Archive for December, 2006

The Sunday from Hell

December 11th, 2006

My Sunday from hell actually started on Friday.  I knew a cold front was coming through and that it was windy.  I wasn’t prepared for my heat to be all night.  (I’d even lowered the thermostat.)  I woke up Fri morning with a horrendous sinus headache (which lasted pretty much all day).  So I finally fired up my two humidifiers and slept much better the rest of the weekend.

On Sunday, I ran out to get some laundry detergent since I was finally making some progress with my many piles of clothes.  On the way back from the drug store, I decided to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast.  However, I misjudged the curb & and banged the crap out of my tire.  And sure enough, the tire was flat by time I pulled into a parking spot.  Fortunately, my cell phone was charged and AAA didn’t take too long getting there.  (However, a couple of girls were working on the car next to me & the alarm kept going off while I was on the phone.  Very annoying!)  If I’d just gone to McDonalds for hotcakes, none of this would have happened.

In the afternoon my electricity went out for about an hour.  Why is it the only thing you can think of to do while the electricity is out involves electricity?  I used the time to do a little much needed picking up.  And when I’d had enough of doing something constructive, I pulled out last Sunday’s Washington Post crossword puzzle.  I even had enough light to work it.

But I really, really, really got annoyed when my $100 iron didn’t seem to work any better than my old $40 iron.  I bought the damn thing because the old iron wasn’t getting the wrinkles out of synthetics.  Now the new one isn’t either.  (I even started a blog post about it, but it’s full of expletives, so I decided not to publish it.)  Obviously, I am domestically challenged.

And just when I thought everything was ready for Monday, my downstairs neighbor comes banging on my door that water is dripping from her bedroom ceiling.  Turns out my humidifier had a leak.  So now I gotta figure out how to repair water damaged cement.  I’m hoping it only involves repainting.  But the worst part?  I was in the middle of transferring a Supernatural episode from my DVR to the DVD when she knocked.  By the time I got back, I was recording not just a commercial, but some really obnoxious ones.  Since I don’t want commercials to interfere with the purity of the show ;), it looks like I’ll be re-recording that particular episode.

But, all in all, I guess things could have been worse.  On Friday, one of the guys from work had a deer jump out in front of him on his way home.  Majorly smashed up his car.  And it wasn’t too good for the deer either.

Oh, and my office buddy is in the hospital with severe bronchitis.

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December 7th

December 7th, 2006

I noticed today that the Post Office distribution center had their flag at half staff. I was trying to think of why, and I can only assume that it’s because today is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Immediately my thoughts went to my parents and wondered just what they had gone through.

My dad was in his first year of law school at the University of Iowa (then called the State University of Iowa, because Iowa State was just a college). My mom worked at a bank in Chicago. They had been dating for a couple years and it was serious enough for both of them to know this was the person they would eventually marry. Dad signed up for the Navy and went off to Officer Candidate School. I remember Mom telling me that they thought the war wouldn’t last very long, but it was something like two years before she got to see him again.

That’s also when she started smoking. She said it’d be months before she heard anything, and everyone else was doing it. It just seemed to be the thing to do. I guess it helped ease her anxiety. Sadly, she was never able to kick the habit, and eventually the cigarettes took her life.

I met with my cardiologist today. He’s such a good doctor and so easy for me to talk to. He has 2 young kids, who I imagined were getting excited for the holidays, so I wished him a Merry Christmas. He told me that this year was a little tough because his mother died about a month ago. He mentioned that the hole is really huge, which I can certainly relate to. I thought about telling him that I understood, because my mom died just a few weeks before Christmas. But this was his moment to grieve a little. There was no need for me to turn it around and make it about me, even if I’d have meant it in the kindest of ways.

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No, I didn’t break my December goal (yet)

December 4th, 2006

Just in case you thought I slipped up on my goal to post every day this month, I didn’t. Actually, last night I thought that maybe I’d forgotten to post, but then I realized I’d posted this. I may have mentioned that I’m once again reconfiguring my blogs. So I got rid of my “test” blog and am now using the Supernatural blog to do my WordPress theme experimentations. As you can see, I haven’t gotten very far.

Speaking of learning themes, I ordered the book from Urban Giraffe. I figured since I’ve been relying on the site so much for my WordPress instruction, I really ought to support the author & buy his book. It came tonight.  I’m really looking forward to reading & using it.  This guy really knows his CSS and PHP!  And even better, he’s able to put it in plain language.  I’ve learned more about how to use CSS from his tutorial than I have from any of the CSS books I’ve bought.

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Holiday shopping, part 1

December 2nd, 2006

I just got back from the shopping center. Boy, am I pooped. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have gone out, but the folks at work are sponsoring 5 soldiers (3 men & 2 women) and the gifts have to be sent off next week. I bought a couple of paperback books & several DVDs, including the Supernatural season 1 set. (I can’t believe I paid full price for it, but I don’t know if Amazon would have gotten it here in time.) I figure the Supernatural set is great because it’s gender friendly. For the guys there’s rock music, action, mild gore & scary stuff. For the gals, there’s… Jensen Ackles & Jared Padalecki. It’s a win-win situation. :) And I’m hoping I’ll get at lease one person hooked on the show, so that they’ll want to watch when they come back to the States.

I’d asked some of the guys at work (who’ve been in Iraq & other deployed places) what items would be good. Their first reply was batteries. And the second was… cocktail weenies. I kid you not! Cocktail weenies! Of course, once they said it, I understood why. Batteries to run their music players & such, junk food because it’s hard to come by in a strange land, and DVDs & books to alleviate the boredome. So maybe when I go to the grocery store tomorrow I’ll pick up some non-perishable junk food and some batteries.

Next weekend I’ll be shopping for the kids of the family the work folks adopted. Have I mentioned how great the people I work with are?

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A blogging goal I can live with

December 1st, 2006

I had some great ideas for blogging as I was leaving work tonight. There was the “pep talk” the boss gave us this morning that was chalk full of analogies. (The first two involved hamsters and wagon trains. But I’ve forgotten the third.) There was the sense of satisfaction I felt after a day of challenging work. (All the more significant because I went kicking & screaming into this job that I did not apply for, did not want, and quite frankly, wasn’t all that good at.) Then there was the thought of how I was going to (re)organize all my web stuff. But when I got home & sat in front of the computer, nothing came out.

Once again, I think it’s because I want the blog to be absolutely perfect, and I’m so afraid to write something for fear I’ll change my mind later on. That what I write won’t fit into the grand scheme of things. Problem is, I don’t have a grand scheme. Or if I do, it keeps changing. For example, I’d decided how to organize my blogs, how many to have, where to put them, what to write about in each. But lately I’ve found myself distracted from actually writing by trying to figure out how to design the blogs. (And I won’t even get into how easily distracted—and discouraged—I get with the designing process.)

So, tonight I had yet another brilliant idea. First of all, how about having just a couple of blogs instead of 5 or 6 or 7? And how about writing something every day this month? If I do that, perhaps I can get past my “perfectionist’s block” and move forward.

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