It's raining! After days and days of searing heat and scorching winds, it's finally raining!
Okay, it's sprinkling, but the cloud cover is heavy enough and the wind is lively enough to make it feasible that we're going to get Actual Moisture. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed. When I went to bed and tried to go to sleep last night, it was still 87. It's all very well to console myself with the thought that living without central a/c is better for the environment, but if I don't get a good night's sleep one of these days, I'm likely to be an environmental disaster, all by myself.
I'm running amuck in the fields of advertising this week. I'm getting 12-month activity reports for all the people who have had accounts for at least that long, and deleting all of the search words and phrases that haven't produced any results in that time. (It sounds simple, but they've never cleaned out these accounts before.) That was so much fun, in fact, that I did the same for every account I could scrape up at least 6 months worth of data on.
I had many, many things I intended to blog about, the next time I found myself blogging, but I can't remember what any of them were. That's very sad.
Pondering.
Nope. Can't remember any of it.
It's 'NutNews week again. Groan. Stilted prose, half-finished thoughts, articles stolen from various sites around the 'net and uncredited, and my half-assed html skills. So. Much. Fun. (In the "not really" way.)
I don't know why I act like I care. It's not like I have any control over the content, the boringness of which is the biggest problem. For instance, at one point, I suggested to one of the ChaosManagers that advertising a class for which the registration deadline had already passed? Was really just taunting the people who didn't get signed up in time. She laughed--but the class is still going to be advertised.
And then there was the moment when I had to go to various people's office and explain to them, one by one, why it was not a good idea to put the order form for buying Office 2007 up on the website in .docx format. I thought I was going to have to draw pictures to make them understand that the only people who need the order form can't access .docx documents because that's the 2007 format.
The consensus is that the newsletter today is just like it was two months ago, when Penelope used to produce it. People around here say that like it's a compliment, but it was a mind-numbingly boring newsletter two months ago.
I guess it doesn't have to be--I have carte blanche to edit anything I want to edit, with the caveat that my edits are subject to being re-beiged if I get too lively--but I can't decide whether or not I care that much. It's hard. (Because it's boring.)
Vela, my own personal ChaosManager, continues to display her allergy to contractions. I don't know why. At the moment, I'm going through the articles and introducing contractions where appropriate--or where the mood moves me. And I'm re-titling her articles because I don't find something like "Marketing Update" to be all that compelling. (Although she probably has a point when she says she doesn't want the title to invite people to read the article, because she doesn't want to listen to complaints.) And I'm reading her sentences closely because subject-verb agreement is something she's only nominally interested in. And she has a habit of writing the first half of a sentence/thought and then leaving it to finish later--except, she doesn't finish later.
Oh, why don't I just admit it? I'm rewriting half the silly thing. Not, you know, in any major way, but at least enough to make the articles sound as through they were written by a reasonably well-educated English-speaking person. (Or as close as I can come to that, after several years of blogging.)
The temptation has been strong this week to build some easter eggs into the html. I would, but I don't think anyone here would be amused. (Nor do I think anyone here would actually find such a thing, but you never know.) What I have been doing (largely on my own time, I hasten to assure you) is writing a spoof newsletter. Mostly on my own time, but occasionally as I work on the Real 'NutNews, I stop and capture random ideas.
I don't know why I thought you'd care about all of that.
What a lovely weekend! No, I didn't do anything "special" but I had a lovely weekend anyhow. I ate no "traditional" 4th of July foods. Instead, in tribute to our "melting pot" heritage, I had Mexican, Chinese, and Italian (twice). Also, to celebrate my independence, I ate junk food. (Hey, a self-inflicted diet can be as oppressive as anything else! Let freedom ring with the sound of goldfish crackers, that's what I say.)
And I shopped! Nothing that would gladden the hypothetical heart of The Worst President Ever's administration, but I had a desperate need for new clothes, including (ahem) what we will hereinafter refer to as Dainty Underthings. I shopped, and I scored! Two pair of pants, three shirts, and four bits of assorted DT, all for $145.
The consequences of the WPE's economic policies may be about to bring our entire society to its knees, but at least I'm goin' down in new underwear, purchased at oh-god-help-us-keep-the-doors-open-one-more-day prices. Bad for the country as a whole, yes, but good for my own personal Frugality Regime.
I'm still talking about this, long after all of you have ceased to care, because I actually feel guilty about it. I feel guilty for every dime I spend that might bolster the "retail economy" and keep TWPE's sinking balloon afloat for two more seconds. I feel guilty for not spending until ticket prices were at retailer-killing lows, because I have nothing against retailers per se.
And I feel guilty because I know most of the clothing sold in the USofA is made in sweatshops overseas and while making 19 cents a day might not make anyone wealthy, in some countries, that nineteen cents can be the difference between survival and the other thing, so I should buy at "full retail" instead of waiting until I can save $5 or even $10 on a single garment and just accept it as the price I should be paying for living in the most wasteful society on the face of the planet.*
It's very difficult to be socially responsible without appearing in public naked. To quote a favorite BritCom, "It makes you feel good about yourself, but it's very depressing. What does the green child have to look forward to?"**
Speaking of children, green and otherwise, I think I'm in love. With two little subway geeks. I don't know for certain, but I'm devoutly hoping that Dad waited for the local.
What else?
Well, as a "new" employee, I don't really have any time off available to me, but Vela, my own personal ChaosManager, offered to comp me a day or two in gratitude for my willingness to take on publishing the 'NutNews every other week. I objected, pointing out that it's all being done on company time which means I'm actually already being compensated for the work, and she's doing a chunk of it anyhow, but apparently they find my contribution special in some way.
After a suitable show of reluctance, I've been persuaded to take Monday, July 21 off. I love being off work on a Monday. It makes the eight hours of freedom twice as sweet, just knowing that the rest of the world has to roll out of bed and swim through rush-hour traffic to get to jobs most of them don't enjoy half as much as I'm enjoying the 'Nuthouse.
I mentioned the diet at some point, didn't I? For anyone who cares (or who didn't grasp where I was going with this in time to skip to the next paragraph, I'm holding steady at 4 lbs lost, 6 lbs to go. Looking back on the last three weeks, I've decided to be grateful I didn't put any weight back on, instead of flagellating myself for not taking any more off.
It's important, this diet. Gidget and I are scheduled to start our Non-Smoking Plan in a few weeks and I know that no matter what I do, I'm going to be fighting weight gain. The lower my starting weight, the better.***
What else? Well, I have two new campaigns to build and take live this week. I should get started on those at some point. The experimental campaigns I dreamed up and created a couple of weeks ago are not producing. I'm sulking about that.
I was stuck on some characterization for the Never-To-Be-Written Novel when it occurred to me that history is loaded with examples of complex-but-good, nefarious-and-evil, and even riotously ridiculous people and events. I should just do what others have done before me and steal from reality.****
I'm eating fresh cherries.
And then it occurs to me that if I'm reduced to talking about my snack, I'm probably out of things to say.
_______________________
* I dropped a grape. Instead of rinsing it off and eating it, I threw it away. And, okay, wasted food, and there are people starving all over the planet! But I have no idea what's on this carpet and I have no intention of ingesting whatever it might be.
** In the show, the answer was, "Blending in nicely with the lawn."
*** In reference to the NSP? I'd appreciate it if no one, ever, ever asked me if I did it, how it's going, or if I'm succeeding. Okay? Because that's the most supportive thing you can do for me. Just--ignore it as though you don't have any idea. Which, I know, I could accomplish by not telling you, but it's my blog and if I want to share information and forbid you to mention it ever again, I have the power.
**** I can still remember my shock when, a few years after reading Anne Rice's much-lauded but entirely not to my taste porn, I ran across an oddball little volume about how various and sundry Catholic popes (Is that supposed to be capitalized?) had conducted themselves in office and realized she'd swiped rather than invented quite a lot of things.
And happy long weekend, to those of us getting a mini-vacation from work in the middle of the summer!
I'm sliding out early today, in about an hour or so. I need to make my escape before I get cajoled into doing phone coverage again. The (part-time) receptionist wants to leave early (again) because it's a holiday weekend (again) and she and another person have already asked me, oh-so casually, what time I'm planning to leave. And I'm thinking--I have a distinct memory of her 'undying gratitude' when I stayed until 5:00 on Memorial Day weekend, and an equally distinct memory of how fervently she swore she wouldn't ask again for the rest of the summer.
That's the problem with gratitude. It only lasts until the next time something someone wants is more important to them than the thing they got a month ago.
That's a bit convoluted, but I know what I mean.
Anyhow.
Have a great 4th of July, whether you're celebrating Independence or not!
Posted by AnneZook at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)It's Tuesday, and I'm already luxuriating in the idea that I only have to work two more days this week! It didn't take long, once I got full-time employment again, for me to start relishing my time off.
I'm stressing today. Not because I have such a rush of work on that I can't handle it or anything although, more about that later. No, I realized this morning that I ran out of meds a few days ago and have not yet remembered to get a refill. These thyroid meds are tricky. If I take them, I never think twice about it, but three or four days off of them and the random panic attacks start again. It's stupid to let myself run out. They're cheap and convenient since I get my refills in 90-day quantities. Sometimes I sabotage myself through sheer procrastination.
And, speaking of! Ashlyn! I saw your email just two minutes ago! Picture me prostrated with shame, ravaged by grief, and just generally all-over mortified. I sweartogod I am not stealing your DVDs. They've been boxed up for three months, waiting for me to slap an address label on and drop them off at the post office. I will bring them to the office tomorrow and go out on my lunch hour and mail them. Really! I will! (The R.C. says it's a good thing most of my friends are themselves procrastinators, or I wouldn't have any friends left.)
And, referring back to my earlier comment about my workload, let me edit that to point out that it's 'NutNews week again, so fairly busy. I've been editing text, fixing punctuation, rewriting gibberish, and cursing my poor html coding skills for the last two days. And I'm frowning at one member of TeamChaos at the moment. The one thing I asked them was not to get all carried away with changing the order of the articles, once the newsletter is coded. Minor text edits are okay, but having to change 15 links and bookmarks is just asking for trouble. Naturally, someone decided, at the 11th hour, that the article currently in eighth place needed to be first. Grrr.
Yawn. I thought about working up a head of steam over it, but before I could make up my mind, I'd finished making the edits.
Dum-dee-dum-dum.
I'm not the world's most interesting blogger, am I?
I was poking around the other day, trying to find that pile o'files with all of my novel research, but I couldn't find them. I'm beginning to fear that those papers hit the dumpster along with all the other debris I got rid of in the Great Clear-out of '07. I hate when I do that.
I did run across a story outline that the R.C. swears I wrote and sent to her in the 70s. When I read it, it rings no bells but she swears it's mine. If I run across it again, I'll try to keep track of it so I can share it with you. (I'm sure you'd be no more bored by that than anything else I blog about.) Or I could post some of the research I did for the 18th C. detective series I pretended I was going to write? I wonder if I kept any of that? I think I had more fun with the genealogy of that than anything else. (Like Bertie Wooster, my detective was cursed with a multiplicity of aunts.)
Dum-dee-dum-dum.
I had a very nice weekend last week, but it wasn't anything earth-shattering enough to go on and on about. Just, you know, peacefully nice. I saw Megan on Saturday. We watched The Baker, an odd and interesting little movie loaned to me courtesy of my own, personal Odd & Interesting Media Pusher, and I admired her expensive but entirely fabulous new fence.
I don't have massive plans for the upcoming holiday weekend. At some point, the R.C. and I are going to hit the outlet mall. Now that the never-ending project of shoveling out my closet is actually reaching the point where there are, in fact, only clothes hanging in there that I actually wear, I'm shocked to discover that I own only five "work" blouses and four shirts in decent enough condition (and close enough to my size) to wear out of the house on the weekends. If I get lazy one weekend and don't do my ironing, I could wind up going to work nekkid by the end of the week.
Yes! Four years of closet cleaning proved that I need new clothes!
If I'd known that a consequence of going on the diet was that I'd never again be able to find an abundance of decent clothes to wear, I might not have bothered. (I talk about "the diet" a lot for someone who only needed to lose 40 lbs and actually lost 30 lbs, don't I?)
And, speaking of the holiday weekend, Gidget is trying to make me leave early on Thursday. She's holding a grudge about me having to work until 5:00 before the Memorial Day weekend. Life isn't quite as tough here at the Argonut Café as I sometimes pretend it is. My boss takes care of me.
Although, I doubt if I do. Leave early on Thursday, I mean. Once I get the 'NutNews for this week launched, I'll have the usual two days of follow-up tasks. But it's nice of her to think about it, you know?
Dum-dee-dum-dum.
Least interesting blog on the internet!