AGn Designs

Come Monday I’ll be doing some pretty heavy duty holiday shopping. I don’t like waiting until the last minute, by then it’s slim pickings at almost every store, everywhere. I did read that more than 30% of all of the holiday shopping this season will be done online so I want to assume that there won’t really be many people at the mall this coming Monday. I’m just going to cross my fingers in hopes that I’ll be able to find everything I’m looking for.  Sean is fairly easy to shop for, but he drops hints for quite some time around any gift-giving celebration. Me on the other hand, all I really want is a Mac. I doubt that’s going to happen but it’s worth the wish.

Last night Sean and I went over to the tree lighting downtown.  Driving down the main strip you’re greeted with gorgeous lights wrapped around the poles, and even the mechanical reindeer that many people have on their lawns during the Christmas season.  All of the store fronts are filled with lights and over crowded with people looking to see the tree from every possible location on the street surrounding the tree.  Then you hear the countdown and turn your head as quickly as possible expecting to see something spectacular, you then realize it wasn’t worth the trip.

Now, I don’t want to sound stereotypical or anything but I live in a very “hip” beach town.  More than 50% of the population is homosexual, of that 50% it’s more male than female.  Now, the fashion sense in these residence can blow anyones mind.  Sometimes I feel like I’m walking through San Francisco in CA and not Rehoboth in DE, but that’s besides the point.  The streets are done up nicely, all of the bars and storefronts are done up nicely, even the benches are trimmed for the holiday season.  So why in gods name is the main attraction the WORST thing on the block?  It’s about a 40-foot tree, I believe.  It’s not like we’re watching the Rockefeller Center lighting or anything but you would at least thing that the lights would be wrapped around the tree – and not just dropped down from the top and strung along as though it looks good.  You’re supposed to wrap lights around a tree, you’re not supposed to have straight lines on just one side unless you’re completely LAZY.

It upset my Christmas spirit.

On Saturday we packed up a few suitcases as well as the dogs and headed to a hotel in the area.  Karen and I dropped a bomb in the house and Sean couldn’t be around for it because the dust in the air would be enough to kill him with how bad his asthma is.  Now, I’d personally prefer to just drop a fogger from Walmart and call it a day but she (who reads too much into EVERYTHING) is convinced that the fogger would either kill the dogs or not kill the fleas and a whole other mess of misinformation that she picked up from one of her Google searches.  So she picked up this product called “Flea Busters” and we spent a good 2 1/2 days getting the house back in order so that we could at least step foot into the door and not itch like crazy.

Saturday night we started bombing but didn’t finish until about 11pm.  On Sunday night we came back here at about 10pm so we could start the laundry and begin vacuuming things up.  I did the vacuuming, she did the washing.  Even now we’re still moving clothes around and figuring out where to put them until we can finish bombing the final areas in the house (closets mainly).

On Monday she checked out of her room early so she could get to work, a little while later hubby and I checked out of our room and picked up some breakfast then came back here.  Within about a minute of walking into the house Sean had a HORRIBLE attack and needed to be hospitalized.  As of right now he’s doing OK, he’s been sleeping it off and was given some medication for any future issues.  Hopefully there aren’t any.

I know I haven’t been around much but there’s a lot going on with family as well as the living situation right now, so it’s certainly taking it’s toll on me.

I’m still in search of a home for hubby and I.  We got the unfortunate news that the complex we were looking to move into is currently between owners and no one really knows what the outcome will be when the new owners finally do get their hands on the grounds there.  So we’re back to looking in Delaware, we’re not overly happy about it but there’s obviously a reason as to why we’re staying in this state, hopefully we’ll figure it out.

So I did keep the loan but we’re banking on it to give us even more money to put towards a down payment in the general area.  Come January I’ll have a job out of the house, I’ll still do the design work and posting and what not I just need medical benefits so I’m pumping up my resume and sending it around to a few offices in the area.  I know my way around a computer, anyone can work a phone so maybe something secretarial will do just fine for me.  There are a few design companies in the area, I’ve just seen some of the work they do and am afraid to step foot in their office, I’d probably wind up reorganizing them, or just teaching them a thing or two about what real websites look like.  They’re playing up on the fact that their clients are idiots and completely exploiting it with the most ridiculous looking websites in the free world.  How anyone can sleep at night after doing something like that, is completely beyond me.

For the past month or so I’ve noticed that I’m in somewhat of a funk.  Life is good right now so it’s not really an emotional funk, I’m just having trouble brainstorming ideas for new clients, as well as current personal projects.  Up until the launch of the summer season down here, Sean and I spent quite a bit of time at the beach.  I’m not sure what it is but there’s something about the way the waves hit the shore that spark my inspiration to astronomical levels.  Now, going almost every evening did have a wonderful effect on me but when you don’t go for three months you’ve lost your ability to regain that inspiration you once bottled up inside for the rainy day.  Right now I’m to the point of being completely drained.  I can literally stare at Photoshop for three hours and not come up with a damn thing.  I can’t even find anything online anymore because everyone has the same thing going on with their blogs.  Businesses are no better considering they all find a template on templatemonster or another site like that so they basically all look the same.  I want to come across something unique, I’ve even reverted to looking through scrapbooks to see templates that I’ve done with paper in the past in hopes to recreate them in Photoshop, but even that isn’t working out very well for me.

The remnants of tropical storm Noel are heading this way, by 2am there are going to be gusts of wind reaching the 60 MPH range and that just makes me wonder what kind of an effect that will have on the shore.  I quietly asked Sean if we could head down to the beach tonight so we can get back into the swing of things but he’s so bogged down with work that he has no idea if that’s even going to happen.  His boss sent him a major “To Do” list and he has to complete it tonight, I’m unsure of how in-depth this list is, it could just be quick corrections and he’ll have them done within the hour.

Either way it’d be nice to get out of here just to relax on the cold benches down at the shore right now.  I know it’s cold and extremely windy but I can fight through that with a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate from 7-11 and just sit back and listen for a while.  And there’s something about the beach that strengthens our relationship as well.  Sure, we talk all day long but there’s always a boost of energy when we’re down at the beach that surprises us to this day.  We can get through all of our problems, talk things out and the only outside influence is nature.  It’s strange, but I don’t think we’d have it any other way.

With the upcoming move to Ohio there is a lot of unsettled emotions between the two of us.  It’s not anything in particular but we’ve equally been on edge about things.  The frustration of just wanting to get up and go, on top of not knowing if the person we’re trying to get a hold of is even OK at this point in time, let alone HOME for that matter.  I’m sure we’ll work through it all eventually, but things were moving along very nicely for quite some time and now they’re at a standstill, so much so that I can’t even get any work done because my concentration levels are non existent.

This sucks.