• I’ve had a good day. The only thing that could have made this day better would have been the legalization of pot. #
• This project is going to kill me and my head hurts #
• Work at Home tip: Change lighting throughout day (lamps, window blinds) to keep you awake and focused. #

I had bought two antique postcards from Ebay for pretty cheap.   I bought them because I like Victorian things, and because I like St. Bernard stuff.   They were from England and posted in the early 1900s and had writing and the original stamps on the backs, so I didn’t want to glue them down.  But I didn’t know what to do with them so they sat around for about six months.

I was at Big Lots yesterday and although I didn’t want a frame so modern looking, for 15 bucks for the frame and mat both I decided to spring for it, hoping the postcards would fit.  They were a bit smaller than the mat’s 5X7 openings, so I used acid-free craft paper behind them.  I used no adhesive on the postcards themselves, but instead used acid-free photo corners and used adhesive on the cardboard photo corners to secure them to the craft paper.  Now, if I ever want to read the back of the postcard I just have to slip the postcards out of the photo corners, read them, slip them back in, and put the frame back together.

The whole thing cost less than $30.  (Click for big)

The close up shots were done without flash, so the background looks ecru, which I very much would have preferred to the black frame and white mat.

I had dinner with a friend last night who asked me if I missed yo yo boy and/or regretted breaking up with him (like I used to end up doing the other times we’d break up).

Really though, he paid so little attention to me, there’s nothing to miss.

If I check my email, I’m not disappointed that there is nothing from him because THERE NEVER WAS.

If I come home and find no voice mail message from him, who cares?  He absolutely NEVER called me.

I have him blocked from my IM, which is a lot less painful than how it used to be - I’d see him online all day and there was only a 15% chance he’d even bother to IM me so most days I got to see him ignore me all day.

The only thing missing from my day now that he is gone is daily hurt feelings.  I feel really really good.

So I took off work yesterday to take a coworker to an outpatient medical procedure she needed done.

CoWorker (CW):  “Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it.”

Me:  “No problem!  Now that I work at home I don’t go out much.  This gave me an excuse to do my hair.”

CW:  (scrunches face like she just smelled something bad while examining my hair) “You did your hair?”

Sigh.

The project manager at work said that she knows I’m on top of my project and “wrestling that bull by the horns”.

My project is spiraling out of control.  I sent her this image of what the bull is really up to.

I have this Gevalia coffee maker.  No matter how carefully I load the filter, I just can’t seem to make a cup of coffee without getting a cupful of grounds.

There is nothing worse than taking a big gulp of coffee at 5:30 am and getting a snootful of coffee grounds.

I’ve tried for three weeks.  I give up.  Uncle!  I’ll just buy a new coffee maker.

Besides the cups are plastic and no matter how I wash them, they still smell plasticy.  Plastic on the inside (smells funny), metal on the outside (can’t reheat), cup full of grounds - wow, is this one shitty machine!

The Gevalia coffeemaker before it was larger, but I still got grounds occasionally (when I wasn’t careful with the filter).  The carafe has an opening juuussst small enough to make sure you can’t get your hand in there to give it a good scrub (it’s tall so it’s hard to get leverage when washing the bottom).  And the karafe lid is difficult to open enough to let coffee pour out (it either trickles, or if you open it a hair more, the lid falls off).

So if you order a coffeemaker from Gevalia (their coffee is good I guess), really watch what you select.

It’s I love the actual WORK that I do.  The actual tasks.

I love writing orientation manuals… editing the screenshots, writing things on a “beginners” level, remembering details that other ID people forgot (or didn’t know).

I’m so proud of the work I do too.  I think I really have a talent for it.

But I know the training team, and I know that it will make none of them happy.  Half of them will complain there’s not enough detail, the other half will complain there’s too much.  It won’t fit the needs of every employee’s job situation (”What if a patient calls in and says his hair has turned Denver Broncos orange and his bad breath killed his cat?  You didn’t tell the new-hire what they should do THEN!”)

And then there will be people who will determine my entire style as wrong, just because they would have written it differently.  (You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t realize that, just because someone does things differently doesn’t mean they are doing it WRONG.)

And then there will be the ones whose ego would never let them admit someone else did a decent job.  They have to be “top banana” so they’ll always have their two cents to add, creating unnecessary work for me in the process just so they can feel good about themselves (like the coworker who always gives me incorrect grammar corrections, or the one who tells me I got the policy wrong, when I didn’t and she was the one too lazy to look it up before she shoots her mouth off correcting me.)

I’ve been working evenings and weekends for three weeks.  I’m trying to ignore the fact that my work will please no one.  I enjoy doing it - the feedback, I’ll worry about later.