Back from "Merryland"

Oi. I'm tired. It's 9:45 PM and I'm just sitting down with a nice cup of decent french-vanilla coffee, at my comfortable desk, in my even more comfortable shoe-like-things, after a long day of working and driving. It all started yesterday morning; I had court first thing in the morning and then had to get my guys together, load the truck and drive 6 hours to northern Maryland to install another monitoring system for a client. After spending 6 hours on the road getting sore and stiff, Wess, Tim, and myself got on-site at about 6 PM last night and started to run the gamut - pulling coax cable, surveying for the best camera locations, installing cameras, setting up the internet backhaul to send the video feed to corporate, installing on-site monitoring capabilities, etc... It was a long night. We were finally run out of the location at midnight, almost finished with our job, so we had to get a hotel in Lexington Park, MD for the evening.

We got up early this morning and returned to the site to complete the final points of our installation, aim and focus the camera lenses, check for remote connectivity, and then grabbed a quick lunch before heading back to North Carolina... another long 6 hour drive.

The evening ended nicely though, with dinner with our ladies at Chico's across town. It's cute I suppose, from an outside viewpoint, to see three tired and exhausted fellows come meet their prettier halves for dinner. We were all glad to be back with our ladies, as always.

On the recent side of business news for us, we've been approved for our new office location, procured insurance for the business, chosen a new company name (I think.. maybe) and are making strides to be "good to go" by April of this year. All I have to do now is pay the double first months' rent, pay the entire year's insurance bill, get my office furniture out of storage, and then get moved into the new place.. easy right? Pfft.. no. The initial rent bill is about $900.00. The initial insurance payment is about $900.00. The cost to get my furniture delivered.... you guessed it.. about $900.00. Anyone else see a theme developing here? So, as soon as I get the $2,700.00 I need to get things off the ground right, we'll be up and running!

On the personal side, I have to go beat Marcus with a stick! Being the gardening lover that I am, I was immediately jealous of his new house when I saw the spacious back yard he has and heard the plans he has to cultivate it into a thriving garden. Lacking a back yard, I have chosen yet again to do what I do so well... locate my entire garden 12 feet in the air... on my balcony, completely sustained within 5-gallon buckets! Yes.. it's cheesy, but it always looks nice.. and who else do you know that can say they can still be growing 10 feet tomato bushes in November?

Now, I'm going to go over and see Marcus this weekend and let him revel in his new garden... and secretly I'll hate him for it! (Kidding, Marcus). Nah.. I"m sure it's beautiful. He seems to be the type to pay great attention to detail. I think I'm going to spend the afternoons this summer living vicariously through HIS back yard gargen in lieu of my own! Wouldn't be the first time.

What else is there to tell you guys about? There isn't too much else going on over here on this side of the pond. I've been keeping an eye on my libyan friend's blogs. It always amazes me how much more I want to read and learn about the country after being able to experience it and understand it from a firsthand point of view. I mean, let's face it. You live ANYWHERE for 7 months and you can say that you pretty much "lived" there, as opposed to saying "I've been there."

I can't wait to return overseas again! I'm hoping that somewhere in my future there will be opportunities for more travel, either with my current company, or through others. I've actually had some interest generated from a few firms I've met while overseas... so who knows what the future may bring.

Well, I'm going to sign off of here and get some work done before bed time. I still need to email out some invoices to customers and do my profit/loss statements for the recent jobs... ugh.

Till next time!

Tommy