Half way there

My air conditioner is working again. That helped my mood a lot. Our internet is also back up which is a blessing too.

My arthritis has been bad this week so I haven't done any stitching but I have managed to make 7 necklace fobs so far. Some I like and some I don't but maybe others will like them.

I'm finally starting to get excited about dinner on Friday and that's partially due to Angela car pooling with me. It's been a while since I've seen her and it's gonna be really good to see her again even if it's only for a short time. I need to get her baroque pattern out of my stash and give that back since I've finished stitching it.

I went shopping last night and DH came home with 3 new work outfits and I came home with lots of new books. It seemed like a fair deal to me.

Hope everyone is doing well and I can't wait to see many of you on Friday night at dinner.

If you need me, I'll be in this hole that I've crawled into

I had planned to spend the weekend relaxing. I should have known this would not happen.

Friday afternoon, the office manager took the afternoon off and the phones went crazy. I had a horridly busy afternoon at work which was made even more horrible by news that DH's lic was suspended for failure to appear for a speeding ticket back in 2003. DH spent the afternoon on the phone with the courthouse and the dmv. DMV says courthouse requested suspension cause we didn't appear in court. Courthouse says they didn't request the suspension cause we paid the ticket and therefore didn't need to appear in court. He did finally manage to get his license reinstated about 7pm Friday. Ironically enough, we would never have known that his license was suspended if we hadn't applied for additional life insurance in preperation for the house. The life company ran our driving record as part of it's underwriting process and they let us know about the suspension.

Saturday dawned with the air conditioner once again not working. I apparently declared my victory too soon. I called the apartment complex. The maintenance man came out and said that he needed help to fix it cause it was the unit in the apartment that wasn't working now. The unit inside has all the fans and stuff to actually push the cold air into the apartment. He said he would be back on Monday with help and they would get it fixed. The next discovery is that the internet wasn't working. DH spent quite a while on the phone with comcast and a tech will be coming out on Tuesday to fix that. We spent most of the day doing laundry cause DH's friend called in a favor that would put us cateloging comic books all day Sunday. I did manage to get quite a bit done on Cat's Eye though so I may actually finish that this week. I also took some time and went bead shopping with the necklace/scissor fob idea that Valerie proposed in mind. I got some wonderful beads and some good ideas and will also start beading this week so I can show Valerie what they look like on Friday and see what she says.

Sunday was spent sitting on the floor inputing comics into a spreadsheet. Very boring.

This morning, it was over 90 in the apartment. Dh finally gave in and stayed home with the cats to await the air conditioning repair man. Smokey was mouth breathing this morning cause he was so hot so DH didn't want to go to work cause he was worried about the cats. I was glad that he stayed home too. I actually suggested that he stay home before he discovered Smokey was having problems.

I'm now at work. I'm wishing that I wasn't but that's not an option. Hopefully before the end of the week, I will feel like crawling back out of the hole the weekend put me in.

I have won the air conditioning war!

I have been fighting with my apartment complex on many issues for quite some time now. As of the first week of August, I had won on all issues but the air conditioner. When I left for Nashville, they told me that it would be fixed in a couple of days.

I got home on Sunday night to an apartment that was 90 degrees at 8pm. I called and left a very nasty voicemail with the answering service. The poor girl at the answering service probably thought that I was crazy. I started the conversation with "I know this isn't your fault and I know that all you can do is take a message so please take this message word for word... It has been 3 months since my air conditioner broke. Our lease says that air conditioners will be repaired within 48 hours. If my air isn't fixed by noon tomorrow, I will be calling a professional air conditioning service and having them come out to repair the air and you WILL pay the bill since your maintenace staff is unable to fix it themselves" I thanked the girl for helping me after she read back the message.

Monday morning, I called the office at 10:06am to make sure they got the message and were doing something about it. The manager said that there was no need to call a professional and they had someone in my apartment right now.

DH went home at lunch to find that they had just finished installing a brand new air conditioning unit so I now have a cool apartment again! Yeah!

In the future, I believe I will start with the threats of professional repair people.
I can't wait to get out of there.

Vacation is over.

Let's see...
Friday 8/12
We were finishing up the packing in hopes of getting to bed early. We should have known that this wouldn't happen. The window on the Honda broke so DH wrestled with it for quite a while and I finished packing the suitcases. We finally went to bed around midnight.

Saturday 8/13
We got up at 5:30AM. First stop was to the shop to drop off the Honda so that they could fix the window while we were gone. Then we hit the road and started the drive. We pulled into Hughesville around 8:30PM and visited with Gram for an hour. We then headed to Williamsport to find a hotel only to find that it was little league playoffs and almost all of the hotels were full. We did finally find a room though.

Sunday 8/14
We arrived early at Gram's house to help her cook Sunday dinner. The rest of the family arrived around Noon. We had lunch and started to help clean up only to be dragged off to Aunt Net's (mom's twin sister) house across the street for a tour. Then back to Gram's where we spent the afternoon playing Dominoes with Gram, Aunt Net, Aunt Diana and cousin Michelle. I really only wanted to visit with Gram but seeing everyone else was nice. We left Hughesville around 9pm and then headed toward Philly. We stopped for the night around 10pm in the Poconos.

Monday 8/15
Got up around 7:30AM and finished the drive to the in-laws. We didn't actually get there till around Noon. We sat and talked for quite a while and I had a drink while I was there. When FIL got home around 4pm, we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. After dinner, we stopped at a gas station to get some gas and to get antacids cause my DH let me know after dinner that MIL had not washed her hands before putting the ice in my drink. This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't watched the dog lick all over her and jump all over her and the dog threw up too and she cleaned that up as well. Knowing that, it made me sick to think that I drank that.

Tuesday 8/16
We started the day off shopping for presents for Michael (DH's best friend from high school). We spent all day with him. We ended the evening with watching Sky High at the theatre. I really enjoyed this movie and would recommend you seeing it. It was a lot of fun and reminded me of the shows that I used to watch as a kid.

Wednesday 8/17
The day started off with shopping again but this time it was comic stores for DH and craft stores for me. Michael went along with us so he could spend some more time with DH. After the shopping, we headed toward Mike and Steen's house. We got there a little later than anticipated because we forgot about rush hour traffic. Once Mike got home, Steen started to fix dinner only to discover that she didn't have enough gas in the grill for barbeque chicken so we went out to dinner at Applebee's instead. After dinner we visited for a while and watched some TV and then went to sleep.

Thursday 8/18
We slept in till 10am. This was wonderful. Since all our friends were at work, we went off to explore comic shops and craft stores again. My stomach started to hurt though so DH took me back to the house and I visited with the dogs all afternoon while he continued with his comic shopping. He got lost twice and frustrated himself. I had a relaxing afternoon with some of the best behaved dogs I have ever seen. That night Anne & Nathanial and Brian joined us at Mike and Steen's for dinner and we had a wonderful time talking and catching up and then playing a card game that I can't remember the name of but I loved playing just for the confusing nature that kept you laughing. We stayed up till around Midnight and then everyone wandered home and we went to sleep.

Friday 8/19
We got up around 8am and visited for a while again. Anne then came over and the 5 of us headed over to a place called the works which was a big arcade like place. We had lots of fun walking around and playing games. Around 3PM we left and headed for Nashville for CATS (cross stitch show). We drove till 3AM and then finally gave in and stopped for the night.

Saturday 8/20
We got up at 7:30AM with only 4 hours sleep and hit the road again. We finally pulled into Nashville around 1PM but since we crossed a time zone it was only Noon on Nashville time. I went to the stitching lounge and met a few people. Then I went to lunch with 3 fellow stitchers and had a good afternoon. I then went back to the lounge and talked some more and then off to the stitching mart where I enjoyed looking at all the finished pieces and all the hand dyed fabric and floss. I was very good and spent less than $100 which for those of you who know me was VERY good. I then went back to the lounge and hung out and showed off some of my finished pieces. DH was wandering around Nashville exploring while I was with my stitching friends. He met back up with me to go to the group dinner at 7:30Pm though. We then headed back to the stitcher's lounge for more show and tell and talking. We finally went up to bed around 2am.

Sunday 8/21
Dh and I went back through the shopper's mart and made a wish list of stuff that I wanted. After that, we went back to the lounge and visited until around 2pm. We then went back to the mart to see if we had won any of the door prizes and I ended up picking up a beaded bracelet kit so that I could learn a beading technique that would be good for beaded necklaces that would attach to the scissor fobs for easy access. We then headed home. We got home around 8pm and called everyone to let them know we were home. We spent lots of time petting and reasuring the cats who were a little upset about not seeing us for 7 days.

Monday 8/22
I'm not at work. I didn't have anythign on my desk when I walked in. It was wonderful. This is the first time in 7 years that I've gone on vacation and not had a phone call from the office. It's also the first time that I didn't come back to a large stack of work that other people couldn't figure out how to do. I love the fact that when I walked in this morning all I had to do was answer phones. It was wonderful. Now to go catch up on everyone else's blogs that I haven't read since the 12th.

the pre-vacation work begins

We've started the picking up around the house. We've started the lists of things to take with us. The brakes are fixed. All our friends know we're coming. My gram is so excited she can hardly sit still. My mom keeps picking up stuff for gram so that I can take it to her (eye roll here). Mom has agreed to watch the 3 cats for the week so I don't have to worry about them.

I've got my car now so I can drive myself to work without having to drop off or pick up DH. This is a wonderful freedom. I got to work early enough today to have breakfast without ringing phones.

I've finally managed to get halfway on Cat's Eye. This model stitching job is not going nearly as fast as it should be and I will probably still be working on it at CATS.

No more DMV

I went to Hapeville DMV this morning. After getting to the window and bringing all the documents that the woman told me that I could bring yesterday I was told that what I had wouldn't work even though they told me yesterday that it would. After waiting 30 minutes to hear this, I was very annoyed. I raised my voice. I did keep hold of my temper but just barely and I wouldn't have raised my voice if the woman would have just gotten her supervisor like I asked her to. After an hour and half of dealing with people, I finally got my title.

I then had to go to the local tag office to get my plate. I was thankfully in and out of there in less than 15 minutes.

I don't have to go back now though and I'm so very happy. I don't ever want to go back to the tag office. These people are crazy. No one is following the same guidelines. No one documents what they tell people to do once they send them away. Complete mess!

After that I wandered into work 2.5 hours late so I'll need to make up that time. I'm gonna stay late an hour tonight and probably Friday as well. Then I'll just need to make up another half hour on thursday.

Dad says that I can have the car tonight too so I'll finally get to drive the car that I've owned for almost a month now.

Mischief the cat has taken on a new loving attitude. It's really sweet that she now wants me to love on her since she never let me before. I just wish that she didn't decide at 3am every morning that she wants loved on.

Frustration abounds!

I gave my dad money for the new car on 7/12/05. I knew the car wasn't ready yet but he said that it would only be a week or so. He finally got the emmission yesterday so I went to the tag office. Tag office wouldn't let me have a tag.

After 2 frustrating hours, I learned that Georgia will no longer issue you a title unless the seller matches the owner on the front. So if the name on the front of the title is a. B buys from A and then sells to C, C can't get a title. B has to go and get a title and then sign that title over to C so that C can get a title and tag. This rule apparently started this year without telling anyone. So those of you buying used cars, make sure the person you are buying from is the person on the front of the title! To get all of this straightened out, I have to physically go down to the state tag office in Hapeville and bring my father (since I bought the car from him), the title, the insurance, the emmissions, a letter from my loan company saying that the original owner does not have a loan on the car, a letter from my loan company saying that my dad does not have a loan on the car, a letter from the bank saying that I DO have a loan on the car. The state tag office will then issue a title in dad's name that he can sign over to me. This amounts to the state wanting more money. They just want that extra $25 title fee. I am very frustrated by all this. What frustrates me even more is that my local tag office that is only 2 miles from my house and never busy can't do this. They are making me go to Hapeville which is 25 miles away and always has a line that is 2 hours deep. I can guarantee that I won't get burned by this again! On top of all that, I don't have the car yet. It's still not done.

I'm not wondering if I really needed that 2nd car or not.