A Day (or Two) in the Life of Scott Hanno

Hello, it's me again. Sorry for the shortness of yesterday's note but I wrote part of it before I left home yesterday and headed up to Atlanta and then when I got here I had internet issues and didn't have any time to add to it so I just posted what I had - think that it was close to midnite East Coast time before I got to bed finally and was up again this morning at 5:15 am (4:15 by my standards!) so I'm a rather beat pup tonight ..... and speaking of pups I sure do miss my Monto and I don't think that he likes his temporary home that he is sharing with the other three pups and was freaking out when I dropped him off yesterday. I am in Atlanta for an Owner's Meeting, actually a repeat of the same thing that we did about a month ago but it's a short trip so I don't mind it all too much. But I waited until Wednesday of last week before I knew for sure that I was coming and by the time that I got around to booking a flight the cost round trip was up to $600+.

I was freaking thinking that I was going to have to make another six/seven hour drive up here. But instead I got a one way ticket out of Tallahassee for $100 each way which was even less than a flight out of PCB booked in advance so I drove the two hours there and then back again tomorrow but I'm kind of getting used to hauling butt down I-10! Uneventful trip actually, except that I was selected to do the additional screening going through the check point, I didn't really mind by it's a crock - they search all of your bags and use the metal detector on your entire body and even make you turn the button on your jeans out and pat down your crotch ...... can anyone say overdoing things a bit? And I was looking on my receipt for my ticket and there is a "September 11th Security Sur Charge of like $4.00 per ticket ...... and I was thinking to myself how long we'd be paying that one and that they couldn't come up with a better name for it?

I get to the hotel and they have wireless internet access in all of the rooms but I use an adapter for my Ethernet card and the room that I was in didn't have a signal even though I messed with it for an hour last night and even called the Tech Support (which were no help). Then this morning I decided to see if it would work closer to the door and yup, it worked just fine. So then I ended up moving the desk over to the door and worked there for a couple of hours this morning - then finally go them to room change me this morning to my normal room - the one that I've stayed in the last two times I've been here and guess that serves me right for asking for something a little different.

I've got a busy week ahead too as I've got another Owners Meeting next Tuesday for my San Antonio property and I'll have a Strategy Meeting with them Wednesday morning but no time to prepare any of my reports - I'm trying to do as much as I can for my usual stuff while I'm here so that I'm not behind by two days when I get back to my office on Wednesday. I should be ok - at least that's the plan tonight.

I guess that's the rest of my story that I left out yesterday - I have a 4pm flight out of here tomorrow and hope to be home with my pup by 7pm'ish if all goes well. It's getting late though so I must go - my pc tells me it's 9:21 but my alarm clock says 10:21 and it'll be another early morning tomorrow. Talk with you later - night, nite :)

posted by Scott @ 10:21 PM

Well, another weekend has bitten the dust and it was another just as beautiful as the last. I spent most of yesterday outside working on the lawn and after I went out and raked the brown sections last Tuesday evening I realized that I have an issue with these viney things growing through the lawn killing the rest of it. I think that the reason that they are brown spots is that the lawn chemicals have been slowly killing off the vines but not enough yet to let the grass fill in so I also spent a lot of time yesterday pulling up the weeds hoping that it will help the grass finally grow. It sure has been beautiful weather though and today even feels hot, bet that it was in the mid-80's at least but there is a cool breeze also blowing every now and then.

I also had a setback with my shower project as I found out on Wednesday that the guy that I had been working with father passed away so he was out of the office for the week and will hopefully be back on Monday. I finally made a decision on a tile though so I'm almost there, next is to order it and then finally get it installed. The following two tiles are the one that I was originally going to go with (Spicy Gumbo) and then the one on the right is the finalist (Tawny Beige). The reason that I chose the second on is that the first comes in a random color pattern and I was worried that I'd end up with something too funky if I left it up to them to decide how random. The beige color at least comes in a "high" color contrast so I think that I will still get the same effect as I wanted with it now being all one brown color. Take a look .......

I also still need to pick out the grout but that shouldn't be too hard, I had decided on a mocha color for the first tile and that might even still work - I'll probably leave it up to the experts to decide.

And it's late, so I'll write more later but I've got to get to bed - talk with you again sometime soon.

posted by Scott @ 11:29 PM

Happy Sunday once again ...... I'm just back from a few days in sunny Tampa Bay visiting my hotel for an owners meeting and it feels good to be home tonight!! I drove down first thing Wednesday morning and came back early Friday, that six hour drive has to be one of the most boringest that I've made in a long time. And it was driving me crazy coming home and didn't notice it so much driving down - but these butthead out of state drivers kept hanging out in the left lane and wouldn't let anyone by so we'd have to pass them on the right just to get around them ....... and campers galour going 40 mph and it's not even the camping season yet! I got to my hotel around 3pm on Wednesday and they insisted on doing a dry-run of our meeting that was to happen Thursday morning and while I wasn't really in the mood I went with the flow and got through it. Then at like 7:15pm my San Antonio property called and wanted to have a conference call right then to review their strategy reports so I ended up doing that with them for the next hour or so. Then I did some room service and got prepped for my meeting and that went off without a hitch and after a week and a half preparing for it we were done by 4pm. A couple of cocktails at the Blue Daquiri with my boss and it was time to call it a very nice night. I got out of the festivities on Friday and was allowed to get out of Dodge early on Friday and was back here by about 4pm - I hauled you know what and made it in record time.

I got back early enough to stop by the Floor Store to check out tiles for my shower and they had WAY more selections than any other place that I've been yet and they were the one's that I e-mailed my photo to and they remembered me - I'm pretty sure that I have my tile picked out and they are going to come over this week to give me an estimate on installing it ...... we'll have to see how close they come to my first estimate from the other place before I'm fully ready to move forward. Below is the tile that I think that I selected, it's the same brand but I'm not sure if it's the exact color as none of them on the site looked quite like what I saw in the store, at least it's not as dark brown as the one that I almost went with. And it has a little bit of blue in it too which will go great with my floor as that too has a hint of blue ...... I just hope that I like it once it's all installed. I'm going to go with something like this I hope although I think that the one that I picked has a little darker brown in it .........

And it was a beautiful weekend around here once again and it was in the mid-70's both days and again I spent the entire day yesterday outside working around the yard. I used my riding mower and my raker attachment thing and fluffed things up to try and get it all happy and green again and think that it helped as I dragged up a bunch of old dead stuff, then I mowed and mulched it all up. It's getting better, slowly but surely I think. Today I was a slacker though and ended up sleeping in until 10am and never sleep that late, then did like five loads of laundry (sheets & curtains too) but didn't do much else but did get the house vacuumed and shopped for groceries. I finally found some new vacuum cleaner bags for my old Kenmore upright cleaner and have been looking all over for them and thought that I was going to have to end up buying a new vacuum instead - but I found a website that was selling them and got them last week and now the thing works like new again! I also found some navy blue Tommy Hilfinger 220 count sheets and they also came last week - they're pretty cool too and now my bedroom set is also complete ...... now if I could just say the same about my shower I would be all set!

I think that I might end up having to travel in the next few weeks again for a couple of owners meetings at my other hotels, Atlanta wants me to go there next week and then San Antonio is having one the week after - won't it ever end but at least I should have a normal upcoming week this week. And I think that's about it - I ended up barbecuing a nice strip steak on the grill tonight and it was delicious as usual ..... now it's time to get back to work and start it all over again :( I'm starting to think that I'm not going to be able to get my annual Spring Vacation in like I usually do but you've got to do what you've got to do - know what I mean :?) Have a great beginning to another new week - and I'll talk with you sometime soon.

posted by Scott @ 9:48 PM

Happy Easter Everyone ....... and how was your holiday any way? I had a busy weekend and now I'm all worn out - I spent just about all day outside yesterday working on the yard. But then it poured rain all day today and it was dark out up until like 3pm with some major thunder and lightning too, Montie didn't do all too badly with it though (I think he don't hear too good no more :).

Hmmm, where to start and I guess that if you've seen the photos that I put up yesterday than you all ready know what I've been up to. I had my bathtub removed on Friday and when they were jackhammering the floor to move the drain, it made it kind of hard to talk on the phone when that was happening. Here are a couple of pics of the before and the after, actually before and the middle and I'll be sure to let you see the final product once it's complete.

You can click this to see some of the other pics of the current state, phase one is done and phase two isn't even scheduled yet. It kind of ticked me off yesterday as I went and picked up my rail fence yesterday morning and then planned to go to That Floor Store as I talked with them on Wednesday and showed them my "perfect shower" picture and they thought that they could help me and told me that they were open from 10am - 2pm on Saturday. So, all was well and I thought that I'd get everything ordered and things would be under way, but I get there and they are all locked up with a sign on the door that says that they are closed on Saturday in observance of the Easter holiday ....... now what the heck is that all about and more so, why couldn't they have told me that like three days ago! And now I'm screwed there and it'll be another week before I can go way into town to talk with them, doubt that I can go during the week as they close at like 5pm. At least I've got my other bathroom to use and I might be using it for some time to come :( Montie isn't too happy with me either for taking away his drinking hole, he keeps giving me the evil eye every time we go in there and he sees it. I'm still trying to get him to use the tub in the other bathroom to drink from but it's in reverse order of my other one and the toliet gets in the way of him jumping up comfortably (but I know he can do it if he would try!).

And after my drive to town I came home and the weather was beautiful, mid 80's out and I mowed the lawn, then installed my rail fence and then replaced some more sprinkler heads. I think that the new fence will let the grass grow a lot better as the old one went right to the ground and this one I can mow underneath, plus I set one of my sprinklers to cover the whole corner so I think that it should green up a lot better now. I even had one lady stop when I was out there to tell me how beautiful my lawn was - haven't heard that in a while since this old guy stopped after I killed my lawn to tell me how heartbroken I must be. It's coming along and it's still early - and if you want to see those photos you can click here. I got sunburned too as I'm not used to the sun shining so brightly and didn't have any sunblock on, my poor head is rather red but it matches the red shirt that I know have on now :)

I guess that's it, I'm hoping to have access to my reservation systems sometime in the near future (finally!) so I bought a cat-5 cable at Walmart and also bought this cool little usb storage thingy called a JumpDrive. It's like 128 meg but it's a lot slower to save to than I thought so I guess that I should have bought a better one. I washed my duvet cover today too and it came out fine, think that it's even softer now then the first time that I washed it. I got these clips to hold the insides where it's suppose to be but I don't think that I figured out how to use them yet.

Oh, and the sun came back out this afternoon and think that it's here to stay for the week, mid 70's again for like the next 10 days! So, may the sun be shining where you are living and that all is well with you and I hope to talk with you again sometime in the near future - feel free to drop me a line. Night!

posted by Scott @ 9:15 PM

Another Sunday night and the weekend is done, dang if those two little days don't fly right by :( And it was gorgeous weather around these parts too, mid-70's with a nice breeze both days and think that it's going to be like that all next week ........ this should be my annual spring vacation week! And my lawn is really starting to shape up and is getting greener every day, I mowed it again yesterday and it's looking half way decent but there are a still holes that need to fill in and a few areas that need to green up but I don't think that it'll be all that long before it's looking mighty fine. I also bought another six bags of my red mulch and have about 3 more planters to change out from the old crappy brown stuff to the new and improved red and then it'll all be done.

And yesterday I got up and went out and ordered a new corner fence to replace the one that I installed a couple of springs ago (photo) and I finally was able to find the one that I would have bought then if I was able to find it. But it's like a log pole fence with a post on each end and then two rails going across and it's cedar, much more rustic than the white plastic one that I have out there now and will be a huge improvement. I'll be sure to take some pics once I install it, and that will be a project in itself digging the holes and getting it to fit together. I ended up calling Home Depot last week and they referred me to a lumber yard but when I got there they didn't even have any in stock and had to order it for me ......... you would have thought they would be easier to find than that.

And now on to my next project, I have to say that I think that it's really pretty cool that you can take your memory card from your camera to Walmart and just stick it in their reader and pick out the photos that you want prints of - or you can upload them to their site and then order the prints and pick them up at the store. With that said I have been thinking about removing my bathtub and installing a tile shower in my master bath, I loved my shower that I had in my house in Orlando and have been thinking about doing it for a long time. My biggest challenge has been in finding a contractor to do it, but I finally got a referral from Lowes the other day when I was buying my mower. So after estimates for removal and estimates for tile I am ready for the project to begin and they will be here in another week to let the fun begin. Oh, and that's what I was taking pictures of was my current bathroom floor tiles and walls and need them when I go and pick out the new shower tiles which I need to do sometime this week. I think that I have a general idea in mind of what I want and if you click here you can see what I am shooting for - something darker than my floors but not too dark ....... but I really suck at interior design. I am doing the entire thing in tile though so I'll need to pick out the floor too and I think that it'll give me a lot more room in there as well. I'm kind of excited to see how it comes out, and then after I get all of it installed and put back together I'll need to figure out a shower door - I haven't even started to look at them yet.

Oh, and I watched a hilarious moving on PPV on Friday night and was Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star and the best part was the ending where they had all of the child stars from the 80's singing this song about how hard it was to grow up ...... it's hard to explain but if you get a chance watch it sometime. I'm doing ok with the time change thing but I'll see how I do in the morning when it'll be like 4am instead of 5am when I get up - I think that I got all of my clocks changed though and it'll be mighty nice having it lighter out till later in the evening ...... Summer time will be here before we know it so enjoy your spring while you can!

And I think that the upcoming week should be somewhat manageable, not too sure what is going on but have a package meeting with San Antonio tomorrow morning ....... you know the movie Alamo is out this week and their address is Alamo Street so we need to get as much hype out of that as we can :) Other than that I'm not too sure what's up, I'm ready for it but think that I could have used some more sleep. Have a great week and I will be talking with you again sometime real soon. Nite night for now, at least until another day :8)

posted by Scott @ 10:19 PM