The other Woodstock

Sorry the picture is so bad and you can't see Woodstock flitting all over the car...

I finally met the other Woodstock from Washington state.. He is sooo cute, where is my Woodstock is a little badder looking....Other Woodstock got his amazing graphics from Athestic Creations, he is liquid yellow and a convertible and I must say he looks awesome, so much so that he won this years AMVIV car show.. Congratulations other Woodstock!!!

AMVIV is over until next year

Wow, AMVIV came and went sooo fast. Time always flies when you are having a good time.

We packed Woodstock the night before so we could checkout and head over to the Palace Station for breakfast and some last minute sales. For some reason I thought breakfast started at 10:00 but it actually started at 06:00 and ended at 10:00. When we got to Palace Station at around 8:00 am there was hardly anyone around, cuz most of the people had left or were in the process of leaving. We applied the custom stickers for the people that ordered them the night before and since it was so dead we decided to leave earlier than we had planned.

Andy & Jennifer stopped by before they left, Andy won a Ridemakerz $50.00 gift card and he gave it to me before he left, which was totally awesome!!! I've been wanting one of those for awhile..I just got done ordering it a few minutes ago. Anway, Jeff & Lindy, Evie and me and Aunt Clara left at around 9:30. we got home around 1:30..

I was beat, so I went home, halfway unpacked Woodstock washed some clothes and hit the sack early... My first AMVIV went by fast but I had a great time, I can't wait until next year...

AMVIV continued Sat...

Ok, I'm finally caught up with my posts and no more back dating...

After the Las Vegas strip cruise, we were exhausted and went back to the timeshare. I had to make a whole bunch of custom stickers, for the people who had ordered them during the day, before I could go to sleep. I was up til 2:00 am.. I finally got to bed and it seemed like only a few minutes had gone by and the guys who were staying in the room above us woke up and started taking showers and walking around.. Geez I looked at the clock and it was freakin 5:00 am.. so I started off Saturday one sleepy girl...

I decided to stay at the booth and sell stickers all day. We sold and installed so many stickers I couldn't even keep track of how many we sold. Luckily my aunt was organized and kept track of everything. I just did the installs, for some reason people like me to stick them on their windows for them.....

Oh yeah the organizer for Mini in the Mountains came by and wanted to me consider being a vendor in Aug.. I'm seriously thinking about it since my current contract ends July 31st, and this event is the week after that.

Sat was pretty much the last day, and since my sister flaked and went home early I was stuck with a huge tent and an extra suitcase and no room in my MINI. I'm soo lucky to have SCMM friends, cuz Andy L. and Jennifer T. did me a huge favor by taking my tent and two folding chairs home with them. There was no way they were going to fit in my car since it was already jammed pack with everything else. Thanks Andy and Jen!!!! I totally appreciate your help...

Me, my aunt and Robert and his granddaughter went to the banquet, it was pretty good and we had a nice time and met some people from the Arizona Mini club and some other people. It was an enjoyable evening meeting with friends and meeting new ones.

AMVIV Temple Bar (Hoover Dam) run

Another back dated post, but now I'm caught up.

We woke up before the alarm clock on Friday and was ready to start our day. Thank goodness the heavy winds had died down. We got to the Palace Station and Robert (TwistyBitz) was already there and setting up his booth. He helped us put up our tent and immediately people started coming over to buy stickers. We were still setting up at the time so we were all little unorganized, but eventually got into sync. I really wanted to go on the Temple Bar run because I had never seen the Hoover Dam before. So my Aunt told me she would man the tent while I went on the run.

Well, I have never driven a regular cooper in manual transmission before and I had told one of the club members the night before that I wanted to test drive one. She offered to let me drive her Justacooper in the Temple Bar run, because she wanted to go but she didn't want to drive. So we headed off with approx 110 Minis to Hoover Dam in Lee Ann's cooper. It took a little while to get used to the difference between my 07 MCS and her 04 cooper. I almost stalled out (how embarrasing) a few times. The run was a blasst, and Hoover Dam was amazing. It was so nice of Lee Ann to let me drive her car, I'm so wierd and don't like anyone driving my car, so it was extra nice of her to let me drive hers.

We got back sold alot of stickers then went out with several Maniacs to this awesome Mexican restaraunt. Then we did the famous Las Vegas strip cruise. Can you imaged almost 4oo Minis jam packing the strip? It was a fun tiring day!!!

Too windy to set up tent at AMVIV

I'm going to cheat a little and back date this post. I know it's cheating about my 1 post a day resolution, but the only reason why I didn't post was because there wasn't enough time in the day, not because I didn't have anything to say.

Ok, I'm back on topic now. Well our early morning caravan got into Vegas in pretty good time, and we rolled into the Palace Station at around 11:30 however, there weren't too many people around the top of the parking structure due to the 50mph winds and freezing weather (I might be exagerating a little about the freezing part). We checked in and asked the other vendors what they were going to do and they all said they were packing up and leaving. Someones tent had blown around and hit a Mini, so we didn't want to take a chance of injuring another MINI.

Geez, I was sooo bummed because I was really looking forward to setting up and starting my first AMVIV experience. Since it was so miserable on the top deck we decided to go check in at the timeshare, Sue wanted to see the it, so she came with us to check out the new place and was really impressed, it was the first time I'd ever been there since they moved from the old location.

We goofed off for a little while then went back to take a nap considering we woke up so early... That night, SCMM (SoCal Mini Maniacs) hosted a pizza party that was supossed to be on the top deck but it was still too windy so the Palace Station graciously gave us a conference room to host our club party.. Wow George always finds the best pizza places wherever we are at, it was so yummy and as usual it was really nice to hang out with the Maniacs. We left early and headed back to the timeshare so we could go to bed early and get an early start on Friday. I was hoping that Friday the wind would die down.

Early AM caravan pics

I actually managed to get up at 5:00 am this morning like I was supossed to. We made it to Walmart at 6 on the dot and Robert was already there waiting for us. Evie showed up a few minutes later, then the new guy Bruce was right behind her. We waited until about 6:20 and headed out and was perfectly synced with he O.C group who converged with us at the 605, that was pretty amazing timing.. by the time we reached Barstow we had 10 Minis in our Caravan, which is a pretty respectible turnout considering this is the first time I've ever organized a caravan.
First Potty Stop Victorville
The group stopped in Barstow to eat at Denny's then headed out. They made me the sacrificial lamb and lead car. The drive was great and no one in the group got a ticket, and made it to Vegas in a little over 4 hours even with 3 potty stops. We did hit a really scary sand storm and you couldn't even see the front of your car, luckily it didn't last that long. Our final caravan count was 11.. Denny's Barstow

This is bad, I took this pic while I was driving

Too tired to write anything

Sorry, I just got done packing Woodstock and I'm beat. I have to get up at 5:00 am so I can meet the Maniacs at 6:00 in Monrovia.. Yahoo AMVIV is finally here.. I'm too tired to write anymore. Goodnight

How do I fit all this stuff in the MINI

Since we are meeting some of the gang at Walmart in the wee hours of the morning, I started to pack Woodstock tonight. This is going to be tough, I've got all the inventory, cutter/plotter, two computers, luggage, 2 chairs, roll up table, display signs, table cloths, first aid kit plus all the snacks, drinks etcx.. I'm just wondering how I'm going to get it all in the car without having to put the roof rack on.... This is going to take some creative packing...

Almost missed a day

Well, I was going to post my pictures of the 2 new shirts that I silkscreened today, but right in the middle of it I got a call from work.. Since I'm the oncall I had to drop what I was doing and reboot a system.. Gotta get back to it, I'll post more tomorrow..

Silkscreened Promo Shirts for AMVIV

I thought it would be easy to silkscreen my own shirts so I bought a kit and learned how to silkscreen a few weeks ago, but it turns out that is is a very long involved process. After much trial and error, I was able to get two designs on a some promo shirts for AMVIV today, which is great. I also have two screens in the process of drying and will be able to print some more shirts with different designs tomorrow.

My grand plan for AMVIV was to have several different images for shirts but since I ran out of time, I guess I'll give the promo shirts out with purchse of $20.00 or more...

Have a scheduled work production outage

I have a scheduled outage today, actually I'm now in the middle of upgrading our 55 production AIX servers from TL7 to TL8. Luckily there are 3 of us, so I only have to do 18 of them. 2 weeks ago it took me 8 hours to upgrade 18 QA servers with Centrify and AIX, that was a long night because I had to do it by myself, plus I was oncall, so you get all these calls while your trying to do your work, it takes twice as long to get anything done. Since I'm not the oncall tonight and just a worker bee, I'm now wrapping it up, plus we didn't have to upgrade the stupid Centrify which saved me about 4 hours of work. I can't believe we finished before midnight... Yeah now I can focus the rest my weekend on getting organized for AMVIV which is in 4 days....

Sticker Making Monster

I've been scrambling around for the last 2 weeks to get things done for AMVIV. With 6 days left, I've kicked into high gear and turned into the sticker making monster. Hopefully I'll get most of it done before Wed...

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be

I was dreading going to lunch and leaving work today, so I went to lunch a little earlier than I normally do, and the traffic wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There were a lot of police and reporters around, but the only streets they closed were Buena Vista and Riverside for a couple of blocks. Not too bad at all. It did take me 1/2 hour to get home when it normally only takes me 7-10 mins, which was a little bad but still not as bad as it could have been. I guess I was worried for nothing, I was expecting huge crowds, there were alot of people but not the masses I thought were going to be there.

I normally don't watch the Tonight Show, but I think I will tonight, it's hard to believe this is our first President to do the show.

How hard to get to or leave work tomorrow?

Our new President, Barack Obama will be going on the Jay Leno show tomorrow, which just happens to be right across the street from where I work. I wondering how hard it will be to either get into work, leave for lunch and or leave from work tomorrow? Everyone usually lines up for the show around 1:30 - 2:00pm so I figure it won't be to hard getting to work but will be a pain in the butt to go to lunch and leave work....Geez, I hate crowds, it's going to be crazy, I wish it was my work from home day but Thur belongs to Eric....

Caravan to AMVIV6 early Thur AM

9 more days to my 1st A Mini Vacation in Vegas (AMVIV6), I can't wait, this is going to be so much fun. As of today there are 312 cars registered for this event. I'm not sure how many were there last year, but I was hoping there would be at least 300 and we made it. The more the merrier!!!

I'm still scrambling to get everything made and organized so that I can pack up the car. It's going to be a tight squeeze, but luckily my sister is driving up the day before, and she's going to take my ez-up tent and table with her..

For anyone that isn't an SCMM'r (you should really think of joining) I will be caravaning up with several SCMM'ers to Vegas early Thur morning. We will meet at the Monrovia/Duarte Walmart (off the 210 at Mountain Ave) parking lot at 6:00am and leave shortly after. Hope to see some new faces... If you decide to join our caravan, see you early Thurs morning on the 26th....

Spring Forward is kicking my butt

I must be getting old or something cuz this daylight savings change (spring forward and lose 1 hour of sleep) which happened about 3 weeks ago is kicking my butt. Before the change I was able to get out of bed before the alarm went off. After the change, I have to keep hitting the snooze button because for some reason I'm not getting enough sleep and I'm tired all of the time. I guess losing 1 hour of sleep makes a big difference, I like fall back much better....

Sat Night MINI Meet Northridge Cancelled

This is sad, our normal once a month Sat night MINI meet at Flames BBQ restaurant in Northridge had to be cancelled. Flames went out of business, I can only assume due to the current economic crisis. This was a pretty new venue for us, which was starting to become pretty popular for the valley Mini club members. This Saturdays event would have been Ashley's first event and she was disappointed when I told her the reason why it had to be cancelled. Now we have to find another establishment that will hold our 2nd Sat of the month Mini Meet...

It's Woodstock's Birthday Today

1 Year ago today, I went to Nick Alexander to "look" at a MINI", 3 hours after I got there I was driving home in my new MINI.. since I was only supossed to be looking and I had gone there by myself, I had to leave my BMW at the dealership over night..

1 year and 10800 miles later, I have had many adventures with my Woodstock and hope to have many more.

Happy 1st Birthday Woodstock, me and Niki Love You!!!

Can't think of anything to write about today

Hmm, this is a first, I can't think of anything to talk about today, I guess this is going to be a short post... =o)

MINI United 2009, to go or not to go?

Mini United will be held this year in May at Silverstone UK. I really want to go, but I have a dilemma, on the one hand its the best time ever to go to the UK, due to very cheap airfares and the weak pound. On the other hand I just spent $13,100 on my plumbing problem and I only have a job until July 31st 2009. So do I throw caution to the wind and go? or, do I play it safe and miss the biggest event for the MINI in the last 50 years??? Decisions, Decisions....

Things have calmed down

Nothing much today, the plumbers pretty much finished everything, they are just waiting for the inspector to come and sign off the gas shutoff valve. Then they have to repave the 4x4 spot on the street and then my plumbing nightmare will be over.

Niki is doing much better today, wow, she really had me worried. She's on bed rest, no jumping on off couch etc. The anti inflammatory medicine worked wonders. Boy it sucks to get old, poor thing, I hated to see her so miserable I'm glad she is feeling better.

Other than that, I'm running around trying to get ready for AMVIV.. Really a calm day compared to the last 2 weeks...

Woodstock's first official checkup

I just got back from MINI of Monrovia after taking Woodstock for his 1 year checkup. He's been to the doctor many times before for several warranty issues, but this is his 1st official service. He had his brake fluid flushed, oil and mircrofilter changed, and he got a nice car wash. He is now ready for AMVIV in a couple of weeks. I can't believe he'll be 1 year old in 4 days.. Awww my baby is growing up.

My Poor Niki

My poor Niki, I should have known something was wrong with her when she didn't get out of bed to leave with me for work. She wouldn't even let me pick her up without growling and squeaking in pain. After I dropped her off at moms she started wimpering and shaking and could hardly walk. My mom called me because she was really worried about her.

We just got back from the vet, and apparently she did something to her back and she can't walk or do much... The vet gave her a shot and sent her home for total bed rest and anti inflammatory medicine. I feel so bad for her that she is in such pain, at the least the shot will take effect pretty soon and hopefully she won't be in too much pain for long...

Time Flies

I was just looking at my AMVIV countdown clock and just realized that there are only 18 more days to prepare for it.. I just ordered the tent today and I already have my sign that I had made for the Magical Mystery tour. I still have to create more stickers and makes my display signs. It seems like it was yesterday that I had 3 months to go before AMVIV. I had all these grand plans to do t-shirts too which I had already designed but have not had the chance to make. I guess I'll make samples and just take orders. Geez, I can't believe how fast time flies. I need to get off my butt and getting going..

Coogies Today

It was a beautiful day for SCMM's 1st of the month breakfast meetup at Coogies. I woke up early and headed out without Niki. (She stayed home with mom) It was a nice twisty semi-fast drive down Sunset to PCH. I don't speed on PCH by Sunset, cuz there's always so many police just waiting to give people tickets. Plus I didn't need to get pulled over 2 weeks in a row.

Well, I'm doing about 50 mph, and I look in my mirror a see 3 MINIs approaching me pretty quick, but I can't see who it is. One of them speeds up and gets besides me and I see its one of my SCMM friends, Dan.. He waves and backs off and gets behind me again. The only problem is, a policeman saw him speed up and clocked him at 67 in a 45.. He pulled him over and gave him a ticket.. I felt so bad that he got a ticket on such a nice day... what a bummer... Sorry Dan...

Found out my vendor spot at AMVIV 6

I just found out my Stuck On Minis Vendor spot at AMVIV 6. Please come by my booth #8 located across from Vinyl Styles and Go MINI Go.

If you mention that you saw this blog post I will give you a free $2.75 sticker of your choice with the purchase of any sticker..

Little Black MINI finally has a name

Ashley took me out to dinner tonight and I asked her if she had a name for her MINI, but she said she couldn't think of one. She wanted something with Pooh on it because ever since she was little we called her Ashpooh. Well we finally came up with the perfect name for her MINI, MNI POOH..isn't that a cute name... She just got finished ordering her special license plate for him. I think it's the perfect name for her MINI....

I can't find Woodstock's license plate

Geez, since I got that fix it ticket, I need to put Woodstock's front license plate on, the problem is I can't remember where I put it... The CHP won't sigh off on my ticket unless I have it on there. Boy that is dumb, I'll have to tear apart the garage this weekend to find it

I could have bought 1/2 a MINI

Well the total for my huge sewer problem came to $13,100 almost half of what we paid for Ashley's Little Black MINI. Hmm, new MINI or new sewer, at this point since we already have 2 MINIs in the family, I guess it wasn't too bad. I now have a whole brand new sewer system that should last for the next 50-75 years....can we say that a new Mini would last that long?

Yeah, I'm back home

Yahoo!!!. I get to sleep in my own bed tonight. The plumbers replaced the sewer pipe from my house to the end of the property line and the inspector passed it today. They told me I could use the water until tomorrow.

Tomorrow they will have to clean out the sewer from the property line to the city's main sewer. Once they clean it out they will then put the epoxy sleeve in it. This effectively gives me a a brand new sealed pipe that should last for 50 years or more. Once the liner cures for approx 5-6 hours it will need to be re-inspected, then they can refill the huge trench in my front yard and this nightmare will be over.. I can't wait, I just hope it doesn't rain tomorrow...

I got a cool present

Look what I found when I got back to my moms house after dinner at Roberts. My cousin dropped this little red RC Mini off at my moms house for me. He told my mom that he couldn't find a Yellow Mini so he got the red one. That was soo nice of him, I've been wanting a RC Mini for awhile now, but also couldn't find a yellow one, so I just never bought one. I think I'll paint it yellow..