Woohoo! After this horrible sinking feeling because TurboTax was down (and had half the return already stored!), it's done, at least the federal part. They were only down about 15 (really long, painful) minutes. Now the state website is down. *sigh* But I don't care, because I know we're getting a refund (wooOOOOOOOO! It was pretty darn close this year, it's a good thing I voluntarily "overpaid" my taxes at work each week) so if need be, I can get an extension and not worry about paying interest on late payments. And I'm sure the page will be up and running w/in a day! *happy dance*

Taxes. Evil, evil taxes. Enough said. Will say more when I finish them. Except let me add here - I *love* Patriots' Day (no, it has NOTHING to do with those men in tight pants throwing their balls around *ahem*). I know I have 46 hours, instead of 22, to get these darn things done. ;)

I scanned 40+ pictures this evening, pictures of November-January. It was nice to get it all finished up, because it's been looming over my head for a while (at least a month, since I sorted through the photos and picked out the ones I wanted to scan). But now comes the second tedious part (after the fixing and sizing and such each one from the scanner) - uploading them to the site (well, that's the quick non-tedious part thanks to ftp!) and connecting them to the webpage (THAT is the tedious part!). These are the times I wonder if using some sort of HTML editor might be a better idea than hand coding my pages in Notepad. Then I slap myself hard for letting such a thought cross my head. Actually, since most of the pictures are from the trip to Florida, it should be fairly easy. I'm trying to decide exactly how to lay it all out before I begin (rather than deciding halfway through I want it a different way. Oh stop laughing if you know me!). And maybe this time I'll remember to change the title on Rowan's first year page (which I never updated when I combined Rowan's first 6 months and second six months pages into one). It's a little thing, but it bugs me. But I hate rangling with Angelfire for something so dumb. And on that note, I'll share the oh-so-profound words of Trent Reznor coming from my CD drive right now: I wanna know everything; I wanna be everywhere; I wanna fuck everyone in the world; I wanna do something that matters And to think I was complaining not too long ago that I don't have a good philosophy of life! That's what happens when I leave CDs out of rotation for a few years! Tonight's scanning orgy was accompanied by the musical stylings of The Cranes, NIN, and Bauhaus. And they weren't even the cemetery pictures! ;) Oh, and while I'm in true random mode, I convinced Gary to watch But I'm a Cheerleader (damn it - is it italics or quotes for movie titles?) tonight before I stuck the DVD back in the envelope for NetFlix. I intended to start it and leave, but I got drawn in again. Fine little film. He even enjoyed it. I was just sad that the soundtrack isn't available commercially (and especially that the song I most loved from it isn't even available on a different album). Anyhow. I won't complain about the time change, because that's just so overdone it's sad, but it HAS whipped my butt as far as my sleep patterns go. Scroll down to the last entry to get an idea how bad they were beforehand - Sunday I got up around noon and didn't sleep until 6pm Monday night, when I slept until 10:30am this (Tues.) morning, and now it's 2:30am Wed. morning and I'm not a bit tired. *sigh* Alas, I have to work at 5pm tonight, so I guess I can't try that again! AND I have to go to work again on Thursday. To learn how to use the self-scanning registers. I am so not looking forward to this. Why do I have this sinking suspi...um... this stinking instinct that the customers who are insistant on using these suckers will be the least competent to run computerized equipment? I mean, the fact that two self-scanners require one person to babysit them and two assistants to help her during peak hours (yes, three people, two registers - and this is meant to be progress) should say something. Of course, what it says to me is "I want the cushy job of sitting and watching people use the registers!" Watching people HAVE to bag their own groceries (and not stand there waiting for me to do it all while I scan their $200 worth of junk food and ignore their whiney kids) will be its own reward. Or so I try to convince myself to get excited about this idea. Yeah, that'll be me at the meeting on Thursday, "I'm SO glad to meet you [the trainers they ship out from NY to teach us in 3-hour small-group sessions], thank you for bringing devices to torture the customers!" Um - and if you're one of my customers reading this, don't worry, I don't mean you. It's that nasty woman in front of you or that man ignoring his screaming newborn behind you. Really. You're my favorite. *hugs*

What can I say, I'm feeling verbose today. And it's a new month (and I feel like the big fool, since I didn't even realize it was going to be April until last night, it just wasn't computing...anyhow...) so there are many new prompts for me to lean on, like the latest from Random Acts of Journaling: While I was dead tired, I held out against sleep's strong gravitational pull. In some way I couldn't put my finger on, it seemed that there was danger giving in to it. It felt as though I was dangling from a rope, suspended above a dark pit, holding on for dear life. (A Dream of Wolves, Michael C. White, p. 61) Anyone who's gotten email from me sent at 3am would understand why this passage calls out to me. I am a night person by nature, and given the choice of letting my body adjust to its own prefered schedule, I'd go to sleep sometime around dawn and awake around 2 or 3pm. Whenever I have a vacation or a few days in a row off, I end up reverting to this pattern. The problem is my brain still yearns to stay up until 4 or 5am, while my body is crying for more sleep since I do have to get up around 9 in the morning. But I'm my most talkative, most thoughtful, most alive in the wee hours of the day, and to put a lid on that and pack it in and go to bed seems such a waste. Logically, I'll know I'm tired. Logically, I'll know I'm falling asleep at the keyboard or while reading "just one more chapter" or whatever. But that doesn't stop the tendancy to push myself. I fear that if I go to sleep at 10pm and get up at 6am, I'll lose something of that spark that is me. I fear I'll never be able to write anything worth reading in the daylight hours. And I fear getting a tan. So, each night I try to tell myself I'll go to bed by midnight. Midnight comes and I figure 1:30 isn't too bad. The next thing I know it's 3am and I'm starting to feel the pull of my eyelids, or I realize it's 5am and I just had the most incredible burst of energy and oh-my-goodness-where-did-the-past-4-hours-go? Which leaves me dragging and miserable when I have to get up to get Rowan ready for school. I have NO idea how I'll survive next year when she's going to school full days, where she'll have to be ready to leave by 7:30 in the morning. I don't recall the last time I saw 7am from the perspective of waking for it (I've still been awake for it a few times). It's going to be a rough transition, that much I know. Wish us all luck!

Geesh, no sooner did I post that when I got the email confirmation they'd shipped my first three choices. Woo. I still think it's odd that two are listed as "expected to arrive" on April 3rd and one on April 5th. Heh. Guess that's the popular one they're afraid the postal people will stop to watch?

Always read the fine print! Checking out the Netflix stuff some more. It sounds easy enough - you put together a list of movies you want to view and rank them in order of preference, they send you three, you watch them, you return them, you get more. You puay $20/month for this, but it covers the shipping both ways, and you can keep the DVDs as long as you want (of course, that's their hope - the longer you keep it, the less they have to do to get your $20). So I was figuring with watching and mailing each way, it would probably work out to be three DVDs a week, so less than $2 per rental. Not too bad. And I don't plan to stay on much longer than to watch the original queue of DVDs I'm interested in. So, then I found the fine print. My DVDs are all picked out. Everything I want is in stock. Within hours of making the list Sunday night, the first three were listed as "released to ship." Nifty, I thought. They'll be on their way Monday, I thought. So I checked later today (Monday) and they're all still "released to ship." I clicked on the little link about this "released to ship" stuff. Generally we try to ship all orders within 24 hours of their released to ship status. However, the processing of an order (locating the copy, quality inspection, and packaging) can sometimes take up to 2-3 days. We aren't a 24-hour facility and as such, it's not unlikely for an order to be released to ship on one day and actually ship the next. Please note, due to inventory issues, an order can be in the Released to Ship status for up to 5 days. If this occurs, our system will automatically cancel the shipment and add the title with its initial priority back to your Rental Queue. Um. Funny, they don't mention 2-5 days' turn around in their spiel ("send us the DVDs and we'll send out the next ones in your queue right away" is basically what they say). Averaging that, and it's 3 days to just send the things, then 3 days in the mail, then 3 days to return and 1-2 days to watch - that's 10 days a shipment. Sheesh. And this "if it takes more than 5 days it returns to the queue" thing (geez, Gary moved here not vice versa to avoid my having to learn to spell queue), makes me curious - if they return the film to the queue after 5 days, then put something new in the "release to ship" slot, will it take another 2-5 days to get THAT one checked out and ready to go? Oh well. Hopefully the DVDs will be wonderful when they finally show up! :)