stuff is cool

Images from the last 4 holiday seasons . . . all in random order. No captions, because my wrist friggin’ hurts. But enjoy the spirit of the seasons!

Bill, one of my bestest friends in the word, recently married the beautiful, wonderful Viviana in a gorgeous wedding, which was followed by one heckuvah par-tay! I had the honor of giving a reading in the ceremony, along with Jill. You may remember Jill as the tall blonde reader at MY wedding!

Here I share some pictures of the event, provided with gratitude by friends Jill and Laura. Our camera had technical difficulties

The gang, gathered together at the rehearsal dinner at Maggiano’s. A fitting choice but it would be personally incriminating if I said why.

Bill gave all his groomsmen and ushers boxers with the wedding party’s names embroidered on them. Of course they immediately modeled them for us.

Me and Danny, duh.

The old married couple. 10 months and still going strong!

A gorgeous ceremony at St Michael’s Catholic Church here in Houston.

I love my fellow Catholics

The “Gomertsons” - Mr. and Mrs. Bill and Viviana (nee Gomez) Robertson!

Jill, me, and Kelli, reunited “at last.” A sexy trio!

Resting between the busting of many moves: me, Danny, and Laura

Oh yes, Rice kids know how to get funky. Kelli, Bradley, and Ben.

My handsome hubs

Bill dances with his mommy- so cute!

The beautiful couple. I dream that they have a daughter and we have a son and they get married someday

And here’s a pic from Bill’s birthday this past March. I have to fix those evil red eyes of mine.

Although I am very much looking forward to having kids one day, I am very much dreading having to watch movies with them. I am not sure which will be worse: watching things over and over again, when the kids are 2-7 or so, or having to see movies like the ones my kid cousins seem to like. Such as Space Chimps, Fred Claus, or Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Which reminds me of my ultimate nightmare: 1997’s Jungle 2 Jungle, starring Tim Allen. My apologies if you are a fan of those films. As I have never seen them, I cannot really be a good judge. However, I will relish my freedom to avoid such films for as long as I can. Only when I am forced to out of love will I give silly movies a chance. Make hay while the sun shines, and watch as many rated R movies as you can before you get dumped in the world Daddy Day Care. They can’t all be can be The Fairly Oddparents. But I sure hope they get better by 2018 or so. (By my math, that gives me plenty of time before I start having kids. I want them, but I gotta grow up first, and I don’t wanna.)

Thanksgiving is suddenly almost upon us! I hate how autumn and winter fly by but spring and summer (mostly summer) drag on forever. I am not sure how I can still feel like the holidays fly by when the rest of the word starts the season a full month before I do. Merchants had their Christmas decorations and displays up the week of Halloween.

Now, I LOVE Christmas. I love everything about it. I love decorating, shopping for gifts, cooking, watching Christmas movies, listening to Christmas carols, etc. But I will not start doing those things until the day after Thanksgiving! Or maybe Thanksgiving Day. Even though I have been running into holiday stuff left and right for weeks, I have fought it off enough that when I do officially greet The Season, it will be all the richer and sweeter. You start doing Christmas too early and it gets really watered down.

Some people go to the other extreme. In Olden Days, sometimes Santa brought the tree along with the gifts. Or the tree was set up only on Christmas eve. This makes sense due to the fire hazards they were, what with being decorated with dozens of open flames and all! In any case, some folks out there don’t celebrate The Season, they celebrate the day.

Obviously, I prefer the happy medium. 4 weeks of Christmas is just enough time to build up the excitement and celebration, savoring each tradition one by one. It may start with an impulse purchase of Christmas Oreos with red and green icing, then lighting holiday scented candles, then decorating, etc. etc. until Christmas is everywhere, exciting all of your senses.

I think the timing of holidays is perfect. We build excitement for a month, then have wonderful wonderful Christmas, with the week afterward acting as the denoument, and, just in time, New Years is a solid bookend (paired with Thanksgiving.)

Heyyyyyy bet you guys thought we had given up on our blog forever. Yeah, well, we sorta had I guess. I am not sure why I haven’t been keeping it up. It’s just that I am soooooo busy (haha.)

In fact I haven’t read *anyone’s* blog in months. I really really have no idea why. It’s like I just plain forgot about the blogosphere. Which would seem impossible, but it can be done!

I was replying to an email from Petie and I clicked on her family blog and was just so enchanted with reading about the daily adorableness of my little nieces that I could not believe I had missed out on so much. I have LOTS of reading about JoJo and Lisey to catch up on! And I know nothing about my precious, um, what would he be, nephew-in-law-in-law? Petie’s brother Joey and his wife Maria have sweet baby Joaquin. I am hoping to reconnect with Maria and hear all about the little prince!

Hmm sounds like I have babies on my mind. Kiinda. I mean, it’s gonna happen within a few years, and we are getting closer to BabyTime as each day, week, month, year passes. Danny and I talk about our plans for our future children allll the time. I think we’ve sort of got a plan figured out, though of course it’s not totally up to us, we have to work on God’s plan for us. BUT, we figure we’d of course rather be in a house first, a starter house, of course. However, if we don’t move into a house until age 32 or something (however unlikely) obviously the baby would have to come before that.

Danny has always been figuring on age 30 being “it’s time.” But that’s only two years away! EEek!

I don’t want to make this first return to blogging to turn into a novel, so I’ll shaddup for now I can’t type for very long because of my wrists getting sore from it, but maybe more typing is the right exercise I need!

If you forgot what we looked like, here’s a recent pic of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel DiPaolo. Nah, I just like sharing pics.

Not our Halloween costumes, BTW. What sort of costume is a bathrobe anyway? This pic is from the ROBE 2008 party we attended during Danny’s company retreat weekend. That party got preeety weird. The mask I am wearing was from another, MUCH more formal and elegant event going on in the main ballroom. I snagged this off a table as we walked by the ballroom. Then later, this random girl and I went back to the ballroom, now empty, and took down a bunch of fancy masks that had been used as decoration. I cannot believe i was running around the hotel in my jammies. Maybe I shouldn’t have had so much champagne. Man, Danny’s company is really really cool.

Below is another picture from that weekend, but we have more clothes on.

In August of 2007, I opened a Money Market Account with Chase bank, my bank for over a decade. In fact, it has been my only bank since I was old enough to hold an account.

I sat down that mid-August day with a Chase banker whom I thought was a friend, “Abe,” a man I had trusted since I had been going to his branch for many years. He told me he wanted to set me up with a Chase Premier Checking Account, so that I could earn bonus points and “get free stuff.” He said it was free to upgrade and that there was no reason I shouldn’t, so I said, sure, go for it.

On my very next statement, I started seeing a “service fee” of $20 which recurred every month. Well, since it was called a “service fee,” I believed it was a fee for services to my MMA.

Finally, on June 14, 2008, almost a year later, I finally got fed up with such an expensive service fee. I was no longer using that particular account, and kept very little money in it. I no longer felt $20 a month was worth whatever service they where providing, so I called to see what it was about and if I could cancel my MMA and avoid further “service fees.”

It was only then that I was told that the Chase Premier Checking Account my dear Abe had set me up with requires a minimum monthly balance of $15,000. Yes, FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. In my entire life, I have never had anywhere close to that much money in my checking account, before or after the supposedly “free upgrade.”

The banker who set me up with this account was looking right at my account history when he did this. I had never had more than a few thousand dollars at any given time. He had no reason to believe I would ever suddenly have $15,000 every month. Nor did he even mention it. I certainly would have turned down this great “free upgrade!”

He also happily helped me set up an alert system so that I would receive an automated call if my account went below $2,000. Hmm, that’s $13,000 lower than the minimum should ever be! So what good would that alert do me? Nothing! Thanks, Abe! What a helper!

I immediately downgraded my account the day I found out about this “service fee” that was actually a “penalty fee” for having less than the required $15,000 minimum.

Then I went to my local branch to demand to know how Chase would have knowingly signed me up for an account minimum I would never be able to reach, and also conveniently failed to even tell me about it.

Their first response was “How come you never called us about that $20 fee before? It’s been on your statement every month for almost a year.” Thank you, Chase, for immediately blaming me. Let’s see, if it were labeled what it truly is, a “PENALTY FEE” I sure as heck would have called you on it the instant I saw it. But no, you call it a “service fee,” though what “service” you have been providing me by taking $20 from me every month, I certainly don’t know.

“Priscilla,” the assistant bank manager (“Keith”, the bank manager, was unavailable) told me that since my father was also on my account, and since he had his own separate account with Chase, perhaps ole Abe had “linked” our accounts “for fee purposes.” That still doesn’t add up. My father should have had to agree to this $15,000 minimum as well, and he doesn’t necessarily always have that much cash sitting around in his own checking account himself. They never asked him. Never once did this minimum get mentioned to any of the two account holders: me and my father.

They just set me up with a ridiculous account with an unattainable minimum, and then happily took $20 from me every month under the guise of providing me with a “service.”

That adds up to over $200. $200 that never should have been taken from me in the first place, if that banker back last August had done his job.

Now Chase is saying they may not be able to refund that money. They have only refunded the last 4 months, claiming that going any further back would be “very difficult” but not explaining why. They have also given no explanation as to 1) why that banker Abe did what he did and 2) why they do not see fit to refund my deceitfully taken money.

I would gladly get the hell out of Chase today if I could but I have to twiddle my thumbs while the “upper management” reviews my case to determine whether or not I deserve a refund. I see no plausible reason why I shouldn’t. Chase was in the wrong from the very start. Whether I caught it last August or next August, that doesn’t change the fact that they screwed up big time, and I had to pay for it.

If someone steals my car and I don’t notice it for a few days, does that mean the thief is less culpable for the theft?

Chase made a mistake that made them money and cost me money. I see no proper recourse other than a full refund.

Hallelujah, I have rediscovered the style and comfort of jeans that fit just below my waist, not just above my lady parts. Low-rise jeans have been so popular for so long that it’s the only style I have been able to buy for many years. The only other option, so I thought, were those horrendous ladies’ Wranglers that look straight out of the 80’s, and seem to come right up under your boobs.

But last Friday, as I was shopping at Old Navy for jeans for Danny, I discovered “classic rise” jeans for myself. Rejoice! The waist is comfortable, the fit is still slimming, and I think I look better than I ever did in low-rise.

The style is called “The Sweetheart” at Old Navy: classic rise, stretch, slight flare. PERFECT. I bought two pairs.

The search for the perfect pair of jeans is practically a lifelong quest for some women. Sure, I’ve had favorite pairs in the past, but what worked for me in college doesn’t necessarily work for me as a 27-year-old wife. The days of sizes 1 and 3 are over for me. I just put about five pairs of such teeny ass-crack-displaying jeans into the giveaway pile that is currently being stored in the guest bathtub (nobody ever uses that tub so it’s perfect storage space for now.)

My jeans drawer now holds a few “back-up” jeans for days when I never leave the house. But now I am all Sweetheart, All the Time.

I also love how it’s called “classic rise” as if it’s all retro and vintage.

I do. I like sushi and I like Sushi (my friend Sushi Suzuki, how I miss him!)

But this post is about the sushi most people know: the Japanese fishy food.

I like sushi. Actually, I like Maki (the rolls.) Not a huge fan of just fish-on-rice.

My favorite is the Spiral Roll at Blue Fish House: tuna, salmon, shrimp, cucumber, and avocado.

Danny and I go out for sushi at least one a month.

But I cannot remember the first time I tried sushi!! It must have been fairly recently, actually, in college. You would think I would remember it. I HATE most fish; how did I bring myself to eat “raw fish”!

Do you remember your first sushi experience?

Wow, it’s been months. I haven’t had much to say, not that that stopped me before. Brief news:

- I have a new baby cousin, Calvin Merle Whitmore, son of my dad’s older brother Dan and second wife, Jean

- Calvin’s half-brother, my cousin Harry, was married two weeks ago. We all went up to Evanston. IL for the wedding.

- My collarbone and shoulder have been giving me a lot of trouble, and now my spine is starting to ache worse again.

- Therefore I will probably be changing treatments for the third (fourth?) time in a little over a year.

- My psoriasis has cleared up everywhere except my legs. I still wear jeans with everything, even sundresses.

- I am not working in any official capacity, though I am hoping to work at part-time Yankee Candle for a few months.

- Gigi got a haircut and looks like a widdle puppy.

- Bishy Bish Von Der Bish presented me with a beautiful blue hookah this week, and I cannot wait to fire it up, once he teaches me how.

- I still read all the time.

- Danny and I will be moving from our current apartment in the fall, most likely into another apartment, but closer to our families.

- In addition to not maintaining this blog, I haven’t been reading anyone else’s. I have no idea why. Plan to resume all blog-oriented activity.

- I can’t think of anything else right now. I am distracted by a show about the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

- Speaking of lost-ness, we’ll be watching the season finale of LOST a day late, tonight, with Matt and Shannon.

Pete’s comment made me think abut my grandmother’s childhood, and my father’s, which I daydream about often. My great-grandparents house in Elgin, Texas still stands, and it’s been beautifully well-kept. It has a cheerful and inviting bright red door, a big front porch, lots of trees around it, and a big field behind it with a red barn. It’s so perfect.

Here’s a picture from when we were there last May, right after Grandmom passed away.

And the barn

Dad and Danny

Mommie-Me and Daddy D (the D was for Danklefs) standing in front of their house

Unfortunately it’s not in the family anymore, but anytime we go anywhere near Elgin we make the pilgrimage to go stand out front ad talk about how it used to be. My dad talks about going to visit his grandparents, Mommie-Me and Daddy D, about how hot the bedrooms upstairs were, about riding in Daddy D’s big truck to his grocery store in town, about “the good old days.” I wish I could have been there. I would have competed with my own grandmother for May Queen (she would still win), and we’d both be big bookworms, and we’d help Mommie-Me cook. Maybe she made the same beef stew I made the other day. I learned the recipe from my grandmother.

I miss Grandmom, and Mommie-Me.

This is Grandmom when she was 17 or 18.

Here she is laughing. I never saw this side of her. She was loving and wonderful, but I never saw her laugh like this. She’s so beautiful.

These days, too, will someday be “The Good Old days.” And my grandkids will hopefully know about them from my stories.