Out with June, In with July

Well, the last few days has been eventful (a little). Let's see here, what has happened in the last few days. Let's start with tonight. Tonight is my sister's birthday and I caught up with her at a local lounge club to have a drink and play some pool. Even thought I don't really know how to play pool, nor am i good at it, I played three games against her, sent the cue ball flying off the table twice and decided that pool wasn't my game like poker is. I like poker, it's not as violent as pool is (the cue ball went off the table and hit my sister's foot). But we had a good time and I don't think I'll be investing any money into a new pool stick anytime soon, even though I did blame my pool playing performance on the stick I was using! :)

Poker is awesome and I'm loving the poker league I'm in. The time and the day of the league is convenient to my schedule and I really get excited when I go. Then when I'm at the table, it's so peaceful and I play and socialize. :)

And last week, I stopped by the golf driving range which was which was great! I was hitting balls with my "security blanket" 8 iron so smooth and straight. I'm going out to hit golf balls again tomorrow night for an hour to get just some general practice in. When I see my golf coach again, we will be brushing up on hitting with the Driver. Not to sure of that club, but will force myself to get use to it. Next season (2014) I will be teaming up with a golf league to explore other courses and make new golfing friends. Can't wait!

The hand gun training I've been taking is really moving right along impressively. I really got down all the different types of guns and ammo, stance, holding form, and where on my body I could carry a concealed gun. Very informative. Next Sunday I got shooting with four or five different types of guns to weed out my favorite one to concentrate on. Maybe a 9mm, maybe a .22, we will have to wait and see. :)

This past weekend I got together with three other girl friends and we headed out on the town Saturday night to live it up. We ate dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and then by 9pm and two drinks later, we headed over to a local LGBT lounge bar which had a very entertaining Drag Queen show happening. None of us swing that way, but it was quite entertaining to watch the dancers entertain us to their favorite music. I would definitely go back again. They are very talented and I would love to get make up tips from them, cause I sure need it :)

My studying for my PT certificate is suffering a little bit with my social life being high on the hog. But, I'll have to manage to get that re-focused again and get back on the wagon. As for fitness, there are so many options and directions for me to go. My choices are to go with an expensive gym and have alot of perks under their roof including insurance to visit their doctor on staff, full gym, spa area, restaurant, social clubs, TRX, golf swing simulator, yoga, and P90X. Yes, they all sound impressive but the membership rate is a staggering $171 a month (including the insurance to see a doctor if you get hurt), so I guess it would be good for people who don't have insurance.

Another avenue I'm looking at is signing up for a 3 times a week boxing gym, I like this because it's $99 for 9 weeks. I think boxing is great to get in shape and teaches you self defense. That's pretty much what I'm looking for. Their schedule is awesome too, I can make every class. But, that's only great for cardio and core work, I'm got to bring in some heavy artillery and incorporate CrossFit into my fitness routine. Why? Cause CrossFit is the gem of all fitness factors including losing weight, gaining muscle, flexibility, and balance, and again, it doesn't come at a cheap price. CrossFit is about $135 a month for unlimited. Due to my schedule, I would probably go with the $125 for a 10 punch pass. Sometimes I can go once a week, sometimes twice a week depending on what they are offering for a workout schedule.

One last thing, I did renew my swimming membership at the local hotel, I'm hoping to go swimming once a week for cardio and relaxing. So that membership is paid in advanced and good for a year! :)

So that's what I've been up to lately. I'll turn in again soon to update you on what's next and what's new! :)

Finally A Productive Day

Hey! It has been one of those productive days and I'm happy to report about it! :)

Okay, I'm going to hop thru my day with you, but this won't be in any particular order.......I knew the deadline was coming down to getting my car inspected, so I had to stop procrastinating and get something done today, so I took Jake with me and off we went. I knew I needed two new tires for the front of my Ford Explorer so I stopped by my favorite place and I'll tell you why this is my favorite place to go to in a second. So we get there and I walk in with Jake and we are properly greeted and asked what we needed. I explained that I need two tires and off he went on his computer punching up some tire prices for me. I told him that I needed to stay with the same tire manufacture and model (those cheap tires blow out all the time, I'm not taking that chances. Safety first!). So he tells me that it will be $204 per tire. I expected that price so I'm not surprised at all. I talked to the guy a little longer and tell him that I'm down to the last week of getting an inspection sticker and he says they can take care of that. I decline because I can get an inspection sticker anywhere and I was primarily there for the two tires.

So I passed the keys over to the guy and Jake and I go for a very local walk around the building and enjoy the weather. Nice weather today. After an hour, the service rep comes over to me and explains that my car won't pass inspection from any inspection station without new rotors and brake pads on the rear. Again, I had a hunch about the brakes needing attention......so I tell him "Easy on the price, I'm unemployed, I don't need a heart attack today." He laughs and we walk over to the computer terminal and he punching in some numbers and I'm standing there with my tummy turning wondering what is the monetary damage going to be. He says $850. I say "No Way! Forget it. I can't afford that, so he will have to be creative and change a few things around." This is where I Knew he could cut a few prices off labor and all that other good stuff. I then take out all my money (which I knew how much I had) and count it out in front of him and my cash comes to $700. He doesn't hesitate and starts discounting some labor here and there, and tells me he will throw in the state inspection sticker for free. The total price matches the cash I have on hand. Phew! I tell the guy, "No more surprises, let's get it done, slap a sticker on it, and I don't want any more surprises" He says, "No problem and I'll be good to go in about an hour. No biggie to me. So me and Jake go outside and sit on the grassy around. I snapped some pictures.....(these pictures were taken with my Blackberry)......I know, I know......

This is where we go for all our tire services, I never had a complaint

We just hanging out waiting for car to be serviced

We are enjoying the weather

We just waiting in the waiting room now.....should be almost done now

There's my car right there!!

So after everything was said and done and tallied up, we were good to go and good for one more year. And let me tell you something, driving that car home, that car has never driven so smooth and steady before. Big difference.....must of been the alignment that evened everything out. Wow, that car drives nicely now. I love it!

Okay moving on, my health insurance is coming down to the deadline too (another thing I've been sweating about)......me and my procrastination is going to be the death of me. Some people love playing against deadlines, I get stressed over it. My Cobra letter came to me in the mail with rates to continue my coverage for $441 a month. I can afford that, but I know it was over priced and someone is raking in some money somewhere. So I called up Blue Cross/Blue Shield directly today and explained my situation and asked for a quote on an insurance policy plan for just little ol' me. After going thru all the pre-determined questions easily, and for what I wanted in an insurance policy, the rate came back to me at $227 a month. Did you get that?? Let me spell it out to you......it came back as 1/2 of what the Cobra plan is. I know my doctor office visits co-pay will go from $25 a visit to $40 for unlimited office visits and my generic prescription will be $10 instead of my current $5 I have now. So one of the things I was "sweating" about was health insurance options, and the other thing I was sweating about was the inspection outcome on my car, which both is done and I am happy again and not stressed out as much. Phew!

After everything was done I decided I still had some day light time to do something else I've been putting off, so I went to SuperCuts and got my hair trimmed......I was looking like crap and feeling like crap and need to work on getting myself back in socially acceptable standards. I looked like hell, cause in the past 16 days, I've been thru hell. So, I went to SuperCuts and they washed and trimmed an inch off the back and sides and I feel so much better. It had been 9 weeks since I've gotten a haircut. Yes, I keep track of these things. After I left there, I stopped at Walgreens drug convenient store and picked up my favorite hair coloring kit in a box for $4.25 (Oh, the hair cut cost me $18.95), so I got a medium brown color and went home and colored my hair myself in under an hour. Piece of cake and, again, I'm feeling better.

Back to health insurance again, I currently have Medco for prescription needs and I had seen on the news that Medco and Express Scripts are merging - here's the link for it. I found it interesting....

Okay, moving on......I'm not too impressed about the contents of the dollar store I went to recently.......you will know exactly what I mean when I post these pictures.......

It's JULY people!!!!!!

Hmmmmm, Halloween merchandise on shelves in JULY???? Oh Please!! Anyone else with me on this one??

So, this was found at the dollar store we stopped at recently. I like the dollar store, you never know what you are going to find for a "dollar" :)

The last thing I'm gong to "vent" about is that I'm fluent in Wordpress, but there are specific reasons I don't use them any longer. Now, my point is that WordPress has an easy user-friendly Blackberry App to hop right into your WordPress blog and make changes or add new postings. BlogSpot doesn't have an App (grrrrrr....), so what they have done is given us a specific email address attached to our blog to post blog segments with pictures via email. Now, the problem I'm having with this is that my email account on my Blackberry allows me to upload one picture per email, so my blog postings will be accommodated with my favorite (blog post related) picture. But if I do it from my laptop, I can post many pictures at once. I haven't try posting a blog entry from my Blackberry BlogSpot email address yet, but I'm going to try this and see how it appears on here. So bare will me if you see something a tad different with a blog post. I can only hope it will appear okay. But, I'm open to new avenues on getting blog posting posted here and I'm new to BlogSpot so I can't wait to see how user-friendly that will be.

Okay, this it is my blog post for today, and I'm soooo happy I got more than I expected done today. The rest of the week will be dedicating my attention to setting up my new insurance policy so I can continue to have access to my doctor and prescriptions if needed.

Phew.....okay have a good night.....bug you tomorrow! :)