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

Happy Sunday night and another month is just about done ...... February always did fly right by and soon it will be March and then hopefully it will be all uphill from there! This weather here is whacked though as one day last week we had an inch and a half of snow fall on maybe Tuesday, then that all melted and the next morning it was whicked foggy, the day after that it was 60', yesterday it was windy as all heck and today it didn't get above 30'. It's always something and usually not the same two days in a row! But at least the sun was shining today and ended up washing my car as it was filthy after the couple of days of driving in the slop and it's looking much better tonight.

I didn't end up doing all that much this weekend though, went to Lowe's again yesterday and picked up a few things - I'm trying to fix the cracked molding on my front door but I don't think that I'm going to be able to do it - and might have to see if someone else can otherwise I think that I'll end up buying a whole new door. The door is fine though so I will avoid replacing it if I can but I guess that at some point in it's life the heat builds up between the storm door and the front door and popped the seal - I was hoping to just glue another one back on and call it a day but I don't think that it's going to be that easy. We'll see, I think that if I end up replacing it than I've got to get approval to replace the door, even if the new one is the same I still have to run it by them.

I also did my taxes yesterday on line but as soon as I e-filed I realized that I forgot to report some interest that I made from one of my saving accounts so now I'm going to have to see what I need to do in order to send an amended return, what a pain in that butt that is going to be. But at least I didn't owe anything for another year but aren't getting all that much back either but I guess that it's ok as long as I came out in the green. Montie hasn't seemed like he's been his old self this weekend either and not too sure what is up with him, he's having a harder time getting up on the wood floors it seems and is slipping and sliding a lot. I just hope that it's nothing too serious and that he's feeling better by tomorrow.

I ended up messing with my webcam today and realized that I hadn't changed the picture that was up there since like sometime in 2004 and got my camera programmed to work again, plus I've been slowly redoing all of the other pages to match my home page but still have a few more to go. I also found an option on my control panel for my site to weed out all of the tons of junk mail that I end up getting on a daily basis and that seems to have slowed down the spam since that kicked in. Our work network has also been down all weekend which messed up my plan to update a budget for one of our hotels and had wanted to get that done this weekend but haven't been able to - so I guess that I will just have to add that to my to do list to get done tomorrow. And it should all ready be a busy week ahead as we are in the process of acquiring three new hotels in the next two weeks which will keep my plenty busy just doing them.

That's about all he wrote for another day, all is well with me on this end of the world and hope that it's the same where you live. Talk with you later, have a great week ahead!

posted by Scott @ 9:08 PM

Sunday night again and here I am. I think that I finally figured out my heat deal and ended up buying another new thermostat yesterday and all seems to be working now - and it is a good thing as it was like 15' last night and don't think that it got over 30' all day today. The thermostat that I had bought first was a Honeywell programmable one for a heat pump but it never turned on the second stage electric heat and just had the heat pump running constantly, and no matter how I programmed it the thing was always running and it was still cold in here. My HVAC company that replaced my air handler thinks that I was crazy after calling them so many times but at least they told me that the when it got really cold that the electric heat should be running along with the heat pump but it wasn't so I figured out that the thermostat was my issue. I bought a new Hunter one yesterday at Lowes and hooked that up and it's been working great ever since.

And dang it's cold, last night I went out to get some dinner and it must have been in the teens and was windy and felt colder than all heck. And it wasn't much better today and didn't get above freezing all day, I think that I'd almost rather have the snow than the cold but as long as I stay inside all day I guess it doesn't matter all that much. And looking ahead at the forecast it's not going to be warming up anytime soon either. And there are only a couple of days where there is a chance of snow so hopefully we won't seen any accumulations with that stuff either. It's still hard to believe that only a couple of days ago it was 65' out - at least it melted all of the snow and dried up before the cold got here.

I ended up having to go to a meeting in downtown DC Friday afternoon which was at the Churchill Hotel which is one of our hotels right off of Dupont Circle which was an interesting trip - it took me only about 20 minutes to get downtown which was really quick ...... but then I got lost and took me a good 30 minutes finding the hotel and a place to park. And then coming home it was crazy - it took me an hour and a half and I sat on I-495 for a good 30 minutes ..... I got lost again and I'm sure there was an easier way than the way that I came but I made it home at least. It was a good meeting though and I'm glad that I ventured down there so at least I know I can do it when I need to.

Other than that not too much is going on on this end, I've been watching HGTV on home redo's and it's got me thinking about what I can do with my bathrooms as they only spent $2000 and made such a huge difference ...... I guess that you can do some pretty amazing stuff if you know what you are doing. And I guess that's about it for this day, sorry that it's a fairly short note but there isn't a whole lot to report - hopefully things are going great with you too today! Talk with you soon, have a great start to your new week.

posted by Scott @ 8:54 PM

Snow in the Capital District

And the snow got here yesterday ..... all in all I think that we probably got about 10" or so in total. It started out just like they said that it would be and they called it pretty good actually, yesterday it started out as slop and by nightfall it had turned into a pretty good snowfall. I ended going to get Chinese food at around 7pm last night and none of the roads were plowed but it was kind of fun driving in the stuff when I didn't have to be anywhere in a hurry. And my little Escape did pretty well with the front wheel drive and the automatic all-wheel drive thing but I don't even think that kicked in as I didn't really need it.

Here is another pic that I took today too of the front of the house, guess I'm going to need to work on some furniture for the front porch come spring -

Montie kind of freaked out when I pushed him out the back door this morning and he didn't know what to think I don't even think he even got off the deck before he went wee-wee ....... he was having a pretty tough time getting around out there. And I went out mid-morning and brushed off the car and then shoveled the driveway and walk and once I was done with that I even made a snowman, well sort of but I wanted to make sure that I still remembered how. I did two of the three balls before I gave up - and it was the really heavy and easy to pack stuff so it was perfect for that. Caroline my next door neighbor (Doug's wife) even came over and invited me to a sledding party that they were having at this big hill at the elementary school and she was making hot cider and the works ..... but I never did find the time for that but it does sound like mucho fun huh :?)

And I think that it's suppose to be 55' by Wednesday and 60' by Thursday so I'm sure that this stuff won't last more than a few days but that's ok, it was kind of fun having it around as long as it comes on a weekend. Other than that not much else has been happening with me - I still swear that they messed up my heat when they installed the new air handler and I had them back last week ...... I think that they are thinking I'm crazy but I'm still not happy with it yet. Oh, and I finally got my Verizon DSL internet turned on - I think that it was on Tuesday the day after I gave up and ordered cable and Verizon didn't even tell me it was on until like Thursday but I had all ready been using it for two days before that. It's working ok though, it's quite a bit quicker than my wireless neighbors but I'm sure that it's not as quick as cable would be.

That's about it for today - I hope that you had a chance to go out and play in the snow today if you got as much (or more) than we did. Have a great week and I'll talk with you later. Take it easy till the next time dude!

posted by Scott @ 8:54 PM

Dang, I finally figured out tonight why the detergent in my dishwasher wasn't going anywhere - but for the last two weeks I'd fill it up and run the dishwasher only to find a puddle of the stuff all over the cup and at the bottom of the machine. I thought for sure the thing was about to kick the bucket too but then realized that I'm stupid. It seems that I never turned the water valve back on for the dishwasher under the sink when I had everything disconnected when I replaced the sink ...... and the plumber guy didn't turn it back on either. But after doing that tonight it's working just fine and dandy again - I also can't believe that I didn't burn something out in the meantime. And good thing that I actually wash the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher which I usually run once a week - cuz I didn't even know that the thing wasn't even washing the dishes!

Figured that one out, that makes me feel a little bit better and with it being a Monday and all too!

posted by Scott @ 9:42 PM

Happy Superbowl Sunday and may your team come out the winner, I'm not watching the game but would probably prefer Pittsburgh to win the game. And again not too much going on with me, it rained all day yesterday so I didn't end up doing much at all. I did end up going to get my haircut and then went to Walmart on my way home and found some stuff to line my kitchen cabinets with and did that for a few hours yesterday. Plus I ended up organizing and then copying all of my files for my Tampa hotel onto a cd and mailed that off to the girl that is starting tomorrow who will eventually be taking over for me and that should keep me busy trying to get her all set up and trained as quickly as possible. She's working from a home office and hasn't done that before so we need to set up everything to get her up and running and I hope that she does ok with it ...... I kind of wish that I was working from a home office too!

And I've been in pain all day and limping around as I stubbed my little toe on my way to bed last night and I woke up to find half of my foot black and blue and all swelled up ....... it's a killer to put a shoe on at this point but I hope that it's a little bit better by tomorrow. I was working on patching a couple of nail holes in the ceiling upstairs and had to remove all of the old patching that someone else did and pull out the old nail and then install screws and then slowly fill it in with coat after coat of spackle, then I'll have to sand it all down and finally paint it up. But back to my toe story that's what I ran into, I guess that I wasn't looking where I was going and ended up kicking the step ladder that was sitting in the hall and that was all she wrote ....... it was very painful indeed!

I also ended up breaking down and having my air handler replaced which is the second part of my heat pump that should have been replaced when the heat pump itself was replaced a few months ago. And I guess that due to the new regulations you can only get the equipment that is still in stock as they don't make them any more due to a change in the regulations where they have to all be high efficiency and if I waited too long and had to replace it down the road I would have also had to replace my heat pump with it as well in order to get the two to work together. I think that is all ready going to be my project of the month and will have to pay for that before I can do much else around here but I've still got a pretty long list of things to do. But at least most of them are small things that won't cost me an arm and a leg so I've still got enough to keep me busy. I also started to try and clean out my garage and move some of the boxes that I don't need into the crawl space under the house to get them out of the way and who knows, I might be able to get my car in the garage before spring arrives.

Work has been going fine and I'm slowly getting more used to the commute and the better that I know the drive the quicker that it seems to go. And I think that once it's not dark going and coming it will be a lot better too as it sucks driving in the dark. I'm still waiting for my internet connection with Verizon and supposable it's suppose to be ready this Tuesday not that I'm holding my breath and I think that if they don't do it this time I'm going to have to move on and get cable. But sooner or later I guess that I'll have my own internet but I guess that it could be a lot worse if I had to deal with a dial up connection all of this time.

I think that's about it for this day so I'll end this now and find something else to do. Have a great week and I will talk with you again sometime soon.

posted by Scott @ 8:56 PM