Will the wordpress time madness never end? Apparently all my posts have been an hour off since daylight savings time quit. Or started. Or whatever. I’ve gotten 3 hours of sleep, I can’t be bothered with thinking through which way it actually works. In fact, I’m very tired and I think I will go back to sleep now.

p.s. I think I fixed the clock issue though.

p.p.s. No, I didn’t. According to my posting page, the timestamp is going to read “January 25, 2006 @ 08:35″ when I click “SAVE”. Let’s see.

p.p.p.s. Wordpress, you really chap my hide! I guess there is a patch to fix this known problem but I don’t know how to use it and I don’t have time to figure it out. I’m going to sleep!

I had a bunch of flowers from some source… don’t know if I bought them or somebody else did. I guess they were in a vase for a long time; I don’t really remember, but I do remember looking at them briefly.

After awhile they all died and made a huge mess on the floor. Maybe they got knocked over or maybe the flower petals just all fell off. At any rate, I filled two large paper grocery sacks with all the flower remains. Lots of (what is the middle of the flower called? The stamen and pistin? the reproductive parts.) … lots of those everwhere, but in their entirety…. kind of like the middle of a sunflower just laying around. Except not the middle of a sunflower… the middle of lots of other flowers. And then tons of petals. White, dark purple, dark pink, dark red…

I noticed that some of the remains were very delicate and in fact had little plastic squares holding them up (have you ever bought shoes with delicate decorations, maybe bows, that have plastic around the decorations to keep them from getting smushed in the box? that’s what these stamens had all around them, to protect them).

By the time I realized how the stamens (I have no idea if this is the correct term… T?) were being so carefully protected, I had already thrown away most of the flowers. But I pulled out the white roses I knew these particular pieces came from and i arranged it all together again.

When i was done, i had a half a white rose that had never bloomed, and these 3 perfect little middle parts. the rose looked basically like it was chopped in half, or more like it had never had another half.

When I looked closer, i realized that the rose was fake. I figured that must explain why it didn’t really bloom. I really like fully blooming roses and was bummed that this one never did that.

Well, Phase I of the manual project has been completed. Yes, you heard me, PHASE ONE.

APPARENTLY i am still holding myself to standards that are MUCH TOO HIGH to allow me to function in the real world.

See, silly me thought that I should present my BEST WORK for this project. Silly me thought that it was impossible to skimp on quality.

So, I went into the office at 8:30 this morning (hello, Sausage, Egg and Cheese McMuffins! with Hash Browns!) and crammed away on the impossible task of finishing the remaining 23 sections that had not yet been completed.

When the guy with whom I am helping this project came by to check on me, I explained that I was still working on it. This didn’t seem to phase him as much as I thought it should. Certainly not as much as it phased me.

Apparently he was also still working on some sections he had undertaken.

We go into our meeting (wherein we are to present said manual to end-customer) approximately three hours later than we had originally scheduled. I hastily threw together some haphazard concotion that made it look as though I had done more work than I actually had.

During the meeting, I am getting ready to come clean and show the client the sections he should focus on because those were the ones that were actually FINISHED, when he comments on how impressed he is with the amount of PROGRESS we’ve made.

He says that there was no way in hell he’d expected a finished project (I was heading down the path of apology for not having one) and that this was a work in progress for the ENTIRE YEAR of TWO THOUSAND SIX.

Might have been nice if someone had told me this beforehand!! Then maybe I wouldn’t feel like such a LOSER for taking 62 hours to finish 23% of this project.

I’m telling you guys: high standards are fruitless! Pointless and painful!

JUST SETTLE!

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p.s. is anyone else missing vertical scrollbars on their Firefox 1.5??

So, I have 1 hour and 41 minutes to complete 25 sections of this farking manual that I’ve been working on. It has taken approximately 12 hours per section to complete the two sections I have fully finished.

Somehow, I don’t think this is going to work out.

But, I am supposed to be in the office at 8:30am in order to print out the final product! Hip hip hooray!

I have severly slacked on all my responsibilities since the start of 2006. I have paid no bills yet this month, I avoid phone calls like the plague and occasionally I commit the reprehensible crime of no-call/no-shows to appointments. Some of which involve PAYCHECKS. I can’t seem to get my ass in gear. I don’t really understand why, either. I’m not depressed, I’m not unhappy with myself, it’s certainly not for lack of things to do. I just have no motivation. Is it possible that my new meds are causing this? I wonder if they are repressing my OCD to the point of disaster in the opposite direction.

So, you may have noticed that I haven’t updated the secret garden lately. This is because, well, quite frankly, I have lost all interest in boys. The ones I meet are too time-consuming and ultimately add nothing to my life that I cannot get elsewhere.

Last night I agreed to spend some time hanging out today with this guy I know. I’m not attracted to him in the least, but he is quite funny and intelligent enough that I am not internally rolling my eyes at everything he says.

But as soon as I said, “Sure, that sounds like fun,” to his proposition of hanging out today, I panicked. WHY DID I SAY OKAY? I went home at night and fretted (?) over agreeing to spend time with him. I have TOO MUCH STUFF TO DO TODAY. And the PRESSURE of getting to know someone new? Too much. Sorry. Not in the mood.

So why did I say okay in the first place? I thought it would be a good idea to actually, you know, be social. Except, I don’t like to be social. I would much rather sit at home and work on the three-inch-thick Emergency Response Manual for a local hospital that I need to have rewritten by Friday. AND YES I AM SERIOUS.

I would rather do that than spend time hanging out with someone. What is wrong with me?

Anyway, the time he was supposed to call came and went, and I can’t tell you how relieved I was. He called just now, three hours late, and left a message (I didn’t answer) saying that he overslept and he was gonna cancel on today’s hanging-out.

YES! What a reprieve. I am going to go work on my syncing strategy between my new laptop and my desktop now.

Why is it that when I spend two-hundred dollars on (mostly) good, fresh, healthy food, I am compelled to eat pieces of bread with peanut butter and honey? Every day? To the virtual exclusion of all the other food?

Let me know, please.

Remember to pay my rent.

I just had leftover pizza, cookies* and Dr. Pepper for breakfast.

___
*The Best Damn Cookies In The World (and I MADE THEM).

By the way, today is the 12th day of christmas. I always keep track. Not that it’s difficult since, um, it always lands on January 5th.

When I was younger I would try to keep a present to open for each of the twelve days. Now since I don’t get any presents, I just wait for my second christmas. That’s when my sister and I finally send each other our “christmas” presents. It usually happens sometime in February.

I guess I’ll take down the tree and the lights tomorrow! It makes me sad. I love the feeling of festivity in my home right now.

So! I normally don’t make resolutions, or maybe I do and I just like to say that I don’t so to avoid the feeling of failure at the end of the year. Luckily, I can’t remember which is the case, so at least there’s no aura of failure hanging about me!

But! This year! I have a resolution!

I resolve to not be so much of a perfectionist!

Yes, it really is a resolution. I am kind of a pathological perfectionist, in the sense that it severely interferes with my ability to be productive in any area of my life. The doctors even said so.

Thus, I resolve to adopt the mindset that whatever task I undertake, I only have to accomplish the level of “good enough” and not the level of “absoutely the best it can be with no chance of anyone criticizing it”.

Expect to see many more typos and nonsensical run-on sentences in this blog! I will try with all my might to not go back edit any of my posts from now on. Not for grammatical and aesthetic reasons, at least. If I need to change CONTENT, it’s okay. Because I said so. Also, I am not allowed to spend any more than 5 minutes on proofreading and alterations after I have finished writing a post and before I have posted it.

This should free up much more time in my life so that I can accomplish all the other things I should be doing with my time. Also, if I am successful, it will free up a lot of space in my brain as well! However, I don’t really expect to be able to lose the feeling of angst when things are not perfect. I just would like to be able to suppress it enough to move on.

(maybe I will also try to curtail my use of exclamation marks!)

Dudes, I’ve been working on my Shakira moves and all I can say is that there are muscles in my back I did not know existed. I am going to be sore for days. Apparently writhing around like a snake is harder than it looks, despite my extensive dance experience with body undulations.

Luckily I already have ROCK HARD ABS so that part isn’t a problem for me. But my back! Ow! Shakira, go away! Don’t let the guys know that we can move that way! Because then we HAVE to do it, because, well, if you can move like that, you BETTER BE DOING IT. Even if it means your back muscles will hurt like a sonofabitch for days.

Well, I just finished opening and filing all my bills from June, 2005 onwards. Luckily, I even paid most of them!

So my brand new present to myself is a SUPER DUPER LAPTOP. But don’t tell anybody because I really can’t afford it. I’m excited about it, but slightly reserved pending the receipt of my next credit card bill.

Oh! I had an awesome birthday, by the way. It was just a good all-around day. I actually felt SPECIAL! It’s been years since I had a really definitively good birthday. Usually it’s just like, eh-whatever. Or else it’s really horrible, but I’ll not recount those episodes. (Except for, remember LAST YEAR when my CAR WAS BROKEN INTO on my birthday? And all my karaoke books were stolen? And then I had to spend $145 and every single hour of my birthday day re-making the books? Because I had to work that night and needed the books. But then I had a nice party at work, so it turned out okay. Remember that?)

Anyway. Roomie was so cute and gave me my present soon after midnight — she was super-excited because she was the first one to wish me happy birthday. I got invited to the movies, but declined because I would have felt too pressed for time the rest of the day. Was taken to the mall and received super sexy spiffy gift… Got some supplies for the house at the dollar store, heh heh… Then had dinner, Cold Stone, and danced the rest of the night at local bar hangout.

Dinner was a pretty huge success. I invited a bunch of friends to eat at Buca di Beppo’s. All eleven people showed up! Can you imagine? I was so happy that they all made it. This is definitely the first time I’ve ever planned an event where attendance rates relied solely on the particpants’ relationship to ME. Uh, did that make sense? What I mean is, usually if I invite people to something, it’s an event put on by MORE than just me. And usually the guest list is heavily dependent on the other person’s (or people’s) invitations. And if my people don’t show up, I don’t feel too bad, because chances are some of THEIR people didn’t show up either. Got it?

Anyway, it’s also the first time I really felt like I knew enough people to have a big group that I actually wanted to hang out with. And, it’s pretty much the first time I took charge of my birthday. Usually, I guess I sort of wait for somebody else to offer to do something nice for me on my birthday, and then nobody does, and then I feel vaguely dissatisfied. Not overtly, because I didn’t even realize that until this year.

So the moral of the story is, TAKE CHARGE! You’ll be happy you did.

Recap of cool booty received this xmas/birthday:

• foot spa massager
• 2 dozen roses (oh, i should take a picture, huh?)
• vicki’s secret gift certifcate
• multiple starbucks gift certificates (in theory this is cool, but i don’t drink coffee so um… i guess i’ll buy stuff for other people. i can only spend so much on tea that’s way too expensive, even if it is fake money)
• $325 pair of Charles David boots that are SUPAH SEXY (i guess i’ll have to take a picture of these too, since i just spent ONE WHOLE HOUR looking them up online, to no avail)

Well, I got lots of other stuff but really the best part is that I just had a happy holiday season. And dinner was pretty much the highlight of my birthday.