January 4, 2009
Welcome to the new year!
Whoo, I haven’t touched the computer in a few days and it feels like an eternity. *petting laptop* Pretty computer, I missed you!
It’s been totally action packed around here, in a quiet, sluggish, sort of way. The pregnant friends from out of town were IN town since the Eve of New Year, as were a few other friends from the East Coast. This meant outings to the local diner, for an old times’ sake dinner of french fries, chili cheese pastrami fries, onion rings, zucchini fries, fried mushrooms, and root beer. Also, a few burgers and burritos were had around the table seating over a dozen chattering 20-somethings.
Ahhh yes, healthy healthy indeed. Even the pregnant lady passed up on salads. š
Other highlights? I watched the first episode of Firefly and loved it. Wish I’d borrowed the DVD to watch more of them tonight as I’m feeling under the weather again.
Spent a ton of time with pregnant friend and family.
Watched The Fellowship of the Ring with my cousin, laughed over our long-ago crushes on Orlando Bloom in that movie.
Ran errands with a friend who sympathetically listened to my stress and woes. Had the same friend help me decide what shoes to buy and shirt to wear with my suit, I want to make the right impression and she’s MUCH better at the coordinating colors thing. Her hubby makes me laugh, he was practically dancing with excitement when she admitted he was right and she was wrong about a color combination.
Caught up with friends I haven’t seen since high school; one of them has many NYC connections through her church with regards to housing and makes it seem like it’s still a possibility. Maybe. We’ll see.
Received my copy of The Good Girl’s Guide to Negotiating. It’s pink, but I haven’t decided if that means it’s fluffy yet. Another “we’ll see.”
I hope my glasses with new lenses come in soon. The optician snipped the ends of the arms so they actually fit around my ears like they should, switched the plastic nose pads for silicon ones (free!) and we’re trying single vision lenses instead of the progressives I got some years ago that give me headaches. I hate to say it but visiting the eye doctor is always more traumatic than anything else, including the dentist!
We’re back into the (work) fray tomorrow so I’ll be seeing a whole lot more computer screen, though not for fun things like blogging, twittering, reading blogs, or researching personal stuff.
I know most people were right back to work between Christmas and New Year so I’m grateful for my extra time off; for once, I’ve really squeezed my money’s worth out of the paid holidays instead of trying to find an excuse to put in more hours. If anything, I feel like it’s been a mini-decompression from the ultra-wound up mode I’m normally in all year. Now I could use a vacation from the vacation! š
December 24, 2008
Even if I’m awake at 6, 8 or 10, my brain doesn’t seem to really be IN until around 11. No wonder I’m routine-centric, I’d waste half the day waking up before getting ’round to anything useful, otherwise.
It’s the 11th day of Christmas!
I only have 11 of the 12 steps in my post about pending resignation and layoffs written.
And that’s all the elevenses I’ve got. It’s Christmas Eve and, ensconced in a quilt from my best friend’s mum, heater at my feet, I’m trying to transfer all my files from a Mac to the new PC with Vista in the most tedious manner possible. Not that the goal was to find the most tedious manner possible, it’s just that all the methods of saving data (to external hard drive, to memory stick) tha are most efficient are not compatible between the Mac and my Vaio. Sooo I’m burning CDs. Uh-huh. I’m burning CDs on the Mac, unloading the files to the Vaio, clearing the disk, repeat.
I’d complain but I don’t want to. It’s forcing me to learn my way around Vista, the new programs, and shortcut keys, and awful as it sounds, that’s how I learn best. Involuntarily and out of necessity. And, I’m discovering what’s on all my unlabeled CDs. Only in one case was that sorta exciting — found some old music from my college years! š
Possibly the best part about this is that it’ll allow me to discard more clutter, set up the new computer, clean up the work compy of anything personal, and motivates me to copy over my language CDs to the computer and discard those boxes and CDs too! Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese, here I come!
I must admit, though, while I’m not an Apple Addict, the Mac is So Much Simpler when it comes to this basic organization of files. It really is. But that’s why I bought the PC (other than the much more affordable price tag), I’d hate to become so attached to one platform that I forgot how to use the other.
December 23, 2008
Just now realized that my decision to give my dad a chance to sell the %^&*^% truck at a higher price than the dealer’s offered $4000 was stupid stupid stupid. As if I hadn’t already experienced the burn of not selling earlier in the year, that extra money would have defrayed the most recent car-related crisis by giving me a little extra cash and eliminating the existing truck note.
Baugh.
Ok.
Made the decision to give him a chance, just have to make the best of it. And not dwell.
Um, on the bright side, I got a friend’s opinion on the new suit and thumbs up! So I will only have spent $11 on a quite nice new business suit. Let’s hope I don’t outgrow this one in two years.
December 22, 2008
My new laptop: is pretty much wonderful. All but the part where I can’t figure out why it will no longer let me make my recovery disks. Just because I started installing/un-installing stuff that I didn’t want? Oh shoot, was it related to Windows Live OneCare? Because I junked that as soon as Avast was up and running. Darned Vista, I still haven’t learned my way around it. Oh well, new tech, keeps me young.
Wire transfers: despite costing $18-stinkin-75, are not guaranteed to transmit immediately. Citibank’s website is a liar. I read the fine print, there’s no mention of an up-to-48 hour review. Which, btw, takes me right up to Christmas Eve, and Christmas. Sure can’t wait to pay double the expected fee for “storage” because I was misinformed and didn’t just set up the wire transfer on Friday so that it’d have gone through by now. *sigh* I should just expect things to go wrong like this and you know, see into the future to prevent this sort of thing. Among others.
Escape Brooklyn: makes me even more trepiditious about living in New York. But then again, I only wanted to live there for a year or two.
Business suit: Is an all black suit too conservative for SF? I’m not a hugely fashionable person, so I tend to stick to the basics, and because they practically never have anything but basics in my size.
I found a close-as-anything-fit 0P Tahari suit yesterday for $140 at Macy’s. Twasn’t on sale, but I had my good friend look up coupons as I sat miserably in the dressing room with 4 suits that didn’t fit. He found a rumor of a $25 off $100 purchase so I trekked to Barnes and Noble for a copy of the paper and found THREE of those coupons! That gave me an extra burst of energy to check the racks one last time, and I lucked out big time.
I can’t find pictures of it online but they had two options: a skirt or pant suit. Both were two button jacket with rounded lapels on the pantsuit jacket, and thinner, sharper lapels on the skirt suit.
The skirt suit, after coupon, and after a fatty $113 gift card, cost $11 out of pocket. Just have to decide if it’s impressive enough. As I was told that I barely looked 18 at dinner on Saturday night while our 21 year old guests weren’t carded, I’m going to need all the help I can get to look legal, much less highly competent and employable.
December 17, 2008
- Getting drafts of apps together on Gmail during my breaks. I think it’s best to do that while I’m fresher during the day and send off at night. We’ll see what pans out.
- Trivia: Do you know who wrote and sang Same Auld Lang Syne? I do! But wouldn’t without Google. That song always used to make me tear up as an adolescent. Now it just reminds me of being a kid. And sticks in my head for hours after hearing it. Also, why are Greensleeves and Canon in D (Pachelbel’s Canon) in the radio station’s Christmas music rotation?
- While Ctrl+T is good for me, Ctrl+Q almost always screws me up. Thank goodness for Auto-Save because shutting down the whole program in the middle of a document drives me nuts.
- I know money doesn’t “buy happiness” but there are days I wish I had oodles to give away where it could really help.
It just occurred to me that it’s Wednesday. Payday!
December 15, 2008
Blame it on the cold – my synapses are frozen. No less than five times this morning I’ve remembered and forgotten what I needed to call and ask my best friend, what I was just going to do a minute ago, what I need to write on my to-do today list, what notes to add to my reminder post-it. That’d be five times, each, my friends. *tsk*
I’m about to forget my own head, and it’s still attached to my body!
Hm, also blame it on being so busy this weekend that I essentially took it off from the mile-long list of chores and wrapping-up activities associated with changing just about everything in your life. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but trying to start over, alone, in a new place, and not having a home base to come back to is a whole new experience for me. And the weather backed up the traffic and transportation all morning so that I started the day running pretty late. š I like rain but the first few days are always tough on transportation.
In good news: we might have a buyer for the truck! Cross your fingers with me that this will go through. That’s another thing to take care of, actually. I need to get an ETA on the title, am considering paying it off right now to hurry up the process but I will call the financing company first to find out what the best procedure will be. The lump sum wouldn’t clean out my expense fund, and if the buyer is serious about this and paying cash, it’ll be “paid back” right quick.
Also in good news: I have a nibble on the applications front. Kind of scary, but good, too.
Oh, and Ctrl+T? Every time I think of yet another thing to do, call, work on, etc., I open up another browser window and type it in. That way I’m forced to deal with each item before I can close the window. That doesn’t work well when I spastically Ctrl+W too quickly, though.
December 11, 2008
As it turns out, going to the dentist IS better than going to work. The experience, I mean, not the paying seven hundred dollars instead of getting paid a fraction of that price tag. (Not that I paid $700 — I paid $78, and thank goodness for the dental insurance that picked up the rest! Can you imagine a routine visit costing that much money?? Do they have COBRA for dental? Eeesh.)
What I mean to say is: I spent 2.5 hours at the dentist having 4 almost-cavities drilled and filled, and I was much less stressed than I would have been at a comparable time in the office. It was a very scientific study.
Other things I accomplished in one day:
Dropped off dry cleaning before their one-day cutoff time.
Lovelied up the eyebrows. ($15)
Lunched with newly employed friend and caught her up on sad news. ($7)
Met with two old friends I haven’t seen in months, played with baby.
Picked up dry cleaning. ($10)
Picked up doggy ashes, chatted with old friend.
Dropped off doggy ashes.
Ok, see, my day seemed a heck of a lot fuller than that list shows. Really! I drove all over three towns to accomplish as much as … that. Thank goodness for sick time. I feel like there were a thousand other things I should have gotten done today because I’ll be busy all weekend, but I won’t undo all the good relaxing by stressing about what-should-have-beens. Oh I remember! I wanted to see if I could get my eyes checked today too, but oops! Forgot. Oh well, I have a clean trenchcoat! And isn’t ten dollars ridiculous for dry cleaning a coat? I should have read the tag before buying. Unless it just didn’t matter because I have the hardest time finding clothes that fit.