February 2002

Another exciting weekend in our household! 🙂

We kicked it off Friday night by having dinner at Casa Too Mucha in New Hartford (again). It’s a great place to eat – if you are passing through the area, drop me a line and I’ll send your directiobns from the Thruway. Well worth the stop.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early for “America’s Greatest Heart Run and Walk”, a walkathon for the American Heart Association. The radio station I work for participated in it, as we were doing a live broadcast. I had to put on my happy face so early in the morning! Earl’s company walked in it – and they raised quite a chunk of change! It was cold, cold, cold, but it was for a worthy cause so we didn’t mind too much.

We then took a nap, and then decided to go to the Turning Stone Casino (not too far from the house). It was PACKED when we got there, we couldn’t even find a parking space. So, since we were half way to Syracuse already, we decided to go all the way and have dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse. It was great. On the way home, we stopped at the casino. Earl took $200, I took $100. I decided to play the video slot machines. Well, what do you know… I won $2,250!!! I absolutely couldn’t believe it! Bells rang, people laughed, music played, and an odd woman rubbed my shaved head for good luck. I have never won ANYTHING in my life, and here I won this nice chunk of change! I believe it was an affirmation from God, because I said a silent prayer right before spinning the reels, and I was also playing Earl and my commitment ceremony date – 12/26/96. And voila! 9,000 credits later I had $2,250. So today we went to Best Buy and purchased a new computer. Earl’s computer has been slowing down quite a bit, so I gave him my old Compaq (which has been running fabulously), and I got a new HP Pavilion 760n. It’s a Pentium 4 1.8ghz with 512MB memory, and lots of other goodies. I love it!

Now I’m in the process of cleaning up the “wreck room” for the computer moves. I am walking on Cloud 9 tonight…..

What a weekend it has been! Actually, what a week it has been. Wednesday morning at 4:00 a.m. the phone rang – it was Earl’s cousin Julie from St. Louis. Her brother (Earl’s cousin) Rick passed away at age 43 from a brain anerism. Earl and Rich were close – so we were planning on driving out to Chicago this weekend for the services, pre-empting our planned trip to New York. So on Wednesday night we cancelled all of our reservations for New York and starting making plans for Chicago. Then we get a call Thursday morning – the services are Friday morning, which there was no possible way for us to get to Chicago in time, and the family really understood if we didn’t make it out there. So after some conversation with the rest of Earl’s family in Pa., we decided not to go to Chicago and to go to New York after all. But we had released most of our reservations, so we ended up staying at the Sheraton New York Towers instead of at the Meadowlands. The money was about the same so it didn’t really make a difference.

So we took the day off from work on Friday and headed out about 11:00 a.m. Took a new route for us – Route 8 down to Deposit, and then over Route 17 to the Thruway and down the Palisades Parkway to the George Washington bridge. Very nice and surprisingly quick ride – about 4 hours all told, which was a nice change of pace. Usually it takes about 4 1/2.

Once we got situation in our hotel room we headed over to Times Square and went to the 1/2 price tickets stand just for the heck of it. We ended up getting two tickets to see “Bea Arthur On Broadway: Between Friends” – and it was very, very enjoyable. Of course Bea Arthur is famous for her roles on “Maude” and “The Golden Girls”, but she is even more accomplished on the Broadway stage, and this one woman show was absolutely magnificant, went singing and stand up and storytelling… it was a hoot! We hung around at the stage door afterwards, but she just kind of walked straight to the car, so we didn’t get her autograph, but we did see her up close, it was a little shocking to see how frail she has become. But she still has that fire she’s famous for – and we thoroughly enjoyed her show.

Saturday we headed over to “The Art of Shaving” to use the gift certificate that Earl had gotten me for Christmas. I ended up purchasing the most expensive straight razor they had (he actually helped me pick it out), and I got my complimentary shave and lessons on how to use the razor properly. I felt well pampered. Spent a little more money than I anticipated, but that was o.k. Earl and I had originally scheduled the “royal shave” – which was the full treatment, but cancelled the reservations when we thought we were going to Chicago. I was lucky that they could squeeze in my complimentary shave. I promised Earl he would get the full treatment the next time we were down there. When I get more confident with the straight razor, I’ll take pictures to share here on the web.

After that we headed to the Village. Took a stroll up Christopher Street and surrounding streets as well, did a little shopping, had lunch at the Christopher Street restaurant, which was very good.

We then walked all the way from the Village back to the hotel – 8th to 53rd! Quite a jaunt, but we needed the exercise. Besides, the weather was absolutely beautiful – sunny and 58.

Saturday night we tried to get more tickets at Times Square, but they were sold out, so we went for a nice walk through Central Park and watched the ice skaters and such. We had dinner at The Stage Deli, and went back after our walk for take out dessert. After all, you need to be rewarded after so much exercise – and what’s a better reward than a huge hunk of cheesecake? 🙂

This morning we got up and headed out early – got home around 2:00, which gave us a chance to get the chores around the house done. We watched “Miss Congeniality” on DVD, which is a great movie. Watched a bit of the Olympics before calling it a night.

Well here it is Sunday already! Time really does fly these days – I think that means that I am happy with life. 🙂

Earl and I did a “home shopping spree” yesterday – we went and bought things we need for the house. Sort of a “spruce” up if you will. We both received our tax returns, plus Earl got his yearly bonus, so we had some ammo in the checking account. So we bought new sheets for the bed, a hamper, some decorative planters and such. We went to Albany and went to “Bed, Bath and Beyond”. Very nice, very nice indeed.

The geek in me is trying out a new web-authoring program again. This time I’m trying out Adobe GoLive. I downloaded a trial version. So far I like it very much, but this is the first page I’ve ever edited with it. Let’s see what I think in a week or two! 🙂

We did a little more shopping this afternoon… bought a pair of surround speakers for the living room surround sound system, and a pair of speakers for the wreck-room stereo. We have glorious music throughout the house! Plus we bought some tools at Lowe’s and some household stuff for Mariruth (our cleaning lady). Yes, we are presumptious enough to have a cleaning lady. Actually, Earl has some wicked allergies and she comes in twice a month to clean the house from top to bottom. That let’s him and the cat co-exist peacefully! 🙂

Next weekend we are headed to New York. We are staying at the Embassy Suites Meadowlands. We’re going Friday morning and staying until Sunday. I’m finally going to be able to use my gift certificate at the Art of Shaving, plus we’re just going to do touristy stuff – combining Valentine’s Day and Earl’s birthday into one trip. I already gave him his birthday present, even though his birthday isn’t until the 20th… two tickets to John Edward at a seminar in Providence, R.I. (John Edward is from the TV show “Crossing Over with John Edward). He’s a psychic and a medium, and from what I hear gives wonderful seminars. I’m looking forward to it – and I know that Earl is really looking forward to it too.

Well Earl is downstairs watching the SuperBowl as I am trying to figure out how to ship an ebay shipment to Canada. It’s a $5.00 book and I can not believe the paperwork involved with it! It might be easier just to drive it over and drop it off. Oh well.

Friday night we went out to dinner with Dennis and Vic, to a local restaurant called “Casa Too Mucha”. It’s mine and Earl’s favorite local restaurant, and we eat there quite a bit. The owner, Patty, has a couple of CDs and she is quite the singer. I’ll have to find one of her songs online and post a link to it so you can hear her wonderful voice. Ever since Earl and I were out west last year, I’ve enjoyed Mexican food. I particularly like anything with green chiles on it.

Yesterday we did our monthly Syracuse run – as Earl desperately needed a haircut. So we visited Shoppingtown Mall Barber Shop, and shot the sh*t, and then did some shopping. It’s amazing how much difference a new pillow can make in your sleep patterns. We decided that we needed new pillows, so we picked up a couple at K-mart and we both slept like babies last night. I don’t think I kicked Earl once! 🙂 And the cat didn’t get tossed around either. He insists on sleeping at our feet, or between us sometimes, and we occasionally end up bouncing him around the bed like a trampoline.

We also went grocery shopping at Wegmans. Gosh, I wish Wegmans would come to Utica!

While we were in Syracuse we stopped at Barnes and Noble. I love reading and I love Barnes and Noble – I’m glad that they’re building a store closer to us. I hope our budget can handle it! 🙂 I bought the three book series “Journey of the Soul” by Sylvia Browne. I’ve been doing a lot of reading of Sylvia’s stuff lately. I’m finding much of it to ring true for me. For those that don’t know, Sylvia is a world renowned psychic. Her thoughts on religion are wonderful. Through trance of her spirit guide, she has been able to learn so much of God and the Other Side and so much. As I do more research, I am beginning to identify myself as a Gnostic Christian, rather than as the Methodist I was baptized as. I’ve always been a little bit confused by the teachings of the church… for example, if God is all loving, then why would he punish those that sin and send them to hell? An all loving God can’t be a vengeful God. That made no sense to me. Well as I read Sylvia’s books, I’m realizing that this whole hell and punishment and vindictive and judgement stuff is man-made to scare people – that God is really an all-loving, all-knowing God. I think I am going to join her “Novus Spiritus” study group.

I had to run into work today as the broadcast computer was completely screwed up and played nothing but 2 1/2 hours worth of commercials! 🙂 So much for music! 🙂 Computers can be so helpful, but they can be such a hinderance at times. While I was there I started the 300MB download I intended to do tomorrow during the day. At least it won’t slow down the internet connection for the rest of the office by doing it now. My workstation at work runs Linux and I needed to do some upgrades, so downloading we-a-go. Linux is nice in that it is completely free and doesn’t crash hardly at all. One of our Linux servers has been up and running for the past 74 days without needing a reboot! The other Windows servers need reboots all the time. I hope Linux continues to catch on.