Journal Entries
Off to D.C.
Posted May 22, 2006
TJ and I are going on a little vacation next week. We're driving down to the Washington D.C. area on Doobry. I have a friend who lives in the suburbs, and we'll stay with her for two days (after spending the first night at a hotel ... we usually leave home late, so this way we don't have to impose on them if we arrive at our usual 2am 
). We'll be spending two days at a hotel 2 blocks from the White House for a treat after we leave their house. We originally were going to mooch off another friend for those 2 days, but he's on a trip to Alaska ... I suppose his world-tour of a month ago wasn't enough! 
On Thing we're driving down to Virginia Beach to visit with my uncle and aunt (yes, Bob's my uncle!). We'll stay with them for two days. We'll also get a chance to visit with our nephew who's in the Army and stationed down there. He's being trained, so he's back in the States for now. It'll be nice to see him again, he's been stationed in Korea for a while!
We read about a street near the boardwalk in Virginia Beach that has different musicians playing on every street corner:
>From Memorial Day through late September, Beach Street USA, as it's now called, makes it virtually
>impossible to stroll half a block without taking in the tunes of local professional musicians.
>Along Atlantic Avenue, from 17th to 25th streets, individuals and small bands play curbside for at
>least three hours starting at 8 o'clock every night. Passersby cluster along storefronts to hear sounds
>that include jazz, pop, country and old standards filling the nighttime air. Heard enough trumpet?
>Walk a few more yards, and you might get to enjoy a harp soloist.
>You likely will also find a side street closed off. That's where you can try to decipher a magician's
>tricks, chuckle at a puppet show, marvel at a juggler or admire a family of young fiddle players.
>And three nearby parks offer nightly entertainment, too, often from out of town and always free.
It sound super! It's funny, when I was single, my aunt was always trying to get me to visit them in Virginia Beach by enticing me with, "There's a lot of sailors down here!" 
We'll be making the *long* drive back from Virginia Beach on Doobry, which will give us a recouperation day before we go back to w**k. I'm really looking forward to it! We're going to be all touristy and stuff, and get to visit with friends and family we haven't seen for a while! 
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Latest reply: May 22, 2006
I'm going to Vegas! I'm going to Vegas!
Posted Jan 18, 2006
TJ's brother and his common-law wife have decided to finally get for really-real married, and they're doing it in Las Vegas at the beginning of March. Since it's a trip that TJ and I have been talking about making for a while, this is the ideal opportunity! We were able to get a direct flight on Southwest, if you can believe it! We'll be staying here:
http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/hotels/index.jhtml;jsessionid=1ZRU500H5LPN0CSGBI1MVCQKIYFC5UUC?ctyhocn=LASFLGV
Cool or what? TJ reserved us a whirlpool room! 
The pool should be renovated by the time we get there, and hopefully it'll be warm enough to use! It looks awesome! We're so excited! We're giving ourselves a little money to gamble, but that's not what we're going to be doing most of the time.
Plans are still tentative, but we definitely want to visit Hoover Dam and Red Rock Canyon. Of course, Star Trek: The Experience is the top 
thing we want to do! I'll share more as we do more research! 
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Latest reply: Jan 18, 2006
Wet and Wild Weekend!
Posted Oct 18, 2005
But not in a good way.
I took Poets off so I could get some things done before our Yard Sale, and to maybe get a decent night's sleep as we were getting up at 6am to set things up. We had constant, heavy rain for 8 days before, and the weather reports were saying that it would stop the morning of our sale, so we were hoping for the best. I went down to the basement at around 7pm to get some art supplies for making signs, and after getting that done, I baked some cookies.
Earlier in the day I had gotten a package in the mail, and TJ said he would take the empty box downstairs. Needless to say, when I got done with the cookies, the box was still there. A nag was in order, so I announced that I'd take the box downstairs myself. That's my sure-fire way to get him to do something. He was half way down the stairs when he called me. Water was slowly but surely filling the basement! We scrambled to get as much as we could off of the floor, and brought as much upstairs from the lower shelves as we could. TJ let work know that he'd be gone for a while, and we headed out to Home Depot to see if we could get a pump. Of course, they had nothing. We were told that they were getting a delivery at midnight, and to come back at 6am as soon as the store opened to get one. We drove around a bit after that to see if we could find anywhere else that was open, but it was too late. We headed back home to do what we could.
TJ started using the wet/dry vac, and I had a mop, but it was hopeless. TJ figured he'd have to make nearly 2000 trips up and down the stairs with the full vac, so what's the point? 2000 trips of 25 lbs. each ... I don't think so! We lugged more stuff upstairs, and had to wait for 6am. TJ stayed up to keep an eye on things, and I tried to sleep (I'm usless and horribly crabby without sleep, and he certainly didn't want to risk *that*!). I finally fell into a fitful sleep, and woke up at about 7:15 hearing a car door slam. I thought it was TJ, but no. I called him, and he said that Home Depot lied last night, and there were no pumps, and he was driving to different stores trying to find one. I pulled out the Yellow Pages and started calling stores while he stayed on the other line. When one store answered by saying, "Thank you for calling Farmingdale Home Depot. We have no sump pumps or shop vacs. How can I help you?" I figured it was hopeless and told him to come home. By then I knew my Mom would be up, and if anyone knows who does or doesn't have a pump, it's her. I called her, and sure enough, she said my younger brother has one. I called him, and it turns out he has *two* and he brought them over.
Turns out, quite a bit of Long Island flooded at the same time, so there wasn't any water removal equipment available anywhere! Our neighborhood ended up having quite a hum, as everyone had hoses snaking out of their houses with pumps running all day!
Thankfully, by the time my brother got there, we only had about 5 inches of water in the basement, and the pumps started rapidly draining the water. We spent Doobry draining the basement, and dragging out what we lost. Luckily, it was mostly packing boxes. OK, TJ doesn't say luckily, because they were his, and he had bought the heavy duty wardrobe boxes from U-Haul at $10 a pop, we lost 8. He figures we lost well over $100 in boxes, I lost a bunch of posters, and my old portfolio. Not to mention 3 years worth of hoarded boxes for our "big move." Not too bad! We seemed to be on the edge of the flooding that happened in the town at high tide. The ground was so saturated that high tide really made a difference! The guy in the half a million dollar house next door got 9 inches of water in his basement, and a block over had a couple of feet! But worse, folks who lived closer to the Bay actually got raw sewage! 
Have I ever mentioned TJ's anal retentiveness? He's slightly compulsive about a couple of things, and one of them is laundry. He's got our laundry divided into so many sub-categories that I can never keep them straight. Well, he had put the laundry up on top of plastic storage bins we had down there to keep them dry, but as the water rose, some of the bins started floating, so the laundry started falling into the water. He brought me a soaking bag of towels, so we started hanging them on the line we have in the backyard (that we never use). It snapped, and the towels came crashing down. I had to laugh when he dropped to his knees saying, "Okay! I get it! I repent! Please stop!"
Once we got the water pumped out, it was still coming in, and TJ tried to make sandbags to keep it out, but it was coming in through the foundation, so there wasn't much we could do about it. He hadn't slept at all, so we made it an early night, I rubbed his aching feet and we were asleep by 1am. By Dontbry morning, the water had stopped rising, and we were able to finally say goodbye to the worst of the water! Poor TJ has aching shoulders from all the vacuuming, and my calves are aching from all the running up and downstairs! I think I need a weekend to recover from my weekend!
One of the good things out of all this was the fact that we were up very early, and actually got to meet a bunch of our neighbors! We *never* see them, and in the course of the last 3 years have only talked to 2 of them. Being awake during the day has it's benefits!
So, the Yard Sale is on for next weekend, and maybe we can finally get things back to normal. Okay, normal for us anyway ...
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Latest reply: Oct 18, 2005
Wassup ...
Posted Jul 9, 2005
I apologize for not being around much. Not only has my online time been cut down significantly, but I've been in a bit of a funk lately. I've been frequenting a pregnancy after miscarriage website where I can vent all I want, to people who understand, and that's helped me tremendously as I approach my due date. Obsessing over trying to conceive isn't something most people understand or want to hear about either. I don't like burdening my friends here with all of that, as I know how wearying it can be to hear someone harp on negatively all the time. Be glad I found that other website, as I'm sparing all of you!
That being said, I've had a wonderful week, which has made me feel a lot better, and I'm now focussing on what I have, as opposed to what I've lost.
TJ's birthday was Dontbry, and since it was his 40th, I wanted to do something special for him. On Doobry we went on a dinner cruise from LI to the Statue of Liberty. It was a beautiful night, and it turned into a very special time for us. Dontbry I spent most of the day cooking and baking, making TJ's day a bit out of the ordinary by preparing some of his favorite foods. Sodit was the 4th of July, and we went to Jones Beach to sit on the sand and watch the fireworks. Again, it was a very special time, and we had a few hours afterwards to walk on the boardwalk. Sadly, we both had to w**k the next day, but the 6th was our third anniversary, so we took that day off. TJ surprised me with a beautiful sapphire ring he bought me in Barbados to match the earrings he got me in March. At the time, he said the earrings were for my birthday (which is in October), and since we decided we weren't getting each other anniversary gifts, because our night out was going to be so expensive, he said the ring is for Christmas. At this rate, I should be getting my 50th birthday present next year!
I had gotten us tickets to see Spamalot on Broadway. They're very hard to get, and I searched their website for hours trying to get us good seats. The first good ones available at the time just so happened to be on our anniversary, so I figured it was fate. After a lot of research, I also found us a lovely French restaurant that we went to before the show. Spamalot was very, very funny! TJ had never been to a Broadway show before, and he really loved it! Afterwards, we went to BB King's blues club for a drink. It was a very romantic, wonderful day. That's when my attitude changed. I've been so very blessed, and I'm a very, very lucky woman, and I shouldn't forget it.
Discuss this Journal entry [49]
Latest reply: Jul 9, 2005
Wow ...
Posted Apr 29, 2005
Newsday had an editorial on politics using Hitchhikers as a reference. What a world!
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppin284235869apr28.column
Discuss this Journal entry [35]
Latest reply: Apr 29, 2005
Shea the Sarcastic
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