Sean was super sweet this year and bought me a 17″ MacBook Pro. As much as I absolutely love it, being as it’s everything I’ve ever wanted – I’m also upset. See, work has blown up and I’m back to working on five different sites at once – trying to pace myself through them instead of rushing through them this way I don’t royally mess something up. With that, I’ve yet to be able to really be able to enjoy this new lil super gadget. I’m also having one of hell of a time patching some programs, no serial numbers I come across are actually working the way they’re supposed to and it’s driving me nuts to go have to repeat the steps numerous times every time I boot a program. I even pulled the numbers off of the iMac (which work fine) but can’t have the same result here. I just wish there was a physical ‘patch’ file the way there is on Windows but I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to get around it in the future. For now I’ll just deal with it, and usually it only happens when I need to open the programs so just getting past them once and leaving the program open should pretty much do the trick for the time being.
I was very surprised to even receive the gift, honestly. Our goal for the year was to pay down and pay off as much of our credit card debt as possible so that we can start banking something into savings to be used towards a home purchase later on down the road (yea, we’re back at that step in our lives together). So you can imagine my surprise when I dozed off one night and he woke me up by hopping into bed and pulling the super cuteness of “Guess what I just bought you?” Then the “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you since it’s not V-day yet” conversation. So I got it out of him, which is never hard cause he loves to blab a good secret and knows I’m not big on being surprised. (I’ve got OCD and I’m anal retentive about doing things a certain way – bad combo if you want to surprise me LOL) So he told me that he signed up for another credit card and was approved for financing on the Macbook, and there was still more than enough left over for him to be able to order an iPad for himself. The company has six months deferred payment and I’m not sure on the deferred interest but we anticipate having everything banked to be able to pay it off in July anyway. So of course I was surprised, and super happy and I’m still super happy because it’s everything I’d ever wanted and more. They aren’t making them this large anymore and I don’t care what anyone says – no matter what resolution you put things on the overall size of the screen does make a huge difference. I’m not just putzing around on Facebook on my Macbook to be trendy – I’m utilizing it for everything Adobe – and it will really come in handy for school in the future too considering all the work I’m anticipating for the next semester anyway. Next on the docket there is all Flash related. I’m so into jQuery right now that Flash is probably going to completely throw me off my game but at least I’ll be able to recreate some of the funky flash-based headers I’ve been seeing around the net to be used for future clients – the only upside but whatevs.
So the mac got here last Friday and it hasn’t really left my side. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in bed with it because I’ve got my fancy tray table to keep it sturdy and give me an actual spot for the mouse pad that doesn’t require it sitting on top of the blanket (not sure if you’ve ever tried to draw a straight line in Photoshop while your mouse is on the blanket but it’s NOT easy). Sean, a few years ago, bought me a tray table for like $20 from Walmart, and it’s been my buddy every single time I’ve been working from bed because of my various back problems. In this case, however, working in bed is actually causing the back problems because I’m not properly supported and sitting up the way I would be in a regular office chair. The issue with that is the fact that my office chair is leaning like a bitch and I might have to actually cash in the warranty and pick up a new one anyway. So for now, I’m setup in the kitchen until I can knock out a substantial amount of work tonight. Too much needs to get done for me to worry about how often I need to stand up and stretch before I can jump back into something. That’ll throw me off my game and I can’t afford that right now.
The other upside to the month is a long-overdue client finally paid up and I was woken up yesterday to Sean sneaking around the room and opened my eyes to him saying “Are you super comfy sleeping in our bed?” Of course I was until he started talking to me (can’t function without coffee or a cig in the morning – don’t talk to me unless I’ve been outside for at least 10 minutes). He went on to say that the client paid up and he just paid off the bed. GE Credit must be super pissed at me because I’ve never paid an ounce of interest on my purchases before. LOL. So yea, even though we bought it in November for about $1600, it’s completely paid off as of February and there was 6 months deferred interest on it so that wouldn’t have kicked in for a few months anyway. MWAHAHA!!
So yea, in a nutshell it’s been a pretty good year financially so far. I’m not one of those people who chooses a ‘health kick’ as a new years resolution – I know my lack of a ‘drive’ and stick with the stuff that I know I can control. Since money makes the world go round, of course that would be the one to focus on anyway. So, our goal for this year was to pay off as much as humanly possible and so far we’ve paid off about $2,000 worth of credit cards since Jan 1st. My only issue is there is still people who owe us a substantial amount of money and if they would get off their butts to pay us back we could continue to pay down our debt, but they’re pussy footing around and that’s just enough to be annoying for us.
It’s our ultimate goal to only have the car, insurance and the cellphone bill going out every month. Hopefully by August that will be a possibility so we can start pushing all of the usual money that we shell out every month to bills straight into savings. The goal is to have about $25,000 in savings to put down on a house, and of course I’m super picky about how I want the house to look and the features it has because an in-law suite is mandatory for me. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a separate dwelling, even the option to setup the basement as kind of an apartment for my dad is all that matters to me. I was looking in the general Rehoboth area, but I’ve found a few down in Selbyville and up in Dover that I fell head over heals for and now at least have a starting point. The requirements are in-law type of a suite/dwelling – a pool (or room for one) – no HOA cause I think they’re assholes and a gourmet kitchen with plenty of room for huge family dinners because that’s what us guineas do.
Now it’s just the matter of coming up with the money for it, so I guess it’s time to get off of blogging and get back into Dreamweaver.
PS: For the last 6 months I’ve wanted to come up with a new them for krissy.nu, I may wind up just converting to the 2012 WP theme and slapping a header image in there – who knows. But one will be coming soon, I promise!
While that can get a little annoying, it also worked to our benefit this year. All family members were well taken care of for Christmas, Sean and I did spend quite a bit of money on ourselves but it was on things that we both wanted (for a while) and desperately needed. We know the difference between Wants and Needs – unlike anyone under the age of 16 these days. We both were in desperate need of new desks. I had my Mac sitting on a Rubbermaid folding table and being as the 27-inch iMac (2011) weighs about 40 pounds, it was starting to sink down in the middle. To avoid it completely caving in, we went out and got me a new desk. It’s a super nice one, with plenty of storage and it’s even a little bigger than the previous folding table so I actually got the chance to organize things where I can still completely function without any issues at all. Obviously after Sean spent 7 hours putting this thing together (one warped piece was throwing EVERYTHING off) he gladly took a little nap. I decorated the drawers with dollar store shelf liner so that they can list a super long time without getting destroyed. There’s more than enough room for the work phone so my boss can stay on my butt too heh. I had it across the room next to the TV because we didn’t have a long enough Ethernet chord, but that was taken care of with the addition of a ZyXEL wireless switch that now sits behind my monitor. It supposedly boosts the Wifi in the house, but turns the Wifi into an actual plugged in connection as well, so I’ve got the phone plugged into it and if I needed to I could plug a printer in to it. It was actually strong enough of a feed to handle Sean’s XBOX 360 for a few weeks as well, so obviously it works how it’s supposed to.
Sean, after my desk was put together, began increasingly becoming annoyed with his desk. After drilling into him that he spends way too much time at his desk and needs a new one…. we headed back to Staples a little over a week later (this past weekend actually) to pick up a new desk for him. The one he’s been using for years was a typical students desk with the metal legs, the pull-out keyboard and the thin table top. One you’d see in college students dorm, basically. So it was creaking like all holy hell and we wound up replacing that one as well. He found a nice wide desk that he was in love with, but it unfortunately was not going to fit in the room so he went with one that was closer to size (in comparison to mine). He’s in love with it as well. It’s very nice dark wood with a nice sturdy base, some drawers – finito.
Either way, we both were playing with the Tablet for a little while and found out when browsing through the Settings to get all of the stats that it was now possible (with Android – Ice Cream) to have multiple users. This sparked our interest almost instantly, and we both looked at eachother and I was like “I want”, he said “Go get it” (cause he’s fricken awesome) and while I was pulling the car around (cause he was picking up his desk the same day) he paid for both. Turned into an expensive shopping trip on our parts, but we walked out of there with a want, and a need. 
While he was in the Bedroom for a few hours setting up his new desk, I was prepping the house for Christmas. I did more baking in the past few days than I ever thought possible. Everything from cookies, to breads, to brownies – you name it, I probably baked it. I went all out for Christmas this year, because I actually had more room to do it. I know that sounds a little weird but it’s true. A huge living room and a big footprint in reference to the front end of the house, things just kind of happened. The baking was really just phase two, we’d spent quite some time decorating prior to my even pulling the flour out of the cabinet. So the tree was decorated, the bulk of the outdoors was draped in white lights and the rest of the house had random little touches here and there. Thankfully, minus today, there was really no wet weather going on outside so my garland didn’t get all mucky and was nice and clean for Christmas. I was also really happy with the tree in the living room. With the combination of Karen’s ornaments and mine everything kind of came together that worked out really nicely.
I also got him some new Happy Feet, this is a brand that we were in love with long before Snooki put it on MTV. I’ve always had a pair, and so has he and his were worn to the point that his toes were going to start popping through the bottom. Knowing how comfy they are I changed it up a little bit and got him the “All Around” ones, they look like real sneakers and there’s about an inch-thick rubber sole on the bottom of them. They’re better than my usual outdoor slippers so of course I’ll have to pick up a pair for myself in the future but for now this was all about him and that’s what he got. So that was one pair, and instead of getting him the standard color variations I decided to take a look under the “Animals” section and got him the most ridiculous ones I could find – and his favorite animal – the Penguins. Watching him walk around in these is more amusing than the slippers themselves, but they bring a smile to just about everyone’s face so it was more than worth it.
The thing I was surprised about, however, was the ViewSonic 24-inch Monitor that was under the tree. I’ve been using a 17-inch monitor as my “Email Screen” for the past couple of months and it was working out pretty well for me. I kept my email completely on that window and when I was actually in Photoshop or Dreamweaver I would just load project free TV and watch television right on the desk, no complaints at all. So you can imagine my surprise when Sean upgraded me to a much larger screen. This was one of those items that wasn’t on my wants, or my needs – which then turns into a complete and total surprise. And that wraps up Christmas Eve.
I like to do little things for just about every holiday and since I haven’t made any candy in a while I figured Valentines Day was the absolute perfect excuse for it. So I melted down some chocolate and filled molds and put everything into cute little baggies and I have about 4 pounds of candy to keep on my desk at work for anyone who wants it. I’ve also got a few just for home too, mainly the white vanilla ones because they didn’t set up properly for some god forsaken reason. Either way they look really cute!
Then I started working on some of my arts and crafts projects. I’ve been putting them off for a while but that’s only because I didn’t really have the time to do them. I picked up a stained glass kit from AC Moore and it’s got a really pretty butterfly on it that comes with a stand and everything so I have something visually appealing to look at all day that isn’t fake flowers from the dollar store. It’s my way of dressing up a very drab office. I’m still waiting for it to dry so I can draw in the detail work but for now it’s looking pretty good so-far. It’s still tacky which is why the wings are so dark. They’ll lighten up within the next few days, and there’s also not enough light in the kitchen right now – even though the sun is shining bright outside it’s just on the other side of the building heh.