Schlemiel

noun, Slang.

1.

an awkward and unlucky person for whom things never turn out right.

It has been awhile since my last post because I have been a bit busy (overwhelmed is more like it) and I was beginning to feel like Guam had turned me into a schlemiel. It just seemed like so many thing were going wrong and I couldn't catch a break. 

You have already read about the two pit bulls attacking Bubbles and the wounds she sustained. I also had difficulty getting out of the lease (horrible landlord wouldn't let me out of the lease unless I gave up my security deposit). Then I had to put Bubbles back in the pet lodge because the place I had to move into for a month didn't take dogs over 25 pounds. So for that month I made daily trips  to take both dogs for a walk and also give Bubbles her medicine and change her bandages. I was really enjoying living at Ladera - that part was nice (minus the few cockroaches that made an appearance). Then the air conditioning decided to die in my "new" vehicle. I am still waiting for the part to show up from the mainland so that it can be fixed. It is definitely not fun driving without air conditioning when the temperature is consistently 85ish and the humidity is usually 80%-ish.

When the end of my month at Ladera was approaching, I had to schedule a move in inspection for the house on base and also a move out inspection for my apartment at Ladera. Both were scheduled for Friday and I was planning to move some items to the house on Friday and then have friends help me move the remainder of my things on Saturday. Enter Typhoon Dolphin! 

I witnessed my first typhoon (Typhoon Dolphin) on May 16th from the sliding glass doors of my tenth floor apartment at Ladera Tower. It was ...interesting. I must say Ladera was probably one of the best places on the island to be during the storm. Yes, there were high winds and a ton of rain that I got to see through the glass doors. But I literally lost power for about 30 seconds and then the backup generators kicked on and we didn't lose power again. My friends on the base went about 15-18 hours without power. It doesn't sound bad until you realize how sweltering a place can be without air conditioning and you can't exactly open the windows with a typhoon going on outside. So I survived the storm with no problem at all.

Unfortunately the typhoon's appearance meant that my inspections on Friday were canceled and had to be moved to Monday. I still planned to move out on Saturday though. When we finally got the all clear Saturday morning (roads were mostly okay to drive on and the worst of the storm had passed), I started loading up my car. Turns out Ladera was still on backup generators which meant the elevators were out. (Reminder - I was on the tenth floor!)

I made about four trips bringing things downstairs to my car and then drove over to the base to move the items into the house. I wanted to see how the roads were before seeing if friends were available to help. When I got back to Ladera, I started loading my car again and my friend Amy (who had just moved into Ladera) helped me take things downstairs. At one point we saw workers by the elevators who told us they were planning to have them fixed in thirty minutes. (HA!) We waited a bit and I made a couple more trips down but by 2pm, I gave up waiting for the elevators. A couple friends (Thank you Amy, Emilee, and Alicia) were able to come and help me move the rest of my stuff out of the apartment...thankfully they were willing to do the stairs!! That was a very long and tiring day!! (BTW - the elevators were not fixed until the next day)

Monday morning came and my move in inspection went well. Then I was waiting for my household goods (all our furniture) to be delivered - I was told it would be sometime between 10am and noon. The truck showed up at noon but they were missing part of their crew, so they didn't start unloading the truck until 1pm. Everything was going fine but we had quite a bit and it is an all day job. The men thought they were done around 8:30pm because the truck was unloaded but part of their job is also to put together furniture that was taken apart. My couch wasn't put together, my lazyboy wasn't put together, my TV was still in a box and our desks were in pieces.

The men were good with staying to finish the job but ran into roadblocks. Both of our computer desks were missing pieces that prevented them from being put together. I have no idea what the packers in San Diego did with the pieces but I have yet to find them. I also have a small table I got from my Grandmother that the packers took apart (totally unnecessary)...half the table was packed in the same box as our TV.  Why would you pack part of a table in one box and then pack the rest elsewhere.....or worse toss the rest of it?! I have yet to find the rest of that table. Very frustrating!

So after working on the house for about five days, I had unpacked all the boxes inside the house. There are about five big boxes in the garage that still need to be unpacked, but I have left those for Carlton! I would hate for him to come to his new home with nothing to do!! In addition to these difficulties, Bubbles decided that she was partially housebroken. To date she has had four accidents in the house now. Two of them were about twenty minutes after I had just taken the dogs outside! Not sure what that is all about but I am being more watchful (paranoid) and making sure to take them out as soon as I get home from errands and such.

Needless to say it has been a very eventful and busy couple of weeks!! I am still getting the house organized but I definitely got a lot done in the past week. We should be ready for visitors soon!

So I don't know whether or not Guam has turned me into a schlemiel or not. I will let you decide that. I have definitely had my challenges and I hope to have more fun to report to you soon!

The Suite Life

As a huge welcome, we are currently under TCOR 2 on Guam......tropical storm Bavi is heading our way and may or may not become a Typhoon. So we could be experiencing our first Typhoon!! Or at least the readiness for a Typhoon. TCOR stands for Typhoon Condition of Readiness with four levels. Level four means that there is no current threat but sustained winds up to 58 mph may occur within the next 72 hours.. Level three means you should stock up on water, non-perishable food items, batteries, gas, etc while you can still go out in town (off the base) and destructive winds may be coming in the next 48 hours. You are supposed to secure any outside items and prepare your household for power outage. TCOR 2 means that sustained winds may occur in the next 24 hours, fill bathtubs with water for flushing the toilet and other household usage. Turn the refrigerator temperature down to keep foods cold and sandbag the doors. They also have Typhoon shutters here on the island to protect windows. TCOR 1 means the storm has come!! Stay away from glass doors and windows, keep a battery operated radio nearby along with flashlights. DO NOT go outside!

 In spite of this oncoming storm, we went out yesterday to look at homes for rent in town. We may still be able to get into a house on base but we wanted to see what was available out in town. We met up with a realtor who took us around to see about six different houses in our price range. You definitely get more for your money out in town but the problem is that many of these houses were quite a ways from the base, so not super convenient for Carlton. Also, shopping on the base is much cheaper than in town, so it wouldn't be convenient for me either.

Just to give you an idea of what houses on Guam look like...here are a few that we saw.

Typhoon shutters

So we were in a small hotel room that was booked until March 17th and when we discovered that we wouldn't be getting into housing for awhile, we asked about extending our stay. When we asked on Thursday, the hotel was booked completely and they had no openings anywhere. So we were a little panicked about where we were going to be staying. However, the typhoon changed that. Yesterday when we asked again, they had a suite become available!! So now we are staying in a two room suite and we have it until April 4th! It is amazing how excited you can get about having a full sized refrigerator and a mini kitchen!! Our old room only had a microwave and a mini refrigerator, so to be able to actually cook something is fabulous!! :-)

The Gateway Inn also has a couple small houses available to rent that allow pets and we have been asking about that since we got here but they are still booked. So it is great that we are in the two room suite now, it is definitely a LOT more comfortable for us and nice to be able to cook rather than eat out every day. Unfortunately that means that Ms. Bubbles will be extending her stay at the boarding facility since the hotel does not accept pets. Maybe we will find housing before our stay in the hotel is up.....we hope anyway.

Right now our focus (after the Typhoon passes) is to find a vehicle! We are still using a rental vehicle which is supposed to be returned on Tuesday. It would definitely be better to have our own vehicle rather than continuing to pay for a rental but for some reason most vehicles here are priced about $1-2k above Kelly blue book! For instance we saw a 2003 Pontiac Vibe with 44,500 miles on it for $6995. Yes, it has low miles but it's still over ten years old! Seemed a tad high for us. So the search continues.