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I can’t believe it’s been a year…

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

As I sit here with my third cup of coffee and my feet planted comfortably on the ottoman, it dawned on me that Sean and I have been homeowners for a year. This time last year I was working on cleaning the house to remove all instances of funk left by the previous owners. The carpets were disgusting, the bathrooms made me cringe and the amount of dust and mildew on every one of the baseboards, countertops, windows and doors had me gagging. You never truly realize how disgusting people are until you buy a house from them.

During the initial viewing of the house I knew this wasn’t my dream home (no where near it), but I knew it had the potential to be A LOT more than it was. With little modifications, proper furniture and a deep, deep clean things were going to take shape to the point that the house leaned more towards my liking and less towards what the previous owners had left to rot. During the inspection there were a lot of red flags, the most costly one being the fact that the original 30 year old roof was still on the house and absolutely nothing had been done with it. The garage was inaccessible because of their issue with hoarding, and we didn’t even know there was a crawl space IN the garage because there was so much piled up in front of the door it was very easy to miss. There were also a few questionable areas of just downright negligence on the owners part. The caked-on mold in windows that could have easily been taken care of with windex, lysol and ten minutes of work was the biggest concern, and one of my first areas of focus when I got in here with my massive box of cleaning supplies, but I digress.

When we were set to do the final walk through, we unfortunately had to do it with the accompaniment of an exterminator. During the initial inspection, the inspector noted a small area of termite damage. When the report was returned to the bank in January, nothing further was mentioned about it. Of course, 24 hours prior to the final walk through where we’d be then signing the paperwork and being handed the keys we were informed by the bank that an extermination is required, forcing us to put $2,000 unexpectedly into the house before we even had the damn keys in our hand. The extermination was started at 6am on the morning of the 12th when we were supposed to get the keys. Unfortunately we didn’t close on that day because the bank screwed up yet again and didn’t provide the proper paperwork to the lawyer and we were delayed – yet again – to close on the 14th. Everyone was in a rush to get the paperwork completed, and when we walked in on the 14th there was no longer a wait or a fuck up on anyone’s behalf and we got the keys.

I was here for about 7 days cleaning this house before any instance of my belongings came into it (other than a radio and cleaning supplies, obviously). We had Comcast come in to run the new cable lines (they used FIOS, we needed more internet than TV so Comcast was unfortunately our only choice). We put power, water, sewer were in our name and we attempted to keep the house warm with the $250 worth of oil we wound up having to pay for at signing that was also unexpected (Within a week we’d dropped $800 to have the tank filled completely, btw. Another area where we got screwed). Windows and doors were scrubbed to the point that the paint damn near came off of them, bathrooms were soaked so heavily in bleach that I had to wear a mask just to handle the fumes. I’m convinced they wore sneakers when they showered considering the inch of slime I scraped off the floors and walls of the showers/tubs. I damn near burned out the motor on a carpet cleaner just to get the thick black stains out of the rug that they had so meticulously hidden with furniture and even in hindsight I know that spending the money to have Stanley Steamer come in would not have made the difference since they only make one to two passes over the carpet and I wound up focusing on single areas for upwards of a half our at a time. It was so bad in certain spots that I felt as though I was destroying the plywood underneath because of how saturated the carpet was after multiple passes just to scratch the surface. With the color of the water being sucked up into the machine I was convinced that I was sucking the carpet padding right off of the plywood because there’s no excuse for a berber carpet to be that disgusting.

The kitchen was the biggest focus for me, I truly believe it’s the nucleus of a household. I had a stock of food, brand new pots and pans and kitchen supplies to move in but they weren’t coming anywhere near the house until I could get everything clean. The cabinets and countertops are very, very dated so by default I knew the kitchen, over time, would be completely redone. Initially though, I went at it with steel wool, bleach and elbow grease. The cabinets damn near changed colors. The slime everywhere from built up cooking grease and dust was stomach turning. And the further I got into cleaning the house, the more I hated the previous owners.

The bedrooms weren’t as bad as originally anticipated. I knew with curtain removal, adding mini blinds and a few gallons of paint things would take shape and as of right now that’s the track that we’re on. While the carpets (throughout the whole house) need to be removed and replaced with either hardwood or low-pile berber, this didn’t stop me from setting up shop in the smallest of bedrooms so that I could have my office space. I painted the room a very pale grey, painted the ceiling in an effort to brighten things up and put a fresh coat of trim white on everything so it could pop. The guest room is where Sean and I merged things. He chose a bright blue for his office and whatever was left of that blue wound up being mixed in with the grey I had left for my office, boom – the guest room color was born. The same treatment went into the room. The carpets were cleaned, the walls and trim received a fresh coat of paint and the curtains were thrown out and replaced with fresh bright linens to keep plenty of light in the room. The mini-blinds were brought in for privacy and that’s that.

The master bedroom is where we’ve done nothing. Yes, it was cleaned and the curtains were replaced with mini blinds and black-out panels but there’s no new color on the walls and we still don’t own any real ‘grown up’ furniture. It’s just a dresser that was given to us and two $10 end-tables from Walmart that we’re using as night stands. I have the paint colors picked out, but there’s a lack of overhead lighting in the room and knowing that we’ll be putting in a ceiling fan with light and having to get the walls patched up there was no point in moving forward. Of course, by default, I have everything picked out that I want for the room from dressers to nightstands and even a headboard, it’s just something that will have to wait until we’ve got the money and the time to do it. Sort of like everything else in the house.

I think one of the biggest changes we’ve made is replacing the original toilets in the master bath and hall bath. I know that seems like a weird thing to say but when you’ve got two pink toilets that go back to the late 70’s… it’s time for an upgrade. We did begin the remodel of the hall bathroom but that’s come to a stand-still, much like many of the projects in the house. We utilized Rustoleum’s tub and tile refinisher and transformed the pink tub surround into a white one. A coat of pale green has gone on the walls and we need to purchase a new vanity because there’s a weird pink stone top that just looks horrible and needs to go. We do have tile for the floor, but it’s yet to be laid down. In reality it’d only take a few hours to get that bathroom completed but when you’re waiting on others for help it just doesn’t seem to get done. Maybe one day, but doubtful that it will be anytime soon.

The basement has been the biggest pain in the ass. When initially taking a tour of the house Sean’s eyes lit up because he wanted a nice big room to plant his butt down in and one of the 3 bedrooms in the basement is where it’s remained. The previous owners built up the basement (and did a piss poor job at it). The walls weren’t even secured to the floor (which we only found out later on), they put in a kitchenette that doesn’t function as anything but something to take up space. They went crazy putting in a full bathroom that needs to be completely gutted and redone because it doesn’t function and they made it so wide that it cut off access to the water heater and sewer lines. They boarded up a window with drywall (for no reason), and the way they have a sump-pump sitting in a bucket that the washing machine drains into makes absolutely no sense to me. The pump had to be replaced within the last few months because the basement flooded while doing laundry – that was heaps of fun.

At one point in time the humidifier on the furnace broke, the room closed to it flooded somehow because of it. It was one of the bedrooms that I had originally planned on using as a guest room (later down the road) now is just a cement floor that’s been bleached a few times to avoid any mold damage. Since they clearly had no knowledge of building codes they did a good job destroying the duct work to the point that there’s little to no efficiency capability from furnace and air conditioner. The main house is either freezing cold in the winter, or smoldering in the summer. The den (which is part of the extension) was added on by the original owner of the home (the ones whom knew what they were doing). Industrial grade everything was used for the extension and it actually meets the efficiency requirements.

In an effort to start getting things together, we’ve had a lot of help. Sean’s father and brother spent a few days completely rebuilding the deck off of the pantry (near the kitchen) in an effort to eradicate the termite damage. The sub-floor near the door even needed to be replaced because of how badly things were destroyed. We do still need to install a new outside door to remove the issue we’re having with the draft, but the new stair case and landing are now more than likely the most solid structure on the outside of this house. The rear deck (off the den) requires quite a few boards being replaced, this will hopefully be something we start on this summer. The roof was started on, areas of concern were patched. We do still need to have a new roof laid down but we’re now scrambling for cash because of tax season so we’ve been set back a few months. It will hopefully be done this year, but we’ll see.

Our friend Colin has been down here quite a bit, and just about every time he comes down we have a project for him. Most recently was some remodeling to the laundry area in the basement to move a wall so that we could have a railing on the awkward basement stairs. He’s also assisted with moving the stainless steel fridge from the basement to the kitchen. The previous owners purchased the fridge but it was 6 inches too wide to fit in the area of the kitchen where it needed to be. So, with the removal of a few cabinets and some of the countertop the fridge fit right in place, and the smaller one that was already there is now the overflow fridge in the basement. There was a freezer in the garage, Sean and I scrubbed the crap out of it and then had someone haul it away. We had someone interested in paying us for it but they were creepy and never showed up so we just gave it to someone to scrap and that’s that. We feel the same way about the jacuzzi in the back yard, it does run but it’s disgusting and the yard isn’t fenced in so even cleaning it and attempting to use it would be uncomfortable due to the lack of privacy anyway. So we’ll figure out how to get rid of that after we’ve picked up some scrap wood to close off that side of the deck as I don’t want to give Bella the ability to just bolt out of the backyard and wander around the neighborhood.

We’ve got about 15 trees to remove on the property, this will actually help to open things up in the yard before we get the chance to fence everything in. We know that part of the future plan includes the addition of a pool, removing the trees will allow room for this as well. We have to finish remodeling the kitchen, gut all carpeting from the house and replace it with hardwood floor, buy furniture for the living room (the den is fine as is), buy furniture for the master bedroom, pick up as much art as possible to cover the bare walls, also paint the walls when I can finally decide on a paint color that I actually like. Overhead lighting was installed in my office, we still have another fan/light that needs to be installed in the guest room, we also then need to pick one up for the master bedroom. There’s no light in the living room so that’s another project but a little more difficult as there is no attic access above the living room due to the taller ceilings. There’s a built-in unit in the den that needs to be completed as it does not connect in the middle and leaves things off balance. To the owners defense (original owner) the TV’s back in that time were still in a large box and not easily mounted onto a wall so obviously the opening was necessary. In this day-in-age it’s not, so that’ll have to be adjusted.

It’s a lot, it’s just a lot. A lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of elbow grease and a lot of stress. I have the kind of personality where I tend to never forgive but will make it a point to try and forget. Though, I do believe if I were to ever see the previous owners on the street I’d make it a point to run them over. Their lack of maintenance and knowledge on how to upkeep a home has turned this house into a money pit. I know at this point in time it’s going to take about $40,000 for me to get this house not only restored to it’s ‘former glory’, but make it seem more like my home and less like their negligent mistakes.

Looking back, would I do it again? It could go either way. Dealing with the bank was like pulling teeth, I wasn’t really thrilled about their realtor (considering she was their daughter in law, and clearly had never sold a house before considering her husband would call up screaming when she had a bad day because she clearly couldn’t handle her emotions and went crying to him = dumb bitch). Knowing what I know now I would have probably continued to my search for a house, maybe even expanded to other areas. It was hard for us because of what we wanted. A basement was nice (but not required), for me the two main requirements were public water and sewer because I did not want to deal with well water in a very farm-related area and I’ll be damned if I’m going to deal with septic – I know many have in their lifetime across the globe but I’m not accustomed to that, and it just wasn’t happening.

While the neighborhood is peaceful (minus the constantly barking dogs), life in Lower Slower Delaware is not what it’s cracked up to be. Living in a beach town means you really can’t do anything between Memorial and Labor day without anticipating going out very late in the evening. The lower property taxes mean there aren’t the right town based jobs in place for general divisions for waste management and road upkeep. There are lights out everywhere, the roads (in my neighborhood) are only ever swept up by the homeowners, they don’t plow after snow and while we received no where near as much snow in the past year as NY and Mass. did, attempting to walk an aging pup on two inches of ice was nothing short of frustrating. There’s a major lack of the Italian influence I held so dear while living in NY. Picking up a decent slice of Pizza means I’m either driving a half-hour west to a mom and pop shop that is as good as you’re going to get (which even still isn’t great) OR I’m heading back to NY and in a car for 5 hours to visit family where NY Italian food is always a perk. When asking in local FB groups about certain ways of life that both Sean and I were spoiled by we’re met with country bumpkins having the audacity to tell us to go back where we came from because they’re biggots who just don’t like change and are very, very set in their ways. It makes me want to drop a bomb on their house, not even gonna lie.

When things are going good though, they’re going good. The trade off is the ability to just head down to the park and watch the ferry come in while fishing on the pier and enjoying the conversations with the locals who don’t care where you came from, just that you’re here and someone pleasant to talk to. There’s beaches for miles and if you aren’t happy with the ones in DE you can head right down the road and wind up in Ocean City, MD for a more amp’d up feel (on season only of course… DE and MD are both pretty much dead offseason). Minus the few rotten apples the general vibe down here was something I needed to get used to. The people are generally nicer, the lack of sales tax means there’s more money in my pocket at the end of the day and living on a NY salary in DE is 100% possible. The people are very lax about getting things done and this is both a good thing and a damn shame depending on the field they’re slacking in. I don’t care if it takes a few extra minutes for someone to assist me in a store, I do care if I’m standing in the E.R. and nothing is really being treated as an emergency because that kind of adrenaline doesn’t seem to exist down here. The lack of a sense of urgency is more than likely what ticks me off the most.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the fact that the last year has been an overwhelming learning curve, or it could just be the fact that I need to become accustomed to dealing with things at a different pace – I don’t know. Over the course of time the things that are broken can and will be fixed. I know I’m very happy and very in love with my fiance, I’m happy with my little office, and maybe one day I’ll be able to say I’m happy with my house. The kitchen will look how I want it to look, there will no longer be any weird pet smells after the carpets are gone, there won’t be any remnants of dated bathrooms when we’re done sprucing things up. We’ll have a nicely fenced in yard where Bella can attempt to enjoy her last years of life (if it happens within that timeframe), I’ll finally have a pool which is something that growing up in apartment was one major thing I wanted my entire life. It’ll all happen with time. It’s certainly not ‘drive’ that’s holding us back, it’s money and time. It’s going to take A LOT to get this house where it needs to be and all we can do for now is work as hard as we possibly can to build up the nest egg required to make this house our home.

Yes, this post went from a quick “Hrm… I wanna sit down and blog” to 3700 words. This is what happens when I haven’t sat down and written anything since October even though there’s been a lot going on. I want to get back into blogging more often, and I’ve said that repeatedly over the years but I just don’t know if I have that kind of drive anymore. Sometimes I feel like just randomly blurting out what’s going on but then not actually having the ability to just sit down and write for an hour to get my thoughts out.

In any event, it’s unfortunately time for me to get back to work. There’s a kitchen full of dishes that need to go into the dishwasher (that’s slowly dying on me and also requires replacement). Maybe I’ll be able to sit down and blog again soon, maybe I won’t. I can set as many goals as I want in life, but work takes the priority for me and that’s just the way it is.

Technorati: Daily Life, Homeownership, Home Remodel, Kitchen, Bath, Furniture, Repair, Gripes, Year in Review, Delmarva

Tags:Daily Life, Delmarva, Furniture, Homeownership, Remodeling, Year in Review
Posted in Daily, Delmarva, Home Ownership, Stressed, Work | Comments Closed

Life gets in the way…

Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

I’ve been trying to sit down and write for a while now but being overly bombarded with deadlines is taking it’s toll on me. I’ve had a few major sites that I’ve been keeping tabs on, and pulling 16+ hour days on to keep on top of things. Most recently was disappointed after an 18 hour run to only find that the deadline was missed. I was so ticked off, you have no idea.

On the Tooth front, with the use of antibiotics it’s fine for now. I do still need to see a dentist to have things taken care of, but the unfortunate waiting list to see anyone down here is starting to turn into the “Story of my life.” I took 10 days worth of antibiotics, and haven’t really had any aspirin since the excessive use of it damn near killed my stomach. I’m not someone who goes looking for prescriptions, if it can’t be solved with aspirin there’s something seriously wrong. So when I mistakenly took more than 10 in a day (because the pain was so intense my brain was literally not functioning) I wound up with some abdominal pains and that was that. At least those pains took the focus off the tooth for a little while.

This past week was pretty nice though, I’ve officially hit 30 and now it’s just downhill from here. It’s weird stepping into a new age bracket. My father and sister came to visit. She’s never been to Delaware before and we took some time to hit up as many stores as possible so she could enjoy Tax Free shopping. She’s the kind of person who has to frequently do laundry because she’s down to her last few pairs of pants. So, that was the main focus during our shopping trips, I think she got about 10 new pairs of pants in total so hopefully that means she isn’t doing laundry as frequently. I know she picked up shoes and shirts as well.

I didn’t really go that crazy on clothing, as much as I really do need certain items. I work from home, though. It’s really unjustified for me to pick up nice looking clothes when I literally have no place to wear them. So I did get a few decent looking T-shirts so I could continue my shirt rotation, and even invested in a few jersey knit type of long sleeve shirts because it has been getting a little chilly lately but all of my longer sleeve items were either heavy sweat shirts or just didn’t fit right anymore, so I’ll probably throw the older stuff into the rotation as well.

“Rotation?” – Yes, I wear my clothes to death to the point that they’re repurposed. Once every few years I stock up on nice looking shirts, mostly tshirts. I wear them to death to the point that they’re no longer acceptable to wear out of the house and then push them to the bedshirts pile. Then I go through the bedshirts, if they don’t make the grade I shred them to use as dust rags, cause that’s really all they’re worth. I would donate, don’t get me wrong, but feel it would be cruel to donate clothing that is literally holding on by a thread. This is just my version of recycling. I think at this point I could do some kind of patch work throw pillow with the remnants of fabric that I have to go through… that requires a sewing machine though – something I don’t currently have. That’ll probably change though, I’ll hopefully be hitting up thrift shops in the future.

So while they were here I decided that since we weren’t going to all be together for the holidays I’d have them come early. I went ahead and did a big thanksgiving dinner in October. Technically speaking I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving but even that was 3 days late. My dad is coming back between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I don’t believe my sister was going to be with him, so I wanted to at least get that out of the way. As far as actual Thanksgiving is concerned… I doubt we’re doing anything, honestly. We’ll figure it out as we get closer. I might spend the day setting up for Christmas but that’s because I’m itching to find an excuse for rearranging the living room to put the tree up. The Den won’t really have any decorations in it though. I may be able to pick up some stuff from thrift shops, but I’m not really going out of my way to over decorate the house when factoring in that at this point in time it’s just Sean and I until we decide we’re ready for children.

So yea, it was nice spending time with my family, nice getting some shopping done, and nice having a few days off from work while they were here so I could relax. Since they left on Saturday, though, I’ve just been non-stop working which has opened a whole new can of worms.

My sleep schedule is BEYOND messed up. I woke up on Saturday about 10am after a few hours of sleep because I wanted to be awake to say goodbye to my family. I then wound up crashing on the couch at a certain point of the night after getting some work done. From there I went to sleep around 10am on Sunday, I woke up at 5pm and then was awake and working until 12pm Monday afternoon. I got some sleep and woke up around 9pm then solidly worked until 2pm the next afternoon, fell asleep, woke up at 9pm and worked until 6am, went back to sleep and woke up today at 4pm. Needless to say, my schedule is completely screwed up. Now, waking up around 4pm isn’t that abnormal for me as I’m accustomed to going to sleep around 7am, but having the freakishly long days kind of threw me for a loop. There really isn’t enough coffee in the day to keep me going anymore AND at the moment it’s taken me a few looks on the taskbar to realize what day it is.

In any event, I have a WooCommerce site to get started on, and lord only knows how many edits for other sites cause I’ve been afraid to look into any business emails tonight. I just had a cup of coffee and I’m patiently waiting for it to kick in so I can get my second wind.

Technorati: Work, AGn Designs, Daily Life, Health, Family, Shopping

Tags:AGn Designs, Daily Life, Family, Health, Shopping, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Daily, Family, Fiance, Work | 4 Comments »

Catching up…

Thursday, September 25th, 2014

It’s getting harder and harder for me to focus lately, and I have no idea why. I’ve been semi-OK about keeping things on the up and up around the house, I’m meeting the deadlines that are set for work, but for some reason actually getting the drive to start/finish necessary projects is just not an option. I feel like the closer I get to 30, the more I lose my drive. And at this point that’s happening within the next 30 days so I feel like it’s all down hill from here. For the past two months I’ve been looking at the supplies to get the hall bath remodeled but haven’t touched them even though I remind myself about it daily.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a mental thing, to a degree I feel it’s physical. Every time I actually do have the urge to do something, I’m being held back by something else. The biggest thing lately is my teeth. I still haven’t gotten that tooth removed and it flares up at the most random times, and even today I’m dealing with a little tinge of pain on a completely different tooth. Things have just been so tight with money this month thanks to the $800 we threw into the car to keep it on the road that our priorities are just screwed up.

I really think, above all else, I’m just overwhelmed in general. I know I continue to harp on it, but I really feel like we got screwed on this house. We’ve sunken so much into just the general maintenance that was long over due that we don’t have the strength or finances to get to the “Make this house Our Home” part of homeownership. We’re making due, but it’s just frustrating to be rebuilding doors that were rotted out and hidden by paint, or pulling up carpeting that was moldy because of the furnace leaking but the previous owners “covered” it with bleach and didn’t properly treat anything. It seems that whenever we’re making a decent stride towards something, we have to go three steps back.

To make matters worse, my hairs falling out. And it’s not the over-dramatic “I’m ripping it out of my head” bullshit. It’s legitimately falling out of my head. The chlorine levels in the public water are so high that it’s turning the basement toilet red, and my scalp no longer can hold the hair follicle. However, I’ve also been doing some research into things lately and need to not only see a dentist, but a doctor. When looking into the symptoms I’ve been experiencing lately, I’m a fairly good fit for Hypothyroidism. Obviously I would need to be tested to determine if I was Hypo or Hyper, but comparing side by side, I’m more on the Hypo side of the spectrum. Hair loss, chronic fatigue, irregular period, hair loss, anxiety, .. it all fits.

I’m not a hypochondriac, I’m not someone who gets heartburn and thinks I’m having a heart attack. I know my usual aches and pains, the bulk of which come from just not taking care of myself. In the last year, however, things have just changed for me and not necessarily for the better.

The biggest issue: I live in Delaware. This is quite possibly the worst state to live in when you need medical attention. I’d have to travel into Maryland to speak to someone who actually has a brain. Am I discrediting ALL doctors in DE? No, of course not. BUT for the ones I need to see, having been in their offices in the past with someone else, I’d rather jump off a bridge than have them treat me. Their investigative process is laughable, and the diagnosis based on investigation is asinine. When you’re sitting in an office with a doctor that says “It’s just a headache, it’ll go away” and then winding up in the surgical ward because a retina was detaching… you learn to just not trust anymore. Or when you’re experiencing heart palpitations and they want to put you on different meds when in reality there’s a small tumor behind your heart that is Stage 3 lung cancer. The misdiagnosis and absence of a damn brain are the top 2 reasons to avoid the medical staff here.

On the Thyroid front – I’m wanting to do more research into things myself, this way I know exactly what I’m getting myself into and what can be done to treat it without having to be hopped up on drugs, that’s the one major downside to an actual diagnosis. I don’t even like taking aspirin, why would I want to take some random drug that was created in a lab that probably has numerous lawsuits pending against it.

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Technorati: Work, Stress, Homeownership, Remodel, Thyroid, Hair Loss, Medical

Tags:Hair Loss, Homeownership, Medical, Stress, Thyroid, Work
Posted in Daily, Work | 4 Comments »

Rollin’… rollin’… rollin’…

Sunday, September 7th, 2014

Quick note: I’m not a hoarder, this is what moving looks like. This is also a graphics heavy post.

In the deep recess of my mind I will always have the “I need to sit down and get this done” mentality. The reality of that, however, it just doesn’t freaking happen. I’ve deleted five posts that were sitting in drafts over the course of the past few months. I’m to a point in my life where I’m really just too bored with things to even care about them. I always find a way to side track myself just to get away from the task at hand. This is killing me on all levels because I feel like I don’t actually complete anything from start to finish in the usual time frame.

Last month Sean and I headed up to New York because he had an appointment in Manhattan, and we hadn’t been up there in well over a year so we were doing double-duty on this trip by getting my childhood bedroom packed up so we could move everything into the house. I wanted to get up there earlier, but I also wanted to get the new house settled a little bit before there would be complete and total chaos with new stuff. I’m actually happy I did it this way because the end result of unloading the truck into the living room put my OCD about keeping things clean into a tail spin.

As you can see from the photo below, the living room and dining room were covered in boxes and bags and just fabric everywhere. It took me a solid 3 days to get everything where it was supposed to go. Literally, three days, 8-10 hour days a piece. Books were put on the shelves, furniture was moved to the rooms they actually belonged in, DVD’s and Games were put away, shelves were hung in the hall closet to accommodate the extra jackets, winter gear, and even board games (that I had no idea I had a stock-pile of) and then all of the clothes somehow wound up inside of MY closet. This is primarily because it’s a 8-foot by 8-foot room and there was enough space on the floor, and enough height with the shelves that I could actually get the boxes into the shelves.

cleanhouse

So this is ultimately how the house looked after a solid 3 days of busting my ass. And even though the mess of stuff didn’t actually wind up in the den initially, since I was on a cleaning rampage anyway – I went a head and not only rearranged the furniture in the den, but cleaned and organized it from top to bottom as well.

den

Bella now has her own little corner by the doors, I needed this to happen because I wasn’t able to close the glass doors with the way the furniture previously was formatted. So I had to move Sean to his own corner, which works out better for him because it’s right in front of the TV. Not many people believe that it’s a 70-inch television, but it is and it just looks super small up against the huge wall it’s on.

The closet was a different story. I think since it’s in an area that doesn’t get a lot of daily foot traffic, I was able to keep it at the back of my mind… as well as at the back of the house. I had no ability to even really access the closet, because three weeks of laundry kind of piled up in front of it. Of course, after the laundry was done I still couldn’t get towards the shelves because of everything on the floor inside of the closet that needed to be sorted through and thrown away. In the end, however, the final result makes me very happy. Note: The bathroom and closet are not green, they’re white…for some reason the tablet is randomly changing things to different colors.

closet

Another area we’re tackling is the kitchen. I’ve been fairly unhappy with it since we moved in. The location of the island really cut down the proper use of the counter space. So, what we did was get rid of the island. Does this sound crazy? Sure, but we turned the island so that it is up against the wall instead of coming out from the wall. We then purchased two upper cabinets to hang above it, and cut the depth of the counter top so there is no longer the ability to put the barstools up against it. This isn’t something I’m worried about though, what we’re going to be doing on the other side of the kitchen is opening up the wall to have a picture window (that will allow for more light in the Living Room), we’ll be purchasing two lower cabinets to flank on either side of the bar stools that will now overlook the living room and fireplace. This area will more than likely be used for quick meals, or going through the mail, or just sitting down and having a cup of coffee. Maybe if Sean and I ever decide that we’re ready for children this could eventually turn into a homework space. I don’t know… I just know that by opening things up into the Living Room/Dining Room it’ll just make the kitchen feel larger than it actually is. In order to do the walls, however, I’ll have already needed to have countertops ready to go. We’re replacing the butcher block look formica with a slate black color, I’ll need to purchase two counter tops to replace the existing ones, and then an additional one to put against the new wall. I’ll be painting all the cabinets white, putting in new flooring, and going with a grey tone on the walls. I’ll have pictures of that in an upcoming post, this one was a little picture heavy and I’m personally not 100% happy with how the kitchen currently looks so obviously there’s nothing to show.

In any event, I actually finally sat down and got everything in my head written down. I am going to try for more posts, lord knows there’s enough going on that I want to blog about but at least for now the “I finally have 30 years of my life under ONE roof” post is finally complete.

Technorati: Feeling Accomplished, Homeowners, Organization, Daily Life, Cleaning, O.C.D.

Tags:Accomplished, Cleaning, Construction, Daily Life, Home Ownership, Organization, Rennovation
Posted in Daily, Delmarva, Home Ownership, New York, Stressed, Work | 1 Comment »

Productive procrastination?

Monday, June 23rd, 2014

Believe it or not, I’ve actually been actively attempting to complete a blog post for the last week. This is where my life has pretty much gone in the shitter. I’ve sat down and started writing this particular entry probably 15 times, and still have yet to complete it. So my goal for the next 20 minutes is to complete a thought and hopefully be able to hit the “Publish” button instead of saving the draft. Work has taken up a lot of my time which has caused me to slack just about everywhere else… but it’s not like I’m being a lazy ass either… right?

First and foremost, my dad came down to visit this past week. He’d never seen the house before and probably hasn’t been to the state of Delaware either EVER or at least within the last 30 years that I’ve been alive, so it was a nice little vacation for him. Typically when he takes his mandatory time off of work (he accrues his hours, but never uses them), he takes off two weeks in a row and will maybe spend a few days in Atlantic City but for the rest of the time he’s hanging out in front of the TV complaining he’s bored. So, as a nice little change for him he got to leave New York and had a place to stay for a week that wasn’t his own house. He seemed impressed by the size of my master bathroom, which hell even I’m impressed with that. The house itself also (like it did with Colin previously) seems much smaller in pictures. When you actually walk through it and take in the 3,000 sqft it’s semi-shocking. It’s way too large for just two people, but that’s just how it goes.

Moving on, while he was here I got to celebrate father’s day with both him and George, which was a nice thing to finally have some family members together from both sides under the same roof. We took him to the two restaurants that I know he couldn’t possibly have up in New York. First of which is Cracker Barrel, because hey that place freaking rules and $30 for three people to eat A LOT of food is just an awesome experience. Then another night we headed over to Bethany Blues in Lewes because it’s just damn good BBQ. I’m a sucker for their Mac & Cheese (even though I find mine to taste better, it’s just a nice change to get it from there). I wasn’t happy with my rib choice, should have stuck with the brisket or pulled pork but I wanted something different, and it just didn’t work out that well. That’s ok, dinner was still enjoyable, and dessert was freaking awesome so I really can’t complain.

He left us on Wednesday, he took the ferry up to Cape May and then drove up to Atlantic City for a few days and noted that he not only got to see a few hawks floating around, but even spotted little dolphin following the ferry. He knows based on prior experiences with seeing hawks that it’s just not gonna be a good gambling time, he experienced that almost every time he drove up to Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. It was no different when being on the ferry heading to Cape May. So, even though he unfortunately lost in A.C. he enjoyed his week away from New York.

So, moving on. We had a few big plumbing issues this week. Something happened to the pump in the basement for the bathroom and we wound up springing a leak. Of course Sean over reacted and made it seem like the basement was flooding out and it was just a trickle of water that we were able to take care of. George came in and fixed the pipe, sealed things up and now we no longer have the weird sewer smell either, which was freaking disgusting but I already know once we get a good chunk of money together we’re completely gutting the basement and starting over. The assholes who previously owned the house compromised so many different things by building the basement that we really have no choice.

I got to the point, while my father was here, that I actually put a hammer through the wall in the basement because the fucking morons who built up the basement decided it would be smart to block a window with drywall because they couldn’t figure out how to cover a pipe. Yep.. block a window… lose ventilation as well as an exit point in case of fire. FUCKING SMART! I took the pic of the aftermath of this area off of Sean’s Instagram. The photo to the left is my exposing of the window, and the photo to the right is us exposing the super fucked-upedness of the previous owners. Now… Sean has two vents in his office for the HVAC. Both of which BLAST air into his office, but then you look at them on the other side of the wall (in the area where the holes are now) the vents were half-ass placed on the wall, and then they were clearly leaking because with how cold Sean’s office was getting, the room (where these holes are) was a good 10 to 15 degrees colder. So, he taped up the vents and then heard a weird noise coming from the wall behind the shower, he opened up the wall to find a HUGE hole in the duct work where it appeared that they were attempting to heat the back wall of the shower in order to get around the lack of a vent in the bathroom. So, prior to us locating this hole we knew that the bedrooms upstairs did not have good airflow at all, it was always either too cold in the winter, or blistering on the recent hotter days when factoring in that the A.C. will never kick off because the house would not get down to the 65* that the thermostat was set on. So, once this hole was located and patched a blast of freezing cold air came through the vent in the master bedroom. While we’re confident that there are still leaks here and there, I feel the A.C. is now even functioning better because it’s actually turning off when the house hits the temperature it’s supposed to.

The only reason we really started to investigate into things was because my father had mentioned that the room he was staying in just didn’t have a good flow of air and it was only realized after he’d shut the door to go to bed for the night. Now, I don’t like the idea of someone being uncomfortable in my house, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves. If you know me in person, you know that I’ll make it a point to keep things as comfortable as possible. Case and point would probably be Karen, she’s got poor circulation and is commonly always cold. So, I make it a point to turn the A.C. off before I know she’s coming, or turn it to a higher temperature. Sean and I are comfortable at 70*F, she’s more comfortable at 80*F, so I compromise and bump it up to 75*F and make sure that there’s a fluffy sweater within reach for when she gets the chill. Knowing that my dad is on a normal persons schedule and eating habits, I made sure to have cereal, cold cuts and other things in the fridge/pantry so that he had what he’s used to noshing on at home. I went and bought a double decker air mattress (as the temporary bed until I can get my mattress from NY), this way he wasn’t sleeping on the futon, or on the floor, plenty of clean towels, even found some of the shampoos and stuff I’ve taken from hotels over the years of travelling back and forth with Sean and put them in the bathroom in case he’d forgotten anything. I just, I dunno, I just want to make sure you’re comfortable. I’m not the “Oh do you want a drink?” type of person. I show you where everything is and you help yourself… but that’s just a ‘default’ thing for me because anyone who does stay here, or stop by for whatever length of time is typically someone I’d consider family anyway.

So yea, it was an eventful week and thankfully a few things have been fixed. We still need a roof, still need to get all of the rest of their shit out of our garage, and also are quite possibly going to need to gut the basement and start over. I know Sean doesn’t want to lose his office, but if we can make it better… why not? The goal for next year is to tackle anything on the outside of the house, we want to put up a fence, a pool, get a shed for the lawn/pool equipment, so the next few years are going to be tight, but we’re thankfully pretty settled in and minus the lack of furniture for the master bedroom, pretty damn comfortable. I think the saving grace is the fact that Sean and I both have our defined office spaces and things just run smoothly. I find it’s easier to concentrate when I’m working in the office and not in the den, which could be why it took me almost 3 weeks to blog, because I get side tracked by the T.V. while I’m working. So sitting in the office with music and both feet on the floor in a proper upright working position I was able to spend 16 hours yesterday finalizing a site for a client.

I’ve been working on big name things that I’m not allowed to talk about and it freaking kills me, because my portfolio would look fucking fantastic, but when dealing with NDA’s things just get tricky and I personally do not want to deal with a lawsuit for my boss, or even me.

So… I’m heading off, I’m actually going to hit the “Publish” button, and I’m happy as hell about it.

Technorati: Home Ownership, Father’s Day, Family, Construction

Tags:AGn Designs, Construction, Daily Life, Family, Friends, Home Ownership, Work
Posted in Daily, Family, Fiance, Home Ownership, Work | Comments Closed

We’re getting there…

Monday, May 12th, 2014

I’ve wanted to actually sit down and post for well over a month and a half, but the joy of homeownership when the place is constantly a wreck tends to take the priority. So, since it’s been so long, I now don’t even know where to start.

If you follow me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook you’d know that we did actually close on the house and get the keys, it happened on March 14th instead of March 12th but it happened. Since then it’s been a mad-dash of “Get This”, “Fix This”, “Clean This”, followed by INSERT MORE COFFEE!! The house was so freaking disgusting after we got here on closing day. It took me over a week of shampooing carpets before I was even remotely comfortable with moving in my stuff over here. The bathrooms were scrubbed a few times with A LOT of bleach, the garage was full of crap that the previous owners should have gotten rid of and it fucking cost us money to do it, money we didn’t have because they completely fucking screwed us during this entire god damn process. After going through this house we’ve easily determined that these people were low-life scum who had absolutely no idea what broom was, let alone any advanced cleaning accessory such as a SPONGE. The layers of slime that were scrubbed off of the showers is still mind-blowing to me… to the point that I’m now scrubbing the shower down almost every day just to make sure there’s none of their residue making an appearance – my O.C.D. in this house is possibly 10 times worse than it’s ever been before. I swear to god if they were ever dumb enough to step foot on this property I’d probably shove a few of the shot-gun shells found in our crawl space straight up their asses.

In the past month we’ve gotten the bare essentials taken care of on the house, the rest are all happening this summer. We’ve got a huge couch and a big comfy chair (for Sean) in the Den. We recently picked up a gorgeous 6-person cherry dining table to start building up the dining room, we bought a small kitchen table the first week so we had somewhere to eat, picked up some bar stools on clearance from Lowes that were a really good find. George and Sean have been busy with some of the maintenance around the house so that we can be in a livable environment, and the only major thing left to accomplish this upcoming summer is to get the roof patched up. If we had a little more wiggle room with the bank account this summer we’d have a company come in to take down a few of the over-grown (and dying) trees in the back yard so we can start putting in posts for a fence. Why? Cause the neighbor behind us has the most annoying dog in the world and I’d rather it no longer have the ability to see us whenever we pass by one of our windows, and I want a damn pool so a fence must come first!

Sean’s been really happy down in his basement office, I was able to spend some time getting my office painted and setup so the only thing at this point that’s missing is a new desk but I’m making due with the folding table for now, it’s holding the iMac up pretty well, as well as the side monitor so I think I’ll be OK for a little while. Of course I’m going to need to get my Windows desktop setup at some point for cross-browser testing but I’ll continue to utilize the free services for now. I could really care less if IE6 supports something anyway, if you’re still using IE6 then you shouldn’t have a computer to begin with.

The one big draw-back for life recently is the fact that my cell-phone is pretty much useless. I dropped it on the day of closing and the back popped off, it’s currently being held together with electrical tape and the battery only holds a charge for about 30-60 minutes. I literally have to keep it on the charger unless I’m talking on it, in which case I have to make sure there’s a charger close by. Now, the battery was shit before I broke the back off of the phone, it’s just gotten much worse over time so I’m going to assume that replacing it should help to solve a few of my problems. Thankfully, even though the Droid-4 was made in a way that Verizon would have to change the battery for you, I was able to break the piece off that Verizon has the tool for and I don’t need to waste money by bringing anything to them. So, I’m gonna spend $20 on Amazon for a replacement and hopefully be good to go. I’m not due for an upgrade, but with the cost of cellphones I’d rather salvage the one I have for as long as humanly possible. There’s no point in my spending $200 to upgrade every two years when I can just pick up a $20 battery that should hopefully give me at least 12 months without any problems.

BUT – the one thing we’re doing to help with the problem is turning our Double Play with Comcast into a Triple Play. Sean didn’t really see the point in having a house phone in the beginning, but now that he’s seeing how many problems I’m having with my phone and seeing how often I need to be ON the phone because my entire family and all of my friends live in NY he’s realizing that the house phone will be an essential part of life here for me. So tonight while we were in Staples we found an AT&T phone system for like $100 that included like 5 phones which would pretty much cover every room in the house, Sean figured it would be cheaper on Amazon so we walked away from it, but I saw saw it for like $130 on Amazon so I guess I’ll be heading back to Staples… when will men learn to listen?

In any event, I have an inbox full of crap to take care of and eyelids that are not willing to cooperate, so it’s time to increase my caffeine and while that’s working through my system it’s time to walk the dog. If it weren’t for her snoring next to me, I honestly would have completely forgotten it’s time for her to head around the block.

Technorati: Daily Life, Moving Sucks, Homeownership, Cleaning, Pets, Technology, Work, Men

Tags:AGn Designs, Bella, Cleaning, Daily Life, Home Ownership, Moving, Stress, Technology, Work
Posted in Bella, Daily, Fiance, Home Ownership, Randomage, Stressed, Work | Comments Closed

Move quicker damn it!

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

We’re still at the mercy of the bank. We’ve had to add a second co-signer to the loan because the first one (while well qualified) pays rent so they then needed to re-crunch the numbers. The issue now is the fact that they sent all of this to us on Monday 24th, which is the day when we’re supposed to be letting the current home owners know we’re “good to go” and they can work on getting their stuff out of the house so we can close on Friday. We, unfortunately, have not gotten the green light – all we got was an extra 60 pages of a contract that needed to be filled out and sent back ASAP – now we’re not going to know a damn thing until tomorrow afternoon.

It’s a 50/50 chance that we’ll be closing on Friday, but at this point I’m leaning more towards next week based on how royally we’ve been screwed this entire time. I, personally, could care less about how this is effecting the current home owners because they lied way too much for me TO CARE. I got this sob story about how they’re going into assisted living, can’t afford their bills, yada yada. Meanwhile, they were just downsizing and moving to a different community. Why lie? Why even concoct a story? You didn’t need to say a damn thing to us, you could have been honest and said that the house was just too big for you to handle. Why even come up with some bull shit to try to tug the heart strings? You’re not dealing with a native Delawarian.. you’re dealing with a New Yorker who couldn’t give two shits about you at the end of the day anyway!

So by tomorrow afternoon (fingers crossed) we’ll know our closing date. I’m still hoping it’s Friday just because I’m itching to get the hell in there and scrub the crap out of the place but who knows. Either way I have a stock of cleaning supplies already written down that I need to buy and bring over there. I just want start the cleaning process, have Comcast come in to wire the place and the rest is cake.

I haven’t even started packing, it’s not because I’ve been too lazy to get started it’s because the “Waiting Game” aspect of things has lead me to believe that this wasn’t actually going to happen for us. Is there a lot to pack? Sure. Is it something I could knock out in a few days? Yes. That’s the beauty part. When you own the home and you’re not leaving a “Rental” property – you’ve got a little time to get yourself in and settled. So by default the first task is to get the place cleaned up, while cleaning have anything installed by an outside company that needs to be installed (In our case it’s just Comcast). Then we’ll be heading over to a few furniture places because the only pieces of furniture we currently own are a bed and two desks. Clearly in a 2900 sqft home we’re going to need a lot more. So, first purchase will be a couch, and then I’m hitting up every Thrift Store I can find to get the rest of the house furnished. I will NEVER buy a ‘used’ sofa from anyone. You never know where the sofa really came from, and I don’t want the headache of scrubbing things down to the point I’m stripping the color off the fabric because it’s just not clean enough for me to have any piece of mind. So the sofa will be brand new, where as anything wood based (dining room table/chairs, end tables, coffee table, dresser, nightstands, etc) will come from thrift shops and flea markets. Why? Cause I know I can easily scrub them down and I’ll probably wind up stripping the paint off and staining them anyway.

Do I have it all figured out? of course. Will things go any faster because I have them figured out? Of course not! Sean’s a complete impatient mess right now, but I know he just wants to get this whole process over and done with so we can focus on more important things. I typically will keep the frustration levels to myself, but that’s because I know when it comes to certain things I can handle stress better. I also know I can handle paperwork better, but when you’re exposed to that stuff it’s just something you get used to.

The only thing that I’m increasingly growing impatient about is the fact that Bella’s hair is way too long and she’s been panting like all holy hell because it’s always so damn warm in this house. I spend a lot of time in the bedroom with the window open and the overhead fan on but that doesn’t help her comfort levels. I want to know the exact monetary numbers we’re dealing with for the closing on this house so that I know if there’s an extra $100 in the budget for me to get her groomed just so that’s one less thing to stress about.

A big stress factor right now is work has really, really slowed down to the point that it’s scaring me. I’ve always got little things to do but there’s nothing to really solidly keep myself as busy as I’d prefer. The only benefit to this is it’s given me time to get a new template together for AGn Designs, to replace the “Temporary Site” that’s been sitting there for two years that I freaking hate. I still have like five or six pages to format though, so lord only knows when that will be completed.

Either way, my inbox is showing me that I have a few things to accomplish today so hopefully I’ll be able to get them knocked out and keep my mind off everything with the house.

Technorati: AGn Designs, Mortgages, Buying a House, Stress, Homeowners, Web Development

Tags:AGn Designs, Bella, Daily, Home Ownership, Mortgage, Stress
Posted in AGn Designs, Annoyed, Bella, Daily, Stressed, Work | Comments Closed

The waiting game…

Sunday, February 9th, 2014

We got all of our paperwork sent out, and surprisingly it showed up on their desks much earlier than we thought it would. The package was two day shipping, it made it there in less than 24 hours. Normally, I wouldn’t care too much but when you’re dealing with a company that doesn’t seem to know how to make a phone call… things tend to get lost.

What happens when you receive an email from someone for the first time and Google just doesn’t feel like cooperating? It goes to spam. So of course tonight I get a frantic phone call from my father (who’s co-signing the loan) wanting to know who this chick is and why does she need information (yada yada). So while I was attempting to teach my 65-year old father how to forward an email (he works with his hands, old school – computers are a nuisance… I get it)…. Sean was able to find the email in his spam box and now we get to play the game of “UGHHHHHH Where the hell is this shit now” while locating the paperwork that was missing from the file. I still don’t quite understand how anything was ‘missing’ when none of these items were requested, but either way we’ll get it done. We need to pull w2’s out of our asses, we also need to have hand-written letters authorizing all kinds of crap. I already have a letter from my father given me the “OK” to sign his name on the paperwork, but now we need another letter so they can confirm deposits to his bank account. Since when is a paycheck a “questionable” transaction? I don’t understand these freaking people, and I’m getting so sick of jumping through hoops and repeating ourselves… I just want this freaking house already!

In the end, the efforts should be worth the reward. I just want this process to be over with. I can understand why more and more people are looking for apartments these days… not only can they be cheaper (depending on where you live), but with houses…. the paperwork alone will kill you.

On the work front, as usual things are picking up and I’m to a point in my ‘skillset’ where I’m burnt the fuck out and pissed off all at the same time. 80% of my work is done through a primary contract. With this contract I have a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), this means that all of the shit that I spend my time working on can’t even be made public to help my own portfolio. Sure, the contract can take all of the credit for the 200+ hours put in on a site, but I get no recognition.. half the time not even a thank you. I spend my days with correction emails because something is off by two pixels in a browser no one even fucking uses. Then… I get five minutes to myself to update my own portfolio and realize that I don’t HAVE a portfolio since everything I work on is something I’m not even allowed to talk about. The client list could fucking WOW potential clients, but I’m stuck as a mute.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to keep my mouth shut about things? I’m a New York Italian for crying out loud!

Technorati: Ranting, Work, AGnDesigns, Home Ownership, Paperwork, Contracts Suck

Tags:AGn Designs, Mortgage, Ranting, Work
Posted in Annoyed, Daily, Work | Comments Closed

In the home stretch!

Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

We’re making strides on the “Home Ownership” front. We’re set on our final sale price, we’re mailing a huge packet containing all information over to our broker, and, per our contract, we’re set to close on Feb 28th, 2014. I’m super excited, I’ve been on a bookmarking rampage for everything we’re going to need for the house. The only thing we’re really waiting on now is the word back from the bank confirming that we do, in fact, have the loan and it’s then full steam ahead.

The owners of the home, being as they had to pay February’s mortgage anyway, set the 28th as their closing date. This gives him time to clear all of their stuff, but it also gives us about 15-20 days to make sure the bank has whatever they need to move forward.

I am a little annoyed with the owners at the moment, but at the same time it’s just one of those “part of buying a home” bullshit things. We’re given this sob story about how they’re going into an assisted living facility and can’t come down on their price any more than they already have. Okay, as a compassionate person I understand that. But when your realtor (who also happens to be your daughter in law) lets it slip that you’re just ‘downsizing’ and moving to another community… kind of ticks me the hell off. Especially based on the fact that they aren’t fixing a damn thing inside of the house. The roof being replaced is a cost that falls on Sean and I in the very near future, the plumbing issues also fall on us, and lord only knows how much scrubbing I’ll have to do before I’m even remotely comfortable with bringing my furniture into the home. It’s random things that are ticking me off, but in the end it’ll be something that’s MINE and I should just let it go. Doesn’t mean I’m not ticked off about it… but I’ll just let it go.

On the work front, it’s the same old shit… different day. I’m giving myself random 20 minute intervals for getting a new template up on AGnDesigns. Traffic has picked up a little after some SEO changes. The template currently on the site was only meant to be a temporary one so the fact that it’s been there for two years is proof that I just need to get my ass in gear. I’m drawing inspiration from a few different sites. I did find a template on TemplateMonster that I’m completely in love with but the entire thing is flash based and after doing some research the transitions that I was really hoping on just can’t be recreated with jQuery so I walked away from it completely.

That should, hopefully, be something that changes in the future. School was put on hold for life-shit and hopefully after we’re settled in the house and we know what our bills are I’ll be able to get back into school and get things completed. I, oddly enough, am looking forward to getting into the semester that covers Flash. As much as I like the idea of jQuery, there are just some things where Flash makes more sense (especially when you’re dealing with compatibility issues once you factor WordPress into a site!). So that’ll happen soon enough and things will be smooth sailing again.

So yea, mortgage is under way, hopefully I’ll be handed the keys on the 28th and all will be right with the world.

Back to work I go!

Technorati: AGn Designs, Mortgage, Buying a House, Decorating, College, jQuery, Flash, WordPress

Tags:AGn Designs, Home Decor, Home Ownership, School, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Daily, Work | Comments Closed

Keepin’ it movin…

Thursday, October 10th, 2013

Even though I have these overwhelming moments of “I haven’t gotten a damn thing done…” I’m still movin, movin, movin. I’m cranking things out as fast as I can, and bouncing from site to site and email to email on a regular basis. I still don’t feel like I’ve actually fulfilled anything I set out to do though. Clearly I’m accomplishing something being as all of the bills are paid and there’s still money left to do what I please… it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough anymore.

I’ve been exhausted lately, it doesn’t matter how much I actually sleep – I just never feel like it was a restful one. I don’t know if it’s the change in weather (constant Hot to Cold extremes) or the fact that the sun hasn’t come out in a few days but my eyelids are insistent on just closing completely and forgetting about the tasks at hand right now.

I’m completely 100% overbooked, the workload has got me shaking in my fuzzy slippers and there’s all kinds of pressure from every direction to just get it done where quality and speed are heavily utilized. For just one client there’s 4 major sites to work on, each bigger than the last and of course there’s tight deadlines on every single one of them. With another client, she was MIA for the past year and a half and all of a sudden I’m now supposed to RUSH to cater to her because she’s finally on the ball. She still owes me like $2,500 from the last chunk of work done for her, but swears she’ll have everything paid in full upon completion. I just wish that “End” was closer. I did just finish up on Adam’s halloween site – Oct31st.org. I wish it could have been completed sooner, but with everything going on and the fact that I’m over-scheduled, it really took my time away from it. I feel bad for the delays, but there’s nothing I could have done about it.

Right now I’m looking down at my Thunderbird icon on the dock and it’s showing over 135 emails. Knowing that I already did the usual daily spam clean-out, I’m scared to see the requests I have waiting for me. I need to put in about 8 hours to complete one site today, and then there’s another site that should take me about 15-20 hours that needs be done by Saturday – I just hope I have the strength to get it all done. In theory it’s just 3 8-hour days and everything is fine, but when you’ve got other things to take care of as well, those 8 hours turn into 16 and then your brain fries and it’s time to crash. There isn’t enough coffee to keep my eyelids open anymore.

Excitement Note: We’re looking to buy a house!
Tomorrow (Friday 11th) is going to be beyond hectic, I’ll be on the phone all morning to get appointments setup, and get some banking needs taken care of and then at 2pm I have an appointment with a realtor to do a walk-thru on a house that I’ve been eyeing for a little while that only recently (like three days ago – recently) went back on the market. Sean and I went to TD Bank to try to get a mortgage on our own, but since it’s a manufactured home and not on it’s own land TD didn’t approve us for the mortgage. The lady was very surprised that the pre-approval didn’t come right up considering she saw our proof of income and said “If someone who’s making $30,000 every 5 months can’t get a mortgage – something’s seriously wrong with our systems!” So we’ll get that “This is why you weren’t approved” letter in the mail in a few weeks, in the meantime I called around to numerous banks in the area to find out who actually would provide the funding on a pre-fab home, and I found ONE bank, out of fucking 12!! Since I just took an 11 point hit on my credit for even applying for a loan (which is something TD should figure out how to reinstate since they should properly train their employees prior to them completing an entire application knowing that this house isn’t on its own land), I now am well into the “Poor” rating for credit scores. Sean took the same 11 point hit on his credit, but his was in the higher 690’s, so he still falls under the “You’re OK” mark. His father, very graciously, has offered to co-sign for Sean, and since his score is in the high 800’s, there should be absolutely no doubt that the loan will be approved. He recently sold a house, and when they ask about ‘savings accounts’ he can say that he’s got a few hundred grand in his, and even though Sean doesn’t have anything in his – I’m sure the numbers will balance out.

Now the rush is that we’re trying to bring as much money together as we possibly can. Between closing costs, downpayment, and the initial “Get it all hooked up and turned on so we can LIVE in the house” aspect of things – we’re gonna need about 15 grand. We’ve only got 3700 right now, so needless to say the next two months are going to be a hectic dance of “Work, Deal with Broker, Work more… keep working, working, working, working and working!”.

I’m just crossing my fingers that we can actually accomplish it. We’ve spent so long living under someone else’s roof during the entire length of our relationship (to date) that it’s time to just start the next chapter. It’s a jump that we absolutely need to take, we’re both scared about it (obviously) but we’re going to do it together and no matter what happens we’ll always have each other to lean on.

In any event… time to get back to work. :: head desk ::

Technorati: Work, AGn Designs, Mortgages, Housing, Life, Daily Grind

Tags:AGn Designs, Daily, Life, Money, Mortgages, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Boyfriend, Daily, Delmarva, Stressed, Work | Comments Closed

This is just killin’ me…

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

I unfortunately needed to put the Little Boy back outside. While he is generally a really good cat, he’s also an animal that’s spent the last two years on the street and wouldn’t adjust very well to permanent indoor life. A certain time of night he would be itching to go outside, and then he wound up lashing out by attacking Bella and Meow-Meow. Typically I wouldn’t care about the playful aspect of his personality, but when it goes from playing to claws, and his eyes completely change. We all decided it would be best to keep him as an outdoor animal to ensure that he’s getting the frisky side of him taken care of in his usual environment, and then also making sure he has a proper place to relax.

So the bench outside has a nice warm blanket on it, and he’s got a little feeding station. He doesn’t stray far from the house, and it’s kind of funny to watch him follow Bella and I whenever I take her out for a walk. Usually he’ll get to a certain point where he stops following, but this morning he completely went around two blocks with me and her, and even used the bathroom when he needed to. Not many people can say that they can walk their cat and dog at the same time, so it’s nice to be unique once in a while lol.

Work has been hectic, I’m working on 6 different sites at once and of course they’re all due at the same freaking time. There are projects that I’ve had to leave pending because I just don’t have the time to transfer over to them and no matter how many times I post something on Twitter/Facebook/Freelancer I can’t freaking find anyone who knows what they’re doing in order to help me out.

I need someone who understands proper HTML5/CSS3 compliance, who also has some type of a jQuery backend. Even if they don’t write it themselves, they need to know how to work with existing scripts (which I can actually provide to them anyway). From there, that same person would need to know how to code for WordPress. Anyone can turn any theme into a WordPress theme, but I need someone who understands that you need to have EVERYTHING inside of WordPress as clients are not to touch the actual .php files themselves. So the use of Widgets and Advanced Custom Fields (primarily the repeater fields) are required as well.

Now, while that may not seem like very much – you’d be surprised at how hard it is for me to find someone capable of handling the load. It’s driving me absolutely crazy. I don’t understand how there seems to be NO ONE around who can do it.

Help? 🙁

Technorati: HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, WordPress, Now Hiring, AGn Designs

Tags:AGn Designs, CSS 3, HTML 5, jQuery, Now Hiring, Web Design, Web Development, Wordpress
Posted in AGn Designs, Annoyed, Smokey, Work | Comments Closed

Took ya long enough!

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got a new theme up on k.nu. The previous one was nice and all but I needed a change. I was waiting on inspiration, and oddly enough I got it from a damn game on my Tablet. There’s a game called “Fashion Story” that I’m absolutely sick of playing but the color scheme for the game itself inspired me. When I showed it to Adam he said “OOH SUPER CUTE” and I told him to build something for me. He sent me a PSD with a base template, I added to it and went crazy with little tweaks and mods here and there and BOOM = New Template!

I mirrors templates that I’d done in the past. Everyone now, sticking with HTML5/CSS is going for the centered layouts with muted, but bold, colors. I wanted something completely different. There was a theme I created when I was on dork.com (over 10 years ago) that really reminded me of the theme that Adam started for me. Back then my coding skills were no where near what they are now, I think I tried to figure out what DIV tags were for that template because I’d previously used Tables and multiple frames to get everything to load. God, do you remember coding with FRAMES, that had to be the absolute WORST way to build a damn website – but no one knew any better, they just wanted to get as much information as possible onto a single page and that was the only way to do it.

I’m actually very happy that I was able to get this up and running. I know it’s not an extravagant WOW type of template, but I’m happy with it and that’s what matters. I’ve been so busy working on numerous other things that having the downtime to get it done is really what mattered to me. I started putzing around with it about a month ago, and was able to put the final touches on it for the last few days. I’d finished up a site that I was working on with Adam (for Kimberly J. Brown – remember her from Halloweentown?). The site itself is ready to go in a Development folder we’re just waiting on the GreenLight to go live with it. It’s a fantastic change from the design she was previously using. It’s more hip, modern, and not located on blogger. This chick has been fully upgraded to WordPress and I’m hoping she’s super happy with the site.

My issue now is I’m at a ‘low point’ with work. So this means I’ll be working on random odd-and-end jobs to help Sean out, but I don’t have anything to personally handle on my own. I know I’m helping him out with a site tomorrow, but then I’m jumping onto the total revamp of AGn Designs, it’s in desperate need of a facelift and I have quite a few sites to add to the portfolio. It really sucks that I have so many NDA’s with clients, there were numerous sites that I’ve worked on that I’ve been so proud of but don’t have the ability to list them in my portfolio. One day I’ll get those kinds of sites for my own doing so I can joyfully display them, but for now I’ll just keep chugging away.

I do know that my usual boss has about 6 sites to send to me, but he’s been so damn busy with everything going on that they’re delayed at the moment. I just hope that all of the sites he claims are coming to me aren’t going to show up mid-month in August. Our friend Colin is coming down to visit for 5 days and I really don’t want to be working the whole time he’s here. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and I already have a lot of stuff planned for us. Working would completely cut into that.

The upside to today, other than completing this, is I was able to get outside for a little while and do some much needed lawn maintenance. It’s been so long since I weed-wacked that I couldn’t even see where the bushes began and the grass ended. The grass grew straight up and over all of the trim/separators we have outside. I wacked that down straight to the dirt so I know I’ll have a few more weeks before I need to get out there again. Grass grows so damn quickly this time of year, I hate it. I wish I had a gravel yard … less maintenance.

The second upside – I found a site that makes all kinds of custom stuff for your business. It’s not vista-print – I effin’ hate them. It’s a newer site called BuildASign.com. I ordered a custom license plate, because Delaware is one of those states where you only need to have one plate on the car, so I’m utilizing the real estate that my car actually has (meaning lack of outside decoration) and I got myself a plate with AGn Designs logo printed on it. I did have to partially cancel my order with them because I chose the wrong size window decals – they were way too small for the amount of information that I actually put onto it. That was completely my fault, I know I was paying attention when I was setting everything up but I honestly didn’t even think about it being too small until my Mom had mentioned “Really, 3×5?”. So now I’m working on getting everything larger so it’s easier to read. The license plate should be here by the 15th. Hopefully today I’ll be ordering the larger sized decals and have them around the 15th/16th as well.

Anyone interested in a free AGn Designs window decal? I can offer free advertising to anyone interested in pasting it onto their car to aid me in a little free advertising as well. Shoot me an email through the Contact page if you’re interested.

In any event, it’s knocking on 6am and I have an inbox to clear out so I can get some shut-eye.

Technorati: krissy.nu, agndesigns.net, web development, website design, graphics design, wordpress templates, work, lawn care, custom plates, vanity, decals, portfolio, daily life

Tags:AGn Designs, Daily Life, Friends, Graphics Design, Portfolio, Vanity, Web Design, Wordpress, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Boyfriend, Delmarva, Randomage, Sitely, Stressed, Work | 3 Comments »

I hate wires!

Sunday, July 14th, 2013

I wish I could understand why, even living in a wireless world, I can’t fricken escape them! I just spent the last two hours pretty much ripping every single wire out of the walls/surge protectors so I could properly reorganize. With the addition of the new computer (had to purchase a Windows machine, clients were complaining about cross-browser/cross-platform crap) I was really crunched for space on my desk, and this is something I desperately need so I’m not stuck with the overflow of paperwork I seem to accumulate for some reason. I wound up moving the tower to the shelf next to me but that then required the printer being moved to the shelf above me, and then anything that I had on that top shelf needed to move to one behind me (that Sean put up on the wall last night), and then I needed to drag wires from underneath the house so I could move the cable box. Thank god there was extra slack. But for now, everything WIRE related is pretty much set on where it’s going. The only issue is having to get all of the daily essentials reorganized since everything else was shifted around.

Even with an excessive amount of shelving I feel like I don’t have enough room to properly organize this room. I’ll wholeheartedly admit that the bed is just way too damn big for the room, but when you factor in that Sean is in a completely different room for the entire day (his private office space) there’s really no reason why I can’t make things work in here. The only thing he’s got in here is clothes for crying out loud. Meanwhile I’m always sitting here looking at wires and crap that just needs to be put away and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out where it all freaking needs to go.

I really need a cup of coffee, that’s got to be why my brain isn’t working right now. I haven’t even looked at my emails today, it’s Sunday I need a damn break. Tomorrow is a completely different story, I know that I’m already completely overloaded and I also know there’s more stuff coming in.

On the upside… I’m about 50% done with the new template for Krissy.nu, took me a few years but I’ll finally have something new up. I wish I could go back to a time when there was a new theme every month and the main income was just from sponsored posting. Can’t do that anymore, there’s just no damn time and sitting at a computer for any longer than I already do would drive me crazy and completely kill my back.

I think it’s time for that cup of coffee.

Technorati: Organization, AGn Designs, Wired, Wireless, Technology, Office Space

Tags:AGn Designs, Office Space, Organization, Technology, Wireless
Posted in AGn Designs, Daily, Work | 1 Comment »

Busy…busy bee…

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

Life hasn’t stopped in the past few weeks, I’m honestly surprised I have an ounce of downtime to even sit here and blog but I’m doing it, and the only way to get through it will be numbers…

#1 – A new pet…
While outside for my usual 4am smoke break I couldn’t help but hear excessive meowing coming from the lawn across the street. I believed it to be either a cat in heat, or one about to give birth. So, of course, you could imagine my surprise when there was all of a sudden a little face coming out from under my car begging for attention. Me, being an animal lover by default (one of my weaknesses), I figured she’s super tiny, more than likely a kitten and very thin so she’s got to be hungry. So I threw some of Bella’s food at her – she scoffed it and kind of went away but was lingering because she was clearly feeling us out (Sean and I were both outside at this point). She lingered so much to the point that she wound up walking around on the deck while we were sitting there. For an animal this social there was no way in hell she was a ferral cat because if they aren’t socialized within the first 2 months of birth they typically will never like people. Obviously someone was caring for this little thing in the past but lord knows where that owner is now (it’s been 3 weeks, and to date there’s been no one looking for her). After she hopped up in my lap I instantly knew that this had to be someones cat, even if they were only feeding her outside, she absolutely had to be someones cat. So all of us (Karen, Sean and myself) continued to check on her during the course of the next few days. She was easy to find, she never left the porch. Karen and I brought her to the vet where she was treated with frontline and given a distemper. The vet confirmed my thought of her being between 6 and 12 months old, she’s way too tiny to not be a kitten – no matter how malnourished she potentially was. We kept her, regardless of the fact that Sean’s allergic to her and she was scared shitless of Bella (bull in china shop that dog is, I swear). We got her all setup in Karen’s room, she’s been overloaded with toys and the luxury of sleeping in a super fluffy King bed with Karen (who has a feather topper on it so it’s extra damn fluffy, like sleeping on a cloud). There’s no way in hell this cat’s going anywhere, she’s too comfortable… even though none of us are…

Why?

#2 – FUCKING FLEAS
This cats infested with fleas, well – was. Her time spent on the deck was enough for a few of them to jump off of her and go under the house and then I’ve been playing exterminator for the past three weeks. My legs are bitten to crap from mosquitos because I was out on the deck every single day scrubbing it down with borax, bleach, dawn (which supposedly kills them) and ammonia. Thank goodness I was outside considering I was technically making mustard gas just to get rid of the damn bugs. Nothing I was doing was working and we couldn’t get the exterminator to the house thanks to the absolutely dreadful weather we’ve been having. Thankfully I did start to get things under control, and damn do we have the cleanest deck in the complex. Mother Nature, instead of working against us (in numerous different ways) decided to work in our favor this past week and on Friday the exterminator came in and sprayed down the whole exterior of the house. For two days I didn’t see a single damn bug, and they had plenty of opportunity to pop back up. THANK GOD FOR EXTERMINATORS! The inside of the house was treated a week and a half prior to them treating the outside. The first guy showed up on a day when it was pouring and there was a moat around the house, but he got through it and got us started on killing everything off inside of the house. It didn’t 100% do the trick because there was still the massive infestation outside. So thankfully with the second coat on the carpet, and the coat put on the exterior of the house and the whole perimeter of the property – we’re good to go… just a bit itchy from all of the bites but at least I know they’re gone!

#3 – WORK SUCKS
I’ve been non-fucking-stop with the tight deadlines. My eyes are burning from staring at the screen all day and each deadline is getting tighter than the last. The thing that kills me, and never ceases to amaze me… Clients will take 3-4 days to get back to you and then decide they want something done in 24-hours or they won’t pay for it. Listen up dickwads… your lack of ability to read your email instead of sexting with your wife/girlfriend would probably make ME less bitchy when you do ask for something… just saying.

#4 – Travel, Travel, Travel
I feel like for the past year I’ve spent more time in my car than I have anywhere else. While this might not seem odd, for someone who works from-home… it kind of us. Either I’m up in Baltimore, or just over the MD border on Delmarva or up on Long Island… I feel like it just doesn’t stop and I should always be prepared for a long ass car ride. The most recent one was yesterday, Sean and I are up in NY for my father and sister’s birthdays this week. We’re rushing back on the 30th so I can get Bella to the groomer on the 2nd, and hopefully have enough time to completely clean up the house for the 4th when our friend Colin is coming down to stay with us until the 9th. And yes, there are days in between but this isn’t like driving an hour out east to visit family like we used to do. It’s a 4.5 hour car ride and when you’re dealing with traffic that number has the ability to be doubled at any given time. Case and point – driving up here yesterday took us over 6 hours. Why? We had a nice storm following us up and major construction on the NJ Turnpike so of course getting to Long Island in a timely manor was completely thrown out the window. To make matters worse, the poor dog is in desperate need of a grooming and it was a super muggy day so it took forever for the car to properly cool off so she could be comfortable. I felt so bad for the poor thing, she must have had a full 20 oz. bottle of water just for the ride up – she never drinks that much but could not stop panting, and even though we’re in a relatively cool house now (being maintained at 68*) she’s still panting. I can’t wait to get her shaved.

#5 – Heat Wave…
The official first major heat-wave of the NY season (to my knowledge) is starting tomorrow. Of course I’m extremely grateful that Colin helped me to recharge the AC in the car tonight because the amount of time it takes for the damn car to cool off was pissing me off to no end. It should not take an hour before I’m comfortable in the car when the AC is running at full blast. It does eventually get cold, 6 hours in the car yesterday my toes were turning purple because we were absolutely frozen trying to get the dog to cool off. So you could imagine my surprise when I went into the car just after he finished with the booster and it was already cold. THANK GOD FOR COLIN! I could not have managed getting around while I was up here without that AC being taken care of. NO WAY IN HELL.

#6 – The week ahead..
I know off the bat that there’s two major deadlines to complete, and to top that off I’ve tacked 3 deadlines onto it that are a little more on the tricky side but at least I’ve got help. The two major ones are under NDA with the usual boss so I can’t discuss those, but the 3 smaller ones are two personal deadlines and one kind of big deal for me. The personal ones are knu and agndesigns. I know I talk about that all the time but I’ve finally been getting off of my ass and doing something about it. Adam, my bestie from the Westie, has created a base theme for me utilizing a few colors that I threw at him and I finally got around to coding it so that should be up on k.nu within the next week or so. He also created a theme for AGnDesigns for me as well based off of a few themes I fell in love with but couldn’t quite figure out how to place the sections on the page without it looking completely off balance. He took care of both of them for me and I can’t help but thank him for it.

He’s part of my “Help”, we’ve partnered up and he handles the Photoshop stuff and I code everything. Case and point would be his domain, rockchild.net, he came up with the concept – I made it work. jQuery is in every nook and cranny of that site but it made it flashy and that’s what he was going for. He throws a few projects my way whenever they require coding – I would love to throw him design based stuff because he can get it done so much faster but when you’re under contract it’s hard to pass things off to someone else when you know you’re the one who’s supposed to be logging the hours and need to have the ability to answer every single question on the fly at any point of the day.

The other help, which is connected to the last project, is actually my Mom. I’ll be building the Fire Dept. website over the next few days and she’s comfortable enough playing around with just about anything you throw at her so she’s in the process of getting her bearings on WordPress as she’ll be responsible for all of the content that goes up on the site. I’ve been able to come up with a fairly awesome template for them, jQuery up the ass, all kinds of galleries, custom post types, advanced custom fields, and fancy templates for the mailing lists that will be built into the site. A lot of people don’t realize how advanced you can get with WordPress. It’s not just a blog, or standard CMS anymore – the possibilities really are endless. Case and point would more than likely be Dover Downs, that site is 100% powered by WordPress. Not many people believe me when I say it… but take a look at the source code – you’d be surprised.

In any event, it’s knocking on 1am which (oddly enough) is about two hours past my bedtime. My schedule has completely switched by 12 hours. Usually I was going to bed at 10am but now I’m ready to pass out by 10pm. I’m up by 8am (at the latest) and working all day. The plus side is I’ll be able to get myself to the beach more often this summer, I only live 2 freaking miles from it after all… and my pale ass is in desperate need of a tan. My arms are nice and dark, but my legs (no matter what I do) are still pale as hell. I always say that my legs are Irish and my arms are Italian, I’m typically burnt on the bottom and as dark as one of those Jersey Shore fuckers (without the Orange tint, obviously).

Technorati: Pets, Kittens, Dogs, Dog Grooming, AGn Designs, Rockchild Designs, Daily Life, Bugs, Travel, Weather, WordPress

Tags:AGn Designs, Bella, Daily Life, Delmarva, Family, Friends, Pets, Rockchild Designs, Travel, Weather, Wordpress, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Delmarva, Family, New York, Work | 3 Comments »

Yea… so I renewed….

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

Every year I get a notification that krissy.nu will be no-more sometime in May and every year I pay my $30 to make sure I keep it mine. Why? I honestly don’t know. Even though I really have nothing to do with the ‘blogging’ world anymore, I still feel that this is a big part of my own history and can’t personally stop myself from renewing it. There have been numerous times where I’ve just wanted to let it go and walk away, but that’s primarily because I don’t get to ENJOY the Internet the way I used to. Everything is work related, or Facebook (not gonna lie) and by the time I get down to wanting to work on something personal, my brain is completely blocked and I have no inspiration to come up with ANYTHING.

The upside? The few games that I play on my Tablet have given me a small amount of inspiration – completely referencing color schemes. I do know that the next template on k.nu will be a little darker, but bright at the same time (if that makes any sense). I handed the color pallet over to Adam to see if there was anything that he could come up with because I was fresh out of ideas but wanted to do something with pink/black/white (in a different manor than I’d ever done before) and he’ll be playing in Photoshop to come up with something for me.

Hopefully there will be some time this summer where I can actually sit down and get something done that isn’t work related. Thankfully the Internet is being slow-as-sin which is causing me to have to let the FTP programs run in the background while I find something else to do (ie: the reason I’m blogging). I should be working on my old laptop to wipe Windows 7 out of it so I can hand it off to my sister, but that’s the reason the Network is so slow right now because I’m transferring 20 Gigs of files from the old laptop to my Macbook this way I at least have a back-up of all of the important stuff. (Files and Photoshop crap primarily). I could personally care less about making a list of “Important Programs” considering if it was important enough to be part of my every day life than it’s already on this thing anyway.

The only annoying thing is the internet is going to remain slow for about 5 hours. I really do wish that I had some kind of a flash drive up here with me, or even a USB-to-USB chord so I could just drag and drop instead of heavily depending on the Wireless in the house to get the job done.

I think it’s about time I start digging through my old laptop bag to see if I even have a drive like that. I’d rather wait 20 minutes than 5 hours.

At least I’m on a mission now.

Technorati: Sitely, Krissy.nu, File Sharing, Web Design, Networking, Wifi

Tags:AGn Designs, Files, K.nu, Networking, Sitely, Wi-Fi, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Daily, Sitely, Work | Comments Closed

What happened?

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Things slowed down dramatically for a little while, but out of no where things have picked up to the point that I have to remind myself to breath. The few sites that I’ve been working on for the past few months have finally completed, but in their place numerous other ones popped up. Right now I’ve got three pending and I don’t know how that even happened. To top that off I added remodeling krissy.nu to the list because there’s been an increase in advertising inquiries and the current format doesn’t really allow for anything extra on my sidebars. I thankfully have a few drafts sitting in folders but I do need to ultimately decide which route I’m looking to take and then going from there. I want to brighten things up dramatically and really dive into the CSS3 formatting that I’ve been using on other sites. I’m sick of generating all of my borders with Photoshop slicing up the images for me so it will be nice to build a very CSS heavy template that isn’t image heavy at all. On top of that, Adam was sweet enough to build a template for me on AGn Designs so I’m going to code that one in the near future as well. I need to add him to my list of pending projects as I’ll be coding his new portfolio template for WordPress for him as well. I also repurchased curvy-chick.net to utilize as a fitness/wellness blog so that’s going to take up some of my time as well.

I think I need to hire a personal assistant who just wants to sit in Photoshop all day while I code things. Anyone interested?

Needless to say, things are getting fricken crazy.

Technorati: AGn Designs, Rockchild Designs, Krissy.nu, Work, Business, Advertising

Tags:Advertising, AGn Designs, Business, Rockchild Designs, Work
Posted in AGn Designs, Daily, Work | Comments Closed