FlashBack Fridays

This picture comes from maybe 1989. As students there was always the egg hatching part of the year in school. When those eggs hatched there were always the baby chicks left over that were shipped off somewhere, well my mother thought that maybe they could come live with us. So from the year that my sister had the first baby chicks, we've had chickens living at our house. This picture is the very common scene from when they were first brought to the house. We'd spread out the newspaper so that the poop wouldn't get on anything and then sit with our legs open so the chicks couldn't escape us. I think this picture is from my first chicken circle. I look a little scared and not sure as to what the fluffy white thing is. We still have chickens in our backyard and this well after the elementary years of having them in our classrooms. They seemed to have found a place in our life.

In a Nutshell

Yeah, I guess I'll post something. I haven't really been in the mood to post, whether it's because I'm sleeping, seeing Chancho or I just don't feel like I have something worthy to say, but I'm ending that now. Lately, it's been all about work. Since I've gotten back from Toronto I've been busy with The Container Store. We had an all store meeting, last Sunday, which they asked me to come in 5 hours earlier than I was supposed to. It was nice because I was able to leave 5 hours earlier. Then Monday I was babysitting Buster all day. I'm working on getting him to walk. He's very stubborn. He won't do it. He knows that if he cries long enough someone will a. give whatever he wants to him or b. he'll get picked up and carried. After a day of babysitting I headed in to work for an overnight. It was a huge night. We switched every single aisle around in the office and collections section. Which is about 6 aisles. I was beat. I was also up for 24 hours by the time I got home. Which lead me to sleep for all of Tuesday. Then I was up again this morning for more work. But good news! I am now a leader on mornings that there are trucks. This means that I am in charge of at least 13 people. I'm directly in charge of 3. It's a little odd, but I think I'll adjust okay as I do it more. I'm finally off for the next 2 days.
Then we start up with more happenings. Starting Saturday, I have work and then straight from work I'm driving the parents to their cruise. They'll be gone for a week in the Bahamas. I'll also be attending a cousin's birthday party that night. Chancho lovingly was able to switch around his schedule so that he would be able to attend it with me. I switched my schedule so that we could go to the NYPD BBQ on Sunday. Oh lord that is coming up quickly. I am nervous as usual to meet everyone. All the guys will be out paintballing while I'm left with the wives at the house. I'm not one to get along with women all that well. So we'll see how it goes. It always takes me a while to befriend women. I just seem to get along better with guys, that's always how it's been. This will definitely be a big step outside of my comfort zone.

Chancho made an arrest in plain clothes the other day. Very out of the ordinary. He was heading to go home when a couple came in and complained about being conned out of money and an apartment. Turns out that they met a woman to put a down payment on an apartment from Craigslist. Then they researched the apartment and it was a senior citizens home. No apartment. The woman was wiring the money to a man in Florida. So Chancho had them set up an appointment with the lady again at a Dunkin Donuts. He was there inside the Dunkin Donuts with them sitting across at another table and arrested her when they were handing over the money.

That seems to be my life in a nutshell. As you can see not much going on. Waiting for the weather to get a little bit nicer so we can go to the beach. I'm dying for the sand between my toes!

Quote of the Day: "I miss you, and I want things back to how they used to be. I need your friendship more then ever. I need you in my life again. Tell me what it is that went wrong, and I'll do what it takes to fix it in a second if it means having you by my side again."
Listening to: "Stellar" by Incubus

Tuesday Tips

The Love Your Luggage Travel Sale is still happening. So here's another sale item that I've fallen in love with. It is the Expandable Shopper Bag. It comes in two sizes, small and large. The awesome thing about this bag is that it expands and when I say expand, it really does! The small size goes from 11" to 14". That's 3 more inches that you didn't have before. The large size goes from 14" to 20", 6 extra inches! Holy moly! The way that it expands is easy. The middle section of the bag has a zipper and all you have to do is unzip it and re-zip it to close it back up. It has handles for easy carrying and it also has a padded shoulder strap if you need hands to carry something else. It's made out of nylon and there is an inside zippered pocket.
Here's why I love it. It's a great everyday bag. You can shove your things in there and then if you make a sudden stop to pick something up you have room for it. Or say that you start out your day early in the morning when it's cool out so you have a sweater on. Then by mid day the sun is blazing and you have to get rid of the sweater. Well your handy bag has that extra room for you to tuck it away. If you're traveling, you know you always come home with more than you left with. This bag can help with that souvenir baggage. The print on the bag isn't too bad either.
The price of the small one is $14.99, originally $19.99. The large one is priced at $21.99, originally $29.99. Right now both of them are backordered, but they can still be found in stores. If you buy them now, you can still get the sale price. I'd say the average backordered time is 3 months. However, it could be more or less time depending.

Happy Traveling!

487 Miles One Way

All the way to Toronto, Canada, just to see the Yankees lose. How disappointing. It was a great trip, after the delay, everything went great. Here's my trip through photos, as you all know I love pictures!

The beginning of our trip...7:30pm

 Crossing the border into Canada at 2am. Oddly enough there were tons of people on the road once we crossed over. It seemed like it was only 9pm there with the amount of people driving around.

 Yep, we were in Toronto, the sign proves it.

 We stopped because we saw a cool bridge, turns out we started walking on the Trans Canada Trail. It's the longest trail in the world, which crosses through all of Canada.

 We then continued on into downtown Toronto. You can see the CN Tower.

 The Rogers Centre is where the Blue Jays play.

 And here it is!

 This is some French arch.

 The government building. We just happened to drive passed it.

 Chancho needed me to take a picture of this car. Their license plate was hanging by rope from the back windshield wiper.

 We chose to go to the Metro Toronto Zoo for our sight seeing adventure. This was my favorite picture from there.

 They had a shark petting tank. Too bad there weren't any sharks. They lied. They only had sting rays. We paid $3 to pet sting rays.

 Finally, game time. This was a statue that they had outside of the Rogers Centre. Thought it looked cool.

 Inside the stadium at 7pm. The first time inside of a dome for a baseball game.

During the 7th inning stretch they had the "fastest grounds cleaning crew" come racing out onto the field. It was pretty interesting to see.

 We drank. We drank a lot for $9.75 a cup.

 After the Yankees lost, we headed out and found this place that gave you half off your meal with a game ticket.

 Saturday morning we were supposed to head back. However, we ran into a hotel staff member who informed us that the Yankee game was at 1pm instead of 7pm like we had thought. Chancho automatically looked at me and said "We're going." So off we went to the second game of the series. This is the view of the Rogers Centre with the dome open during the day.

 As you can tell the CN Tower is right next to the stadium. We thought about going to it, but it was pretty expensive. Plus the game went into 14 innings, only for them to lose.

 6pm Saturday we crossed the border back into the USA.

It really was a good time. It was very very clean there. We didn't see any liter any where. I would not suggest getting a hot dog from a street vendor. They are nothing like the hot dogs from NYC. I almost barfed all over the side walk after my first bite. We got back in the wee morning hours of Sunday just in time to sleep a few hours before work. Now we're back into the grind of things for a few months before our next vacation.  That's all folks!

Still counting down

Still here. Just as predicted. I swear all of our vacations/trips always start late because of some NYPD thing. Today's reason being that there is a strike. A simple strike is what is stopping us from leaving. He was sent out early this morning and was supposed to be relieved around 4ish. It is now well pass 4pm. His relief came in at 3, but they still haven't showed up to their posts yet. This morning he told me that he had a friend that would be able to come take his spot if he needed to leave early, so I thought oh hey this would be the perfect time for him to call in that friend. Nope. His friend left for the day. So there he sits waiting for the second batch of officers. No news as to when they'll show up.
As a result of this, I won't be able to see my friends from college as I had hoped for, but that's okay. We'll be getting in much, much later than expected, but that's okay. We'll be driving all night, in the dark, but that's okay. I have been able to pack my bag. I've showered. I've even cleaned the bathroom. I have charged both my cell phone and camera's batteries. I watched the entire Yankee game (which they won). I have even made plans for babysitting Buster next week. It has been productive, I mean that is the only thing that I can turn this day into without becoming miserable and holding resentment.
This just in: The men on strike have made it to their final staging area. I am assuming that they will be wrapping up after a few speeches. I'm thinking another 2 hours before Chancho can head on home. Yay! a sign of something good!

Quote of the Day:“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”  
- Buddha

Listening to: "Found Out About You" by Gin Blossoms

600 lbs lighter

I've got less than 24 hours before I'll be heading off towards Canada. We leave tomorrow after Chancho gets out of work. We all know that an exact time is near impossible to receive from him so we're just playing it by ear for when we leave. However, we would like to be on the road, the latest, by 3pm. I have a feeling that we'll be leaving more towards 4 or 5. That's just a hunch that I have. I'm really hoping to stop in Buffalo to see my old roommates, but I think it might be too short notice for us to get anything together in time. Another thing that we'll just have to wing. If everything goes as planned, or close to as possible I'll be in Canada by 11pm. Wooohooo! We'll spend the night in our hotel, then depending on how we're feeling, Friday we'll take the tour of the CN Tower and then go to the Yankee v. Blue Jay game at night. Saturday, I'm thinking we can go to the zoo before heading home. Or we can switch the days for the CN Tower and the zoo. I'd just like to do some sight-seeing before we come back. We both have work on Sunday so we have to be back by at least Saturday night. I'm pretty pumped for it.
In other news, I think our house lost about 600 lbs today. We donated a shit load of "treasures" to a local church for a tag sale. I really love that someone's shit is another man's treasure. It makes it a lot easier in getting rid of stuff that we don't use anymore. In all honesty I never thought I would see some of it go. It has been in this house for 35+ years. My mother is a closet hoarder. She can't let go of anything and has the excuse of  "I could need this in the future." Well by the time you'll need it it'll be so out dated that you'll have to buy a new one anyway! I understand her thinking, but I am the type of person that can't stand clutter and that's all that we have in this house. If it were organized, that would be another thing, but it's NOT! My mother used to sell Longaberger Baskets from home while we were still too young to go to school, so we have tons and tons of baskets around our house. We have an entire room and half an attic full of baskets. So if anyone would want to purchase a basket, please contact me! Then we have all of the stuff that just isn't used anymore because we've out grown it or it's from my parents childhood and they just haven't dumped it yet. It's a true disaster. Today though, we sent a SUV and a pick up truck worth of stuff over to the church and we have our front porch filled with stuff waiting for their truck to come pick up. I'm very proud of her for actually taking the time to go through it all and finally say good-bye.
This weekend is my sister and BIL's 1 year anniversary. I can't believe it's been a year already since they got married. How quickly time flies. They're spending the weekend in Atlantic City. Then the following weekend we'll be celebrating Father's Day since my parents will be on a cruise during the real Father's Day. We'll be having a BBQ at my parents house. It will be the first time we have all gotten together since Christmas. Definitely over due.

Quote of the Day: "You can't always control the circumstances in life, but you can control your attitude toward those circumstances." -Alexander Lockhart 
Listening to: "Carry Out" by Timbaland ft Justin Timberlake

Tuesday Tips

The Organized Traveler Sale is still going on at The Container Store. Which means that you must being going somewhere at some point, even if you're only going for an overnight, I have something that you may want to consider looking at. Today's tip is about our Microban® products. We have a few items that are made with plastic, which has Microban in it to prevent the growth of bacteria.
The first one is our toothbrush cover. 

You can see that it's small and compact enough to just cover the important part of the toothbrush. It has ventilation holes on the top to all the brush to dry out when not in use. It comes in clear, blue, green and purple. They are on sale for $1.49, originally, $1.99

 

The second item is the standing toothbrush holder. This one covers the entire toothbrush. It stands on the counter by itself and it is in two pieces. It may look like the bottom part folds down into itself, but it doesn't. This one also has ventilation holes to air out the toothbrush. The same four colors are available for these as well. They are on sale for $2.19, originally $2.99. I believe they are backordered, but you might be able to find them in the store and if you can't you can always order them and get the sale price now.

 The third item is the soap dish. It comes in the clear, blue, green and purple colors just like the toothbrush holders. If I can remember correctly it is two separate pieces, instead of it being hinged. The bottom has ridges to lift the soap up and away from the excess water to allow it to dry out. They are on sale for $2.19, originally $2.99.

The fourth item is the collapsible cup. I love it and own one. This also has all four colors. It collapses up into itself for storing and transporting and when you're ready to use it just pull it out and drink away. In the lid there is a pill capsule holder. It is on sale for $1.99, originally priced at $2.99.


 There are a few more items that are made out of Microban, but these are my favorite ones and the ones that find to be the most useful. We have these same items made out of regular plastic without the Microban and those can be found here. They are not on sale, but they really are cheap enough that you don't need a sale.

Hopefully this helps in your traveling :)