Life with the Two Crazy Dogs

I want to wish all my readers, silent readers and whoever who drops by this blog a very Happy 2008.  Wishing all of you folks happiness, great health, prosperity, peace to the world. 

Yeah, I have to admit I forgot to post a Happy New Year post to greet y’all to a brand new year, new resolutions and new dreams and whatever that comes along! 

My one and only resolution is the same year after year: get 3 courses in for the year.  Pretty tough doing part time, unless I take the accelerated classes.  But anyhow, I want to get that accomplish this year. 

Another year add on to my years in Minnesota.  Counting down the days to my 11th year wedding anniversary in February, too. 

Happy New Year to all!!

P/S:  Wanted to put up a Happy New Year song from YouTube, but it just won’t appear.  *pulling my hair!!*

Well, I didn’t put the new year song up, but Memories of us by Keith Urban

The holidays are coming to an end, and down comes the holiday lights.  In my neighborhood almost every house have holiday lights up on the sides of their roof, trees or outdoor decorations.  Most of these lights are those incandescent lights which are not energy efficient.  I was telling DB that if we want to put up holiday lights, they better be the energy efficient rope lighting from holidayleds.com.  I know for sure these lights last a lot longer, at least 50,000 hours and they are not hot to the touch.  These lights are made of very hard epoxy lenses which make them unbreakable.  Also, these rope lightings are flexible and dimmable.  They are perfect for your deck, sides of the house or roof, trees, and anywhere you want.   For next year’s holiday lights, check out these LED lights from holidayleds.com.

I just found out  while I was filling out my online time card that my vacation and sick time balances were all f’ed up big time.  It showed that I owe the company vacation and sick times which is so damn wrong.  By right I should have 5.25 hours left for sick and 16 hours left for vacation, which the 16 hours will be forfeited come 2008, however, my coworker is going to find out for me since I’m in Corporate, employees with Corporate might not be able to carry the remaining hours over.  But again, the company is changing its vacation/sick/personal time policy to PTO (Personal Time Off), and if I’m not mistaken any remaining vacation from 2007 will be carried over automatically to 2008.

Just hope my coworker will get it fix for me this week.  Tell y’all, outsourcing to an incompetent group of HR folks screws up the employees’ lives.  This is not the first time they got my vacation all screwed up.  There are so much more that they messed up: tuition reimbursement, timecards, bonuses, vacation and sick times.  Cross my fingers and lets hope this will be fixed this week.  Idiots!

There is a website out there where you can purchase all kinds of cartridges for your laser or inkject printers, or even fax machines.  This webiste is call Inkers at inkers.biz.  DB and I go through ink cartridges fairly quickly between the four printers we have in our home.  I know, we allow SD and BF to use it occasionally.  I used my black and white laser printer more so than the color inkjet. 

I should inform DB about this website.  The Lexmark inkjet cartridge for our printer cum fax machine uses the most ink.  At Inkers, what I found out is Lexmark inkject cartridges are compatible to Lexmark printers, that is their guarantee.  It is just not for Lexmark, but for all printer brands, HP, Brother, Cannon, Apple, Toshiba, Sharp, and the list goes on! 

Inkers provides the best quality toners and cartridegs that are cost efficient compare to the other store bought brands.  No matter how large your shopping cart is, at Inkers, ground only shipping is free within the U.S.  In addition, if you are not satisfy with their products, the company has a 30-day return policy, and if there are any flaws on their products, you are 100% guaranteed for a year.  Check out injkers.biz if you are in need of printer toners, cartridges or for your fax or copier machines.  Their customer service with a toll free number is there to assist you with your questions.

New Year’s eve, I’m at work and I think this is the first time I’m working on a New Year’s eve.  There’s only four poor souls in the office.  When I came in at 6 am, there was only Kris and she was on a conference call already.  Then Karen came in.  Today is her last day with the company.  She will be officially retired at the end of business day today.  She gave me a box of ginseng coffee which her Filipino DIL gave her.  I’m having a sachet right now.  Not bad.  There’s added sugar in it, but diluted it so it’s not so sweet.

Been here for 2 hours and I’m now chatting with Stef on Yahoo!  Yeah, when I get to work I leave both my Yahoo and Gmail accounts up to check my incoming emails.  I will probably work on the Excel spreadsheets when I’m out of posts to write. 

I was going to post up the pictures of the cross stitch works done by my sis, but too lazy last night.  Hopefully will get the pictures out tonight, or tomorrow morning. 

For now, it’s time to crank out some money.

With all these holidays going on the past few weeks or for the past few months I should say, consumers must have maxed out their credit cards.  I know SD and BF did.  They were in the midst of moving. They had to rent and also shop for the holidays.  Needless to say, they did maxed out on whatever credit cards they have.  He is looking at other credit card companies to transfer the balances.  It is always a smart idea to find and make comparisons to which credit card before jumping right to the one you think is right.   BF looked through websites for Fair Credit Credit Cards as his and SD’s credit scores are not the best, very low actually.  At creditcardsearchengine.com, you can find the type of credit cards from different providers you want and compare them to find the right one to suit your payment types, that is to look for a low APR, balance transfers, intro period, and if they have annual fees. 

…I have changed my Friday vacation for Monday, but I know I will get a reminder from my boss if I did it.  Why she would do that?  Because there will be no one in our department for that Monday, Dec 31.  The big boss is off, too.  So, I have no choice but to come in.  I’m just not into getting back to the grind stone.  I suppose I can look at the bright side of things….I can work on my other stuff, like writing posts.

Yep, BIL bought a new Chevy Silverado truck with the stainless steel Chevy billet grilles.  Brand spanking new and it’s red in color.  He and his son came up to the cities for a drive this weekend.  No wonder BIL works so many jobs.  He sold his old truck and got this new one all with cash!!  He works 3 jobs in a week: 2 jobs with the paramedics and a job with the sheriff’s department.  Plus, he does auto detailing, too with the son.  Hard work pays off!

Darn, I forgot about this week’s Photohunt again.  It just hit me while I was checking my emails.   Here is it for this week’s theme: Messy.  My messy office at home.  It has been in this condition since the beginning of this year, I think, or in July.  I know for sure I got rid of some of the text books from last year.  Yeah, I’m not a very tidy person.

I’m so getting used to these 3 days off, and work one day and off another few more.  I better enjoy it while I can coz after next week, we won’t have any days off (federal at least) till January 21 for Dr. MLKJr’s day and then February 18 for President’s Day.

I had the day (Friday) off yesterday.  Went to Cole’s Salon for my haircut in the morning.  That girl still can’t get what I wanted for a haircut.  It snowed when I got home, more like a nuisance snow.  Not much but enough to coat the driveways and streets to make them slippery enough that every one needs to slow down.  I went to get my text books for school which costs me a bomb.  For two books, one used and the other brand spanking new, the total came to $168+.  Damn expensive if you ask me.  Then drive all the way back to my neck of the woods for groceries. 

Yeah, I bought a set of flannel linen for our bed.  DB washed them this morning and they are now we have fresh flannel linen for tonight.  Will have to see if it’s warmer for DB.  I don’t mind the cotton linen but DB finds it too cool to lay on in the winter. 

Today I hardly did much.  Vacummed the carpets and it was just horrible.  Dust and dog hair and more dog hair and dust.  Coopster really need a brushing again, but I have not got to it yet, and they need a bath too.  DB’s going to bathe Ranger tomorrow.  That dog has more problems than I do.  This time around he has an ear infection and is on antibiotics and ear drops for 10 days.   Oh, and I was putzing around on Facebook this morning.  I found a classmate of mine from when I was in my secondary school.  We were once in contact but lost touch for many years.  Thanks to Facebook, we are now back in action.

And for dinner, I cooked noodles, those dry noodles.  Didn’t bother to take a picture coz it just wasn’t what I wanted.  I should have cooked the noodles in hot water first before dumping it to the wok to fry!!!!  Lesson learned.  We are also trying to use up the ham as much as we can.  DB is having ham sandwiches every day.  He said will make bean soup with the bone, but will see if he will do it.  He is so into getting his computer fix right now.

For now, it’s movie time for me.  That’s what I have been doing every night since the week before Christmas.  Thank you to Blockbuster Online, yeah, but I’m thinking of signing up with Netflix.  They are cheaper for the same amount of rented DVDs.

TTFN, folks.

Since I moved to the States, I have been buying a lot of calling cards till I bought one permanent one from Sam’s Club where I can add more minutes at any time.  I will buy 1500 minutes for $65 plus and to place an international cellular number, I will only have about 100 minutes.  That really stinks majorly.  Pinshark.com has all the international calling cards for all different countries, and phone cards for domestic calls, too.  They are very cheap, for example, for me, international calls to a cellular number in Malaysia, the card will cost approximately $20 and the amount of minutes is about 2,800.  Of course, the price of the card and number of minutes depends on which phone card you would like to purchase.  It saves heck a lot of money if I were to purchase one of these cards.  Pinshark.com carries all the different brands of phone cards that are out in the market.  Their website is easy to maneuver around.  It has a category for consumers to choose the right calling card where it has all the answers for my questions, at least for me.

Wha-ta-heh, the boss is here.  Actually every one in my department came in today.  My boss had the morning off and came in at noon, came in with her hubby and FIL for lunch and tour the campus.  Good thing I have only 45 minutes to go and then three days off.  Will meet with Forrest’s (Simmie’s BF) sister to collect the vacumm cleaner and shampoer at 5 today.  She will drive up to my area instead of me driving to Lakeville to  meet her.  Very nice of her.  For now, I have to act busy, pull up the Excel spreadsheet of reports and pretend I’m working on it.

When I was in KL, the changes in that city were kinda over bearing.  The last I was in KL was in 1994, I think, it was not as crazy as compared to what I have seen now.  The traffice jams never seems to change; the high rise buildings are just coming up and with all these condos for sale almost all over the city.  They are those luxury to the medium priced condos that I am sure will be taken up with a snap of a finger with all the foreign expats in the city.

My SIL gets to leave prison for Christmas, actually because of good behavior, she was out on Christmas eve.  I did not talk to her, but DB said according to his other sister, this SIL of mine had colon cleanse while she was in the lock up.  This is because of all the toxins in her from her drinking and drugs usage, the build up was bad enough to almost kill her.  She is now a completely new person; she put on 30 pounds on her, reads the bible every day, and not as trashy.  No wonder MIL said she feels very happy.

Since I  walk the boys all over the neighborhood for over a year now, I have seen a lot of houses with real crappy mailboxes.   Yeah, when I walk, I do look the houses and its yard and surroundings.  The residents on the street where I live, some of them do maintain those mailboxes to the max.  I have seen some owners totally take pride of their mailboxes with the new column mailboxes made out of bricks with the house number engraved to the column.  Very impressive looking. 

Mailboxixchange.com  has all the mailboxes you can dream of.  Some of the owners bought their residential mailboxes from this site.   Majority of them are post mounted and of course those with columns.  Then the area where the townhomes are, these townhomes are quite spendy.  They are those one level townhomes with basements.  These townhomes’ mailboxes are those of the commercial mailboxes type.  They are made of heavy aluminum and is approved by the United States Postal Service.  There are about 16 individual boxes and each comes with their own keys for each unit. 

Mailboxixchange.com has a variety of mailboxes’ manufacturers like Whitehall, Salsbury to Ecco.  Each product is 100% guaranteed for customers’ satisfaction: 100% refund for a return and the product is good for 30 days after delivery.  This website also markets items like plagues for addresses, and curbside decorations.

*This post is brought to you by mailboxixchange.com*