Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

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).

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Posted in AGn Designs, Delmarva, Family, New York, Work | 3 Comments »

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.

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Posted in Bella, Boyfriend, Career, Delmarva, Gadgets, Work | Comments Closed

Happy New Year

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

So it’s officially 2011 and so far things haven’t been too bad. I’m working very hard to get myself on track as there are a lot of things I’m interested in doing this year that require a lot of attention to detail, and stamina to get through them. I’ve actively been searching for a new job, working hard to try to get myself up to speed with the new requirements as far as web design are concerned. Over the course of the next few days it’s my goal to have a new hand-made template up, as opposed to the freebies I’ve been using for the past year. My links list is very short, so I’m also working on finding some new interesting sites to push into a regular routine as well. Another big thing for me is to throw myself fully into the paid blogging world again as I haven’t been into it for so long that my resources are limited. Once I can regain some traffic to any of my sites I’ll work on getting the financial aspect of things back on track as well.

Sean and I are doing great, we haven’t argued and are finally in the relationship we’ve both wanted for a very long time. We veered off a little and now we’re back on track and couldn’t be happier. We went away for new years weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. It made us realize how badly we need to get into a better place with our relationship and we’re both working very hard to get there. This is exactly why I’m feverishly searching for alternate income and really working on finding a better 9-5 so I can be done with the shit hole I’ve been in for the past few years. I’m actually taking a break from searching through job sites just so I can update here since I hadn’t done it in so long.

I changed back to an older theme for the time being as the Christmas season is over. I had a wonderful Christmas, Sean picked out a gorgeous necklace for me that I’m absolutely in love with, I’m also overloaded on new clothes and DVD’s, even older items that were on my amazon list for god knows how long. The biggest YAY moment for me was unpacking my new Kureg Coffee Maker, I’m head over heals in love with it as I’ve wanted it for so long! I already picked up a 24 pack of my uber favorite French Vanilla blend and can’t wait to try out all of the other ones. I’ve been addicted to flavored coffee for quite some time now, and now I have the option of doing it all from home instead of dropping money in random coffee shops around my house, and my job. It’s great for iced coffee too by the way, there’s even iced tea mixes and the lovely hot chocolate flavors which should just be a requirement considering the weather lately. Ugh, even talking about it here is making me want a large cup of coffee lol.

I’m taking even more of a break from reality by hanging out at the train station people watching. I have my netbook in my purse and thanks to our local internet carrier, wifi is pretty much free no matter where I go, the strongest feed is down at the train station for some reason, but I’m sure that has something o do with all of the metal on the ground in front of me. A few people floating around down here are amusing the living hell out of me though. I’m amazed at how dumb teenagers have become since I was one, I know my friends were stupid, don’t get me wrong – but they were never this bad. One of these pricks watches way too much jackass and is looking to see if his tongue will freeze to the tracks, or at least boasting that he’s willing to try it. The sadistic person inside of me wants to see him get his tongue stuck and run over by a train. The “mom/cop” in me wants to zap him with a tazer and watch him squirm in the grass safely away from the rails. Damn me and my caring nature, lol!

In any event, based on my little word counter I’m up in the 750 range which means I’ve been hard-core typing for a good 10-15 minutes and have no idea what my initial point was for even starting this entry.

Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season!

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Uneventful

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

This is one of those days where the truly isn’t anything going on.  I spent my fourth in house with my dog and a sleeping boyfriend.  He hasn’t been feeling very well so we decided it would be best to stay in.  The original plans were rained out anyway so it wasn’t a total loss.  I caught up on a few things, messed around in Photoshop for a few projects and now it’s knocking on 5AM but I’m not even close to being tired yet.  I know Bella’s exhausted, I can hear her snoring from here.  Considering she’s at the other end of the apartment, it’s safe to say she enjoyed her toys all day to the point that her compact little self basically just went ahead and crashed.

My father is pulling a double shift, he should be home in about 2 hours from now.  He left at 3PM this afternoon and since 7AM is rolling in – I’m sure he’ll be exhausted.  I’m tempted to just stay up for the whole day and then crash later on in the evening but I know that’s not actually going to work out.  I have to pull some stuff out of the dryer and get the beds setup so I can go to sleep.  Sean was so tired he’s sleeping on a bare mattress.  I personally can’t handle that but I’m sleeping on the floor tonight anyway so I’ll be able to get the sheet back on the aero-bed with no problems.  We alternate between the bed and the floor, it’s the only way to save our backs.  Mine isn’t doing very well at all – the lack of proper seating is taking it’s toll on me.  While I absolutely love being “home” I have to say that finding a chair that you don’t just sink into would be much better for me.  Big comfy furniture is great, but not when you have chronic back-problems, you know?

My old bed (twin) is rather comfortable, which I’ve proven for the last couple days of over sleeping.  The aero-bed, I just can’t seem to get the proper pressure set to it so no matter what I do I tend to be uncomfortable.  It’s my luck that I’ll have finally figured it out the last night that we’re here so that’s going to be annoying but I am looking forward to falling into my big comfy king bed when we get back to Delaware.

If all goes well we do hope to be moving up to New York within the next 6 months or so.  That heavily depends on a few job applications I sent in up here, as well as quite a few freelance jobs that I’ve quoted.  We know that in order to come up here we’re going to need to earn about $4,000 a month in total.  So finding a position that will bring me at least $2,000 a month shouldn’t be so hard.  I just need to get myself into an office where I’m making $15-$20 an hour.

I applied for a job on the Island that I found on some job-search site (not sure which one – considering there are like 10 of them that I surf through regularly).  I sent in my resume and hopefully I’ll hear something, starting salary is $75,000/yr.  I think that will easily bring in the $13,000 a year I’d need to find a decent apartment up here.  I’m thinking of looking into my grandmothers building (only because I know everything so well) but I may see what I can find at the Avalon – I really like their rules, even though no one else seems to.

I’m the kind of person who can’t stand chaos, and this is coming from someone whom has a rather large extended family.  But at the same time, if I’m going to be spending about $2,000 a month on rent I want to know that I’m going to be able to enjoy the experience.  The Avalon has a series of rules that would drive a few people crazy but the big ones for me really make it worth spending that kind of money.

1 – Children are to be seen and not heard.
2 – Pets are to be seen and not heard.
3 – No loud parties.
4 – Guests are to be cleared with the main desk.

All that says to me is silence, and no crazy wacko’s walking around the building at all hours of the night.  Private off-street parking which makes me feel safe considering the area that most of the Avalon’s are located on the Island aren’t the best.  Private pool and massive work-out rooms so I’ll be able to keep on track with my diet.  The in-house washer/dryer helps me a lot too, apartments can also come furnished if requested so why wouldn’t I do it?

It’s a lot to think about, either way I’ll have to wait and see what happens.  I’ll tell you now that if they hire me I’m going to take the weekend to head back down to Delaware and pack my stuff to come back up here – I’ll stay with my father for a little while until I can find an apartment of my own and once that happens Sean will come up and the rest is history.

It would be nice, it would be flat out fantastic but money talks … unfortunately.

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Still Searching

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Trusted ToursI’m still kind of set on getting myself out of the house for a real vacation. Yes, going up to New Jersey at the end of the month doesn’t look like a possibility right now but I do hope to be able to get up there the following month depending on what’s going on with work and what not. I have been surfing around one of my numerous bookmarks, mainly Trusted Tours because you can find everything you need from them. You can basically get information on just about any major city/town of interest. I have it bookmarked as Things to do in Boston for when I actually get the chance to get up there again but my main focus is finding things to do in Orlando. I know that there are major attractions down there but I can only take so much if Disney World and Universal Studios before I get bored. It’s a goal of mine to get to know every aspect of Orlando and I think a great place to go for that info is Trusted Tours. They can even give you a few tips on basic sightseeing tours as well. They have a newsletter too.

I’m to a point now where I’m just itching to get out of here, honestly. I know that there is a lot of work to do but my stress levels are through the roof right now. I need a change of scenery, and I also have this urge to visit family. I think if I’m unable to get up to Jersey at the end of the month I may try and persuade Sean into going up to New York for a couple of days. I’ll have to base it on how my work schedule is though, I know his is filling up quite a bit as well now that he’s working for three people instead of the original one he’s been with for the last couple of years now. Jackie took him on board as a programmer, and a larger site that created a social networking script has taken him on for plugins and upgrades. Everything is working out pretty well for him right now, it’s just a shame that I’m only getting started on things. It’ll all work out in the end, I just think I’m going to have to spend a little more time down at the beach to clear my head. Right now they’re swamped because it’s a pretty warm day and since it’s a weekend all of the tourists are coming back to open up their houses and relax on the beach. I’m going to make a trip up north in hopes to find another beach that the DE residents in Sussex are sent to because of the lack of ability to get anywhere near the beaches we live by year round. It sucks having to go up to Kent county but if traveling is the only way to get an ounce of privacy while still being able to enjoy the beach then I guess it’s worth it.

Trusted Tours

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Going Home

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

TravelIt’s my hope that sometime over the course of the next two months, I’m able to hop in the car and take a trip up to New York to visit family. With cancer spreading like wildfire, and the Christening of my cousin – the trip would definitely be worth it. My issue right now is money, I don’t even think I’d be able to afford the $120 round-trip, let alone just being up there in general. From gas to tolls it’s not a cheap trip to take. I know it’s not like I’m going to be in Key West Snorkeling or anything, but it’s still damn expensive to travel through two and a half states. For those who don’t live in the Tri-state area, you probably wouldn’t understand. Unfortunately anyone coming into or out of New Jersey or New York has to pay some kind of a toll. I think it’s stupid considering I can travel the entire length of Delaware for $3, and that’s only if I stay on Route-1 the entire time. Either way I just know that I have important things to do in New York and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get up there. It’s really depressing. I just need at least ONE damn store to call me back and say “Come in for an Interview!”

travel

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