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Absolute Catastraphy

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

For quite some time now I’ve been dying my own hair. Coming from a family of beauticians you pick up on things. For years I’ve used the peroxide/color combination that is salon grade. Recently, due to lack of resources in the immediate area, I’ve been using the boxed stuff from the store. I tried Garnier for the first time and I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed.

Since my hair is as long and as thick as it is, I have to use two bottles. Both are mixed the exact same way, so I really don’t understand why only half of my hair has any visible sign of color. The left side has the red color I was looking for and the right side has a tint but none of the gray is covered, even though I put “Gray Magic” on both mixes. So basically I’m going to have to make it a point to get my hair fully taken care of when I get up to New York this holiday season. I’m going to be using a clarifying shampoo every other day until I get up there. It’ll strip my hair of most of the color to at least tone things down.

I’m also in desperate need of a hair cut, I’ve decided to hold off for a few weeks and just get everything done up in New York. My mother can more than likely do it for me. I’d like some style but even just chopping two inches off would instantly make my hair healthier looking. It’s very dull thanks to all of the dead ends that I’ve been dealing with. I was looking into places down here but the only one in my immediate price range is The Hair Cuttery. The reviews about this place are really 50/50. Many people love it, a lot of people hate it. I did float around ripoffreport.com as well and there are a few people pulling out the race card but that really doesn’t surprise me considering how often that card is pulled from the deck these days.

Anyway, I’m not even going to bother blowing out my hair because I’m afraid to see what it looks like when it’s dry if it’s already botched up while it’s wet. I just threw it up in a pony tail and strapped a headband on to cover up the most effected area and that’s that.

Karen should be home in a few minutes, hopefully she’ll grab a quick bite and then we’ll be on our way up to Walmart. We’re going to the one a few towns over and I figure while she’s doing her shopping I’ll pick up some food for the week for Sean and I. I’m trying not to spend too much money going out to dinner this week considering we’ll be in Atlantic City this weekend. I know that a few buffets are comped for us so that covers dinner for Saturday and Sunday night. On Monday I have a comp for the diner at Ceaser’s and I’ve been itching to get in there so hopefully that works out well for us. I really wish that we could have gotten a room at Ceaser’s, their casino is gorgeous – I can only imagine what their rooms look like. I’m sure we’ll be content either way.

And Jenny, why don’t you and Geoff head down to A.C. for the day with the baby?

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Posted in Annoyed, Daily, Family | 2 Comments »

Surfing Safari

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

I’m not sure why I went ahead and installed the Safari browser on my laptop but it’s actually working out pretty well so I’m happy I did. I couldn’t get it to properly work on my desktop so I’m surprised it actually works here. I’ve been floating around with it for a few hours to really test things out. I love how things morph in and out when I’m logging into secured areas on the server. Firefox gives you just a little pop up window, it kind of makes me giddy. I was poking around some more download sections on Apple.com to find some cool icons too, part of me is just itching to get onto a Mac and play with all of the customization options considering you really don’t get anything good for Windows when it comes to holiday themes.

Anyway, Sean and I are taking a little vacation this weekend. Instead of being miserable in the house while the guest is here, we’ve decided to head up to Atlantic City for the weekend. Thanks to both of us being Total Rewards members we were able to book a “last minute” room for a completely comped weekend. Originally I was just putting in my card and listing him as a guest without his number, that was going to run us about $500. The second I added his card number to the guest ID the $500 balance turned into a $0 balance and that’s just fine and dandy for us. Unfortunately we were unable to get a room at Harrah’s, so we’re stuck at Showboat but I doubt we’ll be there for anything more than sleeping anyway. I adore Harrah’s, and I absolutely love Ceaser’s, so spending more than a half hour in Showboat to gamble really just isn’t going to happen.

My laptop has been acting up A LOT lately, I don’t even think I’m going to bother to bring it with me when we go up to the casino anyway. The Internet keeps crapping out on me and it randomly stalls up. I’m not sure if the drivers are messed up or if it’s hardware based but I’m starting to get sick of it. It was much worse before I reinstalled Windows and since that reinstall I haven’t downloaded/installed anything that I shouldn’t. A few browsers and notepad are really all I use during the day. There isn’t even a photo program on here, that’s all on the desktop so I can use the dual monitors. It makes no sense but I know that somewhere way down the line I’ll be purchasing a new laptop anyway. I figure a 3-4 year life is more than enough when it comes to computers, especially with the way technology is changing. So figure I’ve had this for almost 2 years, there’s another 24 months (at most) left with it. Hell, maybe I’ll get myself a Macbook Pro for my birthday next year. No better way to turn 24, I think.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Daily | 2 Comments »

Something new…

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

With my major lack of creativity I poked around for a few premade wordpress themes and found one that I thought was very light and interesting.¬† With the rate that I’m going this is more than likely going to be up for a while.¬† I’m going back to bare bones when I do actually get around to making a new template.¬† I’m hoping that Christmas will bring me some kind of inspiration so I can have something to launch for New Years.¬† I’m even thinking of getting rid of WordPress and changing over to a different system.¬† I just don’t want to go crazy with things that make no sense to me so who knows what route I’m going to take, I know I don’t.

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Posted in Sitely | 5 Comments »

Oh crap, she’s coming back.

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

It’s a pretty windy day, gusts are hitting about 50 MPH which is enough to send all kinds of chaos to anything in it’s path. The chairs on the porch have been blowing around all night, Sean had to chase the garbage cans down after the dump truck showed up this morning, and even now we had to resort to using a belt to tie them up to the side of the house so we could avoid losing them again. Poor Bella was almost airborne thanks to a pretty hefty gust when she was out for her morning pee, so that was amusing. With the wind it’s about 40¬?F (4¬?C), it’s only going to get colder considering the sun is slowly beginning to set. It should be a pretty interesting night, that’s for sure.

I have quite a bit of cleaning and vacuum packing to do. There’s a lot of things scattered around the house that just need to be put away. There’s the issue of Christmas items needing to be unpacked plus laundry and other things that have accumulated in numerous areas. The kitchen (yet again) looks as though a bomb went off in it and the wicked witch is going to be making an appearance this weekend so lord knows how well that’s going to turn out. Sean is already annoyed at the thought of her being here, I can only imagine how that’s going to escalate when she steps foot in the door.

I can tell already that it’s going to be a hectic week…that’s for sure.

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Posted in Annoyed, Bella, Boyfriend, Delmarva | Comments Closed

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

PPPIt’s obvious that people in Hollywood are running out of ideas, so naturally when they turn an old play, or even a comic book for that matter, into a movie – I tend to not really pay much attention to it. However, when it’s a play that I’ve enjoyed both reading, and seeing, I have to say that it’ll spark my interest pretty quickly. On December 21st, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” will be in theaters and I have to say, I’m excited about it. I’ve read the play quite a few times, I was even on the lighting crew when my high school preformed this play a few years ago. With the amount of fun I had behind the scenes, it’s no surprise that I see the movie itself as something of great interest to me.

Johnny Depp plays Benjamin Barker (aka: Sweeney Todd) and as the story goes he returns to London after being deported on trumped-up charges to Botany Bay prison. Upon his return, he learns that his wife and child were brutally murdered by Judge Turpin. He learns this information from Nellie Lovett, the widow baker and someone who’s always had a crush on Todd. She tells him about what happened and it sends Todd into a rage of madness which is consumed by the thirst for revenge against Turpin. Ever-practical, with the possibility of murder and mayhem, Mrs. Lovett thinks of a fiendishly clever way that they can both make a killing – literally. Those whom Todd murders are baked into the mince-meat pies that Lovett serves in her bakery.

Now, this is a rather morbid story but when you really pay close attention there is a very interesting story line that isn’t filled with blood. This particular installment was directed by Tim Burton who has been known for making things much darker than they actually are. I’ll just use “Willy Wonka” as a key example right now, even though he based it more off of the book than Mel Stuart did in his rendition back in the 70’s – but I digress.

So there are a few easy ways to learn some more about the movie. You can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site, or you can heady over and visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace. I’m going to say that bringing anyone under the age of 13 to see this movie would be absolutely stupid considering how morbid the story line is but if you know that your kid can handle it, knock yourself out.

Sponsored

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Posted in PPP | 2 Comments »

I’m done…

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

It’s only December 1st but I’m basically finished as far as Christmas is concerned.¬† There are a few more items that are currently being shipped to me but I figure everything will be here over the course of the next 20 days or so, so it’s really not a big deal.

On Monday I took a trip up to the Mall to get some odds and ends done, everyone in the family is covered.¬† As usual I went over budget but for the past few years my holiday budget has been in the $2,000 range anyway so it’s really not that big of a spike.¬† I’m supposed to be going 50/50 on a gift for my father with my sister but she doesn’t have any money and I’m not going to add to that bill considering I already dropped about $600 on a computer and monitor for him.¬† I’m sure something will pan out but honestly, I’d rather just throw some clothes on to the gifts I already got him and then leave it at that.¬† I know it’s something that he needs but I already went overboard, the extra $1,000 would just be too extreme for me this month.

I haven’t gotten much work done over the course of the last few weeks but I’ve been running around doing everything else, so since I’m done with all of the holiday shopping I now am going to spend the next 30-days getting the Christmas money put back into the bank account.¬† I’m sure I’ll be able to do it, there’s no major concern there it’s just going to be a pain in the ass trying to keep up with everything.

Come January I’ll be in search for a job outside of the house, it’s not even about money at this point it’s more about sanity mixed with a need for medical insurance.¬† I figure if I can find some design company down here, or even a retail job at this point, I’ll be better off.¬† I’ll have the double income so that’ll help me out in the long run.¬† Sean and I are hoping to move out as soon as possible so having a job on the books, instead of just what I can claim on a tax-season basis should help us out towards a mortgage.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Family, Work | 1 Comment »

The Joy of the Holiday Season

Monday, November 26th, 2007

I should be in bed right now but I’ve got too many things going on before I can crash tonight. I had to activate Sean’s cell phone with some extra minutes and now both mine and his are charging because we’re going to need them today. I’ve had to line the entire living room with newspaper because Princess got into some stuff up in New York and she’s almost doubled in size because she’s full of so much dog food she can’t even move right now. She’s known for getting into things which is why we have a tendency to leave all food out of her reach. Up in NY, however, someone left a door open and a huge mixing bowl of food that would usually go to the two dogs in Karen’s sisters house was scafooned by Princess. Now, she’s used to a 1/2 cup of food a few times a day. One of her sisters dogs is an Akita/Saint Bernard mix so naturally he’s going to get much more than a 1/2 cup. So she managed to eat the entire bowl before anyone found her and is now feeling the effects of it. The problem is she’s allergic to Chicken and all of it’s byproducts. The food she ate was loaded with chicken so she’s having an allergic reaction on top of her bloated-ness from eating her weight in food, basically.

So the second Karen got home tonight she put Princess down and she dropped a few loads in the house. So having the living room lined with newspaper and wee-wee pads is my attempt to save the carpet. Since we have the flea stuff in the carpet, any kind of liquid will deactivate it, so having her drop a load of any kind all over the floor is just going to make things worse. Hopefully my idea helps. She’s having trouble breathing, but when you’ve doubled in size over the course of 20 minutes, naturally that’s going to have some kind of an effect on you. Since she’s an “indoor dog” 100% there’s going to be a lot of presents left everywhere. Damn I’m happy that my dog is completely trained to go outside. Any accidents in the house are one thing, but deliberately crapping wherever you please, wee-wee pad or not, while you’re sick – time for a new carpet.

Anyway – Sean is already in bed. Hopefully I’ll be able to finalize some things in here so I can wake myself up at 9am and be out of here by 10:30 at the latest. We’re taking a trip up to Dover to get some Christmas shopping done before the whole “rush” kicks in. Best Buy is a big trip, but we’re unsure of whether or not we’re going to pick up a television, depends on whether or not it’ll even fit in the car. Then we’re going up to the mall and separating for a couple of hours to do some real shopping. I’m really not sure of what I’m going to be picking up for him but that’s why floating around stores makes things much easier on me. I know that I’m going to need to stop into Spencers and Gamestop but after that – I’ve got no idea. That’s only on his gifts though, I ordered a lot of things online for him. The mall based shopping is a family thing at this point, gift certificates and clothes should cover just about everyone.

I refuse to order gift certificates online, I’ll tell you that much. I attempted to do it yesterday, ordering about $300 in Visa Debit Cards and the first time I submitted the order, nothing took. The second time it wouldn’t go through so I completely gave up. Until I took a look at my bank account and saw $650-something on hold. I called up the company and asked why I’m being charged that much when I don’t even have an invoice to show for it and they told me that the second my card number is typed in the money is held, PLUS there are the basic fees just to print the cards so that explains the $50 ($25 for each order). Either way that money should HOPEFULLY be replaced by Friday and I don’t have to worry about it. If it still goes through and I get no product from the company I’ll have to battle it out with the bank. I know that $650 really isn’t that much money but when you have nothing to show for it and it’s gone – that’s a pretty annoying situation.

I ordered a new monitor tonight so hopefully that’ll be here by this weekend. Newegg is good about getting things to you in a timely manor, considering I’m already on step 4 within 2 hours of placing the order, not bad for a midnight purchase. I picked up two monitors, one for me and one for my father. I bought him a computer for Christmas and the original monitor that I purchased just seemed to small. He’s on a 17″ CRT now and I stupidly ordered a 15″ LCD. So I’m giving the 15″ to Sean to replace his current 15″ monitor and the 17″ will go to Dad with his new system. The other will replace my dying monitor. It’s not “dying” it’s just beginning to fade and making a strange buzzing sound. Considering Karen likes the fuzzy monitors (her eye sight is horrible) maybe I’ll see if she wants to take it then we can boot her CRT as well. I swear I’m the PC queen when it comes to holidays. Everyone gets either a computer or a monitor from me – this is going on 5 years in a row.

Maybe next year I’ll just bank all of the money and buy myself a fully loaded Mac :hrm:

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Posted in Bella, Boyfriend, Daily, Family, Gadgets, Pets | 3 Comments »

Narf?

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

My laptop is slowly dying on me.¬† The battery has been a bit faulty and for the last three days I’ve been unable to get the Wireless to work.¬† It worked fine at the hotel, Sean was using it the whole time he was there with the dogs.¬† It just doesn’t seem to want to work in the house.¬† And I’m not sure what button I pushed, or how hard I smacked this thing but the Wireless is now back up and running so I’ve been getting some holiday shopping taken care of.¬† I’m known for going overboard on Christmas but this year I’m keeping it simple.¬† Gift certificates for everyone!¬† My sister, mother, step-father, aunt and whoever else happens to pop into my head before I check-out should be taken care of with a quick $50-$100 and that covers that.

I wanted to do some real shopping this weekend but weekend shopping in a town overloaded with lord knows how many outlet stores, just isn’t possible.¬† So being as most students are back to school on Monday we’re going to head up to Dover for the day and get some physical shopping done.¬† I did just place a few orders for Sean, he already knows I’m getting him a video game but that’s because I already know that he got me a necklace from Zales, and he’s basically giving me a Christmas.¬† From the tree to the decorations, this house is going to be all spiffed up for the holidays.¬† Now,¬† I know a $70 game doesn’t even remotely compete with the $400 necklace but at the same time that’s just the only gift he’s aware of :heh:¬† We’re going to separate in the mall, I’m sure I’ll run up the bill but I know that I’m supposed to stay under $400 because I trumped him last year, I was also making more money at the time.¬† Now we’re pretty much equal but I do still have to be fair and just take my diamonds and shut up.

Thanksgiving went pretty smoothly,¬† we both enjoyed our quiet evening at home with a turkey and some fixings.¬† He wound up going into a Turkey Coma and slept from about 7pm to 2am but then he was wide awake for a while and back to bed at about 6am.¬† His schedule is a little screwy lately, he hasn’t been sleeping very much.¬† Even now he’s been knocked out for the last 2 hours, it’s pushing midnight.¬† I do know the cause for today’s early rise though.¬† The lady next door is moving out and unfortunately her family doesn’t understand the concept of time and insist that screaming next to someone’s window at 9am is perfectly fine.¬† If I wasn’t so tired I would have gone out there and said something but with no cigarette OR coffee in my system – that’s just the violent bitch end of things that couldn’t have turned out very well at all.¬† So I stuck my head under a pillow and dealt with it.¬† Now I’m exhausted and tempted to fall asleep myself but there’s still quite a bit of cleaning up to do around the house before I can truly relax to the point of falling asleep.

Anyhow – Sean and I went down to Rehoboth Ave. last night to see the tree lighting.¬† Standing in the crowds just wasn’t worth it to us so we walked around a few of the little shops down there and picked up a few things.¬† I found a few interesting things for Karen and my father, I also picked up a puzzle for Sean and I to accomplish for some artwork in the room.¬† He has a picture of Yoda in the office that from far away looks fairly plain but when you get closer to the image you’ll see all of the clips from the movie arranged in a way that make the center image (Yoda) completely possible.¬† I found one just like it but it’s a 1,000 piece puzzle.¬† I’m sure I could knock that out in a weekend but it’s really more of a relaxation thing.¬† It’s just a wonder of where I’ll be able to put it so it doesn’t get destroyed by a clumsy human or a pet who can’t keep their mouth off things.¬† So that should be fun.

I’m disappointed at my new town.¬† Not to sound stereotypical but with all of the gay men in this town you’d thing things would look better on the avenue.¬† There are numerous shops that are done up very well and even the streets are nicely decorated, each pole being wrapped with garland and lights with a sweet bow to top things off.¬† Then you get to the tree, what’s supposed to be the staple of all of these decorations, and they don’t even bother to wrap the lights around the tree, they drop them down from the top and just kind of let them hang there.¬† It’s certainly disappointing.¬† I don’t feel bad at all that I completely forgot to take my camera with me last night, that’s for sure.

I have some more e-shopping to do, maybe I can get some more family members knocked out without even having to leave the couch.¬† The joy of shopping online in your PJ’s.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Delmarva, Family | 4 Comments »

Clearing up confusion…

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

There seemed to be a little bit of confusion with my last entry.¬† There are three dogs in this house, only one of them go outside but all of them are protected from fleas, ticks and all the other goodies that can latch onto them if they step out the door.¬† While animals typically can carry these glorious little fuckers into the house, that doesn’t mean that humans can’t do it either.¬† Delaware has it’s downfalls, like many other states across the US a lot of homes are built onto acres that once housed many tall trees and even more little critters.¬† Humans can track fleas into a house, even if you don’t have pets you’re still at risk for an infestation.¬† Just something to clear up.

So Karen and I did quite a bit of work this weekend.¬† On Saturday we booked a two rooms at a hotel in the area that accepts pets, Sean stayed there with the dogs while Karen and I were bombing the house.¬† He has horrible allergies and enough trouble breathing with basic dust in the area, let alone a chemical bomb.¬† We didn’t go to Walmart and buy some crappy $7 bomb that doesn’t kill anything without having to be used four times a year.¬† Karen purchased a powder called “Flea Busters” that you work into the rug with a broom and then let it sit for 24-48 hours while it works its magic.¬† You then leave the house until the dust settles and begin the daunting task of vacuuming.¬† The problem is the dust takes a lot longer to settle than is listed on the box and with the allergies that all of us are dealing with, the only real option was a two-night stay at the hotel.

We came back after 24 hours to do some vacuuming, while I went around the house with the vacuum Karen got started on the laundry because that room filled up a lot quicker than we thought it would.¬† The dust basically got everywhere and for the sake of killing off any eggs or even the adults, plus the dust from the bomb on the articles themselves – washing everything was the only option.¬†¬† We returned to the hotel a little after midnight, went to our rooms and completely crashed.¬† Two days of moving heavy furniture, breathing in horrible chemicals and just being exhausted in general took it’s toll on us.

Karen checked out of her room at about 8am because she needed to get the dogs back here and then head off to work.¬† Sean and I left our room about 10am, stopped to pick up some breakfast and headed back to the house.¬† There was still some dust in the air and I told Sean to take it easy when we walked in but even that didn’t help.¬† He had a pretty horrible reaction to it and needed to be taken to the hospital.¬† It was a bad asthma attack that seemed to have come out of no where.¬† I noticed he was having some issues when he smelled the dust, I wasn’t expecting it to get as far as it did.¬† He’s doing OK now, he’s got a prescription to work with for his nasal issues, plus he’s got an inhaler.

I’m still rotating laundry, this is the first time I’ve been able to get online in the last four days and that was only to check the time on a few things going on this weekend.¬† I went grocery shopping tonight to pick up some odds and ends for Thanksgiving.¬† Sean and I are going to be here by ourselves, Karen is going up to New York to be with her sister.¬† My father is going to be working and there’s a lot of drama going on with the family (mom’s side) at the moment so I’d rather just not be there – staying here is the more comfortable option for us.¬† So I’m still in the process of cleaning up the house so I have some counter space to work with.¬† There is also a lot of crap on the dining room table but that’s because there’s still some more vacuuming to do.¬† It just requires a lot of heavy lifting so I’m going to have Sean help me out with it tomorrow.

We’re heading back out to do some small shopping tomorrow but that’s only to pick up detergent because there are at least 30 loads of laundry to do and I’m running low.¬† I also need to head to Home Depot to pick up a Lampholder Adapter so I can start decorating outside.¬† I didn’t like having to go outside and plug everything in when we had the lights setup last year, I’d rather just get the converter and work off of the light switch in the house.¬† It’s easier and doesn’t require flipping a switch on the circuit breaker, there’s seriously something wrong with the plug out there.¬† It’s not that we’re overloading it, it’s just been faulty for quite some time now.

Time to rotate some more laundry.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Delmarva, Family, Pets | 7 Comments »

Infestations SUCK!

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

So I have to say it’s been a pretty interesting couple of days.¬† Karen and I are currently working on cleaning out the house so we can drop a flea bomb.¬† There were a few crawling around on Candy, and even more floating around on Princess, we didn’t see it until they both got baths this past week and the fleas just fell off them.¬† Turns out Karen’s room is covered in them which means the rest of the house is full of them.¬† Bella has nothing on her but that’s because she’s been protected with Frontline Plus since the day I got her, but now that we’re aware of the infestation we’re all on our toes and itching like crazy when we go to certain areas of the house.

So her bedroom was cleared out yesterday and we dropped a more localized bomb that she picked up from the pet store, it came highly recommended by a few of the customers and employees in there.¬† It’s good to know that we’re not the only house down here who’s got them – lord knows who else does.¬† So she spent about 3 hours vacuuming the bedroom, dropped the bomb and basically went to sleep in the living room because she didn’t want to go back in there last night – and I don’t blame her.¬† She woke me up about 8am this morning because she was vacuuming up the bomb and now I think she’s going to start doing some laundry so she can begin moving things back into the room so we can now tackle the living room and the hallway.¬† I know that today we’ll also have to do my bedroom and the office – Sean won’t be too happy about it but he has a laptop and is perfectly capable of working in the living room for a few hours.¬† Worse case scenario he goes to the library up the block and gets some work done in the peace and quiet there.

I’ve got to go through a lot of email then get my ass in gear on cleaning up the office.¬† I did the bedroom this past weekend but obviously I’m going to need to vacuum the shit out of it again and then drop the bomb in there – this should just be HEAPS of fun.¬† I can’t even throw the dogs outside today while we’re doing all of this because it’s raining and I don’t have a good sized gate to block off the stairs from Bella charging out of here.¬† I may wind up going to the pet store with Karen to pick up some more of this bomb stuff – maybe I’ll just bite the bullet and invest in a gate to throw up when we get back.¬† I don’t like tapping into the loan money but when you’ve just transferred everything out of Paypal to the bank account you really have no choice in the matter.

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Posted in Bella, Daily, Pets, Stressed | 6 Comments »

Can’t kick the funk…

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

I’m not sure if it’s the family health issues, the lack of a new home or just life in general but I’m in a funk that I just can’t seem to kick.¬† I’ve literally done nothing over the course of the last few days and it’s been bothering the living hell out of me.¬† I still haven’t heard from my father, I was trying to call all week to find out how his colonoscopy went but no one seems to want to answer the phone.¬† I assume that if it were really bad news, I would have heard something from either my sister or my aunt telling me to get back to New York as soon as possible.

Moving down here took a lot of adjusting for me, not only was I starting my life with someone but I was also moving away from everything I’ve ever known, especially just the security of family.¬† Now with my grandfather going through radiation and battling his own cancer, and finding out that my father is 50/50 with colon cancer as well – it’s really striking a nerve.¬† I have cancer on both sides of my family, this is nothing new.¬† My grandfather (father’s dad) passed from leukemia, my grandmother (fathers mom) passed from breast cancer that kind of spread to everywhere else.¬† Now my mothers father is going through it, my mothers sister had thyroid cancer, ovarian cancer and lord knows what else.¬† It has me paranoid to even step foot into a doctors office to see where I rank with this terrible disease.¬† I’m taking the ignorance is bliss route at this point, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what’s going on with my father as soon as humanly possible.¬† I’m going to try calling again tomorrow afternoon when he’s home from work, maybe I’ll actually get an answer this time.

Sean’s “brother” showed up last night for a few hours with his wife, daughter and their new puppy.¬† It was a pretty nerve wracking visit but that’s based on the fact that I’ve never met them before and I know that he’s a big part of Sean’s life.¬† They aren’t literally “brothers” biologically but when you grow up together, and are practically joined at the hip for lord knows how many years, putting them under the title of “brother” just seems to fit, hopefully that clears up any confusion – I know there were a few questions.

But anyway, they hung out here for a few hours and we thought they were going to get a hotel room up the block and then get on the road early the following morning.¬† He decided that he wanted to get down to Florida as soon as possible so they all left (on no sleep) to take the drive.¬† Sean didn’t call him today but I assume that he made it there with out any major issues.¬† I’m sure Sean will call after a few days once they’ve settled in.¬† His brother has already stated that we’ll be going to Florida sooner than we think, I’m just not sure of that 13 hour drive, but it should be interesting.¬† Maybe after the holidays we’ll look into a mini-vacation but who knows what will happen.¬† We may be down there a lot sooner depending on how his father is doing – I just don’t like to think like that.¬† Especially considering he’s battling leukemia as well.

Since I wasn’t really up to cooking tonight Sean and I went to Applebee’s for dinner.¬† We haven’t been there in a while and he’s unhappy with a few things at the moment himself so we took a “date night” just to get out of the house and clear our heads.¬† We enjoyed our dinner then did a little shopping afterwards.

Moving along…I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.¬† UPS should be here with my duvet cover and lamps, that’ll complete the bedroom for now.¬† I bought new curtains tonight because the ones hanging up in there were so caked in dust that even machine washing them shows no hope for them being saved.¬† They also don’t match the new color scheme of the room.¬† I settled on gray/black because that’s Sean’s thing.¬† I personally can’t stand it so I’ve done some bright updating and settled on a white theme that’s turning out pretty nicely.¬† The walls are still a pale gray but it’s really just a backdrop for everything else going on.

So I’m going to hang up the new curtains, vacuum, straighten up some shelves, switch out my summer gear with my winter clothes and then vacuum pack all of the summer stuff so I can store that away.¬† Then it’s off to the market so I can pick up some food for the week and get a few more things for Thanksgiving next week.¬† At this point the only thing we really need for next Thursday is the Turkey and Potatoes, after that I’m covered for dinner.¬† The stuff I’d be loading up on tomorrow is our weekly food plus some dessert based items.¬† I didn’t have enough time to make Pumpkin Pie last year, I also couldn’t find any decent pumpkins and refused to pick up the puree.¬† Yes, I do make it completely from scratch.¬† I’m hoping that changes this year.

Guess I should get ready for bed, it’s pushing 5:30 and I don’t wanna be awake for when Princess starts waddling around looking for food.¬† I typically put on special booties over my foot lotion and Princess smells the mint so she’ll go after my toes.¬† I’m surprised I’ve got all 10 at this point, based on my little history with her.¬† She’s a good dog but OUCH MAN!

Night all (well, morning to the normal sleepers)

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Posted in Boyfriend, Daily, Family, Pets | 3 Comments »

Staying put…:sigh:

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

Last Saturday we finally heard from Sean’s “brother”, while we were happy knowing that he was OK we were unhappy to hear that he’s moving to Florida to be closer to his family. His father isn’t doing too well and he’s moving down there to help out with things. With this move we were still considering moving to the house we’ve been looking into in Ohio until we found out that the complex is currently between owners and who knows how long it’s even going to be there. Most of the homes in the complex are older manufactured homes that the new owner isn’t interested in. So the price tag that was looking pretty good to us is now, more than likely, going to guadrupal in price and then be replaced with a newer home. Granted, if it were a Ritz Craft “Manhattan” model, I’d pounce on it. But as of right now we’re back to the drawing board.

I’ve been pretty bad with the money so far, I’ll admit to it. But that’s because I thought we were moving and started loading up on a few things here and there, mainly bedroom items so we had something to move with. I didn’t go crazy and invest in furniture but new linens, some shelving and other odds and ends just to get us by. We’ve decided to stay where we are for a little while and then kind of work on things from there. At this point we’re even looking into homes in the Delmarva area that meet our price range so that we can stay down here. A mortgage isn’t that hard to come by when you’ve got a good credit score, file your taxes on time and just have enough money in the bank to make the down payment. The problem is the economy right now, that mixed with the forclosure rates thanks to the monkey in D.C. – it’s only a matter of time before everyone just switches over to apartment living.

I’m not interested in that though, I want land – pretty simple request, no?

In any event, we got a phone call tonight from Sean’s “brother” and he’s going to stop in tomorrow on his way down to Florida. Supposedly he sold everything and the house they’re looking to buy comes partially/fully furnished in Florida so he’s only going with a few suitcases and moving along from there. He’s leaving at 8am which is 2 hours from now, by the time he gets here it’ll be around 4pm (I think), hopefully I’m awake depending on when I actually fall asleep this morning. I’ve been straightening up the house, Sean even surprised me and cleaned up the office quite a bit which is why I’m finally able to get over to my desktop. I’m having some issues with my laptop at the moment, I think the battery is beginning to crap out on me or something. At this point I have no idea, nor do I really care very much either.

In any event, I guess I can put in some more cleaning time before I crash for the night. The toilet hasn’t been cleaned in about three days and that’s enough to make me nauseous (yep, OCD).

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Posted in Boyfriend, Home Ownership | 1 Comment »

Take me to the Beach…

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

For the past month or so I’ve noticed that I’m in somewhat of a funk.¬† Life is good right now so it’s not really an emotional funk, I’m just having trouble brainstorming ideas for new clients, as well as current personal projects.¬† Up until the launch of the summer season down here, Sean and I spent quite a bit of time at the beach.¬† I’m not sure what it is but there’s something about the way the waves hit the shore that spark my inspiration to astronomical levels.¬† Now, going almost every evening did have a wonderful effect on me but when you don’t go for three months you’ve lost your ability to regain that inspiration you once bottled up inside for the rainy day.¬† Right now I’m to the point of being completely drained.¬† I can literally stare at Photoshop for three hours and not come up with a damn thing.¬† I can’t even find anything online anymore because everyone has the same thing going on with their blogs.¬† Businesses are no better considering they all find a template on templatemonster or another site like that so they basically all look the same.¬† I want to come across something unique, I’ve even reverted to looking through scrapbooks to see templates that I’ve done with paper in the past in hopes to recreate them in Photoshop, but even that isn’t working out very well for me.

The remnants of tropical storm Noel are heading this way, by 2am there are going to be gusts of wind reaching the 60 MPH range and that just makes me wonder what kind of an effect that will have on the shore.¬† I quietly asked Sean if we could head down to the beach tonight so we can get back into the swing of things but he’s so bogged down with work that he has no idea if that’s even going to happen.¬† His boss sent him a major “To Do” list and he has to complete it tonight, I’m unsure of how in-depth this list is, it could just be quick corrections and he’ll have them done within the hour.

Either way it’d be nice to get out of here just to relax on the cold benches down at the shore right now.¬† I know it’s cold and extremely windy but I can fight through that with a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate from 7-11 and just sit back and listen for a while.¬† And there’s something about the beach that strengthens our relationship as well.¬† Sure, we talk all day long but there’s always a boost of energy when we’re down at the beach that surprises us to this day.¬† We can get through all of our problems, talk things out and the only outside influence is nature.¬† It’s strange, but I don’t think we’d have it any other way.

With the upcoming move to Ohio there is a lot of unsettled emotions between the two of us.¬† It’s not anything in particular but we’ve equally been on edge about things.¬† The frustration of just wanting to get up and go, on top of not knowing if the person we’re trying to get a hold of is even OK at this point in time, let alone HOME for that matter.¬† I’m sure we’ll work through it all eventually, but things were moving along very nicely for quite some time and now they’re at a standstill, so much so that I can’t even get any work done because my concentration levels are non existent.

This sucks.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Home Ownership, Stressed | 6 Comments »

Help?

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

I just dragged myself into the shower in the attempt at waking myself up a little.¬† I know it’s only midnight but I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping for the last few days based on the fact that I’m not feeling very well.¬† I don’t know if stress is catching up to me or if it just has to do with the fact that aunt flo is in town but everything combined is taking it’s toll on me.

I’m in dire need of a hair cut, mine is just getting too long to handle anymore.¬† I like having long hair but when it’s down past your ass and always up in some kind of a funky bun just to keep it out of the way – it’s time for some chopping.¬† I wanted to get it done when we were up in New York last week but Betty wasn’t around and there was no way that I was going to the super fabulous Steve Allen, freaking bastard charges $160 just to dye someones hair.¬† He won’t cut hair and he makes the clients blow out their own hair.¬† He deserves nothing more than a kick in the ass, but that’s the New York charm kicking in for me.

So I’m back to searching for a reasonable place down here.¬† Sean suggested super-cuts, I almost kicked him in the shin.¬† I’ve had professionals working on my hair for 23 years, no way in hell I’m going to beauty school drop outs that only trim your hair.¬† I want style again, and I definitely need a dye job.¬† The grey is shining through and starting to get annoying.¬† So Sean already knows that I’ll be taking about $150 out of the loan money just so I can get myself feeling all nice-nice again, the issue is actually FINDING someone to do it that doesn’t require me to travel all the way back up to New York or even Jersey for that matter.

Anyone in the Delmarva area have any suggestions?¬† I’ll take anything you’ve got at this point.

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Posted in Randomage | 2 Comments »

Doot Doot Doot…

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

We still haven’t heard from his brother, at this point we’re more concerned than anything.¬† He’s either in Florida or his phone is off in Ohio, we’ve sent him a letter and left it at that.¬† Sean says he’s the kind of guy who would probably go swimming with the phone in his pocket.¬† It’s not that he’s “careless” he just doesn’t remember sometimes.¬† This should be interesting.

Sean did some cleaning up today, he got a lot of the crap out of the middle of the room in the office so I can actually get near my desk now.¬† I haven’t been feeling well for a few days thanks to aunt flo so I haven’t gotten much done.¬† However, with my laptop being in the corner of the room that’s hard to get to thanks to the placement of the bed, instead of climbing over a king sized bed I just decided to sit down in the office.¬† It’s strange working on a full sized keyboard again, it took me a while to get used to the laptop keys, now it’s switching all over again – kind of annoying but that’s what the backspace button is for.

He’s watching Smallville so I’ve got all kinds of noise going on in the background.¬† I’m looking around for my iPod chord but am unable to locate it at the moment.¬† I really do need to charge it and load some songs onto it before we take that 8 hour drive but something tells me I’m going to have at least an extra week anyway so there’s no point in rushing anything.¬† I just need to plug in my headphones and work off the shared drive at the moment – kind of hard to concentrate on anything right now.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Daily, Home Ownership | 1 Comment »

Godado

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

I came across a new company today named Godado. At first I had to do a double take because I thought it said “Go Daddy” but that may have been based on the fact that they were fresh in my mind thanks to the commercials they’re now running for their services. Godado looks to be a new affordable web hosting and domain service. They’re plans start in the $5.95 a month range, giving you 5GB of disk space and 200GB of bandwidth. It seems pretty reasonable for the price when it comes to the disk space alone but they don’t offer you very much in regards to resources on top of that. There’s a single database with the Starter package, one would assume it’s a “blog” kind of a package but I don’t know anyone using 5GB of disk space to run their blog, and I run four of them on just 2GB of space, not even close to using the 2GB at that. I like the ability to have more than one database though, I know that when it comes to WordPress you can run them all on the same one, but when you’re looking to use multiple secure database based programs, having more than one comes in handy. But even if you’re paying close to $17 a month with this company you’re only given five. I’ve seen better resources, I’m not saying that this company is bad by any means – I haven’t read any reviews on them – I’d just like to see a bit less overselling on the space and more resources for the price. MySQL/PHP is free to any server master, why not give some more resources up?

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Posted in RevMe | 2 Comments »

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