Our household goods arrived Mannheim Thursday last week and was delivered to our house this past Thursday. Luckily this is a four day weekend for Steve, it gives us a lot of time to unpack most of the boxes and put together the remaining disassembled furnture.

The delivery truck arrived around 10am, there were three burly men who worked very efficiently. The unwrapped the stuff outside so it there was very little trash and dirt that entered the house. Sad to say though, they were very displeased with the way the American movers packed our stuff. They used way too much paper and tape, and to top it they even threw in all their extra wrapping paper and boxes in the last crate! Our desks were destroyed, usable but definitely messed up, parts of the desks were just ripped up instead of taken off carefully with tools. The entertainment center and other smaller furniture were all completely disassembled, so frustrating! As we’re putting stuff back together we notice that they’re not going back as neatly and perfectly as the first build. We all had brand new bikes, they completely took them appart and now won’t go back together the brakes don’t brake. Claims office here we come!

Other than those mishaps everything else seems to be intact. Our bedroom set and living room set are safe! All my picture frames are in great condition. The best part of all this is that all the laundry I packed in the vacuum seal bags remain fresh, the vacuum packaging held up the entire move! When we open them I can still smell the fresh laundry scent! Yay, I don’t have to rewash all the clothes, blankets, and towels! We got a lot accomplished today. The master bedroom is almost done and same with the office. The kids did a lot of work in their rooms too. Steve got the kitchen about 80% done. The living room and dining room are mostly unpacked we just have to take the boxes to the recycle center on base. The hard part will be sorting through the basement, most of our electronics and appliances will not work here so most of them will be in storage.  All our televisions!

Tomorrow is another day, I think we will be able to turn the house into a home tomorrow… just in time for me to go on a long vacation to the Philippines.

Yesterday was a real disappointment for me because as you can see from my previous post my iPhone totally crapped out on me when I synced it up to iTunes. It was stuck in “Recovery Mode” which locks up the iPhone making it completely useless. I read a lot of discussion boards about this problem and apparently many people have encountered this, not many mentioned any solutions, and some of the solutions didn’t even work for me and others. I even uninstalled iTunes and Quicktime from my laptop, although there are so many residue files that remain hidden even Registry Mechanic and CCleaner doesn’t find them. If I really wanted to I could have uninstalled it completely by going into the registry and deleting the entries manually, no thanks!

Around 3am this morning I decided to quick and came to accepting that I was going to return the iPhone today and just get a Blackberry Curve. I love my Blackberry Pearl, I still think its the best hand held ever. When Stephen woke up he suggested that I sync it up to his iTunes to see if it recovers, if not then it was definitely going back to T-Mobile. My husband is a savior his plan worked, his iTunes restored my iPhone and got it working. I like the iPhone but the problems I had with it will stick for a while, I never had any problems with the Blackberry so the iPhone has a lot to live up to.

Connecting to Wi-Fi was another issue. It found numerous Wi-Fi connections but when I tried to connect it to ours it wouldn’t join the network. I know I was entering the passwords correctly. At this point I was too frustrated to figure things out on my own again so I searched for discussion boards with the same problem. What do you know, many others had the same problem. One suggested changing the WPA settings from WPA2, on the modem. And even though the iPhone lists the network you still have to connect to it by setting it up manually by choosing “Other.” I looked at the modem’s settings and it was already on WPA2. I still added our network manually and instead of entering the password I had to enter the Pre-shared key (PSK).

So far I’m not very impressed with the iPhone, but I’m hoping that will change. Now that I am able to play with it and install new applications like WordPress. We’ll see how it holds up during my trip to the Philippines, I expect the WI-Fi to work there. We’ll see.

Finally, after weeks of being on the waiting list with T-Mobile our iPhone 3Gs finally arrived. The sales clerk called us last night and left a message that one of our phones is ready for pickup, so we headed out the door early this morning to go to Vaihingen. We decided that it was best to take public transportation today because after we got the phones we were going to go to the Ludwigsburg Castle.

Our adventure started as we walked to the main street in town to get some breakfast at the Mörel Bäkerie then we walked to the Gärtringen bahnhof (train station) to get on the S1 toward Plochingen. It was a nice 20 minute ride to the Vaihingen bahnhof where we got off to walk to the SchwabenGalerie, a mall where the T-Mobile store is. When we got there the clerk who called us last night gave us really good news, she said that instead of just one phone she had two for us because a guy on the list before us wasn’t able to pick up his phone. Yay me! I get my iPhone too!

Since both of us got our iPhones we decided to walk around the mall and then have some lunch and head back home to play with our phones. Yes, we planned to go to the castle but we were too excited to play with our new toys.

The iPhone 3G is really easy to install on the computer, all we had to do was plug it in and sync it up with our iTunes accounts for activation and registration. Simple. Of course, I was too excited I downloaded a few applications from the iTunes App Store that I already messed up my iPhone. I think I made it do too much at once that it said “oh hell no!” So now, for the past two hours I’ve been waiting for iTunes to restore my iPhone to its original settings. Yes, this is why I am writing this blog to tell the world that I have my iPhone while I wait for it to restore. So far, I’m not impressed WTF is going on with it taking forever and a day to restore? And why in the hell did it crap out after trying to install three applications? I was very impressed at the simplicity of its installation, activation, and registration, but this restore thing is really pissing me off!!! I’m done writing this post and it’s still “Verifying iPhone Software.” WTF!

I went to the discussion boards to see what others have done with this problem but I don’t see an answer! Arghh! I posted a question on one of the blogs (iPhone disasters averted: How to use recovery mode), hopefully I get an answer.

1 out of 100,000 people are affected by GBS, those odds are unimaginable. Those odd are comparable to winning the lottery, why couldn’t our family have gotten that instead? The past week has been really tough for the family because our Tay is in a fragile state. From having a having a great time at the beach, then having some back pain, and then being told he has GBS. Tita Pya has been sending us daily updates since she arrived Baguio. Every morning when I wake up I check email to find out about Tay’s progress; it seems that he just kept on getting worse from back pain to now at a critical state. Today, I woke up and got the fifth update and she said he is still critical but stable.

I’ve been reading about GBS, and been reading the NINDS website on GBS over and over. From the updates I’ve been receiving his condition is as spelled out on the fact sheet. It’s like the doctors are reading off a rap sheet on GBS about Tay. I wonder, do all GBS patients show these symptoms as systematically as it is described? Or are the doctors really just reading off a rap sheet? I hope not, I think not. I have great faith in the doctors in the Philippines, after all our most loved neurologist saved Mama’s life from two aneurisms. As I gather, I think he’s one of the doctors looking over Tay right now. Tita Pya said that the super antibiotics the doctors gave Tay a couple days ago seem to be helping him. According to the NINDS, GBS patients will peak in their condition then start to stabilize and move forward to recovery. Of course with Tay’s age, we are praying for all the strength he can harness because recovery takes from days, weeks, months, or even years. There is no known cure, there’s just recovery.

I want to thank everyone for your kind email and comments. I’ve been receiving so many kind words, thank you so much. I just want you to know that I really appreciate it. And I truly appreciate your prayers for Tay, he needs all the blessing he can get. I also hope that you understand why I am short in my responses or don’t respond at all. Also, some of you might wonder why I’m writing all this in a blog for the whole world to see. Personal family business is not everyone’s business. Well for me it’s my way of getting things out, a way for me to release and calm down. If I just keep it to myself and hold it in I’d explode, at least this way I get it out and controlled because I know I have to be careful of what I say and think. If I hold it in my mind races, and for those truly close to me you know how that goes.

Since last week I’ve been calling the Philippines a lot, I’m pretty sure our phone bill is going through the roof. Even though T-Mobile says that we have a country flat rate, they don’t mention the fine print when you sign up. No mobile phones and not to certain countries… like the Philippines! Well that doesn’t help us much since almost everyone we know in the US and also Philippines are on mobile phones. Another set back to this stupid land line we have with T-Mobile is that the connection is so bad, we either get cut-off or they cannot hear me! Arrghhh! I really don’t need this right now!

Today I’ve been searching for SMS online that works worldwide, primarily Germany, US, and Philippines. While searching I stumbled across Chikka.com, how awesome! I totally forgot I even had a login for this SMS online service. It’s free! I can send and receive SMS between Germany, US, and Philippines!! Yay! The cool thing is that it still has all my previous contacts from Manila and Baguio, I just hope they still have the same numbers.

I sent two messages after downloanding Chikka messenger, one to Tito JonJon to see about getting a car to pick me up from the Manila International Airport to Baguio next week, and another one to my cousin Phoebe to see how she’s doing. Neither one responded yet, I hope they got the messages. If they don’t respond I guess I’ll have to attempt calling again. I miss AT&T!

Next week I will be traveling back to Baguio to see Tay, who is very sick. It is very difficult for me to comprehend his condition because we’ve always known Tay as the strong one, the one who takes care of everything, especially Nay. When I heard the news, I initially thought he would be okay in a week because his strength will pull him through. Then later, Ma told us he has Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). After looking up what GBS is I started to worry. It all started with some back pain which has now progressed to an almost paralyzed state. At Nay’s fragile state, still trying to fully recover from her illness and Tay’s situation adds a tremendous amount of stress on her. Tita Pya is there right now which makes things a little better; she is able to give Nay some comfort and keep us posted on Tay’s health.

The odd thing about this trip of mine is that for the past two to three months I’ve been telling Steve I want to go home and just stay there for a while to be with Nay and Tay. Little did I know that my feeling of nostalgia would bring upon this abrupt trip home. I definitely need to muster up a lot of strength and self composure; it is hard for me to see Nay and Tay in pain and suffering, I just want them to be healthy, happy, and live very long lives.

There are some issues I am going through right now that some of you would be curious to know how I feel and how I am dealing. I’ve decided to write about these very personal thoughts in a private blog. I do much better at sharing my feelings through a blog because I can sort out my thoughts better instead of responding to “how are you” emails and phone calls. A blog would be better articulated and less vent-y.
The personal and private blogs will be password protected. The password will be emailed to registered users on my website. If you would like the password without registering leave a comment so I can send it to you.
Click here to register.

Since I posted “Email Updates?!” I’ve been receiving questions like “what’s an RSS feed,” “how do I subscribe,” “if I subscribe, how would I read it?” So I decided to write about RSS feeds and how you can subscribe to mine and from other websites you frequently visit.

RSS is Really Simple Syndication. Instead of me explaining what it means I’d rather provide this video I found on YouTube that explains it in plain English.

Now, according to the video you must register with a reader. Of course that’s true, but he didn’t say that you can subscribe to an RSS feed and read it in your email. I read all my RSS feeds in Outlook 2007.

If you don’t use Outlook like I do, I’ve provided a way for you to subscribe through your own reader. I discovered this WordPress plugin called Add-To-Any-Subscribe-Button. It lists almost all the current RSS readers. Like My Yahoo, iGoogle, My MSN, Windows Live, iTunes, etc.

RSS is great; you can read new content from your favorite websites all in one spot. You don’t have to go browsing through your favorites to find new content any more. Happy subscribing! BTW, don’t forget to subscribe to mine. Click on one of the buttons on the top right corner of this page.

Until I started at Westwood College I didn’t know about Illustrator. I was having a frustrating time learning Photoshop as it is. I always hesitated playing around Photoshop because it was too complicated; there were too many controls I didn’t understand. Now that I’m a little familiar with both I love them. I’m still a beginner so these designs are very amateur and simple… but of course, you know me… I have to share my drawings.

This is the first one I did. I was thinking of something I could design to upload to CafePress.

I made this design for Alex; he picked the hat’s design.

I did this for Gabby; we were looking through the symbol library and this caught her eye. I didn’t like the color scheme so I changed it to this.

And finally, I drew this myself. I wanted to draw some flowers; I initially wanted daisies but decided to go with cherry blossoms.

I’m so ready to go back to school! I really hate that it took T-Mobile forever to turn on our DSL. I was supposed to go back to school 2 weeks ago. Now I have to wait until October.

Since I was offline for a long time, I was wondering if anyone missed my email announcements regarding new blog posts. I was tempted to write to few blogs offline and just post them all at once as soon as the DSL is turned on. I decided to read and play around on Adobe Illustrator CS3 instead.

Anyway, the purpose of this blog is to find out if you wanted to continue receiving email announcements. It felt like extra work on my part, but I wanted people to read my blogs. I even posted announcements on other sites I used to write on like MySpace and Multiply, sometimes even Friendster. Yeah, seems like I’m desperate for readers! All I really want is to get the word out to those interested. And more importantly, so I’m not telling the same story over and over to everyone who asks what I’ve been up to lately or how I’m doing.

So… please participate in my poll. Question 3 asks if you subscribe to my RSS feed, if you don’t and want to click here to start your subscription. For now this will be my last email announcement.