Yep - I said the same thing, “where is Skippack?” Its the new headquarters of Penco Products where I had to do some consulting the first of this week. Its a great little shopping town filled with character.

I stayed in this cool hotel called Hotel Fiesole (http://www.hotelfiesole.net/home.html)

My Room:

The Bathroom (real marble)

Last night I took a walk around town and then found this nice italian place behind the hotel:

I had a plate of oversized tortelini stuffed with seafood and spinach tossed in a cream sauce with crab meat and jumbo shrimp. Seriously one of the best dishes i’ve had.

They bring cheese out for your to grate yourself (so maybe I don’t eat fancy too often):

Definitely a place worth keeping on the “bring the wife here one day” list

We don’t grow up - we just learn to mask it much better. I was in Harbor Freight today - I saw this and couldn’t help it

I had to be downtown for an early meeting this morning. The sky on the way was amazing. I need to buy a digital camera (yes I’m a nerd that doesn’t own one) so I did what could from my phone while I was driving.

So - I’ve had this bucket (yes a bucket) of coins since about 2005. Its a Food Lion gallon ice cream bucket that I probably stole from mom and dad back in the day.  Somehow, its just become the place where I threw my spare change at the end of the day. Over the years, the bucket has done its job of collecting coins and I decided this morning it was time to take care of the bucket. I lift this bucket and slip it into the passenger floorboard of the truck.

After eating breakfast with dad, I stopped by Harris Teeter and carried this bucket of coins in. I’ll have to admit, I felt a little dumb carring this thing in the store. I bet it weights 50 lbs so its not like I just casually stroll across the parking lot. It was more of a thank goodness for automatic doors and where I can set it down when I get to the machine.

So I start the machine, choose an amazon gift card to start, and dump in a handful of coins. Now remember, this isn’t the quietest machine in the store. About 10 min into counting coins, I see this little face appear beside me, then another. Two kids are watching this whole process, amazed. You know how their eyes get big and they just stare? So the little girl says to her little brother, he has 62.00 in coins. I’m sort of happy to hear this because I had started to wonder if they thought I was putting ice cream into the coin machine. When it rolled 100.00 she was like “wow”. Her little brother asked her “I wonder how many he has in there?”

I turned to him, smiled, and said to him “Do you want to see?”. He smiles and nods yes. Now at this point, I have to decide whether its easier to lower the bucket for him to see in or whether its easier to pick him up so he can see the bucket and the machine. Given I’ve never seen this kid or his dad (maybe even his mom these days), I opt to move the bucket. “WHOA” he sort of yells. His mom then walks over an apologizes for her kids bothering me - I told her it wasn’t a problem, I wasn’t in a hurry.

So, $211 into it, CoinStar flashes on the screen “Wow, you have a lot of coins” - I laugh at the machine. It doesn’t know I’m barely half way. Course, being the nerd I am, I start thinking about how they programed this machine. Who was the guy that put that message in and how they went about setting the thresholds to display certain messages. If it were my machine, I would have specific things flash up there. For instance, if you put in all pennies, I’d display some message like “Come on high roller, got anything serious for me to do?”. Even better, say 20.00 into it, I would start a little graphic counting “One for me, one for you” and then display “Just kidding”. Why do machines have to be so serious?

At $282.37, I decide I might do another card of some sort. Amazon will be happy with that. I close out that ticket and start one for Lowe’s. I did consider Itunes, but given that I’m looking for houses, I figured Lowe’s was a little more useful.

Anyway, 40 some minutes later, I finish the last handful of coins. Lowe’s and I will go on a date and spend 122.79 together shortly. I might blog that date too.

I quickly grab my receipt, my bucket, and sprint out the door…

In case you’re wondering - this was taken about the time the little kid asked to see it. I was serisouly about to spill over the top when I carried it in. $405.16 is heavy, trust me.

Nuff said… he gets towel dried, then dried with the hair dryer. I “asked” Quincy to pose after getting his bath - this is “Yoda Qincy”

What’s that smell? That was the question of the day as we walked into our beach house today. We haven’t been here in more than 2 months. Often the house can have a very “slight” smell when it hasn’t been opened up for a while. That’s acceptable - what we had wasn’t.

“Could it just be stale house smell?”
“Could it be the water from the toilets?”

No - it was something much more rotten than that.

“Did we leave something here that spoiled” - oh that’s close to the answer.

Mom then opened the fridge and about fainted - all we smelt was shrimp. We check the freeze - nothing. We’re usually smart enough not to leave anything perishable in the fridge/freezer. There, in the bottom was a pan of Shrimp Boil.

Now to give you a little background - this is what it looked like a couple months ago. Some of the best food you’ll put in your mouth.

Now - a couple months later - this is what it looks like - rotten and with a smell one can’t use words to describe.

And just in case you can’t tell how rotten it is, I took a close up.

Guess who got to clean out the fridge… my hands still smell

I can’t tell you how many days I think about giving up a desk job to work a manual job. I think some people are scared of work, especially hard work. I actually long for it sometimes (I know that has to sound crazy). I just want to build something, fix something, put it together, take it apart, clean it, paint it, etc.
We were suppose to head to the beach this weekend (I’m sure it perfect down there right now) but we stayed because my grandmother got pretty sick. She’s home now after a night in Moses Cone getting fluids and a couple tests.
Dad and I started one of many projects around their house, replacing the deck on the side of the house. We ripped the old one down and put a new one up. I forget how much I enjoy doing things like this, especially on a day like today! Here are some pictures of what we got done.

I forgot how much I love having a fire (in the fireplace - well outside too). Given that they were forecasting sub 10 degree weather over the past couple days I decided it was time to have a fire. There is simply nothing like the warmth and the light of a fire. There is something soothing about the popping sounds and smell that comes from a rolling fire. We had people over Friday night for a movie and you could tell it just made the whole evening a little more peaceful.

Needless to say, I have one going right now. I have to keep moving away though because I get too hot. It really makes me want to have a fireplace in my bedroom. You see all the southern plantations with their big fireplaces and old farm house bedrooms that have them in the corners.

The real question comes down to the gas vs real fire saga. Sure, the gas logs are way easier, cleaner, safer, and don’t require constant supply of wood (not that natural gas is very cheap). I’m just not sure if they could really do the trick. Sure they are warm and have the “same” dancing flame. Call me old school, but they are just a substitute for the real thing…

I know they probably thought I was crazy. Some people get freaked out at stoplights. They look straight ahead and don’t dare glance to either side. I’m a little different. I look around, check out the cars, people, etc. Well, this morning driving to work I was just checking out the people beside me with a question in mind. “Wonder where they work?” “Would I rather be going where they are going?” “Wonder what they are thinking?” “Are they thinking about me?”

That’s when I realized I was probably freaking this lady out next to me because I had been thinking all of that while staring at her in the car. I felt bad, I sort of smiled and the looked the complete other direction. Great, now she’ll get to work and tell her coworker about this weird guy in a black truck that was staring at her this morning at the stop light. Wonder if her coworker will have a story about that too.

Anyway, that leads me to think how funny it is that some little thing like that can impact your entire day- conversationally, emotionally, mentally.

No I don’t mean Christmas… I mean when it gets cold outside and our furry little friends love to start making their way inside where its warm. After finding a couple “presents” on my desk the other morning, I decided it was time to set a trap. Couple days later, I got him. No more mouse poop on my desk.

I took a picture of the dead mouse, in the trap and thought about posting it on here. Then I thought some of you might think its gross. So I posted it anyway…