Black and White and Late All Over So, turns out two people ordered penguins! from me this week. Cool! Only bad thing is that I never got the email of the order from PayPal, so they've been sitting there since the 22nd and the 26th. D'oh! Anyway, I emailed both and apologized for the delay in reply and promised to send them out ASAP. So I have sold two more penguins! I think it brings my grand total of sold ones up to like...um...five and I think another four I've given as gifts. *lol* Oh well, it's a start.
Viva Friday I'm so happy it's Friday. And even happier it's a 3-day weekend. Actually been kinda busy this week at the temp job. They're giving me more things to do and more responsibility. Including a login to pull credit reports for leads. We're setting up this whole new system of tracking the leads and such and I've been working hard ironing out exactly how it should all work and learning the other things that the loan officers used to do but now I'll do (such as pulling the credit, packaging out the applications, etc.) Much less an observer now and much more of a participant.
Work to Continue! I asked the owner point-blank yesterday if I they still needed me next week or if they had only wanted me for the two weeks as he originally mentioned in April. He seemed surprised and said that yeah, they definately still needed me if I was available. I made it clear I was for as long as he needed the help. It seemed like he had almost forgotten I was technically only there as a temp. Good thing though is that it's at least a little more incoming money to look forward to. We can certainly use it.
Weekend Warriors Tomorrow, we have Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals to watch. We're heading over to my friend Rand's to watch it on his widescreen, HD tv. Should be cool. Sunday, we're all heading out to Disney because he still has one day left he needs to use on his ticket and this is the last weekend for him to do it.
Speaking of Disney and Disney Tickets.... I still never managed to sell the two damned Disney tickets I have. Who knew it'd be this hard to give someone an excellent deal on two tix? I mean really people. And I'm doubley pissed because some ass at my Love's work originally said he'd buy them two weeks ago at $75-80 but didn't want to pay for them out of that check. Meanwhile I don't try to sell them. I don't put them on ebay. It's only THIS week that he's hedging. Then he only wants to pay $55 for them. (Less then ONE day's admission!) Then he doesn't want them at all. So now I'm fucked. He totally fucked me over. And my Love defended him. Bullshit. He committed to them two weeks ago and I held them for him. That makes him an ass in my book. Had this been on ebay, he'd have been a non-paying bidder. And everyone would clearly see that it's wrong. But somehow, because he's my Love's "friend" (nice friend), it's not his fault he fucked me out of selling them. Bah. I guess I'll try to sell them at the gate and see if I can get something - anything - for them. At this point, with them expiring on June 4th (next Friday), it's far too late to list them on ebay. This whole situation stinks.
And then there were beads. Got some new stuff made the other night. AND, was able to take some cool pics of my jewelry with my new camera. Ooh, so excited. I can finally actually post items on PhoenixFire Designs and hopefully even sell some stuff. Who knew? Novel concept right? Anyway, I'll be working on updating that with more cool things. I make pretty stuff; it'll be great to finally actually be able to show some of it off!
Bolding each sub-topic Eh, why not. Anyway, my eyes are killing me. They feel like they do when I'm getting a migraine coming on. I think it might be from it being the end of my cycle. It seems there's a weird hormonal shift at the end but before I get back on the next week's pill and right then, I tend to get a lot of migraines with a lot of regularity. Blah. So the monitor watching isn't feeling that nice. It's my cue to exit. Ta.
I wasn't going to put this here because it's a bit...well, odd....but I thought, all why the hell not. *shrugs* It's something that I thought people might have comments on so I brave the oddness of it to share it.
I see a different world out of the corner of my eyes. All the time, it encroaches on me but not enough that I can properly grasp it. I'm nearsighted. So I wear glasses for almost everything except reading. But, even accounting for the shift between that which I see through my glasses and that which is seen past that rim of corrected vision, the world is different. Things are shifted. Or in different positions from where they are when seen straight on. Out of the corner of my eye the world is a very different place.
This morning I'm driving down the road. And on the passenger seat next to me sits my purse and my backpack of things I take to the temp job. As I drive, looking forward, to my side I see my purse. But it's clearly sideways; it's fallen over and the side is now upward rather then the top. I turn and reach over to correct it - thinking it tilted during a turn perhaps - but when my eyes hit it dead-on, it's fine. Straight and level as it should be. It's not even unsettled and is resting normally on the seat. That's not what I just saw. Clearly from the side it had fallen over.
The world from the fringe is always slightly unseated the way my purse was. Things have moved; shifted; or different things are there all together. I find it happening with greater and greater frequency. There are even times - many of them, which frighten me into trying to not see these changes - people next to me. In that space between my site and my side, there's a world of possibility. And it's always showing something different from what else is around me. Always I turn my head, having half-seen something, only to turn and look and find there's no such thing.
Is this some trick of the eye? Product of some unintentioned imagination? Am I seeing potential - what could be, or perhaps in some other dimension, what is? Or does the world just shift and move in ways we don't understand. Is all of life changed by the sheer act of watching it? Does it remain in a flux until we spy upon it? The scientist with the sealed box...never knowing what lay inside for the process of gazing within it alters whatever it was unseen.
I don't know. But I find the clarity with which I note these changes improves. Does this bring me closer or further away from myself and reality? Is this normal or abnormal. Are we supposed to know this potential or are we not? And to what end can these half-seen differences bring me...?
Oddities. Oddities that need to be spoken to take the queerness from them. Though the questions remain. Just like the realms on the fringe.
So tired this morning. I don't know why either. Slept well enough and got to bed earlier (though not early) then normal. But I woke up this morning and I was just beat. Groggy and foggy and I just can't focus on anything. One of those days were you feel like you have to fight to stay awake just driving down the road. Man, I could just close my eyes right here and be out. Grabbed the only caffinated thing I have around here - some black tea - and am drinking a cup. Just in the hopes of staying awake long enough to finish out my morning and get me home safely. Man I just want to stop struggling and just surrender to sleep. Mornings like this are especially hard.
Not much going on. Host had their very first outage problem since I joined in April tonight but everything's back up so we don't seem any worse for the wear.
Head's been bugging me. Always a problem this time of the month. Between hormone changes and needing to take painkillers for cramps (Aleve causes migraines for me but is the only thing that helps keep me mobile when my cramps and backpain get really bad like they do the first couple days), it's a juggle. Plus, I've just been over-tired lately. Not getting enough rest by half. Not sure if I'm going to be finishing with the temp job this week - originally, it was supposed to just be a two-week fill in (last and this week), but no one's said anything either way. (As usual, they never seem to let me know anything.) Though the owner was back today from his week vacation and they started me in on getting some more stuff done for them like lead tracking and some report information.
Working on some bead projects tonight beacuse the owner's wife asked me about what I did and said to bring some in tomorrow. Um, ok, cool. Just didn't have a lot of bracelets on hand and apparently that's what she likes. Lately I've been making a lot of necklaces - and more specifically, the memory wire ones. Right now I'm thrilled though because with my new digital camera I should actually be able to take pics of things that have been sitting around here for months now. Before I could never get shots so I never put them on the site. Now it shouldn't be so hard.
We missed the American Idol show last night (hockey) but watched the results show tonight. All I can say is I'm glad that fake-ass bitch Diana didn't win. Go Fantasia! *chuckles* Of course, as much as I like Fantasia, LaToya was even more talented then she was so it was crap she got booted off. Yeah, we - my Love AND I both - have been watching this season. We both watched the first season but didn't watch the second. This one though we did and enjoyed ourselves despite the fact that they kept voting off talented people and leaving losers go on too long. Oh well. What do you expect from 14 year old's voting?
So......das boot. Gonna pack up my jewelry items and call it a night. Ta.
Ok, none of them are world-class art shots, but here's a few of the pics I've taken of assorted things the last week on my new Nikon 3700. There's nothing intersting to photograph around my complex lately - unless you're interested in the never-fucking-ending construction that's been utterly annoying me for the last couple weeks. This weekend though I'll be out at Disney so I'll take some pics there which might be a little more artistic in nature. Meantime, here's a bit of a photo recap of my week.
one of the first pics I took - something very hard to photograph. It's a crytsal bracelet I made and it normally wrecks absolute havoc with a camera. My old camera's flash blew out the shot completely. This focused and created a beautiful, crisp shot. So much so it looks almost fake.
this is my Love's watch. bought it for him at xmas. anyway, it was maybe the third shot I took with the camera. full automatic, I was able to zoom in and get a great, detailed focus - to the point you could see the minute ticks and the scuffs he's gotten on it over the last six months.
this is the box of beads I got at the PO Box as a birthday gift. marked only from "K" next to it is a sorter box with some of the ones I've sorted out so far. and I've barely made a dent. it's the most massive (and heavy! did I mention heavy?) box of beads I've ever seen. thank you again.
and this is the adorable lit=tle mp3 player that came in the mail yesterday from felinevamp. it's hard to see just how little it is but it's the cutest thing. and it works in my car too with the cd adapter thingy. (we don't have a cd player installed, just a portable one, but it sucks and doesn't work well. this is way more convienent and doesn't skip!) thank you as well, you're too sweet!
So, like I said. Nothing too terribly interesting from a photographic standpoint (except the crystal bracelet which I just can't believe how clear it came out. man, I can finally take decent pics of my jewelry and maybe even sell some of it!) but still cool nonetheless, no?
I'm not going to mention the crappy game one tonight nor the fact that my head's been killing me all day. I'm just going to leave you with the pics and call it a night. Ta.
Funny Sales Call at Temp Job People are ALWAYS calling and wanting to talk to "who's ever in charge of marketing" or "who is responsbile for advertising." Well, they're not interested. In fact, they don't even care if I take the information down because they don't even want the message.
So call just comes in. him: "I'd like to make contact with the person who does your marketing." Yeah, I'm sure you would. However you won't.
me: "I'm sorry, I'll need to take a message."
him: "Is that person not available?"
me: "No. Any marketing information, I need to take a message."
him: "I'm not looking for marketing information-"
me: "I know. You're looking to give marketing information. Therefore, I need to take a message."
him: < click >
HA!
Poor, exasperated salesguy. Feel so bad for him that the big, bad receptionist wouldn't just blindly connect him. His life is soooo hard. *chuckles*
And I woke up this morning again why? Ugh. I am so sore. Cramps, back pain, generally achy and tired. And this is after an Aleve and three Motrin. (which isn't helping the sleepy factor. painkillers - even normal ones - make me drowsy.) Woke up a bunch of times last night because I was uncomfortable and sore and that's not improving my mood any either. Plus, another 90F day out there (meaning on my drive home at 1pm without working a/c in my car and me in pants and 3/4 sleeves will be miserable) and literally nothing to do here at the temp job, I'm really questioning why I bothered to get up out of be this morning. At least I normally have a half-hour or so of actual work to do. Enter in leads to excel and then mail merge some follow-up letters and write out some envelopes (the owner wants them handwritten so people will be more likely to open them). It's nothing thrilling, but it at least gives me something to do. With the boss gone, no one's giving me those leads so I don't have anything to enter, merge or address. Boring! The owner should be back tomorrow I think though so I'm sure I'll have a ton of ones waiting for me then.
Game One Tonight! Game one of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Tampa Bay Lightning (go Bolts!) and the Calgary Flames (boo! hiss!) is on tonight. The first two games are here in Florida (at the Ice Palace despite the fact that they're now calling it the utterly lame "st. petersburg times forum" because the local newspaper changed the name when they branded it. how confusing is it for people outside the area that the name is st. pete times forum but that it's in tampa and not in fact, st pete? Ugh. not to mention "Ice Palace" was much cooler then "the forum" nonsense they're trying to pass off as cool. it was the Ice Palace for like ten years. Ain't no damned way I'm calling it the st pete times forum.) ANYWAY, game one tonight. Man I wish I could see a game in person. But the tickets are insane right now. Everyone who never gave two shits about hockey is suddenly a diehard fan. (*coughbullshitcough*) I've liked the Bolts for years - even when they were kind of an embarassment. And I've been a fan of goaltender Khabibulin since he was the netkeeper for the Phoenix Coyotes. So no Johny-come-lately support in my camp. I think my friend Rand's coming over tonight to watch it with us. Man, I hope they do well. Then again, I'm just so proud of them for making it even this far. First time ever. :)
Disney Tickets....anyone? Hello...? Is this thing on? Honestly people. Two tickets. You could go this weekend. Good price. Comment or email me. Don't spend $120 for two people. Spend like $75 instead. I need the money and you need a day at either Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM Studios, or Animal Kingdom. It's Star Wars weekends at MGM - big event. 2 adult tix for 1 day/1 park. Cheap! Good deal!
Nightmares, cramps and pain - oh my! Ugh. Cramps. Blah. Doesn't help that I was on antibiotics for ten days. They lesson the effectivness of the Pill and the Pill is the only thing between me and going back to dr ordered bedrest, medical leave, chronic anemia and all that fun stuff. So, needless to say, things are more uncomfortable then normal. And if all that wasn't bad enough, I had horrible nightmares all night last night. Miserable. Woke up trembling and very upset.
Disney Tickets still available! Make me an offer. I could use the extra cash for them. There's got to be a FL resident somewhere here that would like to go for a day to a WDW park of your choice cheaper then the $120 for two it would cost at the gate? I need to raise money to renew my own passes (which expire on June 12th) so whatever I can get from these will go towards that fund. Comment or email me. They're totally legit tickets, I just can't use them before they expire on June 4th.
New Digital Pics Still working on the whole getting-pictures-uploaded-from-the-new-camera-to-show-them-off thing. Just didn't have time over the weekend and then felt like crap all day today because of the cramps and such. And I have the cutest thing to show off. Amazingly generous felinevamp sent me her mp3 player and it arrived today. It's the smallest, cutest little thing ever. I'm so excited. My Love's already planning on how he's going to be stealing it from me. *chuckles* Looks like I need to just make a big entry of nothing but pics one of these days, I have so many things to show!
Alright, it's WAY past this pumpkin's bedtime so I'm out.
Selling Two Disney Tickets Ok guys, about a month ago I won two 1 day/1 park adult admission tickets to Walt Disney World. I tried to schedule for a friend to come with us to use them but it's not worked out. And time is almost up. They expire on June 4th, which means you have about two weeks left to use them. On the odd chance anyone here is in Florida or is coming to Florida in the next couple weeks and could use them before June 4th, I'll sell them to you cheap. A one day/one park admission costs $54.75 before tax; it's about $60 after taxes. I will sell both for $85. If I can't sell them in the next couple days, I'll put them on ebay. Shipping is your call and your expense. So if you want me to overnight them, you pay actual shipping. If you want them priority/2nd day, etc. same thing. If you want standard first class, I'll pay the $0.37. *chuckles*
They're good any day of the week (no blackouts so if you wanted to use them over Memorial Day weekend for example, you could) at your choice of either Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM Studios or Animal Kingdom and they're two adult tickets (but you could take an adult and a kid if you wanted). Like I said, I won them and I already am a seasonal pass holder so I don't need them. They'll expire before I can use them.
If you're interested email me. I'm posting this around the net so first come, first served (unless you're willing to outbid someone on them, then I'll go for highest bidder). These are 100% legit tickets and I'd just hate for them to go completely to waste. webmaster(at)giveneyestosee(dot)com
Wednesday Called in to temp job. Camera arrived! PC fan (on the board, not the case one) died that morning and thought no biggie, my Love would fix it when he came home. (The irony of course being that I had a new camera and I no longer had a pc to upload the new pics to.) Turned out that we had to go buy a new fan. Went out, did that, came home put it in and suddenly the pc wouldn't boot at all. Seems like either the motherboard or the processor got fried, dead or otherwise kaput. So, no computer for me. Bah.
Watched the last episode ever of Angel. Very sad. Only an hour and a damned cliffhanger ending. People are idiots if it doesn't get picked up by another network. Morons. Also watched the season finale of West Wing - with another cliffhanger but that's ok, because it'll be back in the fall.
Thursday Turns out the boss was gone until next week from my temp job. Came in the office and it was dead. Besides me, there's only two other people even working on that side. Car was overheating on drive in to work. Let the car cool down and got some antifreeze at the Walgreens just up the road and added it that morning.
No spare parts that Love could get from work (they often have old parts they don't need/can't use anymore that he can get to fix problems with either of our pc's) so didn't have any way of fixing my computer. No computer for me.
Friday Love decides he'll sacrfice his own pc so that I can have one still. I use mine more plus I have the new camera (and only a 16mb starter flash card so with no computer to upload to, I can't really use it). We decide that while we're at it, we'll go ahead and finally make the jump for me up to WinXP. I was still using Win98SE. Problem was that my harddrive was full (just around a gig left on it) so we had planned on adding a second hard drive and making that one the new primary and install XP on it. So, he took his hard drive out of his case and put my new one in, got it ready and installed a fresh new copy of XP Pro. Put my old hard drive in (with everything I ever owned from photos, to music, to html, etc.) as the secondary. I have long needed to go up to XP (errors and bugs on my very old and outdated 98) but long dreaded having to get my pc all configured again. There's nothing worse then a new OS that needs to be completely broken in the way you want it to be. It's like the old pair of shoes that you love. Has holes in it, but dammit, they're a perfect fit and worn in just the way you love. The new ones are all wrong and it takes forever to get them right.
Well immediately I had problems. My trackball - my beloved Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan suddenly wasn't working right. Even after downloading updated XP drivers for it. It just controlled like shit. Felt VERY glassy (despite being MUCH slower then normal) and I was utterly fumbling around with it. You have to understand, I've been using trackballs for like six years. And this one for over a year. I'm an utter pro at it. I fly with my trackball with the utmost of percision and I never funmble and miss menus. But I could NOT get it to configure the way I wanted it to. So I tried to install the older version of the drivers from my cd (9.6 rather then 9.79 which I had downloaded). Windows in it's infinate wisdom kept preventing me from installing those drivers because I already had newer ones detected. 'Round and 'round we went - all three of us trying to figure the damned thing out: me, my Love and our friend Rand (both of whom are major tech guys) - trying to uninstall the 9.79 drivers, install the 9.6 drivers and get it to work. Each time we uninstalled them, we had to reboot and then upon reboot, they'd be there again. Suddenly, after about an hour of the most absurd headache you can imagine, the pc decided it wanted to crash. The second I touched my trackball, we'd get a flicker of Blue Screen Of Death and the pc would reboot itself. The guys then spend another half-hour trying to figure out what the hell was wrong - booting it up in safe mode and all that - but to no avail. Finally, they gave up. By this point, I was so upset I was crying. I don't take the frustration of trying to get my system working on the best upgrade well (I was having problems getting Netscape configured, windows itself configured and I couldn't maneuver around at all even before the driver and BSOD problems so I was at my breaking point of frustration.) It didn't encourage me in the slightest. I who was already disgruntled about needing to move to XP facing crashes within the first 30 minutes of using it.
Left, went to Costco and used the birthday cash I had gotten from my mom and nanny on getting a memory card for my new camera. (It was supposed to be for clothes which I really need, but I'll get that out of my check from the temp job two weeks from now.) The 16mg card (13 shots) just wasn't going to cut it and I wouldn't be able to do anything with it until I got a larger one. Made me feel a bit better just because I now can use my new camera.
That night, my Love took the new hard drive out and just set up his case with my old hard drive and good old, shabby Win98SE installation. Worked right away. *sighs* Ok, so problem is that he has no pc now at all (at least on XP, he could have a login and so could I giving him some pc usage), and I am still out of HD room, can't seem to get a clean, fresh copy of XP to work, can't have the dvd-rom that he had (because of OS issues) and don't have my burner drive either (because of open bay issues). But, I have my files, net settings, mail and for the moment, a pc.
Saturday Went and saw Shrek 2. It was funny but not as fresh as the original. Puss stole the show. He was so hysterical when he did the big cat eyes thing. Cracks me up just thinking about it. The theater was showing it literally ever half-hour on the hour and each showing was literally selling out.
After that was the NHL Eastern Confernece finals, game seven. Awesome. Bolts of course won it. They're going to play for the Cup now against the Flames. I'm so thrilled for the Bolts because they're a good, young, talented team and they've worked really hard the last couple years. They deserve the recognition they're finally getting.
Today, Sunday Went and had breakfast (ok, lunch) at Cracker Barrel. It's good food and it's cheap. Which is good. Then we wandered around Best Buy a bit, just window shopping.
My hand is really killing me so typing this all up probably was a bad idea. I have problems with the fingers on my left hand (my non-dominant hand). The joints ache sometimes, get stiff and generally just really hurt. I think I might have a low-level arthritis in it. There's just no reason that the joints on my left hand would hurt. Most days it's ok, but somedays - like today - it's just hell. Started with the index finger, but has since seemed to spread to the other fingers as well. It often hits my ring finger the worst, which really leads me to believe it's a joint problem. What in the world would you do to your secondary hand's ring finger to make it hurt? Nothing, so guess it's just a fun health quirk. What worries me is my mom has connective tissue disorder (including lupus, sclerederma, raynauds and a few others) which seem to be genetic in nature and things like joint problems are some of the first signs. It's in the same family of conditions as rheumatoid arthritis for example. Hopefully, it's just a very minor arthritis that I have and nothing more. I try not to worry about it too much, but every now and then I have a bad day like today where it really bugs me. (And yeah, that includes typing.) It's one of the reasons I insist upon a natural keyboard and trackball; it helps minimize the pain. When I used to have a regular keyboard and mouse, I'd have pain in both my hands and both my wrists. Now I generally only have the pain in my left fingers and very rarely my left wrist. So that's better anyway.
Hrm. Well Love just came by and wants to run out to the store in search of a food item for dinner. Guess I better close this up. That's my crazy week update for now. I need to install my camera software and upload a few pics to show off still so maybe I'll try to get to that this evening. If not, then I'll do it tomorrow after work.
