34 posts tagged “grindstone”
The internet is fixed. The sink is not. Work was insane tonight, I got out an hour later than anticipated. I feel like bashing my head into wall, I'm so amped up and completely stressed. Just too many things going on, but a calm night at work would have been welcome. Instead it was just crazy making. So packed I couldn't even have a beer after to calm down. Augh. Maybe I should go run around the block or something.
If I can get through May, everything will be awesome. Light at the end of the tunnel. Deep breaths.
Things that are good:
- the girls in my household
- planning my Seattle trip
- my little sister coming to visit in July
- spring weather finally consistently perfect
- small presents from friends
- tzatziki
- amusing horoscopes
I saw Iron Man last night with T-Rider. When Tim asked this morning, is it was awesome? I said, no, FUCKING AWESOME. I am however very conflicted about. Mostly because I can't decide if I want and awesome reactor in my chest so I can be a superhero, or if I want to be Pepper Potts, as my ideal job has always been as an assistant some super rich, eccentric person who will appreciate my wide variety of skills. (Hmm, that sounds somehow dirty when I put it on paper, I mean it all quite honestly and cleanly, you perverts.) I can ignore the gross stereotypes of Middle Eastern Terrorists, as it's been a stock cliché in movies for years now, and I don't see railing about it appearing in a delicious ice cream sundae of a movie, such as Iron Man, is going to change anything at all. Also there were previews for the new Batman movie and the new Indiana Jones. Hurrah! Indeed the only thing possibly missing from summer movies this year is Matt Damon. And of course decent rolls for strong, leading female characters, but I don't feel like ranting about that today. YAY SUPERHEROES!
I have about ten million things to think about right now, and one is moving this blog to a different host, as I need to test a few out and see how they stack up. I'm thinking Typepad, as I've ruled out Blogspot and Livejournal. But Wordpress isn't out of the question. Anyone else have any suggestions?
And saving the bombs for the end: I gave notice at my day job yesterday. Yes, I recognize that this is risky move in the current economy. However, it's sucking away all my creative energy and way more time than it should. Also, while I don't want to publicly say anything too mean, or revealing, I don't expect the organization to continue to sustain itself for much longer, which would put me out of a job anyway. My last day here, I believe, will be May 27, then I am off to Seattle for a fews, and back to start my new life, however it will play out, in Nashville in June. I have a plan, which will surely be adjusted in the coming weeks, and hopefully keep me afloat and happier.
Hi, how are y'all?
I'm not having a good day. No, I don't want to talk about it.
Also I'm getting a fairly hideous headache. And my boss is ten minutes late for our meeting. If he's not here in another five I am going home.
In lieu of my own content, links:
- "At the beginning of the 21st century, the typical American suburb is just about the safest place that has ever existed in the history of the world - yet it's full of terrified people."
- The headline says it better than I could.
Maybe everything would be better if I had one of these:
see more crazy cat pics
It's Friday, so that's something.
My shoulder has been achey all week, from the work I did last weekend. It's been feeling progessively better every day, so I haven't worried about it. Well, last night I apparently slept on it funny because it is painful today and all locked up, my neck is stiff and I'm generally miserable.
My Annoying Coworker has what he described as a "horrible accident" yesterday. It apparently involved trip over a cord, while carrying his open work laptop and smashing it. Such smashing as requires data rescue and new harddrive. Brilliant. Now he wants me to spend my day backing up all his files on my computer in case he has another accident.
In related news, I am having chocolate chip cookies and potato chips for breakfast, it only seems fair.
In nicer news, it is 9:45 am and already 65°F. I know I've declared it spring already a billion times, but after last weekend's late spring freeze, I can now solidly say, that is it for the cold weather, man. Awesome. It's so sunny, I might try and power through all my work and run out a little early today. Maybe a walk in the park will help my poor hurty neck and shoulder.
I made photo essay of my average day for Rhi. It's here, and I had fun taking the pictures, but the end result seems sort of boring to me. Maybe I'll do another one of my weekend, as that's when the real magic happens. Ha! Not really, but it'd be an interesting contrast. Also this "average day" is sadly lacking in Holly, so maybe I will just shoot her all weekend. I'm sure she'd love that. Heh. Also you should click through the set in order, rather than the slideshow or anything, so you can get the very unexciting explanations with the pictures.
Well, the morning started a little wonky. Overslept, or rather just laid about listening to the rain and thinking about how much I didn't want to get up, which I guess isn't quite the same as oversleeping. Then I stubbed my toe on the leg of the bed frame. Dawdled feeding the bunnies until rain let up a bit and finally left my coffee sitting in the living room. Luckily there is my beloved Turnip Truck to provide me with replacement coffee, a delicious sandwich and pleasent conversation.
I will have a positive mental attitude today! I will not even talk in detail about much Annoying Co-worker is annoying me. No, it's water off a duck's back. I am cheerful and unaffected.
Now I will watch the rain out the window and diligently work until it's time to go play. Diligently, I tell you!
I have no reason to be in anything other than a good mood today and yet ridiculousness at work seems to be getting the best of me. I just spent ten minutes on the porch trying to talk myself into a positive mental attitude.
It's lovely outside, not quite blue-skied, but warm and lovely and scented of spring and joy. I am dressed for it: black a-line skirt, bright green top, white cardigan, black satin ballet flats printed all over with cherries.
Right now T-Rider is driving through the Arizona desert, which I suspect is kind of boring for him and certainly not one of my favorite things to do, but man, I wish I was there. I am instead making a list of insanely urgent work things that I can't solve myself and can't seem to pin anyone else down to approve. The huge desert sky, the possibilty of stopping for excellent food and riding along with my feet propped up in the corner of the open window seems exceptionally perfect right now. But perhaps that's an "anywhere but here" feeling.
HA! In further proof the universe does not want me to be in a bad mood, our accounting person just called me to tell me that they were retroactively extending my raised back to Mar 24, instead of Apr 1. Apparently this makes accounting easier, but more importantly, pays me more for a whole extra week. Woo!
Birthday is now 22 days away. That's three weeks, people. Hope you've all been pooling your cash to buy me that one-way ticket to Barcelona. And perhaps set me up with someone to marry there, so I can stay. *sigh* Yeah, that would better than work today.
Okay. I should be working. Solving problems. Reducing my own panic about what isn't going to get done.
There's going to be another Bond movie with Daniel Craig? Oh, be still my heart.
Yikes, I will never get used to thunderstorms in the morning. It just seems so strange. I love thunderstorms of all stripes, but the morning ones feel so weirdly out of place to me. I really do think of them as afternoon and late night things.
I don't think I've had a decent night's sleep in a week. It's wearing on me in serious way. Despite that, I look fabulous, at least from the neck down: black trousers, black slingbacks with little buckles, ruffley white blouse with a little black and light blue pattern, black sweater, hair up in princess-y, WASP-y ponytail with a little black headband. And I smell like pomegranates and green leaves and tiny flowers.
I'm all for cover songs. Love them, love variations, love the differences in them. And not just country songs, but like punk covers of Beatles songs, or ska covers of Duran Duran songs, or you know, whatever. But really if you are going to make a tribute album to Elliott Smith, maybe shake it up a bit and not have it be full of douchey singer/songwriter types who wish they were as good as Smith? In that case I'd really rather just listen to the originals. (This rant brought to you by Pandora.com, which is giving me a bunch of garbage this morning. I feel that the main problem in their programming is that when you create a station, it gives you ways to much half-assed 'sounds like' and almost none of the actual bands you programmed in to it in the first place. Grump grump grump.)
Today I have the urge to listen to nothing but the Old 97s. Alas I didn't bring my iPod to work and I have none on this computer. Boo hoo.
But tonight Kristen is working! I haven't seen her in almost a week! I am so happy to see her again that his morning I danced around my bedroom while getting dressed! And this weekend will be long and lots of hard work (if I don't wuss out and be lazy and decide I need a mental health break or something) but if I get it all done, my quality of life will be much improved. And hard work never hurt anyone, well unless you hit yourself with a hammer or drop a brick on your own head.
Oy, I just edited this pre-posting, and every place I should have used "a" I had instead typed "the." What kind of sleep-deprived brain malfunction is that? Yeep.
The real important question to cast out into the universe this morning is, why was Joe Namath in my dreams last night?
And also, I hate our graphic designer at work so much. I regularly send him the text that needs to be whatever promotional piece. He repeatedly sends me back designs with key phrases missing because they didn't fit the design he made. Well buddy, if it's an order form, you can't just leave out all references to it being an order form because it doesn't aesthetically please you. Yeah, you have to keep the words I send you IN it, and make your ugly designs work. If I was the boss this guy would have been so fired, so long ago. Alas, he's like my boss's college roommate or something, so we continue to pay him exorbitant amounts of money to do sub-par work and do it very slowly.
Yes, I am somewhat cranky today. Sure it is possibly hormonal, but I prefer to blame dreams about Joe Namath (ew, no, not those kinds of dreams).
In much better news, almost all the trees are now dressed in some lacy, new, pale green foliage. Almost every remaining vestige of winter if falling under the dreamy, lush Tennessee green. Green green green green.
Hey! I just found $6 while cleaning out my purse. Now going to go walk in the sun for a bit and maybe spend my $6 on something. Like, um, hmm, something!
(Stolen wholesale from Rhi, because I needed the lesson this morning)
From Buddhism: Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen:
There is an old story about a man who came to see the Buddha because he had heard that the Buddha was a great teacher. Like all of us, he had some problems in his life, and he thought the Buddha might be able to help him straighten them out.
He told the Buddha that he was a farmer. "I like farming," he said, "but sometimes it doesn't rain enough, and my crops fail. Last year we nearly starved. And sometimes it rains too much, so my yields aren't what I'd like them to be."
The Buddha listened patiently to the man.
"I'm married, too," said the man. "She's a good wife, but sometimes she nags me too much. And sometimes I get tired of her."
The Buddha listened quietly.
"I have kids," said the man. "Good kids, too, but sometimes they don't show me enough respect. And sometimes...."
The man went on like this, laying out all of his difficulties and worries. Finally he wound down and waited for the Buddha to say the words that would put everything right for him.
Instead, the Buddha said, "I can't help you."
"What do you mean?" said the astonished man.
"Everybody's got problems," said the Buddha. "In fact, we've all got eighty-three problems, each one of us. Eighty-three problems, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you work really hard on one of them, maybe you can fix it--but if you do, another one will pop right into its place. For example, you're going to lose your loved ones eventually. And you're going to die someday. Now there's a problem, and there's nothing you, or I, or anyone else can do about it."
The man became furious. "I thought you were a great teacher!" he shouted. "I thought you could help me! What good is your teaching then?"
The Buddha said, "Well, maybe it will help you with the eighty-fourth problem."
"The eighty-fourth problem?" said the man. "What's the eighty-fourth problem?"
Said the Buddha, "You want to not have any problems."
I need a little Buddha doll to carry with me, and when I press his belly he'll say, "take a deep breath and let it go. Let. It. Go." Because no matter how much I meditate on it, how much I work on it, I still find myself falling into looping traps where I will get stressed and then beat myself up for it and then stress about that until it starts to feel like an infinite loop. The problems won't go away. I can work on the necessary ones, but I need to let the rest go, I need to breathe and not let things I can't control make me lose site of the things that are important, the reminder that those are the good things.
---
Tried to brush my hair this morning with the hairbrush I broke yesterday and I sort of lost control of it an accidentally flung it into the toilet. Which was really such a comedic moment that I'm almost sorry no one was there to see it. The hairbrush flew in sort of slow motion as I grabbed after it trying to catch it before the clearly inevitable conclusion. It is sort of sad that I don't have my own reality show, but then again probably most people don't find these things as funny as I do.
It is the lovely, delicious, fabulous equinox. Oh spring, I love you so much. Don't ever leave me again. Winter is so mean and dreadful, not at all soft and sexy and happy like you are, spring.
Sadly, I didn't realize it was spring until I'd already left for work, otherwise I would have dressed differently. I feel I should be wearing some flowery, sunny, garden party dress (even to work!) to celebrate the season of light and joy. Perhaps I will go home and unpack all the spring clothes and store the sweaters--of course that will insure grim and cold tomorrow, ha!
O:BNM update: The blood orange perfume is still lovely, but the sillage sucks and it doesn't really last. I'm thinking that maybe I'd rather smell like pomegranates than oranges anyway. The question is, do I want to smell like flowery spring perfume with pomegranate tones in it, or do I want to smell like actual pomegranates?
Yes, I am procrastinating. It is like crack, once you start, you can't stop. I might as well give up pretending like I'll get anything done. But I should buckle down and finish the important stuff so I can go outside. Outside in spring. I can take off my shoes. And sit in the sun. Hurrah. Of course thinking like that isn't making me work any faster.
