While eating ice cream last night, I hit something crunchy, which I didn’t think anything of.

However, I notice today that I seem to be missing a filling from the general crunchy area…

I now have an appointment on Monday to get this tended to… Ah well, so much for my holiday.

Attached or not, I like Valentine’s Day. (However, I hate those “if it’s your first V-Day w/the one you love, maybe it’s time for an engagement ring” ads - yeah, if you want to freak her out and send her screaming for the hills…)

My clients all decided to take the “bitter & angry” approach to the day and thoroughly enjoyed kicking me around as much as possible.

So, in order to make up for that, I guess I’ll just have to have some Ben & Jerry’s heath bar crunch ice cream. Damn! :-D

I know, I know, I should be getting things done - I am, just taking a bitch & moan break.

Things are at least coming under control in an acceptably rapid fire manner and just a few small things left before bed. On the one hand, it takes me as much time, if not less, to get everything done before the cleaning fairies come every 4 weeks as it did every 2 weeks, so I suppose I could count that as progress.

But jeez, why am I such a spectacularly good procrastinator? It’s a trait that isn’t even remotely attractive, but I just can’t seem to shake it. I could have gotten a good chunk of this done yesterday, or even this morning, but nooooooooo, that would have been way too easy.

I don’t blame going out and enjoying myself today one bit, as I know if I’d stayed home to ostensibly take care of things, I’d still have procrastinated until this evening anyway.

I know I don’t need to become a hyperactive neatfreak whirlwind of activity every waking moment, but being a touch more proactive wouldn’t kill me either. Perhaps I’ll get on that tomorrow… ;)

Gun show was fun - they filled the whole expo center, so really, we should have gotten there sooner, as we were hoofing it through the place to see everything towards the end. I was also a tad ticked off at the folks taking down their tables at 4:30 when the show wasn’t over til 5. Sagamore got a very nifty magazine autoloader. I just looked - I only saw one .22 Tomcat in the whole place - don’t know if they’re falling out of favor or what…

Went to Carrabba’s afterwards to grab some dinner and experienced some of the most comically bad service on the planet. Not mean or snotty, it was just like we were completely and utterly invisible. We’re still trying to figure out what horribly offensive thing we must have said walking through the door.

But the food was quite good, and the cats have been having quite a time digging through the bag that had the leftover lobster ravioli in it. I don’t think they quite understand the ravioli itself is safely in the fridge.

OK, I really, really must go get the things done that have to be done before I can go to bed.

Well, given that I have to leave….now - and there is still a sink full of dishes in the kitchen, that’s been pushed to “when I get back”…

I am such a lazy git when it comes to anything that isn’t work related. I really need to do something about that. Like hire a staff to tend to such things for me. :) Or drink a LOT more coffee.

I did take a few minutes to throw on some makeup before leaving the house again, cause common courtesy really does dictate that you not scare other people with your appearance…

OK, so I’ve been up for a while now, and I am still not fit for being out in public. However, that didn’t stop the Starbucks run - I am sure I scared everyone in the place. Some days you have to reward yourself for just getting out of bed, right? That & I’ve still got a good $40 left on various SB cards from Christmas, so it’s free.

Additionally, I need the espresso to catch up to sagamore’s level of chipper. He called earlier inquiring about the gun show and I was all kinds of grumbly and I’d say he’s had about 5 cups of coffee already this morning - I was outgunned from “Hello!!”

My earlier telephonic social dysfunction was due to infighting in my brain - half going, “Wheeeeeeeeeeee, gun show!” and the other half going “You still have things to get done around the house and if you go out and play, they won’t get done, and you’ll be up til midnight finishing things up.”

Then I realized I’d procrastinate no matter what and be up til midnight anyway, so “Wheeeeeee, gun show!”

Seriously, I have to get better about getting crap done during the week so I really don’t have to do anything on the weekends. Of course that requires being organized and disciplined and all that, and we all know how good I am at that, LOL!

At a minimum, I’ll get the dishes done before I leave - that’s the biggest frog in the house right now, and once that’s done, the rest is always a breeze. That should also mitigate some of the guilt of going out and having fun instead of being responsible and getting things done… Well, right after I finish this coffee. Or, maybe I’ll just make it the very first thing I do when I get back…

Four loads of laundry today - how does one person have so much laundry?? (We shant dwell upon the length of time since I last did laundry, why mess up a good mystery?) Yay for clean socks, tho. Got the oil changed in the car & fuel tank filled to boot - I’m just a whirlwind of productivity today… Well, for me. :)

And speaking of laundry, whoever invented fitted sheets is a total crackhead.

Got the three flooring samples in I ordered - no go on all of them. Too yellow, too pink, and too grey (I really don’t need any help with the floor looking filthy, thanks)…so, back to the drawing board on that - I’ve ordered a couple other samples, we’ll see what they look like.

In other home improvement (hahahaha!) news, I want to get some decent wire shelving for the utility room. However, what I’ve seen & liked so far is expensive!! Well, either that or I am just a tightwad. Annoying either way.

Oh, the f-list collage meme:

~pisceandreamer~

I know, it’s probably an odd thing to think about as much as I do at this age, but I do - part of it is the accountant in me, part of it is the occasional workday that makes my left eye start twitching - just a reminder that yes, there will come a day when I don’t have to actually be anywhere and be productive by a certain hour.

But recently, my mind has been on real estate. It’s highly unlikely I will stay in the immediate area when I am done with the working thing. There’s really not much sense in it - it’s damn expensive up here, the day to day culture is weird at best, and if I feel the need to get into the city for some fine art kinda culture, I’d rather make a weekend of it and stay in a swanky hotel for a day or two…

The thought that keeps running through my head is find a cheap place out in the hinterlands now, enjoy it as a getaway place and have it ready and waiting when I am done with that working thing… It would be paid off by then, and I could sell this place, pocket the cash and be on my merry way.

Sure, it’s pie in the sky and there would be all the absentee landowner issues to deal with, etc, etc, and all that, but when you’ve got this little beauty in Luray on a manageable-yet-dog-friendly quarter acre out there for 110K, it makes you think of such things…

From my saved Realtor.com search named “Other Side of the Mountain” :)

No, I won’t be heading out this weekend to meet up with a realtor, temping as that may be, but the more I think about it, I do think I will do something along these lines in the next 5 to 10 years. All about positioning, ya know?

When the cats rassling starts getting out of control, playing the numanuma song and dancing around in your chair like a whackjob pretty much brings the felines to a dead stop while they look at you and try to decide if you’re having a seizure or not.

Additionally, I found out you can get this song off iTunes…and there are no less than 15 mixes of it…

Backstory: Client is running process in unsupported environment, and having issues. Have repeatedly told her this and that we can make no guarantees as to what we can do for her. Talk to her at 5:30 this evening, tell her we need to check a couple more things, if they look OK, we’ll toss it to development and see if they can call it a bug - but that they may very well come back and say “unsupported environment - fuck off!”

The resultant question:
“So, will the developers be in this weekend working to fix it?”

I near gave myself a hernia trying not to laugh.**

**I do feel bad, and at this point I’d do anything to make the damn thing work, but yeah, dev ain’t gonna be in on the weekend for this…

We made it to Friday!! And now I am going to sit here and enjoy the adventure that is staring at the walls for a while…

Crazy today at work, topped off the week right in stride. I ran out of smart at about 2:30 yesterday afternoon, and at this point I can just barely form a coherent sentence. I don’t think I got what could be considered a single “normal” call all day.

Soooooooooooooo happy it’s the weekend, even if my grand schedule reads: laundry, laundry, errands, laundry, laundry, dishes, laundry. :)

It’s very difficult to do any kind of typing when you have a cat that has decided your hand is the perfect headrest.

Wheee!!! Today I discovered that my coworkers fall into one of three categories:
– Not Catholic
– Bad Catholic
– Catholics going to services after work.
I realized this after I got through my whole day without committing my usual Ash Wednesday faux pas of telling someone, “honey, you’ve got some shit on your forehead there…”

Still semi insane at work, came home and worked some calls in peace & quiet and no ringing phones - makes such a difference trying to read 1000 lines of output when there are no interruptions.

You know, for folks out there that can wake up one morning, decide, “I’m gonna fix this room up” and 2 trips to Home Depot and a weekend later you have a new room, I envy you. I can start with “I need to do something about this room” and then the thought process goes something like this…

The floors really need to be redone. That’s certainly doable…
Well, I should really paint before the floors…
Hmm, painting means doing the trim work, including the windows
Wow, those windows really suck, they really do need to be replaced…
I guess that should happen before the painting, cause otherwise it will just mess up the paint to do them later…
Jeez, I’ll have to go through the damn architecture committee to get the windows done…

And then I break out in hives.

Kitiara: good thoughts & prayers on the way.

Overall, not too bad at all for a Monday. The warm weather is holding - didn’t even need a coat when I ventured out for lunch.

Definitely not as insane as the end of last week was, which is good.

Been vacillating madly about the house of late. Needs a lot of work. The means can be managed, but it’s the motivation that seems to be the problem - very few things that seem to be doable without a ton of major hassle, and that puts me off every time. I did at least order some floor samples tonight, perhaps that will either get me going or convince me to stop thinking about it altogether. :)

Weekend went by way too quick - that’s what I get for sleeping in so late both days, I suppose. :)

Tired and restless all at the same time, which isn’t good, because I really do need to get to bed here in short order and get a decent nights sleep. I’ll readily admit that after last week, I just really need another day off. I need to remember to put some time on the calendar when I get in tomorrow - definitely need a 4 day weekend sometime in March when busy season is over.

With last week ending on such a shitty note in general, I promised myself I’d have a restful weekend (check!) and not be up until midnight tonight so I could actually be able to deal with the insanity decently. So, it’s off to bed with me so I don’t throttle a coworker in the middle of the workday tomorrow.

This link was over in ’s journal, and I had to click…

http://www.funpic.hu/swf/numanuma.html

I’d never seen it before, and I was near tears watching it, it is just too damn funny. In the poor guy’s defense, it is a very bouncy song… I dare you to listen to it a couple times and see if you’re not doing the same thing.

Worksafe, but you need headphones.

It also shows why it is so dangerous to have a cam…….because I know damn well it would happen to me. :) (Deciding against the cam at the show yesterday was a very good idea…)

Odd the things that relax you after a week that kicks your ass. This week, a computer show and then fragging my machine tonight seemed to do the trick. :)

Got a metric assload of crap off the machine, which is always good. So far everything is running smooth as silk and as soon as I’m done downloading the 1001 Windows updates out there, it’s off to bed, where I shall sleep in obscenely late again tomorrow, just like I did today.

Picked up a spindle of CD-R’s, print cartridges, and a copy of Castle Wolfenstien. (Yes, the *original* from about…8 years ago. I still suck at it, but it’s fun.)

Sleeping cats are simply not good for motivational purposes. All they do is make you want to go and take a nap, too…

However, I’ll resist the near overwhelming urge to go back to bed and instead I’m going to the local computer show - lets see if by the end of the day I can be a more complete and utter undateable dork, LOL.

The past two days have been insane. There is just no other word for it. We are seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel for intellect in our clients…

Again today, everyone was quite nice. But there is helping people, and then there is spending an hour handholding people that most certainly have a sign on their bathroom mirror that says “undies under!” There was a lot of, “no, your other left” type things today.

New guy is going to get hit in the head with a stapler here soon. He’s been skipping calls in the queue, as well as picking stuff up and then putting it *back* in the queue unassigned and uncalled. I honestly don’t know what the hell he’s doing or why but it’s making me insane. Had a senior, back line coworker try to dump a call on me - sorry chicky, you tagged the call in the queue, it’s all you. She didn’t even want to call to find out the actual problem, she was going on the subject line only… Hell, dial and pray you get someone’s voice mail like the rest of us, if they answer, here’s your opportunity to learn. She tried to dump it on me twice, both times I had to say NO. I’ve already got 10 calls assigned to me right now, no more, thanks.

I think what pisses me off the most about this week is that for a while on Wednesday, I was actually down to 4 calls…

Overall, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck and I am SO DAMN GLAD it’s Friday. It’s gonna be an all about me weekend. (Read: Sleep.)

I feel like I have been run over a truck today. I’m just over, well, EVERYTHING. Today was one of those days that kinda makes you really, REALLY want to win the lottery.

Volume has been pretty good, but today it was all people who wanted me to think for them - by the end of the day I could barely think for myself, much less anyone else. I cannot tell you how glad I am that tomorrow is Friday.

I think this weekend I am just going to stay in and geek out and work on the site and the embedded style stuff.

No real thinking, please, I’m all out of brain cells. :)

OK, the embedding into the website seems to be working quite well so far, but I’ve still got a ton of tweaking to do on the style to make it all look the way I want it.

No more staying up til midnight. Honest. I mean it this time…

Seriously, I am a total zombie this evening and haven’t been able to do much except just sit here.

Pretty OK day at work, volume has dropped off quite a bit since we got past the W2 deadline.

Had a client hang up on me today with “FINE! I’ll just fix it myself!” after I informed her that the support policy hadn’t changed since the last time she called on the subject and we couldn’t support what she was trying to do with the software. She then followed up with an apologetic email about how it wasn’t directed at me, but our rules, etc, etc. Not wanting to let her off the hook that easily, I emailed her back with kind and understanding words, and yet another offer to put her in touch w/our data consultants, which made her feel worse, which resulted in a response of “You are too kind.” Damn skippy I am.

Managed to finally get around to embedding this into my site over at http://cafechatnoir.net - now if I could just figure out how to feed one style to the embedding and use a different one here when I read everything else, that would be nice… The embedded version is pulling Style X, but it seems that if I go to advanced styles here and just say use Style Y, it doesn’t quite work the way I’d hoped… Ah well.

Sent to me by my Mom… Work Safe if you’ve got headphones.

http://tinyurl.com/4yx2z
(Link is to an imgag.com site.)