Category: Miscellany

I’ll never be your beast of burden

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You may soon have a dream of beating up the person you were five years ago. This would be a good omen. It means you’re ready to wean yourself completely from a stale old self-image. If you dream of feeding caviar and champagne to a donkey, it’s also a positive sign. It means you’re beginning to recognize that the hard-working beast in you needs to be treated more luxuriously. And if you dream of yelling at a bunch of kids to go clean up their messy bedrooms, Leo, that’s an auspicious portent as well. It signifies your readiness to discipline the irresponsible habits and organize the unruly impulses of your inner child.

I try not to post my horoscopes too often, but this one amused me enough, and I wanted to analyze it a little. Beating myself up, eh? Well, okay. As long as it means I’m not just changing my self-image, but I’m also actually changing, too. I am still trying to better myself, strengthen myself, learn to trust again, and (more importantly) learn to trust properly. That would be better than who I was about 5 years ago, if I can keep changing in those areas. But sorry inner beast of burden, you’ll have to deal without caviar. You know you’re allergic to anything fish/seafood related. But how about I dream of feeding you Godiva chocolates instead? Or even better – how about delicious New York Strip steaks and salads? Mmmm. Poor inner child. She’s been through a rough time lately. We’ve been doing a lot of cleaning. But organization? I’m not sure if we’re ready for that one yet. We’ll see.

For some reason, it seems that the LJ feed of my journal hasn’t updated in over a week. I poked around some yesterday, and found a thread from a girl who had a similar problem a few months back. I tried the things that she did to fix it – we’ll see if that does anything for me. At least I know that the feed validates as RSS now. It did before, but there were 2 warnings that shouldn’t have affected anything, but knowing LJ they probably did. 😉 haha. Hopefully this fixes it, though. If not, I know what post was the last one it read. I’ll temp mark the next post as a draft until LJ takes the rest of the feed, see if maybe that doesn’t work – if maybe there’s something wrong with that individual post. Which wouldn’t surprise me either.

I need to call my doctor’s office and see if they’ve heard anything on my MRI, since they’ve suddenly become incapable of calling me since my last visit. I need to schedule my follow up appointment, anyway, since that wasn’t done when I was in there before. When I go in again, I can check to see if I’ve lost any weight, and I can also coordinate my home scale with the one at the doctor’s office so I know the results are accurate. I feel like I’ve lost weight, and the scale has moved backwards some so this is good. Finally. Whee! I also need to find and get an appt with another doctor – but I won’t go into the details of that one here since it’s a little too personal. (Appt made.)

I want to completely reconstruct another site I maintain. A few weeks ago, I spent a few hours while I was teaching myself some CSS, writing an index page all in one file. After I had it looking exactly how I wanted, then I went back and split it up into the appropriate CSS, header, and footer files. I learn better that way, seeing it all in one file at first, working how it should, being able to tweak things in one place before breaking it down into the proper components so it can run the entire site. The only problem… the site that I want to rebuild now is a blog. I am just barely learning CSS, and know minimal amounts of PHP. Trying to throw in all the right stuff I need to make a blog work? Yeah. I don’t think I’m ready for that. But if anyone wants to take pity on me and help… haha. Just be warned it probably won’t be an easy ordeal. And I should still probably make a generic layout of the site first, to show how I want it to end up, even though it won’t work at all in WordPress. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. This stuff confuses me. :-$

I’m spending most of the work day today writing procedural manuals. Oh joy! But seriously, if they help out and make it easier for someone else to do my job while I’m on vacation, I guess I can do it. It just would have been nice if the manuals were already written. I had to be trained one-on-one and take notes, the old fashioned way. So did most of the people in this position before me. I will still train my co-worker one-on-one, but at least she’ll have a manual to refer to when she gets confused, instead of sitting there trying to figure out what she meant in the notes she took?

There was more that I was going to ramble about today, I think. But it seems that my tongue is swollen in one small part, but that is starting to spread. So I think I need to go google that to see what on earth could be going on. O.o I don’t think it’s an allergic reaction, because I haven’t eaten or drank anything different. In fact, since I’m bringing Slim Fast to work, it’s exactly the same thing I’ve had for lunch for the last 3 weeks.

Never even got one second glance

MRI/headaches: I should hear back today, hopefully, about my MRI appt date. There were some issues that’ve been fixed since, so there shouldn’t be any more hold up on getting that scheduled. I was doing okay for a while, only mild baby headaches every day. But the past few days, I’ve had bigger ones threatening. Not quite migraine level, but ones that are bad enough to be annoying as all hell.

Room: I bought new curtains. It’s amusing how much more “grown up” new curtains can make you feel. Granted, that’s likely because I was still a kid when I bought the old ones – and these are just beautiful. I found the curtains on JCPenney’s website, but oddly – the colors I bought are not listed. Since my room is going to be a sandy color, with reddish accents, I decided I wanted the curtains in the red as well, to help break up all the lightness. So, I went with the Kyoto panels in Red. They’re a truer red than the Claret shown on the site, and also slightly sheerer. Also, the images on the site depict the curtains hung by clips. They do have rod pockets as well, and that’s how I have them hung.

I’m not a fan of the scarf-type valances, so I opted for a different brand/style when it came to that. I went with the ascot valances of the Midnight Mist collection in Antique. Again, the color I bought isn’t shown on the site. Antique is somewhere between the Celadon and Natural colors they show online. Currently I have 5 of those valances and 3 Kyoto panels. I need to buy another panel, but I’ve got to wait until I get my pet sitting money first. 😉 I was going to take pictures of how it looks so far, but I kind of misplaced the cord to get the pictures off my camera. Oops.

Tuesday, I took one each of the valances and panels to Home Depot with me to color match them. That was how I discovered I’d accidentally bought 1 panel in claret, and the other 2 in red. That got exchanged yesterday to red, so now they’re all the same color. The color that came up as a match for the valance was Winter Garden. Amusingly, that’s the color I’d already 90% decided on using for the trim in my room (it was one of the colors in the paint kit I got last month.) While I was at it, I also bought a quart of the Seaside Sand paint to test out on my walls. I was highly disappointed in it. You could barely tell the difference between the Sand and the white primer. I know there’s always a variance between what shows on the paint sample and the actual color – but the paint on the wall isn’t even remotely close to the sample in terms of color depth. Oh well. Back to the drawing board while I try to find another paint. I still have to cover the rest of the walls in the primer anyway, so I’ve got a little time before I’m ready for the final color.

I’ve been doing a little shopping online for new curtain hardware and I found these curtain tie backs & matching curtain rod. Think I might just have to save up and buy those. Haha. I find it a little amusing, I’m not really a fan of the gold, but I’m really starting to like it as an accent in my room.

Diet: I’ve decided to start on a proper diet. I had just been “eating less” but that wasn’t working. Saturday I ran out of the last of my caffeine-free Pepsi. I had bought a Sam’s card the day before, so we went and bought a case of bottled water. So now I have officially completely given up soda, for the second time. Haha. But switching from soda to water will cut out a large number of empty calories, plus it’s better in me so many other ways. On Monday, I started drinking SlimFast shakes for breakfast and lunch, and a granola bar for lunch. I haven’t worked too hard yet on figuring out a “proper” dinner menu. Right now I’m just trying to clear out the rest of what’s in the pantry, then when it comes time to restock; better choices will be made there. Not to mention, I’m also struggling at the moment to make sure I’m getting at least the minimum number of calories recommended per day. So some nights I’ve been scrambling to find something else to eat to make sure I’ve had enough. That’s not something I’m used to. Haha. :-$

I’m also going to buy a mini fridge for my office here at work (the public ones are disgusting), and that will let me save some money by bringing my own water and SlimFast, as well as some fruit to snack on. I think in the end, my diet will be some kind of combo of SlimFast and South Beach. I’m not going to completely eliminate carbs, but I do eat too many of them, so I need to scale that back and make sure I get more protein. (I also need to pay close attention to my cholesterol, too.) I’ve been tracking all my food over at Fitday.com this week while I’m just starting out. I haven’t been on a scale since last week at the doctor’s office. I’m not going to yet, either. First I want to get my diet plan organized and properly underway. I’m supposed to go back to the doc in a month for med follow-up, and they’ll do my weight again then. That’s when I’ll start weighing myself at home on a regular basis.

100 Facts: Coming later. 😉 Haha. And yes, I do have one for today. As long as I can get it typed up before the oppressing heat gets to me. :-$

I could’ve sworn there was going to be something else to this entry… but I guess I was wrong. Oh well. If I remember it, I’ll write it up later.

ETA: Oh yes! I’ve got a music meme I’m supposed to be doing! Oops. :-$ That’s what the other thing is! I’ll have to get to that later, after I do today’s fact.