The weather this weekend was awesome! I never heard what the highs for each day were, but it had to be in the 70s. It was actually colder in my apartment than it was outside, which was a pleasant surprise. I'll take some more of those!
Despite the nice weekend, and having several planned ectivities, I was also quite drowsy and indulged in several naps along the way. Friday I came home early from work since there wasn't anything to do, with the intention of cleaning the house. Instead, I fell asleep on the couch watching the news. When I go up, Tim and I went to Target and then out to dinner. I thought I would be up late because of the nap, but I wasn't. I think I went to bed around the normal midnight time. On Saturday, I slept in later than I wanted so I was late for the group editor SW meeting. After that, I rushed around cleaning the house because Dylan was coming over. We went to the Red Robin on the waterfront and then to Theatre Sports, which he had never been to before and seemed to enjoy. Afterwards we hung out at my place for awhile, until about 2 am. On Sunday I actually got up in time to go to church! I found a Free Methodist church off of 522 that was nice. The music was boring, aka: too many hymns, but the minister was nice and the congregation was a decent size. Afterwards I met up with the girls and we went to Peggy and Trevors for our bimonthly lunch. Last night I had every intention of beginning to build SLL, but I fell asleep
That's about it.
Nikki on 03.31.03 @ 11:13 AM PST [link]
For the past couple weeks, my computer has been acting strangely. It's been sluggish and loads of popups windows have bogged down the rebooting process. Then, a few nights ago I discovered that the address bar was no longer using the MSN search engine; it was something called ShopNav, which wasn't very robust at all. Perplexed, I looked through the registry for any suspicious variants of the viruses I cleaned off it last week. I saw nothing. So I started to research the problem, typing "ShopNav" into the Yahoo! search engine. First return brought me to a bulletin board-like site where people can ask questions about such problems as I was having. Sure enough, I am not the only one who's suffered at the hands of ShopNav. It seems that my ventures into Grokster downloading, as well as a plethora of other venues, has installed various spyware programs, files, and cookies onto my computer. This site had a scanner for it that found about 10. From the string, I found a link to another scanner, which was helpful because it found things in my registry. After a third program, I was finally able to rid my computer of all the crap, or at least the majority, which was wreaking the most havoc. What's amazing to me, although everyone else probably knew this and didn't tell me, today I did another scan (because I am still battling the errant popups) and found more even though I haven't downloaded anything! Geez! Anyway, I was happy that I figured out and resolved the problem myself. It always makes me happy and less like a computer-impaired geek wannabe. :) The computer seems healed now, and that makes me happy, too, especially since I have to start working on Seattle Live Literature tomorrow.
I bought a new writing journal this weekend; hopefully, that will be the catalyst I need to get some writing accomplished. I've been so wrapped up in production work, between work, Sll, and the measly blog updates here, that I haven't had much time to devote to "my first love." It's a struggle: I feel like I need to spend a lot of time "practicing" HTML, JavaScript, etc. because, my theory is, ultimately it could lead me to an improved job prospect. And, I enjoy it. But, I am a writer. I can't neglect that. So again, I return to my age old admonition to myself that I should spend less time watching tv and checking e-mail and utilize the time that I do have. Sure, I spend more time commuting now, and lately I've been working a lot of overtime, and I've been pretty diligent about working out after work (with the exception of the past two weeks because of overtime): all things that eat up time that I used to have available. But still, soon work will calm down (perhaps I will be unemployed again?) and I will get back into my schedule. I have plenty of time when I get home at night, usually, to write, if I would just not even turn the tv on.
Hopefully, the approaching warm weather will help, too. I always feel more creative when it's sunny. I just opened the writing journal that I bought when I really began to dedicate myself to writing again and I looked at the date and tomorrow is the second year anniversary! The first writing exercise that I did from Room to Write by Bonnie Goldberg was called "I remember." The direction was simply to list, with as much or as little detail, all the significant things I remember. Here are a few that I wrote:
I remember when writing was easy.
I remember when my report cards in elementary school always said, "Nikki talks too much."
I remember wanting to go see E.T. so badly that when Mom said no (because she didn't want to see it) I threw the only temper tantrum that, she says, I'd ever thrown (I was 8 years old). When I went (She paid my uncle to take me.) I was so scared by the extra terrestial, that I sat backwards in the theatre seat for the rest of the movie.
I remember how good it felt when Jacob liked me. He was the first boy to show/admit that he liked me, in a positive way at least. We met at the daycare center I volunteered at, which was next door to his house, and I actually saw him do a double take. I even remember what I was wearing and how I was wearing my hair. I was 15 years old.
(No, Marie, not your husband.)
As many of you know, I work in a lab. It's not a lab like the old PRS lab; this one has windows and no vault, but I still have to use my card key to get in. There are about seven of us that work in here; most of the others are, as far as I can tell, testers of some sort, working on a variety of projects. They don't really pay much attnetion to me, and I reciprocate, happy to be left alone in my little MSDN world of deleting pages. But sometimes, I am not left alone in my happy world.
"Andrew. ANDREW. ANDREW," calls one of the nameless workers who sits behind me. He's talking to, well, to Andrew. I think they work on the same project together. However, they have chosen, for whatever reason, to sit on opposite ends of the lab. Andrew sits by the windows and the other guy by the door. This guy constantly needs to get Andrew's attention, and it's extremely annoying. He can't get up from his freaking chair and walk over to Andrew's workstation? He can't use MSN Instant Messenger? No. Instead he has to jar me from my solitude. Constantly. And God forbid that Andrew should want to wear headphones to listen to music, or the news, or maybe just to tune this guy out, because that doesn't stop him. He just keeps repeating Andrew's name like it is his favorite word. It's driving me insane.
I know, I know, it's such a small thing. How could I be so intolerant?? But, I just want quiet at work. Quiet. It doesn't bother me when others converse, or even not to much when all their Pocket PCs that they are testing continually go off. No. But I cannot take this chanting. I think that's why I drink so much soda here. It's driving me to drink.
I heard back yesterday that I wasn't chosen for an interview loop for the last position that I had an informational for. I am disappointed, but more than that I am just frustrated. Two groups now have said that I don't have enough experience, and that's fine, but I wish that I knew what they wanted. I have my own site as well as working on SLL. I know- I've only been doing this for a little over a year. I asked a producer I work with in my group as well as my recruiter and no one gives me any answers, basically just that when the timing is right, it will happen. That doesn't satisfy me; I want to be a little more proactive that that. But there is so much...XML? ASP? Design? Where do I start? My recruiter said there's nothing I can really "learn" persay, that mostly it's on the job training. But if no one will give me a job, then what can I do? GRR!
Work has been very busy, thus the lack of blogging lately. In fact, I need to get back to work now.
It was a fairly busy weekend. On Friday night, Tim and I went to Best Buy: I was looking for a replacement stereo and he was looking for a fax machine. I also looked at laptops. :) Neither of us were successful. Then we ate at Olive Garden, which was very yummy, especially since I was starving!
On Saturday, Patrick and I went and saw Daredevil. I can only suggest that you see this on video if you feel you must. It wasn't a horrible movie; but it wasn't a great movie. Ben Affleck was having serious hair issues. Daredevil is a very different kind of superhero. He kills a lot of people, which I was surprised by. Spider-man didn't kill anyone. Afterwards, we sat in his hot tub, which was so nice after my muscles being so sore from working out this week. I'm going to have to do that more often.
Yesterday, my stereo appeared to have spontaneously healed itself. It works now! Strange. But, I am glad to not fork out a bunch of money for a replacement. However, I decided to clean my computer keyboard because it was disgusting looking. Afterwards, the letter "k" no longer worked. So, KI had to go out and buy a replacement for that! Luckily, keyboards don't cost that much. :)
My mom is in the hospital. This weekend she collapsed and laid on her bedroom floor all night before finally getting to her bedroom phone and calling her neighbor, who then called 911. Because she was having an MS attack, her legs just wouldn't hold her. So, they admitted her to the hospital for her steroid treatment. Usually she does that at home, but this time they kept her. She told me that she collapsed like that one other time a long time ago...which was the first that I had heard about it. I guess this is one of the drawbacks to being 2000 miles away from home.
Today is my third anniversary of working at Microsoft. I can't believe it's been so long! I remember those good ole Encarta days! I remember being astounded by how quiet it was. Since I had just left a daycare job, anything in comparison would have seemed so. Even when I think of how little I knew about computers then compared to now...wow. How dumb was I? :) But, it's been a great three years (for those of you that are jaded...be quiet!) and I hope there are many.
I think I will either pass on working out tonight or just do a light workout. Man, I am sore!
Who is going to come clean my house? It's a disaster area. I thought Mika would take care of it, but alas, she hasn't yet.
Why is it that when I wake up in the mornings, it's all sunny and then I get to work and it's gloomy? Is it an Eastside phenomenon that I wasn't aware of until I moved to Seattle? (Tim, no comments from you about urban sprawl and such! :) )
Maybe more later. I am too sore to think.
Last night began my regime of returning to working out. I was on that damn treadmill for 45 minutes! I ran really only 30 minutes of it, since 15 was warming up and taking a break and such, but still, a new high for me. By that time, I was too tired to even stretch out, so I just went home. The plan is to start in on weight training, too. Maybe tonight.
I got my taxes done last night and I will get back a little more than last year. Someone must've lowered taxes. Good news is that I can deduct student loan interest forever now. It used to be that you could only do that for five years. That was a pleasant surprise. So, in a couple weeks, my checking account is going to look pretty darn healthy, until I realized it and then start paying bills. :) It'll be nice to lower my debt, though. Maybe this year I'll be able to afford the laptop I so desperately desire.
Does anyone know how to fix a stereo? All of a sudden mine has decided not to recognize CDs. It acts as though there are none in there, even when it's full. Everything else works fine: radio, cassette player. It's only two years old, but of course, isn't under waranttee anymore. It's easy enough to replace it with another cheap one from Best Buy, but then, what do I do with this one? Seems silly to throw it away, and I'm not even sure that I'm allowed to throw electronics into the garbage! So, perhaps I will list it on Craigslist, along with the microwave that I don't need anymore. And maybe my old printer. Surely there's someone out there that would like to fiddle with them and, upon fixing them in five minutes, smile triumphantly at the bargain they got from the girl who has no idea she just got taken for a ride. Surely someone wants to take advantage of me (like that). I'd rather just have the stereo fixed, though, but if it's more expensive to fix than to replace...
This week was a bit stressful since I worked a lot of hours trying to make up for those I wasn't here and the vacation hours I had didn't cover. I've caught up on the backlog of work, though, so I feel better. My apartment is a disaster area because of it, but hopefully I will catch up on that this week. This week starts my journey back to my original schedule. Work. Work out. Eat right. Clean house. Socialize. Tomorrow night I get my taxes done, so it will be a little off than the usual, but still.
Dylan and I had a good time last night. We ate at a Greek restaurant in Fremont, Costas Opa. I was a bit overwhelmed with all the unfamiliar food, so I stuck with what I did know: Ceasar salad with chicken. Not too exciting, but he did get me to try a Greek drink called ozo, which tastes like black liccorice. It certainly isn't a drink to gulp or even do more than carefully sip, but spread throughout the course of a meal and discourse, it was good.
I think that I have found a replacement for my beloved black sweater. Mom bought me one for Christmas, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. It's good, but not like the old one. Yesterday I went to Ross and found one that is much closer. It may even be better! And in Ross style, it was cheap, which always pleases me.
Seattle Live Literature is going to be a little late this month, because of the timing of my vacation. Wendy is working on some of the pages, which is a great help to me. I feel like a slacker, but between work being crazy and then the Internet not working quite right at home lately, I haven't been very productive with anything.