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

Not too much happening on my end of the world today, it's been raining since Friday night but finally cleared up this afternoon - go figure but just in time for another week to begin. I spent three days visiting our hotel at GA Tech last week and left for there Wednesday morning and got back about 8pm on Friday and I've kind of been beat ever since and was pretty much a slug all day yesterday. The trip went well but I think that they've got their work cut out for them, it's a good crew who isn't afraid to say it like they see things. And surprisingly my flight both to and from Atlanta went fairly smoothly - we got delayed by about 25 minutes getting out of here due to clouds in Atlanta and then there was bad weather in other parts of the country that delayed our plane coming in so it was about 30 minutes late getting out of ATL. But it was ok, and I got home in one piece and my boy Montie survived living alone once again.

And that's one of the neat things about my alarm system as I can set it to e-mail me whenever someone arms or disarms it so I can keep an eye on when the boy next door comes over and walks him - but I'm not sure that is a good thing either as some of the trips were mighty quick. But he's no worse for the wear but not sure if he'll be talking with me after I get through the next couple of weeks.

I'm also learning how to travel better and have my Treo with me and the thing is great, I finally got the company to set me up with unlimited downloading of files and I can save them to my card and then take my card and use the reader on my laptop to open the file - so I was getting e-mails at the airport and could save the attachments and then got quite a bit of work done on the plane and it worked out rather well. I also have been using SeatGuru.com when I'm booking my flights to do seat assignments and you tell it what plane you are flying on and it tells you the seats to stay away from - and I've been doing the exit row seats whenever possible and it gives you plenty of room to work on the laptop.

Other than that I finally got around to calling the Homeowners Association about the status of my lighting application, and then found out that I made it past the Neighborhood Advisory Council and now it has to go before the Design Review Committee before I get final approval to install my lights - dang if this hasn't been one long process for a little thing like lights. I think that I should be in pretty good shape though, at least I'm still keeping my fingers crossed. And I guess that's all I've got for this day, all is well with me and I hope that it is the same for you! Have a great week and I will talk with you soon.

posted by Scott @ 8:51 PM

Hey, what up and Happy Easter to ya! And they take the holiday much more serious around these parts then when I was living in Florida - my next door neighbors had a easter egg hunt for the kids this afternoon and then another one for the grown ups after that - plus the people across the street had their entire family over and they were taking pictures in the front yard. But for me it wasn't too much of a Sunday out of the norm, cleaned the house and got groceries and did laundry and that kind of stuff. But dang if it wasn't a beautiful weekend around these parts and yesterday was in the 80's and today in the 70's but I can hear it starting to rain right now but I guess that it's a good time for that.

I also finally got around to taking a few pictures of the house yesterday and posted them this morning, so you can click here if you want to check them out. The yard is doing pretty good all ready and except for a few holes that need to grow in I think that it's looking pretty good. I spent the entire afternoon outside and after I mowed the lawn I weeded a few more of the planters and then even got around and washed the car and that was long overdue. I am also still looking for some matching stones for my front walk and went to a couple of places yesterday and found a great nursery that is just down the road on the way to Leesburg - it's called Blue Mountain Nursery and they have a ton of trees! They also had some of the stones but none of them were a perfect match, so if I don't find anything that matches I may end up replacing the whole thing. I'm also still waiting to hear about my landscaping lights but guess that I will get around to calling them this week - I don't know if they send me a letter or what.

Other than that I was down in DC on Thursday and it was a beautiful day that day too, I drove from the L 'Enfant Plaza to the Melrose and drove right through all of those monument things ........ some day I'll have to spend some time down there looking around. But I ended up rushing back to the office Thursday afternoon for another conference call so it was a pretty busy day all in all. Friday was pretty quiet though and think that half of the town took the day off for Good Friday and we even closed the offices early ....... not that I left much earlier than normal but most left around 2pm.

I guess that's about all that is going on with me, I've got a couple of short trips coming up and then in two weeks from now I'll be sitting on the beach in Mexio. Oh, and that reminds me I was working on getting a passport and went to the Post Office yesterday - but you have to send in the application with my birth certificate and can take up to six weeks so that's not going to work right now. I even went and had my picture for it taken beforehand - so one of these days I'll actually send it all in. Well, I hope the weather is doing just as great on your end and that you have a great week ahead and take care until we again!

posted by Scott @ 8:52 PM

Well, here it is another beautiful Sunday, the weekend is just about done and it's time to head back to work in the morning. And yesterday rained ALL day so I didn't do much other than to go shopping - went to Walmart and Lowes and also put my porch bench together and it's looking great. And I'm also cat watching Winston who is the neighbors cat while they are away on spring break, it's not very much work as all I do is let him in and out but have to do that through Thursday. I did notice that on their front door they have this blind thing that is enclosed in glass like a window and you can open and close the blinds with a little knobby thing on the side - it looks really nice so I ended up picking one of those up for my front door yesterday and put that on and it's working just great - and looks pretty good too.

And with the rain yesterday I ended up having to mow the lawn today as it had been two weeks and it was so long that I also ended up having to bag the grass. So not only did I end up having to clean the house and do laundry today I also spent a few hours outside and it was beautiful out today. I even weed whacked and edged and it's looking rather nice out there but my next project is going to be to replace the stepping stones that is being used as my walk way. I kind of want to turn them around so that it's wider than they way that it is now as they are retangular blocks but they are set the skinny way and I want to spin them around but then I'm probably going to need a couple more to finish it so I'll have to look around to find some that match - I'm not even sure where to look for them but Lowes didn't have them - but one of these days I'll find what I need. I also hope to find out this week if the Homeowners Assoc people approved my landscaping lights as their monthly meeting is this Tuesday - and then I'm not sure how I find that out other than to call them afterwards. I also think that I'm going to need to run an electrical box to plug them in but I'll figure that out when I go to install them.

I also have a couple of trips coming up both to Atlanta and then I've got a meeting in DC this coming Thursday and then again the following Thursday and then I'm off to Mexico after that. So I'm sure that Montie's not going to be liking life much but I'm hoping that the kid next door can watch him for my short trips and then a girl from work is going to take him for the week that I am gone. I'm starting to get a little bit excited about Mexico but it's only three weeks away so that it will be here before I know it - and I could use a little R&R in the sun.

Montie is doing well but he's been having this hacking cough the last few days that he can't seem to get over. The only thing that I can think of is that I bought this foamy type mattress thingy for him last weekend and it lasted all of about 15 minutes before he chewed it to pieces so I'm just wondering if he's still got some of it stuck in his throat or something but I don't know what else to do for him as my hymlick (?) maneuvers haven't been doing him any good. Other that that, that's about it, I'm not even sure what the weather is suppose to be this week but hopefully the rest of it will be just like it was today. Oh, I watched Hostage with Bruce Willis on Friday night and it was a very intensely good movie - so if you have a chance be sure to check it out. And have a great week yourself and I'll talk with you on another day.

posted by Scott @ 8:54 PM

Welcome to April 2006 ...... and to day light savings too - you've gotta like the extra hour of day light each night and is going to be great! But I'm not too sure how dark it will be in the morning but it's all ready dark when I get up any ways so as long as the sun is kind of shining by 7am for my drive to work it won't matter to me much at all. And today was an awesome day and kind of wish yesterday was just as nice, but yesterday was in the 70's and cloudy but it never did rain - while today was in the high 60's and blue skies and sunshine! I spent most of the day yesterday outside and ended up buying some bushes for out front and got them all installed and somewhat cleaned up but still need to get some mulch and finish it off. I also went and got four of my neighbors to sign off on my request to install the landscaping lights - it's a pain in the butt to get it approved but I turned it in today just in time for the April meeting this coming week - I just hope that they approve me as I all ready bought the dang lights. And if nothing else it got me to meet a couple more of my new neighbors and met two more across the street and met the guy next to them the week before.

I also got my electric bill the other day for March and I was shocked at how much lower it was than it was in January since I installed the new air handler - I went from using like 2400 btu's to only 1800 or like 33% less and it was even colder in March than it was in January. I thought for sure that with my new thermostat using the electric heat more than the first one I bought it was going to be through the roof but nope, and I was very happy with that. I was also messing with my Hunter thermostat today and really kind of like it as it has this auto changer for seasons and goes from heat to ac all in one setting and you don't have to mess with a thing - can't say that my old Honeywell one did that. Plus I joined the budget program from my electric company and is a flat amount all year long which I can live with so hopefully it will stay where they have me budgeted at.

I also found out this week that the gym that we have at work is free for everyone that works in our building and used to go to Worlds Gym in PCB three days a week and really miss it so if I can find the time in the evening (and I can get out of work at a decent time) I am going to start to use that when possible - I went on Friday night so I'll see how I do. I thought for sure that the gym at work was a stand alone thing that they sold a membership to and figured that they probably charged like $50 a month, so I was looking at other places but haven't found any place that was all that convenient. I was pretty surprised to hear that this place is free, there ain't much in this world that you can say that.

I've got another meeting at the Churchill on Wednesday and might head over to the Sheraton in Reston to see if I can help out there this week too - but Reston is like in my neighborhood and is on my way to work so that's not much of a trip. Other than that it should be a pretty normal week - I've just about wrapped up my old job and only have one hotel left that I am working for ........ but I think that their days are numbered too. Other than that I'm loving the springtime and can't say that it's the same in Florida as it is up here. So, I hope that you are enjoying the weather just as much and I will hopefully be talking with you on another day. Take it easy and have a great week!

posted by Scott @ 8:40 PM