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Headache Central

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

I’m not sure if it’s from my previous stomach ache today or if it’s got something to do with all of the chaos in the house right now, but my head is throbbing.¬† It’s not my usual eye headache from looking at the screen, it’s kind of bouncing around all over.¬† I’ve got myself setup in the bedroom with my laptop.¬† There are a few things for me to accomplish today but that’s really nothing major.¬† You’ll see a few posts here and there on other domains but that’s about it.¬† I do hope to get around to finishing the template I started for acidgloss.net but I’ll get to that when I’m in the mood to.

As of right now I’m flipping through channels in hopes to find something to watch.¬† Unfortunately I don’t see that happening considering there’s nothing on TV on Tuesday’s now that House and Nip/Tuck are off the air.¬† Stupid writers strike!

So for now I’ve got Jackie keeping me company on AIM, I’m going through email and also responding to a few job postings looking for resumes.¬† Hopefully something will spring up, because I’m unsure of what to do anymore.

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Posted in Daily, Family, Work | 3 Comments »

Talk about surprise.

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

I’ve frantically ran around the house to get some final cleaning in.¬† Why?¬† About 10pm we got a phone call from Karen’s sister stating that she’s been on the road since about 5pm this afternoon to get down here.¬† Unfortunately she got lost in Eastern Pennsylvania so now that she’s back on the right track she’s probably going to be here within the next couple of hours.

So I got all of the dishes done, straightened up the living room since they’ll all be sleeping in here (Her and both kids) and then got the bathroom “reorganized” because her son likes to rearrange things.¬† He wound up redoing the neighbors back-yard the last time he was down here, if he’ll go that far who can only imagine what he’ll do with my make up?

I do still need to run the vacuum over the floor but I’m going to wait until Karen gets off the phone with her.¬† I may have to run over to the supermarket but I’m not sure of that yet, we’ll see what happens within the next hour or so.¬† I don’t even know where she is in relation to here at this point – hopefully she’s at least on the Jersey turnpike!

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Posted in Family | Comments Closed

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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Posted in Bella, Boyfriend, Family, Pets, Work | 4 Comments »

WHY IS THE WORLD SO SCREWED UP!?

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

It’s another one of those days where everything that could possibly go wrong…can.

I woke up this morning with the intent of just going to Wal-mart and picking up everything I need for Bella and myself and then just coming home and relaxing for a while until Lost comes on tonight.

About two hours ago Karen called with the test results for Princess, they believe she has Cushings disease but will need to admit her on Monday to run some more tests and figure things out. If she does have it then there’s a 50/50 chance that she’ll live or need to be put down, it depends on how far along she is with the disease. So that was upsetting blow number two today. The first one was the call from the vet stating that Candy’s ashes were ready and we can pick them up when we’re ready to.

A few moments ago while I was contemplating life and hoping to hear something from any job that doesn’t require being a cashier part-time, the phone rang out of no where and it was Karen’s sister who needed Sean to head down to the store and give her a jump because her car died a few moments after she got a phone call from her boyfriend stating that his mother had passed away this morning.

There are only two months out of the year that effect me the most in life. February has always been a bad one for me but the final “bad moment” up until putting Candy down was having my last moments with Joe alive without any outside influence. We’re coming up to the two-year mark of his death and I’m already in a daze about that, so now adding to the fact that there’s a 50/50 chance that Princess will be put down around the same time…my nerves are shot….beyond shot.

I fully understand that the world has it’s way of balancing itself out but why does everything need to happen at once? While Bella is my baby I’ve grown very close to Princess. She’s the ultimate lap dog and I love her as much as anyone could. Candy I adored but since she was so much older than Princess and Bella she really just didn’t want to be bothered so I never had any “bonding” moments with her that were memorable, the only time I’ve ever held her was when we were going to the vet for one of her random bad days that would come out of no where. Princess and I have fallen asleep together lord knows how many times on the couch and I’ve given her more personal-time than I have Candy, and her death upset me but Princess would be like losing my own pet, even though she’s more “everyone’s” dog than Candy was.

Why does everything happen at once? I just don’t get it.

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Posted in Family, Pets | 14 Comments »

Happy New Year!

Monday, December 31st, 2007

Getting up here was interesting.¬† The car was over packed with presents for everyone.¬† For the most part, everything gift wise (including our luggage) fit nicely into the trunk.¬† The backseat was filled with a computer, monitor, a lot of booze and a gift for Karen’s sister.¬† The laptop was tucked behind the seat, it was almost the perfect placement for it considering there was no room for anything else.¬† Going home should be pretty easy considering gifts were minimal this year.¬† It’s not that they were cheap, it was mainly gift cards and other small items that can easily fit in the trunk so that we don’t have to have an overloaded car on the drive back.

There is about an hour and a half left of 2007 and Sean (as well as everyone else in the house) is fast asleep.¬† I’ll wake him up in about a half hour so we can head over to my aunts house.¬† He’s been sick and the allergy meds that he’s been taking have knocked him out.¬† I feel bad about waking him up but he also understands that I haven’t gotten to spend any time with my aunt in quite a while, so he shouldn’t be too annoyed by being woken up.

I went over to my mother’s last night, we had dinner and she cut my hair.¬† It’s way too short for me but everything she cut off of me was dead end, more than six inches worth so it’s going to take some getting used to.¬† Unfortunately my hair is so thick that it’s borderline afro unless I flat iron it, so while I once thought that shorter hair meant less maintenance, I’ve certainly been proven wrong with my new do.¬† It took about 30 minutes to get it straight with my new wet/dry iron from Remmington.¬† At first I was a little apprehensive about getting one that dries your hair while it straightens but it’s actually pretty decent.¬† It would typically take me about 45 minutes to blow my hair out and then another half hour or so to get it to the desired straightness.¬† Either way the time has dramatically been cut down, that’s all that matters.

When we got back here I wound up relaxing on the couch for a little while and passed out from about 12 to 2.¬† Then Sean woke me up to say he was going to bed, I followed and wound up sleeping until about 2 this afternoon.¬† I guess that had something to do with my lack of sleep for the last few days so catching up on things wasn’t so bad.¬† It’s not like I had any work to do today so there was no real reason for me to wake up.

The original plan for today was to go out east to see his aunt and deliver some gifts, but we decided that the traffic just wasn’t worth it on New Years Eve, so either tomorrow or Wednesday we’ll make the trip out there and that’ll be accomplished.¬† I’m probably heading downstairs to visit with my grandmother and aunt, and see how my grandfather’s doing, he has about a week left on his radiation and I heard he hasn’t been feeling very well.¬† So while it’s nice to see family, the situation kind of sucks.¬† But he’s knocking on 70’s door and people just have to accept that everyone ages, no matter how much it sucks.

So we stayed here today, had pizza for dinner¬† (which made Sean happy) and have basically been flipping through channels for the last few hours until it’s time to get out of here.¬† The only thing that seems to be on is Family Guy, and while I love the show I was hoping on seeing something interesting but no big deal.

My aunt is doing OK, thank you for all of the little notes and I’ve received.¬† She was a little shaken up and a bit sore but it’s been a few days and she seems to be doing OK.¬† I’ll know more tonight though.¬† I need to get all of my packages together, there are about 8 boxes going over to her house – plus a bottle of wine.¬† At least the car won’t be over loaded, everything should fit fine in the trunk this time.

In any event, I hope everyone has a Happy New Year.  Hopefully everyone can stick to their resolutions this year,  I know I will be.

Happy New Year!

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Posted in Boyfriend, Daily, Family, Friends | 6 Comments »

Busy with Resolutions?

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

I’ve been keeping myself busy to make up for the financial loss of the holiday season. I’ve gotten a lot of posting done, a lot of design work and even some personal things as well. I hope to be able to bring in the New Year with friends and family and not have to worry about any actual WORK until the 2nd or so. I’m heading up to New York this weekend and unfortunately got a phone call tonight that set me in a tail spin. My aunt was in a pretty bad car accident, her car is more than likely totaled. I did get in touch with her tonight though, she says that she’s fine, but she’s also a stubborn Irish woman so who knows if that’s actually the case. I know she’s a little sore from the accident but she’s assured me, a few times, that she’s absolutely fine with just a few bumps and bruises. I found out from my sister, she called me from work and told me I need to get back up to NY to see her, I’m thinking something is very wrong but a second phone call to verify information told me that I can wait until Saturday.

I went to the DMV yesterday to get my ID changed over, I’m officially a Delaware resident. I was apprehensive about surrendering my NY ID because I was unsure of the wait time for a new ID card. In NY you go through the motions and then you wait a few days and it shows up in the mail. In DE, however, the card is instantly given to you so I don’t have to worry about not having proper identification on me when I’m traveling this weekend. My next big task is to get a car and some insurance down here and the rest is cake. So that’s one goal for the year.

Another goal is heading back to school. I’ve decided on DeVry and luckily with my situation I’m eligable for full financial aid from 2-3 different resources. I just need to make sure to get all of the paperwork in around the first of the year. It’s only going to be an associates but it’ll carry over for when I’m going for my bachelors (maybe masters) somewhere down the road. So on top of an 8 hour work day, I’m adding a 3-4 hour school day. Then the other 12 hours can basically be spent relaxing and sleeping. Not too shabby – I know I can handle it.

On top of the first two goals, quitting smoking is certainly on the list this year. With a lack of health insurance and increasing lung issues, it’s time to stop beating the dead horse and moving on. I picked up “The Easy Way To Stop Smoking” because I’m a reader and figured a book could tell me more than those damn “Cold Turkey” techniques. I have to say that I can understand why so many people have read this book over the last 20 years. I completed it in about 3 hours and I’m confident that once I begin his methods I’ll succeed in quitting for good. Cold turkey and the patches and that horrible gum – none of it is worth it to me. You quit when YOU are ready to quit and you consider yourself a “Non Smoker” the second you extinguish your last cigarette. I’ll pick a day and then go from there. As of right now there’s a little too much stress in the air for me to pull this off completely. I know you’re sitting there like “Ha! Talk about another excuse” but that’s just how it is for me. I’ve got the little monster in my brain that won’t shut up and I’m going to have to slowly learn how to stop listening to him, that’s all.

And then of course there’s the weight-loss resolution that everyone has. The difference is I’m already ON a diet plan (and doing quite well, thank you) so it’s basically just keeping the concentration, continuing with my small-portion meals during the day and going on from there. Even Sean is going to get in on it with me, who knows – maybe by this summer we’ll spend more time at the beach than in the back yard – heh.

In any event, I hope everyone has a Happy New Year, I won’t be around until Tuesday afternoon so hopefully everyone has a fun weekend. Be safe!

Posted in Boyfriend, Daily, Delmarva, Dieting, Family, Friends, New York, School | 7 Comments »

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…)

Posted in Bella, Boyfriend, Daily, Family, Pets | 5 Comments »

Eventually I’ll plan for real.

Friday, December 14th, 2007

?While I’m not really searching for anything in particular, I just like to keep ideas fresh in my mind, and valuable sites bookmarked to use at a later date. I’m not planning my wedding because I’m unsure of when exactly I’d like to even have it. As of right now, we’re both aware of the fact that we’re going to be together for an extremely long time and that is good enough for us at this point in time. Sure, it would be nice to have a huge family wedding but I know that would instantly be a hassle because of the Catholic family traditions that I don’t personally agree with. A church wedding is more than likely not going to happen for me, while Sean went through some levels of Religion (he went to Catholic school) my father made it a point not to force us into it the way he was. He hated going and if we truly wished to go then it would be our choice, not his. My grandmother wasn’t really too happy with that being the strong follower that she was, but she accepted the fact that he’s entitled to raise his children whichever way he pleased. On my mothers side, they didn’t care too much. I know my mother never liked going, or at least I think that was the case. Either way not having that background has instantly cast me out of the whole Church wedding and at this late in the game I don’t feel going back for classes is even remotely important. Why force ourselves into an uncomfortable situation just to make everyone else happy about OUR relationship? I’ll be fine with a justice of the peace on a beach. Down here it’s not hard to find, we’re in a beach town and they’re preformed on numerous occasions considering it’s up the block from the court house anyway.

Anyway, I found a resource to bookmark – 1weddingsource.com – they give you everything that you could possibly need. It’s a directory that connects brides with vendors in your area, it also provides tools and articles to help users through the “wedding planning journey”. If you live in the Buffalo area you can just look into Buffalo Weddings. Unfortunately I was only able to locate two places for Delaware (Dover and Wilmington) but I was unable to locate the kinds of resources (in those areas) that I was looking for. More and more this is looking to be a Long Island wedding. I know a lot of the resources available for Long Island weddings. Plus I have a huge family to help me out with the odds and ends. My mother has done the invitations for family and friends as far as the eye can see and has beautiful calligraph handwriting. My grandmother is the queen of party favors and with 7 grandchildren in the family, it’ll be a full wedding party – that’s for sure.

There’s a lot to do, I’m just unsure of when I’ll be ready to start.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Family, Randomage | 7 Comments »

I’m planning ahead.

Friday, December 14th, 2007

Christmas is fast approaching and luckily I’ve completed the bulk of my shopping early. Knowing that there’s going to be a rush at almost every store for the next few weeks, I’ll admit that a lot of my shopping has been completed online. I ordered my father’s gifts from TigerDirect, my sisters from Overstock and then a mix of Target, Walmart, Kmart and other fine retail stores join the list at completing the holiday season for me.

I’m heading up to New York on the 30th, I’d like to spend time with some of my family so I’m more than likely going to be staying up there for about a week. My mother is going to give me the hair cut that I so desperately need, my sister will fix the dye job that Garnier screwed up and I get to spend time with my father as well. For New Years Eve we’re trading off. Last year we went to Sean’s aunts house and this year I’d like to spend time with my aunt. Her house has a lot less people but I like relaxing on holidays, parties don’t really appeal to me. Maybe it’s my sensitive hearing, who knows. A lot of background noise can really get to me after a little while.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Family | 1 Comment »

Ehh…

Friday, December 14th, 2007

Things didn’t go too well in Atlantic City this weekend.¬† While we did have a lot of fun, all of the money that we went up there to gamble with, quickly left our pockets.¬† Now the Casino is the proud owner of one of my weekly paychecks.¬† It’s unfortunate but we did go up there just to have fun.¬† The room was comped, I did spend about $30 on coffee but having a Starbucks in the Casino really didn’t help me.¬† I met up with my father on Saturday after we arrived, he’d been there since Wednesday and wasn’t doing too well himself.¬† He stayed at Harrah’s the whole time, didn’t even leave the casino.¬† I did do well at Harrah’s, but since I was staying at Showboat I put more money into them then Harrah’s so even breaking even wasn’t an option.

I’m hoping to go back for Valentines Day, I’m sure I’ll have comps for something.¬† Hopefully we’ll have everything figured out before then though.¬† Instead of looking into a house we’re now looking into a rental, we just need to find something in our immediate price range.¬† :: crosses fingers ::

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Posted in Boyfriend, Family, Randomage | Comments Closed

Absolute Catastraphy

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in Annoyed, Daily, Family | 2 Comments »

I’m done…

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

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

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

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

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

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Posted in Boyfriend, Family, Work | 1 Comment »

The Joy of the Holiday Season

Monday, November 26th, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Narf?

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in Boyfriend, Delmarva, Family | 4 Comments »

Clearing up confusion…

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to rotate some more laundry.

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Can’t kick the funk…

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night all (well, morning to the normal sleepers)

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