Dee's Life

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Journal :: October 2004

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01.10.2004 (fri)

The heavy workload continues. Not that I'm complaining - it's better to have a lot of work than none at all. But I have loads of really long, really boring pages to make now and the energy is being sucked out of me. It was a long week.
I did a ton of forms and other such delightfully interesting pages and by the end of the day my shoulder was killing me.
But at least two new sites are online now: Caixagest (the design of which was done by Pedro and me over a year ago already) and FSP (the one I'm currently working on).
This last one is still very much under construction (I've been adding sections as they get done).
My only regret is that the final product looks very little like my original mock up, but sometimes you have to give in a bit to the people writing the checks :)

I worked until about 8.30 PM because urgent things kept coming in. Not a fun day.

02.10.2004 (sat)

I spent most of the day playing Sims, as would be expected.

In the afternoon we went shopping. It was the worst possible day to do it - a saturday AND the beginning of the month - but the list was quite large and hubby's been getting home really late this past week so it's been difficult to plan shopping on week days.
I could go to a local supermarket but they don't have a lot of choice so there's always stuff that we need to get at the mall anyway.
So we spent the better part of two hours doing something can can normally be done in half the time. The two women in front of us at check out did not help matters - they kept moving stuff between two shopping carts, then moved some items to a hand basket and forgot about it so ended up paying for those items separately and taking twice the necessary time and a lot of space around them in the middle of a very big crowd. Like Pedro said, to some people the world revolves around them.

At night I watched a funny movie called Something's Gotta Give.

03.10.2004 (sun)

I got up thinking about the songs. I ended up doing something that didn't work, but it's the intention that counts. Hubby took over and spent most of the day recording some guitar tracks. I gave up and played Sims instead.

In the afternoon I focused on finishing The Da Vinci code and succeeded.

At night I tried watching a movie but didn't feel like it and gave up after half an hour.
I didn't really feel like doing anything so I put some Buffy on and practiced my manicure skills.

Scully has been surprising me a lot lately. She was the cat that we almost didn't know we had. She'd hide whenever she saw us and she always hated being picked up. But lately she's always trying to get our attentions and spends most afternoons on my lap purring. It's quite a change!
I'm glad she seems to have gotten over her childhood traumas.

Michelle, however, is quickly becoming our problem cat. The tumour in her mouth, although benign, seems to be growing. Her left fang is no longer straight and I fear it may have to be removed. I was hoping to avoid that because it's really intrusive surgery but it's developing a lot faster than I had hoped. I have to take her to the vet again.

04.10.2004 (mon)

I had weird dreams again. I hate when that happens because it throws me off for the whole day.

I was hoping I could take the day off today but I have a lot of new work coming in and I don't want to let it pile up.

My mother forgot her keys again and came over to pick up the spares. That's when I found out that our intercom is busted and doesn't open the downstairs door. One more thing to worry about.

05.10.2004 (tue)

I was lazy all day. I didn't even have the energy to play Sims (and I didn't feel like sitting in front of the computer on my day off). Fortunately hubby suggested we go for a walk in the afternoon. It was really pleasant and got my energy back up.

At night I watched more TV than I thought possible these days. For some reason there were tons of shows that I like one after the other - ER, CSI, Will and Grace...

06.10.2004 (wed)

Back to work. I did a few pages today that I had been leaving behind for a while. Can't delay the harder stuff forever.
It was a very dull day. I found myself daydreaming on more than one occasion. I was focused enough to work well but the rest of me was somewhere else.
Another characteristic of days when I feel like this is that I can't make myself get out of the house. Seeing the sky or other people would break the spell and then I'd just feel miserable with no way out.

I'm enjoying Angels & Demons. It's a great book to read in the bathroom cause the chapters are short. So everytime I have to pee I read another chapter :)

I've put up the lyrics to most of the new songs in the music section. I wanted to put up a couple of demos as well but they never sound good enough :)

08.10.2004 (fri)

I worked until 7.30. I had a few really long pages to make with tons of tables and stuff and it took forever. I still had a couple more things to do but it's friday so I don't think anyone's going to care. Monday will be soon enough.
Despite the break on tuesday, it's been a really long week. But it looks like I'll be able to make the deadline.

09.10.2004 (sat)

My dreams are getting weirder everyday. I dreamt a whole horror movie this morning. It was clear and full of detail and I could almost bet it even had surround sound. Yup, it's a brand new dream technology I like to call weirdovision. Maybe I should write the script and sell the movie rights. But I'm missing the ending, so I won't :)

I spent a great chunk of the afternoon playing the game Runaway. It's quite simple but I still get stuck on occasion because some of the objects are pretty hard to spot. Instead of making challenging puzzles they just blend the pieces into the background. What I like is to figure out how the pieces fit not spend half an hour bending down to see if one of them slipped under the carpet.
But visually it's really nice, even if the story is implausible and really pathetic at times. I'm becoming too demanding, I guess :)

We've been watching Jonathan Creek and I'm really enjoying it. I thought that watching it again, now that I remember the solution to the puzzle, wouldn't be as much fun, but the show has such a great sense of humour that it doesn't matter. It's still fun to watch for a second time. And it's been long enough that I don't remember every single detail anyway.

10.10.2004 (sun)

The morning was quiet, with some folding-of-the-laundry duty but in the afternoon we finally worked up the courage to assemble the bookworm bookshelf. It took a while to figure out what we could use from the previous assembly and what we had to drill again. It didn't turn out EXACTLY as I would have liked, mostly because it's not centred over the bed, but it could be worse.

Then I had to plug all the leftover holes and finally was about to paint over the plaster when I discovered the leftover paint had dried up and was unusable. I guess I have to go buy new one. It sucks because I hate that colour and what I really wanted to do was paint the whole bedroom white with one purple wall or something like that. Bright and colourful. Not that dull dirty colour. But that would require more time and energy than I have right now.

11.10.2004 (mon)

I couldn't settle down to work easily today. I had too many little things to do and ended up wasting a lot of time getting organised. Not that it wasn't work, but it's not the kind of work that is palpable.
I still have some administrative stuff to take care of tonight or tomorrow morning so it's not over yet. The end of trimester work always takes up a little longer than I'd like.
But I did a couple new pages so it wasn't a complete loss.

In the little breaks I took when I needed to get my thoughts organised I did some furniture rearranging. Yes, I still do that on occasion.
I have some plans to move a cupboard from my office to hubby's office and one from there to here. Mostly because the one that's in my room has stuff I don't need and the other one has all my files and stuff. Plus it's a way to bring the printer into my room so I don't have to keep going back and forth whenever I need to print something, which is often.

I finished work at seven thirty and watched ER. As it was ending hubby arrived and we went shopping after which we watched another Jonathan Creek episode and had dinner.

12.10.2004 (tue)

Another day that felt like it was broken into lots of non-related little bits.
I had to go to the post office to pickup a letter for the company. Seems simple right? The problem is that I never know what they're going to demand so i have to carry almost every single document I can think of plus the company stamp apart from my ID. One of these days they'll ask me for some blood and urine samples, I just know it!
But after presenting a lot of different papers proving that I do actually own at least part of the company they let me have the envelope. This should be an olympic event.

Then I had to adapt some forms from the site to make them print-friendly. Forms with drop-down menus and such don't print well, as you can expect, so I have to do a different version. I only did two pages. It takes forever with the printing tests and everything.

Our intercom hasn't been working for a few days now so I finally called the company that handles the building's maintenance and they sent a guy over. he opened the phone and, like I had already checked, it seemed fine. He then removed the wires to check if it was the button spring that was worn out and then put everything back. When he went downstairs to check the other end it was working again. I hate when that happens. I mean, I'm glad it wasn't anything terribly difficult and expensive, but still...

And because a day isn't finished without some home improvement, I painted the plaster covering the holes on the bedroom wall.

And it's tuesday, which means it's my veg out in front of the tv night. Ah! Free from thought for three whole hours! Lovely.

Well, as it turned out I didn't manage to be a couch potato after all. My in laws came over to say goodbye because they're going on a trip - Venice this time - and then hubby and me ended up cooking dinner and take a little time to talk.

15.10.2004 (fri)

I've had tons of new content delivered these past couple of days and am trying to keep up. I worked non-stop today until quite late and did about 16 really long pages. But no matter how much work you do the clients always manage to wonder why the REST isn't done yet. Some days it's really hard to deal with that. I understand why some companies make it a rule to never deliver anything on time - if you do, clients feel that maybe they can push just a bit more.

16.10.2004 (sat)

I've been stuck in front of the computer for so many hours this week that I got up this morning with tons of energy to do something else for a change.
We've been thinking about buying new bedroom furniture so we went over the the store we've bought our livingroom bookshelves at and checked out some catalogues. We found a bed we liked but had to come home and make some decisions about the rest of the furniture.
I wanted another wardrobe but ended up deciding it's too big and wouldn't look good. And the mattress is also 5 cm too long for the bed size they gave us at the store.
When I was going back, in the afternoon, to remove some more doubts and check out other storage options, Pedro was feeling too tired and started resenting my excess energy so decided to pick a fight. Since I'm also PMSing it worked and we ended up coming back home before even getting to the store.
Sometimes I just wanna slap him. Why is it so hard to just say 'look, I'm really tired and don't feel like doing this right now. Do you mind?' He just can't say anything straight out! I have to go around trying to figure out what he's really thinking and if I miss we end up having an argument. Some days I really hate men.

17.10.2004 (sun)

Today was a bit boring. I was still slightly pissed off about not not solving the whole furniture thing yesterday, plus in a fair amount of neck pain from working too many hours straight last week, so I didn't do anything much. I watched a couple of movies and finished the Runaway game.

At night I finally finished reading Angels & Demons.

18.10.2004 (mon)

I'm starting a really stressful week. Everything has to be done before the 22nd and there's still a lot to do. I avoided the pages that consist entirely of tables and did everything else instead - text pages are done faster and are slightly more interesting. But I'll have to do the other kind tomorrow.
I'm going to need a vacation after this week...

19.10.2004 (tue)

The work today consisted on doing four or five pages entirely made up of price tables - cut and paste of numbers onto cells for a whole day would drive anyone mad.
Around 5PM I rebelled and browsed through some websites for five minutes and then got back to work.
Work went on until 9.30 because this was the day the restricted area was supposed to be up (actually, I was meant to have until friday but the client has been pressing for earlier). My brother had some unexpected hiccups with the code because the stupid IE wouldn't allow the login to work, so he ended up having to do it some other way which meant I had to redo all the links in the protected dir. I could kiss the guy that came up with 'find and replace' - If it wasn't for that I'd still be doing it.

On tuesdays there's all these tv shows I like to watch but for some reason I never get to sit down and watch them. Not that it's terribly important but it seems ironic that whatever is going to happen on a random night in any given week now seems to always fall on tuesdays.