the danish outpost
updated when time and inspiration allow. latest and greatest always in the blog.
itching to get some work done, but never the right kind

2000-12-28

feeling kinda how a girl feels

i'm still at work (5:30), listening to my new Beatles CD, 1, that rob got for me for Christmas, and trying to figure out how to cover for not having worked very hard at all the past few weeks. bossman is back on monday, and i'm sure he'll want to hear about all the successes i've acheived for the team while he was gone. eh. y'know, it's kind of hard to be motivated when you're tired from holiday stuff and there's hardly anyone else in the office. it's been pretty empty here, more so this week than last, and damn cold too. dunno if it's because i'm sick or not, but it feels like they've cranked down the temp in here. i have to get up and walk around every so often just to keep the circulation going.

...hang on. [skitters off to get mug of hot tea] ...ah. better. [dunking tea bag to speed up steeping process, wrapping hands around mug]

i've found it hard to focus on the journal the last few days, in part because i'm doped out on cold medicine, but also because i'm getting antsy about the new design. i've had the idea for the layout for a few weeks, and have been playing around with it in my head. it's evolved a little bit as i've seen other sites i liked and dug around for some graphics to use. y'all, how difficult should it be to find a decent traditional Chinese landscape painting? with all the dreck out there on the web, you'd think it would be pretty easy. but nooooooo... so i've tailored the original idea to accomodate the graphic i hope to eventually find. i'm hoping to get the layout finished and up this weekend, in time for the new year. seems like a good way to start things, eh?

i've got to get it out of the way so i can buckle down to finish a few more pieces i want to write. again, the ideas have been bumbling around for a while, and just haven't gelled the way i would like them to. there's more truth to the discipline of writing for an hour for every single day even if you have nothing to say than i would have thought. after all, the brain is a muscle like any other, and consistent exercise will tone it up. **sigh** i'm looking forward to upgrading the tools at home after the first of the year - DSL, scanner, backups, maybe a new monitor, and some kick ass editing tools. then i can actually do some of this tweaking and editing at home. of course, with my luck, this will just feed into my night-owl tendencies and screw up my sleep patterns again. :)

hey, how funny is this? yesterday's entry was a sort of left-handed tribute to Eddie, as i decided to do the routine first in English then in mediocre French. then i got a note from jenn today, en fran�ais, naturellement, to point out that rachel's blog entry for dec 28th is also in French! [ed note: if it's not on the front page, check the archives] a conspiracy, she asks? no, i say, mais le singe est sur la branche. of course, i did 'fess up that i merely ran the first part of the entry thru Babelfish, and then just cleaned up the bits where my idiomatic English confounded the translation engine. the funniest bit to me was that Harry Potter became 'the potter of Harry', which i think i corrected correctly, but then i left the original translation in there because it was funny. jeez... i really need to start reading/writing/speaking French again. i mean, i *did* take 5 years of lessons, and i can still get around in French-speaking areas well enough. heck, i even saw a play in Montr�al a few years back in English, French and Yiddish. the English i got, the French i mostly got, and the Yiddish i just winged based on body language. so it seems like i've retained enough that a little practice might bring it back. and the spoken part would be easier now, because i have less fear of looking like a fool than i did in high school. wasn't that always the case? you'd get called on to answer something, in French/Spanish/German/whatever, and even if you knew the right answer, you'd choke up a little, because you didn't want the teacher to correct you in front of the whole class. which is kind of silly, because how else are you going to learn? altho, i may have had reasonable grounds for fear my fifth year, when out of a class of 10 or so, there were two French exchange students. presumably, the teachers thought it would be nice for them to be in a class where they had the upper edge at least once during the day, but it pretty much destroyed the playing field for the rest of us. and frankly, i'm not sure it would be pleasant to sit in class for 45 minutes listening to a bunch of students butcher my native tongue.

*sigh* gearing up for the walk home... it's COLD out there, people. my thighs were numb by the time i got to the office this morning. and we're supposed to get snow this weekend. how much is anyone's guess. they do tend to over predict here, just to be on the safe side. but i've heard everything from 2" to 16". kind of a variance there. and of course, the worst of is is supposed to be on Sunday, just in time for New Year's. we're not doing much - honey and i have dinner reservations at the local watering hole, and my best friend and her honey may come over and join us, and that's about it - but still, weebling thru the snow in heels is no fun. actually, i joked to frenchy this morning that if there were 9 inches of snow, he should wear 6 inch heels. he didn't think that would work, and i then nearly fell off my clogs trying to demonstrate that the heels would work to pin him in place in the snow drifts, rather than tipping him over. flashback moment - i remember trying to help a neighbor push his car out of a snowbank by his driveway when i was in junior high. y'all i was wearing knee-high, fake leather, zip-up-the-side cack brown boots with Heels. like, 2 or 3 inch heels. what the hell were my parents thinking, letting me get those? they were ridiculously impractical - not even warm. eh. maybe it's only as we age that we get practical, altho i've been accused of being an old fart for most of my life. 8)

you know, starting an entry is easy; it's winding them up that always gets me. ever notice how on TV, people never say 'hello' or 'bye' when using the phone? that seems unnatural to me. and not having a nice clean ending for an entry sort of feels like hanging up the phone without saying goodbye. some days, the stories hang together and there's a natural point at which to stop, neat and clean. and then other days, the words just sort of dribble off the page.... [ed. note: and if i were a stylishly talented graphic artist or HTML wrangler, i'd have made the words do exactly that. eh.] at least i know one of the things about my writing that i'd like to improve. New Year's Resolution #537...

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