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Still Kicking

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

I know I haven’t been around in a while, but knowing how the internet works I’m sure no one really gives a shit anyway.  Work is taking it’s toll on me so I don’t even have the time to check my email anymore.  I’m home early enough with nothing to do so I can finally sit down and at least update to let you (those who do actually care) know that I’m alive, I’m just too damn busy.

I have no drive for just about anything anymore, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing ’cause I’m out of the house all day and making some pretty decent money.  I’m enrolling in school with the next pay check so I really won’t be around to do much of anything when that happens.  I’m finally getting my Bachelors so I can find a job that pays a bit more in a field that I used to, at one point, enjoy very much.

I’m permanently living in New York, Sean and I are working hard at getting our own place so we’re no longer a burden on anyone, even though we pay our own way around here and for others as well.  Hopefully with a degree under my belt and all of the work that Sean’s been doing lately we’ll be able to get something nice and cozy just for us and Bella (of course).

On the animal front – Bella’s been doing OK but she’s got this horrible growth on her stomach that’s cause for concern.  It’s gotten much larger as we’ve been up here and right now it looks as though there’s a ball (a little larger than a golf ball) stuck under her skin on her stomach and it’s just kind of hanging there.  I’m pulling money together so I can have it removed.  It’s uncomfortable for her, and everyone can see that.  She isn’t as active as she once was and her appetite has gone out the window.  She can’t sit or lay down properly because it gets in the way so it’s certainly time to get rid of it completely.  I originally wanted to get it taken care of a few months ago but bills are very tight and it’s just not something that I can afford since the VET isn’t willing to work out any kind of payment arrangements.

Dad’s doing well, no sign of cancer thanks to his treatments.  My mother, on the other hand, it’s been pretty much up and down for her for the past few months.  She’s been pretty weak, and it’s been hard for her to get around so my sister’s over there a lot helping her out.  I would be if I wasn’t always at the office.

I don’t think I ever mentioned anything about this job since I started there – it’s been about five months since my start date.  I love the environment, can’t stand a few people, and have bumped heads a few times but that’s my personality.  I’m working with two absolutely wonderful ladies and I’ve spent a lot of time with one of them outside of work because she’s one of the coolest people in the world.

In any event, my 10 minutes online has certainly stretched a bit further than I would have liked it to.  I would like to update more often but I don’t have the ability to do it at work during any downtime and by the time I get home at night the only thing I’m looking to do is keep my head on a pillow until the following morning.  I have been able to check my email more often though so anyone still floating around feel free to drop a line (krissyville @ gmail.com)  let me know your new web addresses too – I haven’t kept my list updated in quite some time.  You can even comment with it, I have them all on moderate anyway.

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Posted in Bella, Family, Randomage, Work | 5 Comments »

Super Shitty Weekend

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I left work on Friday with the goal of doing some minor clothes shopping over the weekend and then basically vegging out. While I did get myself down to DOTS, things still didn’t go as planned.

Saturday was some-what of a down day, minus the fact that my tooth was bothering me. My sister treated Sean and I to dinner and her and I were both vegging out in the living room playing with the dog. The next thing we hear is this extremely loud bang and our doorbell rings three times, very quickly. By this time Bella had made her way down to the door because she tends to bark with door bells, not uncommon with bratty animals. I go out to see what’s up and I’m then thrown into the dumbest argument in the world with the guy who lives in the next apartment.

He came out in a fury stating that I had gone out of my way to let Bella into his apartment to rip his papers up and have her take a shit on his carpet. Yes, this was his complaint. I had the “audacity” to find a key for his door, let my dog in to take a crap, and then bring her back into my apartment with out anyone seeing me.

Let’s back up a little bit though, shall we? I’ve lived in this building for 20 some-odd years. My grandmother owns the building and when she’s not around we’re basically the ‘active landlords’. Meaning, if somethings busted – it gets fixed. For as long as I’ve lived here I’ve never ONCE gone into any of the other apartments if there were tenants renting. I was in Jen’s apartment a lot when she was living up here but we were friends and the kids loved the dog. However, she moved out in 2006. I have not stepped foot into that apartment since.  I lived in DE for a year and a half with Sean and ever since I’ve been back up here, and working, the only thing I wish to do at the end of the day is go into my bedroom and crash.

Now, at night I have my friend Lucy over.  Sometimes it will be Alicia and Dave as well.  Hell, we’ll even throw Colin into the mix sometimes.  We hang out on the porch sitting at MY table (nope, not a community table for the other tenants, it’s mine – I’ve been using it for years.  ANYONE who’s been here, knows that.  It’s my designated smoking section.  The table just happens to be about 10 feet from his (neighbors) window.  We make every effort in the world to not get too rowdy and he’s also never said a damn thing to me about the noise.

So let’s fast forward to Saturday (again).  He’s going on and on about how I’m disrespectful and I have 15 minutes to find the landlord (grandparent’s) or I’ll be sorry (Yes, this is called a threat!).  So I called her house, no answer, I was then told by my sister (who works for my grandparents) that they’re out at a party.  So he’s continuing to scream that I need to call her.  Explaining the lack of alternate contact means nothing to this prick.  Thankfully, however, my sister had my grandfather’s cell phone number.  So I call and the conversation basically went like this:

Me: Momma? The douche in the middle apartment claims that I put Bella into his apartment to take a shit and rip up his crap.

Momma: What?

Me: Yea, he’s screaming that I need to call you or I’ll be sorry.

Momma: What does he want me to do?  I’m no where near town, call your father.

Me: OK, but I’m sure he’ll have a major complaint on Tuesday.

(Yes, every time he goes downstairs to pay the rent or just to cause trouble – he’ll give someone a face full about the horrible living conditions and storm off.  Asshole, you’re paying $700 a month for a small studio apartment, utilities and cable included – get a fucking life).

So I call my father, he can’t leave work because he’s the only one there.  And at this point there’s steam coming out of this guys ears.  He’s waving this tiny piece of toilet paper around claiming it was my dog who shit there.  Now, I knew just looking at it that it wasn’t hers.  Why?  She’s been sick all week and shitting green liquid, this was a perfectly formed brown turd that resembled the large turd sitting on the grass down on the sidewalk (which at this point, was no longer there – guess who stepped in shit?)

My mother was then called in, she sent someone down for EMS to hold down the fort until a cop could get up here.  The douche-bag was screaming about how he’d call the cops so I went out of my way to have them called for him.  I know, and anyone who knows me, knows I wouldn’t allow my dog into someone else’s apartment – especially if it was just to take a shit.  What douche-bag doesn’t understand is that I wouldn’t do anything to screw up someone else’s income and I know that while he’s paying shit money it’s still keeping the mortgage paid on this building.

So the EMT shows up and has no idea as to what’s going on, we explain that he’s here for SHIT, literally.  He then laughs, which is no surprise because I found it amusing as well.  The cops are taking a while to get here, which is no surprise considering the police department in this town absolutely SUCKS because they’re too busy bull shitting with each other.  Saturday, there was supposedly some large fight down in the Landing (horrible area) where all hands were on deck.  One managed to sneak away, he came up the stairs with a shit-eating-grin on his face and my sister (known for diarrhea of the mouth) started in on him.  She explained the situation, he chuckled and then went into the guys apartment.

We knew we were fucked the second he opened the door.  They’re best fucking friends.  So he walks in, see’s the crap and then turns around to come out to us and point the finger.  Why? Because of course you’ll take HIS side over mine.  So I threw a hissy fit (with valid reason, of course). The douche bag comes out of his apartment and starts shooting his mouth off in a different tone than before the cop had shown up.

Supposedly I let the dog run loose whenever I please (even though she’s never outside with me anymore).  I’m outside of his window smoking up with friends until 3am and he’s going to have this place raided for drugs.  Yea – that’ll fly.  I’ll gladly piss in a cup or have a needle rip some blood out of my arm to prove his theories are shit.  Why? Because I’ve never touched anything illegal in my life.  AND I’m picked on for it too.  Heaven forbid I think anyone who smokes up or sniffs is a loser (recreational or not).  I do smoke about a pack of cigarettes a day but I’m also 23 years old and it’s completely legal to do.

The cop didn’t believe anyone of us when we told him that douche bag threatened us, he also believed that I’m that disrespectful and would actually allow my dog to shit in someone else’s apartment.  So the cop wrote down our information, laughed and then left.

Supposedly he later went down to EMS and spoke to my step-father (who sent over the EMT) and explained that this guy was a nut job and not to take him too seriously.

So I was close to killing someone, I walked into the house and almost put my fist through a wall because I needed to get the rage out of me, and taking it out on the douche bag just wasn’t worth the jail time (because yes – I was angry enough to do it in front of a cop).  I called Lucy and told her to basically get her ass over here ’cause I needed OUT and angry driving wasn’t an option.  We hung out in Bayville for a little bit, she brought me back here ’cause something came up with her girlfriend.  I then called Alicia and her and Dave picked me up and I was out long enough where I could mellow out.  Staying here was absolutely not an option for me on Saturday.

This entire time, my tooth is freaking killing me.  I just came off antibiotics for another tooth and then I knew damn well that the other side of my mouth was going to blow up like bloody hell.

SUNDAY

I wake up in a lot of pain, I can see the swelling going up on my left cheek and I haven’t been in this kind of pain since the last time I dealt with an abscess in my mouth.  This one, unfortunately, I knew was going to be much – much worse.  Why? It’s one of my top teeth and when you have an abscess that close to your optic nerve you know the turn out isn’t going to be good.  So I chugged some aspirin and then took some antibiotics that I had left over from a previous infection (horrible teeth – estimated $16,000 worth of work to get me back to where I need to be.  Front teeth are fine, it’s ALL the back ones that are shot to shit!).

I did some shopping with Sean to get some clothes for work – I still don’t have all of my stuff up here yet. Came back here and basically went to sleep.

MONDAY

I woke up with the intent of getting to work and just relaxing while I’m training.  It didn’t work out that way though.  I woke up and couldn’t see out of my left eye.  It’s not that it was swollen shut – it’s that it was completely black.  When I pressed down on the intense swelling around my upper lip/nose area – my vision went from black to blurry – OK so the infection went up further than I thought it would.  I schedule an emergency appointment with the dentist so I can be put back on antibiotics and then I call in to work and explain that I’ll be absent for the day.

I go to the dentist, and instead of giving me antibiotics up front he wants x-rays done.  So I’m being poked and shifted and I’m changing rooms because his machines are messed up (for some reason).  They finally get the two x-rays they need (out of the 3-4 taken) and he then goes on to tell me how much trouble I’m in and tells me that if the nerve was completely dead he’d give me a root canal right then and there but being how I’m so infected the pain would be unbearable.  So he gave me Amoxicillian, asked if I wanted a pain killer but I refused because I have aspirin, and then sent me on my way after he told me I’m going back on September 9th at 8am for a double root canal – yea, like I can go to work after that.  I’ve got no choice though.

I slept for the rest of the day, in an extreme amount of pain and knew that Tuesday wasn’t going to be any better.

TUESDAY

I wake up and the swelling is worse than it’s ever been before, my eye is swollen shut and I called in.  I slept for the bulk of the day and then told myself that as long as I can see on Wednesday I’m going to have to go in.  I’m on probation and thankfully a doctors note is the only way I can keep my job right now.  I’m still in training, I was supposed to do a lot more this week too, so I have no idea what’s going to happen today.

WEDNESDAY

It’s pushing 9:30 and I need to get out of here.  I hope my time out of the house is much better than the crap I’ve been dealing with in-house.

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Posted in Annoyed, Bella, Boyfriend, Daily, Randomage, Work | 6 Comments »

Uneventful

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

This is one of those days where the truly isn’t anything going on.  I spent my fourth in house with my dog and a sleeping boyfriend.  He hasn’t been feeling very well so we decided it would be best to stay in.  The original plans were rained out anyway so it wasn’t a total loss.  I caught up on a few things, messed around in Photoshop for a few projects and now it’s knocking on 5AM but I’m not even close to being tired yet.  I know Bella’s exhausted, I can hear her snoring from here.  Considering she’s at the other end of the apartment, it’s safe to say she enjoyed her toys all day to the point that her compact little self basically just went ahead and crashed.

My father is pulling a double shift, he should be home in about 2 hours from now.  He left at 3PM this afternoon and since 7AM is rolling in – I’m sure he’ll be exhausted.  I’m tempted to just stay up for the whole day and then crash later on in the evening but I know that’s not actually going to work out.  I have to pull some stuff out of the dryer and get the beds setup so I can go to sleep.  Sean was so tired he’s sleeping on a bare mattress.  I personally can’t handle that but I’m sleeping on the floor tonight anyway so I’ll be able to get the sheet back on the aero-bed with no problems.  We alternate between the bed and the floor, it’s the only way to save our backs.  Mine isn’t doing very well at all – the lack of proper seating is taking it’s toll on me.  While I absolutely love being “home” I have to say that finding a chair that you don’t just sink into would be much better for me.  Big comfy furniture is great, but not when you have chronic back-problems, you know?

My old bed (twin) is rather comfortable, which I’ve proven for the last couple days of over sleeping.  The aero-bed, I just can’t seem to get the proper pressure set to it so no matter what I do I tend to be uncomfortable.  It’s my luck that I’ll have finally figured it out the last night that we’re here so that’s going to be annoying but I am looking forward to falling into my big comfy king bed when we get back to Delaware.

If all goes well we do hope to be moving up to New York within the next 6 months or so.  That heavily depends on a few job applications I sent in up here, as well as quite a few freelance jobs that I’ve quoted.  We know that in order to come up here we’re going to need to earn about $4,000 a month in total.  So finding a position that will bring me at least $2,000 a month shouldn’t be so hard.  I just need to get myself into an office where I’m making $15-$20 an hour.

I applied for a job on the Island that I found on some job-search site (not sure which one – considering there are like 10 of them that I surf through regularly).  I sent in my resume and hopefully I’ll hear something, starting salary is $75,000/yr.  I think that will easily bring in the $13,000 a year I’d need to find a decent apartment up here.  I’m thinking of looking into my grandmothers building (only because I know everything so well) but I may see what I can find at the Avalon – I really like their rules, even though no one else seems to.

I’m the kind of person who can’t stand chaos, and this is coming from someone whom has a rather large extended family.  But at the same time, if I’m going to be spending about $2,000 a month on rent I want to know that I’m going to be able to enjoy the experience.  The Avalon has a series of rules that would drive a few people crazy but the big ones for me really make it worth spending that kind of money.

1 – Children are to be seen and not heard.
2 – Pets are to be seen and not heard.
3 – No loud parties.
4 – Guests are to be cleared with the main desk.

All that says to me is silence, and no crazy wacko’s walking around the building at all hours of the night.  Private off-street parking which makes me feel safe considering the area that most of the Avalon’s are located on the Island aren’t the best.  Private pool and massive work-out rooms so I’ll be able to keep on track with my diet.  The in-house washer/dryer helps me a lot too, apartments can also come furnished if requested so why wouldn’t I do it?

It’s a lot to think about, either way I’ll have to wait and see what happens.  I’ll tell you now that if they hire me I’m going to take the weekend to head back down to Delaware and pack my stuff to come back up here – I’ll stay with my father for a little while until I can find an apartment of my own and once that happens Sean will come up and the rest is history.

It would be nice, it would be flat out fantastic but money talks … unfortunately.

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Posted in Bella, Boyfriend, Career | 6 Comments »

Difficult Morning

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

I’ve only been up for an hour and it’s looking to be a pretty stressful day.  For the past couple of days I’ve been working on quite a few different websites.  I did a PSD to WordPress convert for Jackie.  I’m currently working on another WordPress convert for a client I picked up on GAF and on top of that I had to redo a few things for a template I completed last week for my new “boss” so to speak.  Tomorrow I’m taking on another template and while it’s constant work it’s also a constant headache.

The landscapers woke me up today, but that’s fine because for me sleeping until 10 means that I’ve overslept and I needed to be jolted out of bed anyway.  The reason behind the jolt is Bella, naturally.  If someone is under the window she’ll typically bark her head off and slap a big machine under them and that’s grounds for all kinds of barks and growls on her end.  Knowing that Sean worked all night and didn’t actually get to sleep until about 5:30 this morning, I made it a point to get her out of there as fast as possible.  Now she’s hanging out with me in the office, she’s got her window seat and some fresh food on the floor and that’s about all she needs.

Another reason for the down-day isn’t going to be the predicted 70* weather, it’s the email I received from my mother.

Living four hours away from friends and family has been difficult for me, and while I love Sean and do like Delaware – It’s taking me a lot longer to getting used to not having so many people around.  I come from a big family, and the only time it really feels “homey” is when Karen’s sister comes down with her kids because there’s more noise in the house and it feels more like what my life was like in New York.

I really miss everyone, my grandparents, aunts and uncles and I truly have no idea what’s going on with any of my cousins, even the two out of five that I’d stand the chance of seeing.  My one aunt doesn’t get out to visit very often and the other one just held a Christening for her son, and I saw the pictures he’s absolutely adorable.  He looks a lot like my aunt, and has this tiny button nose and looked so cute in his little white suit with gold chain, definitely an Italian child, I’ll tell you that much.

It kind of just hit me today that I’ve missed out on a lot of things.  Hell, I even miss my sister sometimes and when I lived up there I absolutely could not stand her.  But, considering our situation we did get along well – we were just frustrated with each other the way that siblings typically are.

Another irk of the day is the fact that I can’t find my USB cable for my digital camera.  I took some nice pictures this morning to put up on my health blog.  I guess something will appear after I go through a few boxes.

I need to get my butt in gear and finish this template.  I’m hoping to be able to start something for this site sometime today but that really isn’t too important at the moment, work comes first.

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Posted in AGn Designs, Bella, Family, Work | 10 Comments »

The LONG Weekly Breakdown

Friday, April 18th, 2008

It’s been quite a week, if I had the energy I probably would have updated sooner but when daily life gets in the way – a blog really isn’t a priority. I’ll break it down into categories so you can skip the areas you probably won’t care about. I also had to throw a break in it because I’m certain it’s going to be a 2500 word entry. Sue me, it’s been a week.

Health & Wellness – Back Problems SUCK!
I threw out my back last weekend, it took me a few days to nurse myself back to health but me being the stubborn person that I am – I still insisted on cleaning whenever I could and getting some shopping done. I had trouble lifting the heavier items (soda, and even a gallon of milk for that matter) but we needed it and I know that Sean has been really busy working on a few different sites. He’s chugging along getting the social networking site up for one client, Jackie and her father have taken him under their wings with some programming work and he was approved to write plug-ins and hacks for Social Engine, the only out-of-the-box social networking site on the market right now. So it’s safe to say that while I’m not feeling well, he’s still very busy with other things. He did really help me out though, as far as the heavy lifting and laundry is concerned. I had to spend Sunday in bed, which is something I absolutely hated, because I don’t like being unproductive but when you can’t stand up it’s very difficult to accomplish just about anything.
(more…)

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Posted in Bella, Boyfriend, Daily, Soul Mate, Work | 8 Comments »

Internal Alarm…

Friday, April 11th, 2008

I’m really not sure why but my schedule is beyond screwed up right now. I’ve finally got some work to do thanks to a new contract position but for my initial project I stayed up until about 5am putting a lot of finishing touches on the photoshop aspect of things. I rolled into bed and then popped right up at exactly 10:32am. Now, the reason that number is so “hrm….” for me is based on the fact that my body has trained itself to wake up at the exact same time every day for the past week or so. I really don’t understand why, either. I know that yesterday the landscapers showed up around our house at the same time yesterday morning which then triggered Bella to sit in the window and bark her freaking head off. I’m seriously going to start going to bed with her sonic zapper because I can’t take waking up to a barking dog anymore. Today was no different. They’re showing the house next door and having people walk around is never a good thing when you have a bitchy dog to deal with. So of course she insisted on barking. Come to think of it, she’s been the reason I’ve popped up so frequently in the morning. I wish I could figure out why she’s the new resident alarm clock.

It’s taking it’s toll on me though. I’ve been up for an hour and a half and I’m already exhausted. I can’t continue on 5 hours of sleep but I really don’t want to go back to bed because I have so much to accomplish today. I have a couple of posts to do, a lot of emails to respond to, a PSD to convert to XHTML/CSS and then I think I just landed my first big project with this company of creating a template for a social networking site. I’ll base my template on the network site that Sean’s designing, and then add MySpace, Facebook and Vidilife to it. Why? Because I’ll do the complete and total polar opposite of all of them. I see no point in having them all look the same so I’m going to come up with something different. :hmph:

Guess I should get myself in gear. I think I’m going to need to put on a pot of coffee. If I don’t get some kind of energy boost I’m probably going to be asleep within the next half hour.

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Reorganized & Unhealthy

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

I know I haven’t updated in a while but it has a lot to do with how busy I’ve been for the past five/six days.  Karen and I were talking the other night in the kitchen, which is a typical thing for us, and the topic of clearing up her desk area (in the kitchen) came up.  When she moved in she kind of threw all of the bills and other desk related things on a couple of shelves and into the filing cabinet and that’s been her system for the past few years now.  Me, being an organizational freak, asked if she’d ever let me do something with it and then out of no where she runs to her bedroom and pulls out all kinds of storage and organizational solutions that I was surprised she’d even had, considering the state of the desk to begin with.

The next morning (Thursday) she left to meet up with her sister in Atlantic City.  I then took over the daunting task of finally organizing all of her paperwork to make her life much, much easier.  After doing a complete and total clean up of the kitchen, giving me ample counter space to spread out on,  I started with the filing cabinet and about 6 hours later I’d completed my sort through about 10 years worth of paperwork to put it all into proper labeled folders.  When the weight of completing that was lifted from my shoulders, I looked up to the shelves above me and I’ll admit, my head began to throb a little.  I pulled things down a few piles at a time and sorted through everything.  I then reorganized the items that were meant to stay out on that shelf and everything is now complete.  The project time took me about 10 hours in total, and that’s not counting the two breaks I took to put my eyes back in the sockets.  Damn did they need a rest!

The next morning I knew that there was a lot more to accomplish, it was great to walk into the kitchen and not see that mess around the computer but when I’d gotten a paper cut the evening before I attempted to find a band aid in the medicine cabinet but was unable to dig through everything to easily find one.  Expired medicine and prescription medication for her mother (whom died in 2005) was taking over ample space in this cabinet.  So I went through all of that as well, and it turned out pretty nicely.  There was even extra space available on the top shelf so I then had room to get everything off of the counters that was medicine related as well.

I floated around the house and sprinkled some carpet fresh and then vacuumed the entire house and managed to clean up the coffee table and any other surface that was covered in clutter.  The only spot that I couldn’t get to (because my back went out again thanks to over-working myself) was our “Junk” area in the kitchen.  It’s a pile of just about everything, that’s hidden when you first look at the kitchen (it’s under the bar – that no one uses because of the awkward height of the chairs for it).

My back is still very sore, I have good days and bad days.  Unfortunately the really nasty weather isn’t helping very much either.  It’s got everyone in a funk and the cold weather isn’t doing anything good for my back these days.  I have the windows open during the day, even though it’s chilly, to air out the stale smoke smell in the house.  Karen went back to smoking when she put Candy down and she’s just now getting back on her Nicorette.  Unfortunately when she smokes in the house, my twinge for it kicks in and I started doing it as well.  I’ve always gone outside, probably why I was always able to tan so well considering I’d be outside all day long in the summer with my laptop and a cig.  But a few bad weeks and now I’m back on track with things.  I’ve also added filters to my cigs, even though I smoke Ultra-Lights I’m still injesting a lot of TAR, and now I’ve gotten myself tarless filters to help me cut down on that intake.  Eventually I’ll be completely done with it.  I’ve purchased my last carton and by this time next week (at the rate that I smoke) I’ll be “cold turkey” and able to get around without getting winded.  It’s a 10 year addiction that’s being thrown away in one night – hopefully my PMDD doesn’t kick in cause Sean won’t know what hit him.

I’m patiently waiting on call-backs from a few companies.  I’m still hoping to land the job for that interview I went on a few weeks ago.  I’m also waiting on some kind of an email from a company I was just accepted to as a contractor.  I sent in all of the paperwork last week, EIN# and everything else included.  I’m just not in their system yet so I can’t start floating through the LEADS to start working.

In any event, I need to find something to do.  There’s nothing really going on online and I don’t have any work waiting for me.  I think I’m going to straighten up the kitchen and make some lunch for Bella and I.  She isn’t feeling too well but that has a lot to do with the rain, we haven’t been able to bring her out as often as she’s used to so I think she’s feeling withdrawn as well.

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Posted in Bella, Daily, Family, Stressed | Comments Closed

Keeping Busy

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

I did quite a bit of cleaning yesterday.  I went into the laundry room and it looked as though a few laundry bins had exploded all over the room.  So I straightened everything up and finally got around to doing my own laundry.  After I was done with that I started on everything else in there and now the room is so damn clean it looks like it’s never been used.  That’s always a plus side when you’re trying to cut down on dust collecting.

So while all of that was in the wash I vacuumed the entire house and went extra heavy in the bedroom because there’s sand and food all over the floor.  The sand is from me, it stays in my socks while I’m walking back to the room to change them.  The food is thanks to Bella, I crunched up something for her the other night and she didn’t finish eating it all, Sean being someone who refuses to look down he stepped on the plate and they went all over the place.  I think it was left-over nachos from taco bell, I’m not really sure.  It was something crunchy that almost went through my foot when I stepped out of bed yesterday morning.  There was also some dust piling up on the side-tables so that had to go.  Now the room is nice and clean and so much more relaxing.  I do need to invest in a good duster though, the fan blades are kind of icky looking.  I’ll get up there later on today with a wet rag so the dust doesn’t go all over the bed.  The bed takes up almost the entire room (it’s a king in a 10×10 bedroom) so the only option is to stand on it.  It helps to get the height I need but it’s such a soft bed that it’s no where near as stable as I’d need it to be to stand up there for a long period of time…heh.

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Hrm, not bad.

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

So I’m working on a template for a client and I have to say, I like it way too much.¬† So much so that I think I’m going to change a few key aspects of the design and then use it as the new template on acidgloss.net.¬† It looks more like a CNN kind of template, and there is one available for like $90 but when you know how to code with heavy CSS and then work it into WordPress, why pay $90?¬† I’m getting like $150-$200 for the job but that’s only because there are a lot of function changes and I’m also going to integrate a forum into it.

During the process I took a while of poking around the net to figure out a way to get each entry to have it’s own individual post icon, something like what you can do with LiveJournal.¬† There’s no official “plugin” for it, it’s really dependent upon a template file and “Custom Fields” I haven’t used that option in so long it’s unreal.¬† Either way I have figured it out.¬†¬† I did shoot the idea over to Sean though.¬† I know exactly what I’d like the plugin to do – there just isn’t one available.

To give a quick break down, if you use LiveJournal you should be able to understand where I’m coming from.¬† When you’re posting an entry there should be some kind of a drop-down menu or browse button for images you’ve uploaded¬†onto your server via WordPress.¬† Now typically this is a “Browse” option but that’s for pasting the icon directly into the entry, I want it to be part of the index.php template file itself.

When you’ve chosen your image and published your entry it will appear wherever you pasted the include file.¬† Now you can do this with the custom field, but the option it doesn’t have is the ability to automatically set a default image to the entries that don’t have a related images, and I don’t want to have to go back through 2 years worth of archives to paste the image into the article – you know?.¬† I’m sure there’s a way to just rewrite the default WP custom_meta code but who knows.¬† I have asked Sean to consider creating the plugin so that he can add it to his list, and I’ll certainly pimp the hell out of it because I think it’s a decent idea.

Note: I just had him come in and write up a quick if-statement and the rest is cake.¬† Now I’m just going to have to come up with a default image.¬† I’ll have to play around in photoshop for a little while for that one.

So I’ve been busy with that and right now I’m hoping to get a few things completed so I can take a shower and get out of here.¬† I have some errands to run, Bella’s out of food and I want to stop into a few stores to check in on my applications.¬† I’m also hoping to apply at the beauty supply shop down here but that’s because of my experience with it while I was at my grandmothers store.¬† This place is kind of like¬†a Sally’s but they don’t have a lot of Sally’s specific supplies that I use on a regular basis.¬† Either way they’re over loaded with hair products so it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway.

So I guess I should get my ass in gear.

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Life in a nut-shell.

Friday, March 7th, 2008

I know I’m late again but I finally got around to getting the March template up and running. I have no idea how it looks on the Mac because I haven’t made much of an effort to go into the office lately. I have my laptop and I’m enjoying flipping through 400+ channels and finding absolutely nothing to watch.

I got everything taken care of at the DMV on Monday and now all I need is to find a decent job to bring in enough money for my own car. Sean’s is great and all but it’s got over 120,000 miles on it so it’s only a matter of time before we’re looking to get rid of it. It’s a 1995, naturally there’s only a limited amount of time left with it. I narrowed my options though, I know I’m not willing to spend anything more than $12,000 and while even that seems like a lot, I also know I’m not coming home with something brand new. I found a few dealerships in the area that have the car I want and while the ’05 Chevy Cobalt that I’ve been looking into has about 50,000 miles on it already, it’s also still under warrenty for another 40,000 miles and since I am working locally, I’m not too concerned about that.

I started and quit a job on Tuesday, it just wasn’t the place for me and I have other things going on right now that I don’t wish to go into. I put in some applications in other stores and I’m hoping to hear from one of them sometime within the next few days.

We’re going to have company this weekend, Karen’s sister is coming down to continue house-hunting so I spent the bulk of the day straightening up the house. I finally got around to giving the bathroom the “deep clean” it’s needed for the last two weeks. It’s easy to wipe down the counter and throw some bleach on the floor but I’m the kind of person who likes to get down and scrub the shit out of things. When you can eat off the bathroom floor, you know there’s no cross-contamination and excess bacteria floating around. I also do the same scrubbing in the kitchen on a daily basis. Even if I don’t cook and a drop of soda happens to be on the counter, I go into over-drive and take care of things.

My sleep schedule is back on track. I typically crash around midnight and I’m up around 9am. It’s a good feeling to see more than a few hours of sunlight during the day considering my hours were more like 9am to 2pm and since the sun (for a few weeks) started to set around 5pm things were really kind of sluggish for me. Now I’m up and ready to take on the day after a good nights rest. Bella still isn’t quite used to the change, but no matter what time schedule I was on she typically slept for most of the day anyway.

On the topic of pets, I got her groomed last week and she was a little – clingy – for a couple of days. She seems to be getting back to normal but I’ve noticed that since the mood kind of lightened (a few days after we put Candy down) she’s really taken a hold to Karen and follows her around as much as she does me. And at night there’s that spot on the couch that she’s taken over which is usually curled up in the blanket by Karen as well. It’s a little strange, and I have no idea why but I think she realizes that if jobs do go through for me, that I won’t be around for the entire day the way I used to.

I did find out that the bump on her stomach is a benign tumor. She’s had it since she was very little and it’s gradually gotten bigger over the course of the last year so I’m going to have to bring her to the vet and see what they can do for me. I’m confident that it’s nothing too serious but I would like to get it taken care of so it can’t potentially turn into something fatal.

And on the topic of Cancer, Princess has been diagnosed with Cushings (as I’ve noted previously). The vet gave Karen a prescription for Kemo and we’re a little hesitant about giving it to her. She’s 22-pounds and they have her on 500MG of Kemo a day. Now, the documentation for this particular drug (LYSODREN known as Mitotane) notes that you should only have 50MG so naturally we’re thinking “Wait, won’t 10-times the amount be fatal?” We’ve verified with the Vet that the dosage is correct because of “her size” and I can only imagine what they’d give a large-breed dog that’s 100lbs. I don’t even want to think about it.

There are some other big things going on but they aren’t worth discussing right now, probably because I haven’t had time to process the bad news yet. I just hope things start to pick up and get back on track, or I have no idea what I’m going to do.

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Snap Happy

Monday, January 28th, 2008

It’s been a rather unproductive week, mainly because I’ve been a bit under the weather. I cleaned up the house and have been maintaining that for the bulk of the week. I got some grocery shopping done, picked up a few odds and ends for the house and basically have been floating around with odd and end jobs and that’s about it.

Lately I’ve found myself getting “click happy”, having the Mac and my digital camera is really sparking all kinds of creativity. So much so that I’m considering setting up a photoblog on my new domain but I’m not really not too sure about that. I’ve decided to pull out some PHP books and refresh my memory so I can recreate the gallery script I used to use on my site (acidGALLERY) it was created for early versions of PHP4 but now that all of my servers are running on PHP5 and a higher MySQL version, naturally a few things are going to have to change It’ll be a fairly basic script, admin panel with the standard category, description and auto-thumbnail options. I’m also going to work it into a script that Jackie sent me a few days ago. I was having trouble trying to setup a very basic gallery (where I did all of the work myself) where the popup was javascript based and had a next/previous option with descriptions. Thankfully she pointed me in the direction of one she uses and I have to say I’m pretty content with it thus far. It’s an HTML based script, you do all of the work yourself – and that was enough to spark my interest in creating a new one.

Anyway…Sean and I have been doing a lot of driving around lately to clear our heads. I’m still patiently waiting on a response from the companies I’ve submitted my resume to. It would absolutely rule if I could land the job that’s closest to my house but I’m willing to do some kind of traveling if it means a decent amount of money in return. I just got really lucky when I found positions that don’t require a Bachelors and I know that with the money coming in there’s the option of banking it all for either moving into our own place, buying a house or maybe even both of us going back to school. Right now we’re both working pretty hard because we’ll need to get some money together for taxes and considering the $8,000 loan and the paid blogging earnings from last year, something tells me I’m going to owe quite a bit of money.

I’m also unsure of where exactly it’s going to go. While I have been living in Delaware for the past year, I didn’t have my photo ID changed over until late December. Something tells me I’m going to have to pay New York taxes as opposed to the Delaware ones and I’m not too sure if I’m happy about that. I do have a few write-offs this year though, that should help me out. Between buying computers and other business related items – I’m sure I’ll break even at some point. It would be great if I could personally claim the Mac but Sean made the actual purchase of it and he’s got his own things to pay. We’re ready to get our taxes done, unfortunately we’re waiting on companies to send out the forms. I know you’re supposed to receive them by February, hopefully these companies can keep true to their word.

And since I’ve been so snap happy lately, I figure I’ll just link them up.

(more…)

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Going Crazy…

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

In about five hours my alarm is set to go off at the loudest it’s ever been. By 10am I need to be in the shower and ready to start the day because between the hours of noon and four PM I’ll be waiting on Stanley Steamer to get here and take care of the carpets. Now, when one pays a company to come in and do….say…6 rooms, you also pay a bit extra so that they can move things around. So please tell me why for the last two days Sean and I have been moving everything out of the living room, dining room, bedroom and office? Because while they claim they’ll move things for you, it only falls under certain categories and if they DO move it for you, it needs to be completely cleaned off. They don’t move plants, they don’t move bulky furniture (king bed), they won’t move wooden bookcases unless they’re cleared off and they won’t touch electronics. Guess who’s house is filled with everything they WON’T move, but were paid extra for? :: waits patiently for your guess ::

I attempted to get into bed around 3:30 because thanks to a faulty alarm clock (Sean) I didn’t wake up as early as I wanted to so I knew I was going to have to fight to get myself to sleep tonight. Who would have thought that an hour and half later listening to Sean wheezing, Bella snoring, and the different paperboys doing 80 miles an hour in a 13 mile-an-hour complex could keep me wide awake?

I’m in the kitchen because there’s so much stuff piled up on my desk (to get it off the floor for the cleaners) that I can’t even use my iMac. I’m not sure of where my laptop is at this point considering the house is in complete disarray. My DS is no where to be found but something tells me Sean had something to do with that, considering his “throw it anywhere” strategy when we started this project. He doesn’t understand that if you’re organized going into this, it’s so much easier to put everything back and get back to your regular life without having to go through bags and stacked up things where you’re unsure of their original origin, but men tend to do that.

The coffee pot is just about done brewing, Karen sets it for about 5am considering she’s up around 5:30 (most days). Today she has a doctors appointment at 9am so I’m sure her alarm is going to be beeping soon as well. I don’t know what to do to get myself to sleep. Usually staring at a screen for a little while does it for me, reading a book works if the screen remedy fails. Unfortunately, neither one is working for me right now. I guess because I feel as though there’s so much to accomplish today. I would love to just start cleaning right now but the only thing that’s really left to do before they show up is vacuum and that’s kind of rude to do at 5am. Both Karen and Sean can sleep right through it, but I doubt that’ll have the same effect on the neighbors considering how loud the Dyson is. With the window cracked I can hear it up the street.

I need to find something to do that will bore me enough to get me in bed. Maybe I’ll surf around MySpace for a while, nothing but uninteresting people there.

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The Random Daily BS

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

I didn’t really accomplish much today as far as work is concerned but I believe that’s based on the fact that I’ve been doing A LOT of converting so I can at least have ONE computer that’s completely up and running. (more…)

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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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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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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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