Posts Tagged ‘New York’

Downside to Delaware

Tuesday, June 24th, 2014

If there’s one thing in the world that I’ve grown accustomed to over the years, is a sense of urgency when referencing ANYTHING in the medical/dental fields.  Moving to Delaware has really been an eye opener to me. The area I live in certainly lives up to the nickname of “LOWER SLOWER Delaware”.  After all of the idiots I’ve met in the Medical fields down here while accompanying Karen on her doctors appointments, and even my experiences with the fucking asshole E.R. doctors in the BeeBee Lewes Hospital… my mind is just BLOWN on how horrible things function down here.

Todays Problem:  I’ve had issues with my teeth for probably the last 20 years, it’s genetics and other factors that just cause me to look at sugar and get a cavity. About a month ago I bit into something way too hard and chipped one of my molars. And when I say “Way too hard” that could mean anything from a pickle to the crusts on bread.. my teeth are just that freakishly soft. My father and I can easily compare our teeth to Chiclets, where my sister got my mothers genes and they’re cement in comparison. So having the crack really is nothing new, I figured just let it go and if and when the tooth starts to actually hurt I’ll take care of it. For me, and my extremely high pain tolerance that’s just the way things go. Yes, it’s unhealthy to not take care of them right then and there, but regardless of root canals and patch jobs, it’s just going to figure out a way to fall out of my mouth anyway. Case and point would be another molar that no dentist can seem to properly fix for me.

So, of course you could imagine my lack surprise when I woke up one morning (somewhat recently) and had a weird thing floating around my mouth. It was a large section of my recently chipped tooth. There was no blood, no weird ‘ooh…that’s definitely a cavity’ taste, it was just a broken tooth. I don’t know if I grind them when I’m sleeping, or if the dog was on the blanket and I punched myself in the face in my sleep when trying to cover myself and the blanket slipped, I don’t know. Who knows, it’s happened before (the punching thing) but knowing I had relatively soft food the night before made me question why things are just falling off of me.

For the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with it, chewing on the opposite side and really limiting how often I eat foods that require excessive amounts of chewing. A few people have even said to me that I may possibly have a thyroid problem because for as big as I am, I really don’t regularly consume enough calories during the day to maintain the weight I am.  This is well before any dental issues surfaced, I just never was tested for anything. So limiting consumption really is nothing “new” for me.

Last night, however, I got a SHOOTING pain straight up the side of my face… one that can only be connected to my horrible history with abscessed teeth. It’s something I’m used to, it’s not a new pain feeling for me, and something I’m commonly able to manage with a combination of aspirin and antibiotics. So, the shocker attached to it was the fact that the molar, which broke off in sections, is now a quarter of a molar and the remaining quarter is loose. Should I just wait for it to fall out? Sure, but at the same time I know there’s still the rest of tooth attached underneath the gums and having to deal with a fully impacted tooth is the absolute pits.

So, as I’ve done a few times over the course of the last few weeks (unsuccessfully mind you), I started calling the dental offices in the area. One, who is supposedly the best of the best “The Dental Group” in Lewes, as usual was incapable of answering the phone when I called over the past few weeks so you can imagine my surprise when someone actually picked up the phone today. Unfortunately it only caused me to have to be re-routed to another facility because after they charge you probably like $600+ for the “Initial / New Patient Visit”, they decide whether or not they’re capable of handling your current needs. I by-passed that shit and got in touch with an Oral Surgeon in Rehoboth, who takes the Care Credit Card and actually answered the phone on the first ring. After talking to the lady and explaining the situation she noted that she can get me in for Monday but there is no earlier availability. When noting that I’m prone to abscesses, and I feel one coming on she told me if the tooth gets worse to call them, but Monday is pretty much the earliest I can come in.

Now, I don’t know if being born and raised in New York has spoiled me, or what, but when someone calls you with an ’emergency’ situation… aren’t you supposed to do something about it? I know damn well if I was up in Glen Cove I could just call up Dr. Hoffman and be in the door either same day or following afternoon, X-Ray done, tooth extracted, I go home and sleep off the sedation. Why? Because that’s how you’re supposed to do shit!

I’m grateful that I do actually have the Monday appointment, and I know I shouldn’t have waited this long – I get it. BUT, when you’re someone who doesn’t feel any dental pain until it’s too late and irreversible, you just need to get things done when they need to be done.

I’m hoping, with fingers toes and eyes crossed, that nothing happens over the course of the next week. I do have a few antibiotics that I’m going to take to keep the potential abscess at bay so things aren’t delayed past Monday and maybe I’ll finally just start feeling normal again. For now, only broth for the next week and that should cover both the need to drink AND keep something in my stomach.

The biggest issue is every time I even swallow my own saliva I feel the tooth shifting around, I highly doubt it’s even going to last the next 6 days. ::UGH::

New Year…Same Shit…

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

I’ve wanted to be able to jump on here for a while, but as usual – life gets in the way.  I’m experiencing downtime, which isn’t normal this time of year.  Usually January is when things pick up to the point that I’m about to rip my hair out.  That’s not the case this month.  I’m hoping this low doesn’t last for too long – I do still have bills to pay.  I’m finishing up a small site, and working on some domain transfers but that’s really all that’s going on right now.  It’s driving me crazy. I’m looking at six different email accounts where the inbox is completely blank… scares me.

Usually I’d take the time to finally get the chance to work on my own things.  That’s really not the case this time and I’m not sure why.  The lack of inspiration to build something for myself concerns me a little, being as I always did better in Delaware than I did in New York on creativity coming out of my ears…. hope that funk goes away before someone comes at me with “Just run with it” template/logo request. I’ve wanted to come up with a new template for krissy.nu, agndesigns.net, acidgloss.net and even agn-solutions.net but I’ve got no inspiration at all.

The perk to today is our new bluetooth case for the tablet came in, it’s nice having a keyboard to type on, and kind of irks me that this tablet is more powerful than my actual laptop right now.  It’s the goal for this year to pick up a Macbook, and typically we like to get at least one big electronic purchase in during the year to help out on taxes. Of course it’s still upsetting to know that I’ll no longer be able to pick up the 17″ MacBook Pro, and everyone keeps telling me that the screen resolutions on the 17″ are close to the 15″ but to me it’s just not the same. I’m so used to having a 17″ that anything smaller is just not going to work out for me.  I don’t like the Retina displays, I think that’s a complete and total waste of money considering they’re supposed to be some type of super HD bull shit, but you couldn’t even load in a DVD to watch on the thing because they’re done with super drives.  I don’t know what the hell Apple is trying to do, but there’s some unhappy consumers out there right now, that’s for damn sure.

Anyhoo….

New Year’s was spent in NY with my family and a few old friends that I’ve been missing. We saw Colin almost immediately, but I’m sure that’s because he was the most vocal about missing us, I hung out with Muir for a little bit (didn’t see the munchkin ’cause he was pretty sick), I got to have dinner with Franny and see a few of the old crew of my last job, I spent some time with my sister doing some shopping, hung out at my moms a little and while I was home I floated around the kitchen to do some restocking of a very bare fridge for my dad.  They’d been eating a lot of take out for the last 6 months apparently, all I saw was a few TV dinners and a bottle of Vodka in the freezer and almost immediately began writing up my shopping list. I’ve gotten so used to regular ‘big meal’ type of cooking over the years that it’s second nature to me.  It was hard only being able to stay up there for a week though.  I really wanted to stay longer.. I feel there wasn’t enough time spent with people and when you’re away for so long it’s hard to catch up knowing that you’re on some type of a schedule.

So we went up a few days after Christmas, and returned a few days after New Years – thankfully we left late enough where there was really no one on the road and were able to get down here in pretty good time.  Bella did really well during the drives up and down.  Unfortunately we weren’t that lucky when we actually got to the house early Saturday morning (in DE).  She ran up the stairs so quick that I think she got one of her nails stuck in between the slats on the wood stairs and was then limping around barely putting any weight on her paw at all.  Since it was 4am there was really nothing I could do for her at the time, I checked her paw she had full mobility and I felt nothing in between the pads in reference to swelling or some type of a splinter.  We wound up bringing her to the vet the following afternoon to have her checked out. I was given some anti-inflammatory meds (that gave her diarrhea  but the next few days she did pretty well so thankfully I was able to stop her at the 2 pills instead of the full 6.

Since then, we’ve all just kind of been hanging out.  Sean’s got quite a bit going on and since it’s all programming based there’s really nothing I can do to help him other than handle the side-job emails, quick template updates, and even moving domains around.  There’s nothing substantial for me to work on right now and while it’s driving me nuts – it’s also telling me that I’m going to have a very easy weekend to get all of the Christmas decorations taken down and the bedroom cleaned up because things are completely out of place ever since we came back from NY and the lack of organization is another irk of mine. I’m even considering having Sean hang a few shelves up for me, but I’ll wait until I’ve fully decided upon that one since he’ll jump at the chance to hang shelves any day of the week – he’s weird like that.

It’s all coming to an end…

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

With the Holiday’s winding down, I’m finally able to wind down long enough to actually knock out a post. I’ve pretty much been running around like a chicken with my head cut off since Thanksgiving. Work, as I noted previously, is coming in waves, but at the same time the tide hasn’t really gone out. It’s not the luxury of “Ok, I can take some time on this and then bounce back to this.” it’s been “Do it now, and faster!”

@AGnDesigns - Instagram @AGnDesigns - InstagramWhile that can get a little annoying, it also worked to our benefit this year.  All family members were well taken care of for Christmas, Sean and I did spend quite a bit of money on ourselves but it was on things that we both wanted (for a while) and desperately needed.  We know the difference between Wants and Needs – unlike anyone under the age of 16 these days.  We both were in desperate need of new desks.  I had my Mac sitting on a Rubbermaid folding table and being as the 27-inch iMac (2011) weighs about 40 pounds, it was starting to sink down in the middle. To avoid it completely caving in, we went out and got me a new desk.  It’s a super nice one, with plenty of storage and it’s even a little bigger than the previous folding table so I actually got the chance to organize things where I can still completely function without any issues at all. Obviously after Sean spent 7 hours putting this thing together (one warped piece was throwing EVERYTHING off) he gladly took a little nap.  I decorated the drawers with dollar store shelf liner so that they can list a super long time without getting destroyed. There’s more than enough room for the work phone so my boss can stay on my butt too heh. I had it across the room next to the TV because we didn’t have a long enough Ethernet chord, but that was taken care of with the addition of a ZyXEL wireless switch that now sits behind my monitor. It supposedly boosts the Wifi in the house, but turns the Wifi into an actual plugged in connection as well, so I’ve got the phone plugged into it and if I needed to I could plug a printer in to it. It was actually strong enough of a feed to handle Sean’s XBOX 360 for a few weeks as well, so obviously it works how it’s supposed to.

@leprakhauns - InstagramSean, after my desk was put together, began increasingly becoming annoyed with his desk. After drilling into him that he spends way too much time at his desk and needs a new one…. we headed back to Staples a little over a week later (this past weekend actually) to pick up a new desk for him.  The one he’s been using for years was a typical students desk with the metal legs, the pull-out keyboard and the thin table top. One you’d see in college students dorm, basically.  So it was creaking like all holy hell and we wound up replacing that one as well.  He found a nice wide desk that he was in love with, but it unfortunately was not going to fit in the room so he went with one that was closer to size (in comparison to mine).  He’s in love with it as well.  It’s very nice dark wood with a nice sturdy base, some drawers – finito.

While picking up his new desk we browsed around the store a little bit, and came across the Google Nexus 10″ – Android Tablet.  Of course I was instantly in love, this thing is more powerful than the Droid 4’s that we upgraded to in October.  The $500 price tag instantly turned this item into a “Want”. We’ve been bouncing back and forth about Tablet’s for a little while now.  Sean really wanted to see what the new Microsoft Surface was about, I personally had no interest in it at all being as I’m as anti-Windows as you can possibly get these days.  Upgrading to Mac has spoiled me rotten.  I don’t have to deal with excessive upgrades, daily virus/malware scans and the blue screen of death that Microsoft claims to have gotten rid of , but I’ve seen it on both Windows 7 AND 8 because it’s very easy – when you know what you’re doing – to trigger everything Microsoft claims doesn’t exist.

@AGnDesigns - InstagramEither way, we both were playing with the Tablet for a little while and found out when browsing through the Settings to get all of the stats that it was now possible (with Android – Ice Cream) to have multiple users.  This sparked our interest almost instantly, and we both looked at eachother and I was like “I want”, he said “Go get it” (cause he’s fricken awesome) and while I was pulling the car around (cause he was picking up his desk the same day) he paid for both. Turned into an expensive shopping trip on our parts, but we walked out of there with a want, and a need.

 

@AGnDesigns - InstagramWhile he was in the Bedroom for a few hours setting up his new desk, I was prepping the house for Christmas.  I did more baking in the past few days than I ever thought possible. Everything from cookies, to breads, to brownies – you name it, I probably baked it. I went all out for Christmas this year, because I actually had more room to do it. I know that sounds a little weird but it’s true. A huge living room and a big footprint in reference to the front end of the house, things just kind of happened.  The baking was really just phase two, we’d spent quite some time decorating prior to my even pulling the flour out of the cabinet.  So the tree was decorated, the bulk of the outdoors was draped in white lights and the rest of the house had random little touches here and there.  Thankfully, minus today, there was really no wet weather going on outside so my garland didn’t get all mucky and was nice and clean for Christmas. I was also really happy with the tree in the living room. With the combination of Karen’s ornaments and mine everything kind of came together that worked out really nicely.

Traditionally, families open their gifts on Christmas Day. Around here? Christmas Eve. I think it’s a tradition based on impatience but to each their own. Sean cleaned up this year, outside of the gifts purchased for ourselves of course. New shirts, plenty of toys and gadgets to keep him entertained and the guitar I bought him. I know I usually complain to him about how much noise he can make on his own (without an accessory) but at the same time we’ve both had a pretty rough year, him more than I, and it was something I know he always wanted. So I got him a nice stand for it, and a DVD so he can learn how to play and we’ll go from there.

@leprakhauns - InstagramI also got him some new Happy Feet, this is a brand that we were in love with long before Snooki put it on MTV. I’ve always had a pair, and so has he and his were worn to the point that his toes were going to start popping through the bottom. Knowing how comfy they are I changed it up a little bit and got him the “All Around” ones, they look like real sneakers and there’s about an inch-thick rubber sole on the bottom of them. They’re better than my usual outdoor slippers so of course I’ll have to pick up a pair for myself in the future but for now this was all about him and that’s what he got. So that was one pair, and instead of getting him the standard color variations I decided to take a look under the “Animals” section and got him the most ridiculous ones I could find – and his favorite animal – the Penguins. Watching him walk around in these is more amusing than the slippers themselves, but they bring a smile to just about everyone’s face so it was more than worth it.

I cleaned up pretty well myself. Karen got me the “In-Styler” which is a hair straighter I’ve always wanted. I’ve used a friends before and it was probably the fastest way to straighten my hair that I’ve ever used. Some people have mixed feelings on it, others use it totally wrong and wonder how their hair gets wrapped up in it. As long as you read the directions it works out exactly as it’s supposed to, so I’m bringing it up to NY with me while Sean and I head up there for New Years, and after I get a much needed hair cut (via Mom) and dyed (via my sister), I’ll be using it to style my hair. Mom and I are also hitting up the nail salon, I’m long overdue for a manicure AND I desperately need my eyebrows done it’s been almost six months and I just can’t fricken take it anymore.

As usual, I bought myself a few articles of clothing while I was doing some shopping for other family members and had Sean wrap them for me. There was a jacket at Old Navy that I’ve wanted for a while, and I was in need of new yoga-pants so I threw those into the shopping cart as well. He wrapped everything for me, knowing that he was supposed to actually buy the items for me for my Birthday back in October but never did (I oddly got a Christmas tree instead), so he switched Holiday’s but kept the wrapping paper basically lol.

@agndesigns - InstagramThe thing I was surprised about, however, was the ViewSonic 24-inch Monitor that was under the tree. I’ve been using a 17-inch monitor as my “Email Screen” for the past couple of months and it was working out pretty well for me. I kept my email completely on that window and when I was actually in Photoshop or Dreamweaver I would just load project free TV and watch television right on the desk, no complaints at all. So you can imagine my surprise when Sean upgraded me to a much larger screen. This was one of those items that wasn’t on my wants, or my needs – which then turns into a complete and total surprise. And that wraps up Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day was a completely different story – I was non stop in the kitchen. I was cooking/cleaning for a good 8 hours yesterday. I fired up the crock pots early in the day to get the sauce going, the meat balls and sausage wound up in the pot a few hours later and from there it was just the matter of getting the pasta in the water so I could get everything into the oven. I even managed to get a spiral ham in the oven with everything else going on. As soon as dinner was done, I had a quick cig and was back in the kitchen to clean everything up and start baking the brownies. Why? Cause for the most part the cookies from Friday were already gone and the ones that remained were a little on the hard side. I figured that some time of dessert was required on Christmas and I went the double thick double fudge brownie route – more than half of them are gone which – to any cook – damn good sign.

Then Wednesday comes…..

Today was supposed to be a day of packing, working and getting ready to get out of here bright and early tomorrow morning for the long drive up to New York to see friends and my family. Of course that hasn’t been the case at all. Even though I woke up relatively early, I’ve been doing other things (not sure what) but nothing that I had originally set out to do. I do know that a load of dishes was done, all of the laundry was folded but nothing was put into the suit case at all. I also needed to get about 8 or-so hours of Work completed because we’re losing an entire day tomorrow to the drive up to New York and lord only knows what kind of a drive that’s going to be considering the storm sitting over the Northeast right now. Thankfully, in southern Delaware, it’s just rain but unfortunately it’s A LOT of rain and the complex is completely flooded. This was heaps of fun when it came to walking the dog. I don’t mind the drizzle, that wasn’t the problem, the excessive amounts of water just sitting because the complex has absolutely NO proper drainage systems is 4 inches of just mud and twigs to walk through. Poor Bella wound up taking a swim on multiple occasions tonight just because we completely misjudged the depth of the puddles we were going in to. I also found out that my winter boots are absolutely NOT water proof. As soon as I was in up to my ankle, my foot was soaked and of course they’re too big for me so they were rubbing weird and my sock wound up slipping down – needless to say it was not a good experience for anyone involved and Bella only really went to the potty twice (usually she goes about 4 times) but she still wound up having to be thrown into the sink for a nice bath to get her color back to white, she’d turned into a muddy brown fur ball for the bulk of the walk, the puddles did help but it just darkened everything and I wanted her to be nice and clean for Grandpa tomorrow.

We’re hoping to leave here before noon, now no ones gifts are wrapped and I haven’t done any packing but that’s completely the plan for the morning so that we can get up there in a decent amount of time and have the time to stop somewhere on the turnpike to pick up a roast beef sandwich from one of the Roy Rogers along the way for my father because that’s his one and only request for my time in New Jersey on the way to Long Island. I’m also needing to make a stop while we’re down here to pick up some cigs (for peoples xmas gifts) and some fudge from Candy Kitchen as I promised other family members that I would.

I can honestly say… there’s no way in hell we’re getting out of here by noon…that’s for damn sure.

We’re only going to be up in NY for about a week. Sean’s father is staying down here with his mother while we’re up there, she’s got 2 Chemo treatments this week and then unfortunately she’s going to lose a week to sickness because she’s not getting the third day of extra fluids because they supposedly don’t do that on Saturdays around here, and she didn’t go in today – for whatever reason – to start the scheduled 3-day cycle. So now she’s going to lose a day and I just hope that George keeps pushing large glasses of water onto her so that she can stay hydrated enough to get through the nausea that’s going to completely consume her for the next week.

We’re ringing in the New Year and NY and I personally couldn’t be happier. Being down here for the last six months I’ve really missed my friends and family and just can’t wait to get home. Even if that means I’m not sleeping tonight just so we can get out of here tomorrow – I’ll do whatever it takes.

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to get into my Dashboard for a while since the work is still piling up and this is a ‘mini vacation’ for me, so I’m wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year! I hope 2013 is a hell of a lot better than 2012… at least we won’t have to deal with all of the Mayan Calendar bullshit anymore, heh.

I miss my dog and want to go home…

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Sean and I have been in Delaware for the past month. Every time we’ve tried to go home, some major account pops up that requires our complete attention. Due to this, there’s been no possible way for us to hop in the car and drive five hours north to get back to Long Island.

Initially it was the account for Dover Speedway, from there it’s trickled down to numerous small accounts popping up at once that all require some ridiculously short turn around time. To top that off there are still modifications to do on sites that were completed a few weeks ago so that we can launch them for the client.  Whatever the case has been, we’ve just been too damn busy.  I’ve been told (hopefully as a joke) that if I choose to stay down here any longer my dog will be shipped via FedEx so that I can then stay for as long as I absolutely want, as long as they don’t have to deal with her anymore.

Right now I’m trying to complete FOUR accounts at once.  The task would be much easier to manage if there weren’t so many other factors involved. The environment isn’t an issue at all, I actually find myself more focused down here. The issue I’m dealing with right now… EMAIL… each of the clients is kicking over a multitude of emails to follow for changes/tweaks, and to top that there’s a few new clients coming out of the wood work.  Whatever made me think that Sean and I couldn’t afford to purchase a house down here has gone completely out the window.  Now it’s just the matter of actually getting HOME so that we can continue to work and pay our bills and then eventually go for that oh-so-hefty mortgage to get the house that we’ve both decided upon.

I know they say to never put your eggs in one basket, but this is a home that’s been on the market for almost a year, it’s in beautiful condition and has absolutely everything we want, including a very, very large in-ground pool in a fully fenced in back yard. It’s my ultimate goal to have the keys to this house in my hands before summer of next year so I can literally take three straight days off work and just float in the pool. Meaning, I have no intent of getting OUT of the pool for three days. Who needs air conditioning when you have a float and a nice breeze?

The house itself is $250k, as it’s been on the market for so long I’m offering $175, the negotiations can begin from there.  There’s 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a Florida room, large kitchen, dining room, media room, living room, AND an in-law suite.  What do two people need all of this space for?  Simple really.  The master bedroom will contain absolutely NO computer equipment EVER.  Two of the four bedrooms will be offices. Mine will be fully customized with the same color tones as on this template (White, Black, Grey and pops of Pink). Sean’s will have the more masculine feel.  The other two rooms (in the main house) will be designated guest rooms as I’m sure we’ll have frequent visitors via either friends or family.  The in-law suit contains a small kitchen, large room and its own bathroom. We’ll use this as the ‘guest house’ for the guests staying for more than a few days so they have a bit of privacy.

Regardless, I’ve decorated everything in my head and don’t plan on giving up.  We have looked in NY, the property taxes are absolutely ridiculous so there’s no reason to even continue our search there. Yes, all of my friends and family are up there, but affordability wise – DE is the place to be.

Either way we’re going to continue to work and get our finances in order, the issue really is getting back to NY. We have every intent of leaving tomorrow morning and then working tomorrow night to get caught up. I really wanted to do some laundry and clean up before we leave here but I honestly don’t see the laundry aspect of things happening. I could have spent the last five minutes getting that in the washing machine instead of blogging, but considering I’m still three hours behind on my email – getting up from my computer just wasn’t happening.

I’ve got my fingers crossed in hopes to actually go home tomorrow.  Being in DE isn’t bad, I’m not unhappy in any way, and I absolutely love Karen (Sean’s mom), it’s got nothing to do with her. I just know that we don’t actually live in DE anymore and everything we own (including a more stable internet connection) is back in NY.  I whole heartedly believe that if we brought Bella down with us for this visit – we’d never go back to NY. Regardless, I miss my dog, I miss my friends and I really hope that things slow down long enough for us to pack up and hop in the car.

Meh… forget the emails – I’m doing laundry. :hmph:

Hello Delaware!!

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally back in Delaware for a few weeks. It’s been three years since I moved back to NY and I can’t tell you how much I missed it down here. The second we rolled in my eyes lit up to the point I swear they were glowing. We’re staying with Sean’s mom, it’s weird being back in the house but at the same time it feels as though I never left.

Sean’s birthday is tomorrow, I need to get myself out of the house long enough to get up to the store to pick up a few things for him. He already knows he’s getting two video games, “Gears of War 3” and “Dead Island”, I know there’s a third gift in there but I’m going to need to find it first. He knows, in the back of his mind, what it is – but has yet to figure it out so that’s good enough for me, at least there will be some kind of a surprise factor, heh.

So far we’ve hit-up the usual spots where we could be found… “The Roadhouse” in Lewes, “Casapulla’s South” in Rehoboth, and of course we trucked ourselves to the beach because neither of us has really seen one in years. I know that I live on Long ISLAND, but the beaches up there suck major, major ass. It’s not the same when you live on the North Shore. You don’t get the ISLAND feel, you get the “Oh look, there’s Connecticut and somethings floating in the LI Sound again”. So, needless to say, being able to look out and all I see is endless ocean, I’m one happy chick. I fully intend to go back a few more times before we leave.

On top of this being a change in scenery for a few weeks, there’s still some work involved.  Sean and I are both swamped with work, I’m getting mine done a bit more quickly than him, but that’s going to reverse pending a few responses from a client that’s giving us a pretty solid workflow at the moment.  I’ve got a few more sites to add to my portfolio, which is also on the agenda while I’m down here because the change in altitude and the addition of the beach has given me a whole new burst of energy and inspiration.  I’m starting to wish I never left, but circumstances back in New York made that pretty difficult for me.

I’m on the war path though, I’m looking on both Long Island and in Delaware for places to live.  My heart will always be in NY, but for some reason my soul is happier in DE.  Financially speaking, of course, DE would be the way to go but the few prospects that I’ve found don’t really thrill me too much.  One lady down the road (same complex as Sean’s mom) is offering a rental on her house for $750 a month (which is 100% doable, and a pretty good deal), but then when I showed a little interest she noted she’s actually looking to sell as soon as possible because of all of the problems with the house that her husband has been feverishly working to correct. I took a few minutes to take a walk down to the house to see if it would actually be worth it for me or Sean.  It’s a relatively decent deal but I could see exactly what she was talking about the second I walked up onto the property.  It does need a lot of work, and based on the fact that a mortgage would even be required, I’d prefer to take on a much newer model home without as many issues.  I’ll weigh the options for a little while, going back and forth between NY and DE, but for now – until we can pay the bills down quite a bit – I’m going to stay put until the opportunity to make the choice, with the financial stability, comes to the surface.

Based on how much I missed it down here, however, I do see myself coming back to visit a bit more. Yes, it will continue to be a ‘workation’ being as we do need to work in order to continue living, but having the luxury of working for yourself means you can pretty much work anywhere with a laptop and a wifi signal.  We already know that we’re coming back down in November for Punkin Chunkin but that’s something we saw advertised quite a bit while we were down here but never took advantage and actually went to enjoy it in person. It’s a three day event, I don’t see myself going all three days. But even going up to just enjoy the festivities for one day would make me pretty happy.

Hot damn!

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Sean and I just got back from the Mechanic.  We brought our car in because of a pretty funky issue we were having, unfortunately I was the only one to ever seem to experience this issue.  Whenever I would turn on the car the battery light would come on, knowing it’s a good battery I assumed it could be the alternator not properly sending charge to the battery.  This wasn’t the case at all.

I asked my neighbor of 20 years if he could take a look at it for me, because it’s an issue where I just didn’t feel safe driving the car, so of course I’ll talk to an off-the-clock mechanic before I actually bring it in to one.  He turned on the car and saw the battery light almost instantly go on, he then noticed that the air conditioner was shooting out hot air and that’s not normal.  A few moments later the hood started smoking – we’re leaking anti-freeze.  He told us that we’d need a serpentine belt, possibly a water pump and maybe a hose or two fixed but he couldn’t tell where other leaks were coming from, being as they were covered in anti-freeze.

So we call up the garage up the block, talk to the ball-busting mechanic and was told to bring the car in on Tuesday (mind you – this was Friday).  For the past few days we’ve been bored out of our minds, it’s not that there’s nothing going on here it’s that we’re used to just being able to get up and go and being kind of stuck for a few days doesn’t help our moods.  I know I was bored out of my mind on Saturday, to the point that I was about to pop a gasket.

We’ve used my sister’s car for the quick errands, I really hate driving her car.  While it handles well, she needs rear-brakes and it would help if she had rear break lights as well.  There’s a big hole on her bumper that is causing the wiring underneath to corrode and when it rains she just has no back-end lights at all.  No blinker, no rear breaks – nothing.  So of course making the attempt to drive this thing at night was absolutely stupid of us.  She can deal with the tickets, we certainly don’t want to.

So since it was so bright out and close to impossible to actually see the back-end lights thanks to the way the sun is sitting in the sky – we were able to safely make it to the mechanic.  It only cost us $300 for a water pump, serpentine belt and a refill on the anti-freeze.  A very good price considering the estimate was $380 (originally).  I’m not sure if the name-dropping helped the price (considering my grandfather knows the guy) but either way, someone’s on our side.

So he drove my sisters car home and I drove ours.  And the reason for “Hot damn!” – it drives better than it ever has before, we very obviously have needed a water pump for a while now but I think since we only ever seem to do short-term in-town driving, it really didn’t matter too much.  The 5 hour drive from Delaware to New York is basically what did it for us.  Thankfully it happened after we had made it to town, it’s not like we were stranded on the Southern State Parkway or anything.  We managed to make it to the North Shore with absolutely no issues at all – and I have to say I’m pleased about that.

So everything is perfect now, we’ll figure out when we’re going to head back down to Delaware but at the advice of the mechanic, we’re going to stay up here for a day or two to drive the car on short distances and then go from there.  I’m not sure if we’re going anywhere tonight, but he’s talking about picking up dinner so maybe we’ll wind up going out and doing something.  If not tonight, we may take a quick trip to New Hyde Park tomorrow and poke around at a few different places – I know there’s a comic book store there that he wanted to see, and I know I want to see if PETS is still there so I can stand outside and warn people of the horrible condition they leave their animals in.  Thank god for veterinarians, or I wouldn’t have her.

Never buy a dog, cat, small mammal, fish, or reptile at PETS of New Hyde Park, they’re sleazy assholes.

What a week…

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I’m still working on getting everything moved over to the new data center.  Thankfully I was able to find one that knows exactly what they’re doing so I couldn’t be happier with my choice to finally make this move.  I have a lot of other things going on, mainly work related but it’s nothing too big right now to really make a huge deal out of.

Sean and I have extended our mini-vacation.  We’re not on Delaware (if you haven’t guessed).  We loaded up the car for a big family trip and now we’re staying a bit longer than we originally planned.  We left about 2AM on Wednesday morning, we didn’t get here until about 7AM so that’s quite a trip to take.  Traffic and my little break down certainly didn’t help us, and by the time we were crossing over the bridge we were basically driving directly into the sunrise, and of course neither one of us had any sun-glasses with us so that proved to be a bit difficult.  We got here just as my father was heading out to work and thankfully he didn’t notice the huge box in the back seat of the car.  He got that the following day (his birthday).  I made dinner, had my aunt and uncle over and then on Sunday we fired up the new BBQ (Dad’s gift) and enjoyed burgers and dogs for my sister’s birthday.  All in all that went over well.

I saw my mother, she was diagnosed with Bells Palsey a few weeks ago but after surgery on Tuesday the test results showed that she has Sarcoidosis.  It’s an auto-immune disease that will never go away but it can be controlled with the proper medication.  Unfortunately she has it pretty bad and that’s where the paralysis in her face has come from.  It was a little strange seeing her like that but there’s nothing you can really do to stop it.

My dad’s cancer has been cleared thanks to his radiation treatments.  He’s lagging a bit though.  Even though the radiation is no longer in his body he’s a little worse for the wear so he’s having some trouble getting around.

My aunt (mother’s sister) went in for surgery on Monday.  She had a lump on her skull and underneath her cheek muscle that doctors need to run a biopsy on.  She wound up checking herself out of the hospital on Tuesday against doctors orders and now it’s a waiting period for the test results.   One ass hole doctor basically said “You’re riddled with cancer” but he made this remark before the tests were even looked at, let alone processed.  So it’s safe to say that bedside manor is non existent – even in the ICU!

So it’s safe to say that almost every member of my family is falling apart to some degree.  My aunt has always had medical problems, but now my mother has them pretty bad, my grandfather will more than likely need two knee replacements and my grandmother, who’s 60 pounds lighter thanks to Weight Watchers, just had surgery on her eyes and is still feeling the effects of the botched surgery she had a few years ago on her ankles – they’re no better than they were before the surgery and thanks to sliced nerves they’re much worse than they should be.  The doctor was able to get the lawsuit dismissed, apparently “I do not recall” seems to be a good enough excuse for a judge to void a lawsuit.  :ugh:

Something tells me I’ll be moving back to NY in the near future.  It’s not the fact that Sean and I have been talking about it for a while, it’s the fact that I expect to have an upcoming year where everyone drops like flies and being 5 hours away really wouldn’t be a great idea.

In any event, time to return some emails and continue with domain transfers. Oh joy!

Just itching to go…

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

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

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

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

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

Trusted Tours

A book recommendation, followed by randomage.

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

Since there isn’t much going on these days, other than sending out resumes and hoping for the best, I’ve been doing a lot of reading to keep myself entertained. A few months ago I picked up a book at the grocery store. It caught my eye because the author, Erica Spindler, has been a favorite of mine for quite some time now. It’s one of her newer books, Copy Cat, and I have to say I highly recommend it to just about everyone in the mood for not only a romantic story, but a suspense thriller as well. Paperback cost me about $7 but you can find it on Amazon for as little as $1.

Erica Spindler - Copycat The Sleeping Angel Killer provides the chilling focus to Spindler’s 12th bloodcurdling romantic thriller (after Killer Takes All). Kitt Lundgren and Mary Catherine “M.C.” Riggio of the Rockford, Ill., VCB (Violent Crimes Bureau) vow to catch a serial killer who sets the suffocated bodies of 10-year-old girls in their own beds, dressed like angels in frilly white nightgowns, hair spread out on their pillows and pink lip gloss applied postmortem to their mouths. Spindler’s setting of a “meat-and-potatoes” Midwest town provides a fresh background for two believable and very cool investigators. Kitt, a recovering middle-aged alcoholic, tried and failed to catch the murderer five years earlier, during a 2001 killing spree, while her own child was dying of leukemia and her marriage was falling apart under the strain. Now, when eerily similar crimes recur, someone calls Kitt, identifying himself as the original killer and the new perp as just a copycat. M.C., an ambitious, distrustful newbie, is assigned to help Kitt with the investigation. The detectives must overcome their personal problems in order to catch the monsters, a task culminating in a breathless finale.

I’m not done with the book yet, I only started reading it before I went to sleep last night. After about an hour I was 150 pages in and found it damn near impossible to put it down. The only reason I did was based on the lack of ability to keep my eyes open. While I was enjoying the book, my head was still telling me to go to sleep and no amount of fighting it was going to keep me awake for much longer anyway.

The book has a day-to-day theme going on with it and oddly enough the story was set in the February/March time frame of 2006. A few things caught my eye, mainly because March 2006 was such a difficult month for me. I noticed that chapter 7 is the only notice of the ex-husband (thus far) and this fell on the date of March 7, 2006. The reason this caught my eye was based on the fact that the very first line of the chapter read “Hello Joe”. I found it pretty freaky, this character is talking to her ex-husband the same day I lost Joe. I know that it’s purely a coincidence but it stood out for me, and probably had a lot to do with why I sat here for so long reading as much as I could before I dozed off.

I had some pretty strange dreams last night, not sure why but all family members that have passed on came to me and started yapping about something important, what the message was – I have no idea. I just think it’s strange that I haven’t dreamt of my Grandmother since I was 8 years old and there she was standing in front of my desk with some kind of a message that I just didn’t understand. I didn’t hear her, I knew she was talking to me, you can always see someone talking to you in your dreams. I’m just unsure of what was actually being said, I just remember screaming “Speak English” because it sounded like “Womp, Womp, Womp” whenever she opened her mouth.

Another interesting dream happened just as I’d dozed off to sleep. I’m unsure of whether or not it was based on the book or not but I was walking up my stairs (the one’s in NY, not DE) and at the top of the stairs was Tony Soprano’s mother (now deceased). I could literally see right through her, she looked at me with this evil grin on her face and then her eyes rolled up in the back of her head. I went to run inside but I couldn’t get my keys out of my pocket and I stood there screaming “Wake me up!”. When I finally did wake up it had only been about 20 minutes since I’d gone to bed. It was just one of those freaky dreams that chills you to the bone and sticks with you all freaking day.

And speaking of bone chilling, according to my weather monitor it’s supposed to get down to about 3¬?F tonight. A quick snow shower came through this evening but I haven’t been outside since about 1am to see what kind of “damage” was done. Down here you don’t get much, we’re too close to the ocean and everything tends to melt within an hour because of the salt in the air. I hear NY is getting some pretty decent snow, I kind of wish I could be up there right now to enjoy it but I have to accept the fact that Delaware will never be New York and I need to move on. It sucks, but nothing I can do about it.