Consequences

When you don't pay your bills there are consequences.

Currently, we are in the midst of dealing with some consequences that are not our fault.  I am at Starbucks typing up this post because my cell phone, the internet and the TV in our apartment aren't working.  I'm guess that the electricity and the water will probably be the next things to go!  HA  Fingers crossed that doesn't happen.  We've got this great benefit of living here in China that the bills were negotiated to be included in our rent which is fantastic, however, when the rent doesn't get paid, the bills get turned off.  After a year of living here it's finally been brought to our attention that the rent isn't being paid on time and we have a new landlord as of January and well she's not about waiting so she just cancels the services.  Our gym membership wasn't paid so Bill gets nasty looks and told he can't be there when he goes.  Anyway, there's this crazy process here, our landlord must generate an invoice and she gives that to our agent, who then gives that to Charter's accounting in China and then Charter in China asks for the money from Charter in the US.  Whew, did you follow that… so it's a long slow drawn out process and it's been taking a long time to pay.  So this new landlord lady is angry with the timing.  You'd think there would be a better system, or that the landlord would request and generate the invoice ahead of time.  I don't get it, all I know is I am not a fan of not having a cell phone or the internet!

Although, when you don't have tv, internet or a cell phone there is always T25!  We took a trip to the fake market in Shanghai this weekend and we came home with T25 and P90X3.  Bill already has P90X 1 and he wanted a new workout so he went for 3, I decided that 25 minutes of working out is good and I heard from a friend that T25 was pretty good.   Every workout is only 25 minutes long, I figured it'd be perfect for my attention span, except for the fact that these are HARD!!!  The first 25 minutes of the cardio dvd this morning kicked my butt!!!  I'm pretty sure I'll sleep good tonight. 

The good news is that I'm home now and it's 2pm on Monday and the internet is working again! HOORAY!  I'm pretty sure Bill made a few unhappy phone calls this morning and got things taken care of! 

Nice Park Job

So I was feeling pretty bummed out this morning about missing out on March Madness!  One of those things about expat life and being 13 hours ahead of time that just hits you every now and again and of course here the streaming never seems to work so I couldn't even have some coffee and watch this morning.  So I decided to meet some ladies for lunch to get out of the house.

Turns out my day isn't as bad at this guys:

I can't begin to fathom why he thought it'd be a good idea to drive over the edge of the curb like that!

My day's also better then these guys who clearly got their kites stuck in some bad places!

 I don't think that one's coming out of the power lines anytime soon!

Passwords...

Is it just me or do other people have trouble remembering passwords?
I returned home from lunch and finally sat down to get back into my blogging however I couldn't remember the password!  I guess it's my punishment for not blogging since January.  This resulted in me sitting here in front of the computer trying every imaginable password I could ever think of having created and trying every password for all my other accounts for the past 2 hours.  It ended up with Google calling me(I had to request that and boy do they have fast service!) and me having to completely reset my account.  Whew, that was hard work!  I've now added my Google account to the password book and will never forget that password, until the next time I need to login.

So, I'm back… Yes, back to China.  After our Australia and New Zealand trip I thought I may have had too much sun so I decided to step back into the Polar Vortex for 3 weeks just to "cool-off" a bit!  Unfortunately, it was a bit too cold to actually do some downhill skiing, but I did manage a trip out to ice caves of Lake Superior.  Pictures will be coming after I get to the Australia/New Zealand pictures.

Back to today's story… I made a bonehead mistake… I trusted weather.com and the weather app on my phone!  I was meeting some girls at a new restaurant in town called Element Fresh, it's a chain out of Shanghai that I'll say we as expats pretty much worship.  It's salads, soups, juices, just great tasting IMPORTED food.  This place is where you go to actually get a sandwich or a salad that reminds you of home and in fact the salads are often better than some restaurants at home!  Yeah, it's that good.  So the past 2 days have been in the low 70's here... don't shoot me American friends and family, it's warm and sunny but still smoggy, I'll take your cold over my smog!  Today, however, was 50 and really foggy… aka smoggy… with a 40% chance of rain all morning up until 12 when it went to 10%.  I figured I was made in the shade when 11:30 rolled around and it appeared to be just a grey day with no rain.  I figured why not e-bike it to lunch.  At about 12:30 while we're eating lunch the sky opened up and that was followed by some lightning and well I sat through lunch contemplating leaving my bike at the restaurant and taking a taxi home or risking the driving in the rain. Luckily by the time we were done eating and sorting out our bill the downpour had turned into a steady rain so I figured I'd just chance it.  I was only going a 10 minutes drive away.  I ended up making it home relatively dry, I had a rain coat on and the helmet and glasses saved my face but my hands and the tops of my thighs were pretty wet and cold.  The best part of the rain ride though is that the e bike got a much needed wash!

Before rain dusty/dirty bike:

 My bad-ass rain outfit (I needed the sunglasses for eye protection even though it was dark):

 After rain wash and shine:
Isn't she a beaut?