It never rains in California....

...except when we try to go somewhere. Santa Monica boasts about 340 days of sunshine a year! January 17 was NOT one of those days. The day of the Golden Globes we decided to take Geo and head down to Hollywood to see some sights and maybe find someone famous!

We made a quick pit spot in Bakersfield, CA so that Hannah could scope out where Nick goes the majority of his week. The room full of dead animal heads creeped her out- but hey, it's science!

We can't imagine the amount of work it would take to stuff a giraffe.
(and yes, it's real..or was)

Nick being forced to pose outside of one of his buildings.

Once in LA, we started out at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We realized we only knew about 20% of the people on the stars. Geo was the real star, apparently, as we kept getting stopped by people so they could fawn all over him (which he just ate right up). The most eclectic members of the Geo Fan Club now include a transsexual and a Catwomen impersonator (who left a bright pink lipstick stain smack dab on the middle of Geo's forehead - Don't tell Echo, he might get jealous!) Geo let us know his overall disinterest in the fame and fortune attitude of Hollywood by doing all his business (#1 and #2) smack dab in the middle of the Walk of Fame. Here are some photos of that part of the trip!

Geo and Hannah (Guess who's more excited)

We had a nice view of the Hollywood sign as we ate our lunch (before it rained!)

Believe it or not, other people asked to take Geo's photo by the Lassie star too!

Grauman's Chinese Theater (home of Geo's Catwoman girlfriend)

By the time we were done walking, it had definitely started to rain and was picking up steam so we decided to hop in the car and drive through Beverly Hills and down Rodeo Drive. We were the only ones driving a Sable. Everyone else was in a BMW, Buick, Porche...... We were only slightly out of place. Man was it shi-shi! Some people have way too much money! C'mon, a Jimmy Choo store? Who goes there? We also drove right by the Beverly Hilton (where the Golden Globes were that night!) They had set up the red carpet and we saw a lot of limos driving around - but alas, spotted no one of interest.

Site of the Golden Globes (really not that impressive looking - We've stayed in better looking Super8's)

We continued all the way down Santa Monica Blvd until we got to the famous pier! We decided to brave the rain and walk it just to say we did! We saw dolphins out in the distance too! The crappier days seem to be the best for marine life viewing.

Our cloudy view of Santa Monica (the beach and the city) - as empty as you will ever see it!

The entrance to the historical Santa Monica Pier!

At the end of the pier - please excuse the AWFUL hair! It rained a lot....

The amusement park on the pier.

We just need to find the start of Route 66 now!

All in all - the day was fun, but wet. We wish we could have walked around more, but we made the best with what we had! Hopefully sometime in the spring we can go somewhere with decent weather on our side!

Vroom Vroom!

After much drama - Nick finally got a new car! Let us tell you about this ordeal.

Friday night we went to Carmax (adequately described by Nick as "Walmart for cars" - a huge used car dealership) and we found a car he actually really liked and in our price range. It was a deep blue Kia Rondo - a small SUV type (we were both pleasantly surprised and stunned that we actually liked a Kia - especially Nick!). We went back on Saturday morning to take a look at the car in the daylight (just to make sure we weren't deceived by how nice the car actually was) and much to our avail - they raised the price of the car by $1000! Quite unhappy about this unfortunate turn of events, we talked to the staff but they could only agree to give us the price we saw Friday for that one day only. This was irritating as we were planning on financing through a bank to get a better APR, and, as you probably know, the banks aren't open on the weekend. So even though we fully planned on purchasing this car Monday morning after we went to the bank, they refused to give us the original lower price after Saturday.

Still following us? Good! We decided to go ahead and try to finance through Carmax at the risk of a higher APR to get the car at the lower price that day. We needed a car, and quick! as we no longer felt safe driving Chuck the damaged Cutlass and we didn't know how long it would be in our possession if it was getting totaled out. Due to Nick's age and part-time employment, they would only finance us if we put $4000 down (which we don't really have to spare!). When we asked about having Nick's parents co-sign for us, Carmax made it clear that they weren't thrilled about doing that since they would have to mail the papers back and forth from CA to MI. That process would take too long and they were unwilling to hold that car for us even though it was pretty much a guarantee we were going to buy it and they had 3 others of the SAME CAR on the lot (so it wasn't like no one else could get one if they were interested). Ugh. Nothing ended up happening on Saturday and we went back Sunday one final time for Nick to plead his case and try to get the $1000 lower price on Monday. Carmax refused so we went ahead and walked out saying good riddance! You aren't willing to work with us - then you don't deserve our business!

Sunday night we went around to a few dealerships to check out their used cars and became even more frustrated discovering that the Carmax we just decided to boycott really did have the best prices and quality used cars available. Then a small miracle happened! Nick stumbled upon a used White Kia Rondo online at the Subaru dealership in town that was a higher model then the one at Carmax, $1000 cheaper than the original price ($2000 cheaper than the new price after they raised it) AND in better shape than the other one! We drove by quick to see if it was still there and it was!

Monday (this) morning, Hannah had to go off to work, but Nick also got up early to scramble around, get to the dealership first thing and do his best to get that car. Drum roll please.......... HE GOT IT! Yippee!! And for a lower down payment amount and lower APR rate (lower than Carmax AND lower than what his bank was offering)! For once something worked out perfect. He also brought Chuck the Cutlass in to get the official insurance quote on it and he ended up getting about $400 more than we expected to receive! Knock on wood, but has our luck turned around? We sure hope so!

We will leave you with a few photos of the newest member of our clan - he still needs a name(Nick was thinking sid), any suggestions? (Nick insists it's a boy - so no girl names!)

Ta-dah, here's the whole thing! Nick wants to add roof racks since it already has roof rails.

The front seats - the passenger one folds all the way down if you need to put something extra long in your car

The back seats

Geo's seat aka The trunk - those panels lift up and there's extra storage space underneath. Plus the back seats fold all the way flat

AND a sun roof! Sweet!

There's a reason it's called FresNO and not FresYES...

Will our luck ever turn around? We started 2010 with a bang - literally!

Monday the 4th we were the unfortunate victims of a rear-end accident. The guy who hit us (we were in Nick's car) was able to hit us hard enough that it put holes in the frame of Nick's car! Good news is the guy who hit us had insurance...Bad news is the damage to Nick's car is MUCH more than the car is actually worth so it looks like his car is just getting totaled out :(

This happened exactly 1 day before Nick got his official California registration for his car and exactly 2 days before he had to start driving 1.5/2 hours each way to go to school out in Bakersfield. Needless to say - we are NOT happy campers and poor Nick is being forced to buy a new car at a very inopportune time. We knew we wanted to buy a new car eventually but we had hoped we'd get 1 or 2 more years out of Nick's car. Which then of course leads us to our next dilemma....

Being in school, being 20, having out student loans, and only working part-time doesn't exactly qualify you for any car loans (despite knowing that we'd be able to cover payments!) And since we're all alone out here and Nick needs to drive so much we don't really want to go the "buy someone else's problem car" route. So far everyplace we checked wants us to put down an outrageously high down payment in order to qualify us. Honestly - how many college students have an extra $4000 lying around to be able to spare for a down payment? Hmmmm. Come Monday - Nick gets to find out how much the insurance company is willing to pay him and also find out if he can qualify for a different loan!

Sorry for such the gloomy and short post, but as you can see, we've ended up quite frustrated over all the poor luck we have in Fresno so far. We're definitely thinking once Nick graduate's it'll be adios to Fresno!!! Maybe we'll get to Colorado after all....!

Keep your fingers crossed for us that things will work out for us and our luck will turn around - hopefully our next post will be happier!