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

Evening to you and here we are at the close of another weekend. And the heatwave is back and think that it is suppose to last a while, it was at least 95' today and my poor a.c. has been running all day. But I just got back from Atlanta last night about 10pm so it wasn't much of a weekend for me and I went down there on Wednesday afternoon and stayed at the GA Tech hotel for the last three nights. It was hot down there also but probably about the same as it is here and it was actually a pretty smooth trip on Air Tran and got there and back right on time. But it did make for a very short weekend and ended up having to get up this morning to mow the lawn since I didn't do it yesterday and I was also pretty worn out so I hope that I can make it through the next week.

The class that I attended was a little stressful as it was all about "mastering effective presentations" which means that it was all about presenting and public speaking in front of a group of people and I really dislike that. I guess that I didn't think much about it before I got there as usually the classes that we have are pretty easy but I found out first thing Thursday morning that we would have to do six speeches in front of the group over the next three days. And full days they were - we started at 8am each day and went until at least 5pm so there wasn't much time to play - plus we all had to prepare our final presentation that we did on Saturday on Friday night ...... now if that doesn't suck! But we did have dinner with all of us one evening and my boss was in town and she took us out to a nice restaurant (brewery place) which at least broke up the three days. I'm just glad that it is behind me though - and it also felt good to get home last night.

But today I didn't do any cleaning or much other than getting the lawn done and about four loads of laundry but I am noticing that without the pup running around the place it really doesn't get very dirty any more. I still haven't had a chance to do anything with the photographs of my pup other than pick out the ones that I want to have printed and found a place to have them printed up locally but I think that first I need to find some nice frames and determine what size I need to have them printed at. I really think that a few of the black and white ones are the best ones and I have about three of those picked out. I also haven't heard back from the vet as to when his ashes will be ready - I figured that I would have had a message from the yesterday but haven't heard anything. I guess that it doesn't matter when at this point as I can't go get them until next weekend anyways but I would assume that they'll have them by then if not before.

I am also headed back to Atlanta again this week to help train one of our new Revenue Managers and will be staying at our hotel called Emory Conference Center and is one of the few remaining hotels that we have that I haven't been to yet. I'll spend a few days there working with him and then I can help him out remotely after that. We also just lost our Revenue Manager in San Antonio who ended up replacing me back in January and I guess that his last day is August 8th so I might end up helping them out as well. I really need to find the time to take some vacation time though as I am starting to get up there in the accrued hours and if I don't start planning something I'll end up over the max and loosing some ...... but I do have some time before that happens. I'd like to get away somewhere and have kind of been watching the prices of cruises but haven't done anything about it yet - but I'd like to take a week and just go somewhere and lie around doing nothing.

I guess that is about it for another week with me and I hope that all is going well on your end too. Thanks for listening, stay in touch and I will be talking with you sometime soon. Take care till then!

posted by Scott @ 9:03 PM

Good evening and welcome to another Sunday night. Today was a beautiful day around these parts and only in the mid-80's and was actually very nice - just too bad that I didn't do anything outside though. But I did end up doing quite a bit outside yesterday while it was 90' plus and got the lawn mowed and all that good stuff plus worked on my weeds on the side of the house again. But then it poured rain during the late afternoon but I guess that's why it cooled down as it got really nice after that. I have also been trying to run a wire from my kitchen into the crawl space both yesterday and today so that I can plug in my security system down there instead of tying up an outlet in the kitchen - but I swear it is almost impossible and I still haven't gotten it done yet.

I got back from Staunton VA Friday night around 7pm and it was a pretty good trip overall and think that we had quite a few good ideas to bring them some business. I actually liked the hotel very much and was a very nice place - actually it was much nicer than most of the Marriott's that I've stayed in recently. I also kind of got attached to the small historic town with a main street and all of the little stores and I could even see myself living some place like that it was that cool. The guy that I went to visit even rides his bike to work each day - now if that isn't the life I don't know what is! And as I was driving down there on Thursday it started to pour rain so bad that I almost had to pull off the road, it started just a few miles before I got there but it was crazy rain and you couldn't see a thing more than twenty feet in front of you. Two hours and fifteen minutes each way - plus it was in the middle of the mountains and was just a nice area all around ..... too bad that I didn't remember to bring my camera though.

And this week I am back off to Atlanta for a few days to attend a training class on Effective Presentations which I'm not really looking forward to but it will probably do me some good. So it'll be another short week in the office and then I am off to GA Tech again where I was at just a few months ago. Other than that I guess that the rest of me is ok, I have found that keeping myself busy with other things helps to take my mind off of missing the pup but there isn't much time that goes by before I'm thinking of him again. But hopefully some day it will get easier, but I think that it's going to be a very, very long time before I am happy again.

posted by Scott @ 8:55 PM

Montie update - I got my pictures back from the photographer today and after bawling my eyes out looking at them I posted most of them on my site. While I had to reduce the size of them to save some space they turned out great, if you want to check them out click here. Gotta run, it's getting late so I'll talk with you later!

posted by Scott @ 9:54 PM

Hey and what's up, it's another Sunday and here I am. But I am totally depressed about the loss of my Monto and is way harder than I ever thought that it was going to be. Everything in the house reminds me of him and I keep looking around for him and it totally sucks that he's not here. I just hope that it gets easier with time but so far I think that I actually feel worse today. I dunno and keep telling myself that he is in a better place but I'm not sure that I am, that's for sure.

And other than that I didn't do all that much this weekend other than getting the lawn mowed and going to the park yesterday morning. Today was hotter than heck and must have been 95' today and I swear that it's as hot here as it is in Florida most of the time. So I certainly didn't work outside any today but did go get groceries and that was about it. I am heading down to Staunton VA to visit our Stonewall Jackson hotel at the end of this week and I wanted to see if I could take the Amtrak instead of driving the three hours but I don't think that is going to work out as they have a really crappy schedule. But I thought that would be kind of fun to do and get some work down in the meantime but oh well, I guess that I will end up driving myself instead.

I guess that's about all that is going on in my life today though so I think that I am going to end this here and talk with you later. Take care until we talk again.

posted by Scott @ 9:11 PM

Montie passed away at 1:37pm on Saturday, 07/15/06 and I was with him until the very end. Sitting here now it is a lot harder than I thought that it was going to be but he was such a great boy that I couldn't let him go on getting worse each and every day. He was still happy and didn't see it coming and I almost changed my mind as today was a "good day". But he has had many bad days where he was hacking so bad that he couldn't even breathe, plus he was having a harder and harder time even getting up to try and walk around.

Born December 18th 1990 in Orlando FL he lead a full life and was by my side all that time since. He moved all over the country with me and everyone loved him, he loved my Mom and referred to her as the ice cream lady. So now he has moved on and is probably sitting by her side eating ice cream with her the way that they always did. When I first got him he was so small that he couldn't even walk up and down the stairs but that didn't last long but he still liked me to carry him up and down them with me. And everyone always laughed at the way he used to like to drink out of the bathtub jumping up and leaning over the edge waiting for you to turn the water on for him - and there were even many times when I'd find him standing in the bath tub waiting for someone to come along.


I realized that probably because he hated cameras I don't really have any good pictures of him so I arranged a photographer to meet us this morning at a park and she took a 100 or so shots so hopefully I will have some good ones to have printed and keep around. I am also having him cremated privately and they will return his ashes to me in a nice cedar urn and I am going to find a special place to keep him around. I miss having him here with me all ready and keep looking around for him or waiting for him to come bother me. 15 years and 7 months almost to the day, he's been by my side since I was 26 years old! God bless you Montie - and say hi to the rest of the family for me ...... you will always be in my heart and you will always be the bestest pup that I ever met.

posted by Scott @ 2:34 PM

Happy Sunday night and here we are again - dang if the three day work week last week didn't make the rest of it fly right by! I didn't mention it last week but I got up fairly early last Monday morning and decided to head to the park for a bike ride. There is this old railroad track that has been converted to a biking, blading walking trail and guess that it's like 50 miles long (or 25 I'm not sure) and starts in downtown DC and goes out all the way past Lessburg so it's plenty long enough. It's called The Washington and Old Dominion Trail and if you want you can read more about by clicking here. One of the entrances is like 2 miles from my house and I threw my bike in the trunk and drove down there and headed out. I went west and it was pretty cool cuz you drive through all of these little towns and across roadways - places that I'd never see if I were just driving around in a car. There was also this quarry lookout along the way which was pretty cool, plus a river that I road over and even found a mountain biking trail that I hit up and it almost killed me ...... plus I got nice and muddy along the way. I ended up going five miles one way before turning around so all in all I probably ended up riding 11 or 12 miles total.

After that I came home and finished pruning my trees on the side of the house that were so overgrown that I couldn't even mow around them. I've still got more work to do but at least I got the six bags of my red mulch all spread out in the front of the house and part of the side but I'll need to go get more at some point and finish the rest. It does make a nice difference though - plus some of my grass around my front steps is finally starting to grow in. I've also decided that I am going to clean up my garage at some point and paint it and fix the drywall tape that is sagging and then probably plaster it a little bit. Once I get it painted then I think that I am going to try and epoxy the floor as it is a mess with stains all over it and I think that will make a big difference. I'd also like to look into some organizer units and might even look at using some of the wasted space up above as the ceiling out there has to be at least nine feet. That will be an ongoing project - and who knows, I might even just get my car in there some day.

I also was amazed that I got it all done but yesterday I set out to the DMV to get what I thought my title changed over to Virginia and my tags - but I got all that done and was even able to change over my drivers license (click here)! My registration is only good until the end of August as I need to go and get an emissions and inspection done and then go back and have it extended - and I also need to look into getting a county decal if I need one of those. But other than that I'm pretty much a Virginia resident - and I also even got my voters registration card a week or so ago too. Oh, I also had Stanley Steamer over yesterday and had the carpets shampooed and then went and got my oil changed ...... I think that was about all that I got to (other than getting the lawn mowed) but I was pretty warn out.

Today was just another day of cleaning and grocery shopping and the laundry is done and guess that it is back to the grind in the morning ...... five days of work is going to get the best of me! And so I guess that it is about time to end this and get on to other things - have a great week and I will talk with you soon! Take care till we talk again :)

posted by Scott @ 9:13 PM

Happy 4th of July 2006!

What's up and welcome to another new month! And it surely does seem like it's summer around here as it's been in the mid-90's all weekend but at least it beats the 12 inches of rain that we got earlier in the week. The rain messed up a lot of people but I guess that quite a few of them were in NY and PA and to our north - at least there was no damage at my house! The worse that it got around here was there were a couple of days where the creek that passes under Route 7 must have been up over the road at one point as there was dirt all over it - but I didn't see that and was able to get to work each and every day. But I think Tuesday night the traffic was terrible and it took me like an hour and a half to get home - and there wasn't even any reason for it other than it was raining. At least that was only one evening. And I think on Wednesday we had hail but they weren't real big but it still sounded pretty loud and I could see it accumulating on the deck a little. But then by Thursday most of the weather had finally moved on - and now it is only a distant memory.

I found out on Monday that our Director of Sales at one of my hotels had passed away on Sunday at his home which was a total shock to everyone - he was only 47 years old and no one saw that coming. So we had a memorial service for him on Thursday down in DC and had a great turn out, and some shared some great stories too. But I guess that his family lives in New Jersey so his funeral is back with his family but it was a good opportunity for everyone to say their good byes to him.

And yesterday my next door neighbor called me to ask if I minded if her and her son cut down some of the dead branches on the tree that is between our houses which of course I didn't. And once I got the lawn mowed I started to work on it but it was hot and slow going at that and they ended up coming out and helping me with it. But then she saw one of the neighbors from across the street and begged him to pull out his chain saw and that really sped up the process ...... plus it turned out to be a neighborhood activity. I also got invited to a 4th of July party at the parents of the neighbors in Reston on Tuesday but I don't know if I will end up making it or not. Other than that there were some fireworks at the mall last night that I could hear and then I'm sure that there will be more on Tuesday night around here somewhere, but between the traffic and getting back to work the next day I'm not sure that I will venture out to find any.

I did end up taking tomorrow off as a vacation day and then have Tuesday off for the holiday so that will definitely make for a short week. My boss is still gone and gets back on Wednesday so it will be slightly back to normal but I'm sure that she will be backed up for weeks to come after being out of the country and cut off from her in-box. I also think that I'm going to work on getting my VA registration for my car and have been trying to figure out what all I need to get it done - and might have done that tomorrow but the entire DMV is closed for the holiday, and I'm sure that the banks and post office are as well.

I guess that is about if for now - I really need to try and actually do something tomorrow I am going to try and get up at an acceptable time as I bought that mulch for my planters more than two weeks ago and have yet to do anything with it. So, here's wishing you a great 4th of July holiday

posted by Scott @ 9:09 PM