Losing It

In about a week we get to go on vacation, which is good, because my stress level with work is driving me into brief bouts of hysteria. I manage to keep it together while I’m in the office but once out of it, and no longer actively progressing towards my goal of several finished projects in the next week, I get a little squirrelly.
Last night, as TM looked at me with concern I shouted “What? WHAT? I’m in my own home! I get to be eccentric!”
Later on the couch, I accidentally launched a spoonful of ice cream at my neck so fast it was like a tranquilizer dart. The shock of the icy projectile hitting me, then sliding from my neck down the front of my shirt caused me to start choking -- at which point I started laughing so hard my cheeks were wet, cradling the melting ice cream missile in my hand after rescuing it from following it’s path any further.
I thought TM might collapse boneless into the sofa and be lost among the cushions, he was so helpless with mirth.
Once I had recovered myself, and cleaned up the ice cream tracks, I settled back down on the couch and asked: “Do you like me even though I’m a freak?”
To which he replied: “I like you because you’re a freak. You’re my freak.”

Five simple guidelines for entering amateur photo contests

Having recently gained some small experience of amateur photo contest entries I offer the following rules of thumb.

First of all: Let’s define amateur, shall we? Amateur means you can’t be getting paid to take professional photos, in any way shape or form, even if they are of someone’s gaudy wedding dress.
Second of all: Focus. If your photos aren’t in it, they aren’t in the contest either.
Third of all: Everyone and his brother can take huge close up shots of flowers. Get over it.
Fourth of all: Your baby’s naked ass. To you: the cutest thing ever. To everyone else: totally inappropriate.
Fifth of all: Your family vacation photos: not interesting to anyone not belonging to your family.

How to win friends and influence people

All you need is the following joke:

What do you call cheese that isn't yours?

NACHO CHEESE!

I just sent an all staff email with that joke in it, and am now the toast of the office. I am completely serious.

Behold the Un-Miraculous

Unless I figure out some way to produce the utter BOG of work required from me in the next three weeks through a miracle of modern hyper-brain magnetics (woah!) I may have to regrettably suspend my daily posting for a little while. I will still be writing whenever I can drag a minute out of a given day. I'm actually working on one at the mo, but I started it on Monday and haven't been able to drag ANYTHING yet in order to finish it. Wild horses, seriously.
I'm going to stop now before the sense becomes non.

The ball is falling.

You know those periods in which everything that is immaculately planned to go a certain way just completely collapses? All those little straightforward things – that you don’t even think about when they go the way you assume they will – can suddenly become the most complicated processes ever.

It’s like this:

You have a football field right? And say this field represents one week. Well the field is covered in people, standing in positions at random, but, say, no closer to each other than about 5 feet. These people – they’re all holding really big, REALLY bouncy balls. And then you have yourself holding your ball, standing at one end.

Now all you have to do is get from one end of the football field to the other – all the way through the one week – without touching anyone else’s ball, or dropping your own. And this is fine, as long as everybody standing in the field just holds on to their own ball.

But then there’s this: the fundamental rule of the universe that if one person drops the ball, every other ball will be dropped as well. The force of one ball dropping draws all other balls to be dropped too. Because balls, you see, they like to bounce.

So all it takes is that one ball to drop, for all the other balls to start bouncing around you. And then how do you win the game? With all those other balls dropping and bouncing all around you, it’s all you can do to hold on to your own ball, curl around it, and pray to come out of this thing alive.

Okay, a bit dramatic, I admit, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this week STARTED in the nicest possible way – in part because we knew this would be a week for ball-dropping – but I didn’t realize the extent of the ball-dropping that would occur. Didn’t realize that it would extend beyond my immediate environment into the world outside.

I ask you: how difficult is it to order one pair of contact lenses? Not twelve, not six, not ten, just one. And then what kind of person then tries to blame ME the CUSTOMER for the mistake, adding that there may be a fee? A fee? Um, nope, I don’t think so.

That was just what I needed.

My mental place of inner peace and calm is going to get such a workout before next Friday it won’t know what hit it. Do you know how hard it is to walk around convincing yourself constantly that it doesn’t matter, that, in fact, nothing you are doing right now really matters, and that in 10 years you won’t even remember it happened? Considering the truth of those convictions, it’s pretty f***ing hard.

Full Disclosure

Busy today!
Here's a nifty thing I heard on the radio today -- of special interest to my dad. This goes BEYOND googling someone before you date them:

Scientist posts his own genome on the web.