Very. Happy. Girl.

So today was two. two. two-days-in-one! for me since I don’t work tomorrow today was essentially my Friday, but with the usual Thursday stuff included. After work I had a couple of discounts that were about to expire so I figured I’d hit the stores for a little start-the-long-weekend-off-right shopping.

Um, did anyone else notice how hard it rained at 4 today? I swear I did, but somehow that didn’t equate in my brain to the fact that Lafayette would be nearly flooded! Needless to say, not only is the top of my car clean, the inside of the wheel wells have been all-but pressure washed!

So I get to Borders (discount #1) and I have a decision to make: to umbrella or not to umbrella, that is the question. It was still raining but in a non-torrential way and I was parked at the end of the sidewalk so I decided to go without. It was fun. I laughed at the silliness, giddy with the 4 days of freedom ahead, and cleaned my glasses off as I entered the bookstore (sometimes windshield wipers on glasses would /not/ go amiss). Blind though I might have temporarily been, my ears worked fine and the sound they heard was a biddy’s affronted ‘Well’ at my dampened state as we passed. Oh get a grip, lady, it’s only a little water (and I’m much less likely to drip than an umbrella), this isn’t Escape from LA and it’s not acid rain. (Or was is NY that had the acid rain? anyway…) Let your inner child out of the attic would you?

In a stroke of true luck (seriously, the last several times I’ve gone in there–or any place else–it’s been out of stock) Charmed, Season 4, was right where it was supposed to be and it promptly accompanied me to the checkout counter. Now, I thought the discount I printed out was for 25% off but when I checked the receipt at the door it was only 20%. Wouldn’t you know it? I pulled the wrong one out of my notebook! I think I might have actually given them an expired rewards discount! But it scanned so who knows. I still have a 25% off to use before the end of the weekend, so if I’m out that way I might pick up an actual book (gasp!).

Next stop was the shoe store (discount #2) where I really intended to buy some everyday wear sort of low kitten heels or even flats (since I seem to be able to tolerate them a bit more now). But I really didn’t like the ones they had. I tried to talk myself out of them, really I did, but they just kept calling to me… So now I have yet another pair of truly cheesecake peep-toe pumps for the fall. When I described them to palmie over the phone she declared them the quintessential [Scraps] cheesecake shoe and I happen to agree!

I had thought I would then stop by Michaels for some more canvas-boards (I’m feeling painterly this weekend) then I noticed the Fashion Bug had finally opened. I love their clearance racks. 40% off the already discounted price? Why thank you. Then I decided to go ahead and apply for the store card (free tote bag) and got approved (lipstick case and add’l 10% off the entire purchase). So while I left the store with a stuffed bag (including some great straight-legged slacks that will go perfectly with the new pumps) and an invitation to participate in their store fashion show in two weeks, I didn’t actually spend any money there. (Yet… it’s semantics, okay?)

Then Michaels had some of their Halloween stuff out already Dude. Orange chinese lanterns for a buck a piece? Oh yes! And pumpkin shaped doilies? Those, too. And a few odds and ends decorations to stock up for what will be the best BYOP in the history of my throwing them (and this’ll be #5 and I throw pretty cool pumpkin parties so that’s saying something…). And I got the canvas-boards.

But now I’m faced with another dilemma. I have the next four days off, entirely to do my own bidding. This is bizarre. I don’t generally take time off to just do nothing, though I had thought that a slacker weekend would be cool. Except I’m me, y’all, I can’t just do nothing! The dilemma is whether to leave the alarm on for tomorrow morning. Granted, I’m not a morning person in general, but how great would it be to get up at 6am on my day off and get caught up on the comic or write the next article or finish reorganizing the Abyss (which is very un-Abyss-like now)? I mean, really? And then do it again on Saturday and Sunday and even have Monday still to do it again? It’d be like the time in ‘03 when I took most of Spring Break off to learn Dreamweaver and build Rock*Paper*Scissors and all it’s inventory in a week. It was a creative oasis in the middle of my work-a-day world. It was glorious!

And apparently I’m crazy. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do it!

Unexpected Wednesday

Yes, I know, it comes around every week like clock-work. That’s not what I’m saying.

Take this morning, for instance. I really didn’t think I was going to make the 6am wake-up radio after it took over an hour to get to sleep last night . In fact, I had a very realistic dream where instead of waking up at 6 or even 7, I woke up at 8 when the radio-alarm auto-offs and had to rush to get dressed, brush my teeth, didn’t even have time to wash my hair so I just pulled it up into a messy ponytail and rush to the car, grumbling and cranky, and I’m in the middle of traffic, thinking that I should call the office, when I look at the car clock and see that it’s only 7:20. Apparently I must have hit the wrong buttons and advanced my clock. So instead of ending up 45 minutes late, I was going to be 10 minutes early. This is when the alarm actually did go off and I had the momentary thought of, ‘wow, that was very convincing’. While I wouldn’t exactly say I was chipper this morning, I did have plenty of time to wash my hair, make coffee and toast, and finish the backgrounds on tomorrow’s RA…

Fast forward to the end of the day and we get our second unexpected. I almost talked myself out of writing today. I wasn’t (still am not) feeling well and I needed to get to comic scanned, blah blah blah, but I really needed to get started on Sept’s articles if I had any hope of getting them done in time to get October’s done in time to get November’s done before November begins (at least the drafts… November = NaNo and I don’t know how I’d manage both if I didn’t try to get a little ahead on the paid stuff). But I went. And I wrote. Thing is, I didn’t right the article I intended to: I wrote the next one on the list but only because as I started to list points and notes for the first I realized that some skills for this article were going to be addressed in the next. So I wrote that one instead. I need to do the visual aids for it (it’s another calligraphy article this week) and finalize some specifics (and editing, oh, yes, the editing) but the fleshy outer shell is there. Cool.

Of course, now it’s 9:15, I’m still not feeling well (even after the fail-safe noodles for dinner) and I’m going to take myself to bed with the Frida Kahlo biography and read til I fall asleep.

There’s no crying in baseball!

Did Tom Hanks every play an editor?

Ugh, I just had my first real clash of artistic temperament meets editorial review. Sigh… It’s fixed (and so much for the media black-out at 10pm… I’d already invoiced for the article so I really needed to get it revised [read as: shell of its former self] so I wouldn’t be short of my contract this month) but I’m spent.

And, wow, I was so jazzed up this evening until I got that email. I was all high on thoughts of planning the next party, had gone out on a recon mission to the party store, jammed out to the radio on the way home, then get hit with: ‘it’s too long, confusing, and too creative’ Seriously, that was the basics. Of course, the editors really didn’t ‘get’ what I was going for (I know all writers probably say that, but there was a serious lack of communication on just what I’m ‘expert’ in and what that had to do with the lamb recipe) and they kept calling it two recipes. No. It’s one recipe, two preparation methods. And not even two full-on methods, it was more of a then vs now with the now being the actual instructions.

Have you ever noticed that the higher emotionally you are the more dangerous the precipice that you dance upon? I mean, seriously, I just about lost it because I took it way too personally at first. Of course, it’s not meant that way, and I knew that, but still at that moment they weren’t telling me the article was broken, they were telling me ‘I’ was broken. Which is stupid because I’m not (though cracked probably wouldn’t be wrong, lol), but I guess I was just lulled into a false sense of security when my other articles breezed through.

The other part really was the timing. We’re supposed to have our articles submitted 4 days before the end of the month. This particular one went in on the 21st (plenty of time) but due to one of the editors having a family emergency (it happens, not much you can do about it) they were backlogged. Still, the article went on “Writer Hold” at least yesterday (if not Sunday… I don’t remember if I checked the status window after I submitted the webcomic article Sat.night) and if I hadn’t asked about it both yesterday and today I still might not know that there were issues that I needed to fix. That didn’t hurt: it pissed me off. I’m still a little irritated but more than that, I’m tired. It took an hour and a half of editing and then moving to the laptop from the desktop because that’s where the image files were that needed to be reassigned.

It was not the ending I wanted for this day and I still have one thing to do before bed if I can get back into proper head-space for it.

I’ll have to see if I can resurrect the euphoria I was operating on before the editing issue arose tomorrow. But relived is never as good as the first time.

2 1/3 laps!

Wohoo! I was doing so well on my walk today (the walk I had almost convinced myself to skip before leaving work) that I switched over to another playlist and walked two more songs as I circled around the first connector before heading back to the car. Go me! Of course, now my calves are screaming at me and I have a blister on my index toe, but it’s a small price to pay. (Remind me of this tomorrow when it hurts to move???)

Anyway, so further on to the goal of self-improvement I saw something come across the Digg feed last night about ’sleepy geeks’. Basically the theory is that those who watched television or were online up until bedtime slept worse than those that didn’t. Fair enough, I suppose, I mean there’s at least some validity in the idea that a busy brian does not a peaceful sleep make. So this week I figure I’ll try it out.

Since I aim for bed at 11pm, I’ll do a media black-out starting at 10pm. The intervening hour I’ll use for pleasure reading, research (that’s fun too, and much more low-key, honest!) reading, or working on the comic. A month or more ago I cut out food after 9pm (to prevent digestion competing with sleep and to not pack on late-night calories) so I’ve got a nice little stair-step going.

It also occurs to me that I’m starting to have the care and feeding guidelines of a Mogwai. At least /I/ get weekends off without turning Gremlin

The monkeys are quiet

Because I got so very much done this weekend.

Needless to say, no plans materialized from RockStar (so glad I didn’t clear my Saturday night on that ‘maybe’ earlier this week) but it was just as well. Friday night I went through 7 boxes of office stuff: sorting and tossing, those now-empty boxes are being filled by Izzy since she’s getting ready to move next month. Then yesterday I did a bit more organizing, edited my third eHow article for the month (whew! contract fulfilled for this month!), and drew Tuesday’s RA. Thursday’s is almost finished as well.

Then a really odd thing happened. Last weekend we has such hellacious storms that power went out for several hours. Well, last Saturday night (after the storms the previous night) I noticed that the tv picture was a bit, uh, off. Basically there was a big green splotch in the lower left corner and the left vertical third had a decidedly blue tinge. I mean, you could see everything, but the colors were off. Mom had been talking about getting me a bigger set for Christmas this year anyway, and she’s saying it might just be an early gift with this development. In the mean time, if it got to me too much I could grab the tv from Drew’s room since it wasn’t being used.

Exposition over, on to today: I decide that (what with Palmie and I planning to hang out on Friday and as movies will probably happen) today would be a good day to grab the tv so I clear everything but the modem/router off the stand and head to Mom’s. When I get there (and Mom isn’t, but I have a key) I see that Drew’s tv is not just like mine (like I’d thought) and that I’d need to borrow the DVD player as well–I just decided to wait until I could talk to Mom this week. No biggie.

Knowing that the few shows I still watch will be on tonight, I put the tv back up on the stand and turn it on to make sure moving it didn’t completely kill it, right? Dude. It not only worked, the color was fixed. Seriously. The hell? I mean, there’s still a minor ghost of a shadow in the lower left corner, but it’s not bright green and the blue tint is gone. Go figure. Obviously something must have been loose and moving the set around jiggled it back into place (I’d figured the set had received a minor zap from the lightening last week, since it was coincidental) but how did it come loose since I haven’t moved the tv in months and months? Really.

Who knows, I’m just glad whatever it is decided to resolve itself. You know, I never did think to give it a good whack when it messed up. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when stuff like that happens? Whack the hell out of it and get it to straighten up?