Time is fleeting today more than usual. I got to work, got ready for a meeting, met with my boss to prep for the meeting from 10-10:30, attended the meeting from 10:30 to almost 12:30, then went to my desk, ordered pizza and held a working lunch until almost 2:00 during which my “crew” of volunteers (including my boss and her boss and several fantastic co-workers who were willing to help) and I stuffed 500 envelopes and labeled 330 of those for a mailing, then it was time for our World Cup Ice Cream Bar… so that was about 20 minutes of “relaxing”, then I had to get back to my desk and check the email that I hadn’t been able to check since 9:30 am.

As a result of checking the email, I had additional things to do, phone calls to make and projects to start/complete. I looked up after typing and writing and filing and just getting through stuff and it was 4:38. I knew then I would not be leaving at 5. I found time at 5:00 to put together some charts for a meeting I’m having with my boss tomorrow morning at 10am to prepare for a larger committee meeting in coming weeks. I popped into her office to give her the charts to review before tomorrow and we chatted for a bit and both went, “Shit - tomorrow is Thursday already.” But the charts should be helpful and a lot of stuff got done today.

Then I caught the 6:20 train home, got back to the train station at 7pm and went to Harmon’s to get some clear nail polish, some black nail polish, and some anti-perspirant/deodorant. I also ended up with a new hair-clip and some flip-flops… but I still didn’t break $30 total. I got home at 7:30 and had a bowl of cereal (the All-Bran with yogurt clusters) and now I’m sitting here trying to decompress.

Tomorrow is going to be busy but not stressful (today wasn’t stressful either - it just FLEW by because of everything going on) and I should be able to collect my thoughts a little better. I have an appointment with the doctor after work, and then Friday night I am going into Manhattan after work since I am dog-sitting again this weekend, through Monday morning… I’ll go to work on Monday straight from NYC. Like a “real” commuter
I have to figure out what I’m doing with the car… is someone going to drop me off? Or can I leave the car and let them pick it up later? I don’t think I can leave it parked in the station parking lot all weekend. Ugh. I should call NJ Transit and see what their policy is on commuter parking. I’m sure that some people have overnight shifts or stuff like that.. but an entire weekend? Questionable.

I’m still hungry… and I don’t feel like cooking anything or going anywhere, so I’ll have to see what I can find downstairs that doesn’t require much preparation. Or, um, any preparation.

However, I got two new Netflix in the mail today, so I can just lose myself in the escapism of film and end the day in this fashion. Yeah. Movies are good.

I bought myself four tasty muffins yesterday.
Four.

I had one for breakfast this morning.
One.

I looked forward to having one tomorrow. And one Thursday, and Friday.
One.

I got home tonight to find none left.
None.

My family members ate them all.
Sigh.

And blamed me for not leaving a note explicitly stating that the muffins shouldn’t be devoured. In all other cases, they ask, “who does this cake/pizza/mango/etc. belong to?” But not this time.

So no muffins left for me. This really put me in a crappy mood after a long day and driving in a car with no air conditioning - even after seeing a movie with Theresa and having a fun time.

Sigh. Maybe I’m just tired and cranky.

I stopped at Shop-Rite after work and got myself two of the yummy pistachio muffins they bake in their “bake shoppe” and I will have one for breakfast tomorrow. Mmm. I can’t wait to wake up.

I spent tonight food shopping, making pasta for dinner (well, boiling pasta - I didn’t actually MAKE it - “it” being orecchiette, to be precise), watching part of “Sin City” until I realized that I wasn’t in a state to watch that without having nightmares, writing a letter of personal reference to a District Attorney’s office for my friend who’s going to be an ADA, and now I look up at the clock and it’s past 10. I guess it makes sense since I didn’t get home until after 7… so it’s only been three hours. That time just sort of slipped through my fingers.

Anyway, I meant to make some additional changes to my new site template and do all kinds of other good things, but I can tell you now that it’s just not happening tonight. I’m too gosh-darn tired. I’m going to slip this letter into the envelope and put it in my purse so I can mail it in the morning after I stop at the bank (the post office in town is right across the street from my bank.) If time is an issue, I can drop it off at the post office in Hoboken since I pass it as I walk to work from the train.

I need to stop at the bank regardless. I spent the last $30 in my wallet on gas for the car, and that barely got me half a tank. It’s sick. Regular gas was $2.97 a gallon at the “cheap” station. I have to put premium in this car, but I cheated, so it was $3.14 for “plus” grade.

There’s actually a website for NJ called NewJerseyGasPrices.com. I’m sure there are comparable sites for other states, but they rely on drivers around the states to login and list the current gas prices at their local stations so people don’t have to drive around and waste gas looking for the best price on gas. They actually have a little tool called “GasBuddy” which you can include on your website. For shits and giggles, I’m including it on the right side here… I’ll probably take it down in a week when it depresses me too damn much.

Here’s a silly work observation:

Today, I attended a big meeting at which there were some fairly high-ranking folk in attendance, as well as lots of assistants, etc. I noticed that the group was mostly female (yay! Women as a majority in corporate America??). There were about seven men there, but of those seven, three are openly gay (yay for openness!).

All of the straight men were wearing yellow polo shirts. Post-It® Note yellow polo shirts. Such a horrible color for clothing. Truly. It was strikingly odd since everyone else was wearing black or a print or purple or red or other such “power” colors. The yellow was completely incongruous and, well, it looked wrong. My esthetic sensibilities were quite offended. But I don’t have to work directly with any of the yellow offenders, so I should consider myself lucky.

And now, I am going to get to sleep. I slept poorly again last night and didn’t have time to properly style my hair this morning, and ended up applying minimal eye makeup while I was on the train (I’m getting quite adept at applying eyeliner pencil and mascara on the train - it doesn’t move all that much, but it can still be a challenge with the starting and stopping). I want to at least be able to dry my hair tomorrow since I will be wearing a skirt again and will want to look somewhat polished… since I didn’t get to do laundry tonight. But I got the food shopping out of the way, so I can do laundry tomorrow.

It all works out so nicely.

I have spent the better part of the weekend in front of the computer working on both the freelance design AND my own personal redesign. Here’s a sneak peek at what the new look of researchgirl.com is going to be. At long last, it will be a global CSS… for consistency.

I even created a little Flash button to rotate the different t-shirts available in my spreadshirt.com store. I don’t think I’ll actually make any solid revenue off of them, but I like them and want to share. I’m a little egotistical like that.

SO… Italy won the World Cup! I was watching and it was pretty wacky. The French captain was thrown out of the game for head-butting an Italian player in the chest. They were having some verbal back-and-forth and he finally just ran around in front of him and butted him in the sternum with his big shaved head. It was nasty. The winner was decided through penalty kicks since even after both overtime sequences, they were still tied 1-1.

I was happy for Italy. They were so exuberant and clearly overjoyed to win… they were dancing on the field and jumping around like little kids. It was absolutely uncontrived and guileless; they were just HAPPY. With good reason.

My brother, his girlfriend and I went out for Indian food afterwards and on the way to the restaurant, we saw about 10 cars driving around with HUGE Italian flags waving off of the roofs, out of the windows, or mounted in the tailgates of trucks. In downtown Montclair, there were some teenagers standing on the corner waving the Italian flag at cars as they drove by, so we gave the kids a wave and a thumbs-up… there was some nice good-will in the air… in heavily Italian-populated northern New Jersey
I am still full of delicious palak paneer and chick peas and other stuff. I stuck with the vegetarian offerings for some reason.

Now it’s 8:30 and I really feel like I’ve done nothing this weekend. I’m going to clean my room for a bit and do some laundry since I don’t think I’ll have a thing to wear to work otherwise. Wait - I have some skirts. I can put off the laundry for another day or two. Skirts are good like that.

A cup of tea would be nice. I’m going to go brew one up and do some crossword puzzles - NOT on the computer.

I’m having trouble with my redesign… I just can’t get the style sheet to do what I want it to do. I will have to ask for help from the techies in my house since I am just getting beyond frustrated and can’t see what I’m doing wrong. It’s probably something really simple and stupid; I might have two elements battling each other and be unaware that it’s even going on. Garhgg.

OK. I’m going to read my O’Reilly CSS Pocket Reference and see if re-reading the rules will spark some clarity in my mind.

I didn’t do much today other than computer stuff. I helped my mom do some cooking, and I napped… because I couldn’t fall asleep last night until 3:30 and then awoke at 6:30, having a strange auditory hallucination (or perhaps a waking dream) that a family member was knocking on my door. I actually got up out of bed to open my door and see what the hell they wanted. There was no one there, so I went back to sleep and then heard something again at 8ish… and also got up to check the door since I could’ve sworn I saw shadows of feet under my door. But no… nothing there either. It was just really strange and I’m sure it had to do with lack of sleep… or restless sleep.

I want to get some good sleep tonight so I can think clearly and get some stuff done tomorrow. It’s just annoying.

I’m liking this spreadshirt.com thing. Here’s another shirt I “designed” today… I created my own image since I really like this font:

The quote is from George Bernard Shaw and it goes, “If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.” It’s a little cheeky. I like it.

Here’s a little look into how my mind works, by the way. On the train home…

Well, let me digress and vent about that first. I left work at 5:20, allowing myself ample time to get to the train station for the 5:44 train and still buy a bottle of water. So, I look at the table which announces the track numbers for the trains and my train is listed as being on track 12. I start getting on the train and the conductor asked me where I was heading. I named my stop and he told me that the train was not going there and that the train across the platform was. I knew for a fact that the train across the platform was NOT a train from my line and that it was going to New York state. So, I found another member of the NJ Transit squad on the platform and asked him which train was going to my stop. Several other people heard me asking and seconded my request. He said he didn’t know and that I should go ask the station master.

There was a comically audible groan from the commuters at large and we all trudged (with a sense of determination, urgency and annoyance) back to track 13. It was now 5:54 and we were only boarding the train. By the time everyone was on board and they’d made enough announcements to make sure that it was clear which train we were on, it was 5:58 and the train got moving. We had to make extra stops along the way to accommodate those people who missed their connections because of the delay, so I got home at the same time I would have had I taken the 6:17 train. The end.

…to pick up where I left off… on the train home, I was listening to my iPod and the last song I listened to while sitting there was Queen’s “Somebody to Love.” I remembered that the song is performed in the movie, “Ella Enchanted” starring Anne Hathaway and that she herself sings it - very well, I might add. Then I started remembering the whole story and plot of the movie (based on an award-winning young adult/childrens’ book) and decided that it was something I would enjoy having for the times I’m feeling sort of cruddy and needing escapism. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that this would be a feel-good film to own.

In a nutshell, it’s about a young woman in a fairy tale kingdom who is granted a special gift by a fairy godmother when she’s an infant. This fairy godmother is known for selecting less-than-great gifts for children - and for liking the drink a wee bit too much. She bestows a gift upon infant Ella: the gift of obedience. From that day forward, Ella will have to do anything anyone commands her to do. Despite this, she still manages to grow up having a mind of her own and a sense of social justice, etc. Then there are silly exploits, enchanted talking books, an elf who wants to be a lawyer, a prince named Charmand -called Char for short-(ha-ha), the search for the fairy godmother, evil stepsisters, etc. It’s not a serious film, but as far as “family films” go, it’s a good one and it’s got some good morals.

So I got off the train, walked to the car and drove to Target where I purchased a copy of “Ella Enchanted” on DVD ($14.99 - full screen only, BOO!) and a pack of gum.

Now I’m going to embark upon some freelance web design work that just came my way yesterday. I can start by putting together the CSS design and perhaps a Flash graphic since that’s something the client has requested. I have to give myself a quick refresher course in Flash - that’s tonight’s fun.

“Monsters, Inc.” is on the Disney Channel, so I’ve got that on as background noise. I’m noticing that they are running it without commercials. I don’t know if this is because the Disney Channel used to be/still is considered a premium channel, or if this is something they do during movies to be considerate to parents and children. They have commercials otherwise…

Ok. Check out the other t-shirts in the shop. I’m kind of proud of them.

I’m so exhausted. It’s not even 9:00 yet… but I guess it’s OK. I can get into bed and read for a while. Then I want to be up early to go to the bank and stuff before work.

Tomorrow night, I’d like to see “Pirates of the Caribbean II” - but I might be way too tired. Perhaps I’ll live dangerously and see it by myself as a matinee on Saturday… get another thing I’ve never done before off my list (since I’ve already crossed off riding a camel and having a tooth drilled without Novocaine.)

However, I did get a lot of stuff done today. During lunch, I made an appointment with a new orthopedist (much closer to home) for another look at my wrist, took care of paying some bills, called Merrill Lynch and arranged to get an IRS letter of determination mailed to me so I can FINALLY rollover my old 401(k) to my new one.

And now I am going to do a crossword puzzle or two and read and then sleep. Sleep. Lovely sleep.

Dude. This morning was crazy. It was raining in a moderate fashion when I left for the train this morning, and it was fine the whole train ride. I got to Hoboken and walked out onto the platform and got sprinkled by a leaky roof over the track where my train was.

I had my umbrella at the ready when I got out onto the street and that’s when the rain started to come down in sheets and buckets and other metaphors. For a few moments, I was keeping kind of dry… then the rain got even stronger and within 30 seconds, my shoes were soaked through, my socks were soaked through, and my pants were drenched and sticking to my legs. Thanks to capillary action, the water moved up as high as my thighs, so I was totally and uncomfortably wet when I got inside. Better yet, with every step I took, water squished out from my leather shoes… nice.

I wasn’t annoyed… I was just smiling because there was absolutely nothing I could do about it… and because it was my own folly for deciding this morning that I would wear shoes instead of wearing flip-flops and changing when I got to work. Silly eva.

When I got to my desk, I found a pair of promotional flip-flops (about 4 sizes too large) and put those on while I let my shoes and socks dry a little - they were stuffed with paper towels and hanging over the edge of my garbage can to speed up the process as much as possible.

My shoes and socks were still damp when my 2:30 meeting rolled around, so I wrapped my feet in paper towels, then put socks on over the the paper towels, shoved a few more into the toes of my shoes and then put my shoes on. At least they were snug. It was pretty comical.

It seems that this weather - especially with the thunder and lightning and barometric craziness - has greatly increased the pain in my bad wrist. So… tomorrow… I am MAKING time at work to call and find another orthopedist closer to me and make an appointment. I am MAKING time to call the health insurance company about a claim I filed and haven’t heard anything about. I am MAKING time to call and get some more information on this school loan thing. That time will probably be my lunch hour, but that’s OK. I will still stop and eat and read… I’ll spend half an hour on the phone, and half an hour relaxing. It’s all about balance, after all.

I created a few new t-shirts on spreadshirt.com where I’ve created an actual store. It’s got a silly name for now… we’ll see if I come up with something better. But I designed this shirt tonight.

Yes, it says, “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses”. I have others, too, but no more with dating advice from the 1950’s. There is one with a quote from Alfred Hitchcock, though (”self-plagiarism is style.”) I am working on getting some more fun quotations that will work well on shirts.

Right now, though, I am going to ice my wrist. I bought a new wrist brace since the Velcro on my previous one was worn away from repeated wearings and laundering. This is brace #4. If I need surgery, I just want it already! However, perhaps it will be better to wait until the fall/winter months when I might be moved into a new place and not have to worry about wearing a cast in the humid nasty summer weather.

My friend wants me to find out if massage is contraindicated for this condition because if it isn’t, she’d like to try massaging it. Her husband might want to try cranio-sacral therapy on it. I’m considering acupuncture. It’s just such an annoyance and a pain and I’m willing to have surgery… but I want to be sure it’s being done for the right reasons and on the right part of my arm. Hence the visits to various doctors and now the search for alternative treatment methods.

What to do, what to do?? I don’t rightly know.
But I will figure something out tomorrow.

My family went out to see the fireworks. I don’t feel like sitting out in the humid NJ night and getting chewed on by mosquitos.

So I’m watching “The Music Man” and just painted my nails a dark metallic red. It’s not as garish as it sounds since my nails are still relatively short. If my digital camera wasn’t currently charging, I’d take a photo as proof.

Oh, well.

Italy beat Germany in the World Cup semifinals today. This means I don’t get any money out of the office pool. Boo. But that’s OK. I sort of secretly didn’t want Germany to win anyway - home court advantage and all that… plus a subtle bit of anti-Germanness stemming from being Polish.

I spent a little time scanning things today and Photoshopping in the hopes of creating a new look for the site as a whole. Then I can work in a suitable CSS and make the transfer over to a uniform look with nav bars and stuff. Maybe I’ll even submit it for W3C compatibility and validation. That would be kind of geekily sexy. Or not. I don’t know.

OK. I’m gonna go ahead and read my history book. This week is going to be so short, it’ll be the weekend again before I know it and I can work on CSS then. I can actually bring a notebook to work (along with my O’Reilly pocket reference guide to CSS) and see what I can come up with. I know that it’s sort of counter-intuitive to jot down code stuff, but I might find some shortcuts or different methods/workarounds for effects that I want to achieve. I might also find some cool Javascript or DHTML to make pretty slideout menus or other treats like that.

Yeah. This will be next weekend’s project since I’m not doing anything else. The following weekend is dog-sitting. But this coming weekend will be upon me quickly and I can devote it to computer time. Perhaps it will just be a way to procrastinate and put off cleaning my room.

Marion the Librarian… I feel ya, girl. You = my future self. Except I can’t sing like Shirley Jones, and I have decidedly better fashion sense… esp. if I lose the extra pounds.

“Oh-ho, the Wells Fargo wagon is’a comin’ down the street!!!”
This movie rocks.

My brother has Vonage as his phone service, so I used his phone to call the UK this morning since I can’t place international phone calls on my current cell phone plan… my three-hour call to the UK this morning (to chat with my friend Michelle) was only $7.08. I gave my brother a $10 bill and told him to, “Keep the change, kid.”

It was wonderful to catch up with Michelle in the UK. It’s always nice to realize (again) that your friendship can basically pick up where it left off - whether it was 2 weeks or 6 months ago - and that there’s no penalty for having been too depressed or poor or self-pitying to call. Yay, friendship!

Right now, Amanda is playing Katamari Damacy on my PS2 and is trying to build the moon… I’ve taken to calling her “Kali, the Destroyer” since she’s rolling over office buildings, small islands, oil tankers, and even giant octopi. Yes, it’s a fun game.

I also just checked my Stumbleupon homepage and saw that I had a new review. Users review other users basically to praise their taste in “Stumbles” (websites) and other such fun ego-petting. I received a comment from a gentleman in Ireland who stated, “I think i’ve got a bit of a brain crush on her.” That’s OK flattery… I can accept a brain crush graciously. According to UrbanDictionary.com, a brain crush is “wanting someone purely for their mind - has nothing to do with sexual attraction.”

Hey. That’s fine by me. I’m not currently comfortable with being a sexual being, so do enjoy my mind. It’s my best feature! I’m still entertaining the idea of creating a “Why You Should Pick Me” brochure as a humorous self-marketing device and experiment, complete with bulleted lists of features and testimonials from my friends and associates. I could use my design and writing skills to create it in Adobe InDesign and then make it a downloadable PDF. I was also thinking of creating a blank template that other ladies can download - complete with a space for a passport-sized photo and lists with boxes to check off to indicate turn-ons, turn-offs and mad skills you may possess, along with “make-your-own lists” for those of us who have additional things to offer.

I think the testimonials would be highly entertaining. Very much so.

Time to eat some lunch.