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

Geez, seems like I've been off from work for a week now! We got out early last Wednesday and the office closed at 1pm but I probably worked until 3pm, then ended up going to Lowes and got a bunch of small stuff including grass seed and a three way switch and also some brackets for my shelf that I installed three months ago but was still pretty unstable. Thanksgiving was a pretty crappy day and it rained for most of it but I did get my grass seed planted and finished up my shelf and even rewired my switch but I needed more parts. Then I went to dinner with my next door neighbor to her sister's house in Hamilton VA which was about 20 miles west of here on the other side of Leesburg. That turned out to be pretty nice and was most of her family, her sister, husband and parents and we even had a birthday cake after dinner as her birthday was today ........ hmm, I just realized that I never wished her a happy birthday!

On Friday I must have spent three hours rewiring my switch to the light outside the garage and no matter how I tried it the light never worked so I ended up giving up, only to find the light on after it got dark. I also went to the mall and walked around and again back to Lowes where I almost bought a new medicine cabinet for my bathroom but chickened out worried that I wouldn't be able to install it. I also looked at bathroom floors and have pretty much decided that I am going to go with ceramic tiles when I redo the floor instead of linoleum as there are so many more choices to choose from - plus the guy at the store said that they would cut any pieces that I needed cutting. I think that I can handle that project as I watched the guy do it in my old house, the grouting is nothing but it's getting the tiles lined up that I'm a little worried about.

I also finished up raking the rest of the lawn yesterday and was only a couple of bags worth, and then I cut down the old bushes that are out in front of the house which I've wanted to do since I moved in here. So now I still need to find some matching blocks as I want to spin the front walk around and make it wider instead of skinny but I'll need to find about four more blocks that match to make up for the extra space. So now all I've got left of my bushes is some stubs and I'll need to dig up the roots at some point and then find some small bushes to plant in their place.

And it's back to work in the morning but I'm not quite looking forward to it yet but I do think that I've got a busy week ahead as I've got meeting just about every day. And the girl that is working at two of our Crowne Plaza's is going out on medical leave at the end of the week for four to six weeks and I think that I'll be picking them up in the meantime and helping them out, plus the couple of properties that I am all ready doing. I guess that's about it though and all is well with me and guess that December is right around the corner. Oh, and I got a note from my niece today and guess that she accepted a position with the Philadelphia Airport Marriott Hotel and moved there last Friday ....... another one in the hotel business!

Talk with you later and have a great week, stay warm and try to stay in touch if you can.

posted by Scott @ 9:16 PM

Welcome to another Sunday night in the house of Shanno, it was another cold and wet kind of day. I don't think that it got out of the 40's all day today and by the time I went to the grocery store it was misty and the winds were blowing and was another good day to just stay in the house. Yesterday I spent just about every waking moment picking up leaves, I raked up six bags and then mowed up another two but I got most of the entire lawn all cleaned up ..... but the trees still have half of their leaves on them :( It was a nice fall day yesterday and was in the 50's and sunny so it was kind of nice to be outside.

Last night we had our work holiday party ...... I know it's only the middle of November but is kind of nice to have it out of the way before everything else gets started. We had a dinner party at Mount Vernon Estates, you know the home of George Washington which was pretty cool. We started out with like an hour and a half tour of the house and grounds and then had dinner in a private room and then called it a night. It is a really cool place though and I'll have to try and go back again during the day so that I can really see the scenery as it's like 2000 acres right on the Potomac River. If you want to read more about George's house you can click here.

Work was fairly busy last week and I'm helping out with another hotel in Atlanta so they kept me busy, plus I'm still helping out with another hotel down there but the new guy starts a week from Monday so my days should be coming to an end. I'm not sure if I am heading down there to spend some time with him or if I'll just do it remotely but I haven't made any plans to go anywhere so I guess that it's still up in the air. It should be a very nice upcoming week with the holidays and all and it'll only be a three day week and I'm sure that it will be over before it even gets started. Plus I know of a lot of people that are taking the whole week off so it will probably be pretty quite, but then again it might be one of the more productive weeks I've had yet.

I ended up ordering my shower but it's going to take anywhere from six to eight weeks to get here so I'm looking at the beginning of the year before they come to install it. I also plan on redoing the floor but I haven't decided if I am going to do ceramic or just linoleum and need to go see what new products they have out there these days. I'm still working on the garage and one of these days I'll start to paint it but I'm still taping up the seams and sanding it down which is kind of a pain in the butt. One of these days it will all come together and it will look beautiful.

I guess that's it for another week, I hope that you have a great holiday and eat lots of turkey and that you have a nice long weekend ahead of you. Take it easy and I'll be talking with you on another day. Later!

posted by Scott @ 9:08 PM

Hmmm, my website seems to be down for some strange reason and so is my e-mail so hopefully I will be posting this at a later time. And what a cold, windy and rainy day today was and don't think that it got out of the 40's ..... and yesterday was 75' so go figure. I guess that party is over as it's only going to make it up into the 60's all this week, plus it looks like rain every other day. It wasn't too productive of a weekend around here either, today I was pretty much a complete slug and the only things that I did yesterday was to mow the lawn and go get a massage and that was pretty much all the weekend wrote. My neck has been killing me lately and the massage lady yelled at me for not drinking enough water and she wants me to stretch it every day, and to tell you the truth it actually feels better today after doing that.

I also had my six month check up for the dentist on Friday and I checked out fine but need to go back to have a small tooth patched. I guess that I end up brushing too hard with my sonicare and have started to wear down the enamel on one of my teeth, plus they have been more sensitive to cold water than they used to be. So to make sure that I don't push down too hard my dentist has me brushing with my left hand and that seems to be helping too. Otherwise it was a pretty good check up all in all. Not much else going on here though, I just carried a ton of garbage out to the road from the garage and I'm not even sure if they are going to take it, there was a microwave and a satellite dish not to mention three bags of leaves and the regular garbage. But I figured that it was worth a chance and if it's still sitting out there when I get home tomorrow than I guess that I'll drag it back in. And the garage project continues but it's kind of slow and messy and every time I go out there I end up covered in white dust and I've still got so much to do.

Work has been pretty normal but last week was kind of quiet and guess that it's only going to get quieter as we get closer to the holidays although the traffic still sucks and took me an hour and a half to get to work one day last week. We have a ground breaking ceremony on Wednesday for a new Westin we are building - the Westin at Reston that I might go over for but I'm not even sure what one of those things include. But it is at 4pm and on my way home so I might just have to find myself attending, I guess that we will see. And our holiday party is this coming Saturday and is at the Mount Vernon Estate and I'm not too sure what that is other than a big ole house. I guess that I'm going to that too, although it doesn't seem much like the holidays yet. I'll have to find my holiday lights at some point and hang them up too, tis the season and all of that.

That's about all that I can think to report for this week so I guess that I will end this now and find something else to do, I hope that things are going well with you too and I will talk with you soon. Take it easy and have a great week!

posted by Scott @ 9:14 PM

Evening to you and what's up with you tonight? Not too much been going on with me, it's been mighty cold and think that it's been down to the 20's a few of these nights but it's ok with me ...... the change is kind of nice. And I mowed the lawn yesterday but it was more of bagging leaves than it was mowing the lawn and it's still looking mighty green and looking good which kind of surprises me. And I figure that if I bag up a few bags of leaves each weekend I won't have to end up raking very much which will be just fine by me. Work has been going just fine and I'm keeping myself busy but the traffic has been getting on my last nerve ..... it's been taking me close to an hour each way every day and that part of my life sucks.

I had a guy come over yesterday to give me an estimate on ripping out my bathtub and installing a shower and got a pretty good price on it -you can click this link and then click on the Design your Bath and check out the white marble ...... at least that's the kind of thing that I have in mind but I'm not quite sure about it yet. And if I were to do that I'd also have to redo the floor and probably replace the toilet and might end up having to paint the room while I'm at it. And my garage project is coming along slowly and I go out there whenever I have nothing better to do, I've got one of the big walls just about done and I'm taping up the corners and mudding that but the ceiling is rather a pain in the butt. I'm in no hurry though to get it done but someday it is going to look great!

Nothing else has been going on though, I've been over to my neighbors house a couple of times as their computer continues to act up but I've got it running again, at least for the time being. I've been wondering if I was going to upgrade to Windows Vista when it comes out in another month and also if I need to buy a new pc as this one has been giving me some issues - but I think that I've decided that I will just upgrade to Vista and rebuild this thing from scratch and it should be good to go for another couple of years. I think that I got it around T-Day two years ago so it should be good for at least another year. I'm really liking the Dell Pavilion XPS that they have out now and the thing is tiny and looks really cool and think that that's the one that I'll get when I do end up getting a new pc. I still need to figure out the new office though as I'd like it but don't want to spend $500 to get it.

Oh, and for Halloween I got home around 6pm and the neighborhood was crawling with kids and I didn't even have a chance to change before they came knocking on my door. So I did that for the next couple of hours and finally turned out the lights around 8:15pm and all in all there were probably 40-50 kids at my door. I also think that I might be headed up to my brother's for Christmas but I'm not sure yet, and I'm also not sure if I would fly or drive but guess that I need to start looking into it. I'm not sure what I will end up doing for Thanksgiving but I think that I'm just staying around here for all that I know.

I guess that's about it for another week, all's well with me and I'm staying nice and warm ...... at least for the most part but I really probably should go out and buy a coat to wear as I haven't broken one out yet. Take care and take it easy and say hello to the family for me. Have a great week!

posted by Scott @ 9:11 PM