Dodge Sprinters

Yeah they suck ass! We've never had one that lasted more than 3 years. Yes we put 300miles a day on them, but it's a commercial truck. It's supposed to take a beating and keep on going.

So far we have replaced everything but the engine....which died last week with no warning whatsoever. The cost of a new engine you ask, .......$14,000 installed. WTF!!!!

Needless to say we will be buying a new truck and trying to find a way to get at least the $10,000 that we still owe on the broken truck on trade-in.

Ordinarilly this would not be a problem, but American Express has ratched down our credit line. It's not a huge tab at all, but since the "economic downturn" it has been standard practice at AmEx and probably most other credit cards to reduce their limits to the ceiling of what is owed so that you can't charge anything new.

Great, fantastic. I think they should do that for most personal lines of credit, but for a commercial shipping business you need that extra cushion for just this kind of situation. Truck repairs on a diesel engine are tres $$$$$. That is what a line of credit is for.

I have yet to call them and beg for a little bit of a cushion, but in the meantime we are trying to decide if it is even worth it to try and repair the truck or just get another truck to finance for longer than it will be driveable. UGGGHHHH!

Slacker

I know, I know. I'm slacking on this whole writing a blog thing. Seriously I have been trying to get some crap done. The kids are done with school in 2 weeks and I need to have all of my architect duties finished up before then so that all summer I can focus on entertaining them, creating my website to sell my rugs and on real writing, not this fake blog writing.

I have lofty goals for the summer. I'm getting thru the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite. Photoshop is truly one of the most amazing programs I have ever worked with. I am still mastering Illustrator, and Dreamweaver is not at all as intuitive as the artsy programs.

I have to have my web site up and running by the end of June. That is my official deadline. After that $$$$$ should just start rolling in. Cross my fingers.

Writing........I love it and I hate it. I just need to take that dive and commit more words to paper. I can only get better.

I am also going to be posting my house on one of those house swap web sites. I'm looking to spend next summer in a beautiful castle in the south of France and knowing what I do of the French....I'm hoping the above mentioned home owners will want to spend a few weeks in my castle in the Southwest US. We'll see how that goes.

Check ya later peeps.

Weekend Recap

The entire weekend kicked ass. Our seats were decent and the road trip was perfect. There is nothing like spending 2 -8 hour drives with the one you love, especially when you don't usually get to spend that much time with each other usually or are spending that time herding children.

NIN was awesome as usual. THey played completely different songs from the Lights tour last fall. They definitely kicked Jane's Addiction's asses. I'd never seen Jane's before and probably would not have enjoyed it at all except for Dave Navarro. He is a sight to behold and he was on the JumboTron the whole time. I was transfixed and he took his shirt off in the second song. That guy is a rock star.

Whenever we go to shows I get that exhiliration from being in a place where music is being made, but it also makes me feel old and I miss the days when I got to be back stage and have laminates with my name on them. I've hit that point where I feel old. Yeah the guys on stage are all 10-20 years older then me, but it makes me feel old to no longer be a part of the rock-n-roll scene. It seems like that part of my life is gone for good and it makes me sad.

I wish I could follow the tour around the rest of the US and see all the shows. It was that awesome.

The Ultimate Dress

THE dress arrived yesterday and it is oh so glorious. I tried it on immediately and it looked awesome and I didn't even have my spanx on. So it will look even better after I'm poured into my spanx, my good bra, and I've colored and waxed everything.

I'm pumping up this weekend so much in my mind that I hope it turns out even 1/2 of what I'm expecting.

We've been married for 10 whole years next week and this is our anniversary present to ourselves. We are going to one of our favorite cities, seeing one of our favorite bands, visiting some of our favorite people and we will be staying 2 nights in a hotel by ourselves. We are going to gorge ourselves on expensive restaurant food, dress to the nines, Carl's even going to wear his pimp shoes, and just over all live it up this weekend.

I need it so badly after spending the last 3 months in the house wearing fleece and eating hot dogs.

I'll post a full recap on Monday. Maybe I'll even have some photos.

Brain Vomit

I've got a lot of crap that needs an outlet. I'm feeling very blah this week. My dress has not arrived yet and neither have my Tony Robbins CDs. I'm not feeling like doing much of anything. So far this week I can sum up everything by saying.....

"Some days the only thing I can seem to accomplish is dragging my ass onto the treadmill.....that is the number 1 reason why my ass looks so good."

I'm listening to too much NIN in preparation for the upcoming NINJA show in SD. That is never good for anyone. That shit is deep and puts you on edge.

My dear husand has not been home for dinner in 2 weeks. The corndogs and fish sticks are starting to get a little redundant.

The weather has been beautiful for a change and it makes it almost impossible to sit at a computer for any extended period of time.

I'm hopelessy addicted to Perez hilton, Facebook, and now Twitter. It is driving me insane. I wish I had a phone that only made phone calls. Damn iphone keeps following my around like a lost puppy.

This is one of those points in my life where everything is at a stand still. I'm in the eye of the storm trying to wait patiently for whatever is coming next that will stirr things up again. It's frustrating, but a little exciting knowing that things cannot go on like this forever. Something will change and I'll wish I could come back to these days of reading, internetting, baking, hanging out with the little one, and trying to figureo ut what to do with my life from this point forward. Until then I have a mild case of the blahs. It's nothing that a few days in Vegas couldn't cure.

Maybe that's just what I need......a drive to Vegas, watch the Bellagio fountains, dinner at TI and a walk through the Forum Shops. I might give it a try. Where is my Vegas hair?

The Ultimate Edge

I love self-help books. They take up probably 1/5 of my library book shelves. I love all the law of attraction books, motivational books,financial help books, etc. I will read anything that will promise to make my life better.

As a self-employed person and somewhat artist I need all the motivation I can get to move me forward and towards a goal because no one else is going to motivate me, but me. The books give me the occasional kick in the pants to get started, or get finished on one of my projects.

Since I am officially stuck in a rut and getting too comfortable in my stay-at-hmoe mom lifestyle I have decided to kick things up a notch to get my ass in gear. I am behind in finishing my leftover architect duties, behind on getting my website and rug designs put together into a website and sellable product, and behind on everything in general that I want to do with my life.

So I am pulling out the big guns......that's right......Tony Robbins the Ultimate Edge. I know you've seen the infomercial. I've read most of Tony's books, and they're pretty good. They were what I read when I first started reading self-help stuff. I've never been into the audio and video stuff, so this will be a first for me. I've heard you don't get the full experience of his ideas unless you see or hear him, so this should be exciting.

I'll just pop it in when i'm on my treadmill and see what happens.

There are several goals with which I have been procrastinating and could use Tony's help.

1. My rug business. I need to sell some rugs and make some $$$$$$.

2. I want to publish something someday and in order to do that I need to write something. Please motivate me Tony.

3. I want to brush up on my French and learn Italian and Spanish. I just bought the Muzzy DVD sets for the kids and now I need to get my butt in gear to learn the stuff too.

4. Adobe Creative Suite. I bought this a year ago and so far have only mastered Illustrator. I want to finish learning Dreamweaver, take Illustrator to the Pro level and also be an expert at Indesign and Photoshop.

Wow that's it. That doesn't seem like too much. I can do it with Tony's help. I'll keep you posted on how hard he motivates me.