textlog archives

I’ve moved my regular postings here.

Things shall be changing shortly.

Today I started my new job. The day was… boring, actually. I basically spent most of the morning filling out papers, meeting everyone (and I will NEVER remember everyone’s name!), reading the handbook, setting up my computer, playing with PhotoShop and some other programs that I’ve never used before (I’m a Paint Shop Pro girl), things like that. The afternoon was spent basically doing nothing. My boss was in a meeting, so I didn’t have anything to do once I was done with all of the paperwork.

I have to admit, in my fit of boredom, I had a moment of ‘What the heck have I done?!?!’ But it was only fleeting, I don’t think it was serious. I just hate being bored at work- that’s one of my least favorite things. I figure if I’m going to be doing nothing, I’d rather be at home doing nothing than at work doing nothing. But of course, it’s my first day, so it’s not like I’m going to have piles and piles of work to do right off the bat.

Everyone seems really friendly though, so that’s good. My boss is really nice and laid back, and a few people even had on jeans which is totally cool with me (although I think I’ll wear khakis for a while just because I’m new, ya know) I have my own little cubicle near the windows (yay! LIGHT that I didn’t have in the lab!) and my own computer and a cool phone that IS HOOKED UP TO THE INTERNET- how cool is that? I definitely need to do some decorating in my cube though.. it’s very naked right now! I have a bag of stuff from my old desk, momentos from my old co-workers, and some pictures of Dan and me, and of course the kitties. I think I might also bring in a plant or something.

So yeah. Day 1 is done.

Last night was my sister’s bachelorette party. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but let’s just say that it involved a nice, fancy dinner, a penis cake, and dancing men. And LOTS of drinks for Michelle. A great time was had by all.

Tomorrow I start my new job. It hasn’t quite sunk in that I’m not going to my old job tomorrow morning… it’s going to be very strange, I think. I’m actually not even nervous, that’s how NOT sunk in it is.

Next Saturday is my sister’s wedding. So starting Wednesday, I am not doing any website work (outside of my day job, of course) We are going to have lots of family in town who we hardly ever see, so I’m going to be visiting and having a grand time.

I washed my car today. It is nice and sparkly and clean- for tomorrow’s 8 mile commute to work.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m undergoing a rather large change in life with this whole starting a new job thing. Or maybe I’m just insane.

But today, I got this sudden, inexplicable, panicky urge NOT to have kids for a long while.

I go through phases of this, usually. For weeks I’ll think about starting a family. Then for a few weeks (or sometimes months) I will be like NO WAY. But today… just now in fact.. it hit me HARD, harder than it usually does: that I am so not ready for that.

Babies, baby talk, bottles, breastfeeding (I just realized that all of those start with ‘b’, heh) nap schedules, baby food, diapers.. NOT SLEEPING. I am just not there. So not there.

And for that, I am made to feel horrible. There is so much pressure to have kids, you know? Once you’re married, it’s like oh, so kids soon right? But why? Why so young? I’m not old.. just 26, I’ve barely figured myself out.

I actually had a friend not too long ago (a friend who has 2 kids, 1 of them very recently born) tell me that I ‘need’ to have kids. Why does someone ‘need’ to do that? Like it’s a solution to something? There’s nothing wrong with me.. is there?

I’m sure I will be at that point eventually. But why should I rush it? And why should I be made to feel like I’m disappointing my friends and sometimes my family because I don’t want kids yet? I don’t make my friends feel like they’ve disappointed me because they’ve started already- in fact, I’m very happy and excited for them. For THEM. Not for me.

I’m feeling very unsettled today. Which probably makes sense since I ended a job today and start a new one on Monday. Or is it more than that?

I need to go to bed.

I always forget to do these.. Friday Forum!

1. How do you decide what to blog about? Do you make a point of blogging at least once a day, or do you post whenever you feel like it? What subjects do you tend to blog about the most? Usually things will happen during the day and I’ll be like ‘I HAVE to write about this!’ But sometimes I’ll forget… or I’ll decide later not to.. or I’ll simply be too lazy or too busy to get around to it. So lately it’s been just whatever I think of when I finally get around to opening my MovableType and start writing. I used to try to blog every day, but of course that didn’t last long. Some days I’ll post several times, and then I’ll go up to a week with nothing! It just depends, I guess. Sometimes there’s just nothing interesting to write about, really. I think I blog mostly about my day-to-day stuff.. and my cats, of course.
2. What summer movies have you seen so far? What did you think of them? Which ones do you most want to see? What’s the worst summer movie that you’ve ever seen? Do you enjoy drive-in theaters? Movies? What are those? We haven’t been to a movie in quite a while.. the last one we saw was on vacation in Texas, we went to see Star Wars. Other than that… I can’t even remember! I don’t know if it was a summer movie or not, but the worst movie I’ve ever been to see was Thin Red Line, it was horrible. I do like drive-ins for a change of pace, but I haven’t been to one of those since high school!

3. The reality TV show “Big Brother 6″ just started on CBS. Did you watch the first episode? Will you be tuning in throughout the summer? Have you watched past seasons of “Big Brother”? Why/why not? No, I’ve never watched Big Brother, and I don’t think I will start now.
4. What’s the biggest city [population wise] that you’ve ever lived in [or visited]? How about the smallest town? Do you prefer big cities or small communities? Why? For visiting, I’ve been to Pittsburgh (HA!) and San Antonio and Houston and Denver and Tampa.. not sure which of those is the biggest. Visiting the smallest… Volant in Pennsylvania is pretty tiny, I’ve been there- it’s a little Amish town. Mars, where I grew up, isn’t exactly a metropolis either! hehe For living, I like smaller communities. Maybe not as small as Volant, but nothing like a big city.

5. What’s on your mind right now? Are you stressed out about anything? What are you most looking forward to? Do you have a lot of items on your to-do list? What are you happy about right now? Right now, I’m thinking about how this is my last day of work, and how I’m more sad than I thought I would be. I am stressed a bit I guess.. tired for sure! I always have a lot on my to-do list- you know that! I am happy that my sister is getting married next weekend!!!

Reading this story about how football is the REAL American pastime makes me giddy with excitement about the season starting soon. I cannot WAIT for training camp to start.

I just need to vent here for a moment. Partly at myself, partly at other people.

I have this client right now, actually I’ve had this client since February. When I first started the site, I was working with her daughter on the design for her business (her daughter is a designer, but didn’t want to do the project herself because she thought her and her mom would fight too much over it) After about a month of going back and forth and getting pretty much nowhere due to lack of decent feedback from the girl, and then a few weeks of hearing nothing from her after I emailed several times, I ended up calling her mom (who is, after all, paying for the site) We set up a time to meet. Great! I thought. Maybe now we’ll get somewhere!

When I met with her, it turned out that she hadn’t seen any of the 7 or 8 versions of the design I had created, even though I told her daughter to forward them to her mother. NONE of them. So she had no idea what had been going on for the past month and a half! Needless to say, I felt pretty horrible about that, and I apologized, but she said not to worry about it, she understands that her daughter is flaky and basically screwed it up. So that was good news, at least she wasn’t mad at me!

The bad news was, we had to basically start over. She liked one of the versions I had made, and wanted a few minor changes, so I did those before I went on vacation. When I got back, I emailed her, ready to start moving on the site. I didn’t hear anything for a few weeks, when suddenly a girl from her office called me and wanted to meet to talk about the site. So, I started working with HER now. This time, she gave me a bunch of content to start putting on the site… but the client hadn’t told me which design she wanted to use. Unfortunately, she was on vacation, so the girl just told me to pick whichever one we last talked about because she really wanted to get the site up by the time she got back from vacation- WHICH WAS IN 2 DAYS. I nearly laughed and cried at the same time. Of course, that would never happen. But I didn’t tell them that… heh. I just said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

So I headed home and started coding the pages based on that design, and then put in the little bit of content she had given me. I emailed it to them and waited for their feedback.

That was about 3 weeks ago. Since then, it’s been back and forth 50 MILLION TIMES with changes to the logo here, changes to the colors here, changes to the layout there, this picture here, etc. Things that really should have been decided upon BEFORE I started any development. But the way things worked out, it didn’t happen until now. So now every time they decide they want something different, I have to go into each page and edit the code separately (unless I’m lucky enough for it to be in a menu include or something, but that’s only happened a few times) I realize that little things will pop up toward the end of the development phase, it has happened on other sites I’ve done. But this stuff is getting ridiculous!

I think we’re almost to the point where it’s ready to go (I say that now…! ha!) I’m not completely satisfied with how it turned out, mainly because a lot of what’s in it I think looks wrong or dumb, but that’s how the client wants it (even though I’ve gently suggested otherwise) And I feel like I’m basically working for free at this point, because this contract was signed before I adjusted my prices back in February after we did our taxes (and I saw just how much of this hard earned money would be going directly to the government, grrr) So it’s not very much money, considering I’ve worked about 15 hours on it, not counting the meetings we’ve had and the aggravation of re-doing things 50 times.

Interestingly, this is the 2nd client who has done this. The other one has fallen off the face of the planet and won’t email me back.. which at this point, I’m fine with. I have the deposit to cover the 10+ hours of work I put into the never-used designs, so whatever. If I get some of these other jobs done in the next few weeks, I might try to get in touch with them again.. but I’m not going to break my back over it anymore. The funny thing is that the 2 clients are related in a way- one is a customer of the other and was had a referral from the other one (heh, you get that?) I’m wondering if they do this to each other all the time?!?

So, what have I learned from these two customers? Well, I redid my contracts to require in writing a final approval of the design, after which point no major changes can occur (and I then defined ‘major changes’) I’m going to try to only work with the person who is actually PAYING for the website rather than people loosely affiliated. Part of me feels like it might be a little bit my fault, although I’m not sure what I did wrong. I tried my best to communicate with them and get clear feedback on things as we went, but they just didn’t seem to want to cooperate. I suppose it’s normal to have things like this happen now and then.. but it really gets frustrating, especially when they’re basically happening at the same time. It makes me wonder if I’m the problem! So I’m also going to try to get an even better picture of what they want before we start.. even if I think I already know, I’m going to make doubly sure, just in case.

There is nothing I hate worse than having to do things over again. And I just want this site to be DONE.

I got this from Crissy:

Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word. No more.

Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.

On Sunday morning, I was checking my email on the computer while Dan was still asleep. All of a sudden, I heard this scream from the bedroom, followed by Dan yelling at one of the cats. Naturally, I assumed Scotty was behind this one, since it’s always him who is getting into trouble.

But no, no… this time it was Gracie! She apparently decided it was a fun game to attack Dan’s nose while he was sleeping. He came into the computer room holding a tissue on his face, wiping up blood from a pretty deep scratch on the bridge of his nose and another one at the edge of one of his nostrils. The whole time he was yelling at the cats, ranting and raving.

And of course, I was laughing. After I knew he was alright, of course.
I just found it quite surprising that it was Gracie causing the problems this time. And I also though it was a bit ironic that Dan’s precious little Gracie, the one who we always think is so innocent and sweet and never does anything wrong, was acting up.

So there you have it. Both of our kitties are turds.

Dan has now instituted a policy that they get no turkey or ham treats in the morning until his nose heals. That’ll show them.

We finally had a nice day here, weather-wise. Being able to walk outside without becoming instantly drenched in sweat is really nice, I have to say. We took advantage of the day and did something we’d been putting off so far this summer: Cleaning The Garage.

We had so much junk in there, it wasn’t even funny. Empty boxes, tools from when we did the ceramic tile in the entries last September, random pieces of scrap wood, empty plastic pots from flowers I bought for the yard, etc. It only took us about 2 hours to go through everything and get it all organized into ‘keep’, ‘throw away’, ‘give away’, and all of that. And we were able to clear off the set of shelves left by the previous owners that are less-than-good that we want to get rid of- now we can!

The best thing about the whole day was that I was able to cross ‘Clean Garage’ off of my list of things to do this summer. There are only a few things left: pressure wash the deck, clean out under the deck, paint our bedroom closet and get new shelving in there, and patch or resurface our driveway. Definitely a manageable list! Of course, that’s probably because I’ve become MUCH more realistic about how long things take. And since we’re both so busy, I am trying not to overwhelm ourselves with tons of things that we HAVE to do all the time.

See? I’m getting better. But I still had such a great feeling of accomplishment crossing the garage off the list…