Yay! Blog! v2.0
Category: What I Did Today

I took a class on effective communication today. I’d heard great things about the teacher, and found that he knew his stuff and was pretty entertaining.

Most of it was common sense. I’m not sure what I took away with me. I need to go over the notes to really absorb some of it. He talked fast and covered a lot of material.

Something that bothered me about the class was that he kept using examples of married couples and parents and children. I could follow the concepts, but he would always begin an example by asking, “Who in here is married?” or “Who in here has more than one child?” The first couple of times, I hardly noticed. But after the fourth or fifth time, I felt like he was teaching the class to the married people and parents. I felt alienated by it, plus it’s a sore subject with me, so that was an internal distraction.

There you go… I learned about internal distractions: those personal things going on inside a person’s head that might keep them from hearing your message. I lived it today.

Anyway… I’m not sure I learned anything I didn’t already know, or couldn’t figure out on my own, but maybe going through a day’s worth of instruction will reinforce the concepts.

I went to see March of the Penguins this morning. It was beautiful and touching. Nature is amazing.

The theater didn’t have junior mints, but I got popcorn and a bottle of water. The popcorn and water cost more than the movie ticket.

After the movie, I went to Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Upon leaving, I overheard two women talking:


Woman1: I ate healthy and didn’t enjoy it.
Woman2: Well I didn’t eat healthy, and I feel miserable.

Isn’t that just the way of it?

... and no, you can't have the number.

I don't have a number yet, anyway.

My quest for a cell phone started off not so well. I didn't want to order one over the internet because they require a signature when they deliver them, and I'm a regular 9 to 5 workerbee, so I'm not home to sign. I looked at some plans over the internet, though, for leverage when I went into the wireless store. I found one for $9.99/month and decided I could deal with that.

I entered the wireless store and a salesman immediately asked if he could help. He didn't really want to help... he wanted to make money. Here's how the dialogue went:

Me: I need to get a cell phone for emergencies only. I wondered what kind of deal you could give me.
Him: Do you travel?
Me: Sometimes.
Him: Where?
Me: Oklahoma. Arkansas. Wherever.
Him: Okay... what I would do is get the [Blah Blah] plan. It's $40.00 a month.
Me: That's way too much.
Him: It is? Okay, well, we have another plan. It's $30.00 a month.
Me: I can get a plan for $9.99 a month over the internet, so that's too much.
Him: What's the coverage on that plan? This plan is nationwide.
Me: It's nationwide.
Him: Oh, well, we have this one (walks across the store and points to a brochure) for $19.99/month. It has (some number) of anytime minutes and 500 weekend minutes.
Me: No.
Him: (walks over to a map). It covers all of this area in the United States. All the major cities.
Me: The one I saw on the internet covered all the major cities.
Him: (walks over to the phones). We could give you this phone for free. (shows me the tiniest freakin' phone I've ever seen).
Me: I need one that goes from my ear to my mouth.
Him: You can still hear with this one.
Me: [Thinking to myself: Are there any phones you knowingly sell in this store that you can't hear? Idiot.] No. I need a phone that goes from my ear to my mouth. Doesn't matter anyway. I can get a plan for $9.99 on the internet.
Him: Okay. *shrug*

After that, I went shopping for fun stuff. I got some little dog magnets and a neat beaded bracelet.

On the way home, I remembered someone talking about cell phones for sale at Walmart. I try to avoid Walmart. Partly for social reasons; partly because of a lack of willpower not to spend lots of money there; partly because of the crowds of people who frequent that place. But I think it might be one of the only places that cater to people who want to buy a cellphone they won't ever use.

I ended up with a nice Motorola flip phone for $69 and a year of service with 150 minutes for $93.42. That's $7.79/month. Whooot! Still too much for something I won't use, but I'll deal.

I haven't activated it yet because it's charging. I'm sensing that charging this phone is going to take forever. Ugh.

Home from work today, I decided to treat myself to a great Italian meal at Romeos. It's my favorite restaurant, and I can't remember the last time I went.

On the way, it felt as if someone was watching me.

It was cloudy out, but the anticipation of great bread, pasta, and dessert kept my spirits up. Seeing the familiar silhouette of young lovers in the upper window brought a smile to my face.

I ordered chicken parmesan with fettucine alfredo and caesar salad. Everything was excellent, and there was enough left over to bring home for dinner tonight. Too full for dessert on the spot, I ordered the chocolate cheesecake to go. It's the best ever chocolate cheesecake, drizzled with chocolate syrup and sauces of pureed raspberries and apricots with chopped pistachio nuts and strawberries on the side. It was thoughtful how the waiter carefully labeled my to go container with the restaurant name, entree and date.

On the drive home, the sun came out. Then I found a box from Amazon.com in my mailbox with two fantasy books and a combo Patty Griffin CD and DVD.

Ah... some days are quite delightful, no?

I've been working my hiney off lately trying to get our work website tidy on the back end. Oooo... I said "hiney" and "back end" in the same sentence.

I worked late every night this week. Tonight I worked until 6:00. When I got home, I thought of something else I wanted to do to a file and decided to look at it. I typed in the URL of our homepage and got a different page with a lot of broken images. It was a page that goes in a different area of the site. Looks like someone uploaded it over the homepage. It could have been me, but I didn't go near that page today. It could have been a couple other people, but I can't imagine they would be doing anything with that page today.

Bottom line... I had to go up to work to put the homepage back. I signed into the after hours log at 8:19 and signed out at 8:27. Eight minutes at work, and an hour round trip from home. I wish I had access to do it from home. I guess I should look into that.

The guard at the front desk is so young. I've seen him before, but never in his guard gear. I thought he was just some kid they hired to sit at the desk and ask people to sign in, but tonight he was all decked out in his cowboy hat and uniform.

Today I did the jury impaneling process over the internet. How freakin' cool is that? I got a summons on Saturday. Last time I got a summons, I had to go to an empty warehouse place and get herded with all the other cattle into lines for this and that. It took all afternoon. Then I didn't get called for a jury.

This time, I just had to answer a few questions over the internet. Now I wait to get an assignment by email. It'll be sometime between tomorrow and December 26th. I've never served on a jury. I've only actually gotten called to the courthouse once. It was traffic court, and they dismissed us all after an hour saying they didn't need us.

I think I'd like to serve on a jury at least once in my life. I guess I should be careful what I wish for.

I was up at 9:30 this morning, so I figured I'd get a lot done on my to do list like I did Saturday and Sunday. Today was different, though. Saturday and Sunday went by like days used to go by before I got, um, older. Plenty of time to do things. It was awesome. But today went by too fast. I think it's because I went shopping. That takes a big ol' chunk out of the day, and doesn't feel like I really *did* anything.

One item on my to do list was to acquire and install a second hard drive. I've been agonizing over a hard drive purchase for weeks. My computer keeps complaining about low storage space which is funny because it still had 2 or 3 gig. I remember when we only had 20 megabytes total on a computer! So I'd move some things to my backup drive to free up space.

I'd been to CompUSA once, and looked at hard drives, but couldn't bring myself to purchase one. I'm glad I waited. Today they had 200 gig hard drives on sale for $99. Whooot! So I'm 200 gig richer in storage space!

At the grocery, I had bad luck and good luck. The eggs I bought disappeared between the time they scanned them and the time I got home. Poop. The good luck was that I won $4 on a $1 lottery scratch off. I rarely ever do lottery stuff, so that was way cool. Too bad I lost most of that on the disappearing egg purchase.

I didn't do much else on my to do list. I got sidetracked on a project dealing with my email addresses. And during that project, I got sidetracked at EMusic.com and ended up getting a subscription for a month. I had some tunes that I got there quite a while back with a free trial. I'd lost the MP3s, so I wanted to download them again. Turns out I had to subscribe again to download them. It wouldn't count against my monthly downloads, and I figured I could find 40 more songs to download for $10. I got some great tunes from Mother Jane and Tanya Donnelly, and I stilll have 24 more songs I can download.

It's back to work tomorrow...

I know you're dying to know the progress of my to do list....

Things I worked on (accomplishments are scratched out)

• clean up my PC desktop I didn't get everything... there's a bunch of free and legal MP3 downloads I need to trash or file, but they're tucked away in a folder, so they're not cluttering the desktop.
• make CDs for the brykMan Whew... I had some CD writing errors that about made me cry, but I adjusted my methods and got things back on track.
• go through my emails and answer/delete/archive as needed Finally got it to where I can see all the emails in my inbox on one screen.
• watch stuff on TiVo I watched Tart, Johns, an episode of "All In The Family" that was supposed to have Christopher Guest in it but didn't, and started watching Men Don't Leave.
• watch football I didn't watch any full games, but I had some on. I picked 7 of 14 games correctly in an ncaa football pool against the spread. Not too bad... the 1st place people picked 9 games correctly.
• do my FlyLady missions from this week Nothin' to it!
• walk at least a mile each day So far, so good... two days, two walks.
• rip mp3s from my CD collection I did some... I have a looong way to go!

Leftover stuff I still need to do

• Design some promo stuff for the upcoming Freeaudioplayer compilation CD
• archive stuff on my hard drive
• acquire and install a second hard drive
• make a photo album with the pictures from my Portland trip last May
• make a CD for Lynn
• put a new CD together to sell at CDBaby
• clean out my car
• clean my garage some
• make CDs from the songs I've purchased at iTunes

Stuff I'm adding

• Thank you note to Elan
• Buy groceries

I decided to clean the inside of my car today and get my oil changed. It was overdue for an oil change. I also needed to replace my old vehicle registration sticker with the new one I got in the mail.

I scraped the old sticker off and started to put the new sticker on when I realized... I scraped off the inspection sticker instead of the registration sticker!! It was in many small pieces. There was no salvaging it.

So I had to get my car inspected today, too. Luckily, it expired next month anyway and the same place that changes oil does inspections. There was no problem with the inspection. I love my Honda.

The three day training I attended this week was hard on my pocketbook. With 1.5 to 2 hours for lunch each day, I couldn't help but shop at the nearby mall all three days. I ended up with 10 shirts, 3 pairs of jeans, 3 pairs of shorts, and 2 jackets. Today, I hadn't intended on buying anything... I went to the mall to walk. I ate at Souper Salad again yesterday and today, so I needed to walk some of that off. I did walk... right into Foley's. They were having an awesome sale.

I'm really excited about the two jackets. They're like dress jackets, but they zip up in the front. I've always wanted a zip front dress jacket. I got a black one and a gray textured one. The most excellent thing is that they're both a size smaller than I thought I would wear even with the weight I've lost so far. Yay!

But really... after I shopped, I walked around the mall a couple of times fast.

Y'all didn't hear from me at all yesterday because after training, I started redesigning my website to make it accessible and to use CSS for layout. I'm still tinkering with the main page. I've got one issue that I'm having a hard time resolving, and I don't think it's a CSS issue. I've got some icons I want to right or left justify and have text wrap around. It works in everything except IE. In IE, the text wraps, but the images disappear! That's weird, too, because usually everything works in IE, but not in some other browser.

Anyway... I'm not messing with the design too too much. The cool thing is, that I'll be able to make more dynamic skins once I'm done... skins that will completely change the layout instead of just the colors and header images.

I'm going to get back to designing now. Whooot! I'm a code-monkey!

Today was the first day of a 3 day training conference. I got up extra early because it started at 8:30, and it was all the way across town. Misjudging how long it would take me to get there in morning traffic, I got there a full hour early. Sheesh. I drove around scouting for restaurants for lunch and a Starbucks, but ended up sitting in the parking lot listening to music for about 20 minutes, too.

I was taking 3 classes today, and I had written the room numbers down earlier in the week. I got to the first class and the instructor was having some problems getting the "student files" onto the computers. I know exactly how he was feeling... he'd tried his best to make arrangements beforehand and was assured it would be no problem by the IT guy, but when it came to doing it, the IT guy wasn't around to do it. Not that all IT guys are like that... I'm just saying I know the feeling.

The class was supposed to be about Accessible Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but the instructor had to rearrange some things, and we started learning how to make Flash accessible. The instructor kept saying the class was 6 hours long, but according to my schedule it was only 2 hours. Then I realized I was in the wrong class. Hah!!! What a dork. Actually... the room had changed since I wrote it down, and I didn't verify that what I had written down was right.

The good thing was I learned a little about Flash. The bad thing was that the class I was supposed to be in was the one class of the whole conference I really wanted to attend!! At the break, I snuck out and didn't go back. I had to kill 30 minutes before my next class, so I went and sat in my car again. Fun.

The next class was about Accessible Javascript. I didn't learn much that I didn't already know.

Then it was lunch. Yay!! I don't follow my diet when I'm in training at a remote location, so I headed over for Souper Salad. I know... that sounds like diet food, but they have wonderful gingerbread and blueberry muffin bread with honey butter. And focacia bread. I didn't stuff myself, but I ate plenty I shouldn't have. I suspect I'll go back there tomorrow or Wednesday.

After lunch was Homepage Reader class where we learned how blind people listen to web pages. It was very interesting. My site is *so* not accessible. Or at least not blind friendly. They could get through it, but they'd probably leave from having to listen to the navigation links every time they visited a page.

I was supposed to go home after that. That class was over at 3:00, and I'd been looking forward to getting out early, but there was a repeat of the Accessible CSS class from 3:00 - 4:30. So I crashed it. BREAKIN' THE LAW!! It was worth it! I love CSS so much. I don't use it for layout on my site or at work, but I want to. It would take quite a bit of work to convert my site, though. A LOT of work. Ugh. One of these days, maybe....

UPDATE: I forgot... after I ate lunch at Souper Salad, I went to the mall and bought 3 pairs of jeans and 3 shirts. All one size smaller than I have been wearing.

I had a nice birthday yesterday. Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes!!

First thing I did yesterday was to weigh, and to my surprise, I was at my lowest weight yet. That was cool, but I figured it was fleeting because, being my birthday and all, my diet was out the window for the day.

I treated myself to Starbucks first thing... Decaf Grande Nonfat with Whip Caramel Machiatto and a Dulce de Leche Cheesecake bar. Yummy!

When I got to work, the three guys on my cubicle row serenaded me with a tentative happy birthday song.

I had a few cards on my desk, too. My friend Norma brought me a card, and it had a beautiful pair of earrings in it. You can kinda see one of them in my webcam pic today. The interesting thing about this is...

I rarely change my earrings. I have a pair of diamond earrings that my mom gave me when I turned 16 or 21 (can't remember exactly). I always leave those in. Not because I don't want to change them, but because I'm real lazy.

The interesting thing was that yesterday morning, I wanted to change my earrings. But when I looked at all my other earrings, nothing struck my fancy, and I left the diamonds in. But then, what do you know... I got cool new earrings for my birthday, so I got to change them anyway!

Then a guy in my section, Jesse, said he wanted to take me to lunch. He invited everyone in my section and a few others that I requested be on the invitation list. We picked up another guy I didn't know on the way, too. Jesse's girlfriend showed up a little later.

I had tortilla soup and rice. Not bad, but not on my low carb diet. Then I had Tres Leches cake. Yummy. There was a candle on the cake, so I got to make a wish. I made it a good one. Same wish I always make that never comes true, though. Still... it's fun.

After everyone pitched in for the bill, they decided they had $3 too much and gave it to me to get lotto tickets. My friend Kelly went to 7-11 to buy them. I didn't win anything, but it was nice to dream about it for a while.

I asked friends, Kelly and Michael, for suggestions on take-out for my birthday dinner. Kelly won with her suggestion... a gyro! So I went to Milto's for a gyro and Windmill Cake. Windmill Cake is more fudge and cream than cake. Pure decadence!

I got a card in the mail from my Aunt Mary with a check. Yay! I sorely needed a check because I've been spending way too much money lately.

I spent the evening in the Ampcast chat room where they sang Happy Birthday in the key of F lead by the incomparable Andy VanDuyne.

So, all in all, it was a nice birthday. An odd thing is... after all that decadent food... I lost another pound. Yay!

Yesterday was the second day of my "Fundamentals of XML" class. Man... I love XML. You get to make your own rules and then you get to apply them and then you get to validate against your own rules and if you break them you get to fix them. Fun!!

The day started off weird, though. I got there and my chair was missing. They had these big leany back soft kind of chairs that were even comfortable while sitting typing at a computer. But the second day, mine was gone. I told the helper guy who was hanging around the classroom first thing. We studied all the chairs and came to the conclusion that I really was out of luck... there was one less chair than there were students. That's when a nice lady told me that a guy had taken my chair and moved it to another spot. Then I found out that one of the people the prior day was sitting on a fold up style metal chair.

So I decided to let it go and get one of the fold up style metal chairs and sit on it. Really... I let it go. No worries... someone had to sit on the fold up style metal chair. But then...

This girl got to class late. She was sharing a computer with the loud obnoxious guy (you know the one... always has a comment or question). He welcomed her and told her we were working on an exercise. Then he said something that made me fume... He said...

"And I got you a chair."

Um... that was my chair. It was painfully obvious it was my chair. It was sitting in front of my computer. "And I got you a chair." Bastage.

I still let it go except for making a mental note to blog about it... life's too short.

At lunch, I did something I haven't done in ages. Shoe shopping! Yay! I got two new pairs of Aerosoles. Those really are the most comfortable shoes ever. And that's what matters the most to me... comfort. You'll never see me in spiked heels (sorry boys ).

After class, I had a little time to kill before I could pick up LilyDawg, so I drove down Lake Austin Blvd to Lake Austin. I passed by the apartments where Kevin and Mary Hannigan used to live. Ah... memories. I miss Kevin and Ryan and Eric from my days as a State Auditor.

I got home at 5:00 which gave me plenty of time to relax before the 7:00 start of Velcro Touch Radio. I watched the rest of Ed TV, ate the last of my Tex Mex Pork Chops, and generally just vegged out.

The radio show and chat were a blast! There was great music and dancing! Here's what you missed:

ME SALSA DANCING

I wish everyday could be like that. Well... except for the part where the guy stole my chair and bragged about it to his computer partner. heh!

I went to Bath and Body Works for a little pampering. I needed to get some Sun-Ripened Raspberry Body Cream. They always have some special that makes me buy way more than I need. Today it was buy 3 get 1 free. So I got two body creams, one body spray and a candle.

I like to try different fragrances even though I usually stick with raspberry. Today I tried something new.. I can't remember the name, but it had something to do with rice. Something and rice flower, maybe. I dunno, but it smelled like Play-Doh. heh!

After that, I needed to go to Eckerds for makeup, but I had to tinkle. I didn't want to go home and disturb Lily just to leave again, so I did a bad thing. I paid for it, too....

I went to Starbucks. Ugh. The sad thing is... the toilet was stopped up, so I didn't get to tinkle. And the bad thing is... I got a caramel machiatto. I mean... it was good and all, but not so good for my diet. I paid for it when I left... I got to my car and when I opened the door, it hit the cup and hot coffee spewed out of the little mouth hole and onto the front of my shirt. A lot of hot coffee. I burned my boobies.

I had to laugh, though, in case people saw it happen.

I still didn't want to disturb Lily, so I went ahead to Eckerds with a coffee stained shirt. It wasn't really that noticeable because of the color and design on the shirt. heh!

Now I'm ripping songs from CDs to put into iTunes. I've got Black Crowes Shake Your Money Maker playing at the moment. I forgot what a great CD that is!

Sunday weigh-in: Pound Zero -3 (that means I lost 3 pounds).

I finished up my tracks for the song I'm recording. Yesterday, I did guitars and bass. Today I did vocals. Vocals are my favorite... everything else is work. Although, bass can be fun sometimes when I get into the groove. I'm hoping my friend Boogaboo will record a guitar solo for it. He wrote the song.

Tonight, I'm listening to Nondescript Radio at Ampcast.com. It's John Ingram's last show. Boo Hoo.

I forgot to do the "Day In The Life" photography project today. Oh well.

That's about all there is to say about today...

First thing this morning, I headed out to run errands. First was the bank where I cashed in $75 worth of loose change I'd been collecting. Then to Walmart for Diet Rite Raspberry and Grape sodas. Then to Starbucks for an Iced Decaf Grande Super Breve Latte. I put Splenda in it to sweeten it. Last night I ordered some vanilla and caramel syrups from suzannesomers.com, so soon I'll be able to sweeten up my lattes with them. Yummy!

Then I went to the store where I bought $100 worth of great food. Just now, I ate some watermelon. Yum!

On the way home from errands, I saw a firetruck with its lights on turn down the street that leads to my street. I got scared for a minute until I saw that it passed my street. I couldn't help but think of LilyDawg and Little Bird in the house alone with a fire.

All was well, and she was real happy to see me when I got home.

My cable modem was out most of the day, so with nothing to keep me in my computer chair, I headed for the music studio corner of my bedroom and started recording a song. Weeeeeee!

For dinner, I made something sooo delicious. Cheeseburger Pie (baked ground sirloin, onion, heavy cream, eggs and cheese). On the side, I had spinach. I love me some spinach!

Now it's time for LilyDawg to start giving me orders. She'll want dinner. Then she'll want to walk. Then she'll want a giant dog biscuit with liver sausage smeared on it. Then she'll want something, and I'll have to figure out what it is. It might be more dinner. It might be another walk. It might be a game of hide and seek. It might be a belly rub. That's the hardest part of the evening... figuring out exactly what she wants. Because it never ends until she gets it.

Today, I started my diet. I didn't start first thing, though. I had a box of belgian chocolates that I bought on sale recently, and I couldn't bring myself to get rid of all of them. So I ate the ones I liked best (the cream and caramel filled ones) and threw the rest away (the solid ones with nuts embedded in them). I'm calling it a good thing because it kinda made me feel icky, so I won't be wanting chocolate anytime soon.

I went to the store to stock up on diet food. I bought way more fruit than I intended, but most of it is frozen, so it'll keep. I also bought some Santa Sweets grape tomatoes. Ever seen those? They're tomatoes, but they're tiny and shaped like grapes. Way cool!

When I got home, I cooked 3 scrambled eggs and cut some Santa Grape Tomatoes in half and tossed them together. Then I put some cheddar cheese on top. I also sliced an eggplant and pan fried it in olive oil and put some provolone cheese on top. That was all yummy.

Tonight I cooked a whole chicken and ate part of it with asparagus and some of the leftover eggplant with provolone cheese. Before I go to bed tonight, I can have some fruit if I want. I probably will.

I was thinking about breakfast tomorrow, and realized I need to eat a veggie with my cereal and nonfat milk. Eeek. I forgot to prepare for that. If I'd thought of it, I would have gotten some celery and nonfat cheese. Or maybe some cauliflower. Oooo... I just remembered! I got a cucumber! That would be good for breakfast, I think.

Anyway... food food food, right? That's what happens when I diet... all I think about is food!

I weighed this morning, but I'm not telling how much poundage I saw. It was less than I thought I'd see, though. We'll mark today as Pound Zero (PZ). I think I'll just weigh once a week. I used to weigh everyday when I was on a diet. It didn't discourage me like other people say, but I think I'd like to try something different. So next Sunday, I'll report in how much I've lost, if anything.

This morning, on one of the boards I frequent, I continued a discussion about the new music distribution system called Weed. It's a thing where people can legally give a music file to someone else. The file will play 3 times, then the person has to pay for it. There's a whole complicated pay system, too. The artist gets a cut, Weed gets a cut, and the seller gets a cut. Then if the purchaser turns around and sells a copy, he gets a cut as well as the artist, Weed and the person who sold him the file. It goes one more generation with the first seller continuing to get a cut on the sale.

Since I give most of my music away for free, I'm not interested in getting it "weedified" and put into the system. But I really don't like the system anyway. To me, it encourages people to sell files to people who want to sell files instead of to listeners, you know?

It also touts itself as the way to share files and respect artists rights. Puhlease... it's not "sharing" files. It's sharing samples of files that have to be bought. The whole filesharing thing started because people could get music for free, not because people had a nagging urge to share music they'd bought.

I'm not saying the whole idea is bad... it's the only distribution system that truly independent artists can get into easily right now. But it just doesn't sit right with me.

The rest of the day, I read up on Suzanne Somer's diet in preparation for starting tomorrow. I also cleaned out my refrigerator of foods I won't be able to eat. I don't mean I ate it all! I threw most of it away.

I think I'm going to like the diet. It's along the same lines as low carb, but I can have some carbs. In fact, I'm encouraged to have carbs! Good carbs, though... the whole grain kind. And I can have fruit! I think I've said before, that my main problem staying on the low carb diet before was breakfast on work days. It's just too much of a pain to cook a low carb breakfast every morning. On this diet I can have some fruit when I get up and then some grape nuts and nonfat milk after I get ready. I can even stop at Starbucks for a decaf nonfat latte on the way to work. Then I have to wait 3 hours, and I can eat a true low carb lunch. That's easy. The diet also encourages eating lots of veggies. I think I'll love it! Thanks, again to Karlyn, 'The Wife' of BrykMantra for getting me started.

Now I'm off to bed to read. I started Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series again. If I finish it in my lifetime, it will be a true accomplishment!

Today I went to work.

When I got off work, I went to Starbucks to ask if they made drinks with heavy cream. I'm planning to start a low carb diet soon, so I'd like to know I can go to Starbucks and get *something* that could satisfy my incessant Starbucks' cravings. The answer was yes. YES! The plan is to get an iced venti half heavy cream half water latte. Then I'll sweeten it with Sweet n Low or Splenda.

I got Suzanne Somers' Fast & Easy diet book today, so I'll be reading up on her version of low carbing (Somersizing). Karlyn, 'The Wife' of BrykMantra, has been so helpful.

LilyDawg ran outside as soon as we got home and started eating grass. I think that means her tummy aches. Poor poochy.

Now I think I'll put a frozen turkey dinner in the oven. After all... I don't to eat it frozen!

Let's work backwards today...

LilyDawg took me for a walk just now, and we saw something sitting up on a wall by the post office. I thought it was a cat, but when I looked closer, I saw it was a possum! I was like, "Hi Possum!!!"

Before that, I added a radio.blog thingy to my site. You can see it over in the sidebar, but if you don't feel like looking right now, I'll post it below. If you click it, it'll open a new window with a Flash playlist of some of my songs. I'm excited about it. The only problem I've noticed is that sometimes it gets stuck between songs. You just have to click on a different song and click back on the song it got stuck on and it'll start playing again.



I filled mine with my songs, but most people have popular music in theirs. I'm not sure if that's legal. Someone would have to be paying ASCAP and BMI licensing fees. So either radio.blog is paying them, or it's up to the individual sites. There's no information at radio.blog about it. I'm steering clear of the legal issues and just using my own songs. Before that, I added a new section to the sidebar for links to some of the radio show chats I frequent at Ampcast.com.

Before that, I was practicing a song I want to record. I tell ya... 'A' Chords are hard! They shouldn't be so hard. I can never get my fingers on the strings in the perfect position, though. I need to stop being such a perfectionist and hit the durn record button. haha

Before that, I collected all the bedding I had scattered throughout my house. Then I figured out what I didn't want anymore and put it in a pile to give to charity. I kept more than I should have, but I can always prune away some more later. I kept 4 sets of queen sized sheets, 2 sets of full sized sheets (for the old futon), two comforters, 4 blankets, and tons of pillow cases. I found a place to store all the sheets and pillow cases, but I don't have a place to store the extra comforter and the blankets. Boo. And now I want to splurge and buy some really luxurious high thread count sheets. If I do that, I pledge to get rid of at least one of the sets of queen sized sheets.

Before that, I slept late. And tomorrow's a holiday, so I can sleep late again. Weeeeeeeeeee!

Today was great! I woke up around 3:30 a.m., and decided to see if the weather man was right about the snow. I expected to see a whole lotta nothin', but when I looked out my window, the sight took my breath away. Snow everywhere! So Lily and I went outside for a walk. The field was beautiful... there was a stream of water running the length of it and snow everywhere else.


I went back to bed, but set my alarm to get up about sunrise. When I got up again, I went outside to play some more and saw one of the girls on my block. She's about 11or 12 years old, I think, and she's never seen snow before. So we made snowmen on my car.

They're pretty sparse, but we don't get a lot of practice.

I went back to bed again, and got up at noon. All the snow was gone!

This afternoon, I filed my taxes (can you say REFUND!). I wrote a letter to my Aunt that I should have written over a month ago. I suck at writing letters!

Then I recorded some radio spots for a couple of Ampcast radio shows. One for Dennyvan's Old Time Radio and one for AndyV's Box of Chocolate Radio which officially starts broadcasting Mondays 7:00-9:00 EST on March 7th. Yay!

This evening, I spent my time at Song Planet listening to Swannie's SwanSpirit radio show. I used to go to radio show chats all the time a few years ago. I even DeeJay'd a few myself. Not live, though... they were pre-recorded. It was fun!

So it was a full day. Thanks to all of you who had Valentine's Day wishes and encouraging words for me today.

I've got quite a few other things I want to do this weekend. I'd like to record a song. I just need to stop procrastinating and do it! 'night all!

The bad news this morning was I forgot to set my alarm last night. The worse news was... I woke up anyway and had to go to work on time.

I went to lunch with one of my coworkers. He drove us over to the east side for some Mexican food. It was great! I had chicken enchiladas with tangy tomatillo sauce. They had the best corn tortillas I've ever tasted. Mmmmmmm!

I wasn't feeling so well after lunch, but I don't think it had to do with the food. I had a dizzy spell, and then my head felt thick. I left a little early and took a nap when I got home. Now I feel like a zombie. Hopefully, I'll feel better tomorrow.

This weekend, I finished watching all the episodes of Cupid I have on tape. So last night, I started watching Titanic. Ooowee! I love that movie.

Lily didn't sleep in the new bed with me again last night. She's not afraid to come in there and wake me up if she wants something, but she won't lay down and go to sleep. At least not while I'm in the bed. She napped there while I was getting ready for work. ha!

I moved my cheap little stereo unit from the old bedroom to the new bedroom last night. It has a remote, so I can load it up with 5 CDs and control it from the bed. Tonight, I figured out how to connect my iPod to it, too. That new bedroom is getting to be awesome!

When I got home from work tonight, I let Lily out in the backyard. She promptly found something really stinky to roll around in. Harrumph! So I had to give her a bath. She's so funny after a bath, though. She shakes and shakes and then runs around like a mad dawg!

After we had dinner (chicken salad for me, dog food for Lily), I surfed over to Ampcast.com and listened to the radio show and chatted with some of the regulars. I'll probably do that more often. Tonight I heard songs from my friends Antnee and boogaboo. I even heard one of the songs I did with Jon Solo, Best Without You.

Now I think I'll head back to my new bedroom and watch TV or listen to music or read a book in my comfy new bed. Yay!

At Starbucks, they've started putting out signs that show a staff person's drink recommendation. The other day, one of the girls recommended an iced soy caramel machiatto. The soy part didn't excite me, but I thought an iced caramel macchiatto with regular milk might be good. So this morning, I had one. It was kinda weird. Since it was cold, there were globs of caramel in the liquid part. It's pretty strange to suck up a glob of caramel through a straw!

I might try it again at another Starbucks. The Starbucks near me isn't very good. Like how I ordered a slice of lemon pound cake, and they gave me regular pound cake. I had to go back inside to get that straightened out.

Then I went home to wait for my new bed to arrive. The Room Store guys brought it about 1:30. Five minutes later they were finished assembling it! Wow, they're fast!!

Lily got really nervous because I closed her in a bedroom while they were here. When they left, she demanded to be fed canned dog food! Then she wanted to go for a walk. After that, she settled down, so it was time to go shopping for bedding and a night stand!!

Walmart had a bedding set including comforter, sheets, pillow cases, bed skirt and pillow shams with gold moons and stars and suns. I got some clippy things that hold the fitted sheet on, too. And they had Raspberry and Grape Diet Rite. Woo-Hoo!

Then I headed over to Bed, Bath and Beyond because I had some coupons. I ended up getting a couple of three drawer organizer things to use as a night stand. The bed is pretty high, and I noticed that night stands are pretty low. What's up with that? I like to be able to see my alarm clock.

Here's a picture. I didn't use the pillow shams. I hate pillow shams!



I'm excited! I hope I sleep good tonight. Lily's not too sure about the whole thing. I think she'll warm up to it, though.

This morning, I noticed two messages on my answering machine. I knew one was the Orkin man from last night, but I didn't realize I had another call. I checked the caller ID and saw the other call had a 210 area code. That's San Antonio. My thought... could it actually be my boyfriend calling me?? But no... it was The Room Store calling to verify my address for the bed delivery tomorrow. He read my address, then told me to call if it was wrong. It was right, but he didn't leave a number for me to call if it was wrong!! He also wanted to confirm that the delivery would be "February 7th which is Sunday." Errr.... February 7th is Saturday! I got another call this evening, though, that said they would be here between noon and 4:00 p.m. so things are good to go!

When I dropped Lily off for day care, the girl/lady/chick/female person asked me if I would like them to take care of Lily during Spring Break which caused me to exclaim, "Oh Thank God!" and hold back tears. You see... I got an email saying they would be booked up with boarding and closed for day care that week. Gak!! A whole week of leaving LilyDawg by herself at home. I'd be a nervous wreck!! I'd probably have to take some time off that week, and I hate to waste my annual leave just to stay home with my pup. Anyway... I'm extremely happy they'll be open.

A big group of us went to Olive Garden at lunch. It was a goodbye luncheon for a guy who is moving to Iraq to work for Brown and Root. What are they doing there? Rebuilding Iraq? I dunno... but he's going. I had the soup, salad and breadsticks with Chocolate Lasagna for dessert. Oooo... luscious!!!

Tonight I'm just going to chill out. Maybe move some furniture around to make it easier for the bed delivery guys. Maybe write a dear john letter. I'll just take it as it comes. For now, I'll sip on my Diet Rite Red Raspberry soda.

After choking on my water first thing this morning, I thought today would be a doozie, but it turned out okay. I was real busy at work with meetings and web site updates. There was one break where the people in my cubicle aisle were talking about other people who got caught having sex in a parking garage a few years back. Can you imagine?

I'm really looking forward to Saturday. I get my new bed! I have sheets and a comforter for it, but once I get it all set up, I might need to go shopping for a bed ruffle or whatever you get to make a bed look nice. I don't have a headboard, either, but I doubt I'll get one of those this weekend. I think I'd like to buy a sleigh bed at some point.

Tonight I was roaming around the iTunes music store. I put two songs in my cart: "A Nurse Who Loved Me" by A Perfect Circle and "Rain and Snow" by The Be Good Tanyas. I really love iTunes.

In case I do a "What I Did Today" post tonight, I wanted to jot this down so I'll remember...

One of the first things I did today was try to drink a glass of water. Half of the first mouthful went down the wrong pipe causing me the cough like crazy, and the other half went down the front of my shirt. I guess I have a drinking problem.

I bought a bed today. Yay! It'll be delivered next Saturday. It's a Simmons Beautyrest. It's made with that techology that if you're sleeping with someone who tosses and turns, it won't bother you. That's good because I think I bother LilyDawg!

I rearranged the room again when I got home, and I think I've got it so I'll be able to see the TV good when I'm in bed. That's really important. ha!

The thing that got me motivated to go get a bed today was that The Room Store is right next door to Chik-Fil-A. I'm extremely food motivated. But when I got there I remember... Closed Sundays. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Tonight I colored my hair. Nothing extreme... I just made it bolder. I tried to take a picture, but I'm not having any luck getting one I'm satisfied with. Sorry.

Poop! I was hoping the Panthers would win the Super Bowl. I was excited when they tied it up. I might like the Patriots better if they got a new logo for their helmets. I hate that patriot head that looks like a comet.

I wanted to watch Survivor All-Stars this season, but TiVo says it's normal time is the same time as Tru Calling. I can't turn my back on Tru... she's so cool. Guess I outta get ready for bed. Sheesh this weekend went by fast...

The sun came out today! Yay!

Last night, I watched another episode of "Cupid." I've got them all on video. There were more episodes of that than I thought. I saw the one where Trevor hooks up an assistant coach of the Blackhawks with a woman who has a heart condition and doesn't have much longer to live. It's a really touching one!

Today I went to the store on a quest for Hansen's Diet Soda. All they had was two six packs of Tangerine Lime, so I snagged 'em. I also discovered that Arizona Diet Green Tea is made with Splenda now. Woo-Hoo! If you're a Splenda fan, look for Hansen's Diet Sodas and Arizona Diet drinks.

For my web project today, I made a Halloween skin featuring Pete Beck's cat Joey. If you'd like to try the skin on for size, it's the last one on my skins page.

I also rearranged my master bedroom to make room for a new bed. I can't decide if I'm going shopping for one tomorrow or not. I have such a hard time with big purchases like that!

Now it's time to get ready for bed and another episode of "Cupid." By the way... if you're a "Cupid" fan, I found some scripts of unaired shows [no longer available].

Goodnight all!

This morning I went to Starbucks, but I didn't get a coffee drink. There were too many people there. I got some swanky orange juice and a toffee bar. I didn't really miss the coffee drink. The toffee bar was decadent enough.

I spent most of the day moving some files to a different directory on the web server and then fixing all the links I broke. Then I checked the server logs to see which of the old URLs people were trying to access. For those pages, I put redirecting pages so they could find what they were looking for. I guess people were getting there from bookmarks. I love that part of my job. It's like tending a garden without getting my hands dirty.

For lunch, I ordered a sliced beef sandwich and spinach casserole. They were out of spinach casserole, so I got fudge pie instead. haha Any excuse!!

On a break, I surfed some blogs. Check out Pete's new camera and the picture he took of Joey the cat!

Now I'm waiting for the Chinese delivery guy to bring me my Shrimp w/Cashew Nuts, Fried Wontons, and Pineapple/Seafood Fried Rice. That should last me most of the weekend.

I'm thinking about rearranging bedroom furniture this weekend. I've been meaning to buy a bed, but I need to move things from one bedroom to the other and figure out the best arrangement. If I get a new bed, I'll probably start sleeping in the other bedroom. That's like moving to a new place in a way. What if I hate it? What if LilyDawg hates it? Ah... life.

This morning I was late for work. All I know to say is that I forgot what time I needed to get up to get to work on time. After two days of training, and two days of weekend before that, my schedule just got... off.

There was a chili cookoff at work today. I didn't participate in any way. I usually avoid "fun" stuff like that. I think the way it worked was that you paid $1.50 and got a sample of each kind of chili. Then you got to vote. I saw the entries. One wasn't chili; it was ice cream with chocolate sauce. I guess they got confused between chili and chilly. They ended up winning the "smoothest" chili award. Alrighty then...

I had an update meeting with management for the projects I'm working on. It went fine, but those meetings always make me nervous for about a week before. I was hoping when it was over, I'd feel 100% better. Nope. I'm still nervous as hell.

I took off work early to go to Whole Foods to buy some Hansen's Diet Soda. Yesterday, I learned they use Splenda, so I want to stock up. But Whole Foods only had two kinds of regular Hansen's: Club Soda and Tonic. Bleh.

Tonight, I made a new Austin skin for my website. I set it as default for the next week. Then I'll set "roses" as default for Valentine's Day. Yeah.. anyway... Goodnight.

Today I went to the Government Technology Conference for training. I wrote this while I was at the conference:

I got here early and found parking on the 6th floor of a garage two blocks away. I parked on the edge of the garage facing the Convention Center. When I got to the Convention Center, I could look out the window and see my car. ha!

I should have brought my camera. I'll try to remember for tomorrow. It's cool to see the new Frost Bank Building from a different angle. It looks exactly the same as other angles, but still... there's something cool about a new perspective. The Austin skyline is really filling out.

The instructor's favorite word is "whatnot," and she likes to interrupt herself. She talks really fast. Halfway through a sentence, she'll stop and start another sentence. Then she'll start the first sentence over. There are always a lot of "ums" and "you knows" and "likes." That usually doesn't bother me, but it seems like it takes her 200 words to say something that someone could say in 50. She knows her stuff, though.

There's a snack bar down the hall from the classroom called "Delica-Texan." Har!

At lunch, I went to Iron Works Barbecue for a sliced beef sandwich to go. I've always wanted to try Iron Works. It's pretty good, but they were stingy with the BBQ sauce. Of course, if I ate it there, I could have had all the BBQ sauce I could stand. I took my sandwich back to the convention center, plopped down on a couch and munched. Just as I finished, I noticed a big sign: "NO OUTSIDE FOOD/BEVERAGE ALLOWED IN THE BUILDING." Oh well. No one kicked me out or anything.

I had hoped at lunchtime, I could go see the vendor exhibits and score some free promo items, but the exhibits don't start until Wednesday. Boo. I still have a purple pen I got from the Sybase exhibit two years ago.

I'm watching Arrested Development. Have you seen that show? hahahaha! LilyDawg is chowing down on some canned dog food. She already had some dry dog food mixed with wet dog food earlier. I guess she's extra hungry today. Like mother, like dogter.

Today I watched a movie, cleaned up around the house, and went through my digicam pics to make more wallpaper. I've got 4 more pages worth. I've got the Austin 360 Bridge on my desktop right now.

I need to get to bed early tonight so I can get up early for a training class tomorrow. It's a two-day class on "Securing and Defending Your Web Applications." I get to take it free because an XML class I signed up for got postponed, and they wanted to make up for the inconvenience. And I still get to take the XML class when they reschedule it! Weeeee!

This morning, I got a lemon bar at Starbucks. Tart yummy goodness!

I was feeling really down again today. It's the first time I've had to stuggle to hold back tears at work. I wish this icky stuff that's going on could get resolved. For the good or for the bad... I just want some resolution. But, of course, I hope it's good.

I walked to the Capitol for eggplant parmesan at lunch. As I was walking down some stairs into the catacombs of the old building, a guy looked up the stairs at me, smiled and said, "Hi" or "How's it going?" I smiled back and returned a friendly greeting. It pulled me out of my slump for a little while and that was nice.

This afternoon, the asst. division manager asked me to see how many responses we've received on a questionnaire we have out on the web right now. So I was counting and when I got to 100, instead of continuing in my head "101, 102, 103," I noted that I'd already gotten to 100 and started over with "1, 2, 3." But by the time I got to 86, I forgot about the first 100. So I told him 86 people responded. D'oh!! Luckily, there was another statistic I gave him that didn't make any sense coming from 86 people, so he noticed and asked me what was up. I figured out what I did, and corrected the figure to 186. I didn't tell him *why* I had the wrong figure the first time. I guess he could always read it here if he's checkin' out my blog, though.

Lately, I've been working with LilyDawg on her "sit and stay" skills. It's like a game. I tell her "sit." She sits. I tell her "down." She gets down on her belly. Then I say "Good Girl," and give her a treat. Then I walk around the house, and she's supposed to stay there until I say in a high pitched voice, "OKAY!" Then she runs as fast as she can to do it all over again.

Tonight, instead of handing her the treat, I started teaching her to catch it. My MandyDawg before her could catch her treats even if I threw them high in the air. I'd like to teach LilyDawg to do that, too. Usually, if I toss a treat to her, it bounces off her nose. Tonight, I'd hold it over her snout, when she'd start to raise up to grab it, I'd drop it. I'd hold it higher and higher, and she started catching it! I can't throw it and have her catch it, yet, but I can drop it in there. That's the first step! Yay!

I forgot to mention in yesterday's "What I Did Today" post that I ordered chinese food for dinner. I got a new menu for the place I order from, and it had a new kind of fried rice: Pineapple and Seafood Fried Rice. Oh My Goodness!! I'm not a big seafood fan, but something told me to get it. It is soooo yummy!!! It has pineapple (duh), shrimp, crab (maybe imitation), and other bits of seafood that I can't identify because I'm not usually a fan. Wow!!

This morning I made it to Starbucks and decided to get caffienated coffee for a change because I was so tired. Both the cashier and the barister asked me, "You don't want it decaf?" They recognize me as a decaf customer. haha I don't think I've really interacted with the barister that much either.

At lunch I went out with my 'bunal buddies. There used to be a group of three who would go, and they called themselves the tribunal. Then they invited someone else and turned it into a quadbunal. Then they invited me and turned it into just 'bunal, so they wouldn't have to change the name when people join or leave.

In the afternoon, I *finally* got to try a Diet Rite flavor besides Cola. I'll say it again... Oh My Goodness!! White Grape! Yummy!! My friend John traded me that one for a Cola. I'm going on a quest this weekend to find a place that sells them.

Tonight when LilyDawg took me for a walk, I found a wallet on the ground. It was sitting next to a truck parked in the cul de sac. I thought I remembered seeing the owner of that truck walk into a certain house one time, so I knocked on the door. I had looked at the driver license, so I knew who to ask for. Sure enough... the guy was there. It felt good to help!

This morning, I set my alarm 30 minutes early so I could get to work early and have some time to think before the manager's meeting at 8:30. As I got to the edge of downtown and right around the corner from Starbucks where I was headed, I looked at the clock. It was 8:20!! I had 10 minutes to get to work for the meeting, and it was a complete shock to me that I was running that late!! Thanks goodness I noticed before I stopped at Starbucks. Then I realized there was a lot of traffic. I didn't really think about it... I was chillin... listening to some great tunes by Norah Jones and Leona Naess. Long story short: I didn't get to go to Starbucks and I was *almost* late for my meeting. Boo.

Then work happened.

Then I came home. I noticed the big black dog next door was roaming the streets. I don't know where his owner is. So I rounded him up and put him in his yard. Lily wanted to go out back, so we went out and I looked at him through the fence. He was just sitting on the stoop outside the backdoor looking bored as hell. I'd be bored as hell, too, if I was stuck in a backyard all by myself. So I got him a rawhide bone. I've always wanted to give him a treat, but I've been kind of afraid. What if he's allergic, and I kill him? What if he chokes on rawhide? I had a dog that did that once. But he looked soooo bored!!

I threw the rawhide bone over the fence and he lunged for it and took off to a place farther back in the yard. I followed along the fenceline and looked through. He was so happy chewing on that rawhide!! I about cried!

Of course, when Lily and I went walking later, he was out again. I rounded him up and put him in his yard. That's about all I can do.

Tonight I watched the rest of last night's American Idol and part of tonights. Stinkers galore!! hahahaha! I am so ashamed of my of Houston!! I was born and raised there.

I also made another skin for my website. It's peppers!! Go pick a skin.

Holidays rock! I had today off for MLK/Confederate Heroes Day. Isn't that an odd combination?

I continued my low carb living with foods that included eggs, bacon, chicken, steak, macadamia nuts and salad with ranch dressing. I have a feeling I might cheat tomorrow at breakfast, but we'll see.

I spent most of the day working on my website. I set it up so you can choose different stylesheets if you'd like. I only have two stylesheets available right now... the one with LilyDawg in the banner and another one I made in honor of Valentines Day. You can switch back and forth with these links:


The default and the azflower one are the same. The default will change at my whim, though. I'll set up a more permanent stylesheet switcher in the sidebar soon. Whew... that was a lot of work!

I also rounded up my neighbor's big black dog several times. He made another hole in the fence and has been getting out all day. He used to be scared of me, but now I think he loves me. I got to give him hugs and kisses.

This evening when I walked Lily, there were two people in the field. They looked like they were throwing things. Light flashed off of an object in one of their hands. I thought it might be a knife. They were way across the field, but it looked like one of them threw something in our direction. Then one of them yelled something. I got scared, so Lily and I ran all the way home. It was dark, so I can't be sure they had a knife or whatever. I just wanted to be safe.

I didn't have the settings right on TiVo, and it tried to record American Idol from a high numbered channel that I don't get. Maybe it's the high definition FOX channel or something. All I know is I only saw the end of the show. I'm glad there's more to come. Yay! It's American Idol time again!! Boo Hoo... back to work tomorrow. But it's a short week.

Last night I went to the store late. There were weird people there. I think they were anarchists. I'll try to stick with store visits during the day from now on. I got what I needed for the weekend, though.

This morning, I fixed a great breakfast of bacon and fried eggs. Meal #1 in my return to low carb living. I fried the eggs in butter and garlic salt. I broke the yolk... I don't like that runny stuff.

For late lunch (and several meals to come), I cooked a whole chicken on the chicken sitter. I filled it with apple cider, lime, and some McCormick seasoning with lemon, basil and thyme. It turned out yummy again.

Other than cooking, I watched movies and went for walks with LilyDawg. It's COLD out there! I'm sure it's colder elsewhere, but dang... it's COLD out there!

I finished the laundry that I started yesterday. All I needed to do was reboot the dryer to work out the wrinkles and then fold and hang. I used to let laundry go for weeks. Or I'd just do one load of underwear and socks a week to keep me going. Now I do laundry every week and am much happier for it.

Another thing I did was forget to watch the Colts play. Phooey! But I would have been disappointed anyway... I wanted the Colts to win.

The other thing I did was pee a lot. I drank at least 80 ounces of water today!

I have a VCR in my bedroom, so I've been watching videos as I go to sleep at night. It's easier to focus on than reading, and I need easy right now. Last week, I watched "The Matrix." It was odd to see "The Matrix" and "Return of the King" in the same week. It made me distrust Elrond a bit. Last night I started watching old episodes of "Cupid." I really love that show.

I also went to Culvers to get a cheeseburger, fries and a sundae. The last three times I've been to Culvers, they've gotten my order wrong. The first time, I ordered a cheeseburger with mayo and lettuce only. I got one with mayo and mustard only. The second time, they added a tomato. That was okay because I just took it off, and it didn't cost me more. Today they gave me an extra order of fries. Not for free, though. I don't have a good memory for what things cost, so I didn't realize I was paying for something extra. *sigh* Still... the food was delicious. They always get the ice cream treat right. *knocks on wood*

I also watched some of "The Kids Are Alright." Takes me back to high school or right after. Fun!

I also worked on a big project I started a few weeks ago... ripping my CDs to MP3 to fill my iTunes database. I don't just rip all the songs and move on, though. I listen to see which songs I really want. iTunes doesn't put the artist name in the filename like I'd like, and it automatically stores the songs in its own directory structure. So I rename all the songs and store them how I like them to be stored. It's a pain, but it keeps things consistent. A couple of the CDs I ripped today were Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers "Honky Tonk Union," and Foo Fighters "The Colour and the Shape."

Today I wasn't feeling so great. Partially because of the constant rain we're having. Partially because of the same crap that's been making me feel uneasy over the last month. But I muddled through work.

I helped my buddy John with some javascript on a survey form he's doing. I also moved some files from one place on the web server to another. We're trying to shorten our URLs. I think that's another job that most people would hate, but I love it. I love moving the files, searching for and updating files that link to them, and then adding redirecting pages where the files used to be. It would be easier if I had some good software at work like Dreamweaver. And if the local files were set up the same as the server files. But nope. We're remedying the out of sync local file/server file problem over time, though.

For lunch, I had a sliced brisket sandwich, potato chips and fried okra with ranch dressing. Mmmm... ranch dressing.

Tonight I watched The Matrix Reloaded. I guess I should write a movie post about that.

I walked LilyDawg a while ago. There's a creek in the field from all the rain. It's really lovely. It would be cool to take a chair down to the field and just watch the water flow. I would never do it, but that's what I thought when I was over there. The lights from the building adjacent to the field reflect off the water, so it's easy to see it flowing at night. I also thought it would be cool to have a little paper boat and float it from one end of the field creek to the other. But really... that would be littering.

Goodnight. I hope my sleep is peaceful tonight.

brykMantra said he wished people would do more "What I Did Today" type posts, so I'll do one for today. No promises that it'll be a regular thing, but hey... I aim to please for the short run!

Right now, I'm listening to Lori McKenna's "Don't Tell Her." I am so in awe of Lori McKenna. I wish I could sit in her kitchen with her and listen while she strums her guitar and sings.

This morning it took me quite a while to get to work because of the rain. No accidents or stalled cars or anything... just light rain. When I got to work, I found out my supervisor was home sick and appointed me in charge. So I got to do our section status report for the week. That's where all the people in our section send me a status report, and then I put everything together and send it to management. I love doing the status report. It's one of those things that probably most people would hate doing, but it's sort of mindless, and I get to find out what everyone else is doing.

At lunch, there was a frito pie and coke float sale to raise money to cover the deficit from our Christmas party. I got a frito pie, but it was pretty small and I'm a piggasaurus, so I wanted another one. I stood there and ate it, then got back in line for another. The chili was great! It had a sweet flavor to it. My friend Brian made it. I hope it's not a secret family recipe or anything because I want it!

Tonight, I played hide and seek with LilyDawg. That's where I have her lay down and stay, and then I go hide. Then I say "Okay!" and she comes running looking for me. She didn't find me. hee hee I didn't stay hidden for too long because that would probably freak her out.

I got an email from a guy named Billy who has been to some of the concerts I went to back in the 80's. He had an identical experience to mine regarding the Texxas Jam in 1983. Styx played last. Sammy Hagar was on just before Styx. Sammy Hagar was so awesome that when Styx started with their Mr. Roboto stuff, it was a big let down. So my friends and I took off a short while into their set. Billy said he and his friends did the same exact thing!

Now I'm listening to "Goodnight Elizabeth" by the Counting Crows. Ahhhhh... goodnight folks.

I went to an XML seminar this morning. I saw a lady with really short gray hair except for a long braid that hung down to the middle of her back. I don't make a judgement about whether she should have that brain. I don't look at it and think, "That's stupid." I don't figure out some psychological problem she has that makes her feel like she needs it. But, by God, I wanted to cut that thing right off of her head. Like when Monk sees a crooked picture and can't focus on anything else until he reaches up and straightens it, I couldn't stop thinking about taking a pair of scissors and snipping that braid right off at the root.

After the seminar, I headed for Texadelphia for a cheese steak sandwich, chips and salsa. I got mushrooms, extra cheese, mayo and ranch dressing on my cheesesteak. They played Yes' "Starship Trooper" on the radio. What a great song! There were pictures on the wall of Stevie Ray Vaughan playing guitar and Ricky Williams breaking the NCAA rushing record. You know... Austin Pride stuff.

After Texadelphia, I went in search of money and fuel. Things that make the world go round, I guess. At the gas station, I looked over at the convenience store part of it and thought about how I can't remember the last time I've been in one. I always pay at the pump. That pay at the pump thing had to hurt the convenience store sales, eh?

When my gas tank and pocketbook were full, I headed for the movie theater. It was 12:30 and (I thought) there was a 1:00 p.m. showing of Return of the King. I got there at 12:40 and found a 12:30 showing and a 2:00 p.m. showing. Augh! I hate walking into a movie late! I like to make sure I get a good seat, and I like to see all the previews. But I didn't want to wait until 2:00, so I rushed in. Luckily, it wasn't crowded, and I was able to find a good seat away from people. They were showing a preview for that Ashton Kutcher movie that looks like it might be really good, but might be really bad. Then Return of the King started!!

The most surprising and possibly the most touching part of the movie? Billy Boyd singing. What a great surprise. I'd heard he was a musician, but I'd never heard him sing. A brilliant scene, not just because I like Billy Boyd, but it was put together well with Pippin singing a sad song and Faramir going to battle. Here are the lyrics:

Home is behind
The world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow
To the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight

Mist and shadow
Cloud and shape
Hope shall fail
All shall fade

Yay! for today!