Step Away From the Cake

Xena, the Warrior Moluccan, died tonight. I don't think I can do this again. I can't lose any more animals. It hurts too damn much. I don't think I'll ever own another bird. I can't stand the pain.

I'm fighting temptation to buy some new toys. The Garmin Forerunner 305 is only $215 on Amazon. Very good price and very tempting. I'm trying to talk myself down. If you have one and hate it, please leave a comment. If you have one and love it, please leave a comment. I really shouldn't buy it but I haven't bought myself a new toy in forever. Quick, talk me down.

There's a thousand things running through my head that I could post about but since a lot of them tick me off I'm trying to refrain. I do have to comment about the immigration bill today. The American public brought down the Capitol Hill switchboard - for the first time ever. Yes. That's how it works. The politicians were going to do something the American people didn't' want, really didn't want, and the American people let them know. Wow, pretty amazing. Yes, I could go on and on about the bill but it pisses me off so I'll pass for now. Yeah, something is going on with me. I am soooooo tired. I mean dragging tired. I don't know why but it's annoying. It's probably closely tied to the whole work burn out thing going on :) I am taking a few days off from exercise to give myself a break. I don't think extra sleep will help but it's worth a try. That's about all I have to say. I'm tired and heading off to bed.

I've told you that I have been working hard on my financial situation for the past 18 months. In my past I made some mistakes. While I could blame it on things that happened, I had my own business and my partner dug out on me and left me holding the bag, the truth of the matter is, I made all those choices and if my credit got screwed up it was my fault. In researching how to repair it I learned that the quickest way to boost your credit is to get credit. Now that is stupid. How are you supposed to get credit if your credit is bad?? It took me a long time to search out ways to get credit with bad credit. But I found them and I used them and guess what? My credit score has gone through the roof and is now above the national average. If you are having some credit issues and need to build up your credit there's a easier way to find bad credit credit cards . This site not only shows you which cards will be given to folks with poor credit, they have a listing of low interest...

I'm not sure what's going on but the last week I have been utterly exhausted. My strength training dropped to 3 days a week and the other 2 days I have the hardest time getting up. I don't know exactly what's up. I'm wondering if I should take a couple of days off completely and just rest. I don't know. So here I sit at 6 a.m. awake, but too tired to go for a run. Ugh!!! I wonder if it's mental tiredness from the burn out I feel from work. I'll be taking a week off but that doesn't alleviate the burn out I feel now. I just made a decision while I was typing this. I am taking a few days off. Today, tomorrow and the weekend are now exercise free. I'm going to sleep in a little and do some stuff I want to do that I haven't had time lately. Wow, that makes me feel better already. I think I'm trying to do too much. My weekends are usually packed with stuff to do; exercise, clean house, do laundry, make biscuits, bath birds/dogs, lu...

Well, both my blogs have gotten nailed by spam in the last 2 days. This blog has word verification and they still got in. My other blog I've turned on comment moderation and they still snuck through. Unreal. If they took some of this ingenuity and channeled it into something constructive they would be millionaires. So, what to say?? Lots happening and I'm feeling really positive about things. Really positive. Oh yeah, I heard today that my murdering, drug dealing neighbor has moved to the Big Island and is getting addiction treatment , I sure hope it works. This guy is like 60 years old and has nothing. No job, no money, no future, living with his sister. I can't imagine that. I worry that I'm not where I should be financially yet I'm miles ahead of someone like him. You know, lately I don't understand people at all and it really boggles my mind. I could go into all the political stuff but I'll pass. But just your average people. I don't un...

discover your dog breed @ quiz meme

I consider myself pretty intelligent but sometimes I can be really dumb. I have a tendency to be stubborn with myself and to forget my limitations at times. For instance, if there is something I need to do that is hard, or difficult, or a little scary I will put it off and put it off and put it off until I can't put it off any longer. Now I know that it is never as big as it seems in my head, and that the longer I put it off the bigger it gets. But I do it anyway. For example, a few months back we went to get a mortgage we ran into a problem because suddenly there was a tax lien on my credit. It was from the State of California, who I've been having issues with for months. I got so angry I just threw my hands in the air and said, screw it. Now there was a number of things going on here. First, I was really pissed at Cal. for waiting 18 years to try and collect some bogus taxes. FYI, because I have no records and can't prove they are wrong, they are automatically as...

So Hubby and I are taking off the last week of July. Actually it's the end of July beginning of August. I need some time off in the worst way. You can not imagine. We were really hoping to be able to go somewhere. I would love to take a Maui Vacations . Maui is my favorite island and I absolutely love going there. There's this palm tree on a beach just south of Lahaina on Maui that is very special to hubby and I. Our first trip to Hawaii was 10 days on Maui. We stayed in a condo outside Lahaina . There were these funky old bicycles at the condo and we would ride them down the beach to this leaning palm tree to snorkel . It was 1986 and we had a great time. We went back to Maui and that tree in 2001. It was really exciting to find it still there. That is our tree. Alas, it looks like a vacation is not in the cards right now. The way Nala's hips are I can not risk putting her in a kennel, even for a day or two. If I could find someone to come and stay at the ho...

Some days I can't think of a thing to write about and other days I can't seem to shut up. Guess which day today is :) Hubby and I have an unspoken division of duty. Do other couples have this?? I've always assumed they do but I've never asked. Basically, I take care of the inside, he takes care of the outside. He also does interior repairs. One thing hubby is very good at is plants. He does landscaping and yard maintenance on the side. Anyway, I would love to have some plants indoors but with the animals and my ability to kill things it's probably not a good idea. Maybe I should get some silk trees . Of course if there's a way to kill them I'll find it :) Okay, just some thoughts.

It's really warm here tonight. I've also been in front of the stove for the past hour too. I make my dogs biscuits and I didn't over the weekend because I kept forgetting one ingredient. I finally got the needed item and, since they were out of biscuits, made them tonight. It's not hard but it is hot since I have a tiny kitchen and a big oven. The things I do for my animals..... My murdering, drug dealing neighbor appears to have moved. Rumor has it he has gone to the Big Island. I don't know it that's true. I do know that I haven't seen the slime in a week, so I'm hopeful. They started working on that house, apparently drug dealers don't take care of houses - who knew? So they are trying to run something and it blew out. They said they needed to find a place that does power supply repair . Okay, and I care why??? This guy is a real chatty Kathy. He claims he's the new owner, we'll see. Life in Hawaii, never dull.

After spending the morning on the phone to the government I'm happy to say everything worked out - for me!! For a change things went in my favor and all is right with the world. At least for now :) The thing about the government is the paperwork. I had to give my address 400 times and I had to get some ballpoint pens and sign my name, just so I could fax it over to them, although they could not tell who I was by my signature. The government has some very strange requirements . But I'm happy. The tax liens are being removed from our credit reports and the sun will shine!!! It really doesn't take much to make me happy. Really. Not much....

to throw a fit. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate the IRS!! Or the State of California!!!! UGH!!!! I have literally spent the last 3 hours on the phone with first, the State of California, and then the IRS. I've been doing some financial stuff and realized that there were ancient tax liens on the report. WHAT?!?!?!? I had not seen them before. Hmmmm, very strange!!! After almost an hour on the phone with the State of California I finally got the info that these were expired liens and could be removed from my credit report. YEAH!!! Joy, joy everywhere. Only to discover that once a credit report picks up a tax lien it very rarely lets it go. I have to get a release from California (which they are sending). I then have to send this release to the credit reporting agencies and hope they will remove them, there's nothing I can do to force them to remove it. Although, having that release will make it better with mortgage companies since I have proof no lien exis...

Yeah, right, I wish.... I love taking pictures although I don't think my pictures are that good. I love to take them though and I take hundreds when I go on vacation. I'm thinking of starting a photo a day thing over at Flo's Place just because I would like to work on my picture taking skills. But if you like to take pictures and are good at it there's a photo contest going on that you should get in on. It's free to enter. All you have to do is upload a picture and see what happens. Maybe you'd like to try a baby photo contest instead. I know a lot of the bloggers out there have kids. This might be a good way to use all those photos you've taken :) So I've seen some of your picture taking abilities. Head over there and check it out. You could win $10,000, and who couldn't use that??

I don't know about you but I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I got hooked on them when I was working on the fishing boats, that's a whole other story. But these are great books to sit and read while you're watching fishermen haul in the catch. It's easy to do two things at once because it's easy reading, I mean it was written for kids after all. Well, the final book in the series is coming out next month. I'm excited. I don't know how it's going to end. I've read all kinds of things on the net, Harry dies, someone else dies, Hogwarts is destroyed, blah, blah, blah. This is one of those times when I don't want to think. I want to wait and be in suspense until I can sit down with the book. I'll probably get it and then read it in one night. That's usually how I do it. Anyway, I'm looking forward to it. If you aren't one of the 1 million who've preordered Harry through Amazon, you can still get it. If you order it throu...

Well, thanks to the idiot who took the time to write that ridiculous comment, and since I have word verification on had to work to get it on there, I've turned on comment moderation. No more crap like that on my blog. Sorry if anyone tried to look and got that garbage....

Well, it's been a weekend. I was bird sitting my bosses bird so it was double Moluccan weekend. Let me tell you something, 2 birds is not twice as much work, it's about 4 times as much. It seems like I spent all weekend making food, cleaning cages and playing with birds. Her mom is coming home today though - yeah!!! Yesterday I was supposed to go for my run but I really felt like hiking. I haven't been hiking in about 4 months and the weather has been so beautiful. So yesterday morning I went of a hike. There's a very nice trail literally around the corner from my house. It also hooks up to a couple of other trails so you can go really far. Since I haven't been hiking in a while I decided to take the "easier" trail. It's about 2.75 miles and not too hilly. It was beautiful. I saw lots of birds, I even saw what looked like an Amazon parrot. It could have been one that got loose. So 5.5 miles took me about 1:49 and totally kicked my butt. ...