If I knew then...

Watching an old Saturday Night Live episode intro, with Steve Martin hosting from the early 90's. I actually remember seeing this episode the first time around and the opening was pretty funny. Tonight, it's sort of twinged with this sadness, seeing Phil Hartman always makes me sad, and there was a line about Chris Farley going out after the show and getting totally trashed. . . And knowing how both died not too long after all this, it's just hard to watch. But it was more than just celebrity death sadness, it's this whole feeling of how meaningless little comments thrown around at one point can later come back and be utterly haunting. How many things we joke about or take no notice of until it's too late. Wow, this is sounding morbid, but it's something I keep turning over and over in my head lately for no apparent reason, which is, I think, what makes it all the more troubling for me. So, Rowan had a rocking good time watching Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers tonight. I put a little more detail on the Flickr pictures and am now too wiped out to recount, oops. But suffice it to say, she was on cloud 9, but as soon as we walked out the door, not two minutes later, was talking about how now she can't wait for Christmas. ARG! The child is never happy in the moment, that's for sure. I'm truly steps away from taking and donating all of her toys since she doesn't seem to GET the concept of appreciating what she has just for having it. *sigh* Tired, only moderately coherent. Some days I really struggle over whether to even hit the "publish" button.

Stupid Blank Box

AGAIN! Again I'm sitting here and my mind has gone blank. But I'm trying to enjoy a little calm before the storm of Christmas totally sweeps me away. I can't believe it's two weeks from today; that's impossible to come to terms with. Never mind that there are only 3 weeks left of this year. I can't remember if there was anything I wanted to accomplish this year that I haven't (heck, I don't remember if there was anything I wanted to accomplish, period). I just went back to check last year's entries, and I didn't write a single one in December and the one in January didn't really focus on it, so I'll assume I set no goals for myself. So, yay, I met each goal I set. ;-) Er, or I failed at them all, I suppose. I'm not surprised; I've never been a big new year's resolutions type. First, I'm much too realistic - what are the chances of someone keeping one of those things beyond March at the latest?? And secondly, because if I want to make a big change, I figure I should just jump in and work toward it where I am, not wait for some predetermined date. Of course, the flip side of that is that I usually don't decide to make big changes because, again, I'm a realist. So, Rowan had a 2 hour school delay yesterday morning instead of another snow day. It was all because of ice, though, and it really was much worse this week than last, but they hate to cancel twice in two weeks (and always panic during the first storm). Walking home from the bus stop was a challenge to say the least - while the streets are plowed and sanded and salted well enough by the city, the sidewalks are the responsibility of the homeowners, and as such, end up untreated for hours or days in many cases. I have been walking down to meet her at the bus stop (she normally walks home with another older girl who lives further up the road than us and is enjoying that little bit of independence) just to make sure she doesn't slide into the road. That thought just panics me. Then tomorrow is a half day when they're dismissed before lunchtime. Yep, like I said, tough schedule. I'm hoping there aren't any immunizations at a 10 year physical, then I'll never hear the end of how horrible her life is. (Ah, yes, the drama. I made her change out of her school uniform before heading to Girl Scouts this afternoon and she about had a breakdown because she couldn't decide what to wear and didn't like anything she had. WTF? Then I suggested a long sleeve shirt of sweater and you'd think I'd have suggested she wear a diaper and onesie. She was just beside herself to have to change. Then 5 minutes later she was bouncy and perky. Oy.) Gah, is there anything more annoying than newscasters trying to banter about things like "w00t" being added to the dictionary? Oh, right, Google Reader is more annoying. If you pay attention to the columns on the sides of my entries, you may have noticed on the left there are three little boxes that come via Google Reader, the bottom one being songs I enjoyed on Pandora (the Internet Radio station - if you've never tried it, you may want to consider it, I've found plenty of new music based on my preferences that I probably wouldn't have heard otherwise). But Google Reader only picks up about 1 out of every 3 songs I bookmark. I thought I was going crazy at first, but I finally subscribed in both Bloglines and Google Reader; Bloglines gets every song, Google Reader still fails miserably. The problem is I can't get a handy little cute widget on the side there through Bloglines. So, bear in mind for each song up there, there are plenty more you're not getting to see because Google Reader is failing me. Which is sad, since it's the only Google branded thing I haven't had smashing success with. What's funny is that's the only feed it has problems with; I compared all my feeds with Bloglines, and they all come through fine except the Pandora one. *shrug* The guinea pigs are being... active. They're chasing each other and bouncing and rumblestrutting all over the place (and sending tons of bedding all over the place). So far, no teeth chattering (or bloodshed) so I think they're just playing, but yikes. Go to sleep, guinea pigs, it's late! So far I'm still keeping up with the 365 Days project (although I'm realizing it's going to be a 366 Days project, since we have a leap year coming). Today's photo was easily the most fun to take, though it actually is one of my least favorites photographically. Oh well, it's only 0.2% of the year's worth of photos; they can't all be winners! Well, not sure if I'll post again before 2008 - I'm sure I'll mean to plenty of times, but whether I'll actually do it... don't hold your breath. Maybe I'll get a chance to look back on what I have accomplished this year and what I hope for the year ahead so NEXT year I can look back on something!

Staring at this blank box

I keep thinking I have things to say, then when I go to actually type, it all goes away. I dumped Adobe Reader today (formerly known as Adobe Acrobat, in case you missed that update). It was fine for years, then the last upgrade was the straw that broke the camels back. The sucker was taking 85-90% of my CPU capacity if I scrolled where there were pictures. Considering I have to read several online newspapers each week that come in PDF format, that was just not acceptable. So, after searching to see if there was some sort of fix, I gave up and tentatively downloaded Foxit and haven't looked back. About 10 minutes later, I removed Adobe Reader from my computer and haven't missed it. And, ya know, Adobe, should I ever actually WANT to send my files to FedEx Kinko's, I think I'll manage on my own, thank you. I've been working on a project over at Flickr, "365 Days." The concept is to take a self portrait every day for a year. It sounded so easy when I started, or, at least doable. I had thought about it on and off for months after seeing lots of great photos from people participating, but always figured I'd never be able to bring myself to do it. Well, I took the plunge starting the day after Thanksgiving and am up to day 12 today (if you're curious, you can click here to see the set). It's funny how hard it is to take a photo of myself that I'm satisfied with and upload it. Besides not liking many photos of myself, I am amid some *really* talented people in this group! It's so hard to do anything that hasn't been done over and over before or even to do something old well. But I'm persisting because not long ago, I was noticing that to look at our photos, you'd have little reason to believe I existed. Now I just look like an egomaniac. Zach, Zach, he's a Lego maniac. Yes, advertising is an insidious and evil thing. Rowan had her first snow day of the year yesterday. It wasn't very snowy, really, but there was a lot of freezing rain so school was canceled. She had a half day last Wednesday and will have another one next Wednesday (when she gets to go to the doctor for her annual check up - I figure if the school is going to waste all these half days, I'll at least get some use out of them!), and snow day yesterday. Not to mention Thanksgiving the week before last. And the week after next is the last week before the holiday break, so not only do they have a half day that last Friday, but no doubt they'll not get a lot done at least half of that week. And the week before Thanksgiving they had Monday off for Veterans' Day. So that's 6 weeks straight of no full weeks, then a week and a half of vacation, half a week of school, and then *finally* two full weeks of school (assuming no snow) before the next shortened week. Tough schedule, eh? Ah, well, nothing really exciting has been going on, so I guess I'll stop now. Then when I'm laying in bed tonight, I'm sure I'll think of the million things I wanted to mention now!