I woke up at 5:30am this morning to join the commuter traffic to downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
My appointment was at 8:30am at the County Assessor’s office to appeal my property tax assessed value. I wanted to get there by 8:00 to sign in. Not knowing how long it would take me with unknown amount of traffic, I estimated 2 hours, just in case.<\/p>\n
I left my house in Walnut, CA at 6:18am (I never seem to be able to leave the house at my target time), and I arrived by 7:05am. That gave me plenty of time to drive around to look for parking.<\/p>\n
The lot next to the building, and those in close proximity charged $3 for 15 minutes with a $20 maximum. I paid $12 maximum in a lot that was 3 blocks away. They were pretty long blocks, but it was a nice walk early in the morning, walking past the Disney Concert Hall and the Music Center.\u00c2\u00a0 I arrived back at the parking lot at 9:20am. So for almost 2 hours of parking, I was better off paying the $12 maximum than $3 for 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
There was no place to sign in at 8:00am as it said on the paperwork when I arrived. I was the first one there before the door to the appeals room opened, so I sat outside with my reading material I brought along for this anticipated waiting period. By the time the door opened at 8:25am, there were 5 of ready to rush in. However, we were not called according to first-come-first-serve. Fortunately, I was called first, but the couple who should have been second was skipped, and the guy who came last was called.<\/p>\n
The rest was uneventful. I will probably have to go back to appeal again. No big deal. But since I don’t go downtown very often, in fact, hardly ever at all, it was a bit of an adventure. If anyone knows of a cheaper parking lot close to 500 W. Temple, let me know for next time.<\/p>\n
The material I brought to read while waiting was a newsletter from JEMS – Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society. We’ve supported their work of AACF in the past, so we get their newsletter. I was particularly inspired by the testimony of Rachel Ogimachi who talked about her short term mission trip this past summer to Paraguay.<\/p>\n
Rachel said she expected God to do something big and dramatic, but it turned out to be rather ordinary. But the words of Mother Theresa kept running through her head: “Do small things with great love.” <\/strong> The work of the pastor and his family who were there in Paraguay to reach the Japanese community for Christ exemplified this. The church comprised of 17 adults, and once a month they drive 6 hours to lead a service for 7 adults. Nothing glamorous, yet certainly not easy. And they continued in this work with love.<\/p>\n “Do small things with great love.” I wish I did some great things in my life. But small things done with love add up together to make a difference. Someone said, “Do not seek to be important. Seek to make an impact.”<\/p>\n That’s what I want my life to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I woke up at 5:30am this morning to join the commuter traffic to downtown Los Angeles. My appointment was at 8:30am at the County Assessor’s office to appeal my property tax assessed value. I wanted to get there by 8:00 to sign in. Not knowing how long it would take me with unknown amount of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-thoughts-on-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}