2007 VMA's

Last night I was going to watch the MTV VMA's but after only half an hour I just had to turn it off and watch Family Guy re-run's on Fox. My wife pointed out to me that normally they hype the VMA's like crazy but this year they didn't and I can see why. The whole show looks like it was put together by some college interns and run by the TV broadcasting club of some po-dunk university out in the middle of no-where.

They were using some weird 80's theme that had a female speak and spell voice going through all the nominee's and it was really hard to understand. They also showed clips of each video in small little boxes to make some sort of collage which didn't really work either. I was only able to really watch the first main performance that started off the award show and then they continued to show snippets of other performances that were taking place at "parties" in other locations of the Palm's Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Truly an interesting format if you're there live to enjoy it, but for those of us watching on TV it kinda sucked. I also think the cue cards were un-readable to the announcers because everyone I saw in that half hour kept on fudging what they were supposed to say. How embarrassing!

If I were the head of MTV I'd probably end up firing the whole crew that worked on the VMA's this year and maybe light a fire under my creative team for coming up with an absolutely craptacular show. Oh and just because you make new awards, doesn't mean that anyone really cares. Stick with the tried and true, thats what made people want to watch the show in the first place. OK, rant done......... for now.............

Book rewards

I read a lot of books now that I travel most of the time. I end up buying about a book a week or so because I'm normally on a plane at least 6 hours out of the week and that doesn't include the time that I spend at the airport waiting around to board the plane.

I buy most of my books from Barnes and Noble because its just down the street from me here at home. I prefer Borders though for a few of reasons though. First off, Borders was the bookstore that was closest to me when I lived in Stamford and I liked going there a lot. The prices at Borders is normally cheaper than Barnes and Noble although they're pretty comparable. The rewards program with Borders is also free which is good for me because the one that Barnes and Noble offers you have to pay a yearly fee, whats up with that? And finally, Borders is just everywhere, from the airport to the mall, I can always find a Borders (or a Walden Books which is owned by Borders) or I can order stuff online through Amazon which has a deal with Borders.

I'll admit that the majority of my books in 2007 has come from Barnes and Noble but thats due more to convenience than anything else. If Barnes and Noble makes their reward program free, I'll sign up with them too, I could always use 20% off on new books :)

Marriott Silver!

I got a pretty cool surprise in the mail yesterday, Marriott sent me my Silver Elite card! I didn't know I had achieved Silver Elite but I guess all those stays at the Fairfield Inn that I had to endure got me enough points so that I could get the status. Granted it wasn't hard to achieve, I only needed 10 nights at any Marriott to get this far. I need another 40 to get Gold but I really don't want to get to Gold with Marriott. My next assignment is taking me to Houston TX, well a little north of there and the approved hotel there is a Courtyard Marriott which kinda stinks. I was hoping to get Platinum on my Hilton Honors account.

Hilton's so far are my favorite hotel chain, then the Starwood's, then Marriott, and last and certainly at the bottom of the pile is Holiday Inn. At least I will be getting 25% extra on my bonus points so this will give me a little flexibility as I'll be earning more points overall. There is a Hilton Garden Inn near the Courtyard Marriott which wouldn't be bad I don't think and it would allow me to earn more points with them. My march continues on to getting elite status!

Home for Labor Day

I'm sitting in my home office writing this blog because this week happens to be the week that I'm slated to work from home so that I can be around for Labor Day. I was rolled off my client early so that means I get to spend next week at home too! Ahh the sweetness of it! I get to spend lots of quality time with my wife and cats which is always a good thing. I'm trying to get a new assignment and it looks like I'll be heading out to Houston. I've never been there before so this will be something nice and new. If I'm lucky, I might be able to make it to an Astro's game or something. :) Woo another hat to add to my growing collection, if I made it to the Tiger's game I was planning on going to in Detroit I would have gotten a hat as a souvanir.

Now that I'm home, I'll probably blog a bit more until I'm deployed. Look out for more boring crap from me!

Super Secret Status

This past weekend I registered for super secret bad ass status with Avis. I'm working on Diamond for Hilton but I just got Avis First status after sending an inquiry to Avis customer service. After I complete 3 rentals a month I get a free weekend rental. I just got this status but its just plain awesome since I rent with Avis so much. I've also found that they have the best rates over all.

I don't know what other fun perks I'll be getting but they have to be pretty decent after all the cars I've rented with this company, maybe I'll get some free upgrades to an luxury car or something one day. Their cars are sometimes not that great but over all I've enjoyed the experience. When I start returning the car to the place I rented it, they'll probably give me even better cars since I know they're giving me crap because I'm not returning it to the same facility currently.

For now, I'm going to see how much I can milk this. It's going to be so sweet!

Pontiac G6

This week I got a Pontiac G6 as a rental car from my lovely friends at Avis. I gotta say that this is one sweet ass ride. This little car has some pull. I think its a class above the Neon and Focus but with a much bigger engine, better sound system and over all its just hella fun to drive! I floored it just for kicks while coming to my hotel up the entrance ramp and that little car MOVES! If I knew I was going to be a consultant a few years ago, I probably would have loved this to be my airport car. It's American so I don't mind it getting dinged up since it doesn't retain value, but it would be cool to go on the highways because it has so much power. If I could request this car every week I would but there's always the possibility I'll get an even better car one of these days. :)

South Florida is Hot Hot Hot

This past Sunday I decided to go to the swimming pool at my community with my wife to of course do a little swimming and to cool off. It had been pretty hot the last couple of days that I was at home and thought that a nice swim would be a way to cool off. It even rained an hour before hand so the water should have been nice and cool right? WRONG!

The pool water felt a lot like bath water when I jumped in. It was pretty interesting given the fact it was about 90 degrees outside and the water temp was actually hotter than that. I held out my arms in the air for a couple minutes and dunked them back in the pool and it felt really hot when I did that. But I enjoyed staying in the pool so I stuck it out. Normally I would have left but I don't get to stay home often or use the pool so better to take advantage of the opportunity while it presented itself.

Maybe for my next place the pool water won't be so hot in the summer time. It just needs to be October already so its not 90 degrees in the evening (I know its sad isn't it?)

Forgot my socks

After my little scare a few weeks ago by getting stuck in Detroit, I've been packing an extra set of clothes in my suitcase. I've also taken to working out at the gym at the Double Tree where I'm staying so thats another pair of clothes entirely. As fate would have it, I went ahead and packed all the extra clothes I normally do except for white sports socks that I use for working out. Fortunately I had at least one pair but I used up some cash buying more socks. I need to start making a packing checklist so I stop forgetting stuff.

Being Gold rules

I checked into the Double Tree at my client site this week and much to my surprise, I got a coupon for $5.00 at the gift shop. Now I know its only $5.00 but that means I can get 5 free bottles of water which is super sweet. I also get breakfast in the morning now which is particularly awesome. Hopefully I'll wake up early enough to start taking advantage of this perk of mine. I've worked hard to get my Gold status with Hilton. I'm earning about 4000 points a stay which isn't a lot but when you add it up over time, I'm looking at some free hotel stays in 2008 when I finally go on a nice long vacation.

I'm not doing so hot on my points for the airlines but thats because they expire too fast and I don't earn that many of them when I fly. Besides, I can get some free flights by giving up my seat when I start flying Air Tran again. Ahh the wonders of travel.

More troubles with Northwest

I've been doing a fair amount of travel with Northwest Airlines for my current client. So far they have been the most unreliable air carrier that I've ever taken. Last night they left at least an hour later than they were supposed to and with my drive home I didn't get here until at least 2am which to me is quite un-acceptable. It's a good thing I'm not flying with them for much longer.

I've changed flights because I'm just tired of always being delayed by the major carriers. It seems to me that the smaller carriers like Jet Blue and Air Tran are doing much better in terms of being on time and they're also a little more generous with their food. Hopefully I'll earn some free flights with Air Tran once I start taking them come September.

The first to return Harry Potter

This was amusing to me so I thought I should blog about it. For the Barnes and Noble store in Pembroke Pines, I am the first person to return their Harry Potter book or so the salesperson says. I bought one earlier today because the ones that my wife ordered hadn't come in yet. Well to our great surprise they did come in today so I returned the one I bought. They didn't question it but if they had I'd have to point out that its quite difficult for any normal person to read the whole book (which is over 700 pages) in only 5 hours. I'll probably read it later tonight or something after watching my Saturday evening TV of course.

More travel woe's

I would have to say that work-wise this was the worst travel experience yet. Since I fly around the country for a living I'm sure I'll have even more stories to tell in the coming years which should entertain people if they bother to read the ole blog.

Anyway, I was all set to leave from the little regional airport in Michigan like I always do, turned my craptacular car in (Subaru Forrester) and then noticed that the security area was closed off. I looked at the screens and they said everything was on time. I went over to the ticket counter (the airport is so small its less than 100 feet away) and inquired what was going on. The ticket dude (who pulled like triple duty as the ticket agent, the gate attendant, and doing stuff on the tarmac) said that the flight from Detroit had been delayed and they expected a 7:30PM take off.

OK, no sweat, 7:30 will still give me half an hour to get to my other gate in Detroit so I can catch my ride home. 7:30 arrives and the plane just arrived and started to get people off. OK I think I can still deal with that, it'll be really tight but I think I can still make it to my gate in time. The flight of course is quite un-eventful until we actually land. Due to some snafu or whatever you want to call it, the gate that my plane was supposed to use was occupied. Sounds like a simple problem right? Put the plane in a free gate. The pilot comes on and says that Detroit is experiencing heavy traffic in Michigan and there are more planes coming in than taking off to avoid some sort of storm. Pah! Like I care, just park the stupid plane so I can get on my way!

Here's the kicker, 45 minutes later I'm still on the same plane, still parked on the tarmac and no closer to the terminal. I saw a couple planes park next to mine and then leave to go to gates but for some funny reason mine was still sitting there eating jet fuel and pissing everyone off. At this point I've checked with the airline and lo and behold my flight left without me. Luckily I work for one of those ultra huge companies that have their own travel agents so I call them up and ask them if there are any flights out to Ft. Lauderdale that night. Because of my incredibly good fortune so far, there are no other flights out and most of the flights for tomorrow are booked solid. Since I had this funny feeling that I was already re-booked on another flight, I told the travel agent I would call back if I needed further assistance.

After finally getting off the plane, I just saw a sea of people in terminal C which is the smaller terminal in Detroit, terminal A was my destination and I decided to head to my gate to see what the deal was. Being impatient, I decided to skip my gate and go to any gate to see what could be done. The kind gate agent at A74 (this is ALL the way at the other end of the airport from terminal C) just printed out my boarding pass for this morning and said I'd be on the 7:11am flight. I asked her what about hotel accommodations since it was mechanical/maintenance failure at the gate and not the weather. She told me to go to Gate 41/43 and wait in line to see if I can get a voucher for a hotel. I decided to take the nice train that they have in terminal A to Gate 41/43 and the line was HUGE! Obviously I'm not the only schmuck stranded in Detroit because the gates were all fouled up and there was no where to park the jets. I took a look at the line and calculated how long it would take me to get to the front and after coming up with about an hour or so to two hours, I determined that all the hotel rooms will be gone by then. I decided to phone my boss who said to go ahead and book a room and charge it in, just not to go to some $300 a night place since I'm waking up at 5am anyway. Ahh gotta love the travel agent! I call them up and get a spot at the Crowne Plaza right by the airport.

I decide to go down to the waiting area for the shuttle and see another sea of people calling up hotels trying to get a place to stay. Luckily I have my confirmation number on my phone so I have nothing to worry about. The first thing I noticed is that the DoubleTree where I normally stay in Michigan is WAY nicer which is kind of sad considering I'm in Detroit. The second is that room service is way over priced. I paid $18 for five pieces of coconut shrimp and a Sierra Mist. If I wasn't so hungry I wouldn't have spent the money but as it is, it was 11PM and a man's gotta eat. Alas I only have five hours to sleep but normally that should be enough. But the tale doesn't end there...............

Ahh this morning! I get up, stretch and get ready to head out. There are bunch of people heading out at the wee hours of the morning as well but thats not surprising considering the large amount of people stranded. I decided to take the 5:30 shuttle to the airport so I could get there early and also because I have no idea what the wait times are like in Detroit for security. Surprisingly I breeze through security and head for my gate which is all the way at the end. (A55). So far things are going pretty good. I'm a bit hungry but no matter, I'll be home at 10AM right? WRONG!! As we're on the plane and after we push off to actually get under way, the pilot comes on the PA system and says that they're having some technical difficulties starting up the right engine but its nothing to worry about, they'll just pull in and have the maintenance guys start it up from the engine compartment instead of the cockpit. Hmmm that doesn't sound like just a little problem, what if the stupid engine cuts out while we're in flight? I'm not too confident that the Airbus A320 can stay up in the air with just one engine. As luck would have it yet again, they tell us the plane is busted after about 15 minutes and we're forced to de-plane. Yay delayed again!! The flight attendant tells us to go into the terminal and to a new gate so we can grab the next plane that comes in. Hmm doesn't sound too bad except the next plane doesn't come in till around 8:30! They also have to taxi, get to the gate, de-plane, clean, inspect, re-fuel, and re-board everyone. Estimated departure time: 9:30AM.

At this point I'm starving so I decide to use up some more cash and get some breakfast which wasn't all that bad. Kind of like the BK breakfast sandwich that I like. After wolfing that down its about time to board and take off. The rest of the flight is quite uneventful except that I was sleeping when they were handing out drinks and snacks. So now I'm at home working from my home office writing up my blog. This has to be one of the longest entries ever but I felt I couldn't leave out details, this was one trip to remember!

A strange freebie at the ball park

Tonight I went to the Class A Great Lakes Loon's game near my client site. The game was pretty good and the stadium was awesome. The stadium itself was brand new and the teams weren't that bad although I've seen better in Class A (Tampa Yankees) but at least the home team homered twice. I didn't stay until the end of the game though but thats alright, the tickets were nice and cheap and I'll probably go to another game. The only thing that was really weird was the gate gift at the end of the game. And the gate gift was.............................. a loaf of bread.................... yes thats right I now am the proud owner of a loaf of bread. Since I haven't received my Diamond Status with Hilton yet I don't get my free breakfast at the Double Tree so this will do until I finally hit it.

All I need now is some free butter and I'll be all set!

I just saw Transformers the Movie today with my wife and I have to say that the movie totally kicked ass. The special effects were excellent and the story line was pretty good too. If you ever liked Transformers as a kid, this is a must see movie. Who can't enjoy big giant robots blowing stuff up??? :)

Ahh Tea!

Yesterday I bought some tea from Teavana and I have to say that its really good stuff. I bought two different types, one is called the Rooibos Tropica and the other is the Rooibos Key Lime. They're mixed with some other teas to get a pretty good taste and I'll probably buy more when I run out. I also bought their perfect tea maker so I can always get a great cup of tea. I know its pretty cheesy but I thought why not, I bought my dad one and he loves it. Maybe I'll get some crumpets to go with my tea........

The last of my 20's

This month I'm going to be turning 29. Seems a bit depressing considering I can only call myself a 20 something for another 365 days or so. Next year I hit the dreaded 30! I'm thinking of getting lasik so I don't need my glasses anymore, I think that would be a really cool gift to myself, the gift of sight with no glasses. Then I can start buying cheap sunglasses like everyone else. I'd do the contact thing but it just didn't feel right when I tried them.

The other option is to get a car or something to soothe myself for turning 30. Although thats a bit on the expensive side and the thing will do nothing but sit in the FLL garage most of the week or the garage here at my house.

Only 19 days to go, the Amazon Wishlist is updated though :) Just look for stuff with the highest priority, thats what I want for my 29th B-day.

The Soaring Eagle Casino

This past week I went to the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant MI. It was quite the interesting experience. it felt like a much smaller version of Foxwoods. I didn’t play that much while I was there, just a slot machine and at least i was able to come out $2.00 ahead.

The real reason that I went was for the buffet that was there. it was prime rib night for only $20.00 so of course me and some of the people that I work with went. that right there is an unbeatable deal. I stayed a little while longer after dinner to watch some of my co-workers play things like black jack or roulette. Maybe one day when I have some extra money to burn I’ll go ahead and try one of those games out.

Only one thing bothered me about the slots at that casino, they didn’t take coins. I had a whole stack of coins in my pocket but I couldn’t even use them since the machines only took dollar bills. I guess that’s the direction gambling is going in. I’ll admit it certainly makes things easier for the casino because they don’t need to lug around heavy sacks of coins everywhere when they empty or refill the machines. Maybe I’ll go back to the casino later on since it was a pretty good time.

A lemon of a car

This week I probably had the worst car to date. I was given a Chevy Impala that had just been cleaned up and it was basically one of the only cars they had left. I'm sure that’s due to the fact I come in so late and a lot of the people that fly to Flint are on business and need to rent cars.

The biggest problem with the Impala was the fact that the tire was leaking. I could basically deal with that but it was still a bit annoying. The passenger seat belt also didn’t work but that didn’t bother me that much. The last thing that I have to complain about was the ride. I’m sure if the car hadn’t been abused it would have driven fine but someone did a real number on this car. It basically felt like a massage chair on speed when I got close to 70MPH. I drive about that fast on my way to work so I took it as a good thing when I was in a decent mood and a bad thing when I was slightly annoyed. this coming week I’m staying home so no rental car for me till July 9. I want to try out a Subaru legacy one of these days just to see how they are, its getting it that’s tricky. Oh well, we'll see what happens. Whoohoo 4th of July week coming up! :)

Wii-mania continues

This morning my wife and I decided to head on over to Best Buy just to kill some time so we could get hungry enough to eat a decent amount of dim sum for lunch. Best Buy opened at 11am and when we arrived, we got there maybe 15 minutes after the store opened. There was a huge line for the checkout line and almost everyone in it was holding a Wii. I could only say to my wife "suckers" since I didn't have to wait in a huge ass line to get my Wii :)

Right now we're playing Wii Golf and a game called Trauma Center which is definitely a different type of game all together and there's no way any other console could do this game without the inventive Wii-mote. I'm off to my client tomorrow so no more gaming till Friday. I'll just have to keep myself entertained with Lego Star Wars on my wife's PSP till I get home.

Wii Power!

Yesterday I went out and bought myself a Nintendo Wii for me and my wife. I have to say that the Wii has provided the most fun gaming experience I've had in a long time. I haven't bought any real games for it yet, I might go ahead and rent some later this weekend though just to try things out. The fact that I can use it with some of my older GameCube games is awesome. Right now I'm playing Wii sports that came with the console and its pretty damn fun. I'll probably play it again tonight with Claire to see who's best :)

Almost stuck in NY

On Sunday evening I was supposed to get on a plane with my wife and sister-in-law to head back to Ft. Lauderdale on Spirit Airlines. My wife and sister-in-law get their tickets just fine but I was having problems so I go to the ticket agent to get my ticket. When I give her my info they tell me that my ticket was never purchased and that there were no more seats on the plane. I had gone through my company travel agent to get my ticket on Spirit but because they're not one of the approved carriers, its a little complicated for them to get me a ticket.

I call up my travel agent to see what happened because everything that I have with me says that I'm confirmed for the flight. The travel agent scrolls through the record and finds a notation that my ticket wasn't purchased because of an invalid credit card. How that was possible is beyond me considering that my credit card is my corporate card and I've been using it for months. Since I couldn't get on the Spirit Airlines flight I ask if there are any other flights home, no matter what the cost because I just have to get home. My wife, being the excellent wife that she is, is checking with Jet Blue which isn't too far away from Spirit in the terminal to see if there are any flights and there is for over $300. I put that in the back of my mind just in case I need it and proceed to discuss travel arrangements with my travel agent. At first it sounds like he has me on a Delta flight which isn't bad because I can get extra points with them, the only downside is that I caught him buying a ticket for Newark to Ft. Lauderdale rather than La Guardia to Ft. Lauderdale. For my friends who know the tri-state area, we all know Newark is no where close to La Guardia.

After trying out different options, most of which did not leave from LGA or left the next morning, I decided to purchase my ticket on JetBlue. Although I might be out $300, I'm going to fight it out with my travel agent to get some of my money back considering something went very wrong with this trip. I'm all booked up for my flights to my client for the next few weeks and I know those are OK because I have seat assignments and everything.

All I can say is that this past weekend was the worst traveling experience I ever had, its a good thing I didn't have checked luggage because I know that something would have happened to it if I did and then I really would have had a terrible weekend travel-wise.

A night out in NY

I was in the NY area for a little over 24 this past weekend because I had to go to a baptism where I was playing Godfather. I did make time to go out with a few friends from back home on Saturday night. My friend Johnson, being the good man that he is, was able to drive Claire and I to NY. We were meeting our friends Lucy and Luan at Penang near NYU. I used to go to Penang in Queens but I don't know where it is anymore and there isn't anything to do in Queens after dinner anyway so this location made the most sense.

The food there was as good as the food at the Penang in Queens, the location was nicer too. Since we arrived late, Lucy and Luan came from a bar and started to get hammered but they didn't get too far since we arrived only half an hour after we were supposed to. There I had all my favorite dishes and appetizers as well as this really good watermelon drink that I had never tried before. There are pictures from the dinner and all and I think Claire posted it on her MySpace page.

After dinner we all decided to go to a bar. The bar was FAR no matter what Luan says. The bar was actually really nice, it was black and red with some plasma TV's above the bar. I only had one drink and everyone else had at least two or three. Things got really funny when all of a sudden the movie that was playing on the TV changed over to some really bad porno. The movie was so bad it was hysterical and the fact that we had been drinking only made it that much funnier. Needless to say we left that bar to try and get into another bar but the one that we went too was just too full so we made this huge loop and ended up walking through a little bit of Chinatown as well as Little Italy.

The end of the evening was at a bakery near Penang. The place we went to was called Bruno Bakery and I must say I was surprised that it was open at 11pm. We all had some dessert to top off all the food and drinks we had earlier that evening. The evening was really fun and I hope to do it again when I take another trip to NY. I'll see if I can get some pics together and post them on Flickr, I'm not at all skilled at using Slide but eh, I'll use what I got!

Crash and Burn PS3!

I was perusing some of my regular tech and gaming sites earlier today and I came across an article that detailed that so far Sony has lost 2 billion (thats right kids, I did say BILLION) dollars on the PS3 so far. I will admit its a superior gaming machine when it comes to graphics, the Blue Ray DVD player, and 60 gig hard drive compared to my Xbox 360 (which is currently at Microsoft for repair). To me thats an incredible amount of money no matter how you slice it. Even MS is doing better but the real winner for this generation of game machines I think is the Nintendo Wii.

I plan on getting a Wii next week if I can along with Zelda and maybe another game. I may not be home a lot to play it but hey, I might as well get it because it just looks too damn fun not to!

Stuck in Michigan

I was going to take what is known as a flex trip at my company, meaning that I was going to head off to another destination besides my home location of Ft. Lauderdale. Right now I'm writing this from my hotel room in Michigan because I wasn't able to leave because I made a critical error in my travel plans. That mistake was using Chicago's O'Hare airport as a transfer point.

My flight was originally scheduled to fly out of Michigan and go to Chicago at around 6:30PM. I found out later that morning that my flight was delayed which wasn't so bad. Then about an hour or so later I found out my flight was canceled. Needless to say I was beyond pissed. My co-worker was nice enough to get the airline to switch our flights to an earlier flight at around 3:45 so that was pretty cool, but thats not where this ends. As the day goes on we find out that the flight is delayed till 8pm. Well that kind of puts a cramp in my day considering my connecting flight was at 6PM central time. So that leaves me here, stuck in Michigan just slightly pissed and just a little disgruntled. I dare say that I will probably try to avoid Chicago like the plague in the future.

To be thwarted because of a little wind and rain! GAH!

Going for the Gold (or Platinum)

As you can tell, I'm trying to catch up on my blogging since I let it sit for quite a while before I post anything new. Well anyway...........

Since I am the great traveler these days (even though until about August it'll be to Michigan), I've been trying to build up my points on various different airlines, hotels, and car rental places. The ultimate goal is to get Platinum status for most of these places. Granted it takes a long time to get status with these places, you gotta travel a lot! My trips to Michigan have been slowly but surely increasing my point status but I've been kind of scatter shot. When I was going to Ohio I could always count on around 2000 miles on Delta and quite a few points at the Hilton or Westin hotels.

My Michigan trips have me running around on 3 different airlines so my point totals aren't what they should be. Platinum status is cool as hell because you get like double points most of the time, free stuff all over the place, and normally you get to board the plane first. But the best part? UPGRADES!! The points that I accumulate can be used for different upgrades whether they be car upgrades (premium rentals are SWEET) and even free stays at hotels (which I will definitely use when vacation time rolls around). I think it'll be at least 2-3 years before I get to where I want to be but once I'm up that point, vacations will be so much sweeter than they already are.

Traveling with extra gear

This week is especially hard since I'm traveling around with some extra stuff in my bag. I got a new game for the PSP and my wife let me take it with me. The game I got was Lego Star Wars II which I rented for the Xbox 360 and beat but I enjoyed the game so much I decided to actually buy it. The PSP though adds quite a bit of weight to my bag. There's the extra A/C adapter and the PSP itself which I also lug with me to the office because I don't want to leave it in the hotel because I'm just not trusting like that.

I'm also starting to carry around extra clothes in my suitcase just because the weather outside is getting nice and I really don't want to go out after work in my work clothes. Shorts and t-shirts are the name of the game for after work activities. While this adds a bit of extra weight, I look at it as semi exercising while on the job. HA!

SUV Upgrade in Michigan

Normally when I get a rental car for my client up here in Michigan I get a car. There was one instance where I got a small SUV but for the most part I've been driving cars. This week I got a nice surprise when I received a Ford Explorer. I'll be the first to admit that I think the car is pretty sweet in terms of the ride and the look. The gas mileage kinda sucks but overall this would have to be the best car I've gotten. Avis has been pretty good to me so far, so much better than Hertz. I'm gonna build up my points with them and the free iTunes songs after ever rental doesn't hurt either. :)

New RSS Feed on MySpace

I finally found a way to post blogs on MySpace kinda sorta. There is a cool Flash based widget that I just used to show an RSS feed for my blog. The only bad part is that it doesn't show all of my post, just a little snippet but its good enough for me! Total sweetness!!

PT Cruiser

This week I got a PT Cruiser as a rental car. I've already ranted about how much the car sucks in a previous post on my blog although I made that post in 2006 when I went to Las Vegas. Needless to say I'm not pleased but it could be worse, I could have gotten the Toyota Corolla that the person before me got. I hate that car even more than the PT Cruiser! BOOO!!!

Memorial Day Weekend

This past Memorial Day weekend was pretty entertaining. First I picked up my wife's friend from the airport and went off to the Sawgrass Mall for some shopping which lasted for about five hours. We also had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory which was pretty awesome. That evening we decided to go to a comedy club at the Hard Rock in Hollywood. The comedians that they had were pretty good. I liked the second act the best, the main act was one of the finalists from Last Comic Standing although I don't know what season he was from. He was doing just fine until someone made fun of him and then he decided to stand and try and make a view point which just killed the mood at the club. He tried to end it on a good note but eh, it was kinda half hearted. No matter, I'm sure he'll learn from the experience and I had a good time regardless anyway for most of the night.

Sunday was a day at the in-laws. There was a lot of food there and we all spent most of our time in the pool getting all prune-y. I think I spent at least 3-4 hours in the pool with everyone playing pseudo volleyball. I was in the deep end with the guys so it was harder to jump up and score points. It's not like we were keeping score anyway, it was just a lot of fun just to play. Truth be told I forget what happened Sunday night *shrug* I guess its not important really hahaha!

Monday was a good day because it was pretty nice and we spent most of the day at the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. I think this is really the first time that I've been to Ft. Lauderdale beach and if I went there before, I certainly can't remember it. The waves crashing on the beach were pretty strong but we all went in anyway. I had no luck with the umbrella though no matter how many times I tried to stake that sucker into the ground, the wind just kept on blowing it over so I gave up on it. My wife's friend got burned pretty good so we had to get her some lotion so the burn wouldn't hurt too much. She had some bad luck on the way home too, her flight was delayed till after midnight so instead of having her take that flight, I drove out to the airport to get her so she could at least get some sleep at our place. I brought her with me to the airport this morning and I get to the airport pretty early but she was on the 7am flight so she didn't have to wait that long. All in all, it was a good Memorial Day weekend.

Back from San Juan

It's Tuesday and I'm already back at work. I came back from San Juan last Saturday night but haven't had a chance to write anything on my blog until today. I uploaded pictures from the trip to my MySpace page. I'll upload pictures to Flickr later since thats where most of my other pics are.

My trip was pretty nice over all. I like the hotel that I stayed in, I ate way too much (I'm not used to eating 3 meals a day for 6 days straight), the places I saw was great, and there wasn't too many hiccups.

Here are some of the highlights right off the bat:
Camuy Caverns - Very nice place to go, although the bat shit on the railings was a little gross
Huge Dish to look at the Universe - Uber cool, it was in a James Bond movie :)
Tour Guide for the caverns and dish - "Words are like bullets"......... if you don't get the reference, go watch some South Park!
Old San Juan - The whole city was awesome
San Cristobal Fortress - One word......... COOL!
El Moro Fortress - Two words........ UBER COOL!


If I'm in the mood I'll write more later about my vacation, and if not, eh I'll just remember it in my head :)

A Beautiful Beach in San Juan

At this very moment I am writing this blog from the Carolina Beach in San Juan. My wife and I didnlt go at the peak season so the beach isn't too crowded which is really nice. We found a good spot under a tree to relax so we're not totally baked by the sun. The water is crystal blue just like Hawaii and pretty warm too. The sandis a bit hot and I think I burned the bottom of my feet while I was trying to take some pictures but thats OK, the picture will come out pretty nice when I post them later on Flickr.

Tomorrow will be quite an adventurous day since I'll be headed to the Camuy Caverns and an observatory for the day. There is going to be much picture taking of course! Time to get back to relaxing on the beach, if I havve the urge I'll write more tomorrow.

FTL Security

Something odd happened to me and my wife while we were going through airport security when we were leaving Ft. Lauderdale. In what I can only call a weird coincidence, the both of us had our carry on bags searched after we went through the metal and x-ray screens. I know we didn't pack anything that would require a second search because I made sure we did everything by the book. I travel for my job so I'm pretty up to date on what we can and can't pack. I wasnlt that upsetbut I was pretty annoyed that I was stopped for additional screening. My wife was a bit more upset because they messed up her carefully packed clothes when they went rumaging through her bag. I'm traveling again this coming Monday, lets see if I get stopped again for no good reason.

An Awesome Dinner in San Juan

This evening my wife and I went out to dinner at La Piccola Fontana to celebrate our anniversary. This year was a little more low key than last year when we went to Las Vegas. the restaurant was located in the El San Juan Hotel which is a really nice hotel. lots of dark woods and crystal chandeliers decorated the lobby and the hotel had not one but two Starbucks Coffee places in it. Noww thats a classy establishment! (For those of you that don't get the joke, look up Strong Bad on the internet and watch his cartoon).

I ended up getting a seafood linguini with spicey marinara sauce that was really good but my wife by far had the better dish. she ended up getting a 16oz lobster tail drizzled with honey truffle sauce. This thing tasted awesome and she was nice enough to let me have a piece of it. We ended our dinner with chocolate cake and ice cream. MMMM I'm totally stuffed right now, so its time to veg on the couch with the wife and relax for the

Happy Anniversary to Us

Ahh today is a very special day. Today I am celebrating my second wedding anniversary with my wife. We stayed up late last night so we could give each other cards and yesterday we also bought each other iPods. I needed one for when I travel for work and she needed one for when she works out at the gym.

We'll be spending our anniversary in San Juan for the week. We haven't had a nice week long vacation since last May when we went to Las Vegas. There are going to be more out doorsie things for us to do in Puerto Rico simply because the heat won't be so punishing and we're not going to be in the middle of a desert.

My wife has booked a few excursions for us already and I'm sure there will be a few more we'll find to do as well. If I have the time I'll send updates while I'm in San Juan but don't on it, I'm there to relax and enjoy my vacation. Highlight for tonight is dinner at a fancy italian place :)

And I didn't bring a computer with me this time, this will probably be the first time I haven't brought a computer with me in a while and it feels great!! Later my people!

Wow I've reached a blogging milestone

I didn't realize it till I actually looked at my Blogger dashboard but I've actually reached 502 posts. I personally think thats a lot for someone that really doesn't write a lot although I've been told enough that I write pretty well. Now I'm in a job that can take advantage of my writing skill but now I'm digressing. Maybe in the next 2 years I'll make it to 1000 blog posts even though I doubt anyone is still reading this. It just seems like good practice to keep on blogging and who knows, maybe one of my friends on MySpace will actually read it sometime.

Ft. Lauderdale Air and Sea Show

This past weekend I saw the Ft. Lauderdale Sea and Air Show at Ft. Lauderdale Beach in beautiful sunny Florida. I'll have to admit, the demonstrations were really cool. The trick bi-planes were pretty sweet to watch going through some really intricate maneuvers but the highlight of course were all the fighter jets that they brought out.

The brought out primarily fighter aircraft like the F/A 18F Super Hornet, the F-15 Eagle, and the A-10 Warthog. The Eagle and Super Hornet were really loud and they were buzzing the beach close to the sound barrier. You could even see the vapor trails behind them as they were pushing Mach 0.9. I was waiting around for the F-22 Raptor but it was too hot. Just as I was leaving I did see it near the beach and it was pretty sweet to see. Gotta love vector thrust being able to flip the aircraft in the air like a pancake on crack. I would say one of the best parts was seeing the B1B bomber. That sucker was HUGE!! You could feel that plane coming before you ever saw it. I bet the enemy can feel their doom just before they get a huge bomb right up the ass. Well nothing else to report on the home front, next week is vacation time oh yeah, probably going to post pics the week after if I have some time.

I hate mosquito's!

This past Saturday I went on a little tourist attraction called the Jungle Queen with the in-laws. The ride itself was pretty cool, it was on this old boat that resembles an old paddle boat and it went down a small river in the Ft. Lauderdale area. The bad part about the trip was when we got to this island to sit down to eat. It was all you could eat chicken, ribs, and shrimp. Sounds good right? Normally I would have enjoyed something like that and eaten plenty but there were mosquito's under the table biting the crap out of my legs. So in the end I was more annoyed than anything else. After we got home I counted the bug bites on my legs and it numbers at around 21 bites on my legs. Now I'm out at my client in Michigan and my legs still itch like crazy. So far after studying things a little bit, I don't see how mosquito's are useful to the planet. They should be exterminated!!! This way no more bug bites for me.

California Pizza Kitchen

California Pizza kitchen is one of those places that you just have to love. The last time I actually went to one was when I lived in Tampa. There wasn't a California Pizza Kitchen there I think, who knows! But the one that I normally went to was in Orlando FL at the Millennium Mall. Granted that was a bit far to go for pizza but I was already at Disney so a little more mileage on the car never hurt anyone.

I went to one this weekend with my wife and it was awesome. We tried two different pizzas, the Wild Mushroom and the Shrimp Scampi. Whoever thought of putting shrimp on a pizza needs to be hailed a genius! I will definitely be ordering both of these pies again. I'm hoping that my next assignment takes me to a place that has one readily available so that I can try the different pizzas offered. I don't go to California Pizza Kitchen all that often because its expensive so its a treat for me whenever I go. Almost makes me wanna move to Cali........... hehe NAH!!

Treo Case coming today

When I went out and bought my Treo 700WX, I also bought a case for it because the one I had for my Treo 650 wasn't doing so hot. My old case was a vertical pouch type but the Velcro on it just wouldn't stick anymore. Lo and behold, about a month or so ago I was in the car with my wife and I got out. My case had rotated on its clip so it pointed DOWN instead of UP like it normally does and my phone fell out because the Velcro was crap.

I returned my Treo 700WX today because I didn't like some of the features. However I am keeping the new case that I bought for it because I'll need it for my Treo 700P. The best part is that it has a magnetic clip so I don't have to worry about the Velcro wearing itself out or anything like that. The clip also doesn't rotate so that should help things out too.

Now I just need the UPS guy to knock on my door so I can finally get my new case instead of keeping my phone in my pocket.

Good Bye 700WX

I had the Treo 700WX for about 5 days and after tinkering with it for that time it just wasn't for me. I will admit that its a very cool phone and everything with plenty of good features like multi tasking and background synchronization with Outlook for PIM stuff.

The area where it lacked, and this was the deal breaker for me, was the email. I thought that pocket Outlook would at least have the features that VersaMail (which is what I'm using to write this post) had right out of the gate. I have a complex routine in how I get my email and my old Treo was able to do this no problem. I have a primary and secondary Gmail account. Since you can only download mail once from Gmail I had to set things up this way. In Pocket Outlook, three critical features were missing for me. The first was the notifications while my phone is off. I get a decent amount of mail throughout the day and being able to know when I get something is important and the 700WX just couldn't do it. The second feature was a different reply to address. I like people replying to a single address or emailing one main address because it the forwards itself to both of my Gmail accounts. Why this easy thing was left out I don't know. And last but not least was the BCC's that were sent out with each email to myself. This was important because I liked beibg able to download my email to my home computer and to have a proper history of everything.

Now I probably won't be able to download my email from work to my phone but I really don't want to anyway or be able to sync up with my work contact list or to do's (again do I really want to do this??) While I do believe Windows Mobile is the future, I don't think its at a point where I would be willing to leave the Palm OS. So after I send the phone back I will go ahead and get a Treo 700P and download all my free programs to it once again :)

New Treo!

This past week I upgraded my phone to a new Treo 700WX. I used to own a Treo 650 (actually its sitting right next to my 700WX on my desk) and I must say that I'm definitely going to miss it. There were quite a few things that I liked about my older Treo like all the short cuts I could put on the front of the screen, the higher resolution screen so I could read things better, and all the free applications that I was able to get.

Since my contract was up, I decided to get a Windows Mobile phone this time around. It's quite different from the Palm OS and I'm still deciding whether or not I like it. I haven't had a chance to play with a lot of the functions like Excel and Word but I will say that as a personal info device and email client it kinda stinks. The Calendar function is not as good, the tasks are about the same, and the notes are alright, nothing stellar to report there either. The email function is where it is totally lacking. Normally the built in functions would be fine like they were on the Treo 650, but Pocket Outlook is missing some things that I needed to have like a BCC copy of all my outgoing mail, a different reply to address, and of course custom filtering for all my email messages. I'll admit that I probably should have tried the phone out more in the store or something but not that many stores had one for me to mess around with and you'll never know if something fits your needs until you actually own it sometimes.

I did buy (yes I actually purchased software for my phone) a new email application called FlexMail 2007 which does everything I need it to do and then some. I can get my Hotmail email on there as well as my Gmail and if I really really wanted to, my work mail too but I don't think I'll go that far. I've been testing out the software and for $20.00 its doing a pretty good job, almost as good as having real Outlook that resides on my PC. All I need now is some good application to replace my Calendar and I think I'll be all set.

The verdict is still out but I can't go back to Palm OS since most of the corporate world is using Windows Mobile or Blackberry at this point. Well thats not true, there's supposed to be a new version (finally) of Palm OS thats being developed using a Linux kernel thats supposed to be bad ass but we'll see if anyone actually adopts it. Hopefully I'll be out on an assignment in the next week or so.

Damn vandals!

This week my wife told me that the TV's that were in the gym in our community were stolen. Now that just totally pisses me off. I have paid a lot of money for the convenience of using the gym and watching TV at the same time and now some ass has taken them and if my theory holds water, the residents are going to end up paying for it by raising the community fee's. If that happens, I'm going to get even more pissed because its not my fault that security here sucks balls. One man running around in a golf cart at night isn't going to stop someone from taking stuff from the pool/gym.

What they need to do is enhance security. It doesn't cost a lot to get some night vision cameras that are motion sensitive and have it hooked up to a security feed that can be accessed on the internet. They're pretty cheap on TigerDirect.com You can even have the alarm go off if someone tries to use the gym after hours or something or put security locks on the TV that sound off an alarm if someone tries to take it. All really simple cost effective stuff!! I'm pretty decent with coming up with security solutions for simple stuff like that. If they can pay I dunno how much for a security guard to lift the gate up and down, I think they can shell out a one time cost for some extra gear to help keep the stuff the community pays for safe.

I can't find a church that I like

Easter has come and gone and it wasn't all that eventful. I normally go to this church in Weston but for this particular holiday I attempted to try a different church closer to home. I should just have gone to the Weston church instead. The church is called St. Edwards and its been a long time since I've seen a church this ghetto. There weren't any real pews to sit in, no where to kneel, and the staff there was plain rude!

Upon first seeing it from the outside it didn't look so bad, but then me and the wife went inside and we decided right then and there that we're not going to this church again. For those of you not versed in the way a Mass goes in a Catholic church, there's a lot of kneeling, sitting, and standing involved but when you leave out the areas where you kneel, it gets kinda difficult to get the full experience. It was kinda dark inside as well as a little bit dirty too. I could barely see the alter since I was in the reject area that they opened up so people would have a place to sit if you didn't arrive early enough.

The thing that gets me the most, and this is just personal, is all the singing that goes on. I'm used to really subdued psalms and the like that involve organs or pianos, maybe even the occasional trumpet or guitar. Down here they seem to think you gotta add some drums or something and maybe a better beat to get people involved and maybe a little bit of clapping too. BOOO!!!! Maybe its because I'm a little traditionalist when it comes to church even though I don't go that much anymore but I do know that clapping during a psalm isn't what I used to experience back north. And one thing that totally killed me was that they were spelling Hallelujah phonetically so people could pronounce it better during the singing parts of the Mass. LOL!! Thats just terrible!! Not only did they misspell it, they misspelled it two different ways!!

I also wanted to jet out of the church after communion only because it'll be a pain in the neck to leave when everyone else does and I know what the priest is going to say anyway. This lame usher had the balls to tell me and my wife that we're not allowed to leave! Umm hello, I've sung my praises to God (without clapping my hands!) and I got my communion so I wanna go, and I damn well will go if I want to! We ended up going out through a side door but I gotta tell ya, you're not supposed to be rude to the parishioners that are donating money to the church, that just makes me want to take my worshiping and my cash elsewhere.

I should commission a church down here, and I mean a Gothic cathedral with ONLY an organ and no room for a band, drums, or whatever other instruments they seem to be allowing in churches these days. I'm gonna get some NY Irish priest that likes to put the fear of God into people during his sermons by telling the people that we're all damned to hell unless we pray for God's forgiveness. Yeah thats the way to go, then I'd be happy to attend that church for sure. I'd also want it to have a school thats staffed by Jesuit priests and Franciscan nuns and I'll send my kid there so he can suffer as I have suffered.

OK thats my rant for Monday, time to do more work!

Holy Week

This week happens to be Holy Week which means that meat can not be eaten for most of the week. Thats kind of hard for me to accomplish considering I normally have some sort of meat in one of my meals on a daily basis. It's hard trying to find appropriate sea food to eat because there's only so much of it that you can eat. Today is Good Thursday, tomorrow is Good Friday, and of course Sunday is Easter!

There was a South Park episode last night that was awesome. It attempted to explain why rabbits were associated with Easter. It was basically a spoof on the Da Vinci Code where there was a secret society (The Hare Club for Men......LOL come on thats funny right there!) and the fact that St. Peter wasn't a man at all but a rabbit (Peter Rabbit???) It went as far as to suggest that the hat the Pope wears looks a bit funny on a human but its just right for a rabbit because it fits over the ears perfectly! LMAO!!

I don't know what I'm going to be doing for Easter this year, hopefully it won't involve an egg hunt or anything lame like that. I'm just looking for a nice relaxing weekend at home before I go off to who knows where for work. At least that part of my life is exciting and ever changing. If I don't blog anymore this week, Happy Easter everyone!

Delayed at home

It doesn't look like I'll be leaving the Miami area for at least a week. I'm still waiting to hear about my new assignment but since I'll be able to stick around here for a little bit, I'll be able to relax at home and watch TV at night with my wife. Not to mention my cats will probably enjoy me being at home for a little bit because I give them lots of treats and play with them when I'm here. Another big plus, I'm not going to need my coat because I won't be frozen in the North East. :)

Tribune Sold

Some big news today is that Tribune was sold today to some real estate billionaire that used to own Equity Office. Now why am I writing about this? My wife used to work for one of their subsidiary companies so it'll be interesting to see what happens to the different parts of Tribune. The Cubs are going to be sold regardless but I'm looking to see if there are going to be any major job cuts since Tribune has a lot of properties down here in the South Florida area. Should be interesting in the next year or so.....

Verizon is slow

I've been cruising on the net and everywhere I look, there are newer Treo's being added to Sprint and Cingular. TMobile doesn't seem to be interested in Treo's so I'm not going to mention them too much. Almost every new Treo that I see recently in the news is for either Sprint or Cingular.

Lets take a couple examples shall we? First up is the Treo 680, a nice Palm based Treo thats exclusive right now for Cingular. It's been out for a few months already and it's supposed to better than the 700p that is available currently (and for over a year I might add) for Verizon. I haven't seen any plans for this device yet for Verizon. I also just heard that a 755p is coming out for Sprint, again where is the new Treo for Verizon? I know it took almost a year from the Treo 650 release for Verizon to get it. The only thing they ever came out with first was the 700W but since then, the two other carriers have had the great releases.

The Treo that I want is probably going to be a Palm based one, the 755p if I can hold out long enough since I'm eligible to upgrade in about 17 days. Failing that, and if it comes out sooner, I'll get the Treo 750 which is Windows Mobile based since I have this feeling that it'll get to Verizon sooner. What I really want is for Verizon to pick up the pace so that I'm not compelled to switch to Cingular because of roll over minutes and the better phones, oh and GSM too :)

New DVD Burner for me

It would appear that my DVD burner in my beat up Dell has finally decided to die. Well it hasn't died completely yet, its just on its way out. The inner track of all the data and music dvd's are fine but when I try and get stuff thats on the outer track it just doesn't plain read on any compuetr that I use and I have a lot of computers too so I know its the burner. I forget what brand it is, all I know is that its a cheap one and its actually the second one that I've had.

Since its not working, I went out and got a Sony external DVD drive. This is one that I used at my last job and it was only $100. I remember when this particular drive cost somewhere along the lines of $300 when it first came out. It's ultra sweet and looks nice on my desk at home. If I get a new computer, I'm just going to hook this bad boy up as the secondary drive instead of getting an internal one. It doesn't eat my PC's resources when its burning since its doing it all on its own and not really stressing out the PC because its directly attached the the motherboard. Ahh to have good data discs again! :)

Ohio no more

I'm finally free from Ohio! I met a lot of great people while I was working out at my client in Ohio so thats one downer about not giong back but I can fully say that I'm ready for a new assignment. I know where I'm going too, its in the greater Boston area but I'm not actually going to be IN Boston. I'll fly in there but then I'll have to drive about an hour to reach where my client is.

The only thing that I can see as bad is that its COLD up there now. It was getting really nice in Ohio, about 70 degrees almost daily and I looked up the temperature at my next client and they're reporting mid 40's to maybe even lower 30's! A couple weeks ago I bought a winter coat, you know one of those long executive ones from JoS A. Bank and I even left the tags on it thinking I wouldn't need it until next winter. Guess I was wrong on that account! I'm not leaving on Monday because I'm waiting to hear when I'm supposed to go so it'll be nice to not wake up at the crack of dawn and head to the airport.

Fun time at the Fair

This past weekend was pretty enjoyable. I decided to go shopping but I didn't buy anything because they didn't have the sneakers I wanted in my size but the best part of the weekend was going to the fair. Miami-Dade has their own county fair which is a smaller version of the state fair that I attended back in 2004.

The Miami-Dade fair was kind of far though, it was all the way in Coral Gables but I did pass through a really lovely neighborhood on my way there that had nice tree lined streets and fabulous looking mansions, you know the kind of houses that I can probably afford by the time I'm 50 or something like that. There was an entrance fee but it was relatively cheap. There was a ton of food everywhere! I think ever other vendor was some sort of food vendor. Like fairs everywhere, the food really isn't that cheap but it was still some really good food none the less. What my wife and I enjoyed were the shows that were playing here and there. We didn't hit up any rides because I really didn't want to go on any. One of the funnier things I did see was the enormous ass of a bear as it made its way into a wading pool. My wife got a cool shirt while we were there but I won't post whats on it since its a surprise. I'll take a pic of her wearing it later on.

This is my last week in Ohio, I think I'm going to Boston next week which should be exciting. I'll take some photo's there and if I'm lucky, maybe even catch a game at Fenway. :)

Hockey Fun

I went out last night with my team from work to a minor league hockey game here in Ohio. It wasn't bad and the place wasn't crowded at all. I had a pretty good time but what was really interesting to see was a group of fans that were really cheering on the home team. One of them had the best jersey that I have ever seen so far. It was a hockey jersey with HecklerFromHell where a name normally goes with a jersey number of 666 on it. To make things even funnier, he wore a Jason goalie mask. I wish I had a camera to take a picture of this guy but he might have noticed me taking his picture and come over to kick my ass or something. Needless to say, it will be one of the more memorable moments I'll save from my time in Ohio. LOL

Airport crowds

This weekend there was a major storm that hit the North East and man were there a lot of people at the airport on Friday. I was in Chicago and it was totally packed with people because of all the canceled flights.

Today when I left for Ohio, the Ft. Lauderdale airport was equally packed with people because they were still trying to get home. I also forgot that it was time for spring break so a lot of people were clogging the security lines. It still went by pretty quickly but over all I didn't like seeing so many people in my way so early in the morning. I'm hoping that since the Ohio airport that I go to is in the middle of no-where that there won't be any spring breakers there to clog up the security lines and delay my getting dinner on Thursday.

A short weekend

This weekend was pretty short. I had a conference to go to for work in Chicago for about two days but it was pretty fun. I was able to meet a lot of the members of my specific organization while I was there and learned a little more about the company that I work for. The only downer was that it reduced the time that I spent at home this weekend. Normally I'm away Monday mornings through Thursday evenings but this time I had to stay away from home an extra day.

Perhaps its just me but there is a lot of extra packing that goes into staying away from home an extra day. I had to pack extra shirts, pants, etc. just to cover the extra day plus I had to bring some other clothes since there were networking and social events while the conference was going on. Those were fun because I got to see a little bit of the night life of Chicago which isn't bad over all. Except for the fact that at night it was bone chilling cold, I had a really good time.

I also got a little bit sick last week so I didn't feel so well this weekend. I mostly tried to stay home and get things done around the house that I normally do before I go away again. I did manage to get some DayQuil and my cold is feeling a lot better but I sort of feel cheated because I wasn't home till after midnight on Friday night. I mean normally I'm home on Thursday nights and work on Fridays from home but coming home at night on Friday seems to cut into the weekend and the time I get to spend with my wife and my cats. Like on Friday's we might go out or something to rent a movie or just hang out at home which is really nice to me now that I'm not home every evening.

On a good note though I did get my new winter coat from JoS A Bank but I didn't bring it with me to Ohio. I didn't think it would be that cold out here but I guess I was wrong, no big deal really. I don't want to lug that thing on the plane if its going to be over 40 something degrees most of the time I'm here. This is also my last week here, so we'll see where they send me next. Maybe something closer to home...............

Back home again

I'm back home again after another trip out to my client site out in Ohio. I gotta say that it is high time to buy a better coat because dress pants don't offer any protection when it comes to arctic wind gusts. I'm using my ski jacket and normally that would be enough but for some reason it isn't anymore. Maybe it was fine back then because I was also wearing some ski pants that offered plenty of protection that kept me nice and toasty.

So I'm in the market for an over coat. You know one of those long wool ones that you see NY types walking around in all over the city. I didn't think I would need one but my recent travels to Ohio have made me reconsider. Yes the coat is going to be big and bulky but you know what? At least I'll be warm when I'm walking to the office. I'm probably going to get a pair of gloves too. My wife pointed out that I might look a little funny if I was walking around with a nice over coat but wearing ski gloves. So I can see her point in that.

Here's my problem though, I live in Florida so I'm not going to have the easiest time finding a winter over coat down here. I know that I can get one online at JoS A Bank for around $200 which really isn't bad. I went to an actual store after work and they were going for over $400! Holy smokes thats expensive! I'm only at my current assignment for another 2 weeks and after that I'm going to be unassigned again unless I get picked up for another client real soon. I'm hoping for a little warmer locale so I don't end up freezing like I have been recently.

At least its the weekend and I can relax at home.......... I love coming home from Ohio, it makes me appreciate what I have down here :)

Miami Beach Clubbing

Last night my wife and I went out to a club called Mansion in Miami Beach to celebrate my sister-in-laws 25th birthday. The 25th birthday is a pretty big deal, it means you're officially over the hill! LOL

Anyway, the club itself was pretty cool. Lots of loud music, way over priced drinks, and a very nice theme all around. The place opened at 11pm which for me already is pushing things. Normally I'm in dreamland by 1am on the weekends but now that I travel I'm trying to get as much sleep as I can at home. The place was really packed that night but thats to be expected on a Saturday night. There are a lot of clubs on Washington Ave. and there were people everywhere. The parking and the entrance fee is quite expensive but what can you do, it is Miami Beach after all. We only ended up staying till around 3am or so but that was long enough for me. I've come to realize I'm getting too old for this type of stuff. Not to mention it was just way too crowded. Every time I wanted to go somewhere, I had to fight through a crowed to get there. Thats not much fun! I don't think I'll be doing the club thing anymore, its easier to buy booze at a liquor store and get toasted at home if I so have the inclination and I can match any clubs music just by firing up Winamp and tuning into some internet radio station.

Tomorrow I'm off to Ohio again and another work week in the cold. I gotta say that there is a sharp contrast between Ohio and Florida weather wise at this time of year. I think I'm going to need a warmer jacket when I have to take my trip to Chicago, I hear its windy..........

Home again!

I just came back from my first assignment. It'll be another few weeks in Ohio but its still pretty neat that I get to travel to different cities. The amount of miles I'm raking in is insane. I think I'm getting like 3000 miles a week or something at the moment. Now what all these miles and hotel points will net me I have no idea but if I'm lucky, it'll be something good.

Although I must say there's nothing like going back to my wife and the place I like to call home. At least I'll have 3 days with her before I go bouncing back on a plane. Time for some rest and relaxation :)

No liquids allowed

So I'm actually flying back home right now but sadly without my tooth paste and body wash because I didn't have it in a little platic bag as required by the TSA. Surprisingly, this is the only time they actually caught on that it was in my bag. Personally I think its dumb that you can only bring 3.4 oz of liquid with you per container and you have to get it scanned and it has to be wrapped in a platic bag and pass inspection. I was able to go through 3 airports just fine till now. So I'm out five bucks worth of stuff..... Whoop de do!!

I guess I'll have to put the stupid things in a plastic bag now even though its assinine. If someone really had intent they'd blow a hole at the checkpoint and not a plane. More dramatic and all that jazz. Besides if it took the TSA that long for them to finally discover I had 4.2 oz of tooth paste in my bag, obviosly something isn't working right. I'm one person out of millions of travelers and if they missed that many times with just me we're fucked anyway because the odds are clearly not in our favor. If someone wants to blow a hole in an airport with C4 or something similar, I really don't think the FAA or TSA will catch on at the checkpoint except by luck rather than resiliance.

Off to Ohio

I finally got my first assignment!

Because of all the many documents I signed I can't say who I'm working for and all that jazz but I can say that I'm going to Ohio which means its time to break out the winter jacket because its going to be COLD up there. :)

I'll probably blog on the go and maybe even post pictures from my Treo. The only bad part? I have to wake up super early to catch my flight on Monday mornings.

I'm a Mac, I'm a PC advertising failing in UK

My buddy Wyatt sent me this article and its damn funny. I will also say that I am one of the proud PC users on this planet that hate using Mac's so this article almost made me bust a gut. It has to be read with a British accent to get the full effect.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html

Happy reading!

A really tall ladder

Yesterday I helped my father in law install a chandelier in my sister in laws place. The one thing that was kind of odd with this job was that the ceiling was 15 feet tall! So I went with my father in law to Home Depot and he rented a 14 foot tall A ladder so it would reach the ceiling. This ladder was really heavy and we had to put it on my wife's Xterra so we could transport it to the house. Putting it up didn't seem to be that difficult but thats because my father in law did most of the work. We were going to use the ladder to put up some additional ceiling fans in my house but the ladder was way too tall. My wife made the suggestion to get the Little Giant Ladder that we always see on infomercials on Sunday mornings. I agree that we'll probably need it when hurricane season arrives so we can put up the hurricane shutters that they gave us when we bought the house. Now I just need garage shelves and I think a lot of the major stuff will be done. Then decorating will be the last thing and the house shall be complete!

What happened to the weather?

I don't know what happened with the weather recently but its been pretty cold down here in South Florida. Normally I think people down here are used to temperatures around the mid 60's but its been around the low 50's this weekend which is kind of unusual if you ask me. I mean this is supposed to be one of the warmest areas of the country in the winter but this is just nuts. I know my northern brethren will probably think I'm a wuss because I'm writing how its only the 50's and they're in the single digits but I have nothing else to write about really. Well I have work tomorrow and I have to find a client to get assigned to and finish training.

ATL Link

I traveled to Atlanta this week and the trip to here wasn't bad at all. The only thing I have to complain about is the shuttle service back to the airport. The shuttle was scheduled to be here at 5:15 and right now its after 6:00 and it still hasn't shown up. This kind of poor service seriously pisses me off. If its not here by 6:15, I'm paying the extra cost for a cab because this sucks! Next time I'm renting a car if I'm allowed to or taking a cab.

I spoke too soon........

My iPod died again last night when I was trying to update it. I was just adding some songs to it and then all of a sudden it totally reset and now there are no more songs on it again. I'll try again tonight to re-fill it with songs. I did discover that my wife moved some songs out of my music folders last night by accident so I had to hunt for them on her MP3 player. Good thing Media Monkey is good at scanning my hard drive for new stuff or telling me if something is missing.

I think I still might get an iPod to replace my current one if it totally dies. I went to Best Buy this past weekend just to look at surround sound bundles just in case we wanted to upgrade the sound in the bedroom since the plasma is in there and all that. I decided to look at MP3 players as well and none of them really impressed me that much. The one thing that I will probably hate about getting a new MP3 player is that I'm going to have to buy a lot of accessories along with it again. Since I have most of the accessories that an iPod needs already, it makes sense just to buy a new one. I think I've settled on getting the 8GB Nano because I don't want another hard drive based iPod. Just shaking the thing will cause the needle to hit the platters and thats definitely not a good and I will be doing a bit more traveling too in the near future.

Now all I need to do is get a car with native MP3 support and I'll be in heaven, the Lexus IS350 is looking kinda good right now, it will go well with the Lexus RX350 that my wife wants.... ;)

Strange Weather

This week has been really strange. I think its been un-seasonably cold over the past week at least. I feel bad for my people in the North East because its frigid! -10 windchill, thats pretty intense if you ask me. Although its nothing compared to the 60 degree weather down here ;) LOL

Florida car insurance stinks

I was all ready today to get some new car insurance because I thought that my old policy was kind of expensive. Well as it turns out a lot of Floriduh car insurance places want you to get your car inspected for damage before they'll enable your policy. I did this once in Tampa and didn't have a real problem with it since the place I could get it done is so close. The ones down here in South Floriduh are at least 10 miles away from me and although they say that they're open on Saturday's they won't do inspections on Saturday for some odd reason. What kind of crap is that? Thats totally terrible! Since I'm really low on vacation time and have two cars to inspect I decided to go with my regular carrier so I don't have to go through the hassle of getting the cars inspected. This only happens when your car is old or has over 1000 miles and this is one of the only states that has this type of inspection. Things were much simpler when I lived in CT and registered my car in NY. Granted I had to have my car inspected every year and shell out $35 but at least I could do it ANYWHERE and it wasn't a real pain to get it done. And at least most of the places weren't holes in the wall either. Total BULLSHIT! Stay away from this state people, its all inviting with its no state income tax and sunny weather but the crap like insurance will make you wanna move to Alaska!

My iPod is working again.......I think

I tried a little experiment this weekend after I was done with my chores and build outs of things that needed assembly. I decided to dust off my iPod which I hadn't touched in 2 weeks to see if it would work again. By this time I totally discharged the thing so the memory was probably erased and reset. I hooked it up to my computer and it actually started to sync up my songs without freezing! The ultimate test was this morning though, when I hooked it up to my iTrip and tried it out to see if it would actually play any songs. It actually worked!!! I'm not holding my breath though, this is probably temporary but at least I won't have to listen to the radio for a little bit. I'm going to invest in a new iPod Nano most likely because it doesn't use a hard drive. I wish it came in a 20Gig version since i have 12 gigs of songs but eh, I guess thats asking too much from Apple.

I can't find the camera so I can't post pictures

I've been meaning to take some pictures of the new townhouse I'm in now but I can't seem to find the camera anywhere. I've looked sort of but not really. There were tons of boxes to unpack and then all the stuff that my wife and I bought to make the place comfortable. There are still lots of little things like pictures and stuff to hang on the walls and 3 ceiling fans that need to go up (although I need a really tall ladder to put these bad boys up) but all in all, its definitely starting to feel like home. My cats seem to be liking the new home as well with 2 different couches to sleep on and more rooms and such to explore and sniff around. I think they like the office the best when I'm in there or my wife is, they tend to hang out where we are most of the time and really enjoy the office chair.

I'm sure the camera is around somewhere and once I find it I'll take pictures and post it up on Flickr or something. It'll show up on the lovely little badge I have on my blog. I'd post one of those Slide Shows that a lot of people have on MySpace but I'm too lazy to do that. Besides, I want people to work to see my pictures and not have random people see it on my MySpace page which I barely maintain as it is.

A weekend of building and buying

This weekend was full of lots of buying and building and of course it was all for the townhouse. My wife and her sister wanted grills so they went out and got a couple of them at Sears so that we can start to grill stuff like fish, steak, veggies, chicken....... basically if it can be thrown a grill, they'll probably make it. I would say that I spent the better part of Saturday morning putting mine together here at my place trying to figure out how everything fit together. What should have taken maybe an hour took me around 2 instead but thats because I was trying to make sure I put it together right. I was pretty happy that I actually got the thing together correctly and didn't have a ton of extra parts as I sometimes do when I put things together. After I finished I went ahead and put it in the front courtyard near the kitchen so its all ready to go for some grilling.

After that was all done, I went over to my sister in laws place to put hers together. Her grill was much easier to put together since I just finished assembling mine and had a good idea of where everything went so it only took 30 minutes to put hers together. We actually used hers thats night for dinner to cook some salmon for dinner which was pretty nice. At least the thing didn't blow up which would have totally been a bad thing.

The townhouse also got a house warming gift as well courtesy of my wife. She got a beautiful 42" plasma TV for the bedroom :) We didn't have a TV in the bedroom because we didn't want to spend a lot of time in there while ignoring the rest of the townhouse but after living here a few weeks it became apparent that a TV would be beneficial. Next Saturday its going to be mounted on the bedroom wall, right now I have it on the dresser. Since its all high definition and all that jazz, our regular DVD players weren't going to cut it. I attempted to use the Sony DVD player that my wife bought me when we were still dating around 8 years ago and we found the picture quality lacking. So whats a guy to do but buy a DVD player that has HDMI outputs! I must say that the picture quality is much improved when you hook it up with HDMI. I didn't spring for Blue Ray or HD-DVD yet because the prices are just too steep right now and I don't see the big deal with HD DVD's when the regular ones seem just fine. Needless to say, I'm going to be enjoying this new setup for years to come :) YAY!

A productive weekend

This past weekend was very productive. I had a lot of help from my wife and father in law but a lot of things at the house were done. Since my father in law is pretty handy around the house he's been helping out a lot with the blinds by drilling holes and putting them up for me and my wife. In the mean time, my wife went out and bought all the ceiling fans and the chandelier for the house so I was glad about that.

Today I decided to take a crack at the office ceiling fan and the chandalier. I did the ceiling fan first in the office because it didn't look all that difficult to accomplish and the ceilings downstairs are decidedly lower than the ones upstairs which are about 15 feet high. It took me basically the entire morning just trying to figure out how to wire the fan correctly since I'm not that great with electrical stuff. The fan that my wife bought for the office has a remote so that made things a bit more challenging since the housing for the remote had to be wedged in with all the other electrical stuff near the ceiling. However, I have to say that by around 1pm I was successful and the ceiling fan is working quite well :)

The chandalier was a bit different because I had no idea how to get this one assembled. I managed to get it out of the box and I also attached most of the non breakable parts to it and even managed to string all the wiring to the ceiling but there was at least 10 feet of wire and that just wouldn't do when all I really needed was a foot and a half. My father in law helped me a lot with this one since he has all the good tools and the know how on how to put it up. I ended up just helping him while he rewired everything and screwed it into the ceiling. I was able to at least shorten the chain that leads down from the ceiling to the chandalier but I also broke one of the test light bulbs I was using so that was a drag since I had to go to home depot to replace it. But by the time I got back it was all assembled and ready to go. The light is way brighter than the little light the builder originally put in.

Now all thats left is 3 more fans and some more blinds and some of the bigger stuff will be complete! Man, can't wait! It's late as hell and I have work nice and early tomorrow morning, if I have the time maybe I'll make another post tomorrow or something.

MIA is dirty

I'm sitting here in Miami International airport waiting for my flight to begin boarding. I had a pizza for dinner and decided to lounge and make some phone calls from the waiting area. In my area I encountered a little furry friend ie form of a small mouse. I've been watching it pop out of its hole in the wall by the window and scurry around trying to find niblets of food. I'm sure most airports have their fair share of mice and all but this is the first time I've seen one scurry around near people. The little bugger is fast too and I was able to make it jump in the air by snapping my fingers at it. I can tolerate a dirty airport but the fact that I've seen this little guy out in the open moves MIA to the top of my shitty airport list, now that's impressive because I thought no one could top JFK and steal its crown. Man alive this town sucks! Give me FTL any day.

Putting up the blinds

This weekend I was going to attempt to put up the blinds in the townhouse and boy did I dismally fail! I tried lots of different wall anchors, some cement bolts because my townhouse is made of poured cement and drilled a few holes into the wall and didn't get one single blind up. My father in law was nice enough to come by with his friend Julio and he was able to put up 2 blinds after he figured out I was using the wrong types of anchors and screws. He also had all the power tools and bits I probably needed to do the job but just don't have because I'm not so big into power tools except my electric screw driver that I use to assemble simple furniture. After the blinds go up, it might be time for the ceiling fans, that should be interesting since the ceilings upstairs are around 15 feet high.......... Ah home ownership, gotta love it sometimes.

Some funny math

I was reading BetaNews this weekend just to keep myself updated on the movings and shakings in the IT world when I saw an article about Sony and their PS3. Link! It seems that they're popping the champagne about selling 1 million PS3's but if you read the article, they have maybe sold around 750K of them in actuality. Hm..... who the hell are their accountants? That kind of math is just way out there and I would totally look into their finances to see if they fudged anything on their balance sheet, last I heard 750K doesn't equal 1 Mil in any way, shape or form.

I'm still unpacking

It's been about 3 weeks since I moved into my townhouse and I'm still unpacking stuff. Most of the townhouse is done but the real disaster is the office at the moment. There are tons and tons of boxes in there. My wife and I worked on it a little last night and she was able to unpack a lot of the boxes and she was nice enough to put away my multitude of books that I own on our sole bookshelf that we currently own. Tonight I get to break down a ton of boxes since I didn't do it last night but thats not a big deal, I have a nice new box cutter to get rid of them :)

It's all coming together

So far I've spent at least a week and a half to two weeks at my new townhouse and I gotta say its pretty sweet. There's a hell of a lot more cleaning involved though because there is so much more square footage to cover. But thankfully, we have all the furniture that we ordered, the washer and dryer are set up, and pretty much everything is put together and unloaded........ except for the office which is primarily my space in the townhouse because of all my electronic doodads and whatcha-callits. There are lots of boxes in there to unload but I'll get to that in the next few days. I'm going to concentrate on the surround sound system tonight and maybe try and put up some blinds and hopefully not mess it up. Pics will be forth coming in the next MONTH, lol thats when I expect Claire and I to have things in working order.

Finally Moved In!

First and foremost Happy New Year to all the people that are reading this.  It's been a while since I've posted a blog but I've been very busy over the holidays moving into my new place and all that goes with it (including no internet access yet).  Basically I'll give a summary of what happened over the past week.

 

December 27 - The Closing

This is the all important day for me and my wife.  On this day we actually closed on our townhouse.  The meeting took about two hours to sign every piece of paper that was put towards us.  I didn't know that there were so many damn papers to sign when closing on a home.  I don't think I want to experience that again personally.  The good thing is that there were pretty much no problems with the documents that were prepared.  I'm told that is highly unusual that everything is in place for closing but I'll just take my good fortune and go about my business.  After closing, getting our keys, a bottle of champagne, and dropping a ton on closing costs, we headed over to the complex to get the gate transponders so we can come and go as we please as well as the garage door openers.  Unfortunately this took about half an hour because the person that was assisting us was moving at a snails pace.  It doesn't take half an hour to get us transponders for a gate.  Also for the privilege of using the gym facilities, we had to drop a little bit of money for a key, only one per household so they can control who goes in and out.

 

Next we decided to head over to the townhouse and go through the garage and unpack some stuff that we brought with us.  We also decided to make a trip or two to the storage unit to unload some of the boxes we had rather than have movers do it for us.  We ended up going out later and getting all sorts of cleaning supplies so that we could begin cleaning the place in the following days since there was a small layer of construction dust on everything.  Needless to say we didn't stay there that night because we had no furniture or bed.

 

December 28 - Another uneventful day

Not much happened on Thursday except shuttling boxes to the townhouse after work and cleaning up at my sister in laws place.  My cats were still in quarantine because they were declawed recently since they both have a destructive streak in them and love to tear into furniture and carpet.  The packing was basically completed and everything boxed up and ready to go so that we would be ready for our move New Years weekend.  Also we hired painters and they surprised my wife by calling her at work to say they were ready to paint.  We really didn't expect them until this week but since they had time she had to drive all the way to Pembroke Pines from Ft. Lauderdale to let them in so they could begin.  I went over after work to see how the paint was coming along and I was impressed how fast they did everything.  The colors my wife chose looked good, but the real fun was on Friday........

 

December 29 - Furniture and Paint

Ahh Friday, nothing like a day off of work to end a week.  The painters were there nice and early at 8am (I wish could have slept in).  I brought more boxes with me and dumped them in various closets.  I let the painters in and they went right to work.  So it wasn't so silent I provided entertainment by blasting music from my Bose computer speakers that I hooked up to my iPod.  I didn't know much about what colors went where so at one point in the morning I called my wife to tell her the progress on the paint.  Apparently the guy in charge told them the wrong colors for the great room and the upstairs loft.  The entire downstairs was supposed to have green paint of various hues and the upstairs a brown paint of various hues as well.  The upstairs loft had green and the downstairs great room had brown.  I asked him for the color swatches since I didn't have them and told him the colors needed to be switched.  So a job that should have been finished by noon took the rest of the day which totally stunk for them and for me because they were in the house that much longer.  At around 1pm, I got a call from the front gate telling me that furniture was coming in.  Of course this is totally not good because I had painters in the place putting up new paint on the walls.  I was supposed to get 2 couches, a chair, 2 ottomans and a cocktail table.  Normally it should be easy to see the furniture when they deliver it because its just supposed to be in plastic.  The furniture came out of the truck packed in moving blankets so I couldn't tell what was what.  I knew that one of the couches needed to go upstairs but I didn't want them to unwrap it because of the wet paint.  Paint can be done over again pretty easily on a wall but paint on a couch would be terrible so I kinda looked at the couches and decided, hey the big one goes upstairs!  The furniture guys gave me this weird look and said, that big thing is going up there???  I was like yup!  Most of the furniture went upstairs because thats where the TV is, only an ottoman and a couch (sectional really) stayed downstairs.  I unwrapped them and looked at it and thought it was wrong but I couldn't tell one way or another because I forgot what the furniture we bought looked like.  After looking things over everything seemed ok but I wasn't really sure and needed to wait for my wife to come home so she could tell me one way or the other if they brought over the right stuff.  After the painters were done, my wife came home and looked over the furniture.  She determined that I told the delivery guys to bring the wrong couch upstairs but I couldn't know that since I had them bring it up while it was wrapped.  So a new dilemma hit us, how do we get the couch downstairs and put the other one upstairs??  HA, thats Saturday's problem...........

 

December 30 - More furniture....

The dining room set we bought at another place.  It's supposed to be square with a round glass part in the middle.  It looked really cool in the store and my wife liked it  so why not right?  Anyway, the delivery guys came in nice and early to give us our table and six chairs.  The chairs were just fine but the table was scratched up so it had to go back, I'll be getting it on Saturday along with my washer and dryer.  The cool thing was that my wife and her sister convinced the two delivery guys to switch the couches.  I hid off in the office assembling a TV stand so I wouldn't be roped into helping and to see if the TV reception got any better because so far its still all fuzzy.  Afterwards it was time to start moving!  I rented a UHaul that was the same size as the one I drove down to South Florida so everything fit just nicely.  My brother in law and a friend helped with the really big stuff by loading it and unloading it into the truck, I owe them a meal of their choice whenever they decide to cash that in.  The funny part really was the truck itself.  It was a bit old and had about 182K on the odometer so I knew it had been places already.  The gear indicator on the front was kind of deceiving and it was hard to tell what gear I was in.  Going to the storage place was fine, but going to my place on the highway was a bit of a struggle.  I couldn't figure out why I couldn't break 60MPH!  I had driven that kind of truck before and I knew I could hit 80.  It so happened that I was driving around in 2nd gear for about 10 miles on the highway.  The gear indicator said D for drive so naturally I thought I was in drive.  After I got off the exit and stopped, I decided to test and see what gear I was in and I did figure out I was only in second.  There was also a funny smell coming from the truck and the heat indicator was rising too.  I'm just glad I didn't blow the transmission on the way because that would have really sucked!  The unpacking was uneventful, there are tons of boxes everywhere and the cleaning has just begun.  The cats were still at my sister in laws apartment so they won't jump on everything or get in the way.

 

December 31 and January 1 - Unpacking and kitty comes home

Pretty much all of new years eve and new years day was spent unpacking and putting things away.  Since we donated our old dishes and flatware, we went out and got new ones so that was nice.  Almost all the dishes have been put away and I went to get the cats as well.  I put them in the second bedroom upstairs with their cage, carriers, blankets, food, litter box, and a whole boat load of cat toys but all they seem to want is to be pet and to roam outside.  They'll probably have to stay there for the next couple of days so we can finish putting more stuff away and I have a lot of office furniture to build as well as the coffee table for the loft.

 

It's now January 2 and I'm at the office working away (although I'm writing this during lunch).  I'm going to go blinds shopping at Lowes tonight and pick up some cat supplies.  Next week we get the table for the dining room and that should be it!  I think there's a rug coming too.  Ahh the joys of home ownership!