I should verily be ashamed of myself, yea. I broke my yarn diet on the way home from the family reunion (oops ... did I forget to mention that in my last post?), when I stopped at Joann's ostensibly to control myself and only buy ... something. I can't quite remember what that something was, or whether I actually managed to leave the store with it. Hmm. Oops. Guess it wasn't important.

At any rate, having just entered this latest yarn purchase into my supposed-to-organize-and-control-me Yarn Catalogue (Microsoft Excel is fun!), I have discovered that I am hoarding just under fourteen miles of yarn in my closet right now. Well, in my closet, in my backpack, and on the floor of my room.

Fourteen miles. Perhaps I should actually get some projects done and reduce that stash some.

Oh, the shame of it. Ah, well.

In more positive news, after an initial period of negativeness (see previous post), my week ended up being quite enjoyable. I scooted myself along on the proofer's test by killing two birds with one stone in doing perfectly earnings for one of our more "difficult" clients (though perhaps I got off lucky since it was an email back, and I didn't have to follow the meticulous set up of the fax and email lists, etc., nor did I have to deal with the main contact, who I hear is kind of a pain in the neck ...), I got to eat some really good Ethiopian food with my cousins and their (attractive, nice, good-taste-in-music) friend and his (boo-pretty-Japanese) wife (more-boo), and I actually ended up getting sleep, by far the most important thing in the world as relates to my happiness (well, sleep and the continued reception of my paycheck). We got paid on Friday instead of Monday like we were supposed to (yay, I could afford the weekend!), and I had a blast last night at Club Six with Stephan and some of his friends who were wishing him farewell, as he is leaving us Tuesday for L.A. before he goes to Boston (boo). I got very drunk before I got sober enough to drive myself home, but Stephan was even drunker than myself ... I missed out by not having gone drinking with him before this, and now it is too late. The only negative to an otherwise positive last few days.

My, what a parenthetical paragraph that was. Now you see how confusing it must be to converse with me on a regular basis — I must explain everything as I am saying it.

I just wish I could explain my own dreams better. Well, I probably can — they are wishful. I've been dreaming of Eric again, of course; each one has him grudgingly forgiving me. The latest one involved me having an appointment of some kind in Sacramento, so I kind of invited myself to stop by his place. He had moved and was living in a long house with some friends of his ... one of them came out just as I was preparing to drive off to my appointment, which I at first thought I was only 5 minutes late for, but turned out to be an entire half-hour ... I must have misread or forgotten the time for which it was set (11, not 11:30). Is there symbology in the timing thing? I wish I had true dreams, but more often than not they foretell things that will definitely not be happening, not things that will.

July 26, 2005

There is something is wrong with this week. I can feel it.

It's not just the post-family-reunion blues (family is depressing sometimes), or the fact that I haven't been able to sleep well for the past few days. There is an icky, ominous feeling to the air. Little things pop up to daunt me -- small imperfections on releases I'm doing for the proofer's test (even though every other release I do seems to be perfect ... too bad they don't count), an hour-long drive yesterday down to Santa Clara for Korean BBQ only to find that the place is closed on Mondays, an email that I can't find an answer for, even though I want to respond. I hope I am imagining, or that this is all coincidence, or something. Part of me wants to curl up in bed for a few days and just cry for no reason at all. The tears come unbidden.

Even the ice cream I just polished off -- leftovers from the last time Nick was here, totally not allowed on my diet, but I don't care anymore since I haven't eaten low-carb in a week almost -- was tasteless and harsh in my mouth. I think I'm going to have a stomach ache.

And I gained 3 pounds in the past 24 hours somehow. Fat and dumpy and miserable Sarah. What a way to work the last week of July.

I suppose I should just go swimming for the rest of the week after work. That might be where the bad mojo is coming from. Plus, I need to work off a week's worth of cheating. Blargh.

In more positive news, I'm three books through re-reading the Harry Potter series. I'll take book 4 with me to work tonight, maybe get a chance to get through it. The load of releases has been unusually light, considering that it's an earnings period. There's stuff to do, yes, but we've been far more pressed for time before. It might be almost a relief if there was an abundance of things to do *knocks on wood* ... it may actually keep me awake.

Not that I'm complaining. Far from it, I swear.

July 18, 2005

Something is seriously wrong with my sleeping schedule. I passed out when I got home from work this morning, as mostly-usual (at 7 a.m., though ... bad Sarah, for not going swimming!), and woke up some time later feeling deeply rested. I head over to the computer and pick up my knitting needles and start perusing the web (because I am a dork ... but haven't we established that already?), and finally started wondering what time it was. Looked down and to the right at the handy-dandy desktop clock and ...

It was 11:30. In the morning. I had slept maybe 4 hours. I had 10 1/2 hours before I had to go to work.

What the fuck? I was supposed to be exhausted after my relatively little sleep yesterday, I was supposed to pass out until late afternoon, have to make a hurried dinner, blah blah blah.

Though being up so early means I can use the time to do important things. Like, you know, cleaning the bathroom, going to the grocery store, going to Ikea (I still don't have a bookshelf, or CD shelves ... my CDs are getting dusty in boxes at the foot of my bed) ... important things. Instead ...

I went back to bed. Did I sleep? No. But I did have fun imagining I was a princess escaped from a raid on her home castle who had run off with her childhood friend, the gardener.

Have I mentioned I tell myself little stories to help me get to sleep? No? Well, I do. Been doing so since I was, like, 7. Old, hard habit to break, but it generally works, especially when my brain is working too hard to sleep. Great distraction.

At any rate, after a couple hours of cuddling my handsome gardener (my favorite pillow ... so sexy), I gave up and decided to be uberproductive and ... watch some TV. While knitting! Sure, it's my need-a-quick-fix knitting project to offset the time-consuming wanna-be-careful other projects I have on the needles, but I ... umm ... got stuff done. Yah? Yah. (Star Trek:TNG was on. It was important. Real important. Deanna Troi had a baby. I cried. I am such an emotional wreck sometimes.)

But I babble. My real reason for writing is ta-dah! Revamp of website is posted. Yay. Not everything works yet, of course, but it will. Eventually. Cross resolution #4 (see July 10, below) off the list, baby.

If I were way spiffy cool, and wasn't using Geocities as my server, I would teach myself some cgi and come up with a feedback form so you could tell me what you think. Instead, you'll have to scroll down and click my snakie button to email me. Feedback is a good thing.

July 16, 2005

Perhaps I am too trustworthy. Last night while I was drunk and dancing and enjoying myself at another Boys Gone Wild show, I happened to check my cell phone and there was a message from my favorite ex, asking me to call him in the morning when I woke up. So call him I did, at 9 a.m. One must note that just yesterday, after several months of he and his roommates not paying the electricity bill (it wasn't being sent to them, and it was in someone else's name at any rate, so they didn't really care so long as they were getting free power), the power company finally wised up and shut off power to the apartment. Which is a little inconvenient, considering that they still have to live there for another two weeks, the bathroom doesn't have a window so they will need to poo, pee, and shower in the dark, and Nick has yet to find a new place to move into next month. No electricity means no computer, and no internet. No email checking, no online searching for places to live, nothing.

So I am called and asked to check his email for him. And like a good ex-girlfriend, I do it, because I am dumb. Or something. But the guy gave me his password and everything. If I were a bad ex-girlfriend, I could go browsing through all the old emails he has saved, including the ones from the ex he was in love with, and the emails from the girl he is currently in love with -- the man saves them, right there for me to itch over. But then again, I have saved all the emails I've gotten from Sweetness -- the good and the bad -- and most of the emails I have from Steph, which I suppose he could look through, too, if he figured out how to do it through Trillian.

So no surreptitious rustling through files for me.

I have a whole day to myself. I should do something with it. Like buy bookshelves, or a chest of drawers, or something. Now that I have money. Payday is a good thing.

Maybe I'll knit a quick side-project or something. I'm sort of sick of working on my long-term sweaters and fiddly bits. On the first sleeve of my Cotton-Ease cabled made-up-pattern top. Since I'm knitting the thing completely in the round, it means I'm really only about 2/3 or 1/2 of the way through the thing, instead of 3/4 of the way, as I would be if I had knitted the bloody thing flat.

Ah, well.

After reading the blogs of other people, I have decided I need to become more amusing -- whether that means I need to be snarkier, more cynical, or have better, funnier, more embarrassing stories to post on here, I'm not sure. We'll see. Since my life is so boring (work, knit, eat, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat), I have a feeling it'll have to be one of the first two. I need to bring people into this place somehow.

Maybe I'll work on converting this site to HTML. That might be a fun project for the day. After I go out and buy another case of nutrasweet-fix. I drank the last diet coke this morning for breakfast.

July 15, 2005

What does one do when they believe something that may break the heart of someone s/he cares about?

I guess one doesn't tell that fragile someone. One will wait until that someone can finally see the truth for himself and admit it, and one will just have to be ready to be there to support the fall, if it comes.

I do not like seeing people I care for fall. Though I don't really like seeing them blindly kill themselves a little every day, either.

Even though I do the same to myself, I guess. I am a sucker for wound-prodding. *picks at the scabs left over still from 6 months ago* What? Don't look at me like that ... I'm trying to control myself. Honest, I am.

Honest.

July 10, 2005

I need to be on a yarn diet. As of the moment, I have about 13 and a half miles of yarn sitting in my closet. Most of it is unassigned to a project, or waiting for me to get around to starting the project for which I have assigned it.

Bad Sarah.

They say that the beginning of summer is a better time of the year to make up goals and resolutions than January 1, because at the start of the year you are worn out from the holidays and such, and hence are less likely to stick to things because you're just too tired to do so. In the middle of the year, however, you're a little more fresh (spring tends to be a little slow in the stress department, unless you're an accountant or something like that).

So my goals for the rest of the summer, now that the year is half over:

1) Finish at least three large projects (as in tank tops, t-shirts, sweaters ... not just scarves) before I am allowed to buy any more yarn.

2) Lose another five to ten pounds.

3) Bring my weekly swimming count all the way up to five times a week (Monday through Friday, holidays excepted). I'm at three now.

4) Redo this website. I know, almost no one comes here, and Flash is fancy, but I think HTML will be better for what I want to do with this space.

5) Finish all the books that have been lent to me before picking up any new ones (including knitting books, dammit).

6) Be more social. Join a knitting group or a book club or something. Make more of an effort to see the few friends I have left in town.

7) Start actually being able to save a little $$ each month from my paychecks. If I can't stick at least a third of my mid-month paycheck into my savings account, then something is seriously wrong. Bad Sarah.

8) Earn my solo editorship at work. I think it will make things easier for everyone involved, especially since we're hiring another newbie, bringing the shift up to a whole five editors. Whoopie!

This year is, as I had resolved that I wanted it to be, better so far than last year. I'd like to think that I am better, too ... but I'm blind in such matters. Not sure if what is/was broken can be fixed. Maybe glossing over it will help. When in doubt, just throw a coat of varnish on it, no?

No, I guess not. Ah, well.

By the way, the new Kent rocks. As does the new Idlewild CD. I'd advise you to pick up both. They are way good, and make being poor entirely worth it.

July 2, 2005

I'm getting bad about updating this, I know. Ah, well.

The year is half over. I'm glad to say that things are infinitely better now than they were six months ago. Five months ago. Even, dare say, just over four months ago. And that makes me happy, I think. Even though part of this infinitely betterness involves having to actually worry about expenses and budget for the first time in my life (I spent over 1/4 of my available money for the rest of the pay period last night at Amoeba records ... this budgeting thing will obviously take some getting used to).

(But how could I resist?! The new Kent album had come out -- and it's only gonna be an import, really. And then the new Idlewild was out, but only as a Japanese import! I had to spend the extra dough, honest! Plus I picked up two CDs -- granted, the two CDs I was planning on limiting myself to purchasing -- used for $10 each. It was all necessary purchasing, I swear. Really. God damn Amoeba Records. Damn them all to ... mmmm ... my CD collection.)

I'm slowly attempting to be more social. It's hard, since I don't really have anyone to be social with on a regular basis like I used to. I have Nick on some weekends -- it seems that despite the fact that I wasn't supposed to be seeing him for most of the summer because he was going to be so busy, I actually am going to be seeing him quite a bit; at least twice this month, probably more -- but that's up in Davis and Sacramento and I have a feeling I shouldn't be lurking around the ghosts up there for much longer, if I can help it. I have my roommate, but most evenings he comes home almost too tired to even cook for himself (testified by the tupperware containers of cereal and milk that he eats while watching TV most nights), and some nights I don't even see him at all before I have to leave. Plus, my work schedule makes really being social kind of stilted; I always have to be gone by 9, 9:30 (depending where I am), and alcohol is pretty much an out thing. Except Fridays and Saturdays, of course, and those tend to be my rest-up-and-knit nights. Or my spend-time-with-Mommy-and-Daddy-in-San-Jose nights/weekends.

Ah, well. I'm not getting desperate yet. And I have stuff lined up for the next week. Granted, one of those nights will be at my parents' house, and another of those nights will be because Nick is crashing at my place ... but ... umm ... okay, I admit. I'm pathetic and a loser. So sue me. At least I'm somewhat happy being this way.

Somewhat? There's been no crying for a long while. And that is a good thing.