It's gotta be getting close to spring now as today was just beautiful, mid 60's and sunshine
galour! Too bad that it rained all day yesterday when I could have done something outside though :( But the grass is starting to green up and has started to grow so it won't be long before I'm back into my Saturday routine again. Not too much news on this end I guess, I worked all last week but what's new, and had two lunch dates and also went out to dinner with a group from work so at least I'm eating well and can't complain about that.
Oh, I bought a new car last Saturday but didn't mention last weekend as I didn't take delivery of it until Monday night. But I traded in my 2005 Ford Escape and picked up a 2007 Ford Edge and the thing is sweet ....... it rides like a
Cadillac compared to my SUV. And it's got the works too, all leather interior and GPS and it's got this killer sunroof called the Vista roof and is like twice the size of a regular sunroof ....... it rolls back kind of what you would find in a limo where you can stand up and wave to the people .......
hehehe, well I can't do that as I would be driving. And it's got a 3.5 liter engine so much bigger than the Escape and is also all wheel drive so I'll be ready for any more adverse weather that comes my way. I only took a couple of pics of it today and some day after I clean it up I'll do a page and show you the inside too but this should at least give you an idea of what it looks like - you can click the pic for a bigger version of it.
I've been watching these types of vehicles for quite some time now and fell in love with the first Edge that I saw - it's not a truck but is kind of like one but is built on the frame of a car and drives more like one. If you want to click
here you can take a look at some better pictures of it. I also had a remote car starter installed on Thursday as I love that feature - and if it's not cold out it will soon be hot and I can put it to some good use! And it has a killer stero and even has a jack built in for my
Ipod and I love that little feature as well!
And speaking of
Ipods I ended up buying a
30gig video Ipod yesterday and have been playing around with putting
DVD's on it and pretty much have it down now and can take that on the plane with me and either listen to music or watch a movie, the thing is sweet! And you can even hook it up the
tv and watch movies that way, I think that I've found a new hobby with the movies that I rent. Oh, and another thing that happened this week is on about Wednesday I get this big envelope at work and I don't know who the heck the return address is from - but I open it up and find a big ole pile of business cards that I had been collecting. I guess that I pulled them out of my bag at the Pittsburgh Airport when I was doing work and left them sitting there, and this nice man was kind enough to send them back to me ....... and even paid $1.25 in postage to do it. I had to send him a big note of thanks as most of the card would be irreplaceable and it was also nice to know that there are still people like that left who would do something for a total stranger.
And lastly I was out taking pictures of my car this afternoon and my neighbors were out there working on the lawn - and they say "hey, your landscaping lights don't work". And then I go into the whole story of me re-wiring my outlets and ever since then (October I think) I've got three outlets that don't work any more. Then Pete says that he replaced a
GFI outlet in their upstairs bathroom a while back and his deck and porch outlets didn't work after that - and I'm thinking bingo, that has to be it! So I replaced the outlet with a regular one (for now) this afternoon and now everything is working again, my lights outside, my garage outlets and my downstairs bathroom outlets ....... all is well again and you don't know how long that has been driving me crazy! I've even gone back and rechecked the 12 or so outlets that I replaced to make sure none of them were the culprit and go figure that it's the one that's all the way upstairs and on the back of the house that makes them all work.
I guess that's about it though, I'm off to Chicago for a short trip this week, just one night and a two day meeting but that should break up my week pretty well - plus I'm looking forward to staying at the
Westin ...... just too bad that it wasn't longer though. I hope that all is well with you and that things are good - try to stay in touch and take care until then. Have a great week!
Good evening once again and here it is the day after St. Patrick's Day ....... so did you end up painting the town green yesterday? And me not so much as I never really have been much of a green beer kind of guy and being on a Saturday no one even gave me crap for not wearing any green. And the weather has been whacked around here too, I think on Wednesday it was in the 70's and then that ended Thursday night and we had
monsooning rains after that and then about two inches of sleet Friday on my way home from work. But it wasn't quite cold enough to freeze at that point so it was just a lot of slop but I'm sure that things got ugly later on when the temps dropped down into the 20's. But yesterday it was back to normal, it was (and is) still cold but at least the sun is back shining.
Not much going on on this end of the world but what's new right? It sure was a long week last week and thought that it would never end - working the week prior and then flying across the country and then spending the weekend in meetings, only to get back here late Sunday night and then it was time to do it all over again. I think that I finally got caught up on doing laundry and getting some sleep and hopefully tomorrow I'll be good to go just in time to do it all over again. This upcoming week should be pretty busy as I've got three lunch appointments and a few conference calls and that's on top of the normal and also have quite a few projects to work on too. Then I think the week after that we head to a meeting in Chicago but that's only a one day thing and will only be gone for the one night. But I might just extend my stay and spend a few days at the Silversmith but I'm not too sure about that yet. I can actually get more done for them from working from here so we'll see, plus hopefully the weather will be improving here and there sometime in the very near future.
I ended up scheduling an aeration of the lawn through
TrueGreen and they should be doing that in another couple of weeks and they also suckered me into doing the monthly treatments as they were running a deal so I thought that I'd give them a shot and see what they can do for me. I think that I've got some of that nasty crabgrass in the front yard so hopefully they'll nip it in the bud before it starts to grow ....... you know me and crabgrass don't mix so I think that I'll let them handle it. My landscaping lights died a couple of months ago too so I'll have to figure them out again one of these days and not too sure what went wrong with them. I really can't wait for spring to arrive and was just thinking that I need to get started again on my garage project as I gave up when it got to cold for me to do any work out there.
I guess that's it for this day so I'll end this now and move on to other things. I hope that all is well with you and hope to hear from you sometime soon. Take it easy, stay warm and have a great week!
Hey again, it’s me and it’s another Sunday night here in Virginia …..well, actually right about now we might be flying over Ohio or Pennsylvania but I’ll be back home and on the ground in the next 30 minutes or so. I’m returning from Palm Springs where I have been since Thursday attending our annual National Sales Meeting for work and it was a fun packed three days along with eating lots and even doing a little bit of work too. I left Dulles airport around 8am on Thursday and when I headed out to the airport it was 11’ out and there was a thick layer of ice on the cars and then got to California by around 12:30pm (their time) and it was all ready in the mid-80’s by the time that I arrived.
We then had a few hours to kill so a bunch of us sat our by the pool for a few hours and ordered lunch – I should have gone swimming but then never did make it. Then the meeting opened with a reception at the pool that evening and the food was incredible and the drink run free. The real conference started out Friday morning with an opening general session that lasted until lunch – and then we all signed up for a team building exercise and I went for the Jeep Tour through the Desert. That was pretty cool (and hot) though and we got to ride right on top of the San Andreas fault line and check out a real live gold mining thing. Plus there was plenty of cold beer and stacks and some big ole 75 year old tortoise named Gus who lives out in the desert most of the time.
We then got back to the hotel and had a couple of hours to chill and then we split up into groups and did a “dine around” and had a great prime rib dinner. After that we did a quick
circ de sol la thing with some funky dancers and other stuff, not quite normal but it was still entertaining. They also have Indian casinos out there but I never did quite make it, there was one right down the road that a lot of people went to but I’m not really all that much of a gambling man.
Saturday morning started off with our discipline break out sessions and I had to lead one for the revenue managers, then we did another one with our brands (I attended the
Starwood meeting) and then the afternoon was filled with some educational stuff just to keep things on the up and up. Saturday night was the big awards dinner for those top sales people for 2006 which was an awesome meal with lots of applauding done by all. That broke up about 11pm but then we lost an hour with the day light savings time change so it was kind of a late night but not all too bad. This morning I had a 11am flight out of Palm Springs through Chicago and we lost another 3 hours with that time change so now my body doesn't know what the heck time it is, other than I’m a little bit tired.
Well, we are getting ready to land so I've got to turn this off and pack up my stuff ....... so I'll be talking with you sometime soon. Make it a great week and stay in touch and I'm hoping that all is well on your end of the world. Talk with you soon.
Hey and what is up with you today? Not too much going on with me and I took it pretty easy this weekend and didn't do a whole lot ....... but the weather is starting to improve a bit. I worked from home on Friday to see if I could get caught up after being away for the week and did pretty well I think - but it was also hard to concentrate on working inside on the computer when it was in the high 50's and the sun was shining. Yesterday was also pretty close to that but the winds have picked up but that's fine with me ....... I spent most of it inside any way.
I did end up going back to Windows
XP and gave up on the Vista thing for a while as it's been driving me
bonkers and basically the only thing that was working was e-mail and browsing and a bunch of my other stuff never did work - I gave it a month to try and get used to it but I just can't function like that. So Thursday night when I got home from work I did a clean install with
XP and after about five hours I have it once again working better than it ever did, and all of my old stuff is working again. I think that I'll give it six months or so and wait and see if they can figure out their driver issue as half the stuff that used to work didn't work any more so we'll see. I am getting pretty good at starting over from scratch and getting things back to normal and think that the only things that I lost were a few things in my Windows Mail mailbox as that wasn't backwards compatible. The one thing that I did like with Vista was their little sidebar thing that let you set things (like a clock and a calender and the weather) on your desktop - but I found the next best with with
Yahoo Widgets that works with
XP and is
practically the same thing ...... so I installed them and am much happier now that my old computer is back again. If you want to give them a try click
here to take a look!
Last week was a pretty short week and flew back from Chicago on Wednesday which pretty much took me most of the day, then went into the office on Thursday and then worked from here on Friday. And it's pretty much a repeat next week as we have our National Sales Meeting at the end of the week in Palm Springs, CA and I'm looking forward to that and warming up for a bit. I checked the forecast for them today and they have 80' weather every day but it did look like it was going to be much hotter next weekend with Saturday
forecasted to be 95'. And it should be a fun filled full four days ....... I'll be warn out by the time that I get back and ready for another full week of work.
Oh, and I tried one of those Betty
Crocker brownie in a bowl cooked in the microwave thing and it was pretty darn good - I even bought some vanilla ice cream and had that on top of it .........
mmm mmm, good. I just can't do them very often or I'll gain 600 pounds. I also sliced my finger open trying to remove the drain cover in my shower today and tried one of those liquid
band aids since it was at the tip and I have to say that they work pretty well, first time that I've tried using those things. Other than that I renewed my website for another year, I was kind of thinking of parking it somewhere and taking a break as all I get is a ton of spam from my e-mail address and I never seem to find the time to update it ....... but it was easier to just renew it than to have to deal with it in another way. So I'm good for the another year - I guess that it's my site's fifth
anniversary!
So I guess that's about it for this day - I hope that all is well with you and that you are ready for Spring to arrive ....... just think next weekend is day light savings time all ready and we get to spring forward into another hour of daytime! Take it easy and I'll talk with you soon. LATER!
