I invited IT Guy to the UFC fight this Saturday by email. I sent it around noon, and he left for the weekend before answering, so I guess he's not coming. I don't know he if was really busy this afternoon and just didn't check his email before leaving, or if he's ignoring me, or just didn't know how to respond. In any case, I was nervous all afternoon with no payoff, and I'm disappointed.

I'm a little junior high in that I like to hang out with someone first, to see if a date is warranted. There's nothing worse than being stuck on a bad date, so if you spend time together in a group first, there's less pressure to make conversation but still a chance to get to know each other. All of which makes dating outside my social circle a little difficult, but not impossible, thus the invitation.

At any rate, I'm feeling rejected without actually being rejected. All I really want out of life is to know what's going on. Uncertainty sucks. I think I'm going to go home and eat Girl Scout Cookies.

I spent several hours this weekend trying to remember the name of a book I had read as a pre-teen. Several hours, because as it turns out, it's really hard to google a book when you don't remember the title or the author. All I could remember was that a group of children had grown up on a space ship, and had been sent away from Earth and groomed by the Ship to form a new society on a new planet. I was never big into sci-fi when I was young, but this was one of the books I read over and over again.

For a while there, I was thinking I'd have to go back to the Wilton library to look it up (left side of the middle stack in the Young Adult section, third section, top shelf - how is it I remember these things but can't remember what someone told me 10 seconds ago?). But I finally found it, because they just started reprinting it this month, because she's coming out with a sequel. It's called Earthseed, by Pamela Sargent, and I'm dying to read it again, but I'll have to buy it, since the library here doesn't have it. Another one of my favorites was Perdita, by Isabelle Holland. This was the book that really got me hooked on mysteries, though Mom used to read me the Bobbsey twin books (my first chapter books!).

Of course, there were my own books that I read over and over again, mostly ones I got from Scholastic book orders at school. It was the most exciting time of the month to see those colored flyers appear on the teacher's desk and get to look through and see what was available this month. Sometime while I was away at college, my mom donated a lot of those books to the school, and I was so mad at her. Someday I'm going to figure out how to un-donate them.

In a bathroom, when there are multiple stalls to choose from, have you ever stopped and thought about the process you go through to decide which one to choose? You avoid using the accessible one in case someone who needs it comes in after you. If there's one already occupied, it's courteous to choose one that's not right next to them. Obviously, if there's something still in the bowl, you have to do the sudden stop and back out. You don't want to pick the smelly one, because if someone comes in after you, you don't want them to think you're the one who stunk it up. If you do have to stink it up, you pick the one farthest away from the door to minimize spread.

If I'm a habitual user of that particular public bathroom, I tend to choose one stall and stick with it. When I was in preschool, it was held in the church basesment. The church bathroom had two stalls and for as long as I had remembered, I always used the one closest to the door. One day, during a bathroom break, I was next in line and the one farthest away from the door opened up before the one I always used. The teacher told me to use the open one, and I threw a fit because I wanted to wait for the other one. I don't think she knew why I was throwing a fit, though, because I was stood in the corner for that little fiasco.

So it turns out Emancipation Day means an extra day of bondage for us tax preparers. The IRS announced yesterday that since Emancipation Day on April 16th (Monday) is a holiday for the District of Columbia, the entire country gets an extra day to file their taxes. Why does no one think of tax preparers when they decide these things? You know, if people knew how tired we are in April, they wouldn't wait so long to bring us their stuff. It's like having a surgeon operate on you when she's been up for 24 hours. Except that's it's not so life and death. Though taxes are kind of like death for some people, so the analogy sort of holds.

I don't know why grocery stores even bother to sell grapes with seeds in them. The only people that buy them are the ones who aren't paying attention to the sign that says they aren't seedless.

Right now, I'm listening to a segment on NPR entitled Who Controls the Money in Your Household? talking about how people who share a household share money. The thought of sharing money terrifies me! I am so anal about my money that I loathe cash, because it's difficult to track. I keep my finances on QuickBooks, so at any time, I know how much I have and how much I owe and if I'm over or under budget. Admirable qualities for your accountant, but do you really want to live with someone like that?

I'm sure there are ways that even an anal rententive control freak like myself could learn to share. The segment emphasized that communication is the key to all plans for a household's finances. And then they had all these stories about how spouses hid their spending from each other. It seems to me that if you have to hide what you're spending, you are either spending too much or your spouse is trying to exert too much control over you. Or you're buying presents.

Sometimes I think too much about things that don't apply to me. I've also been worrying about having to buy new clothes if I lose weight.

That snow materialized. Only a couple of inches, but there's a layer of ice underneath that makes things a little more difficult. And me without ice melt!

If you remember last year, we started doing all individual tax returns paperless, last summer we started doing audits paperless, and now I'm finishing up my first business return paperless. I have to say that I miss being able to look at things on paper. My mind just seems to grasp the physical space of paper information better than on-screen. Plus, I can only look at two documents at a time. You saw I have two monitors on my desk: what I really need is that set up from that one Tom Cruise movie where he's moving all this data around on that huge 3-D screen. That would be awesome. We have some pretty good programs for all this paperless stuff, so I'm sure it's just a matter of getting used to it. I am very much looking forward to not having to look for files anymore.

Note to client: Please don't admonish me for late financial statements when your company neglected to get back to me for four months with information I asked you for.

For those of you who don't read Helen's blog (and why not?), this is a feature she's been doing called "12 of 12", where you take 12 pictures of your day on the 12th day of the month. Edit: Credit where credit's due! to Chad, now linked in my Stalkees column on my sidebar. Do you know how hard it is to take pictures of anything remotely interesting when you sit at a computer 10 hours out of the day?


I park in the mall parking ramp, and cut through the mall on my way to work. The second floor of the mall was purchased recently by the University for office space (big joke), and they've been renovating. I walk through a construction zone every morning and every evening.


This is my building! There's the coffee shop there on the first floor right, and the pet shop on the left, and we're on the second floor. The city put those snowflakes on all the lights downtown this year; I thought they were so cool. That's the only snow we've seen so far this year, though that is supposed to change today. We'll see.


This is my desk. That's all I have to say about that.


This is the meal I cooked four servings of Monday night. It's a very yummy chicken breast with a spinach, onion, and cottage cheese "filling". However, Tuesday afternoon I got a headache and upset stomach, so now I'm wondering if it was food poisoning, and I have no stomach for it.


So this is what I ate instead.


Turns out my camera only holds 11 pictures (I haven't needed the memory before - not much of a picture-taker), so I took a screen shot (I'm quick and spry, clever and sly!) of my computer as I wrote a letter to my Congressman, asking him to support the Stem Cell Funding Enhancement Act. Contact your Senator too, and ask for their vote!


One of my favorite times of day is when I come home and get the mail. I think that's part of the reason I'm an eBay addict. Today the most exciting thing in the mail was a Christmas card from my cousin Sonia, with a picture of Ben and Nora. Nora, I swear, could have been the model for Cabbage Patch Kids. So cute!


Tomorrow is the first Saturday of tax season, and I volunteered to be the first to bring breakfast. This is my Egg McMuffin maker, which I absolutely adore. I would like to say that I haven't been to McDonald's since I got it, especially since I'm reading Fast Food Nation, but I'd be lying. Damn that Filet O'Fish! I'm putting things in a box so I remember to bring them tomorrow.


Time for a run! They say you're supposed to put your treadmill in an inviting environment, but all I really need is that cute little TV. Prize for anyone who can identify the name of the episode I'm watching!


I have time for a little TV. I'm sorry to announce I am again watching All My Children on a regular basis, and I still hate Kendall.


Josh has a gift certificate to burn, so we met at the Old Capitol Brewery for drinks. I was starving, so I opted for cheese fries, which is the only thing I've ever had there that they haven't messed up. Chelsea is spilling her beer in this picture.


It's 11:15 and I'm desperate! One more picture to get in! Bed, my favorite place to be. And check out my teddy bear flannels. I had complained that "fun" sheets don't come in queen size, and Mom found me these. I can't say I'm not looking forward to retiring them, but they are still (relatively) usable, and I'm loathe to retire anything usable.

And that's my first 12 of 12, I hope you enjoyed it.

Eek! I've been flirting with IT Guy over email this afternoon. Or trying to flirt. I don't know how effective I am. He answered my Help Desk ticket for a problem with one of my printers, and we ended up talking UFC (Chuck fan, plus in his column), and I issued him a standing invitation to watch fights with us. I guess I'll find out how effective I am if he takes me up on it? I'm not very good at this sort of thing.

I talked to Emily for an hour last night, and she kinda walked me through more of the details and how she feels about it, and just generally kinda calmed me down. She's a very strong woman.

Emily had her appointment yesterday, and I suppose you can just read what she wrote. I hate this. I hate that we're all so helpless and we just have to sit back and let it happen. I hate that she's so far away. I hate that the best we can hope for is for it not to get worse. I want to protect my little sister, and I can't. You can't protect someone from their own body. Why does all this shit have to happen to people I love?

There's nothing like a Celtic pub band and a night of drinking to lift your spirits. I joined my cousin Rachael and her husband and friends at The Mill Saturday night to see Wylde Nept. I've been to see them once before, and it's really so much fun, with the drinking and clapping and banging pints on the table. There could be dancing, too, but after a couple pitchers of Guinness, I don't think that would have been a good idea. (In order not to sound like a complete lush, that translated to a pint an hour.)

I dragging the gang along next time, they're playing at the Mill again on February 17th for St. Practice Day.

Prayers for my sister would be appreciated.

I've been neglecting you all in favor of email marathons with Chelsea. Blame it on her. But we've exchanged some great recipies, commiserated about the postponement of the St. Pierre/Serra fight, discussed adaption of books into movies, and we've made plans for yarn/fabric shopping tonight, then going to Panera and after to see Eragon. (We have a shared love of children's fantasy.)

I'm also extolling the virtues of Ugly Betty. I set my TiVo to record the marathon on SoapNet on the 1st, and have been watching it all week. I can't believe I missed this! I think it's my favorite new show. It's cute and funny and campy and predictable, but with really good acting and I love it.