Long term planning

My Mom, siblings, and niece probably thought I was a bit crazy this past weekend. I tried to reach them all to ask about future happenings. (I got voice mails every where)

Ric and I have talked about doing an Alaska cruise in June 2010. This time frame was chosen because there will be a cruise3sixty event held there then. If I am still at AAA Arizona, they will pay my registration and stay for the event including airfare. (I will be working on my next level of cruise specialist training) This way my airfare will be paid for (or at least the majority of it) and we just have to pay for Ric\’s airfare plus the cruise.

So….I got out a notebook (that I hope not to lose) and starting writing years and events that are happening that we will have to travel for. The ones we know of for my nieces/nephews graduation open houses and Ric\’s youngest niece\’s wedding.

I thought the wedding was in June 2010. I had the month right, but wrong year. After she called me back, I found out they had changed the date anyways. They are getting married in Traverse City on August 1, 2009. Right now they are planning a whole weekend of fun. They are \”renting\” Ranch Rudolph — all the rooms for the weekend. The wedding will be Saturday, the party will start Friday after people start coming in. It sounds like it will be a blast.

That leaves open houses…. Jerrica is in 2009. I doubt her open house will be as late as Aug 1st. So we should be safe with traveling twice in the summer.

2010 ends up being Madison\’s graduation. My brother said in CT they don\’t usually do open houses. We might have to talk them into some type of party. (Think road trip to Boston area for Kate and Beth\’s parties!) He said they usually go to school until near the end of June. So…may be safe with two events in the summer that year. Might be tricky though. Have to see.

2011 is Tevra\’s graduation open house.

Odd years for the next two — 2013 for Ashton and 2015 for Devin. Then, if I figured correctly, 2017 for Tyler.

Any other family members with long term planning — let me know your dates as soon as possible. Any more weddings in the future? (Kate, Nick, Tristan, Casey, Rachel????!!!!!)

Of course, who knows where we will be in the next few years. We may be working on a small private island in the Bahamas or working on a cruise ship. So many possibilities out there. After paying attention on this last cruise — I noticed they have a \”future cruise consultant\” on each cruise ship. I\’m sure I could handle that job! I would only have to learn that cruise line information! (maybe their \”family\” of cruise companies also) I might have to look into that. I\’m sure Ric could work in the kitchen or maybe do some photography or who knows what else.

All Gone

😦 It is all gone now. I had six containers that Ric drove back with in December. I made a promise with myself that I would only open one a month. Some months it got empty fast, others it lasted almost to the end of the month.

What am I talking about?! Well, of course, pickled bologna! LOL. I\’m glad Ric hates the stuff, otherwise it would not have lasted too long. I now know what my Uncle John feels like out in the Boston area. I hope somebody brings some pickled bologna to our family reunion. (hint, hint, hint)

I hate the new restriction about liquids on carryons. I\”m not too sure I want to package them all up and try to put them in a small checked bag. Maybe if I get one that I don\’t care about and can throw away after it gets back to Phoenix. Can you imagine what it might smell like after being tossed around at a couple airports?! YIKES!!!!

Work News

I\’m into the Long March now: Day 2 of the 19 days of consecutive work. Got a surprise day off Sunday. The owner of the restaurant told me not to bother to come in. I wasn\’t feeling all that great, so that was fine with me. I thought I might get out of working the next two Sunday\’s as well, but they were actually very busy the last couple hours. Ah well. The money will get us a bit ahead of the game for the first time in six months.

Things are picking up at the bakery, so I should have no trouble getting enough hours. When we first came back from the cruise, it was really slow and had me worried that I was keeping the wrong job. But the last week or so has been back to normal.

Well, it\’s bedtime.

The Phoenix has Landed

A lot of people out here in Arizona have started breathing again. Mars seems to be tough on our toys. Of course, the universe likes to play games. We used to watch cosmic rays in our cloud chambers in physics class. Never heard of them doing damage, though.

Slowly but Surely

In spite of Flickr\’s crapware Uploadr application, I\’m getting our vacation photos posted. I found a design flaw when I got to our Ephesus photos. It seems that some bright boy decided to use 8-bit pointers, which means the software can only handle 255 photos at a time. No error, no message, no indication what the trouble is. It just ignores you when you point it at a directory with more than 255 photos in it. Nice. At least it\’s a relatively easy flaw to work around. Not all of the others are so benign.

Anyway, Ephesus, Turkey (yep, that Ephesus; read Acts 18 and 19) and Lindos, Greece are in our cruise-tour collection.

Fuel Costs

According to Forbes, the price of fuel is starting to hurt small businesses (typically defined as any business with less than 500 employees), which employ over half of the workers in the US.

Another Batch of Photos

The photos from Mykonos, Greece, our first stop on the cruise, are on Flickr. The Uploadr continues to be a pain in the butt, failing every couple of photos. But I\’m getting smarter; I waited until all the photos were safely loaded into Flickr, then spent hours typing in descriptions and such.

Procrastination

I can\’t seem to get anything done lately, as anyone can tell looking at our blog. I\’m still trying to wade through our vacation photos and get those posted to Flickr. I have all kinds of projects I know I should be working on, but they just sit ignored in a pile. I haven\’t finished reading a book this week.

Part of the problem has been computer system issues. My previous issues with AVG Anti-Virus escalated to the point that I had to finally do something, which turned out to mean uninstalling AVG 7 and installing AVG 8. Why the automatic update process could not do that, or why it could not tell me that is couldn\’t do that is beyond me. Of course, Cable One had network problems right in the middle of the install which trashed both AVG and Firefox. I finally got the mess cleaned up yesterday.

The main problem is, of course, working two part-time jobs. It\’s hard to get motivated to dive into something that is going to take any amount of time and/or concentration when I know that I will be setting it down to scamper off to work. Once I\’m down to one job, I\’ll be able to get back onto a normal sleep schedule which means I can get up in the morning when I have both the motivation and ability to accomplish things, then working at the bakery until 4pm or so and having the evening to do some reading or whatever.

Ah well, maybe today I can finish up the photo editing, then start the process of uploading the whole mess to Flickr. Need to get at it.

Enemy of Feminism

Remind me again why anyone would want Hillary in any political office?

Double Ouch

Oil breaks $135 and gold is still toying with $1,000/ounce. Silver, soybeans, corn, heating oil are also up.

Just remember; none of this is our fault. No-siree. None of this has anything to do with Uncle Ben and his merry band of feds running the presses until the smoke pours from the windows of the Federal Reserve. And don\’t even think it has anything to do with the federal government\’s decision that food was too precious of a commodity to eat, so lets burn it instead.

Nope. It\’s those damn A Rabs! Yea. That\’s it.