Domestic Geek

Marcus had the web server down for upgrades for most of the weekend and I had all of this stuff I kept thinking I wish I could post. Now that the server is back, I can't remember a single one of those things. *sigh*

I saw a cool video on VH1 Classic yesterday. It was DMC's (featuring Sarah McLachlan) "Just Like Me." Sarah sings "Cats in the Cradle" behind DMC rapping about being adopted. I need to get that song. There is a weird remix of it on iTunes, but I'll try to find the version they had on the tv. I wonder if it will be on iTunes eventually.

I had lunch with my friend from Platt yesterday at Panera. I IM with her at work occasionally, but it was good to see her in person. I really cut myself off from all of my friends. I decided I needed to start being more social.

Now that I can't really bitch about how much I hate my job, I don't have a heck of a lot to post anymore. I'm slowly trying to rebuild the shambles that all of that depression and self-loathing I had back at the end of last year created in my life. I'm eating better, getting more sleep, generally taking better care of myself. I can't hardly eat fast food anymore. We went to A&W for dinner last night and the chili cheese fries and root beer float actually made me feel kind of ill. I don't drink pop hardly anymore at all.

I decided that I have to make my dream of doing freelance design work a reality. I need more income coming in NOW. I also don't know if I'm going to stay at my current job for the long term because if I don't get a substantial pay increase at my six-month review, I can't continue to work there. I knew I was going to have to take entry-level pay to start, but I'm worth a whole lot more than that. This place also has no benefits package whatsoever and the drive SUCKS (even with carpooling). We'll see.

Well, guess I need to go. Marcus is still doing web server stuff and I need to post this before I lose it.

Sorry I haven't posted much in the last couple of weeks. I have had a lot going on. For starters, I did my taxes a couple of weekends ago. I would've done them sooner, but the losers at the old pizza place didn't send my W2 right away. I called to inquire about it and was lied to about it being sent already. Funny...when I got it , the postmark was the day AFTER I called. I'm so glad to be away from that toxic environment. It ends up I have to pay about $550 for Federal! All because I didn't go to school this year and because my old owner screwed up my paychecks too many times. I knew I was going to have to pay this year, just not that much! ARGH! I guess I'm going to have to start selling stuff on eBay.

Marcus had me make the following graphic for a little stunt that he captured on his phone while he and some coworkers were on lunch break at work. You should head over to his site and watch the little video he made. It's a little weird because he was on a swing set at the time. I laughed so hard, I almost peed. He wanted to put this design on a t-shirt for one of the guys in the video. Since my Epson printer was broken (clogged nozzles) and my HP CP1700 needs printheads and ink (really expensive), Marcus bought me a new Epson Stylus Photo R340. I agonized at CompUsa as to which printer to get. I was torn between three different models. I needed a photo printer so I can get cracking on my scrapbooking again. I hope I made the right choice.


I went to the Denver Media Group meeting this month last Wednesday (2/15). It was about Illustrator CS2. I went with two of my coworkers. I got to see a couple of old teachers from Platt and my old coworker/art director from the screenprinters. I had a really good time. I am finally feeling like a professional. I knew what the presenter was talking about, I participated in discussions, I asked intelligent questions...it felt so good! The door prize was a copy of Adobe CS2. One of my coworkers won it. I was so danged jealous! The next meeting is in April. I hope the topic is a good one.

My boss hired Marcus to install an Xserve at my place of employment. We spent last Saturday doing that. It's a little overkill for the size of our office now, but my boss has big dreams for his company and is trying to lay the groundwork now. I've become the tech support person in our office. I'm actually putting some of my tech knowledge to work. My CollegeAmerica degree was still a waste of money, but at least I learned a little there. This will be a big plus when it comes time for my six-month review.

I'm really wanting to get my freelance business going. I'm not going to let myself get too comfortable in a job again. I also need more money coming in and getting a part-time retail job is just not sitting right with me. I'd make more money freelancing, have more scheduling freedom and I'm developing more confidence with my design skills, so I should be able to do this now. I need a new computer, in for my HP and new software, so I need more income. I didn't realize how much of a dog my poor old dual 450MHz G4 was until I started working on a 2GHz iMac G5 at work. LOL I also didn't realize how much better for your eyes LCD screens are than CRTs. I have no eye strain after 8 hours at work, but a couple of hours at home and my head hurts. Marcus bought himself an Apple 20-inch Cinema Display. I'm so jealous. It's purdy.

I've been working on cleaning out my fridge. I can't remember the last time I did that. Something in there smelled bad and I couldn't find it. I package of swiss cheese had gotten under the crisper and it was almost black! Ewwwww.

That cold weather we had this last week kicked my ass. I hate being cold. Last Friday I burned lots of stuff in our fireplace to get warm. I also made a pot of chili. It was sooooo good.

A coworker of mine gave me some gumbo. His mom was visiting and made him tons of food. I was a little afraid to try it because I thought it would be spicy hot. It wasn't. It was so good. There seemed to be every kind of meat in there. I didn't have any rice to put it over, but I used spaghetti instead. Tasty.

I've been playing The Sims 2 ALOT lately. I had a pretty good neighborhood going until I installed a house I downloaded that wasn't compatible with my game (it needed an expansion pack) and totally screwed everything up. It kept freezing my game. I couldn't figure out where it had installed it and I lost a couple of the houses I built trying to find out. I ended up having to reinstall the game. Oh, well. Live and learn.

I've been a bit of a couch potato the last few weeks. The Olympics have been screwing up my routine. The whole TV schedule is out of whack. Starting Over on Monday was replaced by Ellen. Even Gilmore Girls wasn't on this week (they were playing Final Destination 2 instead). *sigh* I miss The Office and Medium. I hope there is some new stuff on next week.

Marcus won't admit it, but he's been sick the last few days. He had an infected gland in his neck and he had a fever. One guy at work has been sick all week, as well. I've been popping vitamin C and hoping I don't catch anything. I've got too much to do in the next couple of weeks!

So, that's about it for what I've been up to. I hope it doesn't take another two weeks to update again. I really need to change the look of this place and my web coding skills are getting rusty. But, that will have to wait for another day because it's late and I need to get to bed.

My ladonnasworld.com domain expired last month. I didn't realize it until I went to make a post from work today and I couldn't reach the server! I had signed up with my old Lycos mail account, but since that has become nothing but spam, I hardly check it anymore. I almost couldn't renew the domain because I had to provide the three digit code on the back of my debit card and it is practically illegible. Fortunatley, Namesecure didn't lock me out after trying several possible combinations.

I had thought about letting it go since I'm going to try and get a new domain for my blog in the near future. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this one then. I decided that I want to keep it for sentimental reasons. Marcus bought me this domain originally for a Christmas gift. Maybe for my portfolio or something. I suppose I'll think of something to do with it when that time comes.

I've had a horrible sinus headache for a couple of days that finally let loose today. Work is going really slow. The ad deadline is the 2nd week of March and it seems everybody procrastinates almost as bad as I do. Early March will be super busy, but now.....(crickets chirping).

Speaking of procrastination (of which I am Queen), I finally got some kind of confirmation from the place at which I applied for student loan consolidation that they are actually consolidating some of the loans. I sent that damned application in at the end of June (needed to be received before July 1). It takes seven (7!) months to do paperwork? I know they had a flood of applications then, but would've it been so hard to send a card saying we've received the application and you'll hear something back from us when hell freezes over? By the end of December, I had given up on hearing from them and was starting to look into applying with someone else. I hope this takes some of the financial stress off of me caused by taking an entry-level job. I have another loan payment slated to start in either March or April. I was thinking I was going to have to find a part-time job somewhere else, but now maybe I can just get by on doing some freelance work here and there.

I installed this cool Firefox extension on my PC that allows search engines in the search bar to be deleted. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on the Mac. I need to remember to research how to do it manually.

Ugh, my headache seems to be returning. I'm going to go be a bum and watch TV from the couch all evening.

I don't know why I can never stick with one thing until I master it. I used to be so into web design. I wanted to be a web designer more than anything. I had a thirst for all things web-related. Now...I can't even change the look of my own site on a regular basis. My co-worker has a new MySpace account and is trying to figure out how to modify the look. The old me woudl've dug right in and would've loved to have figured it out. Now, I'm mildly curious and will dig into it if I have nothing else to do. I had thought that once I had some free time, the love of web would come back. It hasn't. I'm sure part of that is that I sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit there for more (unless I'm playing The Sims 2 or something).

I always do this, though. Music, gardening, scrapbooking, computers, cooking—you name it. I know a little about a lot, yet master none. I need to change that. I know part of it has to do with my perfectionist Virgo nature. If I can't be perfect at something, don't do it. I also love to learn. I get easily bored and easily distracted, though.

I really want to master this graphic design thing, especially using Photoshop and Illustrator. I know I'll never be a GURU, but I still have so much to learn. I'm getting pretty darned good in Illustrator and I'm developing more confidence in my Photoshop abilities, but I want to get good enough to start earning some "real" money at this. Not just a minimum entry-level salary, but big bucks. I want to get to the point that I don't have to look for a tutorial or ask another designer's advice when I want to achieve some effect.

I just finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia. Pretty good set of books. I guess I never had read them before. I would've remembered that story. Oh, well. Now I'll have to watch the movie when it comes out on DVD.

I had a really freaky dream last night. Our new moible home park owner (whom I've yet to actually meet) had decided to consolidate the homes left in the park down into a smaller space and sell off the extra land. He took it upon himself to have all our homes moved to one end of the park, packed in tight like sardines with hardly any room between them and then proceeded to bill all of residents for the cost of moving them and updating the lots to code. There was a notice on our door stating that we had to pay the whole amount ($10,000) immediately or be evicted. I was sooooo angry when I woke up. I really hate dreams that make me angry.

Well, better get my butt moving. Lots of stuff I should be doing other than this.

As usual, time spent away from work moves four times faster than time at work. My day off is almost over and I didn't get near the amount of things accomplished that I had planned. *sigh* Oh, well. It was still good to have time for myself.

I had managed to lose last month's bank statement. I've spent most of the day looking for it. Turns out I filed it (without reconciling it) in the folder with my pay stubs. I haven't filed squat lately, so I can't even begin to imagine how that happened. Oh, well. Soon I can figure out how little money I have.

My paperwork really is a mess. I haven't really filed anything since before we moved back to Aurora. That was over three years ago! This weekend I'm really going to have to tackle that mess because I'm tired of stacks of papers everywhere and I can't find a damned thing! I did throw out a bunch of stuff today that I was hanging on to in case I ever decided I wanted to teach music again. It's been over 13 years since I was in a classroom—I don't think I'll use it. I'm still in my de-cluttering my life mode. I was just too depressed to do it while underemployed and had no time while overemployed. Time to get back to sifting through all the junk.

I got to see my first ads in print yesterday. It was way more thrilling than seeing my stuff on a t-shirt. I don't know why. Well, except the Team [Housewares] shirts that I had made for Marcus and Mike, but the thrill of seeing them printed was tainted by losing my job.

Well, better get going—I've got reconciling to do...