Fucking hell it’s freeeeezing in my office. Maybe they do that to us on purpose so that we can’t doze off or something. But my ability to type and work is hindered by the fact that my fingers are blue and I can see my breath in here. Anyway I can’t seem to get my head into work atm. I’ve sorted all the major issues I’ve had as far as work requests go. I’ve got loads to do for my freelance stuff but I can’t work on that here. Maybe I’ll run over to G&G’s and pick up that ficus bush they said I could have. But it’s cold outside too. Maybe I’ll just sit and think about the wicked things I’d like to do to a certain someone. No, no it wouldn’t do to get all turned on while at work.

Hmmm… baseball… ummmm, PHP code… UNIX – eewww that did it. Better than a cold shower that is.

Chicago’s looking really good now that it’s less than a month off. Especially after my big money scare this week – one that really turned into a blessing in disguise as now I have enough to get my brakes fixed and bills caught up and *still* have some left for the trip. I need to think up a good gift for chickie for inviting us over there.. Hmmmm… Will have to browse online for something I think. Or I could take her kidlets some husker gear – hehehehe. I am evil.

26 days to go.

Ohhhhhhh bleh. Woke up, nauseated and just thoroughly nasty. Not it’s not that, yeesh 😉 Impossible. I think I ate something off. Might have been my hamburger in the sloppy joes last night. I was dumb and let it thaw on the counter because I hate doing it in the microwave. Well Not going to do that again. Been in the fecking bathroom all day. Lovely eh? It’s after 5 now though and I’m feeling a touch better. Should be right as rain tomorrow. I am so glad I’m allowed to work from home if necessary.

Speaking of that, I typed up probably the most mind-numbingly boring rubbish for a newsletter I’m working on. I think the newsletter is for Hospice patients, family and staff etc and it’s written by some staff member. I think, I didn’t get a lot of background on it. Anyway the copy was given to me on paper which means instead of a quick cut and paste, I have to type the fecking thing out. And oh. My. Gawd. The woman goes on for two pages and 800 words about candle flames. I think she was going for metaphor comparing candle flames to grief but she went way to far with it. Or maybe it was just because I had to type it out. I don’t know. Then someone else wrote what started to be a nice piece about Autumn, which soon turned into patriotic drivel complete with a quote from William Bradford thanking God for protection from ‘savages’. Yick. I’m glad I’m going away for turkey day. I think.

Thanksgiving’s always been a family holiday (of course), but as my family is either dead or not bothering with it, I’m going to my good friend Kat’s house in Indiana (just outside Chicago.) It’s going to be weird though, not having mom’s sweet potatoes or green bean casserole. I’m not in charge of sweet pickles this year 🙁 But, I’m looking forward to going. Maybe doing something so different for the holiday will take the edge off of missing mom, dad and Judy. Kelly too of course, but at least I can call her. Yeah, I think a roadtrip is just what the doctor ordered.

So the plan is, 10-11 hours to Kat’s house, Thanksgiving and a movie with her and her family, The day after spent in Chicago seeing the sites and shopping with very little money, then Saturday morning drive up to Rick’s and see the Big Pink House and get some more beer lessons. The kid can’t wait to see his kitties. I need to tell him that I changed my mind again and we would like to stay over and just drive back Sunday rather than driving thorugh the night on very little sleep. Might have to PTO Monday aswell to recuperate. I’m getting to old for all of this 😀

Anyway off to see if I can handle some food. Ta ra.

Well I’m glad I came to my senses. I wrote a longish blog about something personal and decided I’d better not publish it. Never know who’s looking. Bah. Annoying that is. What is the point of this blog if I can’t say what I want. What is the point of any blog really. Maybe Perdue was right in that these things are pointless. I have to censor myself in case of prying eyes. Oh well. I’ll just continue to rant about mundane things because oddly enough, I enjoy it. On the other hand, Some public blogs are great reads. I love going to blogger.com ‘blogs of note’ section and checking those out. And I’d love for my other one to get a nice readership. I’m a feedback whore, what can I say? 🙂

Man the day’s nearly half over. Love when Fridays fly by. I am the alt-tab queen though. Whenever I’m stuck on work or waiting for things to load I flip over and blog for a bit. Which will explain why my thoughts seem a bit random. I started writing this one at 10am and it’s now 11. I’ve made progress on my php stuff (slow-going as it is) and written and deleted about 2 and a half entries in here. As well as checked email, Meditech and surfed for website tracking software. Damn I’m good. Makes time go faster.

Anyway enough nonsense. Back to work.

There, finally got this journal looking the way I want it. Fixed it so my name doesn’t show up, so hopefully this journal will stop showing up in search engines. I hate that. I did an innocent search on my name and this fecking thing popped up. I know this isn’t exactly top-secret, but I would like some place away from prying eyes – they know who they are.

I’m making myself sound like some government spy, hehe 🙂 Nope, sorry to disappoint, just your average everyday person on the internet doing nothing that amounts to much. move along, nothing to see here.

I think I’ve got my website looking pretty good. It resizes for different resolutions so people won’t have to deal with funky scrollybars all over the place. I don’t know how it looks in Netscape though. I’ll have to test that out. What a pain in the ass, making a site compatible in different browsers. Why can’t they be standard. Damn you Bill Gates! Anyway fixed all the broken links (Thanks Rick!), including about 10 of them on my british telly map. I hadn’t thought of checking that one for a while and there were so many dead links on it! So I combed through the net looking for new ones and I think I got them all. I’d love to add some shows to the map but it’s far too much hassle for now. Maybe some other time. I nicked the look of my site from someone’s Blogger template because I loved it so much. It’s unusual. I hope they don’t mind. I left their name in the meta tag as credit. At least I think I did. Better check that. Anyway back to typing. Bleh.

Payday tomorrow. Woohoo! Going to take 100 out of it and put it aside for the trip. Same in two weeks, then again on the third one before we go. If I end up getting the child support checks aswell, then Jason the eejit can help fund his daughter’s first big roadtrip. I’m sooo looking forward to this now that it’s getting closer to the time to go. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go what with Thanksgiving usually being a time when the family gets together and all. But well, Now that Judy’s not here, my grandparents don’t feel up to having company for it and I think they’re just going to go out. I’ve never been away from family for it so I have mixed emotions – excitement at seeing my friends, and a bit of sadness that i won’t be seeing mom, or Judy, or my sister for grandparents for it. I really am too sentimental I think.

And I think too much about stuff. Might be a family trait because kelly does it too. We end up overanalysing every bloody thing until we eventually drive ourselves mad. And it never turns out how we expected. Ah well, I’m not going to dwell on it. Time for snuggling up in bed with my book. Gnighty!

It’s fecking snowing outside. Grrrr. And underneath it is a thickass layer of ice. My car doors were frozen shut this morning – I love when that happens. Need to buy de-icer. Anyway, luckily yesterday I got it in my head to go get my new tires on the car. I’m not a very good planner, hehe. I meant to get one tire this check and another tire next check, but Goodyear had a deal on some used ones. Hope my paycheck is big. They said I need new brakes aswell (rotors and pads whatever that means) *sigh* At this rate I’m never going to get to go to Chicago. Well I am going, but still, I’m not going to have much money. Luckily I’ve only got to cover gas and food and *maybe* a bit of shopping in Chicago. Then it’s up to Rick’s to see the big Pink House, hehehe.. That makes me giggle.. My big tough cousin living in a pink house 🙂

Saw Red Dragon the other night. Very very good and creepy. Much better than Hannibal (though, frankly I liked Hannibal but lecter enthusiasts always seem negative about it. Of course it wasn’t as good as Silence. Even Red Dragon wasn’t as good as that, but it was still scary and creepy and made me look away a few times.

What have I been doing.. Let’s see. Got AAA to make a trip tick thingie for me, free for AAA members so woohoo to that. I remember my aunt using one for our roadtrip to the east coast and it was dead handy. I’m about to begin typing up three brochures on how to quit smoking for the website. wheeeee fun. I lead an exciting life.

Don’t have much else to add. Waiting still to hear from Kelly in Scotland. She better email today.

I was just re-reading what I wrote yesterday and I realised it sounds kind of bad, especially where I said ‘I don’t care that much’ right after saying everythings gone to hell. I didn’t mean that. Of course I care about my aunt, and I’m having a difficult time adjusting to her being gone. I guess I meant that because of that, I’m not bothered too much about losing some other things that used to be important to me, ie. the forum, the group blog etc. They just don’t seem that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I got a dose of perspective on it all and found I don’t miss them as much as I thought I would.

Anyway, cheers to Rick for pointing out every link error I had on my site and making me actually work when I was at home 😀 The other day I decided I’d better tidy up my site and add some more content so I went through and changed my little flash menu on every page, added some pics and new links, fixed the tables that didn’t stretch for every screen resolution and all that stuff. I didn’t do too badly but by the time I’d changed everything I was too tired to check links. So a couple of them were buggered. All sorted now tho. THEN he tells me his emails to me keep bouncing, yet I’m getting the message, so something with my ukmelia.com domain email is fucking up along the line and I can’t figure it out. I tell you, I need to marry a computer techie/auto mechanic and I would be set for life. All the good ones are taken though 🙁

Anyway, I’d better get to work, lots to do today.