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Well, the word on the street is that we’ll be going home tomorrow, although like anything else with this company, that could change at a moment’s notice! Nonetheless, it’s certainly been a fun trip…and a very nice paid vacation to boot, so if all good things must come to an end, then I guess that I can’t leave this one too disappointed.

The Highlights:

• The camaraderie with co-workers (awwww…) and learning things about them that I would’ve never guessed…or wanted to know in some cases!
• Coming to learn that although the folks at Steak ‘n Shake haven’t the foggiest idea what Eggs Benedict are, they’ve got no qualms about serving up a glass of Coke with a healthy heaping of hot fudge at the bottom.
• Never setting foot at the actual disaster recovery site, much less doing any real work.
• Going bowling and realizing that it’s actually not the horrible experience that I remember from my high school and pre-high school days. In fact, I’ve learned this year that most things really aren’t… 😛
• And of course, getting paid about sixty hours worth of overtime for the whole thing ain’t too shabby, either!Now just get me through the alleged twenty hour trip home and I’ll be happy! Atlanta, you’ve treated us well…

What a wet-lookin’ day!!!

It was kinda neat watching the thunderstorms come in from the view at work, as you could literally watch the rain move across the land, enveloping one suburb before leaving behind sunshine and moving along to the next – very cool.

It was less than neat, however, trying to come home when I soon discovered that I was nearly out of gas. Never before have I needed an umbrella while pumping gas underneath an awning!!! Also, the power flickered out and that kinda made me nervous, but having the need to wring my pants out before getting back into the car was the last straw – not cool at all.

And I didn’t get to swim tonight because of the lightning…and I’m certainly not getting up early to go do it tomorrow morning, so tomorrow night better be nicer, damn it!

This weekend was particularly lazy, as most of my weekends tend to be, however I’m ever so happy to report that a single, solitary event caused the entire two-day rendevouz to be beautifully worthwhile! To rip off a perfectly good catchphrase, a fifteen minute call saved me much more than fifteen percent, but not on my car insurance, mind you. Over the last month I paid off one of my fairly large credit cards, so likewise once I received notification that the account was empty, it was time to call and get that baby closed…but wait just a gosh darn minute! I still had one card with an extraordinarily high interest rate, so using my ultra-slick negotiation skills, I ended up keeping the account open to the tune of a 0% balance transfer rate until September 2005…

So for those who can’t quite keep up with the math, at this point I still owe various creditors a bit of money, but I’m not paying them any interest to borrow it anymore…and there was much rejoicing! Between the two refinancing options I chose over the last month, I figure that I’ll be saving about $800 – $1000 between now and Christmas – that’s a cool grand that can be used to pay off my principal that much sooner, or instead purchase myself a very cool Christmas present indeed.

Nope – pay off the principal, damn it! I’ve already got a huge television…that’s just going to have to be enough for the time being.

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In other news, for the first time in lord knows how long, I went swimming tonight and it was great! Well, actually it was more like floating for the most part because I didn’t want to risk “waking my neighbors” because I was “breaking the rules” by “utilizing the swimming pool after hours,” but it was still nice to just float around and relax for a while. I must say that it did really scare me how out of touch with the water and swimming and all of that that I’ve become, as I definitely need to spend some more time over there in the future, but I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem. I’ve been trying to force myself into some sort of an exercise program now for quite some time with little success, but after “swimming” a few laps I certainly felt tired! Tired, but of course not sweaty, and that’s most definitely a plus when considering any workout plan for me!

I figure that I’ll start with a half an hour or so every other night this week to see how it goes. They say that swimming is supposed to be one of the best types of exercise because it hits just about every important muscle group, so we shall see what happens! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch some Fraggles before bedtime…