For some reason on these dates Avis had a Camaro for only $80 a day, last time I checked it was $160 per day. I picked up the Camaro and immediately realized that it was not the best car to drive around NYC in. The seat is real low, the windows are tiny and there are huge blind spots on every side. This car is pretty much the opposite of what you need when driving in NYC traffic. It is fun to drive once you get used to it and it got lots of attention driving in the city, almost every valet and parking attendant commented on it.

My first night in New York I stayed in the Plaza hotel on Fifth Avenue by Central Park. The room I booked, the Plaza King, is normally $595 per night which is a ridiculous but about standard for a 5-star hotel in NYC. I was able to get a “deal” on the room for only $500 plus taxes. I didn’t use the Centurion Travel service to book the room so I didn’t get the American Express benefits. When I gave them the Black Card to pay for the room I asked if I could get an upgrade to a bigger room, they said “no problem” and gave me a Deluxe King room which is about 100sf bigger. The first downside was that the hotel sold all of the rooms facing central park as private residences so the remaining rooms don’t have the best views. They also had no rooms available with more than one bed, which is a problem if you are traveling with someone you don’t want to share a bed with (my brother in this case). They do offer a roll away bed which they charge $75 for, it is not a regular cot like they have in most hotels, it’s a real bed, my brother said it was more comfortable then his own bed. The hotel in general was really nicely done, and everything was very luxurious. The hotel has a Rolls Royce Phantom that is available to drive guests around the city. This sounds way cooler than it is, they will only take you a few blocks from the hotel and the driver was a total asshole, he was even talking on his cellphone while driving us in the city, which is not only rude but illegal (I’ll post a picture later). All in all I enjoyed the hotel, the room had a cool remote that controlled the lights, TV and AC. The AC was excellent I got the room down to 52 degrees which is the perfect sleeping temperature for me. I will probably not stay at the Plaza next time I’m in NY b/c of the price but if money is not an object, this is a great place to stay.

The first problem I needed to take care of was the color of the house, the majority of the interior was painted in extremely bright (I would say ugly) colors, mostly pumpkin orange. I’ve done some small paint jobs before but nothing as big as this. I thought it would be relatively easy and if I worked hard I could get it done in a weekend. Turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks, and more expensive than I thought. The first mistake I made is not spending enough time on the prep work. Taping off the ceiling and covering the floors did not go as smoothly as I thought so I started cutting corners. The hardest part of the job was painting the ceilings, I wanted all of the ceilings to be white which is way harder than painting the ceiling and walls the same color. 

The painting ended up taking about 2 months, mostly b/c I was so frustrated with how hard it was that I didn’t work on it for days at a time. Because of my sloppy prep work I got the wall paint on the ceiling in some spots and dripped a lot of paint on the floors, even with a drop-cloth down. Another part of the job that was harder than I expected was cleaning the brushes and rollers, I ended up buying about 25 rollers and 15 brushes adding to the already expensive job. All told I spent about $1,500 which is at least 50% cheaper than a professional painter would have charged. If I had the chance again I would still do it myself, although I would go about it completely differently. Here is a list of rules that I would recommend following if you are going to do a large paint job by yourself:

1. Take the time to completely prep the room, if you tape off the walls or ceiling make sure the tape line is straight, you will probably need to use multiple pieces of tape. Make sure the entire floor is covered by a thick drop-cloth, tape the floors around the walls.
2. Use quality paint brushes and rollers, buy something to clean the brush with.
3. Finish each room completely (including cleanup) before moving to the next room.
4. Buy extras of everything, the store is always closed when you need more of something.
5. Take your time, rushing only leads to mistakes which take more time to fix.

I will post next week about my attempt to refinish hardwood floors.

Well I’ve watched cops and Reno 911 before so I was pretty sure this was not a good thing. When the officer asked me to turn around I was pretty sure that he wasn’t doing this to check me out. The officer then informed me that I was being arrested for driving while license suspended, (turns out if you fail to pay outstanding tickets ,they wont just disappear). So after an hour of finger printing and mug shots (I should post the mug shot here but  I don’t have the ten dollars needed to get the arrest record from the police station),(too bad they don’t take amex) so we will do that another day. I was told that if I could post a 250.00 dollar bond I was free to walk the streets ,so I smiled and pulled out one of those plastic credit cards people have and gave it over to pay the bond, about five seconds later I was notified that my card was declined , embarrassing (but not nearly as embarrassing as a more recent transaction that I tried to post on my amex black card, king of all cards, that was declined)  again it turns out if you max out your credit cards and don’t pay the bills , your credit card will not be there when you need it. Thank god I was granted my wish and was able to call a friend who gladly bailed me out, That’s why I have friends, strictly for emergencies. So please friend me on facebook ill be a great friend.