You know? It’s tough getting back into a habit when you’ve been slacking for so long. I can say I just needed a break or was too busy, and that was certainly sure at first, but then I was just out of the habit. Now trying to get back into it is going to take some time.
But! It’s April now so that mean’s a new month of articles, more Random Acts… strips and Script Frenzy! So far, so good, but I’ll need to really be disciplined to not slack while Spectrum is in town again 
Have to get used to him being around more than just for special visits since he’ll be in town full time very, very soon!!!
And speaking of Random Acts… I made some announcements in the blog section with today’s update and I think I’m going to need to say ‘no, really, I mean it’ in Thursday’s update because today is, of course, April Fool’s (worst. holiday. ever.) or, as I’ve started calling it: Grain of Salt day. But no, I mean it, I’m going to have to bust my ass to manage everything, but there will be site revamps and an increased update schedule on May 1st. Whee!
Today was the first day back at work after the holidays and while it wasn’t a bad day by any stretch of the imagination, my internal calendar is screwed all to hell and back. I actually thought I had another night to finish the comic until about 3pm this afternoon. Whoops! So it was a nap, dinner, and then the comic.
Now, I had thought to put a movie on to test out the new dvd player but low and behold when I turned on the new TV that Santa (aka Mom) brought me I found something very strange. After not one full day of use it now has two sound options: mute and BLARE. I tried every setting I could on every remote and even called the toll-free philips customer service line. Which was not exactly helpful but I’m sure no one is surprised at that. I explained the problem much like I did above and this little automaton asks “So you’re saying the sound is fuzzy?” Um. No. I’m saying it’s too loud. “Have you tried the volume controls?” *headdesk* Seriously, people, I mean, sure, some idiots might not be able to find the volume button on the side of the set or the remote, but no, I assure you I’d found them. For pities freaking sake.
Anyway, supposedly I get to call AZ Electronics (”which is at ### Carolina St, which is in Tallahassee, which is in Florida”–no lie, folks, I told her my zip code in order for her to find the nearest service place and she feels the need to tell me what state my own town is located in. Now, I could understand if she were telling me that the nearest registered service place was in Georgia or Alabama–in which case we say screw you–but seriously?) tomorrow with the reference number, it’s under warranty (no, really? durr) so no charge for parts or labor, and arrange for an appointment to bring it in for repairs. The fun part? I can’t lift the damn thing. My arms aren’t long enough. Andrew even had trouble with it because it’s so wide and awkward.
And I do not relish telling Mom about this, tomorrow. I wonder, though, if it wouldn’t be easier to just take it back to Best Buy for an exchange at this early stage of the game. Of course, it doesn’t bode well that after 24 hours it flakes out on me. I really expected more from it. Sigh… Good thing I didn’t commit the 19″er to someone else otherwise I’d really be screwed. Sure, I have the little 13″ set tucked away in a corner somewhere, but I’m thinking that the NYE Twilight Zone marathon with palmie and jun would be far less entertaining on 13″.
As of mid-morning today. Whew! That feels good. What’s weird is that I am only making one gift this year. This has a lot to do with the fact that I am still not finished with some from last year. Seriously. So this year I chopped the gift list to pretty much family and near-family and skipped everything else. On the one hand I’m kinda eh about the abbreviated plans but on the other I like it. The simplicity appeals to me, and we know that’s an aberration of ginormous proportions.
Also, tomorrow is the 52nd strip of Random Acts… TaDaa! I did what I set out to do and its still fun so I’ll be continuing. I would have celebrated more but I’ve managed to screw up my writing plans for the first half of the month so the deadline is pinning me down seriously. It’s okay, I’m on, like, Plan C at this point, but I think it’ll be the best of all of them and I should have no problem completing them before leaving town Friday morning for my weekend away.
My goal is to be totally caught up so that I can have 3 days without thinking about any of my work things–any of them! Not going to think about them replacing the office carpet while I’m gone. Not going to think about my articles. Not going to think about the comic. It’s a weekend of not thinking. Well, okay, not much thinking. I will only dally by taking pictures, if plausible, of the Arts District in NOLA for future reference for Wedding Tarot. And since I haven’t had time to ‘work’ on that in ages, it doesn’t count against the not thinking about works. I love my logic!
Tis the season and all that. The UPS dude had already come by with the Sharper Image box by the time I got home but the Sephora box had also arrived AND one of the Amazon boxes. While a good half of it was for me and me alone, the other half was actually parts of birthday and Christmas presents.
Exercise just didn’t happen. Aside from the arduous task of opening all those packages I had to do tomorrow’s comic start to finish and cook dinner. Pretty much nothing else got done. Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow after writing and the SCA meeting to finish what I didn’t get to tonight. Sure, that’s the ticket!
Ugh! Even at limiting myself to just a bit of each item I still ate too much. Tis the way of it, I suppose. So why, then, am I wanting another piece of pie. I don’t /really/ want another piece of pie, I only think I do. Let’s see if I can hold out until tomorrow (and, no, I don’t mean midnight).
Hanging out at Mom’s was cool. We watched a few movies and the dog show. It was kind of nice that the dog who won best of show was the only dog in the finals who didn’t have a best in show title to his/her credit. Mom was put out that the Frenchie didn’t make it to the finals, but bot too much so.
Hey, we get Christmas Eve, why not?
Not entirely unexpectedly the boss let us go early today so I took the opportunity to run by the hardware store (mini power tool! vroom! and parts for an eHow article I’ve had drafted for a while, now) and grocery store (forgot dish detergent last night; pah!) so I got home at the usual time but at a much higher productivity level. I could have stayed and worked til 5–definitely had enough to keep me busy–but the paint fumes made me disinclined to acquiesce. Besides, Drew flew in last night and had Mom’s car so I was her ride for the afternoon. She was ready, we split.
Got completely sidetracked when I got home, though, and watched Free Enterprise before getting anything done. Luckily the comic was inked, just needed color, and all that I really had to do for dinner tomorrow was the pies and chop some vegetables for the dressing. I’ll have plenty of time for the other stuff tomorrow because Mom caved to the demands of the boys to move dinner from 2pm-ish to 4pm. Now, granted, J&K will have already been to at least 2 dinners by then and Drew will probably have gone to B’s for her family’s dinner so essentially we’re holding our dinner for people who will be too full to eat it! We fully realize it, but oh well. But this means I actually have to eat breakfast or something in the morning! Unheard of on Thanksgiving!
And I’ve been wreaking havoc on the web today, too. Started a couple of days ago (I think, I can’t remember what day it is anymore) when I actually managed to widgetize the Secret Project blog like I knew what I was doing and it actually worked. Holy cow! Then today I figured I’d have to be brave and do some more such coding only to find that the wonderful WordPress peeps fixed the stats-incompatibility issues so I didn’t have to! Yay! Of course, then I had a brainstorm on how to fix something that had been bugging me on the Oldenfeld site (granted, it’s something no one else would ever know I fixed because its a very back-end thing and I still haven’t patched the forums yet… sigh…) so I went into the panel and made the change and it worked but somehow changing the ftp user made the files invisible in Cyberduck so I copied them over (all 5.6MB which I’d already copied to my desktop just to make it ‘easy’) only to create an issue with a directory inside a directory that borked the front page. Dur! So then I had to delete the 5.6MB and the directory I accidentally put them in so I could reinstall the 5.6MB without the superfluous directory. But! Hopefully, once this is done, the ftp will be accessible as a stand-alone and not part of my other sites, etc. This is actually more of a safety feature than anything else, to make sure someone is able to get into the site should something happen or when the day comes and I hand over webmin to someone new. If I ever get so lucky, lol.
Because 11pm would actually be the 23rd hour, but that’s neither here nor there at this point. Suffice it to say, it’s rather late in the evening and I’m just now finishing up the stuff for the NaNo Kick-Off tomorrow night. Granted, I got a boat-load of stuff done tonight (tomorrow’s RA…, 4 laps at SLMP, a website, and now the kick-off tickets) but none of it was quick! Oh well, it’s all coming together. The resource page isn’t exactly pretty, but that can be done after the kick-off tomorrow (when I go add the write-in information as well… oops!); the important thing is that it’s up and all of the downloads seem to work (go me!).
Tomorrow is said kick-off, followed by more work on the resource page (change color schemes, add an icon or two, add the write-in information). Maybe try for the Ned-related bit of fluff that I really wanted to do last year but didn’t have time for. Start work on Thursday’s RA… if there’s time.
The party this weekend was unbelievably fun. I mean, I really got lucky with the group that came: everyone really did mesh well together and the last four of us were going strong til just after eleven. I, of course, have enough Spanish Fork Chicken Stew to last me the entire week (good thing, because I go into a no-cooking zone after a party) and some treats and salads, too. But I also need to get the apartment back to normal because I’m going to have a houseguest this weekend and I’d rather the place be more than just presentable.
And, of course, NaNoWriMo 2007 starts in the wee hours of Thursday. How is it November already? I know I probably ask this every year, but seriously, folks, where did the year go??? Anyway, the holidays are in full-swing now that Halloween is almost here. I do love this time of year but I have absolutely no freaking clue how I’m going to survive until New Years! The next two months are looking exceedingly hectic in the best possible way, but still, folks. Come January 1 I think it’ll be time for a complete and total pass out. Seriously.
And a blog post to boot!
Let’s see, I’ve managed to shop (I really need to wrap up these party plans, y’all), pencil a comic and a half, do laundry, start decorating/arranging for the party, draft a NaNo email, create a survey, watch a movie uninterrupted while only knitting, upload two articles, and I’m not done yet! But I will be soon. Gotta get better at this whole bedtime thing before NaNo really rolls around so I can write in the mornings again.I think that really made the difference last year to getting me to 50K in fine form.
And the Abyss is still clean and totally blowing my mind.
But it’s not. I caught myself feeling like I had to go to work tomorrow at least twice.
The big projects for today were some shopping, paying the rent, submitting my ArtSci report and sorting receipts for filing. That last one was a doozie and I’ve spent the last 6 hours or so sitting on the living room floor surrounded by piles of bills and receipts sorting them by year (thanks to the recent stuff-quake in the Abyss, lots of resurfaced). The sorting is now done but my back cannot take another couple hours hunched over file-totes sorting them further. That can wait for tomorrow.
But it’s been a good day, all things considered, and Big Lots had some of their Halloween stuff out already so I’ve picked up a few more decorative items (the linen closet–which also holds party supplies–really needs some organizing now) for the party next month. Wow… it’s September. How on earth did that happen?
Then today is your day! Yes, that’s right, today is National Pina Colada Day! Just now hearing about it? Well, if you read this pre-midnight on the 10th hasten thee to the nearest blender for a frothy concoction. If it’s already the 11th, well, set a reminder for next year and be warned about these future adult-beverage holidays:
July 14th: National Grand Marnier Day
July 19th: National Dacquiri Day
July 24th: National Tequila Day
August 16th: National Rum Day
And speaking of “gettin’ caught in the rain”: I tempted weatherish fate and made my two laps at San Luis park without the sky falling on me. It thundered and threatened, the breeze was kinda nice, and I think there were a couple of light sprinkles in the 30 minutes I was out there but I perservered and I don’t think the bottom ever really did fall out.
I’m really looking forward to the day when I don’t have to convince myself to make that second lap (oh, who am I kidding, the first one, too). That will be the day that I push myself for a third lap and thereby make use of the 60 minute workout playlist on my iPod that, heretofore, has only been used once when I selected it by accident and wondered why I hadn’t run out of music by the time I made it back to my car. Finishing that second lap, however, is quite a feeling. Mainly because I’ve finally gone numb from the knees down.