I’ve been working on saving up some money so Sean and I can go away at the end of the month. The hotel is complimentary, as is a lot of the amenities, it’s just the cost of gas and tolls to get up there, plus some minor spending on a slot machine or two if I actually choose to gamble. I can only do this if I can bring in another $800 in the next 10 days. Since I doubt (as of right now) that it’s actually going to happen I’ll just bank on the reservation until the end of next month and hopefully figure something out then.

It would be great if I could actually afford to look into Orlando Hotels. I’d love to get down to Florida. When you compare the weather to what we’ve been dealing with on the East Coast for the past week – it’d be nice to enjoy the warmth and sunshine for a few days – you know? Another section I’ve been looking into is Lake Buena Vista Hotels, at least it’s in Florida. It really doesn’t matter where I actually wind up going. I think it would just be nice to go on an official vacation sometime soon. Maybe one day we’ll be able to do it, for now it’s more like wishful thinking.

Orlando is the host of the 2008 American Urological Association Annual Meeting and staying at any of their gorgeous hotels will put you in the best location to attend this event. I’m sure anyone in the medical field could find it interesting. I’m not too sure if I’d go but who knows what the future holds. The Orlando Vista Hotel is located close to the entrance to the Downtown Disney Resort Area, it’s also just a half mile from Pleasure Island, and minutes to the Convention Center, SeaWorld, Universal Studios and the Florida Mall.

I’d love to go to SeaWorld, that’s a big trip for me. I’m really into anything Marine so I think that would be a great vacation spot for me. I’m a Dolphin fanatic, I’d love to swim with them one day. I just have to get rid of that severe Fish allergy of mine, even coming in contact with the water with a very small instance of Fish is enough to put me in the hospital. That wouldn’t make for such a great vacation.

I know I haven’t updated in a while but it has a lot to do with how busy I’ve been for the past five/six days.  Karen and I were talking the other night in the kitchen, which is a typical thing for us, and the topic of clearing up her desk area (in the kitchen) came up.  When she moved in she kind of threw all of the bills and other desk related things on a couple of shelves and into the filing cabinet and that’s been her system for the past few years now.  Me, being an organizational freak, asked if she’d ever let me do something with it and then out of no where she runs to her bedroom and pulls out all kinds of storage and organizational solutions that I was surprised she’d even had, considering the state of the desk to begin with.

The next morning (Thursday) she left to meet up with her sister in Atlantic City.  I then took over the daunting task of finally organizing all of her paperwork to make her life much, much easier.  After doing a complete and total clean up of the kitchen, giving me ample counter space to spread out on,  I started with the filing cabinet and about 6 hours later I’d completed my sort through about 10 years worth of paperwork to put it all into proper labeled folders.  When the weight of completing that was lifted from my shoulders, I looked up to the shelves above me and I’ll admit, my head began to throb a little.  I pulled things down a few piles at a time and sorted through everything.  I then reorganized the items that were meant to stay out on that shelf and everything is now complete.  The project time took me about 10 hours in total, and that’s not counting the two breaks I took to put my eyes back in the sockets.  Damn did they need a rest!

The next morning I knew that there was a lot more to accomplish, it was great to walk into the kitchen and not see that mess around the computer but when I’d gotten a paper cut the evening before I attempted to find a band aid in the medicine cabinet but was unable to dig through everything to easily find one.  Expired medicine and prescription medication for her mother (whom died in 2005) was taking over ample space in this cabinet.  So I went through all of that as well, and it turned out pretty nicely.  There was even extra space available on the top shelf so I then had room to get everything off of the counters that was medicine related as well.

I floated around the house and sprinkled some carpet fresh and then vacuumed the entire house and managed to clean up the coffee table and any other surface that was covered in clutter.  The only spot that I couldn’t get to (because my back went out again thanks to over-working myself) was our “Junk” area in the kitchen.  It’s a pile of just about everything, that’s hidden when you first look at the kitchen (it’s under the bar – that no one uses because of the awkward height of the chairs for it).

My back is still very sore, I have good days and bad days.  Unfortunately the really nasty weather isn’t helping very much either.  It’s got everyone in a funk and the cold weather isn’t doing anything good for my back these days.  I have the windows open during the day, even though it’s chilly, to air out the stale smoke smell in the house.  Karen went back to smoking when she put Candy down and she’s just now getting back on her Nicorette.  Unfortunately when she smokes in the house, my twinge for it kicks in and I started doing it as well.  I’ve always gone outside, probably why I was always able to tan so well considering I’d be outside all day long in the summer with my laptop and a cig.  But a few bad weeks and now I’m back on track with things.  I’ve also added filters to my cigs, even though I smoke Ultra-Lights I’m still injesting a lot of TAR, and now I’ve gotten myself tarless filters to help me cut down on that intake.  Eventually I’ll be completely done with it.  I’ve purchased my last carton and by this time next week (at the rate that I smoke) I’ll be “cold turkey” and able to get around without getting winded.  It’s a 10 year addiction that’s being thrown away in one night – hopefully my PMDD doesn’t kick in cause Sean won’t know what hit him.

I’m patiently waiting on call-backs from a few companies.  I’m still hoping to land the job for that interview I went on a few weeks ago.  I’m also waiting on some kind of an email from a company I was just accepted to as a contractor.  I sent in all of the paperwork last week, EIN# and everything else included.  I’m just not in their system yet so I can’t start floating through the LEADS to start working.

In any event, I need to find something to do.  There’s nothing really going on online and I don’t have any work waiting for me.  I think I’m going to straighten up the kitchen and make some lunch for Bella and I.  She isn’t feeling too well but that has a lot to do with the rain, we haven’t been able to bring her out as often as she’s used to so I think she’s feeling withdrawn as well.

The other day I was doing some of my regular shopping and went to pick up some refills for my Fabreeze Dual-Scent Plugin. They didn’t have the scents that I was looking for and I wound up picking up one of the new Renuzit Tri-Scents thanks to my trusty starter-kit coupon and I have to say that it was the best thing I’ve ever done. Thank you to Wal-mart for not properly stocking your shelves!

The scent combinations have kept my room smelling fresh and clean, even with Bella’s stinky dog-bones on the floor. I picked up the Morning Meadow combination. It’s got three different scents – Waterfall Mist, After the Rain & Pure Breeze. The cool thing about the tri-scent is you have the ability to set the intensity of your scents. I happen to like Pure Breeze the most so that one will more than likely empty sooner than the other two. I don’t have everything set to maximum though, it’s a small 10×10 room so I really don’t have to set the dial to too high for the entire flow. I leave the window open about 99% of the time (except in the summer) so of course there’s no point in it being on all day long because the smell would just float out the window. So I turn it on a few moments before I’m about to get into bed for the night and then I come back in the room after getting ready for bed and just enjoy the relaxing scents that actually help me fall asleep pretty quick. It’s also a way for me to mask the smell of smoke that filters itself into the bedroom. I do have a sheet up over the door but if there aren’t any windows out in the living room for it to escape then it looks for the available wind-source (which happens to be my bedroom and the office.

So in wanting to learn more about the TriScents I headed over to triscents.com to learn about the new product. Right now they’re running a really cool contest where you can enter to win a $20,000 home makeover. If you’re interested in entering the contest you can check out the official rules and sign up with your entry. It sounds really cool, I’d love to see what I can accomplish in a few rooms with someone else’s money heh. I’d have the office reorganized so that Sean and I have more room to move around. I’d definitely get something done in the bedroom because there isn’t enough color in there. I’d have Karen’s armoire replaced with a new one that isn’t about to fall over and I think I’d talk her into getting some new book cases and a real entertainment unit in the living room so that everything can match up nicely. Storage is also a great thing so I’d love for them to make some modifications in the kitchen as well. It’s a huge kitchen but even with all of the cabinets and drawers that are in there, it’s really hard to put something away – there has to be a way to organize all of that and I’d love to have someone come in and help me with it!

I’m finally back in the office, my back is feeling up to sitting in this god awful chair. I’m playing around with Leopard, and Parallels Desktop because Sean was lucky enough to figure out what was going wrong with the routes we were taking. It required a lot of Linux editing and that’s not really in my field of expertise. He figured it out, the whole computer acted up for a little while and then he figured out how to fix that. Now everything seems to be running pretty smoothly. The major draw-back was my lack of ability to access my external hard drive. It turns on and the red light informs me that it’s “running” but then when it changes back to blue it doesn’t show the drive on either Leopard or XP and then if it does begin to view it on XP it says that I don’t have the proper permissions to get into the drive. With a major thanks to Jackie (my Mac guru) I was able to fix everything and now everything is up and running just fine.

On another bright note, Sean and I are going on vacation at the end of the month. We set a few financial goals for ourselves and if we can accomplish them by the 23rd then we’re going to keep our reservations for Harrah’s at the end of the month. If we’re unable to reach the goal then we’ll cancel the reservation and hang on until next month. The actual drive up there is the only thing that’s really going to cost us any money, it’s the cost of gas and a few tolls to pay. It’s still cheaper than taking the Ferry because even with the $37 Ferry ride we’re going to have to drive North for about an hour or so. It’s easier just to put gas in the car and get the hell out of here. The room itself is complimentary, and we’re lucky enough to have the new luxury suite available for two nights – absolutely free. Brand new hardwood floors, jacuzzi tubs and plasma TV’s – it’ll be a nice little get-away. After that there’s the pool to hang out in, no children permitted (they have to go to the teen pool) so I figure since we’re going mid-week there’s really going to be no one there so it’ll be possible to lay down and relax without dealing with screaming children or unruly drunks for that matter. I also have about $300 in cash that I can print out at the Kiosk and then of course there’s the food comps so we’re really not spending any of our personal money at all. Of course we’re going to want to Gamble but with all of the amenities that are available – I doubt I’ll be on the Casino floor very often. We need to get away to clear our heads, no dogs, no parents, just us. It’ll be pretty nice.

While I know money isn’t that great right now, I really hope to be able to get up to New York soon. I called my father last night and while things seem to be going OK there’s still that wish for me to be up there. My father’s birthday is coming up, he’s going to be 60 this year. Yea, he was 36 when I was born but that’s OK – he did a damn good job. My sister’s birthday is three days later, she’ll be 22 this year. You kind of wonder where all of the time went in the last 20-something years, you know?

Anyway, it’s my goal to get enough cash together in the next couple of weeks so we can take the trip up there at the end of June. Maybe I’ll get lucky enough and one of my various interviews will come through, I don’t know. It’s just important to me that I actually get up there. Things with the family are “OK”, I found out that my mother thought she had a stroke but it’s actually Bells Palsy. My sister didn’t even find out until like three days after it happened, but my family just seems to like keeping secrets. How could you not tell someone’s daughter that their mother is in the hospital? I could understand if my sister was like 10 years old or something, but she’s 21 – I think avoiding telling her is absolutely uncalled for.

So yea, there are a few different reasons for me to get up there. It’s not like I’m looking for things to do in New York that are out of the norm for me, like going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or something. I’ve been there before, I’m going to New York for family, not even a vacation at this point. My idea of a vacation is floating around in the Casino’s of Atlantic City (Harrah’s being my favorite – of course). But this is a family thing, that’s the most important right now.

If you want to find something to do in New York you can poke around Trusted Tours & Attractions. They have a free e-newsletter, and give you family vacation ideas as well.