Falling Off Of The Face Of The Earth

You would think we did fall off the face of the earth, having not updated out blog in FOREVER (Okay, really, like four months). Well, a lot has happened, and yet nothing has happened at the same time. But now that equilibrium is being achieved, let's start from the beginning.

With Jen's health, she ended up taking a leave from work and school in June. The downside is that they had to push her graduation back to 2015, but at least she gets a break until next January, when she starts back up again. Her leave was pretty lengthy from work: about 10 weeks total. She is just now getting back to Stanford, but at a reduced shift. She also was offered a job at Easter Seals in Oakland providing ABA therapy for several clients in the bay area. It's slow starting that job, and she is considering leaving Stanford for this new position, so we will see how things go.

So, what did Jen end up having? It turns out it wasn't vertigo, which is sort of good news, because treatment for vertigo is not easy to work with. Instead, she was diagnosed with vestibular migraines, a type of migraine that deals with motion and dizziness. They put her through the ringer with tests, including an MRI, hearing test, and motion testing to rule out other conditions like Meniere's disease and vertigo. Although VM is not an official diagnosis, the three doctors she has seen (her regular doctor, a neurologist and an ENT) have it as a diagnosis, and so we went about treating it as such. The medications she had been given were really tough on her, as they made her even more nauseated or caused her heart to pound and beat rapidly. At one point, she was actually seeing things. One weekend, she even kept imagining someone walk by out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look, no one was there! Ultimately, we decided with the doctors to just try to be really conscious of when her migraines were going to start, to make sure she stays cool, hydrated, and out of the sun, and uses her glasses more. It's a little funny to see her in a building with sunglasses on, or wearing them while on the computer, but Jen doesn't seem to mind the funny looks!http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

As if the health issues weren't enough, we also had a bit of a financial blow. Jeff lost his job with Starbucks suddenly not long after Jen's leave. We were able to save some money since Jen didn't go into work and started using up our frozen food cache. For those who don't know, in our house we have two refrigerators and a decent-sized chest freezer that we keep full of food. We grocery shopped for veggies, milk and bread but had plenty of meats and frozen food to eat. Since we didn't eat out as much as well, we saved a bit of money there too and were fortunate enough to keep afloat. While Jeff was looking, a friend from church had mentioned he was selling life insurance through New York Life, so Jeff decided to look into it. He was able to study and take the test and pass on one try, so he is now an agent with the company. If anyone is looking for life insurance or just curious, he made his own Facebook page as well: . Also, to help with some of the finances, Jeff continued to see about any possibilities with Gap. Even after he left his job for Starbucks, Jeff worked at Gap near us to keep his discount. After being laid off from Starbucks, he asked his supervisors for any job leads and it turns out there was an opening at the mall down the street from us! He was offered the job this last week, and his first official day as the assistant manager will be this Thursday. Here's hoping everything is going to go well!

Even though it sounds like a lot of bad happened, we were fortunate enough to weather the storm. It's been a long summer, and with us both home we were able to hang out more and discuss our plans for the future. We have a lot to look forward to still and are excited about the possibilities the future will have.

Hopefully we won't wait so long to post our next blog, but so far September is looking busy with work and Jeff's birthday, plus the holidays are right around the corner. We hope you are all well and hope you enjoyed hearing what's been going on with us!

School's Out For... Well, Three Weeks, Anyway.

The last few weeks have been crazy to say the least. For those who don't know, Jen has had some issues with vertigo. She is prone to nausea and motion sickness in general and has been for years, but the last few months have been pretty bad. Her dizzy spells have lasted days, and the last one she had was at work, and her coworkers sat with her until she was well enough to go home.

The bad news of this was, it was affecting her schoolwork. She ended up cutting out her externship prematurely, and not completing the course. This puts a small hiccup in her school plans. Although she will finish her academic courses on time, her externship schedule was pushed back until next year, and so she will be graduating December 2014 instead of in May. On the plus side, she was able to retain the hours that she has earned so far, so she will have a few less to complete when her classes start back up.

It's been a bit of a toll on us, so whenever we have a chance, we try to get out. A few weeks ago, we decided to drive up to San Francisco one Friday and make a day of it. We started out at Industrial Light and Magic, which is a cool little place if you're a Star Wars fan. We only had a few minutes there, but of course we took a ton of photos while we were there. We also got to drive around the Presidio, and the Palace of Fine Arts, before heading over to hunt down a pizza food truck.

Casey's Pizza is a food truck that is around the San Francisco area, and Jeff found when he was following different food trucks on Twitter. While we were in San Francisco, we thought we would give it a try, and it's the BEST! The pizza was super-thin and tasted great, so much that we ended up getting seconds!

We were in San Francisco to go to Union Square. Giada De Laurentiis, one of the Food Network chefs, was there doing a book signing, and Jen was dying to go. So we headed up to Union Square and did a little window shopping before heading into the huge Williams Sonoma. If you've never been to this store, it's four floors of kitchenwares, and we loved browsing in it. The line to meet Giada was huge, and we were smart to get in line an hour before the signing. She was on the top floor, and the line wound around the stairs and around each floor, out the door onto Post Street and around the corner down Stockton. We didn't stick around for too long after we got our books signed, but Jen was told there would be a limit to 400 signatures and only those that had bought her new book would be getting signatures, and there had to be over 1000 people in line.

School's winding down for us both, and we are stumbling over the finish line this term. Between sickness and everything else, we both barely got through this term. On the plus side, we have a few weeks off from school, so we will take a little time to recuperate and relax before we gear up for more school.

Here's hoping for a quiet summer!

And A Quick Catch-Up!

Hello, all of our friends!

Wow, it feels as though it's been forever! I wish we could say it's because so many great things have been happening, so many trips taken, and just living it up has gotten in the way of the blog. Sadly, it's a lot of the mundane that have kept us busy. Not that we didn't have a few surprises...

In the beginning of February, Jen came home from her externship in order to eat and check on the dogs before heading up to Stanford, but she was delayed. As she was leaving the house, she saw that there were a TON of police officers pointing guns at our neighbor's house. The short story is that these neighbors were involved in a carjacking (which later was based on a false charge, but they're still not nice people) and the police suspected something was going on and raided the house. While the neighborhood was able to evacuate, because we had the dogs, they had Jen stay in our bedroom with the dogs in the house. Originally we thought it would just be for a little bit, but she was in there for about six hours, holed up with the three dogs! It was pretty scary, considering what was going on, but all ended well. There were a few arrests, and aside from being shell-shocked, Jen and the dogs were okay.

We also just got done repairing our car. The Civic was acting up, and something went wrong with the transmission. When we took it to one of Jeff's regulars at Starbucks, and to the dealership to get an estimate, it turned out there were a LOT of things wrong with the car, including a crack in the manifold and the engine mounts were about to go out. All in all, we spent a lot of cash fixing up the car. It doesn't deter us from ever buying a Civic again; Jen got this car and was the original owner when it only had 3 miles on it. Now at around 130,000, except for this latest round of repairs, we have had to put in minimal repairs, considering we've driven it across the Continental Divide numerous times.

Not everything was such crazy news. We got tickets to go see The Hunger Games in an advanced screening in San Francisco. There was a lot of driving from Newark to Fremont to get our youngest niece, Amy, then to Sonoma to get our oldest niece, Sarah, who's in college there, then to get to the theatre. We thought we were super late, since we didn't get there until almost 7 and the film started at 8, but because we got our tickets through Barnes and Noble, not only did we get to go in first, but our section was perfect; the back third of the theatre! We sat in a row with no one behind us, and got to stretch out a little in the nice seats. The four of us loved the movie. Jen had just finished the book a day or so before, and now Jeff is working on it.

Otherwise, everything is same old, same old. We are still working hard, going to school, and trying to stay out of trouble. Easter in a week will likely be low-key, and in May Jen signed us up to go to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium for us to see the Cooking for Solutions weekend, where we will sit in on a cooking session with Alton Brown as well as see exhibitions on sustainable foods, followed by a summer of school and working to pay bills. Oh, and planning a trip. Jeff is going to Houston for a Starbucks trip, and since everything will be covered, Jen's going for the ride too! Even if it isn't until October, it's something to look forward to, right?

Until next time!!