TRIP - Los Angeles, San Diego over Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanks to a 2-for-1 Virgin America promotion, we visited Los Angeles and San Diego for both relatives and attractions. Weather was mostly comfortable albeit some hot moments in LA. The food was primarily Taiwanese style, but awesome compared to Toronto. We visited many attractions and areas without rushing, and I totally understand why people love California.

Day 1 Friday Oct 8

• Left Waterloo 3:30, arrived YYZ 5:30 for the 6:45 pm flight
• Landed LAX at 9 pm, picked up rental car at 9:40 pm

Day 2 Saturday Oct 9

• Griffith observatory
• Pasadena
• San Gabriel Mission and shopping

Day 3 Sunday Oct 10 San Diego

• Old Town
• Balboa Park 
• La Jolla Cove

Day 4 Monday Oct 11

• Downtown - Disney concert hall, Cathedral, City Hall, Bradbury building
• USC/Staples Center
• Hollywood - Hollywood & Highland Mall, Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theatre (there was a crazy crowd for the Bruce Willis at the Special Screening of “Red”). No, we didn't see him
• The Grove & Farmers' Market

Day 5 Tuesday Oct 12

• Santa Monica pier
• Getty Center
• Pinks Hot Dog
• Beverly Hills Hotel
• Rodeo Drive
• In N Out burger
• 11:15 pm Virgin America flight, landed at Toronto 7 am and back to work at 9

Expenses

• TD USD Visa - $150 
• Gas - $20? + $40 + $20
• Lots of Post Cards
• No 3G Kindle at 5 Target's and 2 Best Buy's, wow...

Flights

• AA - typical, full flight $471
• Virgin- very good, not a full flight $200

Car Rental

• Off-site at LAX
• 4 day rental of Midsize car = $73 USD = $75 CAD
• Kia Optima, drove 500 miles
• Very thankful for a working GPS leading us everywhere (and sometimes got us in circles too)
• Highways taken - 5, 10, 110, 101, 105, 605, 710 <- pretty much all the highways in LA, which is 10X more than Toronto

Week Recap - OHIP, Insurance, Netbook

It was a shorter week, so a shorter recap

New Netbook

• Scored an Acer Aspire 1410 Netbook for $200, yes - Intel SU4100, 3GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 11.6" LCD, 6-cell/6 hours battery. The 11.6" screen is lovely when I thought 10" was enoug

OHIP

• The bank statement finally came and Wendy now has OHIP for real, no need to pay $1200 to OB and possibly more to the hospital :)

Jet Lag

• Jet Lag from the LA/San Diego trip even with only 3 hour differences

Home Insurance

• Just to show it never hurts to look around, but everyone's circumstance is different
• I was paying $660 a year for my house (freehold) insurance with State Farm, and will be $720 after basement addition
• Shocked by the increase, I shopped around and to my surprise, TD Meloche Monnex (as University of Waterloo Alumni) quoted me .... $360 a year...
• Long story short, SF said they couldn't lower my premium and insisted TD quote cannot be that low even it is...  so I swithced to prove them wrong, and so far, best $360 ($720-$360)  I "saved"
• Even if TDMM increased the rate next year forward, I am still ahead

Week Recap - Ella

Last week was quite a week

• It's (most likely) a girl, as far as we can tell from the Ultrasound at 21 weeks
• She is healthy, that's all it matters
• Her name is Ella
• With tons of luck, we found an excellent OB to take us, and her name is Wendy also :)
• Did you know - we may need to pay $1200 or more if we don't have OHIP? 

• Caught up on the TV shows and movies
• Iron Man 2, A-Team, Fearless/霍元甲
• The car, as usual, has issues to be fixed and this time it's the Heat not working
• Flushing the system and add Antifreeze ~$100
• The 2000 323i has just passed the 200,000 km today. Wow