(cough, cough) Just a second, let me clear some dust away.

That’s better. Haven’t been around here much lately, I know. I’m finding that I’m too lazy to update both blogs so I’m going out on a limb here and doing some crossover, which I swore I would never do, but times change I suppose.

If you’re interested and want to see what’s going on with me and the fam on a more daily basis, comment or email me. If I’m reasonably confident that I know who you are and that you’re not a weirdo, I’ll give you the link to my not-so-anonymous website/blog.

I’m going to keep this one going for those things that I want to say but don’t want my family, employer or real-life friends to read (i.e. venting). But for the daily stuff, it’s mostly going on the other site.

Otherwise, here’s a quick rundown:

• Koren is growing faster than his sister did. I bought all these preemie and newborn clothes expecting him to be wearing them for a while, but he’s already grown out of most of them.
• Fortunately, he’s no longer eating like a starving wolverine and has settled into more of a 3-hour schedule.
• He’s still still sleeping fairly well at night and will often go 4-5 hours during the first stretch. I just wish his 4-5 hours stretch would be the part in the middle of the night, instead of from 7pm-midnight. After that, he’s up every 3 hours.
• Dude. It’s friggin HOT here.  Some sources say it will get up to 107 tomorrow.   I believe it.
• Had the 6-week followup appointment and everything checked out well. Got the green light on sex, which makes my husband very happy. And I was pleased to find that the first time back in the saddle wasn’t nearly as painful this time around as it was after Kaelin.
• Although, public service announcement, apparently KY Warming Jelly has an expiration date – even though it’s not printed on the tube. Don’t keep that stuff too long unless you want to know what it feels like to have a chemical sunburn on your girly parts. Seriously. Not cool.
• Koren went through a phase of being darn near colicy. He wouldn’t sleep during the day and fussed incessantly. We’re not entirely sure why, but it might have had something to do with some herbal and nutritional supplements I was taking. We’ve had 3 not-so-bad days and that’s about how long I’ve been off the supplements. He still has “grumpy time” in the evening, but he is consolable. I’ll take that over an entire day of crying and bouncing any day.
• Koren likes to be held. A lot. He’s a little high-maintenance in that way and it has totally prevented me from doing any work. So next week I have a babysitter coming a couple days per week so that I can do some work without being interrupted every 15 minutes.
• Speaking of work HOLY MOTHER BUTTER PIES, it is so frustrating sometimes. See, I’m making a product catalog for my employer. Knowing I wouldn’t have much time after the baby came, I started on it a few months ago. But they’ve had me start completely over on it THREE TIMES because they keep changing the product line. And they want it done, like, last week.
• And to complicate things, I can’t seem to get the product pictures from them. It goes like this:
  • I ask.
  • They give me a disc.
  • The disc contains the PDF files of the last catalog they had made – not the individual images.
  • I tell them I can’t use that and explain the difference between a picture and a PDF document of a catalog page.
  • They tell me they’re going to get pictures made.
  • They give me a disc.
  • The disc contains the PDF files of the the last catalog they had made.
  • Wash, rinse, repeat. WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT???
• I haven’t had a chance to do ANY blog design.  You may have noticed that I still have my pregnancy theme on this site.
• However, I have learned Expression Engine.  I don’t know why, but I’m kind of proud of that since a year ago I thought it was impossibly difficult to comprehend.  But now that I get it, I understand why everybody is so pumped about it.  It’s extremely flexible and customizable.  I’ve built several sites with it already and am using it on my personal website (not this one. the other one).
• I HATE the fact that “Add this word to dictionary” is RIGHT UNDER the option to select a corrected word in Firefox spell check.  I keep adding misspelled words to my dictionary by accident.

Today my husband received a job offer for a position that would mean a $40K pay increase above what he is currently making. It sounds like a good company with good people, in a good position of growth, with lots of potential.

He turned it down.

And I’m glad.

Because I love having him work from home. I’ve become a total weenie when it comes to being here by myself all day. I love that Kaelin can run in to give him hugs at any point during the day (except when he’s on conference calls). I love that he can take 2 minutes in the middle of the day to help me bring in the groceries. I love that he’s happy with his job and the people he works with. I love that he doesn’t waste 2 hours of every day sitting in the car on the way to and from an office.

And the fact that I can have all these things and that he actually has a CHOICE to turn down a higher paying job because we’re not in dire need of the money* … well, that just makes me realize how truly blessed we are.

*I mean, don’t get me wrong, more money would always be nice and it’s not like we’re eating on silver spoons around here. But we’re comfortable and his current job contributes to a lot of that comfort.

Dear Internet Explorer,

You are the double-crossing crack whore of browsers.

While mildly more tolerable, your latest incarnation, 7.0, is still just a poser.

I have tried placating you in every way I know how and yet you STILL insist on mangling my design in 6.0.  Even Lord Google cannot seem to help me overcome your influence, which has suddenly mutated into a new strain for which there is seemingly no cure available.

You suck.  Please die.  kthxbai.

-Amy

There is something inherently WRONG about starting a new project for work on a Friday afternoon.

But my choices right now are that, or putz around and not get paid for today because I have nothing constructive to do.

As you can see by the fact that I’m even blogging about this, I’m currently leaning toward the latter.

Remember all that data entry I did?  Well, I just got informed that they’re really revamping their product line and discontinuing a lot of stuff that was previously on their website.  Namely, the 300 items I had already entered.

Figures.

I’ve been busy recently, which has been nice.  For several months I only had a job in the loosest sense, as there was no work for me to do because my project was being held up by technical and personnel difficulties that were quite beyond my control.  Not a good thing when you get paid hourly.

Now things are running on several fronts, which is keeping me busy and even allowing me some creativity in my work – which is essential to my job satisfaction.  And the fact that I’m getting paid again is making life a little easier.

However, sometimes being a contract worker is difficult.  I try to do things to the best of my ability, and I want to deliver a good product.  But ultimately, I have to give the client what they want.  At times, those two goals can be in total conflict.

Things my current client has said to me thus far:

• We have a logo?
• The logo on the current website isn’t our actual logo.
• We don’t have a digital file of our logo.  Just recreate it in Photoshop.
• We may want to redesign our logo.
• We don’t want to redesign our logo.
• We want you to redesign our logo.
• Ok, we understand your point that we should use a unique font instead of Times New Roman for our logo.  Perhaps we can try the standard default font in Microsoft Word 2007 instead.
• Don’t optimize our website for search engines.
• Here are some example websites for what we’re looking for: (followed by a list of websites that have absolutely nothing in common, and in the end, none of them were really what they were looking for).
• We don’t want the website to make a bad impression, but we’re not really concerned about making a great impression.
• We don’t want to put a lot of information on the website, just a general idea of what we do.
• The main purpose of our website is to show our portfolio and make it look good, even though all the pictures we’ve given you to use are bad.

Fortunately, I think I HAVE persuaded them to hire a professional photographer and retake the pictures.  At least that’s one step in the right direction.  I’m kind of looking forward to when this project is over.

Dude.   I got laid off.

• I hurt myself from yawning too big.   I think I overstretched the tendon that connects my jaws or something.   I know.   I’m now in competition with Sammy Sosa for lamest injuries.   I wonder if Workers Comp covers that kind of thing.   It was the boredom brought on by my job that forced me to yawn, after all.
• I dreamed that I had an affair.   With J.   No idea who I was actually married to in the dream.   But Jens’ conscience got the best of him at the last second and he backed out on me.   So I woke up guilty, bummed, grumpy, and horny.   I hate dreams.
• After 4 years, my dog has just discovered that he has a penis.   He has been licking it for 48 hours straight.   It’s driving us crazy, especially since he sleeps in our room and he’s decided that licking himself is more fun than sleeping.
• Don’t buy hair dye that costs less than $10.   Especially if you use white towels and don’t want to see it bleeding onto your towel 4 days after you’ve colored your hair.   Just saying.
• Also, don’t believe the stuff on the box of cheap hair dye that says it comes with highlights and lowlights and multi-faceted color that doesn’t damage your hair.   Bollocks.
• Tomorrow we close on the house we’re selling.
• Tomorrow we’re supposed to close on the house we’re buying.
• Yesterday we found out that the house didn’t appraise for near what we had agreed to pay for it, so now our financing is messed up.
• The appraiser totally discounted the sunroom, which would have made up the difference in the appraisal price.   He refused to count it as part of the square footage of the house (as a previous appraiser had done) because it didn’t have duct work or something.   But since nobody else in the neighborhood has a sunroom, he couldn’t find “comps” so he just didn’t give it any value at all.
• Because, you know, if nobody else has one then it must have been free to install.
• Apparently if you can’t find one just like it then it’s easier just to pretend it doesn’t exist at all than to do some more research and assign a value based on an educated guess.
• Lazy ass.
• So we’ve asked the relocation company to lower the price on the house because it doesn’t make much sense to pay more than a house is actually worth.
• But it’s a relocation company and it will probably take them a week to get back to us because when you have 150 middlemen, things don’t move too quickly.
• And we don’t know what they’re going to say.
• So we don’t know if or when we’ll be closing.
• Annoying, since we’re supposed to move out of our house in 2 days.
• Regardless, we have to disassemble and pack up our computer tonight or tomorrow, so I’ll probably be offline for a few days.
• Bummer dude.