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

Hey again and happy Sunday night! I got my cable internet installed yesterday and all is working fine and I even finally brought out my wireless router and got that working again too. I am still working on possibly getting rid of my phone line with Verizon too but I first need to figure out my alarm system but bought an adapter for it that I don't have yet but it should let me communicate with the alarm company over the internet. And if that works than I'll make the switch over to Vonage again and it's telling me that I can keep my same phone number which I'm hoping for - but I guess that you never know for sure until after it's all complete. And then when that's all done I'll make the call to Verizon one last time and then I won't have to deal with their wonderful customer service representative again.

And it's been a pretty normal weekend around here, yesterday started out cloudy but then got to be a pretty nice day. I mowed the lawn and detailed it all up and then trimmed my hedges as they were overdue. I'm kind of thinking that I am going to rip up the bushes all together that run between my driveway and the sidewalk as they are old and too big and once I do that I may then redo my walkway up to the porch ...... but I've been saying that for six months now and it ain't done yet. I also had a guy stop over to give me an estimate on fixing the rotten wood at the bottom of my garage door frame and think that I am going to go for it in another couple of weeks. It has to be done and there is no easy fix - and while he is at it he is going to replace the frame on the other side of the door as it is starting to do the same thing. And while I have him I am also going to have him move my spigot (water faucet from inside of the garage to the outside of the house - it's on the back wall right now so I have to run a hose through the entire garage and who ever heard of putting a faucet inside the garage.

I also spent a good portion of the day today next door at my neighbors house trying to figure out their computer as it would turn and and then continue to reboot. There didn't seem to be any virus on it that it could find and I'm still not sure what is wrong with it but it was working when I left but I am not sure how long it will be before it starts doing that again. But at least she feed me dinner with the kids so that was cool - at least I didn't have to come home and make dinner for myself.

Oh, and I was in Dallas, TX last week and got there Tuesday afternoon and got home very late Thursday night and went to an internet marketing class for two days which was packed full of interesting stuff. I'm still trying to figure out who is going to do all that stuff at our hotels but I'm still thinking about it. I flew Air Tran again and for the most part it was a pretty smooth trip - getting there was right on time but coming home we were delayed getting out of Dallas and then Atlanta was a mess, I should have had a 45 minute layover but I ended up having less than about a minute to get to the next gate. The good news was that it was just a couple of counters down and at least it wasn't in another terminal or I would have never made it. And I can still remember this guy trying to flag us down from the window as we were sitting there waiting to back up - you could tell that he was trying to get us to reopen the door and let him on but we didn't, we just backed up and left him there. But I was suppose to have gotten home at 10:55pm but it was more like 12:30am so it was 1am before I got home and close to 2am before I went to bed. And then I had to work on Friday so I got about 4 hours of sleep and then went into the office but I wasn't in the best of moods for a Friday.

And speaking of the office we have this huge office move coming up next weekend and I am moving across the hall so that a bigger-wig can take my nice window office but I guess that I don't mind all that much but it might have been nice to find out about it before I read the memo. Oh well, I think that I am going to like my new home even better. We are also doing this marketing plan with some of our hotels that we have in Mexico which is really interesting and depending on how it goes and how involved we get I'm hoping that I might be able to go visit a few of the properties ...... there are like 10 of them and all of them are beachfront and I'd choose any one of them. Oh, and we took over another hotel in Arlington VA last week so I might need to go visit them this week but we'll see - should only be a twenty minute drive or something like that.

I'm also taking Thursday and Friday off this week as vacation days as my eye surgery is first thing Thursday morning and then I'm not sure if I'll be fully back to normal on Friday. I've also got a post-op eye exam Friday morning so I figured it would be better to take both days off and hopefully I'll be good as new come next Monday morning. We'll see how it goes though and I'll be sure to recommend it if all goes well. I have had to put this ointment stuff in my eye for a week before the procedure which I've been doing - and think that I spent close to $100 on prescription meds and all they are are these tiny bottles of eye drops.

I guess that that is about it for this week and you can definitely tell that fall has arrived and that the weather is here to stay - I think that it hit 80' yesterday but they said that was probably the last time that we'd see that until next summer. And I think that there is one day next week that is suppose to be down to 42' at night - pretty darn close to the freezing mark if you ask me! And the pumkins are out now too which seems way too soon but Halloween is going to be here before we know it. Take care until we talk again and have a great week while you are at it! C-ya soon.

posted by Scott @ 9:05 PM

Happy Sunday night once again and I don't have much to report on this end, it was a very nice weekend once we got beyond yesterday morning and today it was actually pretty hot again. And in looking at the 10 day forecast it's suppose to be in the high 80's again tomorrow but then after that something must be moving in cuz it's barely going to be 70' for the rest of the week. And I didn't do a whole lot around here this weekend and was kind of a slug, I did the lawn and all that yesterday and worked on the walls in my garage a little more. But other than that it was pretty uneventful although my lawn sure is looking nice again with all of the rain that we've been getting.

I also took a drive down to Williamsburg on Tuesday and drove back on Wednesday visiting our new Crowne Plaza hotel that we picked up on Tuesday. It was a pretty nice place but I'm sure that they've got their work cut out for them as there seemed like there was a hotel on every corner but at least they are only a mile or two from Busch Gardens so they do pretty well in the summer. We also took over another Crowne Plaza in Englewood NJ that I'll have to go visit at some point but I don't have plans to do that at least for the next couple of weeks. I am off to Dallas this week though for an internet marketing class that should be interesting and if nothing else it should be a lot warmer there than it is going to be here.

I've also been trying to figure out how I was going to get home from my lasik eye surgery which is scheduled for a week from this Thursday as it is about a mile from my office but like 12-13 from my house. They don't let you drive home as I guess they give you some good drugs and I didn't want to have to make someone from work leave just to drive me home. And I figured if a taxi ride was $25 to go five miles to Dulles Airport that that trip would be at least $50 if not $75 depending on traffic. So I called them the other day to see if they had any suggestions and they said that they would check and call me back - and they did soon after that to let me know that they have a limo that they use and they'd set me up with that ...... free of charge so you've got to like that!

Oh, and when I got home on Wednesday night my internet wasn't working and after messing with that for a while I called Verizon and they couldn't help me - they actually finished the call telling me to turn off my computer and modem for a few hours and then try it again later ...... it's a worthless company that I am tired of dealing with. So I am going to switch over to cable broadband and they are coming next Saturday to hook me up - they even have free installation and a deal for the first six months. So now I am thinking about going back and using Vonage as my phone service and I'll come out a few hundred dollars ahead from what I am paying now but I need to figure out my alarm monitoring service and make sure that I can configure that to work together. I should have decided to go with cable when I first got there as it took Verizon the first three months to figure out how to make it work.

Other than that I'm doing well and keeping myself busy, being out of the office a few days a week puts my in the hole and gives me lots that I've got to do. So I guess that I will end this here and hope that you are doing just great, hang in there and Christmas is almost here! Talk with you again sometime soon.

posted by Scott @ 8:53 PM

Sunday night again and it's back to the five day work week :( But it was a beautiful weekend around these parts and in the 80's during the day and 60's at night - perfect lawn weather in my book! And I did mow the lawn yesterday and it really needed it but that is about all that I did for yard work and I barely even mowed the back yard. My biggest accomplishment though was to replace the spigot that is in the garage that I've been using with my hose to water the front yard - it's been leaking since I moved in I think and it was even starting to mess up the wall. But while I am redoing the garage I figured that that was included - so I cut off the old one and ended up having to soder on a connector and then screw on the new faucet ...... I kept getting the wrong part and had to go back to Home Depot three times and I'm still a little worried about the soder holding but so far so good. I actually thought that I was going to burn the house down using that torch thing trying to get the pipes hot enough to melt the solder but so far all is holding ok with no leaks (I think).

I also ended up buying a six foot step ladder to help me with my garage project as all I had was like a three stepper thing and there was no way that I could reach the ceiling with that - my neighbor said that I could use her's but I figured that I'd need it for the next six months or something and it was just as good to buy my own. But I didn't get too far with my project yet - I've got one wall almost patched and sanded but it's definitely going to be a work in progress.

Other than that I ended up attending an Intermediate Excel training class in DC on Thursday and it wasn't as intermediate as I thought that it was going to be and I think that I all ready knew most of what they taught us. But I think that I might try and attend the advanced one at some point as I think that is more up by alley. And dang if the traffic hasn't gotten terrible ever since Tuesday - the summer is over and I guess that it's back to traffic hell for the next nine months. And I think that it took me an hour and a half to just drive down to DC ..... it has truly sucked. And coming home has been even worse than going in - but at least I think that I found an alternative route when Route 7 is a parking lot and I think that I took that two out of four days last week.

We are also taking over two hotels this coming week if all goes well, one of them is in Williamsburg VA and the other is in Englewood NJ and I think that I am going down to Williamsburg this week but I'm not too sure on the days yet. The sale of the hotels were suppose to have been last week or the week before originally so we'll see if they happen this week but all was looking ok as of Friday. I also think that we have one more hotel coming up in the next couple of weeks but that one is in Arlington so that's really in my back yard.

I also watched a couple of good movies this weekend and I really liked RV with Robin Williams and was about him driving his family to Colorado and was quite the trip. The other one was Final Destination III and that was pretty good too, probably as good as the first two any ways. I'm also not suppose to wear my contacts for the next two weeks until the big surgery day and that is going to drive me crazy I think. I guess that is about it though and all is well with me and staying busy so I hope that all goes well with you too. Oh, and I finally got some prints made of my boy and hung them up above the fireplace the other day and here's a picture of it -

posted by Scott @ 9:16 PM

Here it is another Sunday night and another month has come and gone and I guess that after the weekend is over so is summer ...... bring on the cooler weather! And there hasn't been too much going on with me, last week was pretty uneventful and spent it in the office all week. We did have Ernesto come through Friday evening but other than a little bit of rain and a few gusts of wind there was really nothing to it - I don't even think that we ended up getting all that much rain. But at least by Saturday afternoon the sun was back out and today was just a wonderful day - probably in the mid-70's and really a nice day all in all.

I ended up mowing the lawn today instead of yesterday and that's got me off schedule a little bit, plus I went out and finished the planter thing on the side of the house where I never got around to putting down mulch but have most of it complete now. I could keep going and finish the side to the back of the house but I'm not too sure that I'll get around to that ...... at least not any time soon. I also have my other two projects to complete - the shelf over my washer and dryer and then the garage walls and floor - I'm just about done with the shelf but haven't even started the garage yet. But there's always tomorrow so we'll see how it goes.

I am also all set for my lasik eye thing and have that scheduled for the end of the month and have to stop wearing contacts by the end of next week so that it will be like three weeks without them to give my eyes a chance to get back to normal. And I'm trying not to think about the actual procedure as it doesn't sound like all that much fun but guess that there is actually nothing to it - so I'll try and forget about it at least until I get there that morning. They do give you some good drugs and guess that the whole process is rather painless.

And other than that I ended up hitting up Walmart yesterday and what a zoo that place was but I did end up buying a new suitcase and also some picture frames for framing the pictures of Montie. And now that I know what size frame I have I can go ahead and order some prints and then finish them up by hanging them above his ashes. I don't know but I was actually checking out pictures of puppies at the kennel but I'm not ready for that yet - but might consider getting a cat instead as they seem to be easier to keep.

I guess that's about it for this week though and at least we are looking at a four day work week next week so that should fly right by. I've also got a Excel training class to go to on Thursday in downtown DC and I'm actually looking forward to it so we'll see if I can actually learn anything. So, that's about all that she wrote around here but I hope that the weather is great for your holiday ...... and I will talk with you again sometime soon.

posted by Scott @ 8:52 PM