PSA: I left my cell phone on my nightstand this morning. If you need to reach me, you'll have to rely on other methods. I recommend IM or email, since carrier pigeons are not known for their reliability.

On comedic timing - childhood friends will always know the best buttons to push and despite tremendous progress with my arachnophobia over the years, the convincing suggestion of a spider crawling on me will still make me scream if properly timed. Said friends are very lucky I contract, rather than flail, when presented with this sort of suggestion while holding pliers. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye...

On wine - port is good. Port is always good. Port solves most of life's minor problems. The rest are cured by backrubs and cuddling.

On creative genius - it doesn't matter what you intended it to be, sometimes creative projects just go sideways and become something else. The necklace I finished yesterday is not the one I was working on when I started it. Now I'm going to have to make another, and improve my resolve to "de-stash" some of my finished projects as well as my components. (Pictures will be on DevArt a little later.)

On home maintenance - before attempting to fix a leaking sprinkler/irrigation system, it's good to have instructions. Google is my friend. It's also important to identify the shut off valve for the system...before unscrewing valves and other parts. Skipping this step makes your morning shower a little redundant.

On costume design - the costumes that seem the simplest will inevitably prove to be the most expensive to implement. I had an idea for Halloween that should have been easy and instead could easily cost me $100 if I don't rethink it. Time for a Goodwill shopping trip...

That easy to find, logical, perfectly sensible place that you put your home pair of reading glasses? Yeah...next time try to remember where that was or the logic sort of fails. *sigh*

(Found them...just took a bit. Now on to those photos of the pieces I made last weekend so I can post them.)

*sigh* Ever have one of those days where it feels like every single thing you finish and send off as "Final" turns up with an error somewhere until it just starts to seem like you just can't get anything right?

Apparently today is that day for me...and I'm officially sick and freaking tired of being wrong...

< / WHINE >

On Saturday I participated in the Relay for Life event in Santa Clara with a group of friends. Kudos to our team leader, gwenrose for keeping us organized and scheduled for our times on the track, and huge thanks to all who donated, both through my collection and to my team. I believe Gwen told me that we exceeded our team goal of $2,000.

And for those of you who heard (or saw) that I attempted to kill myself with sunshine...I'm fully recovered now from my O.D.

The sun and I have always had a slightly abusive relationship. As most anyone who's ever met me knows, I adore the sunshine. I bask in the summer heat and glory in 90+ degree weather.

Unfortunately, with my ultra-pale northern European coloring, the sun has not always been so gentle with me. I've learned, through years of sunburns, to be assiduous about coating myself with a high SPF sunscreen anytime I'll be in the sun for more than about 15 minutes. I drink lots of water. I do what I can to keep my sun-worship from becoming ritual sacrifice...

But sometimes I fail...and I never know when this is going to happen because (as I've vocally and repeatedly complained to most all who saw me fall to the sun this Saturday) I can't predict it. I can't simply say "Wow...it's 110 degrees. I'll get heat stroke if I do anything outside today." or "Gee...it's really dry. I better get some extra water." I do heavily physically active things in 100+ degree heat on a regular basis every summer, sometimes in such over dressed states as wearing jeans, and usually suffer no ill effects. Then I'll have a day where it's in the 90s (like Saturday) and suddenly everything shuts down.

Obviously, I find this frustrating. I don't particularly like abusing myself that way, nor am I pleased at having screwed up one of my key chances to be social over the weekend by attempting to mummify myself. And I feel even worse that I managed to do this in a situation where anyone might have worried about me...I much prefer to be an idiot without an audience. =S

So thank you to those who've checked in, and those who plied me with water and cool shirts and reminded me to drink my juice and to eat...I'm sorry it was necessary. I'll be more sensible next year, I swear. (Mostly because I doubt any of you would let me try that again...)

What I thought was a slightly-more-annoying-than-usual round with seasonal allergies appears to have revealed itself to be a mild but annoying cold...

therefore, I sincerely apologize to all and sundry who've been in contact with me for the last week. I would have warned you if I'd known. *sigh*

Hopefully I won't have shared too much, but in the event I did infect anyone, it does seem to at least be a mild bug. (Small favors?)

Today was apparently my "Well... SHIT! *facepalm* I r GEN-uous!" day for this week.

Realized my checking account doesn't have what it should have in it...because I accidentally double paid one of my credit cards this pay period. (oops...)

Almost managed to make plans on top of other plans...fortunately Shar reminded me that we have a wedding to attend. (D'Oh! And had to turn down the boss-lady too...whoops...so much for my kiss-up factor)

Managed to close a Word document that I'd been working on for most of the afternoon WITHOUT SAVING IT. Ever. At all. *facepalm* (I've mostly recreated it, but it's crap by comparison to what I had written previously. *sigh* Much thanks to Snoopy for suggesting I might be able to recover it. I couldn't, but it helped nonetheless. I haven't done something like that in a while.)


I'm wondering what I forgot that I need to do tonight...


At least the day's pretty much over. I almost managed to get through this one without a headache. =/

[Edit: I don't appear to have forgotten anything I needed to do, but I managed to leave my coat in my office and not remember it until I was at the front door of the building. Seeing as I managed to get suckered into sticking around for an extra 20 minutes the first time I tried to leave tonight, I wasn't going back for my coat and taking a chance on getting sucked in again.]

[Edit - 7/22/08: And now that I have a good icon, I'm updating. :)]

I've been at work for about 3 hours at this point and have done almost nothing that was in any way productive for my actual work, thus ruining my track record for this week and further proving to me that if the week had just ended yesterday, I would have been much better off.

I have about 45 minutes before I can reasonably leave the office without calling undo attention to my slacker-ness for today. Time to see if I can salvage at least a little of my morning. *sigh*

On the upside, at least it will be warm when I walk out of here. (Yes, yes...I know...100 is not generally what a normal person would call "warm", but when the hell did I ever claim to be normal? And with the AC having just ratcheted itself up again, I'm really looking forward to being twice baked by the time I get home and get into something other than jeans!)

I must have been more brain dead than I realized when I left the office yesterday. I left a pair of forms face-up on my desk with my full legal name, home address and social security number on them. *facepalm* *shakes head*

Dear Self,

Coffee, especially sugared up and doctored with hot chocolate mix to the point where you find it palatable, does not effectively assist with alertness.

It does not make you stop yawning.

It does not make boring projects less boring.

In fact the only significantly identifiable result of is that it makes you jumpy, dizzy and vaguely ill and spastic.

You've tried this experiment before several times. The results have been reliably replicated.

Learn from experience!

That is all.

-- The Management


PS Why do you not have a good *facepalm* icon yet?

I'm having this sudden, very strong craving for very, very dark (bitterly, painfully dark) chocolate...

and the one candy dish in the office that usually has some in it, hasn't been refilled lately.

*sigh*

Not like I need it, right? (Said the fox of the grapes...)

I just spent 2.5 hours on the phone with tech support to fix a problem I could have solved in 15 minutes if I'd had the sense in my head that I was graced with upon birth.

*sigh*

But my email is working again...