Archive for the ‘Boyfriend’ Category

What a week…

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I’m still working on getting everything moved over to the new data center.  Thankfully I was able to find one that knows exactly what they’re doing so I couldn’t be happier with my choice to finally make this move.  I have a lot of other things going on, mainly work related but it’s nothing too big right now to really make a huge deal out of.

Sean and I have extended our mini-vacation.  We’re not on Delaware (if you haven’t guessed).  We loaded up the car for a big family trip and now we’re staying a bit longer than we originally planned.  We left about 2AM on Wednesday morning, we didn’t get here until about 7AM so that’s quite a trip to take.  Traffic and my little break down certainly didn’t help us, and by the time we were crossing over the bridge we were basically driving directly into the sunrise, and of course neither one of us had any sun-glasses with us so that proved to be a bit difficult.  We got here just as my father was heading out to work and thankfully he didn’t notice the huge box in the back seat of the car.  He got that the following day (his birthday).  I made dinner, had my aunt and uncle over and then on Sunday we fired up the new BBQ (Dad’s gift) and enjoyed burgers and dogs for my sister’s birthday.  All in all that went over well.

I saw my mother, she was diagnosed with Bells Palsey a few weeks ago but after surgery on Tuesday the test results showed that she has Sarcoidosis.  It’s an auto-immune disease that will never go away but it can be controlled with the proper medication.  Unfortunately she has it pretty bad and that’s where the paralysis in her face has come from.  It was a little strange seeing her like that but there’s nothing you can really do to stop it.

My dad’s cancer has been cleared thanks to his radiation treatments.  He’s lagging a bit though.  Even though the radiation is no longer in his body he’s a little worse for the wear so he’s having some trouble getting around.

My aunt (mother’s sister) went in for surgery on Monday.  She had a lump on her skull and underneath her cheek muscle that doctors need to run a biopsy on.  She wound up checking herself out of the hospital on Tuesday against doctors orders and now it’s a waiting period for the test results.   One ass hole doctor basically said “You’re riddled with cancer” but he made this remark before the tests were even looked at, let alone processed.  So it’s safe to say that bedside manor is non existent – even in the ICU!

So it’s safe to say that almost every member of my family is falling apart to some degree.  My aunt has always had medical problems, but now my mother has them pretty bad, my grandfather will more than likely need two knee replacements and my grandmother, who’s 60 pounds lighter thanks to Weight Watchers, just had surgery on her eyes and is still feeling the effects of the botched surgery she had a few years ago on her ankles – they’re no better than they were before the surgery and thanks to sliced nerves they’re much worse than they should be.  The doctor was able to get the lawsuit dismissed, apparently “I do not recall” seems to be a good enough excuse for a judge to void a lawsuit.  :ugh:

Something tells me I’ll be moving back to NY in the near future.  It’s not the fact that Sean and I have been talking about it for a while, it’s the fact that I expect to have an upcoming year where everyone drops like flies and being 5 hours away really wouldn’t be a great idea.

In any event, time to return some emails and continue with domain transfers. Oh joy!

In a nutshell…

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

It’s been a while since I was able to really sit down and think about an entry to post here. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot going on in my life that’s really “news worthy”.

I guess it’d be easier to go in “list mode”.

  • New Template – I haven’t sat down and worked on anything personal since April. Luckily I came across a similar template and was instantly inspired, so here it is.
  • College Woe’s – My FAFSA is completed, I’ve been working with Admissions at the University of Phoenix and I hope to be enrolled very soon.
  • Work – I’ve had a steady flow of work for the past couple of weeks, it’s brought in enough money where I can insure that everyone’s birthday is taken care of. Dad’s turning 60, Mo is going to be 22, and Karen recently had her birthday as well. So it’s safe to say that come July 1st, I’ll be officially tapped out. I’m still working from home. Recent interviews have proven to be a waste of my time. I’ve submitted my application to god knows how many companies and when I do get call backs they’ll look at my portfolio, say I’m great, and then go with someone who has a Bachelors in something completely different. How come 10 years of experience in internet/media for a web design position is trumped by someone with a bachelors in science? :: confused ::
  • Canceled Plans – Sean and I decided to cancel our plans for our anniversary. Money is tight and even though everything is complimentary (room, food) we can’t afford to go up to Atlantic City. So I think we’re going to head down to Ocean City and have dinner then relax on the boardwalk. It’s not the most extravagant of plans but we’re living within our means.
  • Moving – I’m in the process of moving to a new data center. I was able to get half of the accounts moved over and now I’m patiently waiting on the other half. I absolutely loathe the company I was previously with and while I adore Tony as a person, and a hard worker, the company who’s filling out his paychecks is run by a bunch of useless fucks. So this move should void all of the downtime issues, run-time issues, and that stupid “page cannot be displayed” issue connected with WordPress installations that was written off as “Natural”. It’s not natural, your fucking data center can’t handle a simple freaking script! ::end rant::

So yea, that’s the last month in a nut-shell. Boring eh?

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.
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On a budget…

Friday, April 11th, 2008

For some reason I was really itching to get out of here last night. Sean and I had spent most of the afternoon in the local libraries in search for information on grant writing. Thankfully when I came home a letter from Dick put me in the right direction. The Rehoboth Library really had nothing that I needed. The Lewes one didn’t either. They told me that the books I was looking for were up in Dover and the rest were on the Deltech Georgetown campus. I really didn’t want to travel that far so I wound up heading over to Atlantic Books and picked up a book that’s a complete guide to grants. It not only gives me a simple breakdown of everything I’m going to need to do but it also gave me a few samples so I can understand what I’m going to need to have listed, and how to go about grouping it together properly. The problem for me isn’t FINDING the grant resources, I’ve found a program that gives me thousands of listings for places to apply to, the issue was the actual write-up. While the Internet is typically a great resource for things, every “How to write a grant” website that I came across told me that I needed to purchase their eBook or the sites linked me to other sites that just kept sending me in circles. Either way I have the book I need and a few emails from Dick explaining how to go about every aspect of it so I’m sure over the course of the next couple of weeks I’ll have my formal write-up and then have the ability to start submitting to different companies.

On our way home we stopped at the market and picked up some things for dinner. I was really insistant that we BBQ last night considering it was the first nice 70°F day that we’d had in a while. So burgers and dogs were really the only menu items last night but that’s OK because there’s plenty left over to do it again tonight if we really wanted to.

After dinner I had the urge to get out of the house and something was pulling me in the direction of Dollar Tree. I knew that we needed a few house-hold items but I was shocked to find out that everything I needed was on sale. Yes, the dollar store was having a sale. The thing I like about Dollar Tree is the fact that it’s a TRUE dollar store. No matter what you pick up it’s only going to be a buck. And thanks to no sales-tax in Delaware, if you get 13 items you pay $13 dollars.

I went in for the basics, carpet fresh, toilet cleaner, air freshner, tissues, and a few odds and ends to complete my need to redecorate the bedroom. I was shocked to find out that almost everything I wanted was 2 for $1. So the simple break down went like this:

2 carpet fresh – $1
2 tissues – $1
2 air freshners – $1
2 bowl cleaners – $1
2 mirrors – $2
1 lotion – $1
Total: $8

How awesome is that?

I then took a trip over to Walmart, unfortunately the dollar store was out of a few items that I needed. There were also some decent sales going on so I picked up the items I couldn’t get at the dollar store, all of which were on sale for a whopping $1! I also loaded up on a few odds and ends for Sean to get by, that gave me another $10 worth of items.

I came home with about 10 bags filled to the rim and only spent $18! If that’s not shopping on a budget, I don’t know what is.

Still Searching

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Trusted ToursI’m still kind of set on getting myself out of the house for a real vacation. Yes, going up to New Jersey at the end of the month doesn’t look like a possibility right now but I do hope to be able to get up there the following month depending on what’s going on with work and what not. I have been surfing around one of my numerous bookmarks, mainly Trusted Tours because you can find everything you need from them. You can basically get information on just about any major city/town of interest. I have it bookmarked as Things to do in Boston for when I actually get the chance to get up there again but my main focus is finding things to do in Orlando. I know that there are major attractions down there but I can only take so much if Disney World and Universal Studios before I get bored. It’s a goal of mine to get to know every aspect of Orlando and I think a great place to go for that info is Trusted Tours. They can even give you a few tips on basic sightseeing tours as well. They have a newsletter too.

I’m to a point now where I’m just itching to get out of here, honestly. I know that there is a lot of work to do but my stress levels are through the roof right now. I need a change of scenery, and I also have this urge to visit family. I think if I’m unable to get up to Jersey at the end of the month I may try and persuade Sean into going up to New York for a couple of days. I’ll have to base it on how my work schedule is though, I know his is filling up quite a bit as well now that he’s working for three people instead of the original one he’s been with for the last couple of years now. Jackie took him on board as a programmer, and a larger site that created a social networking script has taken him on for plugins and upgrades. Everything is working out pretty well for him right now, it’s just a shame that I’m only getting started on things. It’ll all work out in the end, I just think I’m going to have to spend a little more time down at the beach to clear my head. Right now they’re swamped because it’s a pretty warm day and since it’s a weekend all of the tourists are coming back to open up their houses and relax on the beach. I’m going to make a trip up north in hopes to find another beach that the DE residents in Sussex are sent to because of the lack of ability to get anywhere near the beaches we live by year round. It sucks having to go up to Kent county but if traveling is the only way to get an ounce of privacy while still being able to enjoy the beach then I guess it’s worth it.

Trusted Tours

Taking a Break

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Orlando, FL I’ve been working on saving up some money so Sean and I can go away at the end of the month. The hotel is complimentary, as is a lot of the amenities, it’s just the cost of gas and tolls to get up there, plus some minor spending on a slot machine or two if I actually choose to gamble. I can only do this if I can bring in another $800 in the next 10 days. Since I doubt (as of right now) that it’s actually going to happen I’ll just bank on the reservation until the end of next month and hopefully figure something out then.

It would be great if I could actually afford to look into Orlando Hotels. I’d love to get down to Florida. When you compare the weather to what we’ve been dealing with on the East Coast for the past week – it’d be nice to enjoy the warmth and sunshine for a few days – you know? Another section I’ve been looking into is Lake Buena Vista Hotels, at least it’s in Florida. It really doesn’t matter where I actually wind up going. I think it would just be nice to go on an official vacation sometime soon. Maybe one day we’ll be able to do it, for now it’s more like wishful thinking.

Orlando is the host of the 2008 American Urological Association Annual Meeting and staying at any of their gorgeous hotels will put you in the best location to attend this event. I’m sure anyone in the medical field could find it interesting. I’m not too sure if I’d go but who knows what the future holds. The Orlando Vista Hotel is located close to the entrance to the Downtown Disney Resort Area, it’s also just a half mile from Pleasure Island, and minutes to the Convention Center, SeaWorld, Universal Studios and the Florida Mall.

I’d love to go to SeaWorld, that’s a big trip for me. I’m really into anything Marine so I think that would be a great vacation spot for me. I’m a Dolphin fanatic, I’d love to swim with them one day. I just have to get rid of that severe Fish allergy of mine, even coming in contact with the water with a very small instance of Fish is enough to put me in the hospital. That wouldn’t make for such a great vacation.

OOh! It works!

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

I’m finally back in the office, my back is feeling up to sitting in this god awful chair. I’m playing around with Leopard, and Parallels Desktop because Sean was lucky enough to figure out what was going wrong with the routes we were taking. It required a lot of Linux editing and that’s not really in my field of expertise. He figured it out, the whole computer acted up for a little while and then he figured out how to fix that. Now everything seems to be running pretty smoothly. The major draw-back was my lack of ability to access my external hard drive. It turns on and the red light informs me that it’s “running” but then when it changes back to blue it doesn’t show the drive on either Leopard or XP and then if it does begin to view it on XP it says that I don’t have the proper permissions to get into the drive. With a major thanks to Jackie (my Mac guru) I was able to fix everything and now everything is up and running just fine.

On another bright note, Sean and I are going on vacation at the end of the month. We set a few financial goals for ourselves and if we can accomplish them by the 23rd then we’re going to keep our reservations for Harrah’s at the end of the month. If we’re unable to reach the goal then we’ll cancel the reservation and hang on until next month. The actual drive up there is the only thing that’s really going to cost us any money, it’s the cost of gas and a few tolls to pay. It’s still cheaper than taking the Ferry because even with the $37 Ferry ride we’re going to have to drive North for about an hour or so. It’s easier just to put gas in the car and get the hell out of here. The room itself is complimentary, and we’re lucky enough to have the new luxury suite available for two nights – absolutely free. Brand new hardwood floors, jacuzzi tubs and plasma TV’s – it’ll be a nice little get-away. After that there’s the pool to hang out in, no children permitted (they have to go to the teen pool) so I figure since we’re going mid-week there’s really going to be no one there so it’ll be possible to lay down and relax without dealing with screaming children or unruly drunks for that matter. I also have about $300 in cash that I can print out at the Kiosk and then of course there’s the food comps so we’re really not spending any of our personal money at all. Of course we’re going to want to Gamble but with all of the amenities that are available – I doubt I’ll be on the Casino floor very often. We need to get away to clear our heads, no dogs, no parents, just us. It’ll be pretty nice.

Time for a change…

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Since I spent so much time trying to get acidgloss.net back up and running, I decided that a little theme alteration was needed here. As far as I’m concerned, March is over. There are only a few days left and I already show my Irish pride with a tattoo so having the theme up for as long as I did, just proved I’m not into it anymore. I was also getting sick of the green. It reminds me of something I don’t have, money.

Today I was accepted for a contract/freelance position and once I can get all of the paperwork sent back, I hope to be able to get the ball rolling. I’m also still patiently waiting to hear something from the Interview last week. I assume it’s going to take a few weeks and that’s fine, it’s more the waiting that’s getting to me than the actual choice they make. I just want to know – you know?

I’ve been up since about 7am, so I’m basically vegging out on the couch at the moment. I’m too tired to move and hope to be able to crawl into bed soon. There are a few more things that I’m going to need to accomplish before that happens but it shouldn’t take me a lot of time.

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous! Sean and I spent some time down on the beach enjoying the 77°F (25°C) temperature.  While it was a pretty windy day, there was still an over-abundance of sunshine keeping us nice and toasty.  It took a while to get down there though, with such a hot day the beach was absolutely swamped.  I had to go over a few blocks to park because my usual side-street was packed to the max.  I was close to pulling into someone’s drive-way but I wasn’t going to take that route, I finally did get myself into a spot so that was good enough for me.

For a while I convinced myself that I’d be spending a lot of time at the beach this summer.  However, considering the way it was loaded today, and it’s not even summer yet, I think I’m going to setup a nice set of chairs in the backyard and tan that way.  It’s my hope to be working through the summer, so my weekends will be filled with downtime in the yard, that’s not such a bad plan as long as I maintain my regular weekend schedule, right?

Another goal for the summer is to pack enough cash away so I can get myself into school this Fall.  I know I’ve said this a lot but it’s a big goal of mine and at this point, nothing is going to stand in my way.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and I’ll get back to my $5k a month income and be able to accomplish it a lot sooner than I’d originally planned.  I can handle two full-time jobs, I have a laptop for the at-home stuff so that can come out to the yard with me!

Moving along…. After the beach we made a quick run to the grocery store, we were close to completely being out of food so we picked up the essentials and they’re going to have to last for a while.  I’m breaking my diet and going to live on pasta for the next couple of days, only because that’s all we can afford right now.  I don’t like being in a hole, but if $1200 a month wasn’t going out to bills it would be easier to maintain things.

In any event, it’s knocking on 11pm and my eyes are close to almost completely closed, time for bed!

Jobs and Upgrades

Friday, March 28th, 2008

It’s been a pretty hectic week.  I’m still waiting on word from my Interview last Friday.  I called on Monday and was told that they’re still conducting interviews so I should try back in a few days, I just called back about 20 minutes ago and they’re still doing interviews.  I’m a very patient person so maybe if I just wait it out maybe something good will come of it.

Sunday went well, dinner turned out OK.  By Monday evening Karen’s sister had come back from her Easter trip to Atlantic City.  Minus getting lost in the casino, and having her two younger kids with her bothering just about everyone, she did at least enjoy herself.  Her and Karen are going back up there on the 3rd, just an overnight.  Sean and I would also like to go this month because I have the entire month comped but I’m not going to stress about it.  My father is supposedly going up at the end of the month when he’s done with radiation theropy, I’d like to meet up with him but I’m going up to NY in June for his 60th birthday anyway – I don’t know if I’ll be able to make those two trips with the way finances are looking right now.

The rest of the week I’ve just been putting in resumes, contacting a few leads and then going from there.  I did spend a lot of time with the Mac in the last few days.  On Monday Sean asked me if I had any kind of attachment to the keyboard that came with my iMac, I personally prefer using everything that comes standard but that’s based completely on my being anal retentive about organization and matchy-matchy things.  However, I also know he uses the Mac quite a bit now that he’s working on Flash related things so for his comfort I went to hook up my old Logitech Multimedia Keyboard.  It hasn’t been touched in about six months so it was looking pretty disgusting.  So I decided to pop out the screws, pop off all of the keys and then clean it.  I had a whole system going, all of the keys were soaking in warm water to melt off any of the caked-on dirt.  It was primarily lotion and then on top of that it was dust so they just didn’t look good.  Upon taking off the face-plate I saw more dust and grime than I’d ever had in any keyboard before – that’s what I get for leaving it under the desk for so long.  So I took about two hours to clean it out, during that process (where it now looks brand new) I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard.  The iMac came with Tiger but it had the upgrade DVD so I made it a point to process that.

My goal after I completed the upgrade was to install Parallels Desktop 3 so I can also run Windows on it.  I didn’t get that accomplished until yesterday, I was having a lot of trouble getting it moving because there’s a hack that you have to run in order for it to properly work on Leopard that they haven’t worked into the program yet.  So I gave up and Sean went ahead and did it for me when things finally worked the way they were supposed to.  I thought he crashed the Mac at some point considering it kept booting in excess for about an hour.  I wound up falling asleep in the bedroom for a few hours, well the whole night really.  He managed to get everything in working order, including the installation of Windows XP.  I then slept the rest of the night and as of 7am, I’ve been wide awake.

I haven’t gotten in there to play around yet, I’m on the laptop in the living room at the moment.  My back isn’t feeling to great so sitting in that god awful chair just isn’t a possibility at this point in time.  I’ll go in there later after I’ve had some time to stretch it out, there are quite a few programs that I’m looking to get back and you can only use them on Windows, hence the dual setup.  The thing I like about this one is the fact that it’s not a dual-boot option, I can run Windows inside of OS X by just having it boot to it’s own little window.  So basically I’m using a browser with Windows inside of it, I like that idea.  In the future I’ll install Vista, I have the serial from the other desktop in the house, I do like the fact that I can have many instances of the Parallel setup so I can run as many different operating systems as the Mac will handle.  I’m going to stop at Vista though, I see no point in running anything else.  I’m even considering setting up a second monitor so I can run Windows on one side and Mac on the other, I think that’ll work out pretty well for me.

For now I’ve got a few emails to send out and a few leads to check on.  Guess I should get my ass in gear.

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.

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.

Happy Valentines Day

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

I don’t typically do this but I was in the mood for photo posting today so that’s primarily what this entry will be.

It’s Valentine’s Day and Sean being the romantic he is typically doesn’t make a big deal out of things, publicly. We discussed what was going to happen this year and based on finances we decided that spending a quiet evening at home is the route we’re going to take. So tonight I’m going to be making dinner, and last night I went bake-happy and made cupcakes with cute little hearts on them and dual-flavor icing just to keep it interesting. Two dozen very quickly disappeared and that’s only because 12 of them went to work with Karen this morning for the guys in the warehouse, one is a sugar fanatic and wants them at any chance that he can get. I also snapped a few picks of the cupcakes last night, they really did turn out pretty cute.

Valentines Day 2008

Then of course there’s the extreme sweetness of Sean.

Valentines Day 2008

Valentines Day 2008

So as you can tell by the first image, I woke up to a very sweet gesture from Sean. The bag was filled with all kinds of sweet goodies. A dancing dog, I :heart: U milk chocolate, a singing rose and a very sweet card that almost brought me to tears. I wasn’t expecting this, I will say that. I figured we’d just have a quiet evening at home and he’d give me a card or something, considering that’s where I’d lost him in the store yesterday. I feel kind of bad though, I only got him a box of chocolate and a card. Yet, at the same time, I’ve also made him cupcakes, and I’m doing a pretty big spread with dinner tonight so when it comes down to it I think we’re basically even on this.

In any event, I’d like to wish all of you a Happy Valentines day, I hope you’re able to spend a wonderful day with your loved-ones.

Extra Work

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

I’ve been working extra hard on getting my totals up for the month. I slacked off for about a week and now I’m so far behind I wonder if I’ll make enough to cover my taxes this year. There are a few big write-offs though, so that’ll certainly help me out. With everything factored in I owe about $1200 or-so to taxes. After that I have about $1500 worth of write-offs including two computers, monitors and other electronics that I needed in order to even work during 2007. So hopefully that will balance everything out.

I’m dealing with a flood-zone at the moment. It’s been raining pretty hard for the last five hours or so and while everyone north of DE is enjoying snowfall or some kind of mixture, I’m dealing with horrible drainage and the lack of ability to see the drive-way because it’s under water right now. I hope it lets up soon. While I do love a good rainy day, it’s bringing me down today and I just don’t like it.

Once I accomplish getting all of my work done today I’ll be in the kitchen for a while. It desperately needs to be cleaned because we’re having house-guests this weekend, and after I’m done with that I’m going to be making about 4 dozen valentines cupcakes. Two dozen are going to work with Karen and the other two are staying here as my treat to Sean. Tomorrow night I’m going nuts on dinner too, it’s just cheaper to have V-Day at home this year, so I’ll pull some chicken out and make all kinds of sides for it and the rest is history.

Valentine’s Day – Fast Approaching

Monday, February 11th, 2008

VdayThere are only a few days before Valentine’s day and I know for sure that Sean and I aren’t doing very much this year. We were originally going to go out to dinner but then a few bills sprung up and we really just can’t afford things like that at this point in time. We’re both working our asses off to make ends meet but with over $3000 due in taxes (between us) there’s not enough to cover half of that in our bank account right now. We’re literally broke and until I hear something about any of the resumes I submitted in the last few weeks I really don’t know what we’re going to do. Last year he was sweet though, he’s a romantic at heart (most days – at least) and I woke up to beautiful valentines roses that morning and couldn’t have been happier. He also threw in a massive teddy bear as well. This year it’s going to be me cooking dinner for the two of us and hoping things in the house stay calm enough so that we can enjoy dinner without any major interruptions.

I wonder…

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

I just downloaded this new program, Mars Edit, I’m trying it out for 30-days to see if I like it or not. It allows me to log into all of my blogs by only using one program. Now while there is an option for “WordPress” I did experience some trouble with getting things to publish to a self-hosted WordPress blog. It very easily can connect to wordpress.com though, I know that much.

Anyway…there’s a pretty big sale going on at Kmart this weekend. King sheet sets are as low as $20 which is pretty sweet. Target finally shipped my duvet set this past week as well. It was about damn time considering I ordered it over a month ago. But I figured it was going to take a while considering pre-orders and what not. It’s a tan duvet set that comes with two shams. At only $30 I have to say that’s a bargain considering the $75 duvet that’s currently on the bed. My mistake was in purchasing an Ivory color to brighten up the room. It certainly makes things seem much brighter, but every little speck of dust and dirt shows up on it. And we had a previous sheet set on there that was fleece so you could clearly see all of the little green balls building up on all sides of it as well. Drove me nuts!

Sean’s currently playing Halo so who knows when we’re going to get out of here. Either way it’s time to get ready to cross the street…heh.

Slacking Off

Saturday, February 9th, 2008

I’ve been slacking on just about everything lately.¬† I finished the template for my interview but I have to say I really don’t like anything past the main header image.¬† I don’t know what’s wrong with my creativity lately.¬† I used to have inspiration busting out of the seams but it just isn’t that way anymore.¬† I’ve been down to the beach pretty frequently over the course of the last few weeks and I have to say it gave me enough creativity as one would require to tie their shoes.¬† I wear slip ons 90% of the time, so you can imagine my annoyance.

Right now I’m staring at a blank screen in Photoshop in hopes to be able to come up with a new template for AGn Designs, the current one is bothering the crap out of me and even surfing around template related sites for ideas – I still can’t come up with anything.¬† While everything looks great in my little bookmark folder of favorite templates, when you start merging things together and doing it for yourself – it just doesn’t come out the way you’d really want it to.

There’s really nothing going on on the ‘net either, same BS different day as far as blogs are concerned, there’s nothing interesting in the news either.¬† Something tells me this is just going to be one of those down days where nothing’s really accomplished.¬† I would like to head down to the beach but since it’s a bit warmer than usual I assume that it’s going to be packed and that’s really not worth it – I’d prefer peace and quiet instead of barking dogs and rowdy children.

I’d like to clean the office up today but Sean has a “day off” so he’s more than likely going to be playing Halo or Assassins Creed for the entire day.¬† Either way he’ll be in the way so getting a vacuum in here is going to be damn near impossible.¬† I’m sure a fight will break out between someone and he’ll head to bed to go to sleep to get away from it – then I can get the vacuum in here and get some shit done.¬† My desk is in shambles and cleaning it up before I sit down and get my taxes done is pretty important to me.¬† I owe money this year, I know that already.¬† Unfortunately there’s no money to pay it with.¬† I may wind up having to have someone do my taxes for me, just so I can do some kind of “pay with installments” option.¬† I’m sure I owe about $1500 (at least) considering my income last year on just paid blogging alone, I didn’t even factor in the business aspect of things.¬† This is just going to be HEAPS of freaking fun, I can sense it already.