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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to rotate some more laundry.

So I have to say it’s been a pretty interesting couple of days.¬† Karen and I are currently working on cleaning out the house so we can drop a flea bomb.¬† There were a few crawling around on Candy, and even more floating around on Princess, we didn’t see it until they both got baths this past week and the fleas just fell off them.¬† Turns out Karen’s room is covered in them which means the rest of the house is full of them.¬† Bella has nothing on her but that’s because she’s been protected with Frontline Plus since the day I got her, but now that we’re aware of the infestation we’re all on our toes and itching like crazy when we go to certain areas of the house.

So her bedroom was cleared out yesterday and we dropped a more localized bomb that she picked up from the pet store, it came highly recommended by a few of the customers and employees in there.¬† It’s good to know that we’re not the only house down here who’s got them – lord knows who else does.¬† So she spent about 3 hours vacuuming the bedroom, dropped the bomb and basically went to sleep in the living room because she didn’t want to go back in there last night – and I don’t blame her.¬† She woke me up about 8am this morning because she was vacuuming up the bomb and now I think she’s going to start doing some laundry so she can begin moving things back into the room so we can now tackle the living room and the hallway.¬† I know that today we’ll also have to do my bedroom and the office – Sean won’t be too happy about it but he has a laptop and is perfectly capable of working in the living room for a few hours.¬† Worse case scenario he goes to the library up the block and gets some work done in the peace and quiet there.

I’ve got to go through a lot of email then get my ass in gear on cleaning up the office.¬† I did the bedroom this past weekend but obviously I’m going to need to vacuum the shit out of it again and then drop the bomb in there – this should just be HEAPS of fun.¬† I can’t even throw the dogs outside today while we’re doing all of this because it’s raining and I don’t have a good sized gate to block off the stairs from Bella charging out of here.¬† I may wind up going to the pet store with Karen to pick up some more of this bomb stuff – maybe I’ll just bite the bullet and invest in a gate to throw up when we get back.¬† I don’t like tapping into the loan money but when you’ve just transferred everything out of Paypal to the bank account you really have no choice in the matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night all (well, morning to the normal sleepers)