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

Sunday night here, day light savings time is over and it'll be Christmas before we know it! And it's a good thing that computers keep track of that changing the time thing as I forgot all about it, slept till 9am and was ticked that I slept in so long and then sat down at the computer and here is was only 8am - what a nice surprise! And I'm home again and got home Thursday afternoon after a very uneventful trip that was on schedule all the way, and got home early enough to get right back to work trying to get caught up. At least I had part of Thursday and all day Friday to get back into the routine and get back on track where I left off and although I've still got a ton of things to get done it should be a fairly normal week ahead (me hopes!). The weather here has been perfecto all weekend too and seems like Fall - it's been in the mid-70's during the day and dipping down into the low 50's at night ...... but I still haven't broken down and turned on the heat just yet.

No news on the home sale either and I'm starting to think that it might take a while, I did have three different people come and take a look over the weekend and there was one couple that was "going to think about it" but who knows what that means, me realtor said that she liked to hear them talking about where they were going to put all of their stuff and they did ask her what kind of offer they should make ..... makes me think that they might actually be thinking about making an offer but guess that we'll see. I was also suppose to have another appointment today but they backed out saying something about they got a promotion and were moving but that sure did happen pretty darn quick. Guess that I'll just have to wait and see what comes my way but the market sure does seem to be pretty soft right now.

Not too much else happening with me though, I ended up doing the lawn thing yesterday and that was about it and finally got around to washing the truck too which was long overdue. I also went and picked up Montie Thursday evening after work and for some reason he was walking better than he usually does and think that having his buddy Jethro around keeps him on his toes instead of laying around all day - makes me think that he'd be better off with a room mate to keep him active. But he was no worse for the wear even after me being gone so long but he sure is hungry when he gets home and don't think that they have the same "snacking routine" as me and he might actually have to survive off of his dinner, not like being here where he eats all day long.

I've also been messing with my Norton Internet Security program all day as a while ago I downgraded from 2005 to 2004 due to some issues that I was having with that program but ever since then it would never update all of the componets and the only way to fix it was to unistall the whole thing and reinstall it - but that fixed one problem and caused another so I ended up removing that and loading 2005 again. I think I've finally got it all working again but it must have made me reboot my computer about 20 times today and was really getting on my last nerve. I guess that I'll have to give it some time to see if it's actually working the way that it should but so far so good.

Dang if this isn't a boring blog, blah, blah blah! So I guess that's about all he wrote for another day - let's hope that one of these days I might have something of interest to write about. Talk with you later - enjoy your week and the dark evenings that we are in for! Later.

posted by Scott @ 9:48 PM

What up, happy Sunday night to ya and I'm writing you from Reston VA this evening. I came up here last Monday and have a few more days here before I head back home to a much warmer Florida I'm sure. The last few days have been pretty crappy around here and it rained all day on Friday and Saturday and has been barely in the high 50's so to me it seems mighty chilly. But today wasn't too bad, at least the sun was shining so I know that it does happen but in looking at the forecast it's suppose to rain again tomorrow, such wonderful weather they have in these parts of the world.

I came up Monday night and got in about 8pm, rented a car and then tried and find the Sheraton. Mapquest did me well and didn't have too much trouble and then I headed out to my new office Tuesday morning before the crack of dawn. I take the Dulles Parkway to and from work and is sure different that what I'm used to lately, five lanes of traffic and toll booths and all that good stuff but so far so good and I made it to work on time each day. I worked Tuesday - Thursday and they were some long days and actually I much prefer to work from home but I'm sure that most people would, we've been having our budget review meetings with all of the properties and are doing it again this week as well. Other than that I'm still doing my other job in between meetings and I guess that's been going ok but I haven't quite been able to do everything that I usually do.

I took Friday off and went and looked at houses, I think that we went and saw about 8 hours and 3 townhouses and there were a couple in Reston that were ok but more like living at camp. There was one in Herndon that I really liked as it was just as much as all of the others that we looked at but had a ton of new updates plus a big backyard with a park right behind it. I think that the problem that I am going to run into is that I can't really put an offer on anything until I get a contract on my house in Florida and so far I think that it's been moving pretty slowly with just a couple of people that wanted to look at it. I haven't been too overly thrilled with my agent as it takes me a couple of calls to get her to call me back but hopefully something might have taken place this weekend but I guess that we will see. We didn't make it into the paper last Sunday but should have this week so hopefully that might raise a little bit of interest but I don't know if that will matter all that much. I do think that it's going to be a little tough showing the place after I get back as it's not like I can just get up and leave the house in the middle of the day when I should be working so I guess that I'll have to work that out too. I do think that I can find something up here as long as I sell that place, and now it's only a matter of time to see how long that takes.

And I swear that every time I leave the state of Florida another hurricane pops up and hits while I'm gone but at least this time it's South Florida and not the panhandle. But that doesn't make them feel any better I'm sure and it sounds like it is going to be there by morning and has all ready messed up my business in Tampa all ready. I don't know how my hotel in Maya Riviera made out from over the weekend but they had just got done replanting all of the palms and stuff a couple of months ago from the last one and now it's probably time to start over again.

I also miss my pup and being gone for like 10 days is a VERY long time and I sort of can't wait to get home to him and I hope that he's doing ok. I haven't called to see how he's been doing but probably should tomorrow but I'm sure that he's ok or Linda would have called me. And not much else happening with me, it certainly is a different life living here all around ..... but with a little time and a new home I might be able to adjust to it, I'm just not too sure yet. I went to the mall at Tyson's Corner yesterday and dang if that thing wasn't a beautiful mall and the likes of nothing that I've seen in a long time ....... me thinks me ain't in Kansas any longer.

Have a great week and stay warm where you are living if you need to, I think that it's finally perfect weather in Panama City Beach and it's just my luck that I'm not even there to enjoy it. Take it easy and stay safe and I'll talk with you later.

posted by Scott @ 9:58 PM

House for sale, three bedroom/two bath - anyone interested?



The sign went up on Friday but it doesn't officially go up for sale until tomorrow and I kind of figured that I'd have people stopping by all weekend wanting a tour but luckily (or unluckily) no one showed up. I guess that I was kind of thinking that it was going to be like a garage sale and every Tom, Dick & Harry would want to see what's what but hopefully they can all deal with my realtor and won't mess with me and I won't have to deal with any of it. I also saw the listing on realtor.com but there wasn't a picture up yet so it didn't do all that much for me but I'll have to check back.

It was a gorgeous weekend around these parts and has been in the low 80's all weekend with the nights dipping down into the 60's and I love this time of year but guess that I shouldn't get too used to it as where I'm going it'll be lucky to hit the 60's for the high pretty soon. I got the lawn all taken care of but that was about all that I did, got my haircut and that was about all she wrote. I've also been messing with the look of my website and found that one a week or so ago but didn't like the layout so I redid that today and now I'm liking my current home page much better and I think that I'm almost there. I still need to add a logo to the top bar and a couple of other little things but I'm much closer to finally liking it. I knew that if I left the old one up long enough I'd eventually get around to fixing it to my liking and then once I get the home page perfected than I can change all of the other pages over to look just like it. I also changed the format on my Blogger the other day too and it amazes me how simple it is to change three years of archives all in just minutes. And I read back on some of the entries every now and then and I think that I am still talking about the same stuff that I was three years ago - me thinks that maybe it is a good time for a change here.

Work is going fine and next week is the first round of budget presentations with the properties that I get to sit in on and hopefully say nothing. I think that we are ready as it's one of those "don't ask & hope for the best" as no one really asked me to do much in regards to the marketing plan so I'm just hoping that they've got it all under control and are ready to meet their deadlines. Other than that business is doing pretty good in all parts of my country (finally) and there are just one or two more that can still use some work.

Not too much else to report other than my brother called me this evening which is fairly unusual but he didn't really have all that much to say other than to tell me how expensive his trip to DC was and how bad the traffic was ...... now tell me something that I don't all ready know! And my nephew Timmy's 20th birthday was the other day and they couldn't even get him to blow out the candles on his cake - so my brother did it for him and then ate the whole thing. And he also said that it's been raining for like the past 15 days, and guess that it won't be long before it's turning to snow. I watched a couple of movies this weekend and one was Friday Night Lights which was about a Texas football team which was actually pretty good, and last night I watched Ocean's 12 which was a little hard to follow - the first one was definitely better than that one.

And I guess that does it for another week, keep your fingers crossed that people actually show up to take a look at the house and that it sells real quick. Other than that, that's about all she wrote - have a great week ahead and I'll talk with you soon. Over and out :)

posted by Scott @ 10:02 PM

Dang if these weekends don't fly right by and then it's Monday morning again before you know it! We had a lovely weather weekend around here though, probably mid-80's at the highest with no humidity and a nice cool breeze to boot! I ended up spending like 3 hours out trimming my front bushes and then cleaning up all of the leaves and crap and then remulched it all and it's looking much better, I even pulled up a couple of bushes and rearranged a few more. Curb appeal, that's what it's all about when selling a house, right :?) I got the lawn all done too and weed whacked and everything and my whacker almost works except I have to thread more line out manually ..... which is a pain in the butt. And I even edged the drive and the road and it's looking very respectable too.

I also gave away my crappy old riding lawn mower yesterday too, I set it out by the side of the road with a free sign on it and someone came along within 15 minutes and hauled it off. I probably should have listed it on E-Bay and got big bucks for it but then trying to ship it anywhere would have been a bear. I'm slowly but surely cleaning out the garage and every week for the last month I've had two or three big old bags of crap but I've still go oh so much more. I was thinking that I might even see how much one of those little dumpster cost to make it easier, just pitch everything that I've been collecting over the years and have them haul it off in one swoop ...... I'm still waiting to find that out but might end up doing it if it's not too much.

I'm putting house on the market next Friday so keep your fingers crossed for me that some people actually come and want to look at it and I'd love to see it sell quickly but I am a little worried about it. There are a lot of houses in the hood for sale and have been for some time, most of the are less than desirable but still you'd think that someone would want to buy them. I guess that I'll find out soon enough but I just hope that it doesn't take me months.

I also took Montie to a new groomer that's in my neighborhood Thursday morning called Bark Avenue and is like 3 minutes away from my house. So instead of getting up on a Saturday morning and sending him off for the day he went before I started work and then I picked him up afterwards and he was all nice and shaved. He's looking much better except his ears are shaggier than normal and of course his knees were in pain all day Friday, plus he was exhausted from missing his all day nap Thursday. But today he's no worse for the wear plus he got to play outside with me all day yesterday so it worked out very well - wish I would have tried that months ago.

Work is going fine and I'm keeping myself busy and we are getting closer to finding people to take my hotels and get them into position which is the first step for me to be on my way to Virginia. We have someone starting the week after next to take over my DC hotels and getting closer on Texas but we haven't gotten very far on finding anyone for Tampa so we'll need to keep working on that. I talked to my brother last week and he was at a training class in Bethesda all week staying at the Marriott and if I had been up there we could have hooked up - well, maybe the next time. Oh, and I watched the movie Hitch with Wil Smith the other night and I thought that it was a great movie, so check it out sometime if you get a chance.

I guess that's about it for another day, take it easy and stay warm (or is it cool these days, guess that it's about that time of year where it could be either) and I'll talk with you on another day. Take it easy and have a great week as well.

posted by Scott @ 9:45 PM

Sunday night once again and all is well on this end of the earth, at least for the most part I guess. I gave Montie another bath this afternoon as he still hasn't been to the groomer after the last knew injury and he's getting pretty good at it and sits right down in the tub while I'm lathering him up ...... but with that much hair he takes forever to dry and he's still not completely done yet. Other than that it was a normal day, went for lunch at Backyard Burger which is my new joint and then did laundry, cleaned the house and shopped for groceries. It even rained this afternoon but that lasted all of about 20 minutes but it was coming down pretty hard for a while there. Plus it gets dark earlier every day it seems and now by like 6:30 it's dark out and guess that it won't be long before it'll be 4pm and we are turning the lights on again.

Oh, I got my home appraisal back on Friday and dang if I wasn't shocked at where it came in at and even in my wildest dreams I would have never thunk it but all they really base it on is recent "comp" sales in the area and it really doesn't matter what the heck the house looks like. But then that created a complication with my plan to sell it to my friends as it is now priced higher than I think that they were looking to spend so I can either list it on the open market and get as much as I can for it or lower the price down to their range ...... and I've been struggling with that all weekend as option #01 seems like its all about me and that's pretty selfish to think that way. I did meet with a realtor on Saturday who came over and she brought the paperwork to get things started but I'm sitting on it at this point and haven't signed anything. I'm just not sure yet what I'm going to do about this issue yet but I guess that I'll need to make a decision sometime in the near future.

Not too much else has been going on though, just the same ole same ole but did end up selling a cell phone that I found laying around on E-Bay the other day and again I listed it before I turned off my pc in the evening and it was sold by the time I got up in the morning, now I'm wondering how many other things I have laying around here that I should also get rid of, I'm sure I'll have tons of things once I start clearing out the place. Nothing new on the move yet though and finding replacements to take over my hotels is going slower than I would have thought and we've only got a month left and think that we've only found one person - and need two more. So we'll see how all that goes and not sure if we can do everything from hiring and training and turning over the hotel in four weeks or less but I guess that I'll have to play that one by ear. We are moving forward at least so that's a good thing.

I guess that's about it and sorry for the boring blog, but my niece Jessie did send me some pictures of her new baby daughter so I posted one of those earlier which you can find below ...... she sounds so much older and more mature in her e-mail today than I remember her being ..... she really sounds like a Mom! And that's about all she wrote for another day - talk with you again some day.

posted by Scott @ 9:55 PM