back to school, back to school...

wait a minute....just kidding! i dont go to school anymore! actually, even though im not going back to school, i am back in provo after a VERY short road trip to california. i know everyone (and when i say everyone, i really mean the only person who reads this regularly, namely bethanne. i love you! :)) has been waiting on pins and needles to hear how i have survived for the past week or so, still jobless, and also if i made it through a short road trip to visit brad's family. of course, this is not the first time ive been to cali, and i know his family very well (in fact, brad was the last member of the family that i met), but it was still really good to be there (ps...the picture above exudes exactly how i feel and use my time while unemployed, in case you were wondering).

first of all, i need to back it up a few days and update everyone on the job status. i was finally able to get everything figured out for substituting, and i officially was put on the sub list on thursday afternoon. within 2 hours, i had already received 5 job offers. two of them were for friday (when i was going out of town) but the other three are for this week coming up. since then, i have also gotten called for another 2 jobs in a week and then i am permanently subbing for the lady i student taught with in january the 2 weeks after that. hopefully the jobs will keep coming in, because i REALLY need the money. i am going to be one happy girl when august 5th rolls around and i get my first real paycheck! :)

anyway, so brad and i went to california for the weekend. we went for 2 reasons:
1. brad's best friend from growing up, kyle, got married on the 3rd and he and ashley had their reception on saturday. he obviously wanted to be there.
2. brad's car had to be in california to pass emissions so that they could officially register the car. everyone was so excited for him to get the car in march that they overlooked the emissions testing stuff, so we drove back for the weekend to get that taken care of. it was also cheaper for me to drive with him than for brad to fly or drive alone, so i tagged along just for fun :).

we left at about 5am on friday morning and drove....a lot. thankfully everything was fine except for the freak snowstorm in the middle of nevada, but it was a loooong 9 hours to his hometown (about an hour north of sacramento) up in this adorable little town called nevada city. the views are beautiful and thankfully, unlike utah, everything is green, so i enjoyed it a lot. i did manage to get a really sore throat throughout the wknd, and i wonder if i have developed an allergy to pollen since i left good ol georgia (there was pollen EVERYWHERE at his house). alli was also able to come up and stay saturday night so we caught up as much as possible. we went to kyle and ashley's reception and had a really nice time, and we were actually able to just relax for the weekend. well, for the most part. we did have quite the ordeal with brad's car...as we were driving to california, the check engine light came on. this happened when they originally brought the car to utah, and they found out that it was due to an oxygen sensor malfunctioning in the car (probably because of the drastic change of elevation). anyway, we knew that if that light was on, his car automatically would fail. so, being the sneaky boy that he is, he manually turned it off. after all, he already knew why it was on, nothing major. well....big mistake. when we got it tested, it failed because the act of turning off the light triggered a computer response that blocked 4 things from being tested, so they failed. a car can only fail 2 things max, so we were out of luck. so we desperately drove around for 40 miles to restart the system (as was suggested by the emissions guy) but when we got back at 5 on the dot, he was already closed and long gone. luckily, he agreed to come back and check again on saturday (he is one of brad's father's clients, so he was very nice to do this). yadda yadda yadda 2 hours later and a mean practical joke played on the girls, brad found a fuse that was not working, fixed it, and the car passed without a problem. i called brad while they were there and he told me it would cost $4000 to fix and we would have to buy plane tickets home, and we (the girls all at the store) FREAKED out. especially since he only paid $3000 for it. thank goodness it was all a joke (one that we found out later after lots of worrying all about it) and all was well. so that is that. whew.

we also had a mother's day bar-b-q for his family and watched i am legend. i cried again. so sad!! unfortunately the weekend ended as fast as it began. we left at 8:30 this morning after a quick mother's day breakfast, and drove until we couldnt stand it any longer. now im sitting in my bedroom with a swollen lymph node in my throat and poor brad has tons of homework to finish tonight. im pretty much terrified about my first day subbing tomorrow, but hopefully they wont totally tear me apart. theyre only 4-6th graders....what harm could they do? ha.....oh boy....

unfortunately for me (and you, of course), i took very few pictures this weekend. what with not feeling too well and running from place to place the whole time, the only photo op was at kyle and ashley's wedding. here is one of the four of us (im the one in the yellow dress, if you can't tell), and then an apparently "GQ" shot of kyle and brad. anyway, enjoy, and keep your fingers crossed that i dont cry while subbing tomorrow!