Lately online I've been feeling ignored. So many times I'll post something on some forum, or say something on TCZ only to hear cricket noises as I wait for a response. It's kind of disconcerting. I can kind of understand it on a forum, especially one where I'm not very well known - I'm more of a lurker than a joiner - but on TCZ it bothers me. I'm an administrator there, supposedly part of a team, but lately my ideas and suggestions on current issues are ignored or barely considered before being dismissed and even if I just ask some inane question or crack a joke on the admin chat channel, it's like I'm not there.

Oh well. I'm way too dependent on TCZ anyway. Maybe I should retire. But everytime I think about it, I realise there are so many aspects of being an admin I'd miss. Ugh, I have a headache. Whinging about TCZ isn't helping. I just feel like whinging full stop. What else can I moan about.... There's always my granny. She's so bizarre. In fact, my grandfather came to see me at work yesterday and I actually said 'She's whacked!' to him. The scary thing is, he said, 'Tell me about it!' That floored me :) Her current obsession of the moment is to get their house "in order" in case one of them (my grandfather) passes away. The morbidity of that aside, she's been wigging out lately because my grampa has a habit of saving bits of wood, siding, carpet etc from past home improvement projects by storing them in the basement. And he's squirreled away some of it on top of the ventilation system down there. Well she's been after him to get it all down and out of the house for months now. I swear it's the only thing she can physically talk about until it's done.

Well, grampa has no need to be monkeying up and down a ladder to get all this stuff down so I said I would come by today and do it. Little did I know that I would be stricken with a particularly horrible set of cramps all night long and this morning. Ugh it was awful. Could not even stand up straight. Totally sucks because I used to be able to brag that I never got them - and I didn't - so now it must be payback because I get 'em now with a vengeance. Anyway, too much info I know :) So I called them and said I'd be over later than I'd intended so I could rest a bit. I finally show up, piss off granny even more when I ask if we can tackle the stuff in the garage when it's cooler (beastly hot today) to which she said I should have come earlier that morning when it *was* cooler. I then replied that she was lucky I was there to help at all and proceeded to tell her I could barely stand up straight much less climb ladders in a basement all afternoon. Anyway, I made her feel bad then which made me feel bad, but you know, I was bitchy and all. Anyway I told her it was ok, I had taken some motrin and felt up to it etc etc and disappeared down the basement with my grampa.

As I looked around the basement ceiling and the plethora of junk my gran had been moaning about these past months I was shocked to discover that there werre a few slats of siding, one chuck of carpeting, 3 squares of glass and some old screening wire. That's it. Took all of five minutes to get it all down.

Aye-yi-yi, to quote Ricky Ricardo.

I really want to do a roadtrip out to Cali this fall or if worse comes to worse, next spring. I would love to load up the car and head west for a nice leisurely drive along the southern route to Monterey with the kidlet. We could see the Rockies, the desert, stop over at the Grand Canyon (I've never seen it myself)... I think it would be cool for her to get a longer glimpse of the country and I've never attempted a roadtrip like that before. My car's in good shape, I should have enough vacation time built up by then... The only thing stopping me is money. Well, money and getting the kid time off from school which is probably not a good idea. The only feasible time to do it for her is over xmas hols. Argh. I don't want to go in the summertime because it's too bloody hot. Winter, and I'd have to worry about hitting bad weather around the mountains.

Will leave that to ponder for a bit. I want to go see Kelly and Meechie and everyone so I'll have to work something out. Not much else to say atm.. Just working away here waiting for 4.30 to come along so go outside where the heat index is 115 degrees F. And I have to go to the store aswell. Ugh. I shall be a puddle by the time I get home.

Ohh I'm getting a nice little tan from all this swimming. Excellent so long as I don't burn. The kid and I spent a couple hours at the pool this evening and it was heavenly. It's been beastly hot and I have to say, The next car I buy I will resist the urge to buy a black car with a black interior unless I live where it's cold all the time. My car just sucks in the heat. I could fry an egg on the steering wheel. Anyway, the water felt wonderful.

Yesterday, nothing exciting happened. I don't know why I keep writing that nothing exciting happened. Not every day is a party. Maybe I should change it to 'nothing bad happened yesterday'. That might be better. I let the kidlet ride her bike to the pool over the weekend which isn't as far as when she rode to the grandparent's but it's along one of my town's busiest roads so i ended up following along behind her in the car. See, I didn't want her to ride along the busy road, even though that's the quickest way. It's illegal anyway so she had to take a bit of a circuitous route. So I followed to make sure she didn't get lost. Of course, she didn't and I always worry for nothing. But she's not allowed to ride to the pool to swim by herself, so she has to meet a friend there. I know she loves to swim but I doubt she'd have much fun swimming on her own with no buddy to hang around with.

Anyway, I'm working from home tomorrow, hurray! I wish I could think of a reason to keep that up during the winter because I'm going to miss it. Sometimes, even though I love my job very much, I wake up just not wanting to go to work. I just have no desire whatsoever to get up, shower, put makeup on, dress in uncomfortable office clothes and drive across town and sit in my little cave for 8 hours. But having a day at home to look forward to each week motivates me for some bizarre reason and I don't feel like such a sluggard in the mornings. Besides, and I think I've said this before, I love working in my jammies :D

And so ends another entry. I'm off to watch the Cheers marathon, then to bed with my 5th Harry Potter book. Gnight.