catheroominations

*That’s a load of crap. Today pretty much bit.

I’m in North Carolina. Again. For work. Although today, not much work was done. Which was unavoidable, with little work to actually do.

The day started out with the alarm blaring at 6 am, which is 3 am “my” time. I bolted out of bed, started the coffeepot in my hotel room, and jumped in the shower. While getting dressed, I remembered that I left some toiletries at the office last time I was here so I wouldn’t have to schlep them back and forth from California. Problem is, I got in late last night becuase of flight delays so I hadn’t had time to go to the office to get them. Those toiletries included deodorant and hairspray. Current temperatures in Charlotte NC are in the high 90s and not conducive to unprotected pits. But, I went without. I figured “so what?” I’ll have flat, lifeless hair and B.O. That is hot.

When I got to the office, I visited the restroom, and the tempramental zipper on my pants broke for good. Usually, if I try long enough, I can get it to work, but today, the zipper pull went all the way to the top, while the teeth on the zipper stayed agape. Awesome.

When I got back to my desk, I started my computer, and plugged in the additional monitor, keyboard and mouse (because I am nothing if not ergonomically responsible). Suddenly, I lost the task bar programs, but the empty blue bar had floated about 3 inches up the screen and stuck. CTRL+ALT+DELETE would not prompt the restart or shutdown. Nothing would work, so I turned the damn thing off with the power button. (Yeah, that’s a no-no, but it usually works.) I let it sit for a bit to consider what it had done, and then turned it back on. The Dell tried to start Windows, but got caught in a loop of the laptop asking me “Do you want to start in Safe Mode?” me saying “YES” and it teasing me with the Windows logo and then asking “Do you want to start in Safe Mode?” again. Over and over we played this game. I tried other options, like “Safe Mode with Network Connection” or something about “Whatever worked last time you idiot piece of crap PC.” Still with the broken record act. I unplugged all peripherals and tried again. Nothing. Pulled out the battery. Put it back in. Tried to start on battery power. Same redundant line of questioning. Whatever.

I carried the busted laptop in front of my unzipped crotch and took it to a very nice IT lady. She ran the recovery disk, or tried to, but it was taking a day an a half to complete, so she gave me a loaner IBM laptop so I could work (or could have worked, if I had any work to actually do). I left my Dell with her to stomp on, hit with a sledgehammer, and throw out the window into a trash compactor fix and returned to my desk. At least with the loaner I could access my Outlook Mail and the Internet. Course, I had to use IE which makes me want to poke sharp sticks in my eyes.

The interesting thing is, IT had another Dell crash just yesterday that was getting stuck on the same “sector” at the Windows startup as mine, the name of which I cannot recall. (Something like mup.sys I think.) The other corrupted laptop wouldn’t boot up at all, but my laptop fared better. On mine, it would start to boot up, but just the hard drive is toast. Oh, that’s great news. The drive is completely dead. Useless. Several bad sectors, multiple unrecoverable errors, and irreconcilable differences. I lost documents. I lost passwords, account numbers, photos. All gone. POOF! No, I did not back up my data. Yes, I know that’s stupid. And now, I know that’s really stupid.

Traveling for work fills me with such utter joy, I am positively oozing sunshine.

This week I had planned to spend some girl time with my good friend MB in Napa. She’s here from Lexington, KY and meeting some of her gal pals for a week of wine tasting, pampering and possibly some piercing or permanent inking in honor of a milestone birthday.

Unfortunately, I had to cancel because I was asked to take my boss’ place at a training course this week. In Mexico. I quickly renewed my passport, picked an awesome hotel with fantastic photo opportunities, and was learning things like one should never say “Yo soy caliente,” unless one means “hot” in the Paris Hilton sense and not the “I am sweating my face off” sense. And then aye caramba, just days after I told MB I couldn’t make it to Napa, my plans changed. Mexico was out, because my services were requested in North Carolina to help with a documentation emergency. I’m just a tech writer. I don’t feel important enough or smart enough to fly out here and help (the depth of my self-esteem knows no bounds). When this trip was presented to me (read: when I was told I was going to work in NC), it was suggested that I come Every. Single Week. That’s right. Fly out every Monday and home every Friday. But that’s not feasible for several reasons, so I’m here this week and next and then we’ll see where we go from there.

This morning, I awoke at 3:45 AM. (That 3:45 was in all caps, by the way, because I was yelling it.) Three forty-five in the morning is not morning. It’s still night. But I got up and was at SFO in plenty of time for my early morning flight. I felt like a zombie. I was there, but not really there and I didn’t remember how I got there. So, when I saw someone I thought I knew, I wasn’t surprised I couldn’t remember his name. Also, turns out, I didn’t know him, exactly. It was Adam from Myth Busters and he was standing near me at the security check point. He is much taller than I thought. Also, he’s kinda hot, in a geeky way. Señor Savage es caliente.

So here I sit in a Residence Inn, while Matte gets DirecTV installed at our house, clears out our apartment, bolts bookcases to the walls for earthquake safety, gets the fence repaired that the fumigators busted into slats, waits for AT&T to set up our phones, and generally gets us moved in to our house. I would much rather be there, helping him, (and watching the cats slide all over the hardwood floors) but I sort of need this job to help pay that mortgage we just signed up for for the next 30 years.

I can’t find a link to this ad, but there is currently a commercial airing that says “If you were born between the years of 1930something and theyearIwasborn, call us now to see how you can help your family pay for your funeral expenses.” Or something like to that effect.

Check you math, Funeral Planner People. I am not old. I’m not! I’m not! I’m not! So stop telling me I should plan for my funeral so my family won’t have to!

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to eat my prunes and go to sleep. G’night.

Meh.

That’s how I feel about blogging lately. i just don’t have much to say.

No, I do have much to say, but I don’t want to announce it to the blogosphere just yet. These are good things. Good things that are keeping me very busy. In a good way. I’m gettin’ ‘er done over here, but other things are not receiving my full attention.

My 30 Tiny Moments project has fallen by the wayside. I was supposed to take a photo of a moment in my day for 30 days in a row. I lasted barely a week (and those photos were not taken every day either). Could it be that my tiny moments are so tiny, they do not warrant photographic evidence? I hope not!

Awhile back a few of my blogging friends quit blogging for awhile, or forever. I’m not quitting, nay nay. I just need to get my creative juices flowing again so I can write something. Or photograph something. I have been too busy lately and can’t seem to get my head on straight enough to create anything but piles of laundry.

Maybe I need a vacation. A retreat. To a place where I am not distracted by obligations (like work). The last time I felt that, I was in Hawaii on my honeymoon. Complete and utter relaxation. Stress-free living for 10 whole days. There is something in that Hawaiian air and I’d like to have a dose of that again, please.

I need a kick in the pants to wake up the creative side of my mind.

Anyone know how to do that, without the use of mind-altering drugs? If you suggest Hawaii, please be prepared to send me 2 airline tickets.

When I left to go to work this morning, my kitchen looked like this:

When I came home from work, it looked like this:

I hate it.

See in the “before” photo how there are some nice, wide drawers to the right of the stove? Well, since they moved the stove to the right, I lost those drawers. I did gain a cookie sheet cabinet, but, uhm, where should I put my nice, large flatware tray now? The awesome one that holds every single piece of flatware we have? Maybe on top of the counter. Yeah. Or I could put the forks in the top drawer, the knives below that and the spoons in the second to the bottom drawer. Oh, and where shall I put my multiple sets of Ikea-made Rubbermaid/Tupperware wannabes? I guess I’ll leave them out on the counter too because they will no longer fit in the bottom drawer. Oh, and my cutting boards, and placemats need a new home too. Maybe those can sit on top of the litterbox. It’s the right size.

Also, in the before photo, we kept our drinking glasses and pilsners to the right of the microwave and our mugs (many, many mugs) to the left. Now? Well, we shall jam all of them into one small space. And the weight of all that glass and plaster shall bring the cabinet toppling down on top of me one Sunday morning when I make my Earl Grey tea. So awesome.

These ADA improvements they made today are idiotic. OK. The changes were necessary, not idiotic. But why not wait until we vacate the apartment? We do not require ADA upgrades. We are fine with things as they are. Wouldn’t it be easier to do this work in empty apartments? So as to not disrupt the tenants? And not force me to store my silverware in my underwear drawer? I’m just saying.

Our stuff fits used to fit fine in the kitchen. Now we have this kitchen where my stuff doesn’t fit, along with new toilets (in the bathroom, not the kitchen, duh) that make my butt feel huge. We used to have these oblong-ish shaped ones that were quite comfy, but they replaced the one in my bathroom with a smaller, round-seated one for someone with 24-inch hips. Seriously. It’s a Barbie toilet. Although, my feet do reach the floor when I sit now, so that’s nice. Except the seat is so low, I need one of those grabber things to reach the toilet paper.

Must they disrupt our living space like this when we are still living in it? Really?

I used to whine about the lack of counter space in our kitchen. Now I can whine about the lack of drawer and cabinet space too! Oh, and my fat butt.

We need a house. That’s all there is too it. A house with vast counter space, caverns of storage, and toilets with seats as big as swimming pools. So I can feel like my butt is small.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stare at my nice cookie sheet storage now and play with my 12 butter knives.

Rejection hurts. No matter what kind. Whether you’re getting your heart stomped on by a fellow 6th grader who doesn’t like you because “you’re fat!”, denied admission to a sorority because your daddy is not an attorney or a surgeon, or hearing that your photos are just not good enough to be part of an exhibit, rejection sucks.

I received another rejection email today. This one was for a photography exhibit that I really thought I stood a chance of getting into. But again, I was told “We’re sorry. You’re not good enough for us.” At least now, in the world of the Internet, people can apologize, and pretend to be remorseful for hurting my feelings. Freddie didn’t do that, but he was just an 11-year old punk. The sorority just didn’t invite me back the next day, and that was ok with me because they were all snobby bitches and I didn’t like their house anyway. But finding out something I created isn’t good enough to be included in something I so wanted to be part of makes me want to stop trying to get in.

However, for some reason, this rejection didn’t upset me as much as the magazine rejection. This one just made me introspective. When I received that first rejection email, I chalked it up to the judges’ stupidity. It was them, not me. And “Fine then! I’ll get my work seen some other way! Some better way! So suck it, you, you…magazine that I would still love to see my photo in someday! Pfft!

Maybe “thanks, but no thanks” email hurts less because it isn’t the first time? Does it get easier? Or do you slowly start believing that your work is not that great? You start to realize that you and your friends are the only ones who think you photographs are any good and you really have no business in the company of amazing photographers and who do you think you are? Go back to the kids’ table, you annoying little thing. Yeah, that’s where I am now.

I was planning to launch a photography site earlier this month. But I am uninspired to do so. With my recent rejections comes insecurity. Right now I feel like my photographs are nothing but snapshots with some nice depth of field. Some of them are pretty, or nicely composed, but really. Nothing special. Nothing that warrants a spot in a gallery or a quarter-page in a magazine, or an entire web site focused solely on them. That’s how I feel, anyway. So the photo site is on hold indefinitely. Maybe now I’ll just take photos because I like to. Maybe I’ll stop wanting my work to be in people’s houses, office lobbies, cubicles. (I wish I could do that. But I want more.)

I don’t aspire to be famous. But when I hand someone a photograph, asking them to publish it in their overpriced magazine or hang in their fancy gallery, I’m giving them a part of me. And when they do not accept it, they are not just rejecting a photo. They’re also rejecting me. And prior feelings of rejection come flooding back and I want to retreat to my safe place. So for now I am finished submitting my work to anything other than Flickr. I just can’t set myself up for further rejection.

Besides, Flickr loves me. And thanks to them, I can say my work has been in a gallery. Because it has. Technically. OK. So it was there for just a few hours. But still. Below is a shot from Flickr’s 4th birthday party, held last night at 111 Minna in San Francisco. 111 Mina is a gallery. Notice anything familiar?

And there’s a certain feline that Matte photographed in this one:

Here are a few other shots I took at the party. It was so fun to be in a room full of people who love to take photos. And no one thought anyone was a dork for zooming in on buttons, focusing on cupcakes or taking long exposure shots of the crowd as they admired everyone’s work. People oohed and aahed at Flickrites’ flash set ups and kickass cameras. And everyone went home with some sweet swag. Happy 4th Birthday, Flickr. (You don’t look a day over 3, by the way). Thanks for accepting me as I am and for allowing me to expose myself to millions of people.