Tag Archives: Traveling

The Happenings….

I meant to start this earlier in the day, heck even a few days earlier……lol  Lets see what is going on.

We had a pretty good weekend last week.  We had some of the nicest weather we’ve had since the fall and did a bit of grilling to enjoy it.  Last Sunday night, as we were finishing our dinner, there was a knock at the door.  We pretty much keep to ourselves and was like, what the heck.  Hubby answered the door, the neighbor from across the street was there and seemed to be mumbling……hubby is like, you hit my jeep?  The guy is like yes.  This is not the first time, limited parking and it is on the street, so not a real big deal….exchange info and contact insurance.  So hubby is like, let me get my shoes.  He goes out there, sees a big wide scratch on the rear passenger bumper.  The guy is like I didn’t hit you there, and when asked where, he pointed to the driver side, that is so covered in pollen and dust that there isn’t a mark.  There is no way.

Hubby was going to say no big deal and not to worry, until he lied about it.  Because that scratch was not there this earlier.  He came in, all ticked, I went out to deal with it, asked for his info, he refused to give it to me, saying that he didn’t hit us there.  Sounding real baffled and buffled.  Well, that wasn’t going to work.  My husband started questioning him loudly and called him a liar, I called the police to mediate.  Dispatcher hearing it in the background, got the police here quickly.  We got the info from the wife, we felt totally guilty, she looked so crushed.  The few times we waved and talked in passing, she has always seemed so nice, she even dropped off fudge during the holidays.

The police did ask if the guy had gone back inside during this, we are like yes, well he had been drinking, but no proof if it was before or after he hit us.  I had seen them working out front all day, they had moved their car out of their drive to pull weeds, so I figured it was when he was adjusting from pulling it back in that he hit us.  It was a nice day, many people work out side and have a drink while doing it.  And looking back at how he responded, it makes sense that he had been drinking and you know the wife knew it.

Like my husband told her, he was saying to him to not to worry about it when he denied that it was his damage.  We did draw the neighbors out during this…..ggeezzz

So we have been debating all week whether to get it fix, if he hadn’t lied, we probably won’t.  And then, if to fix it, go through our insurance, pay the $100 deductible and have them deal with the neighbor’s insurance or call their insurance and deal with them and possible denial.  Well, that did get answered today when I got a letter from their insurance and are now have an appointment with their adjuster.

Been having an issue with the mail I sent out on May 31st and June 1st.  I sent out 3 things on the 31st and only 1 of them got there in a normal time frame.  One of them was not received until June 9th!  Icks.  On June 1st, I mailed out 2 netflix (to Salem), 3 cards (MI, IN, & WA)…….netflix FINALLY arrived June 10th, card to MI, June 11th….not sure of the other 2 yet, but I have hope.  What really bugs me about it, is that the card to IN was to mom & dad for their 39th Anniversary and I mailed it to be on time to be there by June 9th…..nope, didn’t happen.  So not happy about that.  But seeing that 3 of the 5 items have been delivered I have hope on the other 2, fingers crossed.  Normally only takes about 3 days to MI and 4 days to IN.

A few weeks ago I spent some time researching about internal hard drives for our macbook pros, what I read it looked easy to do and by doing it ourselves save us $50 for the change out, $50 for the transfer of settings and files and save $100 on the hard drive.  A total win-win, if as simple as they say.  Found us a much bigger hard drive ( hubby’s a 250GB, mine a 160GB at the standard 5400RPM) and even faster : Western Digital Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive Western digitals are considered very good hard drives, so I got them ordered.

They were delivered this past Thursday, June 9th.  When I opened the 1st one, I noticed that it had some unsecured from it’s packaging in it’s own box.  But since those boxes were surrounded by packing peanuts, I didn’t think too much of it. Hubby used that one to change out his hard drive, took 3.5hrs for the operating system to install, 1.5hrs for it restore from back up and then it ran slow as heck.  Let it sit over night to make sure everything was lined up and it worked faster in the am.

So Fri we decided to do mine, only took about 50mins for the operating system to install and 30min for it to restore, but I also only had 30GB….his was about 150GB. Didn’t take long at all for mine to be up to speed and no issue.  His started to freeze up, opening programs, playing tunes….so I did some research, sounded like a hard drive issue.  We ran the disk utility, ran the repair, still had the issue.  I started to remember about the packaging and the fact that hard drives are sensitive…..so we switched back to his old and put in for an exchange on the new one.  I will say that so far, newegg.com has a really nice and simple online process for returns.  I’ve never used them before, but was aware of them….so definitely a site to keep in mind when we need electronics.

I got the damage hard drive shipped off and now waiting on the exchange.  Now that we know what we are doing, shouldn’t take long to switch it out and get it running again.

Monday, June 6th was the day we planned for a 12mile hike on Mt St Helen’s, as a late anniversary celebration.  Well, we didn’t go to bed as early as we should’ve and didn’t get our NW Forest Pass like we needed.  We figured we can get them when we get there.  We got our packs all ready Sunday and left here by 6 am, figuring the drive would take about 2-3hrs.  We did figured pretty correctly on the drive, took only a little bit longer due to the fog that we encountered the higher we went.  One moment it was clear the next moment couldn’t see a thing on a winding mountain road.  The pass thing really messed us up, because none of the centers opened until 10am.  If you want to do an all day hike and be back by sundown, you need to start by 8/9am.  So we had already checked a few possible substitute shorter hikes that we could do instead.

They did have some pullovers for you to view the area.  You could see tree trunks from the landslide buried sideways in the dirt and exposed by the rivers that recut their flow through the land.  It really does mess with your mind when you think about it and see it and then the info at the observatory, a bigger mind frock….wow

We went to the Johnson Ridge Observatory, where the original hike would’ve started.  Johnson Ridge is what forced the landslide to move west instead of keep coming north.   Wow about the view…..the pictures we took do not do it justice.  When we first got there, Mt St Helen was covered in clouds and would peak out.  When the observatory opened, we saw the 16min movie they have.  They used the original film with some added CGI, it was actually pretty well done.  Learned a lot more about the blast that neither of us knew.

Didn’t feel so bad about not getting the pass needed for the hike until late, because the trail we wanted to take is still covered in snow and won’t be open until July 4th area.  So the fact that we’ve been doing the higher elevation hikes in the fall, has been a good thing.  And it was a very good thing that we ended up doing the 2.5 mile hike….it was a big workout.  Going by how long it took us, with similar terrain, that they 12mile hike would’ve taken us 9-10hrs.  We really enjoyed ourselves and learned a great deal.

I’ll be posting some pics in a separate post and I still need to make a gallery.

I’ve been working this for a couple of hours and heading to bed.

Planning Our Time

Trying to figure out what to do for our anniversary.  What makes it hard is that it is May 31st….always around Memorial Day….it sucks! When we picked the date (it wasn’t our 1st choice) we were trying to be reasonable money wise and avoid the huge mark up of summer weddings.  We should’ve stuck with Oct.

Well, the last 3 years, we’ve spent it on the Oregon Coast, ironically the last 2yrs in FL was also on the coast…..lol  Nutty.

So now we don’t know what we want to do.  Really can’t do anything on the June 1st, I have contractor payroll and end of the month stuff….blah

We want to do something since we are always home, but the question is what?  While hoping for good weather.

We were thinking of going to Olympic National Park, but that area is now so fully of “vampire” crap from the Twilight movies…hard to find a place we want to stay.  We also don’t know how much effort we want to put into the planning and I don’t know how much driving I really want us to do.  I want to enjoy it, driving wears you out.

We don’t even have a restaurant we really want to go….ggeezz

So far, the only thing I can think of without much planning is driving out all the way to Mt St Helen.  But the question for that is when, May or June?  Due to snow…..blah…..lol

We are so sad…..grin

Seriously thinking of renewing our vows, so we can change the date to Oct……lol  I just don’t know how we would want to do that….want something different maybe quirky….lol

Need to figure out this anniversary first…….grin

New Picture Galleries

I finally got some of our pictures caught up from the last 18months.  =)  I actually started this back in Oct and totally forgot about it…..lol  I did tweet them…grin

Alrighty then……..

On the bio page : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/bio/

The following picture galleries have been added :

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/paulineharold/2010_SuperBowl/2010_Super_Bowl/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/misc/2009_Summerfest/2009_Summerfest/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/misc/2009_Halloween/2009_Halloween/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/misc/2009_Holiday/2009_Holiday/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/misc/20100717/2010_Troutdale_Parade/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/misc/20100801/2010_CarShow/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/misc/2009_Sep_12/2009_Purdue_Oregon/index.html

On the landscapes & nature page : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/landscapes-nature/

The following picture galleries have been added:

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/nature/2009_nature/2009_Nature/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/nature/2009_Critters/2009_Critters/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/PNH/nature/20100318/2010_SmithRock_iphone/index.html

On Our Family Page : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/our-friends/

The following picture galleries have been added :

paulineantoinette.com/friends/sandi/Cormican/Cormicans/index.html

paulineantoinette.com/friends/20101119/Navy_Retirement/content/index.html

Jonathon, Harold & Dylan 2010

I actually was able to get a very nice picture of the boys and Harold.  Took me a bit to get them to quit making silly faces….lol

What have I been I up to?

What have I been I up to?  Pretty much a bunch of work and breaking it up by going to the gym…..that is the story that my tweets tell and boy, it is so true.

My responsibilities at work have really expanded, we have been restructuring and I’ve taken on another client when it comes to doing books.

It has taken me about 3 intense weeks around my other work to get 9 months worth of my clients transactions entered into quickbooks. Still have a few more things to get done, but waiting on info from banks to get it entered.  Going to send a copy of what I have done to his CPA so we can get things tidied it up.  I know something has probably been missed in the rush to get everything entered.

I do have to say that with the big load of work that I had to do quickly, I’m pretty happy with how much I have got done in such a short amount of time.  There were parts that were driving me nuts that I finally got under control, felt so damn good.

Before all of that really hit, we finally drive down to Crater Lake National Park and camped for the night.  We waited until after Labor Day so the kids would be in school.  Even then it was more crowded then expected. Got the last campsite at the campground….lucked out. It was cold, with sprinkles of rain.  We totally lucked out on the weather….it could’ve been much worst….lol

Crater Lake was STUNNING!  We got enough sun and blue sky that the blue of the lake was breath taking.  Actually sleep much more comfortable this round of camping then last.  Used an air mattress and blankets instead of just our sleeping bags and mats. Totally saved our old backs and kept us warm when the temp hit the 30s.  =)

We headed out to Denver at the end of month to start all of my new work.  It was a very busy and very intense week.  We did take a day off and headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park with our friends.  That was really cool.  The highest point (elevation wise) was 12,090 ft.  We have never been that high while on land.  We also lucked out and got a stunning fall day.  =)  I would love to go back and find a few hikes to do there.

Last weekend was the 1st weekend in over a month that I was able to work on things for myself….not work related.  It was so nice and so weird.  I may not get the full weekend off this one due to payroll prep, but Saturday will be all mine.  =)  Just not sure what I want to do with it.  I’m not sure if I’m mentally prepared to attack our office closet yet.  There are so many computer cds that I need to good through and get rid of.  It is kind of scary….so I need to really mentally prepare myself.  Maybe I should do it, by one organize container at time…..icks

I also need to clean out my costume jewelry and start on the holiday letter……leaning more to that for tomorrow…lol

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My handy work. =)

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Hubby’s got sick…..lol

We finally picked up pumpkins today, they look good.  I really wasn’t sure if I was going to do give out candy thing this year.  We really don’t get many kids, it is going to be rainy, and just the doing it with it being payroll time.  But I do enjoy it….the kids seem to like my witches outfit.  =)  This year hubby suggested getting a huge spider and have it drop when I open the door to scare the kids…..he got it set up.  Looks really cool…I really hope that it scares them.

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Say hello to Herman!  Creepy eyes….lol

That is everything in a nut shell right now.  Pretty much just spending my life working…..lol

National Park Updates

It has taken me a bit to get around to getting this edited and uploaded.

They are posted on our travel page : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/our-travels/ (the link is at the top of the page)

This gallery is from our little Olympus & my iphone :

http://paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/20100908_CraterLake/2010_Crater_Lake/index.html

CraterLake 20100908 024

This gallery is from our Nikon, there is over 200 pictures in this one. So you are forwarned.  =)

http://paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2010_0907_Crater_Lake/2010_Crater_Lake_Nikon/index.html

2010 0906 Crater Lake 0001

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We ended up going to Denver for some business.  TONS of work and a lot to cover.  We did take one day off and took a drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park with our friends Brett & Brook.  We totally lucked out and got a stunning fall day.

http://paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2010_1001_Rcky_Mtn_NP/2010_Colorado/index.html

2010 1001 Rcky Mtn NP 0024

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I hope you enjoy.  =)