My favorite Reid scene from Season Three

REID: (to Morgan) Can you get in there?

HOTCHNER: I'll ... meet you guys up there.

REID: Don't do that.

(Morgan stops. Then he jumps a couple more times.)

MORGAN: Why isn't it moving?

REID: I don't know.

REID: Don't -- stop it! Don't --

MORGAN: What? What's the problem?

REID: Don't do that!

MORGAN: Why not?

REID: Because there are six elevator-related deaths per year, not to mention ten thousand injuries that require hospitalization. Chill out.

MORGAN: That sounds like pretty good odds to me. What? What? Are you scared, Reid? You scared? You scared of --

REID: I'm not scared. I don't want to be in an elevator with you, to be honest.

MORGAN: How about I push that? What if I push --

MORGAN: Whoa. Whoa. Okay.

REID: Um ... hit the--hit the--

MORGAN: Yeah.

REID: Push it! It might have--

MORGAN: Push, pull, push, pull. I'm doing it. Nothing's happening.

REID: Pry -- pry -- Pry the door open. Just --

REID: Yeah.

MORGAN: It's stuck, man.

MORGAN: Uhh!

MORGAN: No, no, no, no. Not today. No, not today.

REID: (squeaks) Hotch?

MORGAN: (shouts) Hotch!

MORGAN: Hallelujah.

HOTCHNER: Was that the alarm? You guys okay?

REID: I'll get back to you on that.

REID: Ohh ... Whoo

AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!

So, when Angelina texted me yesterday about the Dodgers Caravan going to Panda Inn by her place, I was bummed because I worked on the day they were going to be there.Then today,she asked me about something else. When I got on the computer, I started looking for it. I came to this page about the Dodgers Caravan next week. As I was reading the article, the first thing that jumped out to me was that they were going to JOHN MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL. My high school??? Are you serious? Too bad it's closed to the public. Though I'm gonna bug my brother to try and get something signed for me. I'm going to try to go to one of the events that's open to the public. Who knows. But I'm going to try.

P.S. How many of you were intrigued just by the title?

Pictures from when "Criminal Minds" filmed on my street

That's the sign that greeted me when I drove down my street. I stopped to ask the cop sitting there if I could drive down to my house. About the third time I drove to my house, a cop stopped me because he said I was going too fast, that he was worried that I didn't see all the film equipment up ahead.

There's some of the equipment, including the dummy. I wonder how they manage to film everything without everything in the background being seen.

Yup, that was parked in front of my house when I got home. Good thing I knew they were filming or else ... hmmm

I think that's the body of the gangster the mail lady finds on the porch.

He's one of the local detectives.

The other local detective. the one on the gang task force I think
BTW ... who delivered the pizza?

Here's the rest of them arriving. Too bad i didn't take more pictures.

Criminal Minds - In Birth And Death

Okay, so it's an older episode... but I'm just now watching the first two episodes of the third season. I finally got them the other night. Anyone who has seen the second episode of the third season, watch the elementary school where David (the kid) goes to. Because guess what? Yup. That's my elementary school! I bet I even drove by when they filmed it and didn't realize it was them filming it. They film there all the time. How far away from my house is this school? Only about six blocks.

Prayer Request/Update on Chloe 1-24-08

Well, what goes up must come down....and that is exactly what Chloe's numbers have done.
Please continue to pray for Chloe as her numbers are dangerously low at 251.

I feel so bad for taking Chloe out anywhere. I had no idea her numbers were so low.

Thank you for remembering us in prayer.

Love,
Karla & Family

Update on Chloe 1-9-08

Chloe did awesome on our trip up to Portland for two weeks. We all had a great time and it even snowed on Christmas day!
Chloe had a very rough time at her appointment yesterday but she is still hanging on to good numbers. She is at 966, yay!! I didn't send out an update before we left, but her numbers went all the way up to 2933!! It was a wonderful start to our trip.
Chloe hasn't eaten much for the past six days so she was put on a steroid yesterday to help increase her appetite. Hopefully that will work.
Happy New Year to you all and once again thank you for lifting up our family in prayer.

Much love and thanks,

Karla, David, Ashley, Hannah & Chloe

Criminal Minds - 3rd Life

So, I was watching an episode of Criminal Minds (3rd Life, aired January 16th) and I had to stop in the middle of watching it. Why? A very familiar location just appeared. The Alex Theatre. When in the world did they film at the Alex Theatre??? What and where is this Alex Theatre, you may ask? It's in Glendale, just around the corner from where I work! In fact, I drove by it the other night to get to the freeway to go to Nina's. I think that's kinda funny since they just recently filmed an episode of Criminal Minds (True Night) just down the street from my house. The Alex Theatre is a really fancy theatre. I've only been to it a few times. The first time was for a Last Supper type service with the Jehovah Witnesses. Why? Long story. The second and most recent time was a couple years ago, I saw that the Alex Theatre was having a showing of "The Princess Bride". My friend Leah and I went. I love "The Princess Bride". We showed up early, went to Starbucks, and went back to the theatre. They had a string quartet entertaining the audience before they let people into the theatre. They also had costumed characters. In fact, one of them was going to show the crowd how to curtsy. They chose two unsuspecting young ladies from the crowd to help them, by the names of Princess Leah and Princess Linda. Well, Leah and I had to finish our drinks before we went inside the theatre. No drinks allowed. Before the movie, they had all the little kids who showed up in costumes walk across the stage. They showed a Bugs bunny cartoon I think (it's been awhile so I don't remember). It was AWESOME to see "Princess Bride" on the big screen. The entire audience applauded Inigo gets his revenge on Count Rugen, and the moment when Westley stands up and says "Drop ... your ... sword." Coincidentally ... the actor (Mandy Patinkin) who played Inigo in "The Princess Bride" also played the character of Gideon on "Criminal Minds".

Buttons and boxes

Buttons. I hate buttons. Actually, it's more like I hate it when people completely unbutton something that does not need to be unbuttoned. Why? Because they know how to unbutton it, but they don't know how to button it back up. Why is it necessary for someone to unbutton all the buttons on a dress or skirt to try it on? For example, we have this new dress that has maybe a dozen buttons on it. Is it really necessary for EVERY button to be unbuttoned to try on? Same thing with this skirt. Is it really necessary for EVERY button to be unbuttoned? No, it's not. I, for one, NEVER unbutton anything unless I have to. And then, I'd only button as little button. For the most part, I don't unbutton anything if I can't help. And if I do ... I button it back. However, it seems that's a concept that's quite foreign to most of our customers. For example ... there's this one cardigan in our store ... several buttons. I must've buttoned that thing three times alone. And then there's that dress. Good grief. Think about it. Our store may have at most, four people on the floor at any given time. At least, there's two people. Say there are six people in the store, they each unbutton five blouses. That's THIRTY blouses for me to button. Why me? Because I always get stuck doing go-backs and recovery. For the most part, the other manager will help, unless it's Mariam. Then forget about it. I have to do it all myself. And that's just blouses. Don't forget there's jackets, sweaters, dresses, pants, and skirts.

Another thing I didn't think about till Olga pointed it out. We were tossing boxes and she said, when we get catalog returns, why don't our customers just bring the returns back in a bag? For the most part, they always bring their catalog returns in the box they received it in. Making more trash for us. Hmm. Makes sense to me, to put their things in a bag, right?

Ugh

Today was an interesting day, to say the least.

I'll start off with the first thing of the day. At exactly 7:00, I woke up from a bad dream. The dream affected me so much that it made my blood run cold. Okay, so I was cold anyway. But this was a different kind of cold that only a bad dream could've left me. Anyone know what I'm talking about? So, what was my dream about? One word. Dinosaurs. It was really weird, but I was scared out of my mind in the dream. In fact, I think there was only one kind of dinosaur in my dream. Velociraptors. *shudders* I've had bad dreams about dinosaurs ever since I saw Jurassic Park when I was a kid.

Eventually I got up and went to work. It started off slowly and then business just picked up. Olga and Tracy were looking for something, and Tracy told Olga to ask me, because I'm supposed to know everything. It's going to be interesting readjusting to Tracy now that we're all used to how Tanzania ran things. When Tracy and I came back from making the money drop, there was a lady outside our store looking at the windows. Today was the third day in a row she came to our store. Who goes to a clothing store three days in a row???

Now here's what gets me. I had a customer today who comes in and when you see her, you go "ugh. great. this one again." This one comes in and fills her fitting room to capacity and barely buys anything. Well, she spent about three to four hours in our store today. When she first went into her room, she started with 29 things. Throughout the next couple of hours, I took things that she didn't want, brought her more sizes, and so forth. Every time I went into the fitting room, she needed another size in something or another. Only problem was, some of the stuff she was trying on was on sale. So we didn't have her size. She brought one pile of things to the counter that she knew she wanted. And she continued to look around. Naturally, she made a mess out of the stacks. She went into the fitting, tried some MORE things on. Comes out and looks at the shoes. There's a pair of shoes that she wanted but we didn't have her size. So, I call another store (Palo Alto) to see if they had it. They did. We did the send sale. Five minutes later, she decides she wanted another shoe. And guess who had it? Palo Alto. So, I call them again. They find the shoe. As I'm giving them the information for the sale, she tells me she changed her mind. She was going to take the size she was trying on. Is she done? Nope. She takes six more things into the fitting room to try on. I think by now, the count has gone up to about forty or fifty things. Out of the last six, she only took one.

NOW here's the fun part. Instead of making it all in ONE transaction, she splits everything up. Why? To take advantage of our promotion. You get a coupon for every $100 you spend, but it's only one per transaction. So, she split up her purchase to get as many of those coupons as possible. No big deal right? Well, it was a big deal to me because had she bought everything in one transaction, my units per transaction total would've sky rocketed. But instead, she made like five different transactions. one had one item, another had two. I think another one had four and another one had five. So, not bad right? What's that... at least ten things out of fifty? Oh wait. But she's not done yet. She asks me to put two of the pants she had JUST tried (that I already put way) on hold for her. Good grief. Hopefully when she comes back, she doesn't try on FIFTY things again.

BTW. I'm uploading pictures from the Rose Parade onto my flickr and my bebo. Those of you who have access to my bebo, not all the photos will be posted. However, I will post the majority of my photos on flickr. Check them out when you have a chance and feel free to leave a comment. Except for Nina

Update on Chloe 1-9-08

Update on Chloe 1-9-08
Chloe did awesome on our trip up to Portland for two weeks. We all had a great time and it even snowed on Christmas day!
Chloe had a very rough time at her appointment yesterday but she is still hanging on to good numbers. She is at 966, yay!! I didn't send out an update before we left, but her numbers went all the way up to 2933!! It was a wonderful start to our trip.
Chloe hasn't eaten much for the past six days so she was put on a steroid yesterday to help increase her appetite. Hopefully that will work.
Happy New Year to you all and once again thank you for lifting up our family in prayer.

Much love and thanks,

Karla, David, Ashley, Hannah & Chloe :D

"I need you to translate"

Too bad she didn't know what she needed me to translate for her!

Yesterday at work, I was in the front when Mariam called me to the register. What did she want? She wanted me to translate for her. I looked at the two women at the registers. Neither of them looked like they spoke Spanish. One was a Caucasian blond lady. The other was Asian. So I told Mariam that I didn't speak Chinese. Mariam asks the lady what she spoke and she said Korean. So I told Mariam I didn't speak Korean. Now Mariam has done this before. The last couple of times were with Spanish speaking ladies because I know a limited amount of Spanish. But I don't like to translate because I don't really know enough Spanish. Other than Spanish, when has Mariam EVER heard me speak anything other than English? And why would she assume I know how to speak Korean or Chinese or whatever language she thinks I can speak? Am I to assume that because she can speak Armenian that she can speak other European languages, like Greek or German or Macedonian? I don't make that assumption so why should she make that assumption about me? Considering I have never spoken any Asian dialect in front of her. And she speaks Armenian all the time with customers and coworkers. There were other things that happened at work that day ... but I don't remember them now. Maybe they'll come to me later. Other wise ... oh well