It just isn't Halloween without the Glassdog Halloween Mix!

You can tell the other Glassdog geeks of the world by this mix. If you cry out "Hail Satan!" and someone answers, "What have you done to his eyes!? Guy's eyes are normal!", you've found another member of the secret geek grew of Lance fans.

Of course, you also run the risk that the people who don't read Glassdog will think you're an crazy satanist.

But then, don't they already think you're a little... off?

Yeah, yeah. I know. I was going to write a nice update about the drunken weekend with my friends, but I was side-tracked by a little popularity contest that's going on at the moment.

Warning - this may ruin any image of me as an intelligent decision-maker.

Someone please tell me why I wanted to grow up to be a writer?

I coulda been a banker. Bankers never have deadlines. They just... bank.

I coulda been a carpenter. Carpenters never have "builder's block".

But nooo. I had to be a writer.

I blame Madeline L'Engle. I wrote her a fan letter when I was 10. She sent back a handwritten note encouraging me to be a writer and to reach for my dreams.

She could have at least included a bit on how to deal with writer's block.

I'm taking this as a sign that someone wants me to get offline already.

This is what happens when I get bored and start playing around. I can't figure out why the model image looks so squishy though. Hrmph.

Geek Moment Alert!

The project I'm currently working on is requiring a small amount of somewhat monotonous art manipulation. Basically, I capture in image, cut out portions of it, transfer those portions to neutral backgrounds, and crop and save them as transparent images. The images are, for the most part, icon sized. Maybe 30x30 pixels tops.

So I grabbed one of these images earlier and opened up Paint Shop Pro. I zoomed in, masked what I wanted, copied it, and clicked hit Control-N to open a new, neutral background image.

300x300. 72dpi. 24-bit color. (I like a little space to work in when I crop and save.)

"OK."

Not enough memory to complete the operation. Please close one or more documents and try again.

Hmm. Alright. I had my usual five Word documents, a browser, and Outlook open. I suppose that could be sucking up a little space. I shut them all down.

Control-N for the new image.

Not enough memory to complete the operation. Please close one or more documents and try again.

Odd. Well, I know there are problems with Windows 98 and memory. I'll reboot.

...

Rebooting complete. No programs open. Start up Paint Shop Pro. Control-N.

Not enough memory to complete the operation. Please close one or more documents and try again.

Arrrgh!

So I started going through my startup items. A cut here, a cut there. One of the computer support guys walked past in the hall and I yanked him into my office to look at my autoexec.bat file. He snipped. He tucked. He admonished me for running Seti@home. He pointed out that I had 130 megs of RAM and 5 gigs free on my hard drive, so it wasn't a swap file problem. He left. I rebooted.

...

Reboot. Start Paint Shop Pro. Control-N.

Not enough memory to complete the operation. Please close one or more documents and try again.

This was insane! It couldn't be happening! I started looking for hidden cameras over my shoulder. I stared at the "New Image" dialogue box.

72dpi. Right.

24-bit color. Right.

300x300. Right.

Memory required for operation. 1334.5 megabytes.

Huh?

And then I noticed.

Next to the 300x300.

"Inches."

The Sex and the City Personality Test.

If I'm Carrie (Sara Jessica Parker), does that mean I get her husband (Matthew Broderick) too?

Just checking.

Number of Emails Waiting: 78

Number of Hours Left Til My First Deadline: 92

Length of the Giant Rusty Spike Driving Into My Skull: At least 10 inches

Color of Giant Rusty Spike Driving Into My Skull: Unknown (read: invisible)

Name of Giant Rusty Spike Driving Into My Skull: Ted. (If it was going to stick around all day, it needed a name.)

Amount of Fun I Had During Chick Weekend 2000: Massive, huge! Big! Ovewhelming! Monstrous!

Details will follow - but it's unlikely I'll have time to write anything up til after November 3rd. But it'll be good. How can five drunken thirtysomething women, a cat, and a Ford Aspire not amount to loads of humorous moments? Uh-huh. Yeah. Bear with me. You'll hear the stories (or at least some of them).

And thus did begin - Chick Weekend 2000!

My oldest and dearest friends start arriving tomorrow for a weekend in which we will drink too much, smoke too much, and revel enough to get us through another eight months without seeing each other.

The bar is stocked, the house is cleaned, and I'm ready to revel!

(To see the results of our last revel, check out my writeup.)

We'll return to our regularly scheduled crunching and stressing Susan next week.

Woo!

[crunch break]

Deep breaths. Quick spin through surf land. Check the stock quotes. Check the news. Check the friendly neighborhood blogs.

Grab more Diet Dr. Pepper.

Unplug headphones, close office door, and crank speakers. (Officemate has gone home.) It's 80's retro night in Susan's office!

Light candle.

Feet back up on desk.

Keyboard on lap.

Tie a rope to my ankle, boys - I'm going back in!

[/crunch break]

A quick breath before diving back in to crunch.

It's yet another grey and chilly day in a string of drizzly days lately. The sort of day I'd like to spend in a bookstore. Actually, one specific bookstore.

Prairie Lights was my first experience with independent bookstores. The town I grew up in had B. Daltons and Waldenbooks... and that was it. And then I grew up and went to college, and Prairie Lights was the doorway into an amazing new world filled with books on topics that never occured to me. I could spend hours on end wandering back and forth over the cool blue carpet, reading handwritten notes thumb-tacked to the shelves by the staff members I envied so. (And it's odd, isn't it? I've loved books since the day I learned to read, and yet I've never worked in a bookstore...) I can still run my gaze over my bookshelves and pick out the books that came from Prairie Lights. There's something special about them. They're different.

Today would be a nice day to curl up in Prairie Lights.

Because a geek girl never forgets her first bookstore.

Crunch Break:

4 hours to go in my day.

I'm so sexy right now. You have no idea.

Every 10 minutes, I reach into the Mt. Rushmore of paper on my desk, grab a handful of paper seemingly at random, stare at it for a moment, stare back at my monitor, and then shout, "Damnit!" and throw the paper back at the pile.

Every 20 minutes, I let lose a "aaarrrhhhoooooork! hork! hork! huleghah!" because the barking seal hasn't been exorcised from my lungs yet.

Every 30 minutes, I flip to another document window, realize I've forgotten something vitally important, and shout, "Shit!"

Every 45 minutes, I flip to the original document window, realize not only have I forgotten something, but I don't have any idea where I'm going to put it now that I've remembered it. So I spend five minutes digging around for the one pen that actually works, which has fallen under my outdated desktop calendar. Then I scribble the important thing onto Mt. Rushmore and forget it.

Every 50 minutes, I roll over my headphone cord and nearly strangle myself to death. Which sets off another barking/coughing fit.

Every hour, on the hour, my computer crashes.

And then I swear more. Sort of like I have Tourette's. Depending on whether I've remembered to save or not.

I'm so sexy during crunch.

How is this entire building full of men resisting me?

It's a secret.

But here's what I need.

Look back into your past and tell me what you wanted to be when you grew up. A fireman? An astronaut? A farmer? A transportation engineer?

Tell me. It's cool. I promise.

The dog next door is howling at the moon, and has been for hours now. I can see him across my back yard if I look out the window, head thrown back, howling up at the sky.

The sound doesn't keep me awake. I'm accustomed to it. It's lonely and beautiful, and for once the neighborhood dogs aren't joining in a chorus.

Just one dog. One moon. And a howl.

And I can't sleep. And I know how he feels.

No, no. That's not the coughing of a dying seal you hear, if you listen in the direction of Texas.

Every year. October. Like clockwork.

The furnace goes on, the dust flies, and I turn into Zippy, the amazing barking seal. Hork hork!

As always, exceptional timing. I'm about to go into crunch mode at work and I have my oldest and dearest friends coming to visit in a week. What more perfect time could there be for me to wander around sounding like a barking, hacking, harbor seal?

If I could balance a ball on my nose, I'd just run off and join the circus.

Ooooh. The Mayfair witches meet Lestat and Louis.

I can't help it. I'm a sucker for Anne Rice.

No pun intended.

Writers are a cannibalistic lot. Sometimes we write to sort out the emotions and situations in our lives. Sometimes we steal from our lives and those of our loved ones - anything's fair for a good story.

Sometimes we write because we cannot scream.

If I'm quiet and out-of-sorts and don't appear here often lately, rest assured I'm fine. And while I'm writing, I can't share everything here.

Someday, maybe.

But not yet.

Been here. Done this. Hehe.

Congratulations Blake and Gwen! And I'm very happy that Gwen finally get's to get out of that icky bed-rest thing. Whew! Glad to hear mom, dad, and baby are doing fine. Yay!

Gosh. Gosh. I'm all agog.

My writing is currently appearing on a website... that isn't my own!

Should you be interested, take a stroll over to Jenny's Sweaty Lip Fetish for a read of something that oddly enough, I wrote a few months ago, but is fitting lately.

Woo!

This is how much of a geek I am.

At the grocery store today, as I stood in the cereal aisle pondering what crunchy wheat/corn/bran treat I was in the mood for this week, my decision was made for me.

I chose my cereal based entirely on the fact that it came packaged with a free "Amazon Trail Three" game CD.

Hey! It's time to do my traditional "It's Friday!" dance. Not only is it Friday, but it's payday, it's actually supposed to get cold this weekend, and we're supposed to have thunderstorms this afternoon and evening.

In other news, the Metzener/Livingston wedding is this weekend. Congratulations, you two! I wish I could be there. :)

I remember when word first sort of snuck out that you two were dating and the reaction was generally, "Dave and Chris? Dave and Chris? Well.. Hmm. Well, ok, yeah. Actually. Yeah. Why didn't we ever think to put them together earlier?" Of course, I also recall when I first discovered you were dating thanks to a well (or poorly) timed turn around the corner by the conference room. (And yes, my reaction at the time was the same. "Chris and Dave? Huh. Fancy that...")

Alright. I admit, I have been running around my house on the verge of shouting, "My house! My house! No one is getting in! My space! Mine!" like a slightly taller, featherless Daffy Duck. And I admit, I'm not exactly the official poster child for love and marriage at the moment ("Dinner? Tonight? That's a pretty big committment. I'm really not ready for it. Sorry.") But underneath all my neuroses and psychological quirks, I'm still a hopeless romantic waiting on a knight in shining armor.

And the hopeless romantic in me wishes you two a lifetime of happiness and love.

--

However, the, uh, commitment-a-phobe in me thinks you're, well... completely nuts.

--

Congratulations, you two!

Three cheers to Mr. Gryph for his stealthy willingness to find me an obscure mp3 so that I could both a) drive my officemate nuts by listening to it over and over, and b) shoot my productivity down the drain for the remaining hour or so of the day.

And Curtis? It's all about the topside, babe. Thanks for the phone call and the laughs!

So I spend most of my workday listening to music of various sorts. Since I share an office, I wear headphones out of consideration that my officemate might not like Rob Zombie or any of my other musical choices. Over time, it's become habit. I sit down at my desk, grab my headphones, and put them on before diving in to work.

And I don't always actually remember to turn on the music.

So I end up sitting at my desk (as I just did) for two hours, typing merrily away, wearing headphones as earmuffs.

Uh, Corey? Don't fear the '70's songs. You're blogging with the '70's music queen here.

I was driving home from work last night, singing at the top of my lungs along with "On Broadway" by George Benson. "'Cause I can play this here guitar.... and I won't quite til I'm a starrrr on Broadwaaaay!" Because, you know, that song makes me want to run off to New York and be on Broadway and stuff and I coulda been an actress and I woulda been famous and sniff.

Yes. Pathetic side of me. I admit it. You think it's bad that I get all choked over bad 70's songs, you should see me watching a musical on stage. It's embarrassing.

You'd think that after doing this twice now in the last two weeks, that perhaps, maybe, I would remember to dig through the white laundry to make sure I haven't put a red sweater in with it?

And as if that wasn't bad enough, there's a really freaky bizarre bug sitting outside my backdoor waiting for me to make a false move so it can jump up, wrap itself around my face, and suck the life out of me.

Today's Question:

Do you sing along with the CD/radio while you're driving? Loudly? And, you know, sort of dance along with the music?

This may say alot about your personality. I'm not sure what, but it definitely says something.

For the record, I sing. Loud. And groove to the music.

And whenever I get busted by a nearby car, I ham it up even more. I figure they'll be jealous because I'm having more fun in my car than they are.

I never think of doing things like this.

Damn.

Don't fall in love with Dreamweaver. Because she'll hurt you. Oh yes, she will.

I used Dreamweaver to redesign this site, figured out the templates, fell in love with the templates. They make the whole site wonderfully easy to update.

So I thought maybe I'd buy it.

Ow.

If I had $300 lying around, there are roughly 127 things I'd need to spend it on before giving it to Macromedia.

Sigh. Back to Notepad.