ouch

since i know you all want an update on my illness, so here it is. last night i had a fever which kept me up for a few hours shivering like there's no tomorrow. my skin aches a lot. my throat hurts a lot and my nose is all stuffed. and i am semi-nauseated. owwwwwwwwwwwwww, i hurt a lot. :(

owie

i am getting a sinus infection, for the second time in 2 weeks. owie!!!

i sent the letter yesterday. i also sent an email notification. no replies to the email. i now expect 1) no reply to anything or 2) a very late reply, like in a month or two. well, i did what i could.

i had to train in a new guy today. he is in fact the guy i saw being interviewed last week or whenever he was, and he does look like a blond mr. wright. he is married. his brother went to uw-madison and now lives in the cities, and is my age. it was kind of hard to train him, only because he is good at learning. when i trained ipod guy he had a hard time understanding shit. this guy is great. but, i felt bad because i had nothing to do for a while. i had a lot of conversations today about not having enough to do. i also like this guy because he appreciates my humor.

as my manager was introducing me, she said, "elizabeth is not what we'd call a senior member of the team, but she's right on the cusp." uh....huh? what a weird thing to say in front of me and in front of the person i was just about to start teaching. not like i don't appreciate its meaning, but why say it? "she's not exactly the best we have, but here you go, learn a lot!" she did say i was very knowledgeable and helpful, so that was nice.

my damn left sinus really hurts!!!

i haven't been this nervous in a long time

i have the email all ready to send. it's typed out. and it's not even THE letter, it's a notification that i'm sending the letter. but i am feeling as though i may vomit. i am SO nervous. all i have to do is hit send.

 

uuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

i have to do this. i have to. ok, proof it. proofread done.

 

send it.

 

i did it.

 

now i'm going to go vomit for 5 hours straight.

ugh

we are getting two new people this week and my manager asked me to be the "mentor" for one of them. well, when she asked that i said, "oh, i'll have to make sure i have enough work to do, then." she was concerned and said i should be working on my medium/low priority stuff, and i was like, i don't have any. she was kind of shocked. but seriously, literally everything that's in my queue is either stuck waiting for a question or feedback or it's done. she asked if i check for responses every day and i said yes, bec. i do.

 

so i just overheard her talking to her boss about the same thing and she was shocked as well. i almost felt bad. why the hell would i feel bad for that? i almost feel like they don't believe me or that they think i'm doing a crap job. it would be nice if they were like "wow, she's great!" but i don't think they are.

 

i'm just thinking to myself, is something wrong here? am i missing something? NOBODY else has this problem. it's like, do i do more work during the course of a day than most people, so it can't get stretched out over days? i don't think so. do i work INSANELY fast? i guess i must. i do know i work quickly, but i can't imagine that everyone else is that much slower than i am. maybe i figure shit out more quickly. i don't know. whatever it is, it pisses me off. whoever thought i'd be pissed at myself for doing well?

 

this is becoming an issue that's really bothering me, because everyone is talking about how swamped we are, and i'm continually bored out of my mind. and the worst thing of it is that my managers do not get it. there was one day last week where i actually worked for the whole day, and it happened to be the day of our company picnic. so i didn't go, because i had to finish my stuff. and i think that stuck in my managers' minds more than the endless days of not having enough to do. i hesitated when telling them i was busy, because i thought it would make them think i was always busy, and i definitely want to get the point across that i need more friggin' shit to do. which is very backwards.

 

I have to do some cleaning tonight because the apartment people are doing inspections this week. I hope they check my bathroom fan because it hasn't been working right for a long time. 50% of the time it makes this hideous high-pitched screech which scares the hell out of me, and the other 50% it just sounds like a car that can't start. And for those who haven't been there, the fan automatically goes on when the light goes on. I haven't been proactive enough to try to damage it into not working at all, though I think I could. It really is not the most enjoyable feature to have for a light.

 

I finished my letter last night and am pretty happy with it, surprisingly. I'm actually feeling really happy that I will (hopefully) hear from him this week. As I was trying to complete the pile of mind-bendingly torturous information I am going to send, I was remembering what a wonderful person he is, and how the root of the matter is that I'm just sad he's not a part of my life anymore. I am going to implore him to be nice, so hopefully the whole exchange will be somewhat pleasant. I am glad I'm doing this. The letter-writing process was akin to removing each cell from my body one by one and dropping it into a giant vat of acid, so I am glad it's done.

 

YES!!!!!!!! I CAN GO HOME NOW!!!!!!!!!

ARG

this letter is the most difficult thing i have ever written. i must have at least 5 drafts now. and now i'm totally lost. i've lost my mind.

 

i caved and went to target today because i needed a lighter. no, i haven't started smoking, it's a lighter for my candles. and, well, that says it all. i decided to light them all tonight and the lighter i had was alrerady out of fuel. those things run out quickly. but anyway, i got a shirt, two skirts, and a pair of gauchos. i'm not sure if those pants look great on me but, by god, they are comfortable. i was pleased - i needed those things. now i'll be all in style for the trip to madison.

 

BRIGHTON! emily tells me you got 2 pairs of new shoes. and that they are green and red. i nearly had a heart attack when i heard this piece of information. so, i am hereby forcing you to either wear the green pair or the red pair this weekend, or both. i thought it was funny because last time i got new shoes i got a green pair of pumas and a red pair of adidas. my green ones are extremely bright and i always feel somewhat self-conscious when i have them on, especially when i am wearing dark jeans. however, they always get compliments.

 

i am completely in love with my new shoes. just thought i'd mention that. and yes tom, it is funny to imagine them by themselves, especially if they are posing for this mythical camera person. standing on their "tiptoes", etc.

 

back to writing the most frustrating piece of correspondence ever to exist in the universe.

I dislike losing things

I have misplaced two of my Bright Eyes CDs and I REALLY want to listen to them right now. Boo. Does anyone have a copy of "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" that I can borrow? I'm also missing one of my Arcade Fire CDs. I bet they are in Rochester, and that pisses me off.

Shoes

So here is what I got today. I was lucky enough to be able to find a picture of both pairs. I was trying to look for a skirt or some type of shorts and had no luck whatsoever. Bottom line: Kohl's had a TERRIBLE selection today (and that's where I always get my pants). I got both of these pairs of shoes from Marshall Field's (soon to be Macy's). I love that place.

Kangaroos (Emily, aren't you proud?)





















And Kenzies (every single pair they had was stellar - I was v. impressed). The woman who was helping me advised me to take very good care of them and was raving about them. I think she was on a commission because she was almost overly helpful. She talked me into getting a MF credit card, which I am ok with, since I've been shopping there more lately. Now I have 3 credit cards, and I don't use any of them. Thanks, Wells Fargo Debit/Credit! I hear it's supposed to be good for your credit to have them and not use them. Whatever.

Annoying laughter

There is this woman here for the week helping out some other lady in the other dept. and he laugh is so annoying, I feel as though I'd rather stab myself in the eyeballs with two pairs of scissors than listen to it.

uuuuupdate

Imagine "update" said with an umlauted u. Or the sound that is in "shoe" (the oo sound). That is how my coworker Patrick said it one time and now that's the absolute only way I can ever say that word. Even worse, I have to say it in my mind every time I update something, which in our software is like 120,000 times an hour.

Anyway, I slept for 7 or 8 hours yesterday, had a whole bunch of food for dinner, ate a couple of vitamins, had some water, went to bed early...and...nothing. Still feel exactly the same.

????????????

I have "Hips Don't Lie" in my head, which I secretly love (not so secret anymore, I guess). A song I really don't love is "Promiscuous" which I have also had in my head lately.

Sick

I had to come home sick today. I'm getting increasingly worried about myself because I've been feeling sick for a long time, and I've been feeling really bad for about two days.

 

I am wondering if it has to do with my diet. Actually, I pretty much know that. When it's your own body you just know. I didn't have this problem when I was on it before, but a lot of things have changed. I don't really eat very much at all, which could be a problem. I'm worried that it's triggering things that could lead to diabetes (which runs in my family). I don't want to slip into a coma or something. I should probably pay more attention to other stuff like how much fat is in whatever I'm eating, and stuff like that, but I just haven't been.

 

Anyone know what prolonged headaches and nausea could portend? Combined with eating almost nothing? And kool-aid saliva (which has pretty much stopped for the moment)? Ha, ha. I'm going to bed now.

VERY AWESOME

after saying "very awesome" i realized i might be 12. however, i just found this website called mog.com and i'm already in love with it. i saw it on spin.com . i had to write about it the moment i saw it. i think that certain people would love it, including nikki and especially tom peed. but NOT brighton. later.

i have bitten my nails way down

i'm trying to write this damn letter and it's not getting done. i now have like 6 pages of crrrrrap (with a rolled r).

 

here's a confession: a couple weeks ago when i asked about zip codes, it was because i already wrote him a letter, and sent it. i only partially addressed it. it said his name and madison, wi 53706. and it had a stamp on it. no return address. i now sort of hope it doesn't get to him. i think the post office is pretty finicky about things. so maybe it is a dead letter.

 

i did that because i thought it would help get stuff out of my brain. it did, temporarily. my thinking was that fate would decide whether he read it or not. which actually means the post office and you guys, since you voted to put the zip on there. :) "fate is kind...she gives to those who love..."??? i don't know the words. so now you know. and can judge accordingly, since i'm a hopeless idiot.

 

blech. i am so tired of all of this.

 

i talked to brighton tonight and it was nice. we both watched the daily show on mute at the same time. that was hysterical.

 

i have had an extended feeling-crappy time lately. a couple of weeks. tonight i almost fainted. maybe i am a hypochondriac. i don't think so...it's not like i think i have cancer or something. i just genuinely feel shitty.

new office setup

Well, we are indeed changing our office setup in a major way. I am slightly upset by it. Mostly because I really like sitting by Dan and in the new setup he is placed as far away from everyone as possible. I think our manager is doing that because he has a tendency to talk and not do work. He has been getting into a lot of trouble lately because of that. Today he got a couple of lectures from our manager. I have also been "inheriting" a lot of his projects lately. I guess it's good that people trust me enough to get his shit done. It is nice that they think of me for those projects because they have so far been needing to get done really quickly, and that is something I can do.

I am moving into the "Think Tank" which is this separate room in the area. I'll be in there with Christi and Seth. That's going to be strange. Not because I dislike them in any way, but because I don't really talk to them. I guess I will now. Our manager said we could get half walls. Christ....I REALLY want whole walls. I hate the idea of half walls. Maybe I should say something. I think I will. The plus side is that there will be basically no traffic in there.

That's my story. I'm tired and exhausted and feeling like crying for some reason.

interview II

he looked like he was about 29. he was tall and blonde and had glasses. that's about all i saw. i think he is unavailable, though, because i overheard some stuff like "we just bought a house" but i also thought i overheard "i just graduated." we will see, i guess. apparently our office is going to get rearranged. i hope i don't get screwed in that situation.

interview

there is a guy having an interview right now. please god be a young guy. it didn't sound like he was. i am going to accidentally stand up and go over there when he leaves. more update on that later.

yoga

jesus christ. i ordered this yoga tape (actually dvd) from netflix and it was crazy. it didn't even start sitting down. what kind of yoga practice doesn't start sitting down? even worse, it didn't end laying down!!! i am proud of myself because i did almost the entire thing on the first try. it was about 35 minutes. the only thing i didn't do was chair pose, which apparently to this lady is the most important pose ever because it was inserted into the practice at least 20 times. also, i cannot do boat pose and probably will never be able to. the worst part was that it went way too quickly. "do these all in the next 15 seconds!!! lunge! downward dog! plank! cobra! plank! downward dog! forward bend! chair pose! mountain pose! now repeat 7 more times!!! ON EACH SIDE! don't forget to breathe!" it's like those horiffic push-up things they used to make us do in phy ed. oh, i'm sorry, GYM. i also cannot stand this lady, so either i'll have to memorize the stuff or just not do this one anymore. she says things in a horrible accent and she does everything with a way too large grin on her face. "i'm perfect!"

 

and there is my synopsis on the new yoga practice. it pretty much sucked!!! now i have to go force myself to do other stuff.

Well, I found something to do

I'm creating this gigantic spreadsheet that will eventually have 11,400 rows. I've been going through the data (in an XML file) for 3.5 hours now, just sorting it so that it will import into Excel correctly. The reason it's taking so long is just that it takes a long time to go through 11,400 records. At some point I tried doing it in Notepad and it appeared that it would take like 10 minutes...it was taking about 1 second per record, so that wasn't working...I'm now using Word. It goes a lot faster. But I still have to wait an insanely long time. For instance, right now. I hope everyone's happy with this report when it's done.

 

This is one case where I really have to hand it to Word and Excel. I already enjoyed Excel already, but I hated Word. Well, in Word you can Find/Replace anything your mind can imagine. It's incredible. And in Excel, you can just do anything you can imagine. I am very impressed with Excel, and Word impressed me today with its Find/Replace capability. Ok, did I just repeat myself? I don't know.

 

The skin beneath my eyes is extremely irritated and red. This morning I put some lotion on it and it burned for approx. 5 minutes.

 

My mom, in order to fund her trip to TN, borrowed all of my sister's graduation money, a crapload of money from my grandma, my grandpa's credit card, and my uncle's credit card (I think - there were two credit cards involved, at any rate). I cannot believe she took my sister's money. I mean, she makes her pay for everything anyway (she had to buy a lot of the stuff for her own party). And the saddest part is, there is a 90% chance she will never see it again.

 

With every new day comes a new stupid, sad, and tragic thing my mom finds to do. My brain is so worn out from her that I can't even think of anything to say regarding her most recent hijink. So I will just go back to sorting my data.

Strange, strange movie

The most recent movie I watched was titled "Immortal," and it was extremely strange. The strangest part about the entire movie was that it was half animated and half real. Some movies have that, I understand. But this one didn't execute it very well. The animation was Toy Story type, or sort of video game looking, so it was almost like they wanted you to think they were real people. In one case, I swear to god a guy was a real person in one scene and then a video looking guy in another scene.

 

The second weirdest thing was the fact that they used Sigur Rós' "Hjartað Hamast" in the movie. Not once, but twice. About half of the song was used the first time, and almost all of it was used the second time. It was a giant part of the movie, and I don't really remember much other music. That was so weird. It's like that was the only song they could get rights to, so they decided to use it twice. Haha. Of all songs to choose, they choose that one, and use it twice. Not like I don't like the song. It's just a strange choice for a movie.

 

Thirdly, it was just a weird-ass movie. Not as weird as Eraserhead, but a movie will never be as weird as Eraserhead.

Mom incident

My mom planned to go to Tennessee yesterday for some class. She was going to go with Gary. Well, Gary, the creep and asshole that he is, didn't show up. I really hope this will show her that he is an ass, and she will get rid of him.

 

She is using this as an excuse to make my sisters be with her this weekend, even though it is Father's Day.

 

I painted a painting of a lighthouse for my dad. I didn't buy him anything because they are always complaining about how much crap they have now that two households were combined and they had a wedding, where they got even more crap.

 

I am really itchy right now in the area right where the band of my bra is. I hope you enjoyed that information.

 

I have been working on my letter to Tom. It's going to take a lot of work to make it turn out well and to get it to say everything I want and to sound good and send the correct messages. I hope to get it sent next week.

Ideas to curb boredom at work

- Count ceiling tiles (Dan's idea)

- Count dead bugs in the light (Dan's idea again) (there are three - it didn't take long)

- Daydream

- Delete files

- Stop writing this list because it is annoying me

 

I don't think it's possible for a person to be as bored as I am right now. Seriously. There is no feeling that is worse than this. And I think this day has gone by slower than humanly possible. sda;lfj;salkdjf;lksdjfa;klsjdf

ugh

I am bored out of my friggin' skull right now. This is really sucky that I'm so bored all the time. Honestly, I was thinking that later I could clean out some of my files. I've been reading news for about 4 hours. AAAAAARRRGGGGHHH.

Hysterical article

Ok. Pay special attention to the first paragraph. I thought it was hysterical in a horrifying and terrible way. I sent this to Dan and he is now convinced that I am now sick and twisted along with my earlier established evil-ness. He also "forwarded it to the entire office" to show how sick and twisted I am. (It was really only one person, or so he says).

 

BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- A man transporting his wife's severed head in a pickup truck crashed into an oncoming car, killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter, police said. The impact sent the head flying onto the road.

A Boise police officer was driving behind Alofa Time's truck on a busy road when he noticed the man's erratic driving and then watched him slam into the car, police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower said.

Time, 51, who was not injured, told officers he was involved in his wife's death, investigators said.

After searching Time's house in Nampa, police found the decapitated body of 47-year-old Theresa N. Time in a car inside the garage, authorities said. She likely had been dead for several hours, Nampa Police Lt. LeRoy Forsman said.

An autopsy was scheduled next week to determine Theresa Time's cause of death, Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said.

Time was being held on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Samantha Nina Murphy, 36, of Boise, and her daughter Jae Lynne Grimes. Murphy's other daughter was injured and was in stable condition at a Boise hospital.

"It was one of the more horrific and complex crime scenes on memory," Hightower said. "A woman and her child killed in a crash, and a severed head from an earlier homicide: It's nothing short of bizarre and tragic."

so

what can i do tonight to get my mind off things? i'm going insane. ;dlsjf;lja;sdlfj a;sf a

Incredibly bored

Even though I am "swamped" at work, I am still bored out of my mind.

 

And get this: we lost power for two hours today. STILL not enough work to do even after not doing anything for two hours. Wah.

various items of non-interest

that is the infamous post-it that i mentioned a few weeks or months ago, that i made and crumpled up and then dan used it and gave it to another person, who then chastised me for making a bad post-it.




















the electricity went out in some of our cubes yesterday and the fuse box was smoking, so someone put a "don't touch!" sign on it. then someone else put another sign that says "U Can't Touch This! - MC Hammer, © 1990" Hehehe.




















This is my Big Ben statue holding a reminder for me to punch out.
















A funny sign in one section of our office. "We now have a bin to recycle pop cans in the lunchroom. Check it out!" Hehehe.

You guys will be pleased to find out that there is a new person in the cube across from me (which is not part of our department). She is extremely weird and her voice annoys me a lot. She is also partially blind and deaf, so she has all this equipment in her cube. her eyes are weird, they don't look at you. i wonder if anyone thinks that about my eyes ever. And guess what? SHE LISTENS TO HER FUCKING MUSIC AT TOP VOLUME! SHE DOESN'T EVEN USE HEADPHONOES! SHE JUST HAS A RADIO ON ALL DAY!!!

i think i'm going to kill myself. i'm cursed. that's just the bottom line. i am cursed.

i have decided i'm contacting tom. um...what else...my stomach has been killing me today. i'm going to do yoga now.

the sitch

ok, here goes. as you guys probably know, tom was my boss. i knew him for two and a half years. i was deeply in love with him. and then i had to leave my job, and he got a new job at the same time (this was a year ago). i wrote him a letter at the time that explained a little bit about how important he was to me. i didn't say "i love you" or anything, but it must have been more than he was willing to hear. after i left i saw him one more time and i also emailed him i think twice, because i was frantic about what he was thinking. eventually he replied (over a month after i gave it to him) and told me not to contact him anymore. he said it was best to keep our relationship professional.

 

so that's the main reason i haven't contacted him in the first place. because he said not to. that's also the reason i said "force someone else to contact him" - because i am so paranoid about going against what he said.

 

here is what i know i'm thinking at the moment. i still love him very much. i miss him every day. i consider him my soul mate, if there is such a thing. i know that nothing's going to happen between us, because he doesn't want that, and currently i am willing to accept that. i worry about how i'm going to deal with other guys in the future, but i think the time has come where i need to just deal with that and to begin to move forward. it's been a year and i've been so...in pain, i guess, about the whole thing for so long. i have finally realized that i am at a standstill with this and i'm going nowhere doing what i'm currently doing. i am tired of being so hung up on him.

 

what is holding me up from "moving forward" is that i don't know why he told me not to contact him. i mean there are a million possibilities. is it that i freaked him out? is it that he really hates me? is it that i'm not a cool enough person? is it that he thinks i'm stalker-ish (i wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it, although i think i've proved myself well by heeding his wishes for a year). one possibility that brighton came up with that i think is maybe probable is that he felt the same way to a degree, but cared more about me being able to go forward in my post-college life without being attached to him. i think this is actually very probably because during the weeks/months before i left, he talked a lot about that. his number one advice to me was to detach myself from college life as soon as possible. he wanted me to do things differently than he did.

 

i feel like i need to talk to him again mainly because things ended kind of badly. i was really mad at him for a long time. i mean, he was nice enough in the "breakup email" (for lack of a better word) but i was so mad, and i sent a reply back that was semi-mean. so i want to apologize for that. i also want him to know the full truth about how i feel about him, and i want a true answer to the question of why he pushed me away.

 

i don't expect anything to happen from contacting him again. i would hope that he would feel happy from hearing from me again. i don't expect that he'll be like "oh, i love you too."

 

one risk would be that he'd freak out even worse and get a restraining order. ok, he'd never do that. unless i sorely misjudged his character. i know he likes me, but maybe girls liking him totally makes him go bonkers. i don't know. another risk is that he gets mad at me (which, as i am sure some of you know, is my worst nightmare). i don't really care what his answer is to the question. if he says he hates me (which he won't, unless again, i misjudged him and he lied to me as well - he told me many times he liked me). if he says it freaked him out, i would feel bad. but, i don't regret what i did. i'm sure there is a situation that would make me really upset. probably that situation is if his opinion of me totally changed and he thinks i am a psycho. but like i said, i don't expect anything from him anymore. i wouldn't hate it if he was receptive to that, but i don't expect it.

 

doing this isn't a big deal to me as far as confrontation goes. it will be about 100 times easier than giving him the first letter. that sucked. i was so nervous. and the tension between us at that moment was practically so thick it was opaque. and i know both of our minds were running a mile a minute. but neither of us said anything. so i just gave it to him and left. the risk this time is also way diminished. mostly because the worst case scenario already happened. things can really only get better. ok, they could get worse, but i almost don't care if things get worse. at that point i'd be like, "this whole thing is just screwed and i'm done." right now i am so confused that it's much worse for me than having no answer.

 

oh, well actually, a much worse situation is if he refused to answer again, or had a similarly confusing answer in some way. that would probably piss me off. if he said, "i really love you but we cannot be together because we're too different in age" - or something like that - that would really piss me off and confuse me. and by the way, the age issue probably is some consideration for him, and i always saw it as one of the main things that he probably saw as an obstacle. i never thought it was an obstacle myself, but i did think that it was probably one of the main things that kept him from doing something. if that makes sense. i mean, consider if everything else was the same, except we were the same age. i have no doubt we would be married by now. it sucks.

 

so anyway, i hope that all makes sense. and i apologize again for being so weird this week. i may have been pms-ing. who knows. later, dudes.

decree

i hereby apologize for how i have been acting this week. tonight i'll try to do an explanation for the last entry.

 

i found a hilarious thing today that i am going to attempt to take a picture of.

Poll

I am conducting a poll on behalf of my brain. Please respond with the answer you think is best.

 

I need closure re: Tom; what is the best idea?

 

a. Contact him myself and ask him some questions

b. Force someone else to contact him

c. Don't contact him in any way and go insane for the rest of my life

d. Other (please explain)

 

Off to do yoga.

dive right in

everyone like my new blog "template"? that's my photo of the thames at the top. the thing on the right is a part of st. paul's cathedral, which we were standing on. the photo turned out extremely well being desaturated and lightened like that. i love it. i love how the "windows" are pitch black.

 

man. i was really going to write a lot and i just got pissed off, so i'm leaving now. bye.

check this shit out

i was looking through the work requests just now and found this:

 

Please see the proof for order #4711412. There are two lower case letters appearing - the font we use on all Property items for Sotheby's uses large and small capital letters - never lowercase letters... Please check the template and advise. Thanks.

 

i thought to myself, there has to be some reason two random letters would become lower case. like, the combination of the two triggers some thing to happen with the font. like how in word if you have two dashes next to each other they turn into one long one (if you have that functionality turned on).

 

so here's what i found out:

 

'fi' ligature
      Elizabeth Baker At: Jun 12, 2006 19:05:39
The text that is being altered is 'Whitefish Cabin' and the 'fi' is the part that appears to be lower case. If you separate the f and i, they become small caps. I also tried 'find' and it made the 'fi' lower case as well. 

I'm guessing that 'fi' may be a special/reserved character in the font. There is a character that is a 'fi' ligature. Note: it does the same thing for 'fl' which is another special character. I am not sure if it is the template or the font that converts the two letters to a symbol.

Template 20419.
 

man, i'm awesome. there was something similar to that a few weeks ago that i figured out. a product was getting a path added in front of a web address, and i figured out it was because the web address was www.jpgould.com and our system saw the ".jpg" part and thought it was pointing to an image. so it came out as like E:\merrillshop\www.jpgould.com or something like that, whatever the local server address is.

 

i love problem solving computer crap. especially when i can figure it out. people frequently come to me at work and ask me to figure out why something's not working and i usually do. yay, my claim to fame! i can do something right, for once!!!

 

today two people were trying to figure out some issue and i wanted to scream because i knew how to fix it, but they were in another area and i'd feel weird if i just went over and said "i was eavesdropping, but just do this and it will fix it." that happens all the time.

8 hours later

well, you can partially disregard that last entry. you see, one thing that everyone needs to know about me is that i go through extreme mood swings. and when i get in a "bad" one, i tend to write about it. which is another reason why it probably seemed like i was always negative on the cp mb - i was. i'd go there because i needed to write. i don't generally write about the good ones. so, last night was a bad one.

 

i'll still probably write about what my main problem is, and will probably need advice. but it is not as dire as i made it sound. or maybe it is. my dog just started barking and scared the crod out of me.

 

i went to church today and practiced the art of sleeping with my eyes open. there were some funny lighting errors. we also had to sing this particularly horrible praise hymn. i made my dad and sandy laugh by pointing out a guy who is a doppelganger of richard dean anderson (macgyver and jack o'neill on sg-1).

 

on the plus side,a bunch of people told me i looked really pretty yesterday (at my sister's graduation party) and even said i was "a pretty person." wha???? news to me. it is interesting that throughout my entire life nobody has ever told me that until recently. i know that i mentioned in my blog one day when like 3 different people said that to me at work. i think that if your grandmother is going to be talking about grandkids who are pretty, it's courtesy to at least lie to your granddaughter who is sitting right there. that happened many a time in my life. maybe 24 is the magic age where people tell you you are pretty even though you might not be. who knows. that was maybe the most superficial piece of crap i've ever written, but let me ask you this: who doesn't like being told they are pretty or good looking? one of the best compliments i've ever gotten is when emily said that i had similar facial features to gwyneth paltrow. thanks emily - i will take that with me to the grave! comments about physical appearance have a gigantic effect on people, i think, whether they be good or bad. sarah and i talked about this recently. i don't think anyone should ever say anything bad about someone's appearance in front of them. it's difficult sometimes to know what they'll take to heart - like i know i've been offended indirectly by comments, like my grandma saying my sisters were pretty and not me. and i know my sisters feel the same way a lot, if i get mentioned and they don't.

 

oh, get this. suzanne said last night that she overheard a conversation between my grandparents and my mom, where my grandparents were talking about getting a computer for suzanne for graduation. well, my mom began crying and said she didn't have enough money, and besides, "suzanne is not elizabeth" - like she doesn't deserve a computer for some reason. i said to suzanne, "let's just hope that she meant something else, like the fact that you don't spend your entire life on the computer, and they should get you something else." and then i apologized on behalf of anyone who has ever compared me to her, because it's happened a lot ( i.e. the "great job, your GPA is almost as good as elizabeth's was" incident from last summer). but anyway, she is getting a computer, probably from no help from my mom,who hates us and is buying a new house and going on vacation next week to tennessee. and i bought my sister a printer to go with it. and a signed single from her favorite band, and some "dirt" (jonathan antin). and as a joke i am going to give her a sweater i borrowed from her yesterday. ha, ha. we were laughing last night about how my other sister meredith used to re-gift things from around the house. for instance, one time she gave me a clay bird my mom made. and once she made this christmas ornament and distributed it accordingly at christmas, and then gave it to, for instance, my mom on mother's day. that one was funny. merry christmas! happy mother's day!

 

so, now that we've all established in the past 24 hours that i am superficial, emotionally unstable, and satan, I AM SURPRISED YOU STUCK AROUND THIS LONG TO GET TO THE END OF THIS ENTRY!

 

well, gotta go to a "dinner party" my grandmother is having. right now i am rolling my eyes so far back in my head they have rolled completely around in my head. my optic nerve is very flexible. it has been doing yoga as well.

writing in blog

it seems that frequently when i'm writing in here it's pretty negative. i have tried to be as non-negative (aka positive) as possible, mostly because when i used to be on the coldplay message board every time i posted this particular person would always throw me under the bus because i was being negative. that affected me a lot.

 

but anyway, i'm feeling really bad again right now. i think that i might need help from you guys. like, a listening ear. for everything. i tend to hold back some things because i don't want to "bother" people. it goes back to the person who ultimately drove me away from the cp message board. even though that guy was a bit of a shit stirrer, i can't help but think he was just voicing what everyone else thought.

 

so i do need help, and pretty badly sometimes, in the form of people to listen to me, and care about things that are happening to me, and occasionally give me advice. it's way too much torment to try to just live some of these things out. and i know it may seem needy, and if i'm needy, so be it. i need help. i'm not going to go around freaking out if someone doesn't say hello to me, but i do need someone to listen to me.

 

the main problem is that i am too sensitive. i take things so seriously, and sometimes when a person means no harm whatsoever i can be affected for weeks and weeks. i have innumerable incidents i can relate where that happened. someone makes a comment, and for whatever reason it strikes me a certain way and i'm out of my mind for the next month and a half. the space bar does not work well on this computer.

 

so i'm not sure if my views on people are completely off,or if my way of handling people is totally off, or both, or more. whatever it is i'm completely sick of it.

 

the absolute last thing i want to do now is go to church. and guess what i have to do in 8 hours? go to damn church. i hate it. because i am satan and i rule over hell.

in other news

i think i need to change the "template" or whatever for this blog. the pink is getting a little vomit-ish. maybe it got that way long ago for everyone else. i don't know - i don't really look at it that often.

Typical day

Just so everyone knows at the start of this, I am going to be extremely annoying and self-righteous in this entry. I am also going to be whiny, and self-obsessed, and feeling sorry for myself. I just thought I would disclaim that so nobody has any wrong ideas here at the start.

 

I was in a bad mood today, just as I pre-determined last night that I would be. And be quiet Sarah. I know that "you decide how you feel," etc, etc, etc. Well, I decided to be in a bad mood. And I was.

 

I have been feeling really "unloved" lately. I say that in quotes because really it's not quite the right word. I just wish I was someone's #1 favorite person. And nobody better say that I am, because I know it's not true. I know that people like me, but it's just that I wish I was #1 for someone. It seems like everyone always likes everyone else more than me. And I told you I was going to be selfish, so there it is. It's just that that has always been something that I felt was important. And occasionally I realize that wow, I must be just an "average" personality person. I'm surprised at myself that I've been able to uphold a pretty good self-image for a while, as far as thinking I am interesting or unique or likeable. But perhaps I am just not as interesting or unique as I need to be. Or maybe I'm just annoying. I don't know. But whatever it is, it makes me upset. I think most people see me as a generally friendly/nice person and otherwise don't have any strong feelings. I wish I was more memorable. I wish I was a person who people would just die to get to know. And I wish I was a person who was able to keep someone I love, so that just by being myself I'd prevent him from throwing me to the side. I don't know how to be that person, I can only be me. Watching sci-fi, being pissed off, and not checking my website email for three weeks.

 

And just the whole situation with my family...I think it's been bothering me more than I realized. I sometimes laugh about them, but it's extremely stressful to be in my family. No wonder my sister is turning goth. And there's no way you can tell them to stop. They're unstoppable. Unstoppable emotional abusers. It's one of the most tragic situations you can imagine. I was really hurt by my grandmother's email. " Elizabeth, I am very sad when you are in Rochester and do not see or even talk to you." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH! I wish I had never been born.

 

And work has been getting more and more weird. I don't like the route it's taking. This guy that's been bothering me is just allowed to run amok. Nobody tries to rein him in in any way. And I take the brunt of everything.

 

Dan and I were talking a lot today and he mentioned that I have gotten way more vocal and cynical since I started. I think the vocal part is true, but the cynicism part I think is half due to my mood today and half due to the way I act toward Dan. You would probably be weirded out if you saw how I acted at work. I tend to be extremely, well, cynical and sarcastic when around Dan. He forces it out of me. I learned very quickly that I can't make normal jokes around him, because he tears them right down. I have to be on my toes. Around other people I am fairly "normal."

 

I'm a rage-a-holic! I just can't get enough rage-a-hol!

 

I feel really tired of everything. I just can't get over being tired of everything. I can't get over being pissed off at my life. No matter how hard I try I just cannot understand the point of anything.

 

I am so annoyed right now I can't even continue writing. I hate everything! And I am acting so childish! But I don't care.

 

I found two lost items today: my lip gloss from sephora and my entry card for work. I was frantic that I lost it. They were both under the passenger seat in the car.

 

I am so sad.

why are people so aggravating?

i truly believe that god has a vendetta against me lately and is trying to make my life as uncomfortable as possible.

 

this guy at work who made me cry last week is at it again. he already pissed me off at least 3 times this morning and i've only been here for an hour and a half.

 

to top it off, i got an email from my grandmother today yelling at me for not seeing them this weekend. oh, i'm sorry that i was doing something literally the entire time i was there, which was less than 24 hours. i'm sorry my life doesn't revolve around you. yelling at me does not exactly make me feel like running over to see you, either.

 

my family is the king/queen of emotional abuse and trauma. i can't believe i've survived this long and remained basically intact. i do have my problems. but i'm not insane like my mother.

 

something that pissed me off royally was that my mom and grandma were apparently having a discussion one day about how much they hate my apartment. my sister told me that. i was extremely angry. mostly because each time they go there they rave about how great it is. screw off, a-holes.

 

on friday evening, half an hour after my sister graduated, and right before she was going to her senior party, my mom began interrogating her about some money she gave her to buy some storage bins. she yelled at her for buying the wrong bins, and forced her to give all the money back, even though she had bought the bins already, so she had to give her some of her own money. my sister was almost crying. i hated my mom at that moment. and at many other moments. actually, most of my life.

 

rant done. for now.

Silent movies

Weirdly, I saw Mary Reilly and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the same day (today). (they are both about the same story).

 

Anyway, MR is way more recent and stars Julia Roberts, but the other was made in 1920 and stars John Barrymore (Drew's grandfather). I highly enjoyed it. It's a silent movie. It was fascinating. I have decided I love silent movies. I don't find them boring--I just find them very interesting and at times hysterical. It's insane the different things they do. The few I have seen have all used tinting of the film, so that various scenes are colored bright green or orange, or whatever. Also, they do layering of the film or splicing for special effects. In this one, they layered this giant tarantula (supposed to be the "entity" of Mr. Hyde) over the film of Dr. Jekyll, and it was supposed to look like it was crawling on top of him. That was hilarious. Also, when he was changing back and forth, it would just be like one second he was Hyde and the next he was Jekyll. In a way it is better. In MR the way he switched back and forth was that an entire body formed underneath his skin and broke through somehow. It looked really bad. I also love how in silent movies they have to be insanely expressive with their faces, overly so. They flail their bodies around and do dramatic facial expressions, and it's all great. It's also just cool to see something that was made almost 90 years ago. That is INCREDIBLE.

 

I was looking at stuff on imdb about this movie, and people who were in silent movies were generally in like 30 movies a year, it seems. The woman who co-starred in this one was in like 40 movies in her life (or so), and she died at age 24 (a fire on the set). That was sad. Hollywood must have been so interesting back then.

thanks

thanks for all of your helpful answers. in thinking about it later, i sort of realized it may have been a loaded question. but, perhaps deep down i already knew the answer.

 

someday i may tell you the reason i asked: we will see! i just can't talk about it right now.

 

laura: good thing we didn't watch that movie. the scene you worried about wasn't bad, but the whole movie was. it was just sort of boring, and i hated the main character. plus, michael shanks' character was a total and complete asshole and horrible person. it's so weird that he took that role...i wonder why. he only has a few other acting roles besides stargate. to everyone else: don't watch suspicious river. it pretty much sucks.

This makes me want to die.

I pulled this from the Savage Love column.

 

"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon," reports The Washington Post. "[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control… [I]t's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed."

Color me paranoid, but ordering American women to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant" because they may harm a fetus they don't know they're carrying opens the door to prosecuting women who harm their fetuses by failing to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant." How long until "women should… refrain from smoking [and] maintain a healthy body weight" becomes "women must…" Does that sound paranoid? Well, so did a war on contraception once.

Oddly enough, Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention don't urge straight men to regard themselves as existing in a perpetual state of "pre-fatherhood." Smoking, obesity, asthma, and diabetes could seriously hamper a man's ability to do the heavy lifting that comes with fatherhood. But Bush's CDC doesn't seem that interested in regulating the behavior of all those fat, smoking pre-fathers out there.

Life or death situation

Friends,

Please answer this question for me, and use the first answer that pops into your mind.

Zip codes: yes or no?


Thank you.

Wonderful day again

As Pat and Dan always say, I got thrown under the bus again today at work. And this time it was completely not my fault. I'm sick to death of getting blamed for all this shit. It's really tiring in many ways.

 

Dan was mentioning my incident that happened yesterday and said, "I felt like calling up [the guy] and saying 'fuck you'!" Aw, thanks for your protectorial spirit, Dan. He was late today because he had to take his dad to the doctor, and I thought it was extremely funny that while he was waiting for his dad he just randomly went and got a haircut.

 

There is a commercial that uses a weird version of Transatlanticism in the background. It's a commercial for donating organs, I think. I have mixed feelings about it.

 

I hate this "bad day" song.

 

I took a nap from 6:30-11:15 and I am going to bed soon. I am just exhausted from this week.

 

There was another problem with the car. My dad and Sandy drove all the way back yesterday and replaced the alternator and when it turned on it started to go really fast and wouldn't stop. So they had to leave it there. They gave the keys to a garage, who fixed it. So they had to drive back AGAIN and get it. I feel soooo bad. Sandy had to sacrifice two nights and her car, and my dad had to sacrifice three nights.

 

I'm tired of everything. I didn't even realize until this evening that I'm having a really shitty week.

 

I'm going home tomorrow for my sister's graduation.

Statue

Thanks to Sarah, here is a picture of the statue.

Comment away.