Work, Trips, Things, Stuff

It’s a new month, and the stress is up. The job situation is hammered out, and I’m currently waiting on a response about finalizing the setup of my work-at-home phone again. I’ve got several projects on the plate right now, and tomorrow I already have a 3-hour meeting in the works for the full briefing on everything that will be.

On the state of things:

The House Hunt is moving so fast. We pretty much have it narrowed down to two, with a revisit to them scheduled for Monday, for Mr.T and Mr.theMad to see what they think. Based on our conversations, I think we’ve actually narrowed it down to just one. I still have a soft spot in my heart for one of the cool cedar homes off Ponce over closer to Stone Mountain, but it looks like we’re going ever-so-slightly ITP with a house in Decatur, off I285 at the Covington Highway exit. I may see if I can bribe the realtor to make the boys visit one of the Stone Mountain houses, too. When James and I drove by there, it was in the course of visiting a ton of places, so we came at it from a horrible route and I think that scared him to death on traffic. Mapquest tells a different story. We’ll see. Either way, in order to keep from going month to month for more than the one expensive month we anticipate, we really need to put a contract on something next week.

The Mini-Vacation to Las Vegas went okay. The family time and the planned events went great. Blue Man Group again was just as fun, and as I’ve told anyone who asks, the Spamalot show left my face hurting from smiling so much. Outstanding. We did learn several things this trip, though. First, the Vegas Monorail doesn’t actually cut off much walking when you have to navigate the maze of casinos to get to and from it anyway. Second, the food choices at the Las Vegas Hilton aren’t really choices at all unless you consider Truly Pricey or Outrageously Pricey as choices. And their hours suck.

The biggest gamble taken on this trip was by nephew Dennis and Mr. T who both decided to order “the surf and turf special” one night, without asking the price. Without revealing the price here, let me just hint that when the check came, we also found out we’d paid $14 for four glasses of water. You make a guess. Now, double that and you’re probably close. Otherwise, I spent the time letting slot machines have my money quickly and video poker machines have it slowly. No big wins for anyone this trip, but that’s just how things work out. Sunday we spent a very lazy day at the pool to enjoy the heat wave for the weekend… 97 degrees and breezy. If only we didn’t have to look at the 15-story high image of Barry Manilow that was on the side of our hotel all day, it would have been damn near perfect.

We did, of course, manage to find the time to visit the Swatch store again for our only souvenirs. =)

Upcoming this weekend is Mr. T’s yearly family reunion. We’ll probably leave late Friday night this year. I know James hasn’t made it to the driving range nearly as often as he’d planned, so I have a feeling that this years golf game will again be “a day never to be spoken of again” much like the previous years. Friday is my last day of Bootcamp, too, and I have to say I’m going to miss it. With all the travel upcoming and the work and moving stress, I decided not to do the 3-month deal they offered me. Mostly, I was worried that last month would fall after we’d moved and I’d be hating life on that trip there and back every morning. Instead, I’ve signed up for two months of morning kickboxing classes, which I’m pretty excited about. I’ve been twice, and they are extremely fun. The last few minutes everyday that we spend just beating the hell out of the heavy bag before we stop to stretch and relax are really outstanding for dealing with stress.

The next weekend we’re supposed to visit my family again for a little reunion of our own. Sis and bro-in-law from Alabama and brother from Florida are converging with us on Mom’s house. Goals? Oh, just to take mom out to eat and possibly get her passport paperwork taken care of so we can all do a family cruise next year. Not looking forward to the drive… of course, but after a couple weeks of work-at-home, I may not mind it so much.

The only thing I do know about the new work situation so far is that there will be travel again, but instead of driving to local offices, I’ll be flying for a couple days at a time to other offices. The rest of the time I’ll be chained to my work-at-home desk. Seriously chained, as we launch the new program which offers customers “phone time with the designer” and I begin taking appointments daily over the phone instead of in person.

All right that’s plenty enough babble. I miss our friends, and hope that sometime soon we’ll have time to hang out again.