Shenanigans

Kate and I have been spending this week in Palm Desert (Palm Springs), CA. This is our decompression week where we take a break from driving for a bit and just relax. Monday, our first full day here, was spent at Firestone. We went in to get the oil changed and to see if we had any brakes left. After waiting for about 2.5 hours, we were told that we needed to replace the rear rotors (or else the world would explode) and it would take another hour. Fine. We'll go to get some lunch and come back. We come back about 45 minutes later. After sitting around for another 45 minutes, we're told that they needed to get a part from the warehouse and were waiting for it to arrive. The part should arrive in about fifteen minutes and then they just need to slap it on the car. She made it sound like there was zero assembly time required for this. It was about another 1.5 hours after that that we finally walked out the door. We essentially put in a full day of work at Firestone. (I've been unemployed so long that my idea of work is now to sit all day while listening to music, reading a book and watching episodes of Charmed, Las Vegas, ER, and Law & Order).

The other day, we made the mistake of sitting through a time share presentation. We were lured by the offer of a $75 gift certificate to the restaurant of our choice. We planned to use the gift certificate to go to a fancy dinner to celebrate Kate passing the bar. The good news is that we did NOT buy a timeshare despite being VERY tempted to. If it were like 4 months from now and we had sat through the same presentation, we almost certainly would be timeshare owners.......in Palm Springs. If we didn't have to pay to move and possibly pay rent without income for a short period of time, shit would have turned out different. They did a whole routine where they asked what our vacation goals were (this is the part where they get us dreaming about the possibility of super great vacations and then fulfill them by selling us a timeshare). We mentioned that we were going to Argentina in February of 2011. This, of course, is mostly a joke. Kate wants to go there because a bunch of our friends just got back from South America and she knows that she will want to escape the cold of Chicago in February. Based on the incentives that they were offering, it looked like we could get enough Marriott Reward points to pay for two round trip tickets and five nights in Buenos Aires. These people know what they are doing.

So, last night, we went out for the celebration dinner at Sullivan's Steakhouse. We both ate too much and the gift certificate helped enormously. Props to Kate for allowing me to ride her coat tails to the top. I'm super proud of her for putting up with the bullshit of law school and passing the bar.

Today, we headed over to Joshua Tree National Park. We took a short hike around Hidden Valley and then drove around the park a bit before heading back to the homestead.