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

Happy weekend after Thanksgiving everyone - and how were the holidays? It's been pretty uneventful around these parts, I actually think that I need to get back to work and back in the swing of things before I turn into a full time slug ..... sleeping late and doing nothing kind of gets on your nerves! I ended up having a decent feast at Mr. B's with the family which is kind of a holiday tradition, we ate much later than we normally do as one of his daughters works at a hotel here on the beach and didn't get off until 6pm - so I went over later in the day and pigged out but other than that I didn't do a whole heck of a lot. I did end up going out and raked up a couple of bags of leaves that have been blowing around the yard as it's been wicked windy around here all week but that's all gone now.

I ended up taking last Monday off and flew up to Virginia to look at some more houses as I'm starting to run out of time to get this whole process started. I must have looked at like 12 of them and 10 of them turned out to be dumps and there were a couple of possibilities - but my first choice that I thought was my first choice in looking at the pictures turned out to need a lot more work than I had figured on so I don't think that that's my first choice any longer - but it's still a possibility for the right price. We'll see how this week goes as last week kind of fizzled out after Tuesday and I think that everyone went on holiday after that.

But last week turned out to be a lot busier than I was expecting it to be and they had me hopping right up until the end on Wednesday and then I worked for a few hours on Friday and got pretty much caught up again and then again today - so I should be in pretty good shape heading into the new week. And it's only like three more weeks before I close here and pack it up and move out and head north - and guess that day will be here before I know it. I've also been continuing to clean out some of my closets and pitching a bunch of stuff - mostly junk and I also started to go through some of the old boxes that have been sitting in my garage too. I ended up buying a cable modem on E-Bay the other day for $20 as I didn't want to loose my internet when I turned the rented one back in and it's working great, I made some other tweaks after using the speed test on DSLReports.com and now my download speed is twice as fast as my upload instead of the opposite of that when I first started messing with it. It's working great though - but now that I've checked the options in VA it looks like I won't have any use for the modem up there as it's all Dish Network for TV and DSL for broadband - but I guess that I'll wait until I get there to know for sure but I've been checking it all out just the same. I also bought a couple of ADT security signs cheap on E-Bay the other day too as someone actually stole the one that I had out front - plus I can take one with me and pretend that I have a system in my new house too, at least until I can have one installed that is.

Not much else other than that to report here - I haven't started any shopping yet for the holidays and haven't even though about it so I guess that I need to start to figure that all out. My brother wants me to come to his house for Xmas now that "I'm living so close" but I can't make a definite decision on any of that yet until I get a timeline figured out as to where I'll be and when I'll be there. I did talk with him on Friday and guess that it was just him and the Mrs. for the big T-Day feast, the rugrat had dinner at his girlfriends parents house ...... sounds like it's getting serious ...... but then my bro said they had a pool table and that was probably the reason.

Talk with you later - have a great beginning to another new month! C-ya, talk with you soon.

posted by Scott @ 9:51 PM

Not too much news to report around here again for another day other than all is well with me and things are moving slowly but surely full steam ahead. Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon cleaning out a couple of closets and digging through boxes that I've been hauling around with me for the last two decades and figured I'd rather pitch what I can instead of moving it again. I still have a few more boxes in the garage that need to be gone through and I've got this big ole pile of crap sitting on one side of the garage that I'll slowly bag up and throw out over the next few weeks.

It was a pretty nice day yesterday too so I ended up putting a bunch of stuff by the side of the road with a free sign on it and got rid of a microwave, a stereo receiver, a satellite dish, the hood from over my stove and a few other smaller things - but no one wanted the computer and monitor that is like 15 years old that has been sitting in my garage for the past few years that someone gave me to try and fix. But I guess that I can't blame them as I think that it only has the big floppy drive in it (back when they really were floppy disks!) and I'm not even sure if the thing has a hard drive. The mover guys are coming here Tuesday afternoon to do their survey of how much of a job they have before them but I don't think the they'll have all that hard of a time with things.

I also need to get my butt up to VA and find a place to live and need to do that in the very near future as I'm only like three weeks away from my closing here. I also haven't heard hide nor hair from the people that made the offer on this place and think that they only had like 10 days to get the home inspection and termite thing done and we're all ready getting close to that. I also just hope that they have their financing all worked out as I don't need any surprises at the end - I'm set and I think that they should be too!

Other than that it was a pretty uneventful week at work last week, our company picked up the Westin Princeton on Monday and I think that I will be helping them out for at least the short term if nothing else as we lost the person who was working there before then. And go figure I loose two Sheraton's a couple of weeks ago and now I pick up a Westin, guess it could have been worse and I could have lost one and picked up two! Other than that our plans on replacing me are moving ahead, slowly but still moving in the right direction.

It rained all day today and has been dark as all heck out all day long, plus it was mighty chilly here last week and think that one morning it was like 36' and yes, I did end up breaking down and turning on the heat! But it's warmer now and bet that yesterday was close to 70', not totally sunny but sunny enough for me. Today was house cleaning day and I'm starting to like that Easy Off Bam stuff, I used it the other day to clean off my refrigerator and tonight I used it on some spots on the garage floor and it works pretty well so far, maybe not as good as it does in the commercial but fairly close.

And I guess that's about it for another day and it's almost time for another week to begin and it should be a short one with the holiday in the middle and all and guess that I'm looking forward to that! I think my plans are to at least have one more feast with my old GM and his family - been a tradition for like the last five years (but guess that all good things come to an end!). So, enjoy the holiday and the family and I'll talk with you on another day! Night :)

posted by Scott @ 9:59 PM

Sunday night here (again), go figure huh that I'd be writing on this thing! It was another great weather weekend with temps in the mid-70's but it's been warmer in the overnights than it had been and think that it's only been getting down into the low 60's. I talked with my realtor guy in VA today and he said that it was almost 70' up there today too - but then he mentioned something about it going to be in the 20's sometime soon and I figured that it couldn't last for long! I ended up mowing the lawn yesterday but it's just about done for the season so that might be the last time that I end up doing that ...... that sounds so sad but life goes on!

And step one on the relocation is now complete, I countersigned the contract yesterday on the sale of my home here and we should be off and running now! I didn't quite get as much as I had started out asking for as I dropped the price by $20k the Friday before that cuz things weren't moving anywhere! And then I had people touring the place all week and I thought for sure that this sweet old lady that was here on Monday was going to come through with a contract but nadda, there was a couple last weekend from LA that got their financing approved but then never made an offer. It then surprised the heck out of me that there was this family that was here on Thursday while I was on a conference call and they kept coming in and asking me questions and was getting on my nerves and I wrote them off for sure but they came back on Friday with an offer and after going back and forth we finally made the deal. I even sold my refrigerator, washer and dryer to them for another $1500 and now I'm sad about that too as I loved all three of them as they were one of my own - but everything that I'm looking at in VA comes with all of them so hopefully I'll find a new love in my laundry & cooling utilities.

And now comes the home inspection (which I hate), plus the termite thing but that won't be any big deal as I've had a contract on that since the day the house was built, hopefully they won't have any financing issues and there is still a chance that something could fall through. So my realtor decided that it would be best to keep showing the place and take any back up offers that we get just in case something happens but hopefully it won't. And it was funny but last night there was a group that wanted to see the place even though they knew it was under contract and when they showed up it turned out to be the parents of two people that I worked with at the Marriott here - and I think that they would have bought the place if they could have. I learned that everyone loved the house but the current conditions of the neighborhood was my shortfall - if the house was in a sub-division somewhere it would have sold in a couple of days. But hopefully that is all behind me now and it's on to step two - finding me a place and then timing it all to make it come out in the end.

And I really dislike the selling of the house thing, I've had to be ready to show at a minutes notice for the last two weeks and it's getting on my last nerve - although I am getting pretty darn good at it. Montie seemed to enjoy all of the company too but hopefully things will quite down a little after this. I am going to need to make a trip up to VA sometime in the near future to find a home and hopefully make a deal, I've been checking out the houses up there and I've got four that I really seem to like. I've even checked them out on Google Earth which is a really cool program and you can narrow in on the neighborhood and even check out what's in the backyards - you should check it out sometime if you have a chance.

Not much else to report though and work is about the same with no major changes there, we are still looking for people but haven't had too much luck but hopefully we'll make some progress on that soon. And I watched a DVD last night which was Kicking & Screaming but I didn't get them in the mail until yesterday I guess due to the holiday so I've got another one to check out at some point which will probably be next weekend. It was an ok movie - I like that Will guy but he was better in that college faternity movie, I forget the name.

And I guess that's about it - my closing date here is set for 12/16/05 so I think that a move is going to be my Christmas this year - I'm just a little worried at this point of pulling it all together to get the timing to work out with everything. Wish me luck if you'd please be so kind and I'll talk with you on another day!

posted by Scott @ 9:56 PM

And here it is another wonderful Sunday night, the weekend is done and it's back to the old grind in the morning. Not too much news to report here though, I really need to get my house sold and get my butt up to Virginia but so far no luck. I ended up dropping a big chunk off the price Friday evening to see if that would help and everyone seems to love the place but no one is willing to commit - I think that I am now the fourth lowest priced house on the beach at this point and I hope that I don't have to go much lower. There is one couple that came on Friday and then came back on Saturday for a second look and they are a possibility but they are from LA and weren't preapproved so my agent gave them the names of a couple of banks in the area to see if they could get financing - she just didn't want to tie things up with them in case something else came along but they are a "maybe". There were a few others here yesterday and none today and I can usually tell if they are going to like the place or not as some have been single girls and I don't think that the yard does as much for them as it does for me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though and hope that you will do the same for me :).

Not much else to report though, the weekend was another beauty and in the mid-70's but the lawn is definitely slowing down and I didn't even mow it. Pretty soon it'll be done for the season but right now it's more like an every other week thing. I did end up raking up some leaves from the sycamore trees (dang if they don't have some BIG leaves) and cleared out a couple of planters but that was more to kill time while people wandered around my house more than anything. Montie seems to enjoy all of the visitors though, except for the one's he sleeps through and never even realizes that they were here.

I watched a couple of good movies this weekend and on Friday night I watched Spanglish which was good but more than 2 hours long and that's almost more than I can take and last night I watched the remake of Amityville Horror which was almost as scary as I remember the first one being, that certainly was a scary movie for a kid to watch! I also ended up buying a new pair of Nikes yesterday, well more like ordering them as they aren't here yet. But I don't know if you've tried the Froggle thing but I think that I'm going to in the future - I found what I wanted on Niketown.com and out of the 90 or so pairs there was only one that I liked. So I was going to order them and it turned out they only had them in like two sizes and they were no where close to me - so I then searched the name of the sneaker on Froogle and found them in my size for $20 less and free shipping to boot! It's worth checking it out there before you buy something somewhere else that's for sure.

I have also been kind of hooked on that coffee moca frappacino stuff and every time that I go to the airport I end up having to have one of those iced things with the whipped cream on top and is a very good pick me up and tastes great too! Well at Walmart tonight I found the little bottles of Starbucks stuff and also found a cheap $9.00 blender too - so now I can whip me up some of them at home with some crushed ice and yum ...... I'm hoping that it is going to taste as good as me thinks it is! It'll be a nice afternoon break thing while I'm working though so we'll see how it goes.

Other than that no new developments on any replacements for me as I transition into my new life, we have one girl that took over two of my hotels (out of five) and I've been working with her the last couple of weeks showing her the ropes and surprisingly she's actually catching on pretty quickly. My other two don't really have and canidates yet but there have been a couple of possibilities but it's still going to be a while before we have someone in place for them. Oh, and I get to look forward to a dentist appointment in the morning and I'm hoping for just a painless cleaning and don't think that I have any new issues to worry about but I guess that I shall see. Other than that it's the same ole same ole and I'm doing fine - other than getting a little concerned about selling this place all is going ok with me.

Have a great week and just thing - only a couple of more weeks and it'll be T-Day! Talk to you later and I hope that all is well with you too. Night.

posted by Scott @ 9:35 PM