Too much to keep up...

Man all these social networking sites are hard to keep up with. I have become a slave to checking each site to make sure I haven't accidentally snubbed some old friend by not instantly approving a friend request they sent, or updated my profile to reflect my true current status. I found an application on Facebook that will allow me to simultaneously update Shannon and my blog heatonspace.blogspot.com, while also updating Facebook. I think my myspace may just have to fall by the way side and be an occasional check only type gig.

So what's going on...Well my team "Flabbercrombie and Cheech" dominated a Beerfest tournament at Nick's 30th birthday this weekend. We took 1st place in three out of four events and second in the other. This final crushing victory may signal my retirement from the plastic cup politics arena of drinking games. At some point in life you gotta stop consuming upwards of 2000 calories in one night if you want to maintain and/or lose any weight.

I am on a self improvement kick right now and am looking at options for improving my job credentials, physical fitness and mental state in general. Specifically I still need to satisfy my conditional requirements for my Real Estate Salesperson's license which I will probably do over the next week. I am also looking at some further education in the form of a Master's degree, a Law Degree or some other intrinsically valuable piece of paper.

We finally got an Autotrader add up for Shannon's previous car that we need to sell, and I got some more housework done this weekend. Shannon's tutoring has her working late Monday nights, so I think I am going to spend part of the extra time getting some things done at work and clocking some overtime in the process.

Recently an old friend found me on facebook and it has resulted in linking up with a whole group of friends I haven't talked to in forever which is awesome. I am looking forward to getting back in touch with some people and seeing what they are up to in life.

Back to School

Today I completed my first day back to school. I don't have kids until the Tuesday after Labor Day, but I do have to work for a week and a half before they ever show up. It seems like a long time considering that they have to pay us, but that's the schedule. Every year I forget what it is like to be in a stuffy classroom that does not have air conditioning. I get spoiled during the summer sitting at home, so when I go back I feel like I am dying of heat stroke. At least it tends to get cold pretty fast, and then instead I am freezing to death and teaching in a coat. Oh, well. At least I get 2 months in the summer off, 2 weeks for Christmas, 1 for Easter, and lots of Monday holidays. And it could be worse. I could teach in a place like Arizona without air conditioning or Wisconsin without a heating system.

I have also agreed to tutor 2 days a week on top of my regular work schedule. This means that Monday and Wednesday are going to be LONG days... but the extra money is nice.

And of course... Robert and I are still working on our Dept. 56 Halloween Village. We will definitely post pictures when everything is looking beautiful, I mean, spooky. I have no idea what we are going to talk about on this blog when Halloween is over. We definitely don't look forward to Christmas, or Easter, or July 4th as much as we do Halloween. We'll have to figure something out though. :)

Rhode Island

So the weekend in Rhode Island was very good. We had lots of fun and spent more time hanging out with friends than I would have expected. The wedding was absolutely beautiful and Robert and I had a wonderful time dancing throughout the entire reception. I don't get that guy out on a dance floor very often, so I need to take advantage of the opportunities that I get.
Rob didn't mention all of the missing/forgotten items on the trip though... First, we forgot our garment bag that had his suit and my dress for the wedding. Luckily, Nick and Lisa were taking a red eye and went to our house to pick it up and then brought it with them to Cape Cod. The shuttle for the wedding was leaving at 5 p.m., so of course the boys started to get dressed at 4:45. Lo and behold, there was not any dress socks or tie in the garment bag. Robert was frantically searching and swearing that he did pack them. Then, he found a TSA notice in the same pocket of where his socks and tie were supposed to be. Guess TSA forgot to repack them. Rob didn't even pack any socks or anything in the suitcase, so he had to borrow white cotton socks from Nick and a pretty "interesting" yellow tie with baby blue flowers from a groomsman. On the plane ride home, I went to tighten my earrings and found that I was only wearing one. I don't think I could have went very long without noticing that an earring was missing, so it must have happened on that day at either the hotel or the airplane. We searched the airplane with some help from nearby passengers, so I don't think it happened on the plane. I guess we can chock the earring up as lost, which is too bad because I bought those earrings as a college graduation present to myself (and they weren't cheap) that matched a ring that parents had bought for me. Plus, sapphires are my favorite. Then, the camera thing... I don't think Rob and I should travel anymore. We have bad luck.

Grrrrrr....

What a frustrating day. Here's the list

Lost: Shannon's sapphire and diamond earring, missing somewhere along our Rhode Island trip. Digital Camera, left in the rental car on our Rhode Island trip. Company claims the car has been cleaned and it was not found however the car will be returned on Sunday and they will do a thorough search.

Late: Payment to Wells Fargo. McAfee mistakenly charged a renewal fee to an old credit card that I haven't used in years who had an old address resulting in a credit late that I will now have to spend hours getting removed from my credit report.

Reported: Downey reported some more bad news that sent the stock plummeting more than 20%. Fortunately I sold my stocks before the plummet and am waiting for the right moment to buy back in and ride the wave back up when people realize nothing has changed.

So anyway, all those things combined make for a rather frustrating morning, but I am really not in a bad mood. Things are going pretty well.

Shannon and I spent a good amount of time on the Halloween Village last night. For a while there our little hot wire device that we use to cut foam broke and I had to dissect it to repair it. If there happens to be any village enthusiasts out there I highly recommend NOT buying the Dept. 56 foam cutter. It is pretty cheaply made and comes with some limited options. We are going to get the one from hotwirefoamfactory.com which is supposed to be pretty sweet.

The one advantage that the one from dept 56 seems to have is a compact accuracy. The best way to describe it would be that while you would hold the foam factory hot wire like a ping pong paddle with your palm around the handle, you can hold the Dept 56 one like a pen so you get smoother squigglies, but we will have to experiment and see.

We were planning on heading to Havasu this weekend, but in an effort to save some money and get some time at home, we will be at home cleaning and working on Halloween stuff.

I might post later as if you can't tell I am in a chatty mood.

Phoenix ATC Delay

Well we are en route to our friend's wedding and we are sitting in the Phoenix airport. We have an ATC (Air Traffic Control) delay which means there is probably some pretty crappy weather on the other end. Gotta love the East Coast. I spoke with Ben (the groom) yesterday and he said the weather was pretty crappy. I really hope for their sakes that the weather improves before the wedding tomorrow. Rhode Island is a long way for us to go for a wedding, but as the lady sitting next to us on the plane put it, "Good friends are very hard to come by, belive me, I have been around 72 years and have very few."

Ben and Carrie called us yesterday and offered us a room at the actual wedding location for free for one night, so that will help out as well.

As usual Shannon is her cost-conscious self and has packed us a bagful of snacks and things for the plane. I am so used to business travel and just eating wherever I can that I never would have thought of it. The trip did get off to a bit of a rocky start when we got to the airport and realized we had left our garment bag at the house and had no time to retrieve it. Fortunately a couple we know is coming out on a red eye later on so they are going to stop by our house and grab it for us.

I am excited to be working on the halloween village again. The table is HUGE this year. Last year the whole village was 6'x4' and this year it will be 8'x5'. We wanted to build a table and base layers of foam big enough that we won't have to buy them again, so our village will likely be a little spacious this year.

Here is a link to our gallery of last years' village:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robheaton/HalloweenVillage2007

This year we would like to take more pictures of the various stages of completion. Time to wrap up and wait for the plane to leave. More to come from Rhode Island.

Dept. 56 Village

Robert and I have been dilegently working on our Dept. 56 Halloween Village. It is so fun to pull out all the pieces, light them up, and remember what it is that we already have. We also already purchased our 1st anniversary presents for each other. Which of course is 2 new pieces for the village: Ghoul School (for me since I teach) and Rickety Railroad Station (for Rob). This worked our perfectly since we already decided last year to buy each other 1 village piece every year and we need to do it in August when we are designing the layout. This way we won't be buying 2 village pieces AND anniversary presents on top of it, which would get to be quite expensive. Robert's mom, stepdad, and grand-dad came over for dinner over the weekend and probably got an earful of Halloween this and Halloween that. Luckily for us Anthony and John are amazingly creative people who seem to know how to do everything. It looks like some of Rob's big ideas that we didn't see being able to work now just might happen thanks to them! Since Robert and I keep on talking about Halloween, we really need to get some pictures up of our village last year. We'll have to wait for Rob to do that though since I have no technological skills whatsoever.

On a non-Halloween note: Robert and I are leaving tomorrow for a weekend in Cape Cod and Boston. We are flying out there to celebrate a wedding of good friends of ours. Congratualtions Ben and Carrie! I am being such a girl right now and agonizing over what to wear. I was told a colorful semi-formal dress would be perfect, and can't seem to think of anything I own that falls into the category... Oh, well :(

Smoke Grime and Expensive Batteries

Pretty Good weekend, busy but good. My friend Chris had his 27th birthday on Wednesday last week and so his sister made her usual attempt to throw a surprise party for him which as usual, I blew. They have decided that as Chris put it, "If we want to surprise Chris we are going to have to surprise Robert as well, so we'll just tell Shannon next time."

Anyway, we all went down to San Onofre for a little swimming and camping. There is nothing like sitting around a camp fire with some good friends getting smoke grime all over your clothes and hair and cooking up some smores. We decided not to bring an air mattress or any kind of pad to go under our sleeping bags, and that was a BIG mistake. It was definitely a miserable night of sleep and I accidentally crushed Shannon's elbow into the ground when I rolled over in the middle of the night.

We also helped Shannon's grandparents move some more over the weekend. Most of the stuff they had me doing was general handyman stuff. Installing sliding drawers in the kitchen, installing ceiling fans, etc. The new ceiling fan in the master bedroom as a remote to turn it on and off, and of course it didn't come with a battery. That little thing took a 12v specialized battery that I could only find at Radio Shack and cost $5 per battery. That is just ridiculous. It could just as easily run on a AA but some jerk somewhere decided he wanted a larger profit margin.

This week Shannon will be up at her parents for most of the week helping the grandparents get settled, while I will be traveling to Bullhead City, AZ to interview a SME (Subject Matter Expert) on construction to permanent financing. This particular lady is really close friends with Mr. McAllister, the 83 year old founder who just retired (or was forced) from his position as chairman of the board. I kind of suspect our SME will not be far behind him, so I need to get out there and get all the information I can out of her.

Also, my counterpart on the Retail Banking side has just announced his resignation. He is moving on to Pacific Life insurance, which will probably prove a much more stable company for him. It is yet to be determined how the department will restructure, but it is possible this could prove beneficial for me. There is a POSSIBILITY that I will acquire some additional responsibility and broaden my experience. While I don't think this is terribly likely, it is an intriguing possibility.