randomness 6 Comments

:: yawn ::

Feeling kind of blah this evening. Not sure why. Figured writing about it might dissolve it some.

Normal day at work. I was on phones, which is always fun (*scoff*), especially while working on modifications, which I’ve only recently learned how to do. Ambivalence ran high today, broken only by a glimmering moment of appreciation when my supervisor recognized my two years of service with a Gotcha Card. And after I’d bitched on here about no one noticing, too.

I accompanied Aaron to Target this weekend so he could purchase some new clothes that actually fit: size 34 jeans, extra-large T-shirts and sweaters and jacket. I believe I now own his old size 40 jeans, for reference, and all his old XXL sweaters fit him like friggin’ dresses. Now he’s looking svelte in his new skinnier duds.

I bought myself a new pair of dress pants for work. Size 18—which is still big, sure, but it’s better than the 20’s and 22’s and (yikes!) 24’s that I had been wearing. It’s amazing how much better it feels to wear clothes that fit properly.

Visited Aaron’s grandarents in Lakewood (Cleveland) on Saturday afternoon. Poppa is doing well after his quadruple bypass surgery of a few months back, and says he’s going to buy us a chest freezer for a housewarming gift. That’s awesome, on both counts.

Planning to start reading the second Harry Potter book tonight before bed. Those books are like crack. I shouldn’t be reading them before bed—it tends to push back my bedtime to about 1:00am.

Not much else to report. I could probably go up and think about going to bed right now, if it weren’t so depressing to have watched my day slip by so fast. As it is, I’ll likely end up skulking at my computer for a while, then realizing how tired I really am and plodding up to bed. Or maybe I’ll read a magazine—that would be a little healthier than basking in the radioactive glow of my monitor.

Yeah.

the ongoing saga of my job 5 Comments

Two Years of my Life

Today was my two-year anniversary of being a full-fledged Sky employee. I didn’t mention it to anyone, and HR certainly didn’t throw me a party. No Sky Financial candy dish, no extra weeks of vacation (yet). I am, however, 40% vested in my ESOP and profit-sharing money now, so my happy 401(k) doesn’t look quite so drastically different between the money that’s mine and not-mine-yet.

I know this is my cue to start my usual woe-is-me crap, but I just don’t feel like that today. I mean, I’m not thrilled to be working for Sky, and I certainly haven’t given up hope of finding something different and/or better, but I’m not unhappy, either. If I stick with Sky, I still have room to move up within the company. If I find something else, I have 2+ years of valuable financial/corporate experience.

It’s just my job. It’s not my life. I’m genuinely happy with my life, and only moderately ambivalent about my job.

Yeah, I’m doing OK. We’re doing OK.

the ongoing saga of my job

Toys!

Thank you, Sky Bank, for all the toys you bought me with my $500 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

Thank you for the Epson Stylus Photo R200 printer and the Epson Matte paper and the Kodak Glossy paper. I’ve had lots of fun playing with my new printer, printing on the free 4×6 glossy paper included with the printer and the 8? x 11 matte paper, too. The printer’s nice and quiet, and prints a 4×6 color print in about two minutes. Later tonight, I plan on making a new driving mix CD (or maybe a third 90’s mix) and printing art on the disc, using the free printable CD-R included with the printer.

Thank you, also, for the new Carlo Robelli electric-acoustic guitar that arrived today after the printer. I tuned it this afternoon, and played with it some, but it needs time for the strings to stretch and adjust, being BRAND FREAKING NEW. I’ve never owned a brand new guitar before, and it’s pretty cool. Sure, I can tell that this is an inexpensive guitar (one might even say “cheap”), but I don’t mind. I’d actually feel silly if I’d blown my whole wad on a nicer guitar that I’d only play a couple times a week in my own basement, alone. Oh, and thanks also for the Musician’s Friend guitar stand, and the guitar strap I ordered today.

I’d also like to thank you for the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250 video capture card. That’s going to go into Aaron’s computer on Sunday sometime, since Saturday is devoted to visiting the grandparents in Lakewood, and I don’t want to try installing anything in his computer without him here. Of course, now he’ll probably have to spend some cash himself on a second hard drive for all this video media…

I think that’s it for now. Next week, though, I’ll be thanking you for the remainder of my toys: the guitar strap I mentioned above, the replacement black ink cartridge for the new printer (just thinking ahead), the printable CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, and two Best of the Muppet Show DVDs. The one with Mark Hamill I barely remember, being a Star Wars nerd at a young age, but I don’t remember much about the ones with Steve Martin or Gilda Radner. I’m looking forward to those.

Thank you again, Sky Bank, for giving me lots of cool stuff. Your benefits rock balls sometimes.

house 1 Comment

Communing With Nature

Today, I decided to go outside and enjoy the fall weather by reading at the picnic table for a while during my lunch break. While I was sitting there, engrossed by The Stand, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked over—and there was a squirrel. On the bench. With a nut in his mouth. Looking at me. We just sat there, looking at each other, for a long moment before he finally decided to go bury his nut somewhere.

And more nature stuff… instead of turning on the computer immediately after dinner and the news this evening, I ended up moving my near-dead Mums from the front yard to the back yard and planting my Roses of Sharon into individual pots. I had nine Roses of Sharon (aka Althea) all together, although two of them had rooted together so closely that I just potted them together. Most have fairly decent root systems—say, the size of a golf ball with random tendrils—but one had a nice softball-sized rootball, and one was surviving on a single solitary root strand. I have eight pots in all: two I left outside to brave the winter, one I put in the kitchen, and five are in the library/media room upstairs. Hopefully the cat won’t knock them over like she did my damn begonia.

After I got done potting, I got a hair up my ass to organize the boxes we have in the garage. Now it doesn’t look quite as ghetto… but it’s still pretty ghetto. I mean, our shelves of gardening supplies are the orange and blue milk crates that were once my bookshelves in college. Our lawn chairs are sitting on top of the old-school mower. There are packing peanuts on the floor. But now, at least, there aren’t quite as many empty boxes sitting in the back of the garage.

gardening

Gardening, Take Two

When we moved into our house over six months ago, I had grand dreams of outdoor gardens and flowering nooks and crannies everywhere. I fantasized about a back garden that would make all who saw it envious of my mad gardening skillz. Back in early May, when I first began this undertaking, I had said:

I have planned: lavender, hydrangea, coral roses, yellow roses, ground cover in front of said roses, a rose of sharon, forsythia, catmint, more lavender, and butterfly bush. In front there, on the curve where there’s still a bit of dirt with no plants, that’s where the herbs go. Three varieties of basil, parsley, catnip, creeping thyme, coriander/cilantro, and whatever else tickles my fancy.

Alas, the only plants still thriving from my $100 Gardenland shopping spree (which did not include all of the above) are an out-of-control basil plant that’s nearly knee-high, three double impatiens, and my rosebush. The lavender’s trying to die on me, the cilantro and sage are long gone, as are the dwarf hydrangeas, and the pearlwort has shriveled into little brown flowerless carpets. No, this is not the onset of Autumn—this is my utter neglect and my poor landscape planning.

I feel like our back yard is some bizarre cross between a blank canvas and a complex logic problem. Now that I know where things grow and where they don’t, I have a better idea of what could go where. Instead of planting a giant flower garden by the house, under the heavy shade of the maple tree, perhaps some packed gravel and a picnic table would go better. Maybe some small flowering ground cover would go well by the back door, where that almost-back-step courtesy slab sits. You know, the I-don’t-have-a-back-porch square of concrete? Next to that thing, on either side. And perhaps a good place for a flower garden would be in the corner where we just planted grass—but just around the corner there, in a little curve, instead of a giant block of flowery insanity.

As for the front, under the overhang of our tri-level house, God only knows what will finally live there. Something that can stand drought and shade (since I frequently forget to water my outdoor plants). The impatiens did fairly well; but they’re only annuals, and I have a problem with buying the same damn plants every year.

First, though, maybe we ought to think about de-thatching and fertilizing and weeding and overseeding our lawn. It needs some serious work. Then we can build from there.