Category: Daily Life

Obviously I was way too optimistic last week when I foretold a return to my usual blogging schedule.  That’s what a 50-hour work week will do to you:  get you all geared up into work mode and then take away all your extra time.

This week promises to be just as hectic, but mainly on the home front.  We spent the weekend laboring mightily to get our house into shape for company.  It’s coming along, but I’ll still need to spend every evening at it until our party this Saturday.

Some weekend highlights:

• I pulled the 30-year-old carpeting off our basement stairs.  It was beyond icky and even though I had a bandanna tied over my face, I’ve had allergy symptoms ever since.  Let me tell you, it’s not easy yanking out nailed-down carpet from hardwood steps (and a claw hammer doesn’t help as much as you’d think).
• My husband disconnected the spaghetti of cords connecting our home entertainment components, cleaned each cable and reorganized them tidily.  I cleaned the floor, baseboards and blinds that had been inaccessible since the last cleaning (don’t ask how long ago that was).
• I scrubbed my bathroom ceiling in preparation for painting it tonight.  I also cleaned the linoleum floor with a soft-bristled scrub brush and a dish sponge. 

That’s not even half of it, especially when you take into account the outdoor work I did and all the errands I had to run.  Oh, and I also managed to write the lyrics to another song and present it at a lengthy band practice yesterday.

It’s really quite satisfying to go to bed head-to-toe exhausted and sleep hard into the next morning.  Getting up isn’t quite so easy, but sore muscles can be stretched.  Now I just hope the weather stays nice one more week.

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And speaking of labor…

Congratulations to Cagey on the birth of her son yesterday!

Man, this has been a busy week!  It’s not getting any better now, but I’m up early enough this morning that I figured I could check in.

I can tell I’m suffering from Blog Madness because just as I was waking up, I had a brief dream fragment that my last post had 66 comments that had to be comment spam.  I was very indignant and determined to log in and delete them all.

The next few weeks are going to be a blur of activity:

• I still need to take care of my pre-party to-do list.
• The list has to be re-prioritized because my sister-in-law is coming to visit with her one-year-old starting sometime next week.
• My company has six strict project deadlines between Friday and Monday, so there’s a strong chance I’ll be putting in some time at the office this weekend.
• My co-workers and I will be moving to a new office in the next few weeks (and taking on new projects even sooner).
• I need to write the lyrics to a minimum of two of my band’s original songs or face their wrath.
• I must write several articles for my community service organization’s newsletter and e-mail them to the editor by the end of the week.

There’s probably more, but continuing the list is sapping my will to live.  Actually, that’s an exaggeration; so far I’m holding up rather well.  Yesterday evening after I led my service club’s board meeting because the president was sick, I went to dinner with friends and got a chance to wind down a bit.  In retrospect, I think three glasses of red wine before dinner was not a particularly good idea, but I woke up with my shoulders relaxed for the first time in two weeks, so it still paid off.

That’s enough rambling from me.  This post signals my return to my usual Monday-Friday posting schedule.  See you tomorrow!

You may have noticed I didn’t post yesterday.  I’m so swamped with work right now that I know there’s no way I’ll have a chance to write anything even remotely thoughtful in the next couple of days, so I’m going to take an official blogging break until Thursday morning.

This all started the last time I had my hair cut.  Once upon a time I used to get my hair colored at the salon, but there’s no way I can afford that now, so I do it myself at home. 

My husband goes to the same hair stylist, and after my last haircut, she told him that she thought I should go for a lighter brown color with highlights, instead of the reddish color to which my current shade tends to fade.

Well, obviously I’m not going to try to highlight my own hair, but I figured it sounded like advice worth taking into consideration.  The next time I bought hair color, I chose a shade lighter than usual that was supposed to be "light golden brown."  I figured that "golden" should outweigh the whole "reddish" thing.  Boy, was I wrong.

My hair turned out light auburn – redder on the crown of my head than on the long part of my hair.  It was not at all what I had in mind, but I lived with it for a couple of weeks out of a combination of laziness and a reluctance to overprocess my already frizz-prone hair.

Earlier this week, overcaffeinated at about 9:00 p.m. after a visit to a coffeehouse to see a friend and his wife do a reading from a screenplay they’d written, I decided to run by the drugstore on my way home and choose a new color.  I also needed to choose a different brand because my usual kind wasn’t covering any gray, which meant my most recent color was exacerbated by a "strawberry roan" effect.

I picked a brown shade that looked like the color I’d had before I started foolishly switching around.  What did I end up with?  Dark auburn with almost a purplish cast – still redder on top than on the sides, but at least covering the gray.  Now, I’m no stranger to hair colors not found in nature.  In the early ’90s I went for a color called "burgundy" for a while, so I can live with weird colors when I choose to…if I do it on purpose.  The good news is that this color is quite shiny, so at least the frizz factor has been nicely minimized.

I’m certainly not planning on coloring my hair again until the roots grow out a bit.  I think it’s been put through quite enough already.  I’ll just have to own the dramatic color as though I’d meant to have my hair that way.  That is, if anyone even notices.

As usual, I’m pressed for time today, but here are a couple of things that may entertain you:

• By now everyone has probably seen this reedited trailer for "The Shining," but since it’s the most amusing thing I’ve seen all week, I figured I’d post it anyway.
• The 100Bloggers project is back in another incarnation here.  I’ve done one post so far.  I had to make a faux Average Jane blog on Blogger to be able to participate, but I don’t really mind since it’ll allow me to comment on some Blogger blogs I read that are closed to non-Blogger comments.

More tomorrow…have a lovely day!

On Saturday afternoon, I took my husband’s Jeep Grand Cherokee to Jiffy Lube for an oil change.  They were just about to close, but they didn’t hesitate to wave me in.  They did a quick oil change, didn’t pressure me too much to do extra services (and even offered to work with me on the prices if I changed my mind), and got me out the door in less than 15 minutes.

All seemed well until the next day.  I got home from the movies and noticed a trail of oil leading from the street all the way to a puddle of oil beneath the Jeep.  My husband had only driven to the computer store and back, but by the time he made it back home, the "low oil" light was on.

As soon as they opened at 7:00 a.m. on Monday, I called Jiffy Lube and told them what was happening.  They suggested I drive the Jeep over, but once I checked the oil level and found the dipstick completely clean, I called back and said I wasn’t comfortable driving it.

Here’s where the customer service portion of this story kicks into high gear.  The guy on the phone got my address and said he’d be right over.  Sure enough, he arrived in about 15 minutes.  I raised the hood of the Jeep so he could have a look and he immediately said, "Just as I suspected, we cracked the oil pressure sender while we were replacing the oil filter."

While I fished the receipt out of the glove box, he made a note of the vehicle’s engine size and said he’d be back with the part and some oil within the hour, apologizing for the inconvenience.  I was so surprised not to have to argue about the whole situation that I didn’t even mind that it was going to make me a little late for work.

He must have returned while I was fixing my hair because he had already replaced the part and topped off the oil before I noticed he was back.  By then, my husband was up and around, so I let him take over, but not before I heard the Jiffy Lube guy apologize again for our inconvenience and offer to degrease the Jeep’s engine and bring over some degreasing solution for our driveway.

I know it shouldn’t be a huge shock when a company takes full responsibility for one of its mistakes and makes amends, but it is.  I’m so used to the idea that a customer has to fight for satisfaction in a situation like this that I hardly knew how to act when everything was handled so satisfactorily.

So, hooray for Jiffy Lube!  Sure, they have at least one careless guy on staff who needs to learn to take it easy with the oil filter wrench, but they clearly have a solid plan in place in case of trouble.  As another Jane would say, "What’s not to like about that?"

I’ve had quite a hectic week and I actually forgot to do a blog entry this morning.  I don’t have an awful lot to say even now, but I’m all hopped up on Red Bull at 10:30 p.m., so I figured it was as good a time as any to just start writing something.

Biggest news flash of the day:  my company has been acquired by a much larger company as of this afternoon.  I’ve been see-sawing between enthusiasm and trepidation ever since I heard this was going to happen, but now that it’s a done deal, I’m feeling calmer.  I think it will end up being a good thing and open up some new opportunities for me.

I’m still fiendishly overscheduling my free time.  Today I made a run to a party store to get paper plates, napkins, cups and plastic utensils for TWO parties tomorrow, one of which I cannot even attend.  The other is Cagey’s baby shower, for which I still need to purchase a gift and probably some other stuff that didn’t cling to my mental shopping list firmly enough.  Oh, and I still need to buy a bottle of wine for a book club gathering tomorrow night.  (Yes, I have read the book.)

I’m not completely unprepared for the shower:  I made a lovely cheesecake the other night.  It should be nicely cured by tomorrow afternoon.  I bought some fresh strawberries as a garnish, but I’m prepared with a can of cherry pie filling in case they end up being too far out of season.

Tonight, I’m babysitting my niece (age 5) and nephew (age 7 months).  The baby went to sleep right at 8 p.m. and my niece finally took a bath at 9 and turned in by about 9:30 once I’d read a pretty darned lengthy version of "Jack and the Beanstalk."  There’s nothing like a tale of cannibalism, theft and murder right before bed, I always say.

On a mostly unrelated subject, November is National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo), and I’m thinking of participating this year.  I don’t necessarily have a story in mind, but it would benefit me to establish the discipline to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  I have a children’s book idea I could run with, but it might be best if I started with something else instead.  I don’t know – I have a month to think about it, I suppose.

Well, that’s all the over-caffeinated rambling you can stand, I’m sure.  Back Monday with my report on "The Corpse Bride" (which I saw last night) and "Serenity" (which I’m determined to see on Sunday).

Now that we’ve sent out the invitations for our annual party on October 22nd, the countdown has begun for readying the house and grounds.  It’s amazing how much work it takes to slap our relatively small house into shape.

Here are the things that absolutely must be done:

• Clean up our office/studio area.  My desk is covered in foot-high stacks of paper, some of which have migrated to the floor around the desk.  The studio is really not that bad, except for the 6-foot long table piled with junk that we established as a temporary place to put stuff while we were cleaning the last time (early this spring, I believe).
• Dredge out our guest room.  We only have two bathrooms and one of them is only accessible through our former guest room, now junk room.  My husband has been filling the room with giant, empty cardboard boxes.  I’ve been dumping piles of mail in there for months instead of shredding them.  Eventually we may find the stratum containing the air mattress that we really should empty and put away when it’s not in use.  Then we’ll have won.
• Clean the windows.  At the very least, I need to clean the insides of all our windows.  There’s something about being able to look outside that really makes a positive impression on guests.  If I’m really feeling gung-ho (read: not a chance in hell), I’ll take down the storm windows and clean them, too.
• Weed the flower beds.  While I’m at it, I think I’ll dig up the rose bush that went feral.  I’m tired of it reaching out and snagging me when I walk by.
• Tidy up the deck.  The furniture is filthy, there are sticks and leaves all over the place, and we’re going to have to clear everything off to set up the band.
• Clean and paint the main bathroom ceiling.  I always say I’m going to do this before we have a lot of people over, and this time I need to actually do it.  "Disgraceful" really doesn’t cover it.

Aside from all that, it wouldn’t hurt for me to tidy the kitchen counters and living room surfaces.  I need to do a massive cleanout of my dressing room, but I can always close that one door during the party, if necessary.  However, our goal is to be able to leave all of our interior doors open and not look like we’re hiding portions of the house, for once.

Tell me again why I plan these parties?

I’ve always been bad about learning people’s names, but lately it seems I’m getting worse.  Major case in point:  my new band.  They all know each other so well and we practice in such a small room that it’s seldom that anyone ever addresses anyone else by name.  Therefore, it took me weeks to finally be certain of which name went with which guy – and there are only three of them! 

My husband is worse than I am.  He’ll run into musicians he’s played with and have no idea who they are.  Then he doesn’t introduce me, which I think seems rude.  I keep telling him he should say, "…and this is my wife."

Then I can say, "Hi, I’m Jane," prompting the person to say, "Hi Jane, I’m Whatever-my-name-is."  Then we’d all know! 

My mom was also bad with names, but she’d just greet everyone whose name she didn’t know with, "Hey babe, how are you?" 

I don’t think I could pull that off.  In fact, I fear it’s staggeringly obvious when I don’t know someone’s name.  Years ago, after I’d already met Cagey on several occasions, she came to my house to play Bunko and I completely blanked on her name right in front of her.  Luckily, she’s a forgiving sort.

I consider it a major triumph that I’ve managed to quickly learn the names of all of my newer co-workers.  Of course, it’s a small company so that helps a lot.  Come to think of it, now that we have a creative director whose name starts with the same letter as mine, everyone keeps calling me by her name.  I guess I’m not the only person with this problem!

I’ll start by mentioning that my red eye has healed completely now.  It looked pretty horrible there for a while, but my main regret was that it didn’t happen at Halloween so I could at least pull off a superior zombie costume.  C’est la vie.

My latest eye problem has nothing to do with how they look and everything about how they feel.  When I last visited my eye doctor, he told me, "You get a new kind of contact lens this time – Acuvue Advance.  They let more oxygen in.  They’re better than your old lenses, but they didn’t make them for your prescription until now."

My vision is 20/800, which means that when I’m not wearing my glasses, I can’t read at all because my nose touches the page before the words come into focus.  With such a strong prescription, it’s not really a surprise that I get all the cool, new stuff last.  I’d been just fine with Acuvue 2 for quite some time, but I’m not one to question the new and improved.

The new contacts were noticeably slimy compared to what I’m used to.  They felt okay in my eyes at first and I didn’t think much about them for a couple of days.  Then, they WENT BAD.  Remember the scene in "Evil Dead 2" where Bruce Campbell’s hand goes bad and he has to cut it off with a chainsaw?  Well, the contacts got so uncomfortable that I had a desperate need to rip them out of my eyes.  If an eyeball happened to come out in the process, I’d have considered it an acceptable loss under the circumstances.

The contacts were sneaky.  They felt fine in the morning and for a while into the afternoon.  By late afternoon, though, they would start to feel kind of dry.  By evening, they felt like they were self-marinating in capsaicin.  My vision was so blurry that I was afraid I was going to wreck my car driving anywhere after dark. 

In case the problem was allergies, I decided to give the first pair the whole two-week wearing period.  They didn’t last that long.  Two days short of the day I would ordinarily put in a new pair, the original pair came out of the case looking kind of squashed and feeling wrong in my eyes no matter which way I turned them.  Grrr.

I called my eye doctor’s office and told them how much I haaated my new contacts.  They were properly apologetic and offered to trade me back for my usual ones.  I have a feeling they won’t be recommending them so enthusiastically for long.  It didn’t take much research to find that I’m not the only person who’s less than thrilled with them.

I’m just relieved that my old contact lenses haven’t been discontinued.  Then what would I do?