.
better go get some popcorn or something, this is gonna be painfully long…
FOR YOU GUYS THAT DON’T WANT TO READ ALL OF THIS PICTURES CAN BE FOUND AT:
http://www.g20nyc.com/~ainsley/California
okay so tuesday the 20th.
woke up, went to class, came home, did some work for my job. my mom drove down from ny and got here around 3. we drove to the airport, dropped off her car, and went to go check in for our flights. (my mom insisted on coming with me. she said it was because she wanted to see where i was going to be living since it was so far from home, i found out later it’s because she thought this trip was a vacation for her, not a business trip for me. damnit.)
i haven’t flown in ten years. planes scare the shit out of me. i’d rather get into a car accident and at least have some chance of surviving than being in an accident in a plane and then having to p
lummit 35,000+ feet to the ground. what a nice final kick in the ass that would be. so yea, planes scare me. plus i always think about those oxygen mask things and what they’re really there for… thanks fight club! gr. anyway.
we had a stopover in denver, colorado. most of the way there all i could see was clouds. i caught a few farms which was weird considering i’ve never been anywhere other than ny/nj/pa/md and virginiabeach/atlantageoriga once each. weiiiird. anyway. we hit a pretty bad storm on the way into denver and yea i was scared outta my mind and grasping the armrests on my seat as if my life depended on it. funny, like that would have done any good if my life actually did depend on it… lol. but we made it through *yay*
flying into denver was cool. i got to see my first mountains! but then it got dark really quickly and i couldn’t see anything. oh well. but uh yeah, in the ladies room in the airport there was a big ‘tornado shelter’ sign. that kinda weirded me out. because yeah, if i was in a tornado the first place i’d wanna be is in a bathroom… NOT.
flying into la was pretty amazing. the city is HUGE. much bigger than i expected. very pretty too. we arrived at 12midnight PST, so 3am my time. i was pretty tired yea but who cares. cali baby! went to the rental car place and i thought i was gonna get a droptop mustang but i wound up getting a seabring convertible instead, which i was
bummed about at first (i was looking forward to beating the crap outta the poor defenseless ‘stang) but i actually grew to really like the seabring. it fit a lot better ergonomically than a stang and it had some really decent power/torque! seabrings get my approval. weirrrrrd to admit that but whatever. it was fun.
got to the hotel and finally fell asleep around 4am my time, 1am cali time. mmm sleeeeeeep.
wednesday, the 21st, my first *real* day in cali.
i woke up around 8am cali time, 5am my time. ewww. but i guess technically that meant i got 7 hours of sleep? sure as hell didn’t feel like it to me plus it was more math than i was willing to do at the time. haha. damn time zones. anyway. around 830 i figured i should call my ‘boss’ tracie at garrett (the woman i would be working for but had never met yet). just as i go to roll out of bed my cell phone rings and it was her asking if i’d like to come by that morning for the tour and to meet everyone and go out to lunch. tour of garrett turbos? hell YES! so i got dressed, said goodmorning to the seabring, dropped the top, and headed down to their headquarters in torrance 😀
so i get there and i go to the front desk to tell security i am there to see tracie and she’s like ‘shes expecting you, have a seat she’ll be out in a minute’. so i sit down in the lobby and there is a big corporate coffee table that i was expecting
to see lame-ass business magazines on… but nope. all hardcore car-tech magazines. AWESOME. so i picked one up and was reading an article ‘in defense of pushrods’ and crap, and this woman comes out and it was tracie so i stand up and introduce myself and she’s like ‘i know who you are’ and i’m like uhhh what? and she’s like ‘i met you at sema atlantic city. well, i didn’t actually meet you, but i remember you were there talking to some of our guys’ which is true, cause they saw my turbo tattoo and we got to talking. how weird is that? she didn’t know it was me when she got my resume and hired me, but like, she already knew who i was… or something. weirddddd.
so she takes me around and shows me “garrett turbo technologies, a division of honeywell inc”. it was amazing. absolutely unbelievable. surreal. i felt like i was dreaming.
you guys know how in a usual office they have stupid cheesy motivational posters on the walls? and people have lame-ass pictures of tropical islands and their families in their offices? and stupid toys on their desks?
yea.
well at garrett, there are pictures of top rally and drag cars on the walls instead of those stupid posters, people have car-calendars and posters and pictures in their offices instead of people, and parts of turbos just laying around. seriously. everyone’s got parts just sitting on their desks for no good reason. and they have turbo
-paperweights. and even the mousepads are in the shape of turbos!!!!
then she takes me downstairs to engineering to show me the ‘real’ stuff. the “garrett garage”
i don’t know how much i am allowed to say about that so let me just say guys you have to see it to believe it.
then, just when i thought it couldn’t get any better…
tracie tells me for the first week or two i will be down with engineering learning how to build turbos!!!!
i have died and gone to heaven.
the rest of the day was a blur.
i met some of the guys that work there. a lot of them also remembered me from sema. that was a weird feeling, but good i suppose.
lunch was fun, it was weird sitting in a restaurant and looking out the window to see palm trees…
i can’t wait to start working there. everyone was so wonderfully nice. it is like a dream come true. i couldn’t ask for a more perfect job.
anyway. i left garrett around 2pm, went to redondo beach for about an hour. it was so pretty! kinda weird feeling though to be driving north and have the ocean on the left of me rather than on the right… *creeeepy*
apartment hunting went not-so-well. i found a bunch of places $750-$850 a month, but apparently they are all in not-so-good areas… but at least i drove around a lot and started to learn the area more.
didn’t do much
that night because i was still jet-lagged, so i just slept 🙂
i did however watch the news. a jogger was mauled to death in the mountains by a mountain lion. thank god i am lazy and don’t exercise! i don’t have to worry about that! 😀 and i watched a few local la high-speed police chases on tv. rawk \m/
thursday, the 22nd.
more apartment hunting. i found a bunch of places that were in a good area but they were all way out of my budget! $1300-$1400 a month plus utilities. i can’t swing that. so i was just driving around up and down main roads that had apartment complexes on them stopping in front of each and calling about availabilities, and i found this place right near the beach that had an opening starting in september for $1000 month plus electric & cable, which is more than i wanted to spend but realistically i won’t be able to find anything better. it’s 625sq feet, has a pool and garaged parking. sweeeeet. i put a deposit on it just in case 😉 however, it’s unfurnished. shit.
me and mom drove to la that night, i found the hollywood sign even after a bunch of streetsigns saying ‘no access to the hollywood sign’ tried to stop me. facker. i win 😀 also found a “no smoking, no campfires, caution rattlesnakes” sign in some park on the hollywoodsignmountain. how odd. california is a weird place. arnold will be my new governor.
friday, the 23rd.
%0
Ai looked at a few more apartments, but since i was content with the place i found the day before me and my mom spent most of the day at the beach. i actually got some color. and tan. not pink. so now i am normal-people-colored instead of freakishly pale. yaaay! thanks cali!!
while i was there i saw something i thought was unbelievable. at first i thought they were sharks, i saw dorsal fins slicing through the water. a moment later, i realized they were *dolphins*. about 20 feet offshore, swimming and playing with surfers and riding the waves. it was incredible. if i hadn’t been wearing jeans and if the water wasn’t so cold (i am a wuss) i woulda ran in and tried to hitchhike a ride on a dolphin. oh well, something to add to my to-do list for when i live there i suppose.
after the beach i wanted to go do some things like visit motorex or signal but since i mentioned before my mom had been making it more and more abundantly clear that she didn’t give a fuck about what i wanted to do and was only going with me to look at apartments because we only had one rental car and wanted it her way or no way and refused to do anything except what she wanted to do, we went to los angeles to visit her friend. he showed us around. saw the tourist sights. i found a ferrari/maserati dealer. very cool. it was kinda like those pizzahut/tacobell places, but uh, much more expensive and not food. hah.
after that
, me and mom drove to santa monica. i wanted to see the sunset over the water but of course she didn’t give a shit what i wanted to do (even if it would only take 10 minutes out of her precious ‘vacation’…) and we got in a huge fight and didn’t speak for the rest of the night. that sucked. a lot.
saturday, the 24th.
princess demanded we do what she wanted again, so we drove to the valley (san fernando valley i learned is it’s proper name). she wanted to see her brother which i completely understand but i wanted to see my friends and go check out more apartments just in case and learn the area more. they could have come to visit her. but no, she insisted we go there. granted i was really happy to see my uncle again but it could have been done in such a manner so that all parties came away happy. oh well. spent the whole day there… it was nice i’ll admit, but i was really angry at the situation.
i did however manage to steal the car later that night and go back to redondo beach to get some cool sun-setting-over-the-water pictures. a few of them came out blurry though because staring at the sun for 20 minutes trying to take pictures really messes with your eyes and the ability to focus on anything. however it was the prettiest, although most painful, sunset ever.
sunday, the 25th
woke up at friggen 5am. wow did that suck. but i was glad because my flight got cancelled and switche
d to a flight an hour later but it arrived in philly at the same time as the previous. (previous had a stop over in denver again, the rescheduled flight was nonstop)
drove to get gas for the seabring before returning it to the rental place, and my mom couldn’t figure out how to get the gas cap off (she’s not the smartest when it comes to car stuff) and like, she asked me to help so i get out and took it off and then got back in the car and i hear her outside mumble something and call me a bitch so i get out of the car and fucking went off on her. i screamed at her and i was telling her that no matter how much she had pissed me off the whole week i never once called her a bitch but she was calling me one like every 5 minutes and i was fucking sick of her shit and this was supposed to be a business trip for me to meet my boss and find an apartment yet she tried to turn it into her own personal luxo-vacation and that i didn’t even want her to come in the first place and blah blah blah and she started crying and i didn’t give a shit which is weird because usually i can’t stand to see my mother cry but i was so angry it made me happy she was upset so i kept telling her off and eventually she appologized and i was still pissed and all but i could tell she finally understood so i tried to let it go. oh well.
so the plane ride back was not that bad. i got to see the desert and the grand canyon. but like, you kn
ow how if you know cars really well and motors you can hear when somethings not right? yeah well lucky me having the ability to hear every single sound a motor makes and like an hour before we got back to philly one of the plane’s engines started making a weird noise and i obviously didn’t know if it was normal or not but it scared the hell out of me.
thankfully, obviously, i made it back okay 🙂
some random cali-related news. amy is trying to get a co-op job out there too so we can share a place. guys keep your fingers crossed for her!!
conclusion:
cali rocks.
i ❤ garrett.
the end.
oh yeah and i found out that i got 100 on my managerial accounting midterm that i didn’t even study for. i am smrt 😀
better go get some popcorn or something, this is gonna be painfully long…
FOR YOU GUYS THAT DON’T WANT TO READ ALL OF THIS PICTURES CAN BE FOUND AT:
http://www.g20nyc.com/~ainsley/California
okay so tuesday the 20th.
woke up, went to class, came home, did some work for my job. my mom drove down from ny and got here around 3. we drove to the airport, dropped off her car, and went to go check in for our flights. (my mom insisted on coming with me. she said it was because she wanted to see where i was going to be living since it was so far from home, i found out later it’s because she thought this trip was a vacation for her, not a business trip for me. damnit.)
i haven’t flown in ten years. planes scare the shit out of me. i’d rather get into a car accident and at least have some chance of surviving than being in an accident in a plane and then having to p
lummit 35,000+ feet to the ground. what a nice final kick in the ass that would be. so yea, planes scare me. plus i always think about those oxygen mask things and what they’re really there for… thanks fight club! gr. anyway.
we had a stopover in denver, colorado. most of the way there all i could see was clouds. i caught a few farms which was weird considering i’ve never been anywhere other than ny/nj/pa/md and virginiabeach/atlantageoriga once each. weiiiird. anyway. we hit a pretty bad storm on the way into denver and yea i was scared outta my mind and grasping the armrests on my seat as if my life depended on it. funny, like that would have done any good if my life actually did depend on it… lol. but we made it through *yay*
flying into denver was cool. i got to see my first mountains! but then it got dark really quickly and i couldn’t see anything. oh well. but uh yeah, in the ladies room in the airport there was a big ‘tornado shelter’ sign. that kinda weirded me out. because yeah, if i was in a tornado the first place i’d wanna be is in a bathroom… NOT.
flying into la was pretty amazing. the city is HUGE. much bigger than i expected. very pretty too. we arrived at 12midnight PST, so 3am my time. i was pretty tired yea but who cares. cali baby! went to the rental car place and i thought i was gonna get a droptop mustang but i wound up getting a seabring convertible instead, which i was
bummed about at first (i was looking forward to beating the crap outta the poor defenseless ‘stang) but i actually grew to really like the seabring. it fit a lot better ergonomically than a stang and it had some really decent power/torque! seabrings get my approval. weirrrrrd to admit that but whatever. it was fun.
got to the hotel and finally fell asleep around 4am my time, 1am cali time. mmm sleeeeeeep.
wednesday, the 21st, my first *real* day in cali.
i woke up around 8am cali time, 5am my time. ewww. but i guess technically that meant i got 7 hours of sleep? sure as hell didn’t feel like it to me plus it was more math than i was willing to do at the time. haha. damn time zones. anyway. around 830 i figured i should call my ‘boss’ tracie at garrett (the woman i would be working for but had never met yet). just as i go to roll out of bed my cell phone rings and it was her asking if i’d like to come by that morning for the tour and to meet everyone and go out to lunch. tour of garrett turbos? hell YES! so i got dressed, said goodmorning to the seabring, dropped the top, and headed down to their headquarters in torrance 😀
so i get there and i go to the front desk to tell security i am there to see tracie and she’s like ‘shes expecting you, have a seat she’ll be out in a minute’. so i sit down in the lobby and there is a big corporate coffee table that i was expecting
to see lame-ass business magazines on… but nope. all hardcore car-tech magazines. AWESOME. so i picked one up and was reading an article ‘in defense of pushrods’ and crap, and this woman comes out and it was tracie so i stand up and introduce myself and she’s like ‘i know who you are’ and i’m like uhhh what? and she’s like ‘i met you at sema atlantic city. well, i didn’t actually meet you, but i remember you were there talking to some of our guys’ which is true, cause they saw my turbo tattoo and we got to talking. how weird is that? she didn’t know it was me when she got my resume and hired me, but like, she already knew who i was… or something. weirddddd.
so she takes me around and shows me “garrett turbo technologies, a division of honeywell inc”. it was amazing. absolutely unbelievable. surreal. i felt like i was dreaming.
you guys know how in a usual office they have stupid cheesy motivational posters on the walls? and people have lame-ass pictures of tropical islands and their families in their offices? and stupid toys on their desks?
yea.
well at garrett, there are pictures of top rally and drag cars on the walls instead of those stupid posters, people have car-calendars and posters and pictures in their offices instead of people, and parts of turbos just laying around. seriously. everyone’s got parts just sitting on their desks for no good reason. and they have turbo
-paperweights. and even the mousepads are in the shape of turbos!!!!
then she takes me downstairs to engineering to show me the ‘real’ stuff. the “garrett garage”
i don’t know how much i am allowed to say about that so let me just say guys you have to see it to believe it.
then, just when i thought it couldn’t get any better…
tracie tells me for the first week or two i will be down with engineering learning how to build turbos!!!!
i have died and gone to heaven.
the rest of the day was a blur.
i met some of the guys that work there. a lot of them also remembered me from sema. that was a weird feeling, but good i suppose.
lunch was fun, it was weird sitting in a restaurant and looking out the window to see palm trees…
i can’t wait to start working there. everyone was so wonderfully nice. it is like a dream come true. i couldn’t ask for a more perfect job.
anyway. i left garrett around 2pm, went to redondo beach for about an hour. it was so pretty! kinda weird feeling though to be driving north and have the ocean on the left of me rather than on the right… *creeeepy*
apartment hunting went not-so-well. i found a bunch of places $750-$850 a month, but apparently they are all in not-so-good areas… but at least i drove around a lot and started to learn the area more.
didn’t do much
that night because i was still jet-lagged, so i just slept 🙂
i did however watch the news. a jogger was mauled to death in the mountains by a mountain lion. thank god i am lazy and don’t exercise! i don’t have to worry about that! 😀 and i watched a few local la high-speed police chases on tv. rawk \m/
thursday, the 22nd.
more apartment hunting. i found a bunch of places that were in a good area but they were all way out of my budget! $1300-$1400 a month plus utilities. i can’t swing that. so i was just driving around up and down main roads that had apartment complexes on them stopping in front of each and calling about availabilities, and i found this place right near the beach that had an opening starting in september for $1000 month plus electric & cable, which is more than i wanted to spend but realistically i won’t be able to find anything better. it’s 625sq feet, has a pool and garaged parking. sweeeeet. i put a deposit on it just in case 😉 however, it’s unfurnished. shit.
me and mom drove to la that night, i found the hollywood sign even after a bunch of streetsigns saying ‘no access to the hollywood sign’ tried to stop me. facker. i win 😀 also found a “no smoking, no campfires, caution rattlesnakes” sign in some park on the hollywoodsignmountain. how odd. california is a weird place. arnold will be my new governor.
friday, the 23rd.
%0
Ai looked at a few more apartments, but since i was content with the place i found the day before me and my mom spent most of the day at the beach. i actually got some color. and tan. not pink. so now i am normal-people-colored instead of freakishly pale. yaaay! thanks cali!!
while i was there i saw something i thought was unbelievable. at first i thought they were sharks, i saw dorsal fins slicing through the water. a moment later, i realized they were *dolphins*. about 20 feet offshore, swimming and playing with surfers and riding the waves. it was incredible. if i hadn’t been wearing jeans and if the water wasn’t so cold (i am a wuss) i woulda ran in and tried to hitchhike a ride on a dolphin. oh well, something to add to my to-do list for when i live there i suppose.
after the beach i wanted to go do some things like visit motorex or signal but since i mentioned before my mom had been making it more and more abundantly clear that she didn’t give a fuck about what i wanted to do and was only going with me to look at apartments because we only had one rental car and wanted it her way or no way and refused to do anything except what she wanted to do, we went to los angeles to visit her friend. he showed us around. saw the tourist sights. i found a ferrari/maserati dealer. very cool. it was kinda like those pizzahut/tacobell places, but uh, much more expensive and not food. hah.
after that
, me and mom drove to santa monica. i wanted to see the sunset over the water but of course she didn’t give a shit what i wanted to do (even if it would only take 10 minutes out of her precious ‘vacation’…) and we got in a huge fight and didn’t speak for the rest of the night. that sucked. a lot.
saturday, the 24th.
princess demanded we do what she wanted again, so we drove to the valley (san fernando valley i learned is it’s proper name). she wanted to see her brother which i completely understand but i wanted to see my friends and go check out more apartments just in case and learn the area more. they could have come to visit her. but no, she insisted we go there. granted i was really happy to see my uncle again but it could have been done in such a manner so that all parties came away happy. oh well. spent the whole day there… it was nice i’ll admit, but i was really angry at the situation.
i did however manage to steal the car later that night and go back to redondo beach to get some cool sun-setting-over-the-water pictures. a few of them came out blurry though because staring at the sun for 20 minutes trying to take pictures really messes with your eyes and the ability to focus on anything. however it was the prettiest, although most painful, sunset ever.
sunday, the 25th
woke up at friggen 5am. wow did that suck. but i was glad because my flight got cancelled and switche
d to a flight an hour later but it arrived in philly at the same time as the previous. (previous had a stop over in denver again, the rescheduled flight was nonstop)
drove to get gas for the seabring before returning it to the rental place, and my mom couldn’t figure out how to get the gas cap off (she’s not the smartest when it comes to car stuff) and like, she asked me to help so i get out and took it off and then got back in the car and i hear her outside mumble something and call me a bitch so i get out of the car and fucking went off on her. i screamed at her and i was telling her that no matter how much she had pissed me off the whole week i never once called her a bitch but she was calling me one like every 5 minutes and i was fucking sick of her shit and this was supposed to be a business trip for me to meet my boss and find an apartment yet she tried to turn it into her own personal luxo-vacation and that i didn’t even want her to come in the first place and blah blah blah and she started crying and i didn’t give a shit which is weird because usually i can’t stand to see my mother cry but i was so angry it made me happy she was upset so i kept telling her off and eventually she appologized and i was still pissed and all but i could tell she finally understood so i tried to let it go. oh well.
so the plane ride back was not that bad. i got to see the desert and the grand canyon. but like, you kn
ow how if you know cars really well and motors you can hear when somethings not right? yeah well lucky me having the ability to hear every single sound a motor makes and like an hour before we got back to philly one of the plane’s engines started making a weird noise and i obviously didn’t know if it was normal or not but it scared the hell out of me.
thankfully, obviously, i made it back okay 🙂
some random cali-related news. amy is trying to get a co-op job out there too so we can share a place. guys keep your fingers crossed for her!!
conclusion:
cali rocks.
i ❤ garrett.
the end.
oh yeah and i found out that i got 100 on my managerial accounting midterm that i didn’t even study for. i am smrt 😀
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