I’m still waiting patiently for all of the hosting to be moved over.  My personal stuff is moved to the new data center, the clients have proven to take a lot longer.  I’m not sure why it’s taking so long, I was told 3-5 days and it’s pushing more along the lines of 8 days.  Hopefully everything will be resolved soon, I’m being charged double for hosting this month because of still having the initial accounts with the old data center.  I just hope everything will resolve itself before I head up to NY next week.

Come Tuesday (24) I’m loading up the car, throwing Sean in the passenger seat and trucking it up to Long Island for a few days.  Dad’s birthday is on the 26th, my sisters is on the 29th and there’s quite a bit of family that I haven’t visited in over a year so I figure the trip up will give me an excuse to do that.  I’m driving the first half while Sean and Bella sleep in the car, then the second half he’ll take over and I’ll have Bella on my lap.

I bought my father a BBQ and a lot of accessories to go with it.  I’ve loaded my sister up with a huge gift basket and the rest just kind of goes from there.  I just want to leave very early on Wednesday morning, figure Midnight (25th).  By the time we get up there it’ll be about 4am.  This gives us plenty of time to get in and to just head to bed for the night.  Then the next morning we’ll take the gifts out of the car and hide them in the house after Dad’s gone to work.  I’ll get some minor grocery shopping done for Dinner on Thursday (Dad’s birthday) and then that should basically take care of everything.

Up until that point I’m going to be working.  I have a few different projects going on right now that are bringing in some fairly decent change, this is how I was able to afford the $200 I dropped on presents this year.  Guess I should get myself back to work now though, few emails to go through.

For quite some time now, it’s been my goal to save up enough money to take a vacation to someplace I’d never been before. Yes, there are still 47 other states that I’ve never visited but this doesn’t mean I’m interested in staying within the confines of the US. I’ve always wanted to travel to Italy or even Ireland just so I can get back to my roots. I’ve heard, from many travelers, that cellphones on some of these trips can be rather unreliable depending on your carrier, naturally I assumed that I would just go and pick up some international phone cards.

It really doesn’t matter where you are, or who you’re with for that matter. I feel it’s important to have an emergency phone card for those ‘just in case’ moments that seem to happen so frequently with travelers. You never know what’s going to happen. You could run out of gas in a strange community, you could have an emergency 911 call because of a slip and fall or coming across something that just didn’t seem right to you. You could have received a message telling you to call home and going directly through the hotel would cost you more than an arm and a leg in order to even make the call. There’s a whole series of issues that could happen that you just don’t know about. Travelers checks get lost or stolen, many other factors that could make your day horrible, no matter what they are.

Pingo, a service that can also be called phone card international, has an option called RateWatcher that saves you from the hassle of digging through piles of prepaid phone card offers just to see if you’re getting a really low phone card rate. It’s nice to know that there’s a company out there that will aid in regulating your ability to get in touch with your loved ones without paying excessive fees. They claim that they have no hidden fees, no surprises and the best competitive rates worldwide. I think when I get myself shipped over to another company - I’m more than likely going to go through these guys.

Sometime over the course of the next couple months, Sean and I have decided that we’d like to take a vacation. I personally don’t see myself being completely on-board with this until I’ve hit the 20-pounds-lost mark. I’m putting myself on set goals of 20, instead of 15. This is based on the fact that the 13 seemed to come off so easily. That was just walking around the block, it had nothing to do with portion control at that point either.

We decided that we’d like to head to either Ohio to visit his brother or possibly up to Maine to take in the scenery. We’ve heard such good things about Maine that after weighing the options it’s more than likely going to be first choice. Considering I basically have control over the destination (he just doesn’t know it yet), I would prefer to go there anyway. I did some looking around hotelreservations.com which as some may know offer everything from cheap hotels to the more expensive hotels. Naturally I’m looking somewhere in between that. Their idea of “cheap hotels” however aren’t like Motel 6 or anything, it’s just the cheapest possible room rates to meet your search criteria.

We’re not looking to do some big beach resort thing. We live by the beach so we’re really looking more ‘inland’ so that when we’re lucky enough to have clear skies, we can see every possible star that there is to see. My grandfather has spent quite a bit of time up there and has so many stories to tell you about Maine that there’s no possible way that I won’t make my way up there soon. I figure if both Sean and I have the money to do this (considering business is doing well for both of us) then this would more than likely be a solid location for us to look into on our trip. We’re not looking for some long week-long stay, we’re probably even going to be driving up so we can float through as many states as possible along the way to our destination. I guess I’m going to need to buy a few storage cards and a couple cases of batteries for my camera, huh?

I fell off the weight-loss wagon over the last couple of days. Baby and I finally decided to get things arranged around the house and with the lack of ability to cook anything, we wound up just going for quick food. Last night at like midnight we wound up taking a drive to Ocean City and having Denny’s just to put some food in our stomachs. I got myself some turkey and didn’t bother with the fries. He got some barbecue chicken tenders thing as an apetizer and I only ate the celery so at least I tried, but I still failed. Tonight we went to Casapulla’s South and I wound up getting Turkey on Rye with Lettuce and Tomato, they wound up putting mayonnaise on it and I’m damn certain that it wasn’t anything fat free either. I scraped off what I could and went from there.  I’ve stayed away from the scales. I figured with all of the moving around I’ve been doing and heavy lifting at that - maybe something would have dropped off me.

I’ve been unable to do any walking over the last week because of my cold, then having my period and now just being sore from everything going on. I know it seems like a plethora of excuses but it seriously true - I just haven’t been able to make the time or get the energy to do anything productive in regards to my diet.

Tomorrow is going to be about 80 degrees so I assume that the 6 hours I’ll be in the flea market walking around a 15 acre lot will get me back on track. Sweating it out is really the only way to go. I’m going to have to make sure to have some sun-lotion with me so I don’t burn. I’m not quite sure if I’m going to wear shorts because I’m covered in mosquito bites that look disgusting but I also know jeans would just be way too hot for me to really be comfortable tomorrow. I guess I’ll figure everything out after I wake up tomorrow.

For now I need to head off, we’re leaving about noon and it’s already 2:30, I’m sure I could use the sleep. I’m exhausted anyway.

Originally posted on krissy.nu

I woke up about 6am so that I could get myself ready to hop on the Cape May/Lewes Ferry at it’s 9am departure towards Cape May. After that I’ll be spending about an hour in the car and stopping at the beautiful Harrah’s Hotel & Casino. Baby and I are both excited because this is one of our first real vacations together. I set myself up in the Bayview tower, which is the new one that they were building the last time I went to A.C., I hear it’s actually pretty gorgeous inside so I’m anticipating it. It’ll be nice to sleep in a bed that doesn’t kill my back, I’ll tell you now that even if I don’t win any substantial amount of money as I did last time, just sleeping on a good mattress for a few nights will be completely worth it.

Dad will make his appearence around 3pm. I have to make it a point to be by the doors around that time so hopefully I’ll be able to find my watch, I’ve been searching for it all morning (Update: Found it, w00t!).

I still have a few things to do around the house, there’s about an hour left before we leave and I need to get the bedroom in order for Bella because she’ll be locked in there until tomorrow evening. Baby’s mom is going to make it a point to let her out for us on Sunday so that she isn’t cooped up in the room the whole weekend. I just need to throw some extra food and water down and then I’m sure she’ll be fine.

It’s going to be a litte bit difficult to stick to diets this weekend but I also know that each floor in Bayview towers is about 1/4 mile, so I may wind up walking the halls for a little while to get in my solid 4 miles a day. I know I’ll be doing a lot of walking around the casino but that’s mainly stop and go kind of walking, nothing consecutive.

Once my father meets up with us we’re probably going to head to Showboat and Caesar’s, I have quite a few comps to cash in on. I’m actually going to have to travel around for all three days based on all of the comps I have. There’s 3 to be done today, a few for Sunday and then probably 4 or 5 to be played on Monday before we start the long drive back home. I would have liked to take the ferry home, especially considering the moon rise, but then we’d have to leave around 5PM and if anyone has been on the Garden State Parkway at rush hour then you can understand my wanting to wait. We’ll just have to do our 2 hours in the car down the Jersey Turnpike - that should be HEAPS of fun…I swear.

In any event, I should get my butt in gear. I hope everyone enjoys their weekend. It’s supposed to be some gorgeous weather for the next few days so hopefully you can all get out in the sun and soak up some vitamin D!

I’m extremely excited, I really hope that I have good news to come home and share.