First, to anyone who's left comments in the last week or so, only to see them disappear? My apologies. I was fighting another major spam attack and I got a little trigger-happy with the delete key. (The attacks were on the political blog, and I've finally just closed all comments on it, but my blacklist spam eliminator doesn't distinguish between this blog and that one.)

Yesterday I showed up for work at 7:54 a.m. Today I came in at 8:07. What's up with that, I wonder? I don't have to be here until 8:30.

I think it's the MOPT thing. I got on a schedule of getting up earlier and even this week, when I'm not taking public transportation because I can't get to the bus stop, I'm still getting up. (Which is good, because I'm going back to the MOPT tomorrow, or next week.)

So, it's the New Year. We all know what that means, right? That's right! It's Diet Time!

I started on Tuesday and was cheating by Wednesday evening (massive chocolate binge, thanks to the R.C. passing along a truly fabulous bar of 70% dark Belgian chocolate from her own haul), but I'm back on it again today and determined to lose that last 10 lbs. (According to the scales, I've already lost 2 lbs, but my weight can vary by 3-4 lbs from one day to the next, for no particular reason, so I'm not getting all excited about it.) Expect to hear much whining and complaining on the subject in the future.

Especially between now and January 16, the date of my annual physical.

(Except.... Just at that moment, I found myself wondering if my physical is on the 16th after all. Because I just realized that I'm keeping the 16th in my head because that's the release of the new season of Doctor Who, but a little voice is telling me that my doctor's appointment was on a Thursday, not a Tuesday. I should figure that out.)

Office-wise--yes, I'm still here, in spite of all my threats to the contrary. I've more-or-less promised to hang out until the end of February (thereby making my annual trek to California in late February affordable) and am currently avoiding making a solid commitment to stay until June.

I'd love a more stable job with a company that would make a commitment to stay in business that ran past the next 90 days but I really hate job-hunting. Right now, the pain of these two choices is pretty well-balanced and inertia is siding with hanging out here for a while.

Office-wise relating to actual work, I've finished the only survey job on the horizon between now and May and my biggest task, beyond bookkeeping, is cleaning up the detritus left behind by the last 12-14 departing employees, along with the rubble of electronic parts left over from when we use to build the product in-house. I've run across boxes and boxes full of miscellaneous cords and power adaptors and twisty little bits of metal and plastic and I don't know what any of it is for.

Except, I feel fairly confident in saying that we don't really need those 250 little plastic thingies that look like something you'd plug a phone line into. I mean, granted, I have no idea why we have them or what they were used for at such time as we used them but since no one has ever wanted one in the four years or so that I've been here, I feel fairly confident in throwing them away. It's tricky because I work with two major pack rats and if I want to start actually throwing things away, I have to pick my moments. Moments when neither of them is in the office and when they won't return until after the trash has been emptied for the day, for instance.

(On the positive side, if I'm on a diet, it's a good time for me to be getting extra exercise. So, spending 2-3 hours a day shifting around boxes full o'stuff and walking around the office sorting, so that some of these things that are like the others are all in one place is a good thing to be doing. I've already had to come back to my desk and cool down twice today.)

Oh, also, the Pushy Client came back out of the woodwork after two weeks of near silence with a "do it now!" project. I remember the good, old days when a client would agree to give you 72 hours (or, 24 business hours, take your pick) between time of project demand and time of project delivery and mean it. I miss those days. (These are the people who went insane sometime last fall and started demanding 4-hour turnaround. I remember complaining about them at the time, since it was about the same time that DiamondGirl finally stopped doing contract work for us and I had to do everything myself.)

I still haven't gotten my license plate stickers. I'm driving with extreme caution until Saturday, when I'll finally be able to get to the emissions testing station, assuming that the little side road that gets me there has been cleared. Then I can take the MOPT next week and ride the train down to the actual sticker issuing office one day. (Gotta figure out how to get to that office. I know there's a light-rail station there, but I'll need to go to Union Station and transfer to do it from here. It's an adventure!)

You know, this blog could be a more interesting place to visit. I'll work on that.