Dyson; Dots; The Vacation Blog

Currently Reading: Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex: The Lost Memory by Junichi Fujisaku

CC and I are back from vacation! Now we're catching up on all the things we missed while we were gone. First thing of note that we did was get a new vacuum cleaner. Our old one just wasn't cutting it anymore. Didn't pick up much at all. I'm sure you all know the signs. Anyway, this time we got a Dyson DC17 Animal. CC ran it when we got home and all I can say is DAMN! I had no idea our rugs were that dirty!

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You may have noticed yet another change in the layout of the blog. Yeah, didn't really like the three column look as much as I hoped. CC said it looked too busy. She's probably right about that too. Just didn't quite turn out how I hoped. I browsed through the standard templates and decided that Dots has the layout I want. I'll probably change the graphics over time. New background, new bullets, new pictures. But for now, this works for me.

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Ok, as I said, we're back from vacation. Time to post the vacation blog so you know what we were up to. I'm not going to post it all at once. I'll post it day-by-day according to the corresponding day from last week. This way I can stretch the material out because I won't really have time to do any real posting again until Thursday due to my work schedule :-) So, let's start with . . .

Sunday 9:00 PM EST

The trip took about six and a half hours. We left this morning at around six. CC drove the first two hours because I was in no shape to drive. That early you're lucky I can walk.

There wasn't any real traffic until we got to Sevierville. That little town has really built up over the past two years and not for the better. Traffic heading away from the mountains is always bad on Sunday as people end their vacations and go home. Now it's much worse.

Pigeon Forge is still pretty much the same as before. It was already mostly full so there wasn't much else they could cram in. Most of the traffic is gone now though. It's just me and CC and all them old people :-)

We had dinner at Applewoods. That's our favorite place to eat here. We both forgot how much food they give you. Good food and lots of it. I'll probably put on a few pounds.

That was it for day one. After all that driving my butt was sore and the constant changes in air pressure had my nose all messed up. We decided to just rest up and start the real vacation tomorrow. Besides, it's Sunday so everything closes early.

Tomorrow we're going to Gatlinburg. There's a big craft/art show at the convention center and we'll also go to the National Park. Should be lots of fun and shopping! :-)

1. The leaves look great! Lots of color.
2. Funny story. First thing we did after unpacking was check e-mail. Yes, we're nerds.
3. Miss the pets. It seems so strange not to have the dogs or the hamsters. Life with no pets would suck.
4. Might do some early Christmas shopping here. We can get unique gifts at affordable prices.
5. Saw a woman spend nearly $80.00 on candy today. That's a lot of fudge and taffy.

More tomorrow . . . I hope . . .

My Mini Vacation

Currently Reading: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Well I've had a rather relaxing mini-vacation the past three days. Over the past 6 days I've only had to work 1. Last week I had those two bonus days off on Thursday and Friday then I worked Saturday and then we went back to the old schedule which had me off Sunday through Tuesday thus I got all my missed days off at once. It makes up for all those times I ended up having to work 6 days in a row to get my days off because of changes in the schedule.

Can't say that I really did much last week. If you've read CC's blog you know the big highlight there. We've added another member to our growing zoo. We've adopted a hamster. He's a cream colored syrian, medium length hair at the moment and I think that's where he's going to stay. As far as I can tell he's reached adulthood so if he was a long haired hamster he'd be woolier by now.

So, if you're keeping track that's one cream syrian (male), one mottled black campbell's russian (male) and one traditional colored campbell's russian (female). Three hamsters, three cages. At night they all run in their respective wheels and during the day they all curl up in cute little hamster balls. They're clean, they don't smell and they don't bite. When I get a chance, I'll add some new pictures of them.

Sunday we had a great time. Call it Mexican theme day. We attended a performance ofBallet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez. That is a fantastic show. If you get a chance, if they happen to be stopping near you while on tour, go and see them. You'll love it.

I've actually seen them before, but in pieces. Small groups of their dancers or former dancers would perform at all the big festivals down in San Antonio. But until Sunday I'd never actually went to their formal show. WOW was that a treat!

Afterwards we went out for Mexican food of course. That wasn't intended but after seeing the closing numbers for the first and second acts, well it reminded me of fiesta which reminded me of eating good food which reminded me that I haven't had good Mexican food in a while. So we tried a place over by my parents' house. Good food and lots of it.

About the only productive things I've done over the past two days involve grocery shopping and some web work. Oh, and a little light cleaning. I've sort of spread everything out because I've had so much time off. It's weird. I haven't had any holidays or vacations since I started in January so having this much time off at once, well I wasn't sure what to do. Just not used to so much free time. I can say though that I did manage to finish up quite a few little items that I've had to put off for one reason or another.

Next week I'll be on vacation. We're taking a short trip to the mountains. It'll be my first real vacation since I started work and our first vacation out of town since we got married. It's not that we haven't tried to take more time off or take a trip sooner it's just that our schedule never allowed for it. Needless to say we're due :-)

The only problem I have now is that I need to push through 4 long days at the salon and at some point find time to pack and such for this trip. That means checking the weather forecasts, tracking down clothes, bagging up shampoos and so forth. We've also got to truck the pets over to my parents. They'll be hosting the zoo while we're out.

Once we get back things will get all serious again really quick. CC's boss has her jewelry show. We've got Halloween. Business will pick up for the holidays at work plus I'll be in training as a groomer. I'm thinking time will fly by when we get back. It'll all be a blur. Got to enjoy the slow time while I can :-)

Slight Changes

Currently Reading: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Well, it being fall, there are always a few, obvious changes going on all around us. For starters, it's much more comfortable outside. The air's not as hot nor as humid and you tend to get a bit of a breeze blowing. You also get the big change in color too. What was once green is now slowly turning orange or red or yellow or brown.

I thought I'd get with the spirit of the season and change the colors here too. Tell me what you think.

Public Service

Currently Reading: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Like any responsible blogger, I like to throw in some posts for the benefit of the public. As you all know, we don't get near enough exercise in the US. We also have a really big problem with English proficiency. Well, the Japanese have come up with a way to solve both problems at once. That's right, English lessons and a work out in one! I've put two examples on the side bar. They teach very useful phrases in English combined with a light work out. Perfect for busy, corporate types who never seem to have enough hours in the day.

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One Wild Weekend

Currently Reading: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Ok, in all fairness, this isn't WILD in the sense it was REALLY exciting with lots of weird experiences like you see in the movie. I guess it'd be more accurate to say it was a strange weekend. Sure was all over the map.

You may recall from previous posts that this was my first full weekend off since January. One constant for me since I started working at the pet store is that I've worked Saturdays. Every Saturday since January I have worked. The times I work change. I've worked mornings, I've worked evenings. But I've always worked.

Needless to say when my boss set up a schedule in which I wasn't working Saturday or Sunday, I didn't exactly hold my breath that it would work. I figured it would work longer than it DID but I never expected it to be a permanent shift.

Saturday morning I'm lounging around in bed, enjoying my first Saturday off in 8 months when CC comes in and jokes about how we should hide the cell phone. She also mentions that it's already rang once and right then I KNEW it wasn't going to be good. It's like when you get a phone call at 2 in the morning. You hope it's a wrong number because no one ever calls for a good reason at 2 in the morning.

As I suspected, it was my boss. The girl we hired last week didn't show up and things were falling behind in the salon. When that happens you've really got to work to get things back on track or the whole day will be shot. Customers will call looking for their dogs. When they pick them up, if they find even the smallest mistake, they'll complain about it. Just not a happy situation.

Anyway, things were falling behind and she wanted me to come in for a few hours, just to help get caught up. She joked that CC could come along and help too if she wanted. Of course, that was actually what CC had in mind. Her reasoning was that she could either stay home and mope about me not having the whole day off or she could come with me, help out, get things done faster and try to enjoy it.

After a quick breakfast we went down to the salon. It only took us about 45 minutes to get everything caught up. Three dogs. That's all we had to do. You'd be surprised how much of a difference that can make though. With CC and I washing dogs in the back, that freed up the groomer to answer the phones and do the haircuts.

And to think, I was going to try and avoid going anywhere NEAR the salon :-)

Still, we did have a pretty good time with it. CC seemed to enjoy working with the dogs. We joked that if the bottom ever falls out of the call center market, she's got a future in dog grooming.

The rest of the day went much better. Shopping, shopping and, of course, more shopping. I made the mistake of suggesting we stop off at Michael's since we were in the area. That's one of those arts and crafts stores in case you don't have one. CC had a ball picking out new decorations for the apartment. It's fall now so that means we should have fall colors all over the place. Looks really nice in fact. She'll be posting pictures on her blog soon.

Me, I did something I've been wanting to do for a while now. I bought computer software. Not just any software mind you, but GAMES! It's been a while since I was able to buy games with confidence, knowing that my machine could run them smoothly. Now that I've got this new Dell pretty much set up, I can use it to have a little fun too. I picked up two games, both of them a little old actually. Even though I could have gotten something more recent and high tech, I went with Pirates! and Knights of the Old Replubic. The first is NOT a game tie-in with Pirates of the Carribean. It's been around longer than that. It's the third version of a once popular game in which you play, big surprise here, a pirate. The other game is a Star Wars game that was VERY popular last year. When I first saw them the cost 40 bucks a shot each. Saturday they were on sale for 15. Go figure. Well if nothing else my game software will be cheap for a while. Lots of games from last year that I still need to catch up on and they're all in the 15-20 dollar range.

Today hasn't been nearly as fun. For CC and I Monday means back to work again and neither of us is looking forward to it. For her, she's got a big client launch thing coming up so there's lots of work. For me it means dealing with the loss of yet another bather. We'll have to revamp the schedule yet again. Two more weeks. That's all I have to hold on for. In two weeks I get my vacation and everything will be at peace for 5 days :-)

I suppose this sort of thing, these problems that crop up at work, should bother me more but you know, if this sort of thing didn't happen to me every few weeks what WOULD I have to blog about? :-)

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