The System Sucks

And here's why.
1) You buy a new car which you pay taxes on when you buy it. Then every year you have to pay the state money (the newer your car the more it is) just to drive it in the state where you live. Can anyone explain why this is? I understand it is good to register the car so that if someone commits a crime you can trace them via license plate (at least that is the only reason I can think of and that is because I read a lot of mystery books). But why every year? Once you register it once shouldn't it cost like $20-30 bucks for the paperwork involved, in my case $187 +$35 for the safety inspection + emmissions test. Now if you have a new car wouldn't it be safe to assume that 2 years later its still in pretty good condition. Also, is it really fair for the state to control wheather or not your car is safe enough to drive? Shouldn't the person driving the car be the one to decide that or suffer the consequences, are they hurting anyone else besides them selves? So, those questions aside, let me tell what happened to me. As you may have guessed the registration on my car expired in July. Now July was a busy month for me, holidays, my birthday, sister having a baby, family in town so believe it or not I do not get around to registering my car. So, come August 2nd, I have my car parked in salt lake city at the mall and come back to find a cop with way too much time on his hands and way too anal has given my a ticket for the sole reason of not having it registerd, 2 little days after the expiration. Ok, fine so the next week I pay all the costs register my car on line print off the temporary permit. The next day after registering my car I have to go to Salt Lake County court house for work and I am planning to then go the other court house to protest the ticket I have received. So, I park my car do what I need to at the courthouse come back to my car and Lo and Behold I have received another ticket for the registration of my car being expired, and this cop is so anal they have also written a note on it that the temporary ticket has to be taped on to the back window of my car in view. So that means the cop has seen the temporary registration permit sitting on the front seat of my car and still feels that it is such a violation to the public of Utah that I have not properly placed my permit on the window of my car. Really, do these people have nothing better to do? Shouldn't they be on the side of the average citizen? I will note that I did take my now two parking tickts over to court house #2 (about 1 block a way) to see what could be done, the second ticket was waived and the first cost me $20 (still a rip off) but the point I am trying make here is the principle of the thing. I mean gas is still over $4 a gallon in Utah, I hear we still have the 4th highest gas prices in the country, I have yet to receive my economic stimulus from the government and the cops are honestly going out of their way to see how much they can nickel and dime you for violations that are unfair in the first place. these are my views if anyone has any differnet opinons I will be happy to hear them but i doubt my views can be changed on this subject:)
Now for #2 (this is my longest blog to date by the way) Insurance I don't believe in it and I think all insurance companies and a lot of doctors/dentists/eye doctors are trying to rip you off as well. So, I have been without contacts for most of this year and have been waiting for my annual eye appt to get a new prescription. So, I go in for my appt, take all the tests, talk to the actual eye doctor for about 10 min he recommends a new kind of contact that you can sleep in and says he'll give me a trial pair. He gives them to me an assistant lady watches me put them in all by my self on the first try and then i walk out to pay what I think is going to be my $25 co pay and am charged an extra $139 for the doctor advising me on these new contacts and the fitting which took all of 1 minute. Don't you think you should be told these things in advance? I was fully prepared to pay for the contact lenses out of pocket since my insurance won't cover it this year of course, but I had no idea I would get charged to have them give me a trial pair and "show" me how to put them in. Well, I could go on and on about this subject but I just don't have enough time right now. So, I will just say this: Everyone (friends & family excluded of course) is trying to rip you off and you have to fight tooth and nail not to get ripped off in this country. Anyone agree or is it just me?

Summer Time

Well, I am sick of looking at our blog post so I thought i'd write a new one. I just want every one to know how much I love the summer time. I love the sun shine, and being able to wear cute summer clothes, not being cold and I love taking a walk in the evening and it being just perfect outside. I admit it makes it hard to be at work during the day especially if the air conditioning is on full blast. I feel like while I live in Utah I should be able to take the summers off to enjoy it more fully, if only I could win the lottery or something. Anyways, we've tried enjoying the summer as much as possible so far, we floated down the provo river one saturday, we have gone to the Lehi Rec center to the pool a couple of times. We are going to Brian Regan in August which is at Thanksgiving point outdoors by the water falls so we are super excited about that and we are also going to see a Midsummer's night dream at the Sundance out door theatre in August. Also, we have gotten good use out of Ryan's new grill. I've gotten to go see Addie, who is now 4 days old and very cute, I am afraid she already favors me as her first aunt to see her:) We went and saw Batman at the Imax theatre yesterday on Pioneer day (Utah State Holiday) with our friends Amber & Christian, very good movie. The only thing I don't like about summer is how fast it goes, I can't believe we only have a month left. I've heard the older you get the faster time goes, and I am scared that is coming true. Well, thats all my thoughts on this subject for today.

California Trip

Well, we went to California the week of Memorial day. First we went to St. George and then Monday we went to Vegas. We went to an outlet mall there and ate at the Cheesecake Factory (Where we always eat when we go to Vegas). Tuesday we headed out to california, after we got there and got checked into our hotel and Ryan and I went to the beach, which unfortunately was pretty chilly, but still fun to hang out at. Wednesday we went to Disneyland and I finally got to see what all the big fuss was about. Thursday we went to Universal Studios which was probably the highlight of our trip, a couple of days later a lot of the stuff we had seen there burnt down, so I am glad we went there. We stayed saturday in St. George to lay out at the pool which was nice and then headed back home (we had fun on our trip, but we also missed our new house) it was nice to get back and sleep in our own bed. In other news, It is finally summer weather here which is awesome! We also met with our bishop in our new ward and got called to be in the primary, he didn't say where- he just said it was going to be in the primary, there's probably a million kids in this new ward so it was a pretty safe bet on our bishop's part that there is some available calling in primary. Annaliese's baby shower that I am throwing is this saturday so hopefully all goes well, I'm hoping as long as we have enough food, things can't go too wrong. Anyways, I think that's all for now.

Phoenix Trip

Hello again,

Just posting a few photos from our trip to Phoenix. It was a quick yet fun trip.

I look really fruity in one of the pictures.

-Ryan

Our House Pics

Hello Everyone

It's been pretty busy lately, but finally has slowed down. I finally ended my 7 year quest to get a bachelors in digital media. -man that felt good to get that out of the way. Diane and I are just working now and things are good. We're heading to Phoenix this weekend to do some work for our jobs, she is training someone for Washington Trust and I am filming stock footage for my work. Diane keeps telling me that she wants to move to Arizona were it's hot, but I don't know if I like being sweaty all day.

Well, we took some pictures of our new place. I think the lens on the camera had a smudge on it because all of them appear to be a little fuzzy on the top left corner, but all well.

Everyone needs to come visit now, since I finally got a grill! We've got plenty of Bratwursts so we need to grill it up.

-Ryan

New address

Well, For those of you who care, our new address is 589 East 1590 South, Lehi, UT 84043. We finally moved in, we have been there for almost a week, The first night was really weird to be finally there, unfortunately we have tons more to do before it really feels like home. They are not changing out our countertops until next saturday so we can't really unpack our bathroom stuff or kitchen stuff so that is frustrating. We are still working on getting a fridge and blinds/curtain for all the windows, get cable and internet, but i'm really happy we are finally in there. Then maybe I can finally start writing about something other than our house, maybe not, I don't know. Anyways, that is our housing update for the week. Ryan is finishing up school he graduates next Friday, April 25th which is also his birthday. Anyways, as soon as he finishes school we will have more time to decorate our house and get our life back to a more normal relaxing pace. Well, soon as we have internet at our house I will be able to keep up on my blogging better.

House Again

Well, just to update everyone, our loan was approved last week so we get to close a lot earlier than we thought we would. We were hoping to close tomorrow so our loan would fund on Friday and we could move in over the weekend but such as life is that plan is not to be. We can't close until Friday now so our loan won't fund until Monday so after work on Monday and Tuesday will probably be our moving times. Anyways, it is starting to seem more like a reality now so we're really excited, we have started packing up our condo so it is a total wreck right now.

Ryan got another new job, hopefully that will be the last time I say that for a while) this one he is really excited about, it is at a place called CMG (creative media group) and he will be doing video editing on a new project for the company, and be making more money. Anyways, I hadn't written a blog in a while so I just wanted to write a quick one, next time I will post pictures of our new house :)