Archive for at around evening time
December 13, 2007 late at night | 
Reading is fundamental
I thought I’d do today’s Booking Through Thursday meme. It is still Thursday…barely.
Do you use any of the online book-cataloging sites, like Library Thing or Shelfari? Why or why not? (Or . . . do you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking to?? (grin))
If not an online catalog, do you use any other method to catalog your book collection? Excel spreadsheets, index cards, a notebook, anything?
I use Library Thing, which I like. I was reading in other places that some people don’t like it. Like, it’s too meticulous or something? I don’t know. I’ve looked at Shelfari and a few other similar places and they seem more social network-y. I don’t really care about that aspect of it. I just like to have a place to list all the books I’ve read. Plus since I took the time to add almost every single book I’ve read in the past 15 years, I don’t really want to have to do that again at another place.
Before I started using Library Thing (probably about a year ago?), I just wrote down all the books I read and the date I finished them on, in a little notebook. I started keeping it around 7th grade, I think. I was totally OCD even back then. Though I know I’m missing quite a few books from my Library Thing list because I would forget to write books down sometimes. But I’d say I have a record of about 85-90% of the books I’ve read since I was about 12.
Now, does that matter? Does anyone care? Probably not, but sometimes I just like to look over my list and I feel somewhat accomplished that I’ve read those books and that I still read regularly. Plus I just love the list aspect of it. It warms my OCD-riddled heart.
December 11, 2007 in the early afternoon | Personal stuff, Rants, Relationship stuff
We’ve just been guilted into going up to visit my boyfriend’s family for Christmas. I really just wanted to stay here and have a low key Christmas, but now we’re stuck driving 20 hours and having to deal with his massive family.
My boyfriend agreed with me about not wanting to go and gave his mom the excuse that we didn’t have enough money to make the trip (which we kinda don’t). Well she called yesterday saying that she WORKED OVERTIME so that she could GIVE us the money to get up there. There’s no response to that. So now we have to go. Blurg.
December 8, 2007 at around evening time | Yummy Stuff
So far I haven’t been too good at the “daily” part of Holidailies. I’m trying, but I’ve been working a lot which makes things hard. For instance I worked 12 hours straight yesterday. I’m not being hyperbolic, either. I was keeping track so I could bill the hours to my client. I didn’t even stop to eat. Today has been mostly the same. But I don’t want to get too far behind so I stopped to, well, eat, but also to post.
Besides working non-stop, I’ve been eating chocolate chips cookies (gotta keep my strength up!). I thought I’d share the recipe because they are literally, the best chocolate chip cookies ever. This is a recipe that I made from combining two good (but different) chocolate chip cookie recipes. I’ve made them tons of times and they always turn out yummy.
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December 7, 2007 in the wee hours | Relationship stuff, The Days of my Life
Looky what my boyfriend brought home tonight! Why you ask? Well, it’s our anniversary. Despite that, I was NOT expecting flowers at all. I don’t think he’s EVER brought me flowers at any other time besides Valentine’s day, so this surprise gesture was really awesome. He told me he went to an actual flower shop and got them to make me a custom bouquet. Wow! It’s like a completely different boyfriend from the one I’ve had for the past eight years (actually that’s not true, he used to be like this…before he got laid. 
). But eight years! That’s a long ass time. Plus we’ve been together since high school and I doubt there are many people who can say that these days. We’ve been though a lot of shit together and we could have broken up but we stuck it out and I think (I hope) we are better people for it.
After that we went and had a nice dinner. Then we came home and got into comfy clothes and settled down for some Project Runway and 30 Rock. Our vacation last month was really our “anniversary” celebration, but tonight was a nice little cherry on top. A night like that may sound totally boring to a lot people, but for me it’s a great night. He’s my best friend and even after all these years I love spending time with him, no matter what we do.
December 4, 2007 in the early evening | Design-y stuff, Work-y stuff
I have this client whose blog design I’ve been working on since last week. She’s a regular client and I like her a lot, but she is notoriously nit-picky. Past designs I’ve done for her have taken days, weeks, and tons and tons of revisions. And that was for designs she liked. Quite a few designs I did she flat out hated.
So needless to say I was really worried about her reaction to my newest mockup. But I totally prepared myself before I started and made sure she liked ALL of the images I was going to use and I made sure I read her detailed emails over and over again so I could get into her state of mind. But still, even after all that, when I clicked “Send” earlier this afternoon, I was mentally preparing myself for the inevitable 10 mile long email. I had even distanced myself from the mock up in the first place, knowing it was going to get butchered.
December 3, 2007 in the early evening | Crafty Stuff
Recently I’ve been getting in touch with my artsy-crafty side again. I’ve always been like that, but it comes and goes in cycles. For instance I got into knitting a few years ago with the whole Stitch ‘n Bitch craze, and I went all crazy and made a badillion scarves and hats and bought hundreds of dollars in yarn and supplies. But after about a year, I kinda lost interest. It didn’t help that my knitting partner-in-crime moved away. (It’s all your fault! Just kidding.)
But I was looking at my forlorn knitting basket a few weeks ago and the thought occurred to me that I could actually knit something and that sounded fun. So I made a scarf since that’s the simplest and fastest thing you can do to get yourself back into the knitting groove. Here it is:
December 2, 2007 in the late evening | Home is where the heart is
Confession time: I actually put all my Christmas decorations last week. It’s the earliest I’ve EVER put them up. I always felt like I should wait until December; like there was something wrong with you if put decorations up any earlier.
But I think Florida is infecting me. There’s the whole mindset down here of…wishful thinking, I guess? For instance, look at a map of Florida and you’ll find the highest concentration of towns that have “winter” in them. Winter Springs, Winter Gardens, Winter Park, there’s even a town near here called Christmas. I shit you not, they keep decorations up all year long. There’s almost nothing in that town but a post office and apparently everyone goes there to mail their Christmas cards.
Anyway, Floridians REALLY overcompensate when it comes to Christmas. It’s 80 degrees outside and doesn’t feel at all Christmas-y, so they do everything they possibly can to turn their houses into winter wonderlands. I’ve NEVER lived in a place where so many people plaster their houses with thousands of lights and giant plastic snowglobes and reindeer all over their roofs. It’s not just a few houses in the neighborhood. It’s EVERY SINGLE house within a 5 mile radius. And the decorations start going up on November 1st, they don’t bother waiting around. We went out to eat last night and I’d say that 60% of the houses we drove by were decorated, by next weekend it’ll be at 100%.
December 1, 2007 mid-afternoon | Meta
So I decided to sign up for Holidailies this year. I’ve done it before in past years (when I used to blog A LOT more). I haven’t been blogging too regularly for the past few years, but I seem to have gotten my groove back in November. My goal was to publish a post a week and I more than doubled my goal. So I’m going to try to build on that victory and post every day this month. I seriously doubt that will happen (especially since we might be going out of town), but the Holidailies guidelines even says we can realistically strive for 20 posts, which I think I can definitely do.
So. Onward.
