Monthly Archives: September 2007

My Week

Well today was ok on productivity.  I got some accounting done and prep work done for Monday’s project.  Took care of some business messages on the board and all the emails I had waiting for me.

I know I did quite a bit of work for my job, but my mind just went blank on what it was………icks

Anyway, I attacked my messages and emails.  Don’t forget if you have emailed me since June of 2006…..lol.. to the end of August, those emails are long gone.  So that is why I haven’t responded.

Let me tell you what we’ve been doing this week.  We spent Monday working when we  decided to take a break and head over to a park not too far from here.  It was beautiful.  All the greenery and it had a river running through it.  Unfortunately my pictures don’t do it justice.

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We did get to see a doe from the road as she was forging.  You could tell that she was use to be people.  She looked right at us several times and just went back to eating, Harold was able to get very close to her for pictures.

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Later that evening we went to our friend’s Tom place for his small weekly gathering.  It is just where folks show up, bbq & chill out.  He and his friends had built a half-pike in the basement.  So he and his friends were skateboarding.  Other then what you see in the media, I haven’t seen skateboarding like that in years.  So that was cool.  I even had a skateboard fly past me as someone wiped out…..lol

Wednesday, we went to look at couches, something we really needed for our living room.  We got very lucky and found one at the 1st place we stopped.  I was so dreading the possibility of needing to go from store, to store to find something that we like.  We got a cream colored leather couch.  We really wanted to get a recliner or something of the sort to match, for once.  Unfortunately, there was no other pieces that was with it.  So we are going to find something in black leather, we just don’t know exactly what.  At least it will be in leather.  =)

We went to a few other places to just see what they have.  Even stopped by a mattress place……..we are needing one.  But it was so strange, we haven’t gotten a new one in so long that we don’t even know how a good mattress is suppose to feel.  All I know is I want my lower back to stop hurting from a night’s sleep.  But it going to take time to find one that we want.

We then headed into the city to meet up with folks for lunch.  We had met them through our friend Tom and just wanted to get to know each other better since we are all in the same online business.  We are in 2 different aspects of the business but it was it is just nice to talk to new people.    So we made some new friends.  =)

Thursday, I had some work errands I needed to do.    Harold wasn’t able to come with me, since we were having the couch delivered that afternoon.  Once we got it, we got the living room set up, Torn brought down the TV from the bedroom.  The one for the living room won’t get here until Tuesday.  And we want to be able to watch the Purdue game while on the couch……..grin

It was so nice to get out of the office.  We brought our laptops downstairs and enjoyed it.

I already described my day today.  I know I got a lot of done, just for the life of me remember what……….lol  That is so sad.

Well, I need to balance the checkbooks……….the never ending battle.

Trip Part 6……..Final Post

The next day (8/31) was another day that we got going early then planned, because the drive to the next campground, took about 2hrs longer then we thought. That was for the Sequoia National Park. We didn’t realize that we would be climbing mountains. We are currently at 7,320ft elevation.

I love the mountains, the cliffs, the scenery, but doing it in a class A RV that takes up a lane fully, is scary as hell to me. I couldn’t look down. I just keep looking straight ahead. Pass other big trucks…….icks. If we were doing it in a car, it would’ve been less heart stopping, let me tell you. I don’t know how Harold did it, but he doing better then I am.

We are currently chilling out, enjoying the fire. It may get hot during the day, but it does get chilly at night. Which I’m enjoying. =) There are lots of warnings about bears and food. Hopefully the picture I took of the food storage comes out so you can see it. But we have yet to see a black bear.

Well, my pc battery is about to die and we only have 45min left a being allowed to run the generator. So I’ll try to write more tomorrow.

*** Sunday 2nd September @ 08:35

We are out of the Sequoia National Park, it took over an hour to get out due to the curves and cliffs. It can be quiet dangerous if you aren’t careful. It is a pretty morning. Reggie even came out and laid on my lap for a while. He is not normally a lap cat for me, it is usually with Harold.

I’ve been enjoying myself, but there have been some frustrations. A lot of things that we had arranged fell threw. =( So that is the business area of annoyance. But the biggest frustration, personally, has been my feet. Harold is like it is ok and it will take time. But after walking around Vegas, my feet were so swollen and hurt so bad. At the Sequoia park we had to shuttle straight to the General Sherman Sequoia instead of doing a half mile trail……..which is the thing that I love. I know it is not my fault, but I feel horrible that I’m not able to help out as fully as I use to……..like getting fire wood….ggrrrr I hope I’m better in the next month, because I don’t want to be sitting on my ass all the time due to my feet.

***I already posted a ton of pictures from Sequoia…….lol I thought I would give you a break.

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Trip Part 5……..Malibu

Wednesday (8/29) we left early then planned for Malibu, which was a good thing. Because that took much longer then we thought. We went through some more winding, cliff dropping roads. I swear, my heart has gotten a hell of a work out this last 2 weeks…icks. Those roads were just out of Vegas, not to mention of the Malibu Mountains we had to go over to get to the beach RV park we had booked.

We got a great view of the beach and ocean there. We got cliff side. There we had better connection, so I was able to get work done.

Harold had booked us a red mustang convertible for those 2 nights…..it was a great thing. Because later that night, once most of the traffic died down we went cruising down CA 1, with the top down…..stopping at a beach to get some sunset pictures. We hadn’t driven a sports car in so long……

One of our friends came over to visit. Afterwards we went out The Chart, a mainly seafood place that had some steak and chicken. We had a excellent meal there. Unfortunately, it was time to say good by to our friend. =(

Harold and I chilled out and let dinner settle and then we took the mustang for one last cruise. The evenings really chilled out, so we left the top up for this one. Stopped on one of the turn off that they have to sit on a rock and look at the stars. You don’t get to see all the stars very often due to light pollution, but this night we did. It was great.

Here are some of the pictures : http://tornrose.com/Odds_n_Ends/malibublog/index.htm

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Blaha, Blaha…….lol

I think I only have about 2-3 blog posts to put up about the trip. I hope you’ve been enjoying the sample of pictures that I’ve been putting up. Those have been only a small example of the pictures we have. We took about 7000 of them………lol

I worked on my passport application and saw that they need my birth cert…….well, I’m not giving up my one and only certified copy when one of the counties in Indiana lost my original………it happened about 16 yrs ago, but it still pisses me off to no end…..gggrrr So I went online to see what I need to do to get a copy of Harold’s and mine. His is a lot easier then mine. I was able to order it online, but mine I have to use snail mail! WFT?!?! Is this not 2007?!? So I’m not too pleased.

I don’t know backed up the passport apps are. So that is another reason for not giving up our birth certificates to apply, we won’t be able to head to Canada and get back without them. =(

Today was my great-aunt Mary’s service. I talked to Melinda, I guess there were a lot of folks who turned up. My great-aunt Ruthie was crying a lot. Aunt Mary was the sister she was closest to. Mom said the flowers we ordered were huge. But then I ordered from the local florist who my family has dealt with for almost 20yrs and she takes care of the local families very well, knew exactly whose services and her age.

The strange thing was that my aunt’s services wasn’t at the funeral home where all my family on that side have been taken care of. I guess the owner got very sick and didn’t have anyone to take over. So it has fallen in quality big time. Rumor is that it may be up for sale….. I don’t know, if her services had been able to be there, at least I’d be able to imagine the services better. So it is sad that the place that has taken care of all members of my family won’t be anymore.

My aunt Mary will be cremated and then have her ashes buried on top of her mother’s grave, (great-grandma Schinkel). My grandpa’s ashes on with his dad’s (great-grandpa Schinkel) and my grandma is with her sister-in-law’s (Aunt Charlotte). The Aunt Ruthie will be with her husband’s, Uncle Bob. So at least I know where to go to pay my respects when I head back there. That is where most of that part of my family is buried.

This is tough…..working from home, way too many distractions. I’m one who needs structure, a work schedule…….. I need to be able to focus.

If I’m going to work from home, I need 2-3 days of left alone work……and that is for the online job I have. Then I need at least 2-3 days of left alone work for our business.  I can’t get anything done if I keep getting pulled away from my goals. Then doing my normal hour or two a day for support and follow up. I’m really thinking of creating a planned calendar/schedule but I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick with.

Everyday I had a plan, it got pushed aside. Just because I’m working from the house, doesn’t mean that I don’t take my jobs any less then if I was working out of the house. Hell, if I did that I wouldn’t get anywhere.

I will say doing errands here is no different then Florida, they take forever. So that hasn’t helped with my time management. I think I’m going to have to put one day of the week just for errands. But that is a bitch, because you want to get them done before that brats are released from their confines……..lol………and sometimes you have more errands then that amount of time.

It is very nice not to really go anywhere this weekend. It has been months since we were able to do that.

We’ve been having issues with continously being knocked off line. It was pissing us off, big time. Well, Harold got on the phone with comcast and demanded a solution. The guy there wanted us to reset the router and restart our pcs everytime!! It would go off 3 times in 5min, so that wasn’t happening! So after Harold gave him an earful, we were able to get a guy out today. It was the splitter and the router was an older one that we should’ve never received. So the tech replaced and and so far, we haven’t been having the issues.

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Trip Part 4……..The Vegas Part

***Picture overload!

But we thoroughly enjoyed Zion and then it was on to Vegas.  We stayed at the KOA campground right behind Circus, Circus.  It was actually a lot nicer then expected, but no grass…..that is about right for Vegas.

We went to this Italian restaurant in a shopping center, called Hole In The Wall…….I believe.  Great food……all the house wine you can drink, I was feeling very nice….lol  I just wish the salad and bread wasn’t so good…..I would’ve ate more of my chicken parm that was great.  It was another great suggestion by Holly.

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The next day, we had lunch with Holly at the Peppermill…….dang, those portions were huge.  We ordered dessert…..Harold, a strawberry shortcake and me a hot fudge brownie sundae….neither of which we would’ve been able to finish on an empty stomach much less just eaten.  It was good.

During all our trips to Vegas we had never seen the light/water show.  When we 1st got there in was in the middle of “1st Kiss?” by Faith Hill?…..that wasn’t very good.  When you come to see the light/water show pop music, especially that one, does not fit.  But they do shows every 15 minutes and the next one was a duet Italian opera…..it was great!  That was so fitting.  We can’t come to Vegas again without seeing that.

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Then we decided to do the tourist, another 1st for us.  We are usually here on business so we barely get out of the hotel & convention centers to see the sights.  So we tried to walk a very small part of the strip.  I will say, I now know what Toni Braxton has been………lol…..I use to love her stuff and seen her open for Kenny G years ago.

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I just thought this was kind of cool looking.

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We then headed over to old Vegas, since I barely had any life left in my feet….ggrrr, and wanted to see the light show there.  It is called Freemont Street, I believe.  It had some of the old gaudy signs from the 60s/70s.  So that was cool.  The only thing I didn’t care for is that the light show was only at the top of the hour……….so we had to wait like 40 min.  I expected at least every 30min., but it was a cool show to see.

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Later that night we realized that we never had supper………but we were so full from lunch that it didn’t make much of dent on us.
=)

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Later that evening Holly took us to a great Mexican place.  Other then Portland last fall, we haven’t had good, much less great Mexican food since Indiana……I know, so sad.  But dang it was excellent.  Another too much food and barely ate it all….I even had 2 pina colas, I usually only have 1.

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For the end of Tuesday night, we just had a really fun time and it was thanks to Holly.  Thanks hon!