Lovin it
I'm not one that likes to find out later that I made the wrong decision about something however this time I'm standing my ground. Jason and I traded my 2002 Ford Ranger in for a 2008 Jeep Compass. I was not intending to get a brand new vehicle, however this particular one used to be a rental and it was priced lower due to having mileage (about 15,000). So, it was a pretty good deal. The Ford Ranger got approximately 17/20 in mileage and this one gets approximately 22/27 give or take. Sure it's not the most awesome difference but I wanted to stick with 4 wheel drive and I've always wanted a SUV of some sort. It's also this color. For 4 wheel drive that mileage is not too bad. I'm happy with my new vehicle. I do miss my truck and I feel bad about trading "him" but the talk of family is getting closer and we'll need that room. Not to mention, the truck had over 100,000 miles on it and both the air compressor (sp?) and brakes needed replaced costing over $1,000. So...it's about that time.
In other news, we purchased some Miners tickets today and we're looking forward to the invites in between. I LOVE basebally season. LOVE it. It starts at the end of the month and I'm looking forward to it. We also cleaned out our garage today. We pulled everything out and set in our driveway so that we could arrange some things. It was a little embarrassing. Our neighbors all commented on our junk and even asked if we were having a yard sale. We're like, nope, spring cleaning. We had our foosball table sitting by the curb with a free sign on it and a couple skateboarders stopped and looked at it. They're like FREE???? So they set it on their skateboards and wheeled it down the road. It was funny. We also had Jason's four cd stands sitting by the road and some lady stopped and picked them all up. Yard sales are too much work. We still have a couple boxes of stuff to get rid of.
Oh and according to the Farmer's Almanac, we're supposed to have a rainy summer. At least we're not having a drought...
Will work for gas money...
For those of you who are into politics...someone tell me what should be done in this country for THIS to be avoided or at least changed??? I won't be able to go ANYWHERE!
Budget
It has finally come down to this. No one can afford a truck :( My poor Ranger is going to be exchanged for a Jeep. I found one in Harrisburg that is going to be placed on hold for me until Monday. I just have to wait for the trade in value. This is the one that I have picked out. I had a busy day today. Kids Count Day camp was in the morning and Relay for Life was in the evening. I need to go to bed. zzzzzzz
Green thumb
Today Jason and I worked hard trying to clean up the backyard and do some landscaping. We have scratches on our arms and we're feeling pretty tired now that we're sitting still. While Jason ran to the barrell to fill the ATM I weeded some and ran across a black widow. Fascinated I watched it hide under the grass when Jason came home. I asked him to hurry up so that he could see this huge spider but of course I didn't see it again. It looks pretty nice back there. I have some spring flowers and now we have green pepper plants and strawberries. If only we could prevent the dog from climbing over the garden fence to lay on the flowers. The other day some punk kid decided to clip all of the tulips that I had alongside my house. Man did that piss me off. I planted those things with pride last fall and I saw them bloomed all of three seconds. BLASTED!! Hopefully they'll double by next fall and I'll have a motion detector to scare them off the next time they decide to pick my flowers. I'm sick of having kids in our yard. Jason was ready to move by the end of this year but I told him it couldn't be done because of grad school. It's too much work. Plus we're not done fixing this place up. In other news, I purchased Juno and I like Arrested Development. Too bad the show is no longer running...Oh and supposedly we're due for a 6 pointer earthquake.
Just a thought.
First off, be sure to read Brooke's below.
Sometimes, working with the public is hard, and not just the ways you may think of. Sometimes you meet some really nice people and it saddens you when something happens.
For example, a super nice 78 year old customer of mine died. He did not drink or smoke, his only vice was lottery tickets. $2 a day. He would come in every morning and talk to me, but his tickets and leave. I hadn't seen him since just before Brooke & I left for vactaion and started to wonder where he was. Then his wife came in and said he was in th hospital but was expected to come home soon. Then, another older customer of mine asked if I had heard about Ferda dying. I was shocked. I wanted to go to his funeral, but by the time arrangements had been annouced (this morning) the funeral was over (yesterday at 1).
It got me thinking about other great folks I have met and funerals I have attended. Tommy Gun: What a wind bag for an 80 year old man. Loved to talk to Gary & I like crazy. Almost every single day he would come in to yap with us. He died suddenly and Gary & I went to his funeral. We did not know anyone there since we had only met him here, but his widow knew us. She said "you must be the Liquor Barrell guys. Tommy talked about you two all of the time."
Don: My "adopted grandpa". His girlfriend (long story) Mary and him were there for me when Dad and Grandma died. He battled a long illness and it was tough to see him go. Mike and I went to the funeral and watching Mary cry was hard on both of us. We both loved them.
"Famous" Tom: His middle name was actually Famous. We would have drinking contests in the office. Who could chug a Zima fastest. I would win but then get sick. He would calmly finish then drink another. I used to sneak away from work and go on a ride around Rend Lake talking crap with this man. He battled throat cancer and lost his voice. Had to use one of the throat vibrating things. He was real sensitive about it for a while, then it got to the point where he would hand it to me and I would try and use it. His laught before he lost his voice was warm and bellowing. Afterward, just a whisper of a breeze but still warming. I still occasionally talk to his widow.
There have been others, but these were the hardest. Only one died from the drink, though he had stopped drinking months before he died. It makes me wonder how many more will I lose. I mean, some may be strangers to me now, but who knows how I will feel just 2 years from now.
I dunno, just some silly thoughts.
J
Reasons to be open minded...
Where are all of our readers at? We hardly ever get comments even though we've been using this blog as long as I can remember.
Anyways, I love culture. I love learning new things about it and the different lifestyles and the love that people have about their culture. It's beautiful. However, the thing that I love most about other cultures, is food. I'm not kidding. I love trying different authentic foods. I want to travel to so many countries and try their different foods. I just bought this chinese Jasmine tea, that blooms into a flower when you pour hot water over it. The flower is your tea and the smell is so heavenly. When you lift your cup to sip, the aroma just flares into your nostrils. It's amazing. Anyways, I just got my people magazine and it had an article about this restaurant that I would definitely love to try. It's called Dinner in the Sky. Someday when I'm retired, I want to travel to France and eat at this place. The best part about vacations is food that you can't get anywhere in the area. I love it. Another place that I want to eat at is Opaque. Seriously, how cool would it be to eat at a place where you are served by blind waiters? Not to mention...in the dark. What a fascinating world we live in and how sheltered is THIS area???? These are just reasons to have an open mind.
Crazy times...but I'm working on it
I am so friggin busy right now it's frustrating. I've made up my mind that no job I have will soak up my life the way school does. I have to have time to get things done that I need done. PERIOD. Right now I'm supposed to be working on a group manual (it will be over 100 pages when I'm finished) but I need to gather some thoughts beforehand. I nearly reached a breakdown after returning from Hawaii...it's that ridiculous and too boring to go over. So, here are three things that I want to discuss:
First, Can you believe that Dr. Phil paid bail for the ring leader of those 8 cheerleaders who beat the crap out of one helpless girl just so he could have her on his show?? That is exactly what those girls wanted. Apparently he wants to talk to these girls but for the love of mercy's sake, what possible therapy is he going to provide except that you can get on tv if you do enough damage? Especially to an innocent victim. Nothing that girl did could have possibly dropped her at the mercy of those 8 teenagers where one could not make that stance that it was not a good idea. I can't believe they actually posted that video online. This is all you see on the media and it keeps on happening. FAN friggin tastic.
Second, the mice in our garage are dying. Yesterday I found one just sitting out in the clear blue taking his last teeny breaths. I feel bad yet grossed out at the same time. I have feeling that sometime in our future they will come up with a spray that PREVENTS things from coming into your house rather than kill things that are already there. Luckily these little guys can smell Ozzy or something because they are not coming in. They're just hanging out.
Third, How about them airlines? You might want to wait awhile if you plan on going to Hawaii...
Joys of Owning a Home!
Well, got some good news today. We do not have a mouse in the house or walls. No droppings anywhere, or any other signs for that matter. However, there may be one under the house in the crawl space and that could be what we are hearing. He also thinks that with some of this wind lately, a screen on one of our foundation vents is flapping and scraping. It is loose. That brings us to the real problem. I knew when we bought the house, we had some problems with the crawl space. Mainly with the vents. The home inspector saw that most were stuffed with foam and he said that we should get them uncovered because it defeats the whole purpose of them. He also said we did not have enough for our size house and that they should be screened with 2 way covers. I got the foam out of them but never did anything else with them. The Terminix guy brought up the vents today and I was like "yeah, I know." He was like "you know that we offer service for that because it is a pest thing too." That I never thought about. He explained himself a bit more then called the guy who does it. We walked around the house a few times and he explained what should be done with the existing vents and where the new vents should be. Then we encountered another problem. My crawl space is inaccessible right now! When we had the concrete poured out back, the guy covered up the entry point. I noticed it then but forgot about it because we never had a reason to think about it. So, the guy said just to forget that one and since they were going to be there putting in new vents anyway (meaning cutting the concrete blocks) they will just cut a new entry way at the other end of the house that gets more sunlight, thus always be drier if you had to crawl under there...for no extra charge. That was the one good thing he said. Lastly, right at the garage door on the north side, the garage wood goes right into the dirt. You just know that means bugs. In this case, termites. Just that one wall though. It was supposed to have been treated before we bought it, but he only found 1 treatment hole (meaning, whomever the previous owners used did a shoddy job). So, he said you could treat that wall and be happy. Just to get the guy to do that one wall was going to be pricey because of the whole basic charges thing. I asked him how much to just treat the entire house and it was only 1/4 as much more. I was like just do it all. So, this Wednesday, we are having 9 (5 new, 4 replaced) vents & 1 crawl space entry put in our foundation, having all the wood in the crawl space treated as well as the entire exterior of our house. A whopping $4000 worth of work. Luckily you can make payments. Still had to make a down payment though. Grrrr. In other news, I installed wireless DSL modem yesterday that gets 3 Mps access. Nice and fast. Plus, since I already have a laptop that is wireless, I promised Brooke I would buy her one and we could just be a wireless house and rely less on this desktop model (though I will still use it for media because that is what I bought it for). Well, yesterday we ordered her new laptop. Basically it is 1 model newer than mine. They look almost exactly alike, so we had to order skins for them to make them personal. The lappy will be here Wednesday as well. Busy day. Finally, I want to say that this is the (semi) official announcement: We have sold our current building/property to CVS Pharmacy and will begin construction on a new building (twice as big) right next door, closer to the Days Inn. We have preliminary zoning permits in place, money in the escrow account and we finally came to an agreement with our lot size & building placement. Look for construction on the new building in August (after I own the business) and hopefully open by Thanksgiving. There will only be 2 building on that entire block after all is said and done. Best part is, it will not cost me one more dime than the current contract I have to buy the old building. Yippee!! Well, going to go relax finally. Been home for 3+ hours and still wearing my work clothes. Work. Geez. That was a nightmare today as well, but that is for another time. Jay