I was sending a list of sci-fi and fantasy books that I have read to someone, and thought I'd dump it here as well. It's by no means everything I've ready, but some of the big series.
Dragon Prince
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0886774500
The Star Scroll
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0886773490
Sun-Runner's Fire
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0886774039
Other things that may be good:
All the Ender books, including the newest:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312857586
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (as we were talking about).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/408712
Everything in the Belgariad and Malloreon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/28896JPBM3K8S
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth, which are pretty heavy, but good:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/408716
The main Dragonlance books:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/3GKV809NNU2I8
The various Dark Elf books by R.A. Salvatore are good, but violent:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/1HDA8ZQ5CY8NN
The "Honorverse" books by David Weber are really good, but a bit
heavy on the made-up-science:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/11FKI8TAGWYHS
Everything on this list is really good. It includes Asimov's
Foundation books, and Arthur C Clarke's Rama books:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/37ZKU1XR1898B
The Order War, by L. E. Modesitt Jr are good, but very repetitive
after the first 5 or 6. The back-story does build with each book, but
its the same plot again and again. If you like the plot, that's fine,
there's 13 of them to read. If not, you'll never read more than one.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/22XHK89AUQ7R7/
Anne Mccaffry's Dragonriders of Pern books are good reasonably light
fantasy:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/191IODV23QVIX
Someone may like George Martin's "A song of ice and fire" although I
couldn't get into them at all:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/15583
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I could never get into
these either, but they're supposed to be good:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440238609
That's more than a start. It's what, 100 books? :) If you buy
anything, I'd definitely try to get everything in a series at the
same time. At least within each set. For instance, the Belgariad is 5
books, and the Malloreon is another 5 books. The Dragonlance books
are a half dozen trilogies (and a couple pairs), etc. There's
nothing I hate more than reading a book or two in a series and not
being able to get the rest. Or worse, reading something in the middle
of a series.
Oh, another place you may point people who have a computer at home:
http://www.baen.com/library
This is a free library of books ( some of which I listed above ) that
can be read online or downloaded to read later. The Belisarius series
has several books included there, by David Drake and Eric Flint.
They're pretty good, easy reads, but quite violent. It's a (very)
alternative history of Roman times. Book six is due out soon.
Well I switched hosting services for my blog. With all the blogging I do it is important to have a host you like, and I really was unimpressed with who we were using before. It was nice when it was a small company, but then it was bought by a bigger company and the service isn't so great any more. I'm trying Dreamhost now and am hoping it will be better.
Other than that, there isn't much new. I'm off of school for the summer, and will be back again at the end of September. So far I've kept my 4.0 average, so I'm happy. Classes will start to get a little more challenging now, but I'm not too worried.
I also applied for a new job at work, but won't hear until the end of August if I got it or not. The people deciding are going on vacation then have a few other interviews to do when they are all back, so it's a slow process.
That's all for now.
 | You scored as Natural Causes. Your death will be by natural causes, though not by any diseaese, because that is another option on this test. You will probably just silently pass away in the night from old age, and people you love won't realize until the next morning, when you are all purple and cold and icky.
How Will You Die?? created with QuizFarm.com |
Well I took my antibiotics for a week and am better. The sore throat was gone in a couple days, and while I still cough a bit, I'm certainly mostly better. I don't know if the doctor's visit made any difference, or if I would have been fine in a few days anyway, but it doesn't hurt to go, even if I do hate going to the doctor.
In other news, I bought a new LCD Monitor. I like it a lot, and got a good deal on the price. So two days after I got it, the cats ran into it and there's a scratch on the screen now. Figures. It isn't the end of the world, but I'm not too happy to have it marred so quickly. It looks like a smudge on the screen that won't go away.
I've got one more assignment for my Sociology class, then it is just finals, and I'm done for the quarter. Time certainly goes by fast. Especially when you are doing quarters at school, they not only seem fast, but they are. I already took the final for my Oracle PL/SQL class (it was open early) and did reasonably well on it. I'll get an A in the class in any case. Sociology is the only one that is at risk of ruining my 4.0 average. I completely misunderstood one of the assignments and it dragged down my grade significantly. As long as I do ok on the last assignment and Final I'll be fine, but I have to get an A on the final to be sure. Of course, it isn't like it is the end of the world to not get an A in the class, but I'd like to keep it all As for as long as possible. :)
Bed time.
I've had a sore throat for a week, so I actually broke down and went to a doctor. He gave me a couple things, and one of them says:
Possible Side Effects: SIDE EFFECTS that may occur while taking this medicine include diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, bad taste in mouth, indigestion, stomach pain or discomfort, or headache. If they continue or are bothersome, check with your doctor. CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR AS SOON AS POSSIBLE if you experience emotional or mood changes, confusion, hallucinations, depression, nightmares, or trouble sleeping. If you notice other effects not listed above, contact your doctor, nurse, or pharmacist.
The captial letters are from what was written, the bold/italic is my own emphasis.
| He... Helium. You scored 31 Mass, 20 Electronegativity, 30 Metal, and 60 Radioactivity! |
| That's odd, our tests indicate that you did not just take this test. In fact, we're not even sure you exist. Oh, wait, no, somebody just found indirect evidence of you in the deep Earth and in the Sun. Okay, so you're real, but man, you need to get out more. Actually, you're pretty cool, always doing your own thing, but we kinda wish that you would interact with us a bit more. On a positive note, I think some research lab in Berkeley has managed to put you into a psuedo-stable relationship that, if you're kept very cold, you won't walk away from... or maybe that was Xenon. I forget. |
 |
My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Link: The Which Chemical Element Am I Test written by effataigus on Ok Cupid |
| Big Five Test Results |
| Extroversion (1%) very low which suggests you are extremely reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and private. Friendliness (10%) very low which suggests you are overly selfish, uncooperative, and difficult at the expense too often of the well being of others. Orderliness (73%) high which suggests you are overly organized, neat, structured and restrained at the expense too often of flexibility, variety, spontaneity, and fun. Emotional Stability (96%) very high which suggests you are extremely relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic. Openmindedness (55%) medium which suggests you are moderately intellectual, curious, and imaginative. |
I got everything except the sound card and speakers on Friday, so I spent friday night assembling it all and installing Windows XP. It went surprisingly smoothly, with a few exceptions.
The first problem was that I used the wrong screws to install the motherboard into the case. The directions said use the "philips head screws" but of course all the screws are philips head, so which ones? I tried some until I found ones that fit, and went with those. Of course, when I got to the hard drive installation, it said to use the "special screws" (who writes these instructions?) and it turned out that those were the ones that I had used on the motherboard, so I had to take them all out. Once I did that, it was smooth sailing.
The computer actually turned on first try, so I was pleased. Everything appeared to be working, until I tried the front USB ports and the card reader, which also connects to the motherboard's USB connectors. I wasn't getting any errors, but windows was ignoring both devices. I tried installing the USB bracket that came with the motherboard, and has lights that indicate if it is working or not, and it said things were fine, but still no response from windows. Finally I took out all the connectors for the USB (12 of them) and plugged just the drive in, and that worked fine. So I carefully reinstalled the the 10 pins for the front panel USB ports, and it worked fine after that. Apparently I had mis-installed at least one of the jumpers, and it disabled the entire USB system.
In any case, it all works well, and so I was happy
In other news, the Monitor came today, and took just a few minutes to set it up. It looks really nice, and other than having to setup the screen a bit to fit correctly, it works well.
In major annoyances, Buy.com still hasn't shipped my sound card and speakers. They're both on order apparently. It would have been nice if they had let me know before I sent them email asking where my stuff was. There's no estimate at all on when they will get there either. I'm a bit annoyed, but it isn't the end of the world. I'm waiting ot activate windows until I have the sound card installed though, so it has the correct configuration set. Windows can get upset if you change the hardware after installing windows. Hopefully it will all come soon, and I can finish putting everything together.
I'm pretty pleased with the performance overall, it starts up really quickly, and installs programs in no time. I haven't done anything taxing on it so far, but things look good.
I took pictures along the way, but haven't played with them yet so I can't put them up here. I will at some point though.
Today I went to CompUSA very briefly, and got the video card. We didn't waste any time in the store, just went to the case, said we wanted it, paid, and got out. There's no reason to stay in there longer than necessary. I worked there years ago, and know first hand that most of the people that work there are not especially helpful. So anyway, I've got my first item sitting around waiting for the rest to arrive.
The only other update is that the monitor has shipped, so that should be here fairly soon. So that's a pretty good day for CompUSA, surprisingly enough. Both the other sites I ordered from are still processing at the warehouse. Newegg.com says that it is sealed and ready to ship already, so hopefully that'll go out tomorrow and be here in a few days. I predicted as soon as I put in the orders that I would be sitting around waiting for Buy.com to send the sound card once everything else was here, and I think that's going to be correct. Hopefully it'll all be here this weekend though, and I can spend my days off doing assembly.
More as it occurrs...
Well, I've finally decided to put my months of browsing computer parts to use, and ordered everything needed to build my next computer. I had hoped to be able to build 2 at the same time, so that Sabrina and I could both have one, but we decided to do one now, and one later, so that I'll have mine ready to go when school starts up again in september.
I'm planning to document everything as I go, so here's what I've done on 7/25/2004.
I bought parts from three sites, depending on what was the best deal at the time.
I also have one more purchase to make at CompUSA, but I have to wait until I can actually to the store, and use the gift card I got from CitiBank with my rewards points.
As stuff arrives in the mail, or I buy it, I will make updates and take pictures. It's been a while since I assembled an entire computer, but hopefully it will go relatively smoothly.
I turned in my final papers and exams friday and saturday, so I'm done with school for the summer. I'm already bored, wondering what to do since I don't have to rush around doing school work. I'm sure it won't take long to get back into a more relaxing pace for the summer. As far as class grades go, I got a 96.25, a 96.775, and a 97. So that's pretty good. My final paper for humanities I got a 9.9/10, so I was pleased with that. Not bad for spending one day doing research, and one day writing. It ended up being 6 or 7 pages, I can't remember which now. There was no set lenght, so I just ran on until I didn't have anything else to talk about.
In the fall I'll start taking Oracle classes, which should be interesting. It'll be the first of many classes in it I'll take, since they focus pretty exclusively on it for the database classes. Hopefully that'll go well, I'm not really sure what to expect from it. I'll also be taking a logic class, and another english class, so I'm sure that'll be boring. One year down, three to go.
That's all that's new here.
I'm almost done with my third quarter at Strayer. I've turned in one final, and have 2 more to go. One is an essay for humanities, which is due Saturday, I'll have to pick a topic soon. I'm not impressed with the choices, so it's a little hard to pick one of them to write about. I got a 188/200 on my the final for English, which isn't too bad. I had a paper for that class, that was 90/100, and 98/100 on the 5 paragraphs that I also had to write. Good enough, I should have a 96 or so for a final grade. I have some programming to do too, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Part of it is short-answer, rather than programming, and that is the hard part. It's difficult to stretch out answers to an appropriate length.
Not much other news here, things are about the same at work as always. The only change is that I was asked to do some of the work one of the account manager usually does while he was away for a week. It isn't terribly difficult, but I certainly have no interest in doing it for a living. I'll let someone else fill out all the paperwork and setup jobs. The worst part is dealing with the sales people, who negotiate the jobs and the pricing. I don't think they have much of an idea of what goes on once they get a job authorized, so they aren't always good about the pricing. Part of the problem is that some of the accounts are worth a lot of money, so you take crappy jobs to keep them happy, so you get the big jobs. Otherwise, I'm still doing my spreadsheet, and entering the results into the online reporting system. Fun fun. It's almost time for another quarter, but I don't know what I"ll be doing for that yet.
Maybe I'll remember to post when I have the actual grades for my classes. I'm not taking anything this summer, so it'll be strange to have some free time again. Working 40/hours a week is practically a vacation compared to working and doing school at the same time. I don't know how people do it when they have to commute to school too. I sleep little enough as it is.
Well it's time for another quarter end at Moore, and another quarter beginning at Strayer. I'm not running a shift this time at Moore, instead I'm going to be at my usual job and also entering information about how much quarterly stuff has been completed so that it can be reported to one of the clients. They want daily updates on how much has been sent so they know it has all gone on time. A couple people at Moore developed a database to track it all, rather than doing it on paper as they had been in the past, so that will make things much easier. It's almost too bad that I'm doing doing the quarterly shift this time, since it is good money, but at the same time I don't feel like spending the time involved to do it. With another quarter starting for school I have enough to do without working 80 hours/week on top of it, 40 is plenty.
School is going well, I got all A's again last quarter. I wasn't sure if I would do well on the final for the programming class, the questions weren't really like what we had done in class. It wasn't programming, but planning, and we hadn't really done much with it. I apparently did fine though, I got 35/35 on the final, and an A in the class. Overall the classes were good. Accounting was harder than I would have thought it would be. There were a couple concepts that I didn't really completely understand, which hurt my exam grades, but I still did fine, I think I averaged 95 or so in the class. The other class was psychology, which was ok. I didn't especially like the text, but the information was generally interesting. I did learn a few things, which is always good. There was a lot of biology information in it, focusing on that aspect of why people behave as they do. I thought the book focused too much on the biology, but that's ok.
This quarter I'm taking the last C++ class, learning about the more advanced aspects of object oriented programming. I'm looking forward to it for the most part, it's stuff I've wanted to know about for a long time. I'm not sure that the book is going to explain it especially clearly, but we'll see. I'm also taking the first english and humanities classes that I have to take. The english class is going to be pretty boring, learning about sentence structure and stuff like that. There' s a whole chapter on the comma. Exciting stuff. The humanities class will be a little more interesting, and probably the one I'll have to focus on the most. There's a lot of discussion involved, and it will be hard to find the time to do it in a timely manner. I usually do everything on the weekends, but the way we have to do the discussion means I have to post much earlier so that I can get responses to what I have said, so I can't wait until I have time on the weekened to do it. As long as I do the reading early I'll be ok I think, but it's hard to be interested in working on it when I get home late from work. The class covers a long period of time and all over the world, talking mostly about the art of each period.
The english class also requires writing journal entries, so I think I'll post them on here. It'll give me something to put up, and I can work on it from anywhere if they are on here. This week we're supposed to do 3, and I assume that will be true every week. I should have done them much earlier, now I have to do 3 today, which probably isn't really the point, but that's ok, I haven't had time until now to do it. I still don't know what I'm going to write about, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. I still have to do a short thing (3 paragraphs) about "why the humanities" for, surprisingly enough, the humanities class, which I'll also post on here.
I don't think there's much else new here. Work is basically the same, with a few additional duties than I had last time I wrote. I can pretty much fill 40 hours/week now, rather than splitting the time between the office and fulfillment, so that's good. Supposedly they may try to reduce the number of temps and hire some of them in-house, so that would be good, as long as I'm one of the ones kept. :) I'm sure I would be, they can't eliminate my position unless something else changes, so my job is safe. We went to Maine a couple times since I wrote last, but Sabrina talked about that on her blog.
I guess I'll try to work on my school stuff.
I've been thinking lately about my lack of social skills, and how I behave around different groups of people. It's not a straightforward topic, so I thought I'd write some thoughts down so I can look at it later.
The biggest thing that comes to mind is that many people, myself included, behave differently depending on where they are, and who they are with. There's a term for it, but I can't think of it offhand. Some people are pretty much the same all the time: either always outgoing, or always extremely shy. It doesn't seem like people outside those two are as consistent in their behavior. I've always thought of myself as being shy, and so do most people who know me. I've never made many friends, nor have I felt the need to have many. The people who I consider friends are very important to me though, and I don't take it lightly. I don't really have "casual" friends.
<aside> I'm not sure I've ever made a friend in my life. Everyone who has become a friend made the first effort to know me, not the other way around. Well, maybe one friendship was initiated by me.</aside>
There are two sides though: Work and Not-Work. At work I am a very different person than I am outside of work. I'm not entirely sure why, but I do consider it a very different situation. For one thing, I don't have much choice about who I spend time with at work. It is also very casual, I have no expectations of actual friendship with anyone, they are coworkers, and that is its own category. I'm always well liked at work, and am friendly with almost everyone. I'm not outgoing certainly, but I don't think most people at work would think I was so introverted at home. On the other hand, nobody anywhere I ever worked ever really tried to be friends with me either. I'm not included in any out of work socialization plans, and don't talk about things that aren't work related.
Outside work, I don't socialize at all. I don't go out like some people. I don't have any interest in going to clubs, or going dancing, or whatever else people do. I like movies, but that isn't a social activity, you go and sit with or without someone else, and quietly watch the movie. I like to watch peoplewithout interacting with them. It's always interesting to see people at the mall, or parks, or fairs, or wherever. I don't have any interest in talking to them though.
Probably one significant reason for the way I am, is that I am very uncomfortable with situations that are unfamiliar to me. I don't like going somewhere new, or meeting new people, or anything like that. If I'm going somewhere, I want directions. I don't like to be lost on the way, or just going for a random drive. Partly, I think very logically, and have a hard time with doing things at random. If I was going for a random drive, I'd still have to have somewhere in mind to go, and know how I was going to get there. It isn't random anymore!
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (which has an online version) considers me to be an INTP which seems to describe me pretty well. Actually, re-reading it, it probably describes me better than I could ever describe myself. A much shorter and more general description is accurate as well. I sometimes test as an INTJ which is also accurate. The differences are fairly small, since the INT covers the more dominant characteristics.
More thoughts later.. or maybe not.
It's fascinating to see what searches will bring up your site. I hadn't realized until today that I could see the statistics for what search terms were used by people to visit this site. I knew you could find the referrers and what domains people come from, but until recently I wasn't listed in any of the search engines so I never saw what terms came up. Not too surprisingly, several of the searches came from looking for broccoli. I had a couple hits from people searching for Olive Garden's garlic-herb chicken con broccoli, which is what I usually get when I go there, and there are several from people looking for information on the Trek 7500, which I bought last summer. I didn't think anyone that I didn't know ever came across the site, but it makes sense that once it was indexed by google and other search engines, it would come up. I still don't have enough traffic to have more than one hit for earch search, but it is still interesting.
I remember back when people were trying to be careful about what personal information they put on line, in fear of net-stalkers, or other people knowing too much about them. Now that's what blogs are for. People share the details of their life with complete strangers that they wouldn't tell their close friends. I think it is good in many ways, very cathartic. Of course, there is still the danger of people becoming obsessed with someone they met over the net, but that's a problem anyway, I never thought it was worse because of the internet or something stilly like that. How is it different than randomly following someone you see in a park? It's much less dangerous in many ways. True, the internet makes some information that should be private a little easier to get than it used to (like social security numbers or drivers license information), but that was available for the right price anyway if you were really trying to get it.
If you are interested in sharing the little details of your life with the rest of the world, then why not? Some of the little things shared can be helpful to other people, like reviews of a bike, or descriptions of restaurants and their dinner offerings. I think it is useful to be able to see what real people think about things, rather than just professional reviews. Both are useful, but if you find someone that seems to have similar interests, you may value their opinion more than what you find in Consumer Reports or some other publication.
It's cold out there today, and going to be colder tonight. The wind chill is something like -15 here, which is cold enough, but I saw it was -30 or colder in Bangor, ME, so I'm glad I'm not still there. Of course, if you stay inside it isn't nearly as bad, but even just going out to the car is hard to work up to.
The quarter is pretty much finished at work, I spent 7 or 8 days working second shift as a shift-lead so that was interesting. It went pretty well, and we got alot done. Second shift did much more than first shift, and third shift was as useless as always. We keep trying to convince them not to have one and the upper management keeps insisting on it. It'd be better to do 2 10 hour shifts instead of 3 of 8 hours. Maybe next quarter they'll notice that nothing got done overnight this time, but I'm not holding my breath. That's only true for fulfillment, post-production and printing should have a 3rd shift, but that's just machine operation.
Since I was gone for a week I got behind on my other work doing postage reconciliation, but today I got caught up, so it didn't take nearly as long as last time. Cindy had taken some home with her to do last weekend and that made a huge difference. I finished around noon and came home early so I could bring Sabrina to work. I stopped at the library on the way home too, but didn't find anything good to read.
This is week 2 of my second semester at Strayer. I'm taking accounting, C++, and psychology. So far I think accounting is going to give the most trouble,. Some of the things that are done don't make much sense to me at all, as far as what is considered a "debit" and what is a "credit." I'll figure it out I guess. The other classes should be ok. I almost messed up the first week of C++ because I wasn't paying attention. The other classes have all had "week 1" "week 2" etc, and this one had "chapter 1" "chapter 2" etc, and so I had done "chapter 1" instead of both 1 and 2. I noticed at about 10:30pm sunday and had to do everything in an hour and a half. Luckily the assigment was easy so it didn't take long. In the accounting class for some reason they couldn't open my homework, I think i have a newer version of Office than they do and they couldn't open the spreadsheet. I resubmitted it as an older version, but I don't know if that worked better or not. I still got credit for the homework since it is just graded as either submitted or not, rather than a real grade, so good enough for now.
Which reminds me, I got all A's last semester, yeehaw. I got a letter saying that I'm on the "president's list" because of it. Oooh. Hopefully I can keep up the grades. It was a bad time for starting the class, since the first day of class was also the first day of the new quarter at Moore, so I was working 10-12 hour days for the whole week. I never got around to reading anything in advance either, so I had to do it all on Sunday. I've already started this week's stuff a little bit, so I won't be rushing at the end again, but I'll still have alot to do on sunday.
I think that's all that is new here. Maybe I'll update again in less than a month this time :)
I always mean to post more often, but just don't take the time to do it. It's hard when working full time and going to school full time. I'm on break from school right now, waiting for the next semester to start in January. I got all As for last quarter, so that was nice. The beginning of next quarter is going to be hard because the quarter-end at Moore is starting at the same time and I'm going to be working every day for 2 or 3 weeks probably, with no days off, along with the beginning of my new classes. I'm hoping to get some reading done before the semester starts so I just have to do assignments, but I'm not sure how far i'll get.
I've got a new job at work, which I guess I haven't mentioned. I'm doing "postage reconciliation" for the Verizon bills we send out. It's essentially matching up what the post office says we paid, with what bills were sent out, so that Verizon knows how much everything cost. It's mostly paper shuffling and entering data into a spreadsheet, but its not bad. I get a raise (which i haven't actually gotten yet) and get to sit all day instead of standing, so that's nice. It's supposed to be a half-time position, with the other half of the day spent doing what I always did, but so far I've had to spend all day doing it. When I started it took a few days to train, and the person that had been doing it had been out for a week, so I started out behind and have been slowly catching up ever since. Once it is caught up it'll only take a few hours each day to do. But of course now that I'm almost there, the quarter is coming up and we'lll probably fall behind again, since I won't be doing it at all. Hopefully the person I am doing it for will at least partially keep up while I'm gone.
I opened an account with UPromise to start saving a little money for school. Companies donate money when you shop with them once you've signed up and you can use it for school. Anyone can do it, but usually it is meant as a long-term plan when you have a kid for saving for their entire life. Any money helps though.
Last weekend we went to NH to see my sister and my father again, we did a quick trip for one night and left in the morning because it was going to snow. We almost got all the way back before it started, but not quite. It wasn't bad though. We got to do another early Christmas gift exchange and see everyone again, so that was fun.
I did my Christmas shopping for Sabrina yesterday, so that was fun. It was pretty busy out, but not really bad. The roads around shopping areas were very slow, and the parking lots were packed, but inside wasn't really too bad. They have so many people working that I didn't have to wait in line hardly at all anywhere. One place I was the only person in the line, and another the line just went really quickly. I'm glad I'm done now though, shopping this week would be hard.
That's about all that's new here I think. Happy holidays to everyone.
We're back from Maine. We were gone for about a week, and went to see my father in Bangor, and my mother in Eastport. It took about 6 hours to drive there and 7 back, which isn't too bad. We stopped a few times each way for food and rest stops. We stayed at the Country Inn again. We like it there, and it's fairly inexpensive and convenient. We had an early Christmas, so that we wouldn't have to drive in the snow. We probably won't go again until spring sometime, although we may go to New Hampshire to see my sister sometime around Christmas.
Before we left we went to a Barenaked Ladies concert, which was fun. We had fairly good seats, except that the people in the row in front of us spent half the show standing and/or dancing in front of us, so we couldn't see very well. Why is it that tall people are always in front of short people? We engjoyed it anyway, it was fun to see, and the music was good. The new CD is really good, and they played all the songs from it as well as some of the old ones. They're playing every song they've recorded at some point during the tour.
Work is much like it was before we left. Things are starting to rev up for the next quarter, so things are a little disorganized. They have to send out the quarter-end and year-end reports for a bunch of companies, like ING, Phoenix, and American Skandia. The quarter is busy enough, but the year-end is apparently huge, which isn't too surprising. We spent part of today moving all the supplies and setup for Verizon so that where it had been can be used to process ING stuff. It seemed silly to just move it all over, but it is a slightly bigger area, and instead of having 12 people work on Verizon, there will be 30 people working on ING in the same space. This quarter should be interesting, because I'm sure they're going to try to make themselves look good since Moore Wallace is being bought by RR Donnelley. They've already started trying to keep better track of people's work, and how long it takes, to become more efficient. It's about time too, there's alot that could be changed there for the better. I wish I had more say in what goes on, but surprisingly enough I don't. :) This coming quarter I'll be one of the leads, so I'll be somewhat in charge, but I'm not sure what of, or what I'll actually have to do. Hopefully I'll find out soon, so I can plan accordingly. We'll see though.
That's about all that's new here. Maybe I'll actually update again in less than a month.
I've been busy the last couple weeks. The quarter end at Moore made for some long weeks. Last week I worked 50 hours, and the week before I worked 72. This week will be back to normal, relatively speaking. Apparently they're not doing the A and B team anymore, but having a group of people there all week instead. So I may end up working 5 days/week rather than just 3. I don't especially want to work 5 days/week, but we'll see how it goes.
School is going fine, this is the last day of week 3. It's hard to find time to do class stuff when work takes 10 hours/day, plus another hour travel. By the time we get home and have dinner I'm ready for bed. Last week I did it all on Sunday, and this week I did it all Saturday and Sunday. I had read ahead last week so I wouldn't have to do as much but this time I had to do it all so it took longer. Hopefully I'll work a little less this week and can do more during the week rather than having to do 3 classes worth of work all at once. It took most of my free weekend to do it all, so I didn't get to do anything else. Not that I had any plans, but it would be nice to just relax for a bit.
We cheated on our diet and got pizza on thursday, so that was fun. At Moore they were giving pizza to everyone to celebrate the end of the quarterly stuff, so I was going to have pizza one way or another, so I waited until I got home and Sabrina and I went together. We also went to see Kill Bill. We both liked it, but it was certainly an odd movie. There will be a second one later finishing the story, so we'll be looking forward to that.
Not much else new here. We're still planning to go to Maine next month for a combination Thanksgiving and Christmas. We don't want to go when there is snow, so we're going early this year. It'll be too bad to not go for Christmas, but at least it will be another visit. It wasn't that long since we were there last, rather than waiting 6 months between visits.
Time flies, seems like I just wrote in here, but I guess I didn't. I've been working at Moore each weekend since I wrote last. Mostly I've been doing the manifesting, which is slightly more exciting than stuffing envelopes. We're going back tomorrow (a day earlier for the week) because they called and asked us to come in. The 1st is also the beginning of the big quarter-end project with them, so after this we'll probably be there every day for the next 2 weeks or so, if it's anything like last time. Kelly hasn't actually called to tell us what is going on with it, I think they think they already told us :) Tomorrow won't be the quarter-end stuff yet though, I think we're just getting the other stuff done so they can concentrate on the quarter. It should be a long couple weeks between that and school, but that's ok.
The next quarter for Strayer was supposed to start on the 22nd, but was delayed a week because of the hurricane. The school is in the middle of where it hit the hardest, so they waited a week to start classes so people could recover. I did all of the first week's stuff then anyway, because I knew the quarter end stuff for Moore was coming and I don't want to have to do all my school work and also work every day any more than I had to. I did all the reading for next week today too, so all I'll have to do is watch the lectures and do homework. That's a fair amount as it is, but not too bad. At least I can spread it out over the whole week instead of having to do it at specific times. I would have done more already, but the assignments aren't posted in advance for any of the classes, so I can't do it early. Oh well.
So far the classes seem ok. The C++ class I'm taking seems to have a nice professor, so that's good. The networking class has a good one too. The business class is much more dry, there's no discussion, just reading and lectures, then quizes to take on each week's material. Very dull, but easy enough. The other two classes have more discussion involved, and feedback from the professors, which is nice. I'm not big on interaction in general, but it's nice to have at least some feedback on what you are doing. I just wish the stuff was posted in advance so I could work ahead some. I know what the reading will be for all of them each week, but nothing else.
We went for a walk in Penwood State Park today. It took us almost 2 hours to walk around the main loop, but it was a nice day for it. We stopped here and there to take pictures and were generally strolling. Sabrina had the day off too so it was nice to do something before I was working non-stop for a couple weeks. We won't see much of eachother until it's over with both of us working different times. It was a good day for a walk, nice and cool and sunny. You can certainly tell that fall is coming. Some of the trees are changing here, but not many so far. We'll have to go again when there's more foliage to look at.
We went to the casino last weekend too, which was fun. We didn't get back until almost 3am I think, after leaving around 7pm. We stopped for dinner on the way, then spent the rest of the night wandering around and playing slots and video poker. We had a good night again, after 2 big losing nights. We ended up with $3 more than we started with, so we were happy. Sometime we'll have to stay for the night, but it's pretty expensive. I'm not excited about spending $200 to stay there when it's only an hour from home or so. It'll still be fun sometime though, just for the experience of staying all night in a casino.
The only other thing new is that Sabrina got tickets to go see Barenaked Ladies at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford. That'll be fun, I like the group alot, and didn't realize they were even going on tour again. Sabrina had heard about it on the radio. The show is already sold-out, so we were lucky to get tickets. Sabrina bought them online about an hour and a half after they went on sale and within about an hour after that it was already almost impossible to get 2 tickets together. That'll be November 13th, and we'll probably head to Maine the next day for an early Thanksgiving. We want to avoid traffic and bad weather as much as possible, so we're going early. It'll be a big week for us :)
If anyone is interested in being notifed via email when I actually get around to posting on here, let me know. I can set it up to automatically email whenever I add a post. Either email me, or post a comment on here saying you want to know. :)
My class finished on sunday, and I ended up with a 98.6 average. Not too bad, but I had hoped to have a perfect score on my final, in which case I would've rounded up to a 100 average :) That's ok though. I don't know what I missed on the final, he didn't post any comments, just the grade. I probably won't ever know, but it doesn't really matter, I probably just missed something in the directions rather than getting anything wrong. My next round of classes starts on monday, and that'll take quite a bit more work than the single class I just finished. Hopefully they'll go ok. I'm looking forward to seeing what the setup is for them, they're not always the same as far as what is required and what assignments will be.
Today was the first day of the second week at Moore. It was pretty uninteresting, and much like it always is. We stuffed verizon bills for a few hours, then started doing the Manifesting for what was done. We were there until 3 instead of 2:30, then had to wait for a cab to pick us up to bring us home, since all the cars were in use for a change. Usually we can work something out for rides, but we couldn't today. As it turned out, everyone beat us home so we could've gotten a ride afterall. Figures :) We might need to take the cab again tomorrow but I'm not sure.
Last week we sorta got a promotion at Moore. We started helping with the Manifesting for the stuff being sent out, and its considered a higher-skilled job or something, so we should start getting another $.50/hr. Yeehaw. Better than nothing, but not a huge amount of money either. All it is is going through the stuff that is done and bundling it for the mail. It gets grouped according to zip code or some such, wrapped in rubber bands, then put in the post office plastic crates. There's a list with each job that says which goes in each bin, so it isn't exactly hard. You just have to make sure everything is there and in the correct sequence, or it's a pain to follow the list. In theory everyone would be doing that as they go, but clearly some people don't pay much attention. Frequently the address isn't showing at all, or there are 2 in an envelope so one is missing, etc, and we have to fix them as we go. Overall it's a pretty easy job, but we end up standing up to do that rather than sitting for the envelope stuffing :) I don't mind though, and working 3 days/week works for me.
Finally finished the job at TransAmerica. It was somewhat interesting, but after a while doing nothing but make copies gets pretty dull. We ended up doing close to 100,000 copies total, in a little under 12 days. We finished around 1pm on tuesday and then had just a few loose ends to copy after that, and were out at about 2:45 or so. It was a nice enough place to work, but tiring to stand all day and make small motions. It took a fair amount of concentration too, to make sure that you got the originals and copies exactly the same, including staples, paperclips, folders, etc. I won't really miss it, but it was nice to not have to be there until 9am too.
On the way out after we finished, we stopped in Kelly's office to turn in our time sheets, and they asked if we could work at Moore again this weekend. I said I couldn't today, but was free friday and saturday, but they said at first that they just wanted all 3 days. So Sabrina's father did it today, and while he was there they said that if I wanted to work friday and saturday I could. I guess I will, although I was looking forward to having the weekend off. Not that I'm doing anything the rest of the week, but that's not the point :)
Apparently Moore decided to try to keep temps going all the time, with two teams, the highly original A and B teams. Team A is working monday, tuesday, and wednesday, and Team B is working thursday, friday, and saturday, and both teams work 1 sunday/month. Kelly asked if we could both do team B for the rest of the month, so we will. The first week of October or so is the quarter end for Moore, and we'll be there for another 2 week or whatever of non-stop work like we did at the end of last quarter. They send out the quarterly statements for several investment companies and have to have the extra help to get it all done on time, so they have over 100 temps come in just for those couple weeks to work, then send everyone back home. After that, in theory, we'll go back to being the B Team and working 3 days/week.
It works out fairly well for me, since I'll be starting the next quarter at Strayer on September 22nd. I'll have 3 days of work, and 4 days to do my classes each week. Plus we'll be done at Moore by 2 or so each day (except for the quarter end) and so I'll have most of the days then too if I need them for something. The thing I'm vaguely worried about is that saying that I'll do this on an on-going basis may mean they won't give me other jobs that would pay better. Moore isn't exactly known for being reliable, some weeks I may work 3 full days, and others it may be just 1 or 2 or none. I don't like being tied to being essentially on-call 3 days/week and also prevented from taking better jobs. If they offered more money, that'd be different, but I'd rather take better paying jobs less frequently and do some different stuff, and hopefully stuff more interesting, than stuff envelopes for crap money with no commitment by them. I may talk to the people at Kelly and see what they have to say, I don't know if I'll be excluded from other job offers because of this or not, but would like to know before I do it too long. It'll be good through the quarter end job, but after that I may not want to do it.
I got the last book for my classes this fall. It's a book on C++ programming, and its used for 3 different classes, so at least I get my money's worth. I'm looking forward to the class, I've wanted to do more C++ programming for a while, but haven't had any reason to. The book is pretty much the standard book for a college programming class, and I've wanted it for a couple years now, so I'm glad I finally have it. It'll be interesting to see how much the class I'm taking covers, if the book covers 3 courses. It is a big book, but not that big.
I started the 7 day job at TransAmerica yesterday. It's copying giant files for an audit that they are doing, or something like that. The files are pretty big, and have a bunch of staples, and paperclips, and they are in other folders, or punched and inserted into folders with big metal fasteners. We have to make exact copies of the original, including how they are clipped etc, and put back the original exactly like it was. It's a big pain to do, but it could be worse. After a year at Kinko's it isn't bad. The copiers they have are nice enough, so that helps. I can't remember what model it is, but its something like the Ricoh Aficio 1055. I know it's a Ricoh Aficio, but don't remember the exact model. I'm not sure if we'll finish the job in just 7 days, they are pretty big and it is slow going. There are only around 60 to do, but I've only done 5.5 or so I think., in 2 days. They said yesterday it might take a couple more days than they thought. I don't think they expected the files to be quite as huge as they are. Some are much smaller than others, but they still take a long time. The people are all nice though, and they have free soda in the break room, so it's a good enough job.
We went to Boston on sunday as planned. We went to a Thai restaraunt that was really good, and then to the Museum of Science. It was nice to see my sister and Gabe again, it's been quite a while. We may go up in the next weekend or so depending on how plans work out because my father will be visiting for the holiday weekend. I don't know if we'll be able to go or not though. Sabrina and I made a stop at Trader Joe's before we came home, and got a bunch of stuff. We got some atkin's friendly cookies, and gummy bears, and bars. They had brands of bars that we hadn't seen anywhere else, so we tried them out. They were ok, but not really great. We also got some Macadamia nuts, so I tried one of those today. I've never really liked nuts much, except peanuts, but we had gotten some mixed nuts from Wal-Mart and those have been fine, and included macadamias. I don't remember the last time I ate anything that tasted so nasty to me. I didn't spit it out, but it was a close thing. At least I won't waste calories eating them. :)
I didn't mention it yesterday, but Kelly called (yes, again) and wanted us to work at Moore today and tomorrow. So we got up bright and early and worked from 6:30am to 2:30pm today, and we're going to work 7-3pm or so tomorrow. It's easy money, so we don't mind, even if it does mean waking up rather early. I didn't get much sleep last night since I had to get up at 5, and hadn't been really expecting to so I had slept late yesterday, and didn't feel tired 'till after midnight. I'm getting tired now, so I'll have to go to bed fairly soon so I'm awake for work tomorrow.
I can't go to bed at the moment because we're trying out the bread machine. We got some atkins friendly bread machine mix and wanted to try it out. We got three kinds, wheat, white, and rye. We're doing the wheat tonight. I've never used a bread machine before, so it's fun to try. I've had bread from bread machines before, but I wasn't the one making it. When I lived in Ohio Debby had one and it comitted suicide. It was running and the vibrations made it walk over to the edge of the counter and fall off. It made quite a mess so they had to get a new one.
Sunday we're planning to go to Boston. I have no idea what we'll do there, but hopefully we can find something to do, and somewhere to eat that is diet-friendly. We weren't doing atkins at all while we were there, so we didn't look for anywhere to eat that worked with it at the time. It's hard to eat out at most restaurants when you can't have carbs or sugar. We've managed here ok, but I don't know what to do there. I'm sure we'll find something.
So Kelly calls this morning, and surprise surprise, the job I'm doing isn't starting thursday. Apparently the person bringing the stuff that we are supposed to be copying is flying in, and won't be in until this weekend, so we are starting monday instead. It's still supposed to be 7 days of work, and at least we're still doing it at all, but it's not exactly a surprise that things changed. They also said now that sneakers are ok, where they had said no sneakers the other day. That's good for me though, I wasn't really looking forward to wearing real shoes all day. And a polo shirt and khakis are fine, so that's much better than a dress shirt. We'll see what happens over the weekend now...
I got one of my books for my fall classes at Strayer today. I ordered two from Strayer's online bookstore, and am getting the other one from Amazon. Amazon didn't have the other 2 or I would've gotten all 3 from them. One of the two I got from the bookstore was backordered and shipped today (For my Networking class) and the one for my Business class came today. So one came today, one shipped today, and one was ordered today. Pretty weird coincidence. The business book seems to cover quite a bit of stuff. I haven't read any of it yet, but I looked through the table of contents and flipped through a bit. It seems like it'll be ok, but it'll take some getting used to to be taking a class again. The database class I'm taking now doesn't really count since it is stuff I already know for the most part, taking something new will be much harder.
We went to the new 99 Restaurant that opened in Avon today. We were pretty much the first people there, so that was sorta fun. I assume other people had been there throughout the day since they opened at 11:30am and we ate at 4:30, but we seemed to be the only ones there when we went in. It filled in some right after we got there, but at first it was just us. The food was as good as we were used to, and the service was good, so they were off to a good start. I'm pretty sure they'll do well where they are, and we'll certainly go back again.
Well, I went to Kelly to take my evaluation exams for MS Office applications today. They went pretty well, about what I expected. Actually, they were easier than I thought they would be. I think the scoring had 3 levels (that's what I was told anyway), which go from basic, to proficient, to expert. I had been told that it was hard to get the expert rating because some of the stuff is either obscure, or had to be done the way they want, rather than the way people know how to do it.
For Office exams, they rate on office 97 and also Office 2000. I scored Proficient on both Powerpoint exams, and Expert for all the Excel and Word exams. I also took the Access exam, but that seemed to be scored differently, or I read what the person wrote down wrong. I got "ME" and have no idea what that means, but I only missed 1 question out of 25, so I assume it is some form of Expert. I also took 3 exams on data entry. The first was entering data that was incorrectly formatted, and making it correct in the entry, according to the specifications given. I got Expert on that too, as well as the regular data entry (alphanumeric). I only scored Proficient on the numeric (10-key) exam, but that's pretty good considering I rarely have to do it.
In other Kelly news, almost as soon as I walked through the door coming home from taking my evaluations, a different Kelly office called and offered a very short term job for Moore Printing again. This one is just one friday/saturday, and the following 3 saturdays in september. So I'll do that, it's pretty much just stuffing envelopes. I sorta liked working at Moore when we did over the summer, its a very low stress job, and somewhat entertaining to do. Once that is over, it'll be time for the quarterly big job for Moore, so I'll probably be doing that too. Sabrina's father will be doing all the Moore stuff too, so we can go together.
About half an hour after that job, they called again with a different job. This one is just 7 days (this thursday and friday, then the following monday-friday), at TransAmerica. It's a pretty easy job too, just making copies of files all day. It's alot of copying, but after working at Kinko's for year, I'm pretty sure I can manage :) There were 2 openings for that and I got first dibs on it, so that was nice.
After all that, I went for a bike ride, for the first time in almost 2 weeks. It was a really good ride, my highest average speed so far. I was surprised after not doing it for so long. It was a really nice day and I was glad I got to go again. When I got home, I found out that Kelly had called AGAIN, but this time for Sabrina's father, offering him the second position at TransAmerica. They could've saved time and effort by just asking when they talked to me the first time :) But that's ok. So we'll both be doing that one too. It'll be slightly inconvenient for transportation, but not too bad. It just makes alot of people dropping eachother off and picking them up. It's actually better for both of us to be doing it than just one of us, as far as rides go.
Well, I went to Kelly today to do paperwork for the job I thought I was going to be doing for them, and found out that I couldn't do it. The company is located at the airport and security is really tight there. They are insisting that anyone that works for them has their own transportation because they can't have people waiting around the building for rides. And since I have no car and would be getting a ride every day, that means I couldn't do it. Oh well, something else will come up.
Monday I'm going to go back to Kelly and take some skill tests for Microsoft Office, and data entry, and stuff like that. Once that is on file I can be considered for more jobs, and better paying jobs, so that'll be good. I'm pretty sure I can get at least mid-level competence on all the office applications, and possibly expert on a few of them. We'll see how the exams go. I don't know exactly what they cover or anything so it's hard to say for sure. I'm taking my class in Access, and have gone through the whole text book, so I should do pretty well on that, and I'm pretty good with Word too. I'm not as good at advanced Excel or Powerpoint, but not bad either.
Today's my birthday. We're going out for dinner, but otherwise don't have any plans. Sabrina is working until 4:30, and we'll probably go to Outback for dinner when she gets home. Too bad we're still on the atkin's diet, we can't get a big appetizer and dessert, but that's ok, the food is good.
In other news, I may have a long-term job through Kelly Services. They called today and had a position at Allstate that could last a year or more. It seems like it'll be fairly easy, it's at one of their warehouse fascilities apparently, going through boxes of files and finding out what is being kept and what isn't, and entering the current stuff into the computer. I'll find out in the morning more details about it, assuming that I do get the job. It's fairly likely I will, but you never know with Kelly, sometimes things change day to day.
The only other news is that I finally got a CT driver's license. The picture came out really good for a change. It didn't take long either, which is always a nice surprise from the DMV. My old one was still from WI, and expired on my birthday, so I had to get a new one. It's good for 7 years, so hopefully I won't have to do it again any time soon.
We're back from our trip to Maine, and have been for a little while now. We had a good time. We didn't leave CT until almost 2pm, so we got a pretty late start. We stopped a couple times, but not for long. I don't remember when we got there, but it was pretty late. When we got there, we went to the hotel and checked in. We were staying at the Country Inn at the Mall. We've stayed there before, and always like it. They have a good free continental breakfast, but with our diet we couldn't take advantage of it this time. You can get a 10% discount for asking for the Internet Discount, so that's nice too.
After we checked in we went to see my father. We had chicken and salad and at around talking after. It wasn't a very long visit since we got there so late, but it was nice. We only got to see him the one night because he was going to see my sister the next night.
The next day we went to the Bangor State Fair. We didn't do any rides, and didn't get to eat the fun food, so it wasn't as exciting as it sometimes is, but that's ok. We saw the exhibits and walked around. We did eat some sausage and peppers, which were good. And I won a stuffed dog playing one of the games, so that was a bonus. I didn't think I'd win at all, so it was a surprise to me. I thought Sabrina was ahead of me, but apparently not.
We also went to the City Forest which was right next to the hotel. It's a new set of nature trails that go around a bog out by the Bangor Mall. It was really nice. They have a new boardwalk that hadn't even had its grand opening yet when we went. We've got a bunch of pictures from it (mostly of the signs along the way). I got a sunburn on my neck because it was very sunny, but otherwise it was really nice.
We went to Eastport too, to see my mother. We were there much longer, but didn't really do a whole lot except sit around and enjoy the scenery. It was nice to go though, and we got to see my mother's new house. She has a view of the ocean again, from several parts of the house. The downstairs of the house is really open, it's basically just 2 huge rooms, so that's nice too. It was cool to go see the eagles nearby too. There are 3 mated pairs that live about half an hour away, right off a major road. It's strange to see them in their nests on giant poles right off the road. There's a little viewing platform to watch from with a free telescope, so you can see pretty well. I don't really need to repeat everything that we did there I suppose, you can read about it on Sabrina's blog.
The trip back was pretty quick. We ended up staying at the hotel in Bangor the night before we left. I was planning to just come back to CT from Eastport, but it's a really long drive, and it was supposed to be bad weather. We went to Bangor the night before so that we could get an earlier start the next day. We had also wanted to stop at the newSuper Walmart to get a few things for the trip back. They had some low carb icecream and we wanted to try it. We haven't seen it anywhere else, and it was pretty cheap. We got vanilla and chocolate with almonds, and both were really good. It's really good for the Atkin's diet if you are on it.
So now we're home, and Sabrina's back at work. I turned in my midterm for my class at Strayer before we left, and got 100% on it. So far I have a 100 average for the class. It's pretty easy, so far. We'll see how it goes in the fall when I take 3 classes. I'm a week ahead in the class right now, and have been trying to stay a little ahead. I assume the rest of the class will be much like it has been. There have been a few problems because I'm using a newer version of Access than the class is for, but I've figured out what was different. So far so good.
The Atkin's diet is going ok so far. I've lost 3-4 pounds since Thursday or so. I didn't really pay attention to what I weighed when I started, so I'm not sure exactly how much I've lost. It isn't too hard to stick to for now, but I certainly won't be staying on it for too long. I like pasta, bread and dessert too much to stay on a carb-free diet. Hopefully I can do it long enough to get to where I wanted to be, but if I don't loose weight quickly I won't bother sticking to it. If I keep up a pound/day I'll be done pretty quickly, but I doubt I will. I only have 8 days until I go to Maine, and I seriously doubt I"ll stay with it while we're gone. I can always go back to it after though, so I'm not worried about that.
Other than that, not much new. Sabrina's birthday is thursday, so we'll probably go out for dinner. I don't know what else we'll do. We were thinking about going to the casino, which is always fun.
Decided to start trying the Atkins diet today. Sabrina started a couple days ago, so we might as well do it together. It takes around 3 days to purge your body of stored sugar and carbs, and after that you should loose fairly quickly. It's a tough diet to stick with since there is so much that I like and can't eat with it, but I don't plan on doing it as a way of life. I've been doing slim-fast for a year now, and haven't lost anything for the last 3 months. I had lost 47 pounds at my best, but am down to 41 pounds now. I gained some back after going to St Paul, and haven't gotten any of it off since, and actually still gained a little back after that. I was hoping switching diets would help start things up again, I only want to loose around 15 more pounds. Even just another 10 would be ok, since that was my original goal. I'd like the extra if I can though. If I do manage to loose it, I doubt I'll stick with atkins. I have managed to eat fine with a relatively low-cal diet, and prefer that since I can eat more of what I like. We'll see how it goes though.
Sabrina and I went biking today. We were gone almost an hour, and went just under 10 miles. It's a fairly leisurely pace, but the longest ride either of us has done since we started. We were taking our time because neither of us has gone much lately. When I was doing my job for Kelly Services I didn't bike at all because I was gone all the time and was really tired after I got back. I didn't do much exercise at all while I was doing the job, now I have to get back into it again. And then I'll probably stop again when we go to Maine at the end of the month. Hopefully after that we get back we can get back to our diets and exercise.
I wasn't expecting the job to end so soon. We had been told it would be 19 days, but we only ended up doing it for 9 days or something like that. We put in quite a few hours, but it certainly wasn't as much as we expected. We were told on saturday to go home at noon, and not to come in on sunday, but we'd be back monday. But then monday they called and said tuesday, and tuesday they called and said we wouldn't be back at all. I'm not sure what the problem was, we had heard that they were having alot of production problems and were really far behind, but you'd think they would need people more after that, rather than less. Oh well, we made some quick money and it was pretty stress free. I don't know if we'll be asked to do it again next quarter or not. Since it ended early we never got to talk about it with them.
I did my second week's class today finally. It had to be done by sunday, so I had to finish by tomorrow. I also did most of the stuff for next week as long as I was at it. I'll still have to watch the slideshow presentation next week, but I wanted to wait until the class' week started on monday before doing it, since you have to sign in on the week of the class to get credit, rather than doing it alll at once. This week's lesson was almost interesting, talking about how to make queries in Access. I already know how to write out queries by hand, but this was talking about how to use the query wizard and datasheet view to do it, rather than writing out the sql for it by hand. I learned a couple things I didn't know already, so that's nice. So far the class seems fine. I like being able to do it whenever I want.
The job at Moore Wallace is going fine. We started the week off with very long days, from 6am to 5-7pm for the first 3 days. Yesterday and today they had cut down on how many people were there because there wasn't much work to do, but we still were invited to go. Sabrina's father and I are pretty much the quickest and most accurate people there, so they like to have us around. Today we were done at noon so we had most of the day free. I wasted it by falling asleep and not getting up until I had to get Sabrina from work, but it was nice to get a little sleep. We have Sunday, and most likely Monday, both off because they are having production problems. I don't really mind, the money would be nice, but I like the time off too. Originally they had said it would be for about 19 days straight, and that's hard to do for any job, let alone when you have to be there at 6am. I have to get up about 7 or 8 hours before I had been to go, so it's a bit of a change for me, and I"ve been going to bed pretty early to make up for it. I'm not tired at all while we're there because we keep busy, but once we get home I'm pretty much ready for bed.
I did get my first paycheck from it yesterday, so we wen't out tonight to Ninety Nine celebrate. I got steak tips, and Sabrina got fish and chips. Both were pretty good. They're going to open up a new one right next to the Michael's that she works at, so once that is open we'll probably eat there more. We've gone to a different one 3 times now I think, and it's nice, but it'll be better when we don't have to go quite as far. Yesterday we ate at Quiznos, which finally opened in West Hartford. We've been looking forward to it opening for a while now. We saw it being built into one of the strip malls a couple months ago and it finally opened a couple weeks ago. We didn't know it was open until this week, and so we went yesterday. I haven't been to one since I lived in Cleveland, but always liked it alot. They toast all the subs so its warm and the cheese is melted. They're really good, so we'll definately be going there again. One of the people that works there thought we had been there before, but we haven't. We suspect she worked at one of the other restaurants we frequent and had waited on us there and happened to remember, but it was weird to be asked. She seemed familiar to us too, but we don't know where from.
I did the rest of the stuff for my class today. I started it on Monday when the first class became available. There was a slideshow with sound to watch talking about the first chapter of the text book, and a quick example database to do some stuff to for homework. It was about as easy as you can get. The video was about an hour long, which isn't bad. It was rather uninformative if you actually read the book, but it is usefull to watch and see what the teacher considers important to know. You can also download the slides from the presentation, and the notes, so you have them while you watch/listen. I had them open and typed a few more things into them while it was playing so I would have them. Much easier than sitting in class and taking notes by hand. So far it's been a fine experience.
In other news, the job that I thought I would be doing for Kelly Services, and then didn't think I would, and then thought would on friday, I may be doing on thursday. :) It's at Moore Wallace, who does mailings for healthcare companies and other similar things. I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but I think it is basically stuffing envelopes for 8 hours/day. Not bad for $9.50/hr. Plus it includes a bunch of overtime. The only problem is that it is non-stop until the job is done, with no days off, so I'll be working on the 4th of July. Normally I wouldn't care, but Sabrina has a 4 day weekend, and now I'll be working from 2pm-10pm every day, so we can't really do anything. The job should be for about 16 days, so it'll be close to $1500. Sabrina's father and I are both doing it, but I don't know for sure if we'll be doing it starting tomorrow or not. We have to call in the morning and see if they actually want us there at 2 or not. If not, we may end up doing it for the 1st shift, 8am-3pm, starting friday. Or it could be something completely different, we don't know until we actually get a confirmation.
I think we're going to go to Maine for a week at the end of the month too. We're planning to go July 30th through August 5th, with 2 nights in Bangor, and the rest in Eastport, so I can see both my parents. We're also planning to go to the Bangor State Fair. I like to see the art exhibit that they have each year, and of course the food. I don't know if we'll do any rides or not, but those are sometimes fun too. We'll also get to eat at Dysart's, which is a truck stop that is open 24 hours/day and has great food. Breakfast is what's best there, but the other stuff is good too. They're apparently known for their baked beans, but I don't eat them so I wouldn't know. We were thinking about bringing our bikes with us since it's so nice to ride around there, but it might be too much of a hassel. It's hard to bring bikes on a long trip and bring them in everywhere, and worry about someone stealing them off the car or just having them fall off. We'll see though.
We went out biking again today. I've gone pretty much every day since I got my new bike, and most day's both Sabrina and I have gone for at least a little while. We went out to a reservoir today in West Hartford that has a 3 mile paved bike path around the water, which is very nice. It's very scenic, and wasn't really too crowded. There were a fair number of people, but spread out over the whole thing it isn't too bad.
We filmed a wedding for one of Sabrina's mother's friend's the other night. There was an official photographer as well, but she wanted a video of it too. It went fairly well. We got to the church about half an hour before the ceremony started to figure out where we should stand and where things were. They had a bagpiper out front when the bride arrived in the limo, and we filmed all that, and the bride walking down the isle, the ceremony, the recessional, etc. Then we went on to the reception, which was at A Villa Louisa in Bolton, CT. It was a nice enough place, specializing in receptions and catering. It had a fountain in the front entry way, and also a nice view. We got video of all the necessary stuff, like the wedidng party coming in, the toasts, cutting the cake, throwing the bouquet, etc.
The video came out better than I thought it would. I was worried there wouldn't be enough light for the camera. It's a digital video camera and they aren't really very good in low light. It was fairly good anyway, and it got better sound than I expected. I don't know if we'll try to edit the video at all or not. We didn't have to, but it's somewhat fun to do anyway, so we might try to put something together. It's pretty time consuming though, and will use up a ton of disk space on the computer, so we'll see.
My class at Strayer University starts tomorrow. It's on Access databases, so it shouldn't be too hard. I have read through the first part of the text book already and it isn't too difficult. I already know quite a bit about it, so I don't expect much trouble. I'm mostly doing it just to see if I like the school and the class format before comitting to getting a BS degree there. We'll see how it goes.
Well I bought a new bike today. It's a Trek 7500. I had originally been looking at the Trek 7200, then decided I'd really like the 7500fx, which is a fitness model. I am planning to ride mostly for exercise, instead of doing my jogging, so I thought that would be good. I read a lot of really good reviews for it too, so it seemed good. But it was much more expensive and I didn't know about paying so much for a bike. But Sabrina and I decided that for something that is going to last quite a while, it was worth spending the extra money for something that was really good, rather than just ok. So I had looked yesterday to see which was more like I wanted, and whether it seemed worth the extra money for a 7500fx, and decided it probably was. The components are quite a bit better, and its a more streamlined bike. I also like having the thumb-shifts much better than the grip-shifts, which narrowed it down to the 7500 and the 7500fx. We went back today to make a final decision and I rode both of them around the parking lot a few minutes, and liked the 7500 much better than the fx version. In theory the FX is better for exercise, but it depends on you riding on smooth roads. The 7500 is a little more all-terrain, and has wider tires for a better grip. It can be a little more work to push it around, but not so much that it is an issue. The other big feature of the 7500 is that it has a suspension fork, and suspension seat-post, which makes for a very smooth ride on less-smooth roads. Since I've spent 28 years looking at potholes in New England, that was a big selling point. It was a really big difference in the parking lot, and I could tell it would be nicer in the long-run to have the suspension.
The people at the store are really nice, the owner was there today and is who we were talking to. He obviously really likes the bikes and knows what he is talking about. He was pretty salesman-ish, but clearly enthusiastic, which is really nice. The place has been around for quite a while. They also stand behind Trek bikes for quality. They will give 10 years of service if anything goes wrong with it, except things like flat tires. Anything else they'll replace if it wears out or breaks. You don't even have to bring it back to them if you aren't around, if you have to get it fixed somewhere else you can just send them the receipt and they'll give you back the money you paid.
So of course it was raining once I got it and I haven't been able to really ride around yet, but I'll try it out tomorrow. I had to get my helmet out of storage too. I had gotten a new one a few years ago and never even took it out of the box. Sabrina brought her bike to get a tune-up and will get it back on wednesday, so we can both go riding together, which will be fun.
Not much new here. I picked more radishes from the garden, Sabrina's father has been eating the greens. Some of the radishes have been nice, and others are really scrawny. I'll be surprised if they get any better after this, they've been in there for quite a while, and I doubt they'll grow much more even now that it has thinned out some.
Monday Sabrina and I had a picnic up the street at a little semi-park where there is a historical marker. There are a couple benches and a picnic table looking over a big field. It was a nice enough spot. I found it while I was out jogging one day. Sabrina made lunch and brought it up when I finished my run. She made sandwiches and macaroni salad, and we also had some cherry's for dessert. She used some of the lettuce from my garden in the sandwich too, so that was nice. It's the first bit of it that we've tried. We saw a deer out in the middle of the field a bit before we left. It was too far away to see well, but it was there. I saw one yesterday when I was out jogging too, it crossed the street a ways ahead of me. And we saw one on the way back from dinner tonight at the side of the road. It's been a big week for wildlife I guess.
Only a couple weeks left until I start my glass at Strayer. Hopefully it'll go ok. I've read the first 3 or 4 sections of the text book, and it seems ok. It's a little bit basic, but it has good enough examples and does things in an ok order for learning. It's pretty much all a giant case-study, which is pretty much the only usefull way to learn a database. It just seems corny when you are reading it.
Well, we've been back a few days now, I just haven't taken the time to write an update. The trip to St Paul went pretty smoothly, except for when we actually got there and the directions I had for the hotel were wrong. I hadn't noticed that they went just to the street, rather than the hotel itself, and the street was too long to figure out which way to go. We managed to find it anyway, after driving around and following the directions that we had to the place that the graduation was, so it wasn't too big a deal.
St Paul is pretty nice. Where we were was very clean and well kept. Apparently in the last couple years they have done major work to redo downtown and just finished so we were seeing it very freshly done. It's a little weird because there are Peanut's characters all over the place as statues in front of buildings and in parks. Charles Shultz was born in St Paul, and the Mall of America has Camp Snoopy in it, which is a little amusement park type place. We didn't have time to go to any of the local attractions because we were only there for 2 nights and the one day we were there was taken up with the graduation. That's ok though, except for the mall there isn't much to do. Where we were downtown has pretty much nothing in it except business stuff. We couldn't find anywhere at all to eat, except in the hotel restaraunt. There was also a cafeteria style place down the street that had italian food and a couple other things, but nothing that interested us at all. The place in the hotel was nice though. The food was good, and the price was ok. It's an irish pub called The Liffey. I got a sandwhich both times we ate there, and it came with a ton of big french fries, so that was good. We also got dessert both nights, which was also good.
The trip there and back was uneventful. We stayed at two different Days Inns, which were both right off the highway and easy to find. We got Domino's Pizza both nights we stayed in Syracuse, NY, and when we were in Elkhart, IN, we went to a Chinese buffet that was right next to the hotel on the way there, and went to an all-night restaurant on the way back. It was the only thing open by the time we got there. It was really good though, we both got burgers and it came with soup to start with, which was good, and a big bowl of crackers to go with it. We got mozzarella sticks for an appatizer because we were really hungry by then, but then could only eat half the burger. The burgers also came with giant potato wedges with bacon and cheese on them. The chinese buffet was pretty standard, but was good, and inexpensive. The most surprising thing was that they had serve yourself pork tenderloin, and whole turkey, and roast, and ham.
In othe rnews, Sabrina picked some of my radishes for me, and they seem to be doing ok. Some of them were scrawny, but others grew really well. There are alot of big leaves on the mesclin mix too, but not really anything to harvest yet. The cucumbers may or may not be doing ok, the plant is going, but not very much. I'm not holding my breath for it.
We'll be leaving in a few hours to go to MN. I think I've got everything packed and ready to go. Sabrina had to go to a conference for work and should be back fairly soon, and then we'll leave sometime after that. I packed up her father's laptop and we're going to bring that with us too. I thought there would be a phone cord with it already, and so did her father, but it wasn't there so we had to dig around for one. We've got them all over the place when we don't want one, and couldn't find one at all today. I finally just took it from the back of my computer. I don't need it since we have the highspeed accesss now.
We had a huge storm yesterday, almost 4 inches of rain in an hour, and a lot of thunder and lightning and even some hail. The roads around town were flooded and cars were stuck and everything. I think it might've killed some of the stuff in the garden, but I'm not sure. It isn't looking so good, but once it dries out and has some sun it might be ok. The raddish seems ok, but the lettuce is pretty flattened. We'll see when we get back if it recovers.
I started packing for the trip to St. Paul today. We're leaving thursday evening sometime, and just driving 4 hours or so. The next two days are 8-10 hours of driving/day. We've got our hotels reserved, and got half off 4 of the 6 nights we're gone because we have the Entertainment Book. We were going to do the entertainment book for the other nights too, but the hotel I had picked out said we couldn't use it because they only honor it on sundays, even though the book says it is valid anytime. So we said nevermind and picked a different hotel completely. Now we're staying at the Holiday Inn in St. Paul, and Days Inn for the other nights., in Liverpool, NY and Elkhart, IN. The Holiday Inn is right next to River Center, where Chris' graduation is, so we can walk to it instead of trying to drive around the city and park etc. That's why we picked it.
My radishes are supposed to be done growing this Friday, so of course I'll be gone on the official harvest day. I took a look at them today and I don't think they're going to be done growing yet, the plants are huge, but the radishes themselves are pretty tiny still. Hopefully when we come back they'll be ready to eat. Some of the mesclin mix could probably be eaten right now, but I'm not going to pick any of it yet. It still has a long way to go before it finishes growing. The bibb lettuce on the other hand, is not doing so well. There are a few plants that are looking ok, but half of them are really tiny and clearly not going to grow well, if at all. They're just tiny splotches in the dirt. Oh well. I'm not sure about the cucumbers either. The plants are there, but they're hardly growing at all. There's no sign of vine or fruit at all so far, and it's half way to harvest. If something doesn't happen soon I'm going to have to give up on them. Overall something of a mediocre experience with the garden, but that's ok. Not bad for a first attempt.
I'm registered for my first class at Strayer now, and have started doing the financial aid stuff for september. I should get something soon saying I'm officially enrolled in the school. I ordered the book for the class I'm taking, which is about using databases. It should be a pretty dull class, but it'll be something anyway.
We went out to dinner tonight to celebrate going back to school. We went to the chinese buffet again, so that was good . I got pretty much the same stuff I always do, and it was as good as it ever is. I also found out that you can get fried icecream for dessert, which I didn't know. I was too full by the time I found out to get it though, so I'll have to do that next time.
Well, it appears that I'm going back to school. I applied to Strayer University, and managed to pass their vigorous screening process. As far as I can tell, if you graduated high school they'll let you in. They offer a BS in Computer Information Systems entirely online, and that's what I'm planning to do. I already sent in a FAFSA for financial aid starting in the fall, and will take my first class starting early June. I'm paying for that class without aid, so I can see if taking classes online works for me. I would think that it would be fine, but I don't want to commit to a full schedule without trying it first. I should get some credit for "life experience" and other classes I've taken before, and that'll make it a bit less than 4 years, but it's still a lot of time and money. Hopefully it'll be an ok school, and the classes will be interesting. The program actually looks slightly better than some of the other online degree programs. It's not as good as going to a brand named school, but it's a start. I can always transfer after a year or two and go somewhere else.
I also applied for a job at Bertucci's Brick Oven Pizzaria for a job as a server. Supposedly they'll call in a few days for an interview. I'm not holding my breath, but who knows. It'd be a bit weird for me to be a server, but I actually think I might like it ok. It's a nice restaurant, and the one I applied to seems nice enough. We've eaten there a couple times now and the service has been really good, and the staff seems to keep busy instead of standing around talking to eachother, which is a bonus. And the food is really good too. So as far as restaurants go, it seems like a good one to work at.
My garden is still going. The cucumbers are almost looking like they're going to do something soon, and of course the radishes are huge. The mesclin mix is looking pretty good too. Some of it is almost big enough to start picking and eating. It's only another couple weeks until it'll be time to pick the radishes already, so that's almost exciting.
One of the stray cats has a kitten now. It's really cute. You would think that there would have been more than one, but as far as we know there aren't any others. It is clearly not a new baby, it must be several weeks old. It explains why she's been so hungry lately, and so tired all the time. We were worried about it. We'd like to adopt it, but still don't really dare bring any other cats in the house, since we don't know how Bud would react. He's been an only cat for his entire life, and it might not be a good idea to bring a stray into the house. They're hard enough to take care of to begin with without another cat being jealous all the time.
Not much else new. The garden is still growing every day. The radishes are definately the best growing plants I have. The lettuce is generally doing well, but the bibb isn't doing great. I think I planted way too many seeds, there are quite a few plants, but there are a lot of clumps, rather than being spread out, and I think they're crowding eachother. They're still too small to thin out easily though, so I'm not sure what to do with them. The cucumbers are growing, but slowly. I don't think its really a problem, they seem healthy enough. They just take a long time to grow.
Not much new to talk about, but it's been a few days since I said anything, so I wanted to put at least a quick update in here.
I did finally thin out my radishes. I had to take out quite a few of them to get them spaced the way they should be, but it came out ok. I really shouldn't have planted so many to begin with, but I didn't realize how well they would grow. I could've planted some more later if I hadn't used all the seeds. That's ok though. The cucumbers are starting to really grow now, so that's good. I was worried for a while because they seemed to be getting such a slow start compared to the rest. They're still only half an inch tall or so, but they've got bigger leaves, and should grow fairly quickly now.
Not really anything else new here. I don't have any plans for the rest of the week so far. Sabrina isn't working again until Thursday, so we have a few days off to do something if we ware so inclined. I don't know what we'll do though.
Today was Sabrina's first day at her new job. We both got up early so I could drop her off, so I had an early start to the day for a change.
I didn't do much with all my time. I spent quality time on the treadmill, and otherwise just sat around until it was time to go back to get Sabrina. Tomorrow I plan to bring her again, and probably go to the library. Other than that, I have no plans. I really should thin out my garden, but I'm not sure if I'll do that tomorrow, or this weekend.
Today we decided to try going to Foxwoods Casino since we had tried Mohegan Sun the other day.
We were very dissapointed. It's the "largest resort casino in the world" but the place wasn't at all for us. We were off to a bad start when we couldn't figure out which parking garage we were supposed to go to, and once we were in one, it was like a maze. Just driving around in it was bad enough, but we couldn't figure out how to get out either. And the garage was practically full too, we must've been in there 15 minutes before we found a single empty spot to park in.
It didn't get much better after that. We finally got in the casino and started walking around, and just didn't like it at all. The decor is very tacky, and trying to look like a village in a way, with the shops inside looking like houses and stuff like that. There certainly are a huge number of slots, and alot of non-smoking areas, which was nice, but it was far too crowded. We couldn't believe how many people were there on a tuesday afternoon. Don't these people have jobs? We didn't even get around the whole place once before we decided to leave and go back to Mohegan Sun.
Once we were at Mohegan Sun again we wanted to get something for lunch, so we went to Todd English's Tuscany. It's a fairly fancy restaurant, and a bit pricy, but wasn't bad for lunch. The host looked at us like we shouldn't be there, but the servers were nice. The food was pretty good but not really anything spectacular. You are paying for ambiance as much as anything. The pasta is made right there, which is nice too, you can see the person making it. They have a very big wine selection too, but that didn't interest us any. It was a fine place, but not really our style and I doubt we'd go back again.
As far as gaming goes, we did our usual video poker (including Jacks or Better, and Double Bonus), and some various slot machines. We did well again. We started with $20 in quarters this time because that's what I had. I didn't have a $10 bill to use. We immediately set aside $10 so we wouldn't spend it, and divided the rest up between us. We had a couple good hands in Poker again, and each did at least one good run at the slots, and at one point we were probably up $20-25 or so for the day, but then hit a losing streak and ended up with $5 extra. So we were still up for the day, and are up around $30 for our two trips, so we're happy.
I'm sure we'll go to Mohegan Sun again, but definitely won't bother with Foxwoods.
Very slow day today. About the only thing of interest was that I went to the track again. I think I'll go tomorrow too, but don't know for sure yet. I did pretty good, I went 5 miles in a little less than an hour. 3 miles of that is all jogging, and the rest is walking. Walking on the track is far superior to using a treadmill. There wasn't anyone there today when I got there, and only one person came right before I left. It's the least crowded I have seen it so far. I thought there would be a bunch of people since it was so nice, but maybe it was too early. I got there around 3pm or so I think, maybe a little later. The weather has been really nice lately too, it was about 60 today, and a bit of a breeze. It'll be about the same tomorrow I think, so that'll be good.
We went to Holyoke today, to go to the Holyoke Mall. We just felt like going somewhere different and look around. We had gone there to get Sabrina's bench for the garden the other day, but didn't get to look around much. It's a very big mall, with a Target and Christmas Tree Shops in the mall, rather than stand-alone like most places. It's pretty nice, but nothing great. Lots of stores that we would never shop at, as usual. Malls aren't really good for shopping anymore, unless you are trendy and looking for clothes.
We ate at Kahunaville which was entertaining. It's themed like a jungle, sorta. There are fake trees all over the place and things like that, and every 20 minutes or so there is a water show with fountains tossing water to music. It was fun, in a silly sort of way. It's similar to the Rainforest Cafe or Bugaboo Creek. We both got sandwiches, which were very good. We also got an appetizer, which was ok, but a little small. They had some very good looking desserts in the case up front, but we didn't get one. We went to Mrs. Fields a while later and got something for dessert. Sabrina got a cookie, and I got a brownie, which were both very good. The drink was huge and a really good price, which is a nice change of pace. I hate spending alot of money for a small drink.
The only other place we really went in the mall was the Lindt store. We got a small assortment of different flavored truffles to try. I didn't even know they made some of them, like the mint. I tried that one and it was pretty good. I didn't try the others yet. It was almost worth the trip just for that. It was raining when we decided to leave, which makes the trip a little more difficult. Neither of us really likes to drive at night in the rain, but it wasn't too bad by the time we left. Earlier it had been raining really hard, and could see lightning through the mall skylights. Once we were on the road a little ways it was hardly raining at all though, so it was fine.
We wento to the Mohegan Sun casino yesterday. We didn't leave here until after 3pm, and it's about an hour to get there, so it was a bit of a late start. We didn't leave until around 11pm. I've never been to a casino so it was interesting to go. The place is huge, it has over 6000 slot machines in it, along with the usual table games, and a giant hotel, conference center, arena, shops, etc. One of the reasons we went was because yesterday was free scoop day at Ben and Jerry's icecream stores, and that was the nearest one. We had been talking about going for a few weeks now anyway, so it was a good time to go.
We had alot of fun. There are 2 diffent gaming areas with the shops in the middle, and an upstairs that is mostly just restaurants. We ate at Johnny Rockets, which is like a 50s style hamburger joint. They even give you 2 nickles to put in the little juke-box on the table. It plays overhead, rather than at the table, so it takes a while to get to your song. It was really good though.
We didn't play any of the table games. They're pretty expensive, and there aren't any that we really cared to play. We decided to dedicate $10 to playing slot machines and video-poker though. We ended up doing really well. We signed up for the little player's club card, which gives you bonus points every time you play something that you can redeem for food or whatever else. We didn't build up many points, but that's ok. The first thing we tried was one of the slot machines, and Sabrina won a few pulls in a row, so we had a good start. We did more slots off and on, but never really won anything else. We did do well at video poker though. We played for quite a while, and did well enough to start having more than we started with, so we cashed out with $12 before we went to eat. So from our $10, we made $2 more. Then after dinner we went back to play some more, and did even better. We lost for a while, but started winning again, and put aside $10 in quarters so we would know that we would at least break-even for the day, and used the leftovers to play more. I was on a losing streak for a while, and on my last $0.50 I got a really good hand, and won $12.50 back. After that I did pretty well for a while, and so did Sabrina (she also got a $12.50 hand) and by the time we called it quits, we had $33.25. So we had a profit of $25.25 once we took out the $10 we started with, and included the $2 we won earlier. We were both pretty pleased.
It's pretty unlikely that we would do so well repeatedly, but it's certainly a nice way to start off the first time we try going. The best you can hope for usually is to not-quite break even. We'll probably go again in a month or so, or go to the other casino, which is not far from this one, called Foxwoods.
The only other thing new is that we did manage to catch the stray cat we were after. We got him this afternoon and took him to the vet that the no-kill shelter said to go to. He's very friendly, and obviously likes people. He just rolled around on the ground with us and then went right in the carrier when we put it down with some tuna in it as a lure. We'll probably never know what happens to it, but hopefully he'll find a new home.
It's been a slow week. It rained quite a bit over the weekend though, and now I've got a bunch of sprouts in the garden. The rows are really full now. The cucumbers are the only things that haven't sprouted now. There may be one sprout so far, but it's hard to tell for sure. By the end of the week it should be going pretty well though. Pretty soon I'll have to start thining it out. I'm not really looking forward to that, but it won't be too bad.
We all went to the track yesterday to do laps. It's only the second time we've gone down, but it was another nice day so we decided to go. It's very different to run on a nice track, compared to a treadmill. It's hard to tell how fast you are going on the treadmill too, since they are never really calibrated correctly. I measured about 1mph faster on the track than the treadmill, and felt like I was doing less work. Having a breeze helps too, you don't get tired quite as quickly. Overall its nice to go to the track, but you never know until you get there if there will be a bunch of people, or the school using it or something.
Not much new today. I checked my garden and there's already one sprout from a radish. I don't see signs of anything else, but that's pretty quick, considering its less than a week since I planted. I also helped sabrina put together a bench we got at Target for her garden area. It's an iron fire-bench, meant to go with a set that has a fire pit, but we just liked the bench. It even came with its own tools with which to assemble it. It was still hard to put together because some of it was a very tight fit to get it into position, but it was ok, and looks nice now.
We've dropped immediate plans to bring the cat to the shelter because it hasn't been around at a time we could bring it. It's been by late at night, but that doesn't help any. We did see it briefly today, but it just ate and ran off again. The shelter called to see if it could give the spot to another cat, and we said yes. They said to just call anytime we manage to catch it, so we'll keep trying. It seems to be better in general, so hopefully it didn't suffer any permanent injury.
The last couple days has mainly consisted of eating Easter candy. We had chocolate of various sorts, ham, and hard boiled eggs. I certainly enjoyed it. The ham was really good, it was Corando, which was on sale this week in honor of Easter. We decorated the eggs Easter night, then started right in eating them. I had one with dinner tonight, with leftover ham, and also some leftover sausage from grilling the other night. We also had our egg hunt sunday afternoon, and got a bunch of candy out of that. Sabrina gave me a basket with some Mounds eggs (chocolate covered coconut) which are very good, and also a giant hollow chocolate egg from Nestle, which is made out of the same chocolate as a Crunch bar, complete with the crispy bits, filled with wrapped up mini-crunch bars. I ate about half of it today. I dont want to think of how many calories of junk food I have had the last couple days, but I'm still counting it in my holiday break, and pretending I'll go back to my diet after I finish the candy.
We're planning to try to bring one of the stray cats we've been feeding to a shelter. It got in a fight, or had an accident of some sort, and there's a chunk of fur missing from it's head, and a pretty deep open wound. There's a no-kill shelter that Sabrina called and said they would take it. We still have to catch it though, at a time when we can bring it to the vet that the shelter said to go to. So of course today it didn't come by at all during the day. We saw it around 10 tonight and gave it some food. Hopefully it'll be by again tomorrow during the day. It's a very friendly cat, and will come up to us to be pet and roll around on the ground in front of us, so we're pretty sure we can get it into a carrier. None of the other cats are really willing to let us touch them, so it's very unlikely we could bring them anywhere. If one of them is going to be injured, its good in a way it was that one since we can take care of it better than the others. I'm pretty sure someone will adopt it since it is so friendly. It's a good enough looking cat, and probably belonged to someone at some point and was abandoned for some reason. It's too willing to come to us to have been born wild. In any case, hopefully we'll get it to the vet tomorrow.
Today was a slow day. We dug out where Sabrina is going to put more plants in her garden. She has a plot in front of the house, next to the driveway. She has some seeds that she is going to put in the new area, the old garden had herbs that had already been started and she replanted. We're looking for some edging that will fit in there, but its hard because it is an odd shape and size. Once we do, we'll plant the seeds for more herbs.
We also tried out a new-ish icecream place on the way home from Home Depot today. It's right along the main road, and was open last summer, but we never went. The place is a big farm, that sells plants and flowers, and added icecream last year. They don't make their own icecream, but its a nice addition. It's pretty popular; there were always people there last summer, and there were quite a few there tonight, even though it wasn't really warm when we went. I got a sundae with Reece's Nightmare icecream, which is pretty much chocolate and peanutbutter, and also had the little Reece's candy (that looks like M&Ms) on it for a topping, and hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry. Sabrina got a sundae with coconut icecream, pistachio icecream, mashmallow topping, whipped cream, and no cherry. It was a pretty big sundae, even though it was the "regular" size, they have a bigger one too. We both liked it alot. I'm sure we'll go again later this sujmmer.
I grilled for dinner again tonight. I made hotdogs, sausage (2 packs), 6 turkey burgers, and two packs of kielbasa. It took a while, and we have a bunch of leftovers, but it came out really well. We'll eat the rest on monday most likely. I enjoy grilling, and am getting better at it. For the most part things don't get too singed. It can be hard with the grill we have because there's a hole in the burner so there's a giant flame in the middle where the propane is escaping, then the side the propane is supposed to go to doesn't generate much heat. I'm used to it now, and work around it. We're thinking about getting a new burner for it. You can get it at Wal-Mart for only $13 or so, which is much better than buying a new grill. I'm not completely sure the one they have will work with the grill we have here, but its worth a try.
For Easter festivities, we made hard-boiled eggs, but haven't decorated them yet. We'll make egg salad, and probably deviled eggs, later on. And we'll have our ham dinner, and probably an easter egg hunt, tomorrow. We thought about going to New York to have dinner with Sabrina's aunt and uncle, but decided not to. That much travel for a dinner tends to kill a holiday. It's about 3 hours each way, and Sabrina's mother has to work on Monday, so we'd have to be back really early sunday. We all thought it was better to just have Easter by ourselves.
The garden is finally done. Well, mostly done, there's still some leftover dirt that has to be cleaned up, and a big pile of rocks that has to go somewhere, but the garden itself is finished. Yesterday we put in the edging, the rest of the dirt, and the manure, and made a little rock-garden to put the pots of cucumbers on, and today I planted all the seeds.
I'm pretty happy with how it came out. It took quite a bit of work, and its not quite straight, but its still nice. Hopefully things will actually grow in it. The stray cats that we have certainly enjoy it, they either play in the dirt, or with the string that we have marking the rows. We want to find something to put out in it to keep the animals away. Supposedly things like chimes, or a pinwheel, will work fairly well for some animals, but we haven't found anything we liked. We spent quite a while the last couple days out shopping, looking for something to use and just for other general stuff. I got a 40lb set of weights for dumbells, so I can move up from the dinky weights we had around the house. That should hold me until I am sick of doing it. If I get to the point that I can do all my exercises with 20 pounds in each hand, I'll be happy. There's no reason to aim for more than that.
We've also been trying to find stuff for Easter. I'm not sure what we're going to do, if anything, other than eat ham and eggs. We still haven't put away the Christmas decorations yet, they're on the couch in the living room. At least the tree is gone finally.
Not much else new here. I just finished my daily exercise routine, and tomorrow is my day off. It's always weird to not do it when I do it the other 6 days each week. I feel like there's something else I should be doing. I haven't lost any weight this week, or even gained a little, because I didn't do as much exercises as I usually do (since I spent the time gardening) and ate much more than I usually do. We're counting it as a holiday week though, since Easter is coming, and will do better next week.
I didn't get as much done on the garden as I had hoped I would, but it's still going ok. I got around half the dirt put back in the hole, along with the straw lining underneith, and have the edging laid out where I want it. I still have to level off the ground under the edging and make it match up right, and then shore it up with more dirt, but the edging will be done after that.
We did go buy more soil, got 3 more bags, because the 3 I had barely made one layer in the hole. Once the new dirt was in (the first layer), we put more of the old stuff in to make it high enough for the edging. I still have to put in the rest of the dirt, and the new dirt, and the manure, once the edging is completely in place. We'll hopefully finish that tomorrow, and plant on Friday. I had hoped to be done today except for the planting because the weather was supposed to be bad tonight and tomorrow, but it ended up that it will be ok afterall, so I wasn't worried about it. It was much hotter than forcast today, so we didn't want to work too hard, and didn't start until around 4pm. We shopped first, then worked on the garden after. It was much better once we got back, and had started to get breezy, so it was almost pleasant again. It's much easier to put the dirt back in, than it was to take it out, but still not something to do when it is 80.
So far I'm pretty pleased with it. It looks good, and the soil we got is really nice. Very black and organic. We didn't take any pictures today, but will take more once the edging is in, and then more again when it is finished.
The last couple days have been pretty busy. It took both days to dig out the hole, and tomorrow we're going to spend the day filling it back in. It's amazing how rocky the ground is here. Not only are there alot of huge rocks, but there are hundreds of little ones. It looks like it could be fill from when the house was built, or the addition was built, and then buried later. We managed to get the bigger rocks out of it as we went, and we'll try to get some of the smaller ones out as we put it back in. It's just as well that we didn't get the tiller, it'd probably break trying to crush through the giant rocks here.
Our current plan is to fill in a fair amount of the dirt we dug up, on top of a layer of straw (which we've had since last summer when we got it for cat beds). Then we'll put down a layer of the new soil we got, and mix it together with the rake, then more of the old soil, and the new soil again, then later on put on the fertilizer, and more straw once the seeds are planted and growing a bit. That way the seeds will have nice soil to grow in, and we can cut down on the weeds with the straw. The edging will go in before the last of the old and new soil, so we can bury it as we go rather than dig a new trench after we fill it in. We'll probably have to buy a couple more bags of soil to get a good mix, we only have 3 bags right now, and that won't spread far. I don't want to end up with a big hump of soil in the yard either though.
I'm pretty happy with how it's going overall. It's been hard work to dig the big hole (it's over a foot deep, and 8 feet by 4 feet now). There are two giant piles of dirt on tarps, and another pile of rocks, to show for it. We took a couple more pictures today so everyone can see our progress. Hopefully it'll grow well and we'll have nice vegitables later this summer.
In other news, we tried a new Chinese buffet tonight. Royal Buffet, in Enfield. It's about half an hour away, but it was really good. Someone had told us it was good and we wanted to try it out. It's only $10.95 for dinner, and $1 for soda. It's got 6 buffet tables of food, 2 of which are almost all dessert items. There's a bunch of seafood, which doesn't do much for me, but it was good if you like that kind of thing. The usual Chinese items were all there, like Mongolian Beef, Chicken Teriaki, General Tso's Chicken, fried rice, white rice, wonton soup, hot and sour soup, etc etc. There's over 130 items every day. Plus they have a sushi bar, and a Mongolian bbq style thing, where you pick out your raw ingredients and they stir-fry it on the spot for you. We didn't bother with that since there was enough else to eat, but it's nice to have if you want it. I've never been good at picking good spices to go with my food, so I don't enjoy it as much as the prepared foods. The food was all really good, and they had a great selection. They even had self-serve prime-rib if you want it. For the price it was really good, and would be a bargain even if it cost more. Lunch is served 'till 3pm, and is only $6. We'll definately go back again sometime.
We went to two different Home Depot's today, but didn't end up with much to show for it. I got a pair of gloves to wear while working on the garden, and also 3 plastic pots for my cucumbers. I was hoping to get some edging for the garden, but couldn't find anything that I liked, and was inexpensive. It was rather disappointing. We also didn't get the soil and manure yet, because it was somewhat out of reach, and we didn't feel like finding someone to drag it down for us so close to closing. We were hoping it could all be delivered, since carrying 320 pounds of dirt and manure isn't our idea of a great time, but it costs $50 even just bringing it across town, so we'll have to do it ourselves. It won't be a big deal, but won't be a great time either.
So tomorrow, I guess we'll make one trip to get the dirt and stuff, and another trip to pickup the tiller. I still have to stake out where I'm going to put the garden, but hopefully that won't take too long. I never did find any stakes that I liked so I'll probably end up just using some thick sticks from the yard. There are plenty of them around, I just have to sharpen an end and stick them in the ground. I'm sure it won't be that easy, since nothing ever is, but one can hope.
The rain did stop when it was supposed to, so it was a pretty nice afternoon. It's pretty soggy out, but it was relatively warm. It should be about the same tomorrow, so that's good. It won't be so warm that we'll be broiling outside while working, but won't be cold either. The ground should be fairly soft after the rain and warm, so that'll make things easier too. Hopefully things will go more smoothly tomorrow than today.
Not much to talk about today. We bought some stuff for the forthcoming vegetable garden. We got a combination hoe and cultivator, with an extendable handle, which is pretty cool, and we also got some trellis type things that will go in the cucumber pots. We still need to buy pots, and some soil and fertilizer, but we're planning to do that tomorrow. And then on sunday we're going to rent a honda tiller from Home Depot to clear the land for my garden, and the herb garden sabrina is making. It's too bad that we don't have more land to do, because it would make it really easy. We don't really need a giant garden though.
I've got a little diagram for how big my garden will be, and how I'm going to divide it. Once it stops raining I'll stake it out so I can see what it'll look like, and where I have to run the tiller. That'll probably end up being on sunday, since it is supposed to rain part of tomorrow, and we have more shopping to do, which will take most of the day anyway. I have to decide what I am going to put around it too. I need some sort of edging for it, or something similar. I don't want my new soil to get washed away, and I don't want grass to grow into it any more than necessary. The less I have to weed it the better.
I can't decide if I want to plant everything at once, or do a little each week so I have stuff ripen at different times. It'd be nice to make it last longer, but at the same time the garden is so small it seems silly to plant it over time. I'll have to decide by monday or tuesday, whichever I end up planting the seeds.
I hope it all goes well. We'll have to take pictures of the construction as we go.
Tax season is here again. I actually did mine a few weeks ago. I filed the federal form online through Turbotax Online I couldn't e-file my state form because I was only a part-year resedent of Massachusettes, and you can't do that online. I already got my federal refund back, and am waiting for the state. Who knows how long that'll take, MA is really slow with their taxes. I was hoping that by doing it early I would get it back sooner, but who knows. I did ask for direct deposit, so at least I don't have to wait for a check. It is somewhat satisfying to get a check in the mail from the government, but I'd rather be surprised that my bank balance is higher than i expected.
I wouldn't mind paying taxes if they didn't make it so complicated. I don't see how the average person can do it without using an accountant. The government must make a fortune off of people that don't take advantage of all the deductions and other ways of reducing your taxes. It's definately worth having someone that knows what they are doing do your taxes for you. If you own a house, or make more than, say, $30k/year, you shouldn't do your own taxes. And really, people that make less than $12k or so shouldn't do their own either, because they may be eligable for the Earned Income Credit, and that's really hard to figure out correctly for most people. At the very least, you should use tax software such as TurboTax, or TaxCut, to do your taxes. That's much less expensive than a CPA, and can help save alot of money in the long run. It knows what to ask and how to figure it all out for you.
I've done all 3 (CPA, myself, and TurboTax) and I prefer TurboTax so far. I'll start using a CPA once I meet the requirements I said earlier. I know that I don't know enough to do a complex return as well as it could be done. I could certainly do a good job, but I'm not trained to get the most out of the tax code. I may not like the way it is setup, or the complexity, but I'll take advantage of it when I can.
A pretty slow day today. I bought some seeds to start a vegetable garden, as you may have seen on sabrina's blog. It'll take quite a bit of work to get it going, since we'll either have to clear a big chunk of land, or make a raised garden. 'm currently planning an 8ft x 4ft plot. I'm going to put in cucumbers (potted, not in the ground), radishes, a mesclun mix, and bibb lettuce. It'll be interesting to see how it goes, I've never tried to raise produce before. We also seem to have a bunny living in the backyard, so it'll probably eat all my lettuce.
Clearing the land is going to be the hard part. If it is too difficult, or the dirt isn't rich enough, I'll have to do the raised garden. Either way we'll have to buy a bunch of soil, and filling that big a space is going to take alot of soil. I don't know if we could even put that much in the car in one trip. I think it could be fun though, in a way. If everything grows well it'll be nice having fresh salad makings for the summer. It'll be a month or two before anything starts to be edible, but then the rest of the summer we can have stuff, if I plant it right.
I also found a pretty good site last night for learning various bits of web programming, such as html, xml, vbscript, javascript, asp, etc. It's hard to find sites that offer lessons for free, that aren't really poorly done. It's even harder to find one that has so many areas covered. I read through several of them, and will keep it in mind for later reference. I'd like to learn to do more with style sheets, and xml, but don't really have any usefull application in mind for it. Until I do, it's hard to just read through and get much out of it. I like to have a project to work on while I learn, rather than just examples and lessons. It's a worthwhile site to look at for anyone interested in learning any kind of online programming.
We sent to Olive Garden tonight to celebrate Sabrina losing 5 pounds on her diet. We got there pretty early, and so we didn't have to wait for a table, which is a nice change. I think it's only possible if you get there before 5pm, I've never been to an Olive Garden that wasn't crowded.
I ordered Garlic Herb Chicken con Broccoli, which is my current favorite dish. We had our salad and breadsticks, which were good as always. Then we got our main dishes, which appeared fine at first, but after the waiter left, I realized that there was no pasta on my plate! There was chicken, and broccoli, and sauce, but no orecchiettes (little pasta shaped similarly to hats). Up until that point, the waiter had been over to the table to make sure we didn't need anything pretty frequently, but of course now that I had something to say to him, he wasn't anywhere to be found. I ate what I had and got about half way through before he came back to see how we were doing. He was chagrined to see what the problem was, which is a good thing. There's nothing worse than a waiter that acts like you are putting them out because they messed up your food. Apparently someone else had ordered the same dinner but asked for extra broccoli and no pasta (why they would do that is beyond me). I'm not sure if I got theirs, or if the kitchen just made 2 that way and we both got the same thing. He didn't seem to think the other person's was wrong too, so its hard to say. The other person may have gotten mine afterwards and he hadn't found out yet.
In any case, he brought out a bowl of orecchiettes a few minutes later and I got to eat it with the other half of my chicken and broccoli, so there wasn't much harm done. It was fresh and hot too, so it reheated the rest of my plate, which is nice too. Chilly oil/cream sauce on pasta would be gross. As an added bonus, he gave us a free dessert to make up for the mistake, so we got the Black Tie Mousse Cake afterwards.
It's become a joke that no matter what I order at a restaurant, there will be something they don't have. This time I was missing pasta, but I can't remember how many times I've gone somewhere and they were missing something else. Usually they are completely out of it and have to make a substitution. It's happened frequently at Olive Garden too. I've ordered the same dish in the past, and had to substitute Alfredo Sauce instead of the garlic cream sauce one time, and bowties for orecchiette another time. I've most frequently had problems with broccoli for some reason. I don't know how many times I've gone somewhere and not been able to get it. One time I went to a restaurant/grill and they didn't have hamburgers! How can you not have hamburgers? They were right next to a supermarket too.
If it wasn't for the fact that I really like the food at Olive Garden, I don't think we would ever go. The service is always ok, but not great, and there seems to be too much staff with too little to do most of the time. But at the same time, there is always a huge wait while they stand around, even if there are tables open. Couldn't they stop yakking at eachother and clear a table? Waiting around must be part of the Italian experience.
Why is it so hard to get a restaurant with good food and good service? The food is generally good most places, but it's become a surprise when the service is anything better than mediocre, and usually closer to poor. We've frequently (especially in Boston) had almost hostile servers. They ask how you are, and if you don't speak up and act cheery, they get offended and look at you like you're retarded or something. Why do you have to be friends with the server? They're there to bring you food, not become your best friend.
Half the time they can't even do their job properly. They don't pay attention, don't bring your drinks and refills, are always slow with the bills (you'd think they'd want their money). You have to wait in a crowd to sit at a little table to have a hostile server bring overpriced food. At least most places we go give generous portions, so the price isn't too offensive. I do enjoy eating out.
Someday I should open my own restaurant and do things the way we like it. I realize that many people like the suckup service and false-cheeriness of servers that are at trendy restaurants, but I'd be much happier with service that is courteous, competent, and unobtrusive... without having to go to a restaurant that is $150/person for tiny food that is made to look pretty, and be trendy, rather than satisfying. They really shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
My favorite restaurant is Bugaboo Creek. You get plentiful food, and good service, at a reasonable price. The decor is a little weird, but despite that I like it. It's hard to believe that it is so hard to find somewhere to eat that fits our style. At least there is one place to go.
As I suspected, we only got a couple inches of snow, I'm not sure how much it actually is. It didn't start until late yesterday, and ended a few hours after midnight, but never was nearly as heavy as the weather people said it would be. I think it mostly went south of us. Schools were cancelled for nothing.
