Tonight I Sleep Alone

Posted on 4/24/2008 by Trev at 9:56 pm

I know it’s been quite a while since my last post. Trust me, it’s not from a lack of things to talk about. It’s because of that pain in the ass time thing. There is never enough of it.

Tonight, Jess is at a sleep study center undergoing a sleep study to determine if she has Sleep Apnea or not. She went yesterday for her across the board allergy test, and a CAT scan. After tonight, she still has to go for some more blood work, and then we need to schedule her surgery. At this point, I really don’t care how many tests we have to go through, or how many thousands of dollars this is costing us — I just my wife to be healthy again.

On top of all of her test, we have started to make the necessary medical changes to the house. Last week, I bought and hung a door for the bedroom so we can keep the cats out at night. That was one of the things that they said we needed to do. The other major change was that the Doctor said we needed to ditch our mattress. Our bed has been shitty for quite a while, and we’ve been putting off shelling out the money for a new one. But in the need of medical necessity, you tend to find ways to come up with the $$. So, we went out last night and started looking for a new mattress and box spring.

To say that we were hit by sticker shock would be a gross understatement.

Most of the decent full mattress and box spring sets we were looking at were around $1,200.00. Um….no.

Long story short, we ended up going to a place that really had some decent prices. Then we fell in love with a mattress. we both agreed it felt great, and even better, fell in our budget. While we were laying there on the show bed talking about it, I mentioned that I really liked the frame. When the the guy came back around to see how we were doing, we asked him if they also sell the frames. He said they did, but the one we really liked only came in a queen size, and they no longer made it. We talked for a while, and he made us an unbelievable off on the whole package (frame, mattress, and box spring). The finish was a natural pine, but they could still order it in black. Jess and I decided to go to dinner and talk about it. After a very nice dinner, we went back and decided to see what kind of price he could work with us on the black bed. After a little back and forth, he finally brought back a price we liked and fit our budget. So, in 2-4 weeks, we’re getting a queen size, 4 poster bed with a brand new mattress and box spring delivered. Looks like we’re painting the bedroom in the next week or so!!

While I’m talking about good news, I also took care of something that’s really been bothering me the past few months. I sat down on Tuesday night with Jess, and we went over all my finances. I really want to get out of debt, and we made a plan to do so. First thing Wednesday morning while she was getting her tests done, I put our plan into action. After a few hours of calls, I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. I got all of the interest rates totally slashed, and my payments lowered with a structured plan with all my creditors. So, starting in May, all my payments have been condensed into 1 low monthly payment, and I will be totally debt free, having repaid 100%, in 48 months. Proof positive again that negotiating works. There’s nothing like the stress of debt being lifted. Sure, I’m still in debt, but I know that in 48 months, I will have none of this debt hanging over me.

For me now, it’s time to close the laptop, roll over next to the puppy, and go to sleep.

Luck

Posted on 4/18/2008 by Trev at 9:35 pm

Luck us a funny thing. All we’ve had lately is bad luck. Take this week for example. For me to say this week has been terrible at work would be a gross understatement. I fought this week to stay under 40 hours (overtime is forbidden), never got a lunch at all this week, and if I wasn’t buried in paperwork, I was on the road putting out fires. Jess had an equally bad week at work, and she didn’t exactly get the best news about her health this week.

Oh yeah, we also had 8 kittens on Wednesday afternoon.

So here we are at Friday, and I still have one more hellacious day of work to go. So I get out of work after 8 1/2 straight hours (again, no lunch), and head over to the new gym that just opened up, Planet Fitness. Jess opened up membership last night and I opened one up tonight since they are waiving the membership fee this week. While there I get a call from Joel wanting to know if we wanted to me them for dinner. I call Jess, who was just leaving work, and we agree. I head home to met Jess, and about an hour later, we found ourselves at Asian Cafe. We waited for them for about 20 minutes, and then in walked Joel, Katie, Rob, and Amanda. We all ordered up some sushi, and had some great conversations. The girls were talking about something, while Joel, Rob and I discussed the new season of ‘Deadliest Catch‘. We all sat there and ate for almost 2 hours before it was time to leave. We even started to make plans to have a nice Rock Band night.

It was leaving Asian Cafe, that I realized something. Bert had called me during dinner and left a voicemail with some information we had been looking for. I had a very deep conversation with an old friend last night in which I said somethings that needed to be said, albeit, 10 years too late. But while leaving dinner tonight I realized that no matter how bad life seems at time, I really do have some of the best friends a guy could ask for. I may not be able to hang out with them nearly as often as I like to, but when I do, we really make it count.

Maybe my luck’s not so bad after all.

Building A Panel

Posted on 4/14/2008 by Trev at 9:58 pm

The Bertman and I have been trying to build the cast of ‘Growing Up Geek’, and I think we may have found 2 more people to join the cast. One will bring another unique geek voice to the fray, and the other will be a more feminine, non-geek perspective. Our goal is to get a solid 4-5 person panel each week, each one bringing something unique to the table.

Will it work? Only time will tell.

From Hell Week To Dirty Weekend

Posted on 4/12/2008 by Trev at 10:03 am

This past week at work was just hellish. You can tell the weather is getting nicer when I crush sales and fight to stay under 40 hours a week. Top all that off with a 7 hour meeting on Wednesday in Scranton with my regional boss, and you get a picture of how my week has been.

Now that the weekend is here, I normally tend to slack off. Not this weekend though. Too many weekend have gone by with me on the computer or couch just wasting away the day. I’m not saying that I won’t relax today, but the majority of this weekend is going to be focused on cleaning. In fact, I am on my way to the basement right now to start organizing that mess. Jess is also starting upstairs. My goals is to get these 2 areas done by dinner, and then after dinner, focus on the living quarters and by tomorrow, have all the rooms clean enough to shampoo all the carpets.

That’s the goal at least. I’ll let you know how we make out with that.