June 2006 Archives

The title pretty much sums up the past week or so. Lots to do on the work front, new customers to turn up, contracts to do, disputes to file. My head has been spinning, though whether that's from stress or lack of sleep or both, I don't know.

I'm currently running on two hours of sleep. Did I stay up until 4 or 5am? Nope. I went to sleep at 11:30pm, and woke up at 1:30am and haven't been able to get back to sleep since. Today we need to sign the new lease, shuffle money at the bank, and plot out another huge maintenance this weekend. The radio show on the other server isn't working out (more drama!) so we're going to run our own. We have a month to figure out how to do that and put it all together, but I think it's doable.

In other news, we've finally cleaned out the garage to the point where I can start using my freezer again. Unfortunately somewhere along the line in the move, the freezer didn't get to dry out completely; consequently, there is an absolutely heinous stench emanating from the interior. I tried for the past week to get the smell out, but no luck. From what I read online, if the moisture gets into the insulation, then the smell is permanent. Yuck. So, I went to sears.com and checked out the freezers and a replacement for what I have now plus tax, delivery and hauling away the stinkbomb freezer was $335. We spent over $600 eating out last month alone, so if I can roll even just half of that back into eating at home, the freezer pays for itself in a month's time.

I know people think I'm crazy with the separate freezer, but it really does help us to eat better and save time and money. I can start using my Costco membership again and stock up on big bags of frozen veggies and fruits that just wouldn't fit in the freezer above the fridge. I can also make big batches of things like chili and meatballs and cereal breaded chicken strips, and not have the leftovers go bad before we can eat them, or have them come out of the freezer tasting funky and frostbitten. Will we eat every meal at home? No way. We'll still go out, but it might actually become more enjoyable since it will be a choice and not a necessity.

And enough about freezers... well almost. Sears is supposed to deliver tomorrow at some time that they've not apprised me of yet. Monday I have an appointment at Paule Attar, first to get my unruly brows tamed by someone other than Jennifer, and then since Liz left, I'll have Jaime cutting and coloring my current hideous mop. Tuesday night, I'm going to Jami's Instant Love reading in Seattle, yay!

Yesterday kind of sucked -- I was cranky, didn't get enough sleep, and just everything was pissing me off. I didn't even shower until 5pm, and as we know, the timing of the shower is a barometer for the shittiness of my day. After I was showered, and dressed, and fed, and still cranky, I remembered that today was the day... after being on pre-order for EIGHT FRIGGIN MONTHS, I'd finally get a copy of Jami Attenberg's Instant Love! So, I went to check the mail, and lucky for the postman, he had not forsaken me.

Having been a loyal reader of Jami's journal Whatever-whenever.net for years, it was almost magical zipping open the brown cardboard Amazon boxypouch and holding an honest-to-God hardcover full-length book by her. I told Richard not to bug me, I was going upstairs to read, damn it. This is one of those books that I'm forcing myself to read slowly. It's broken into a series of short stories, so it's easier for me to tell myself "Okay, that's enough for right now." But wow, it's really good. It did take me a few stories to get into how the structure of the book was all going to play out, but then the light bulb went off and the moment of "ohhhhhh, okay, I get it... how neat!" arrived and all was good. Actually, when I reached the lightbulb moment, I forced myself to stop. I realized I was feeling much better -- the cranky had dissipated -- and I should really savor something I've waited years to read :)

So if anyone actually reads this blog, and is looking for some hot, young, all fiction action, go buy Instant Love now. And no, I don't get any money from the Amazon links :)

Last night I forced Richard to search through his email for terms he'd offered two clients, but never sent to me to put into actually contracts. How did I get him to do this? By agreeing to suffer through 1.5 Star Trek movies. I don't remember what the first one was, but the second (the one I had to sit down and watch every last minute of) was Star Trek: Undiscovered Country. It was okay for a Star Trek movie, but I'll really never get over my parents dragging me to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the theatre when I was a child.

This morning I prepped the contract packages and sent them out, as well as following up on several other issues. Ended up working til 11:30am. Then I thought Richard had slept long enough so maybe he could shower and let me nap for an hour or two since I'd been up since 7am working. He promised me that he'd get up "soon", and I crawled into bed beside him and tried to sleep. His typing on his laptop. His intermittent coughing. His shifting around to readjust pillows while in bed. His poking me when I was breathing too loud. Twitch. I finally gave up around 3pm, feeling even shittier than when I went up at 11:30am. And who's still in bed even now? Richard. Still not showered. Still in bed with the damn laptop.

Monday morning and I'm making some good progress on the to-do list I made last night at 3am. I finally tracked down the friend of Richard's that was spamming on our IPs. The guy had been on vacation in the Caribbean all last week when I was trying to get him to shut down the customer of his that was sending the spam. He then had the audacity to whine to me today that his girlfriend was not happy that he was dealing with business while on vacation. To which I responded "well, if you'd have taken care of this on Friday before you left for vacation... "

The truth is I'm envious of anyone who has their own business and thinks they can take a vacation. Richard and I haven't had a real vacation or even more than 24 hours when we were both together and not checking on the business since 2002. A truly crazy person emailed me last week and said what an inspiration we were and how someday she hoped she and her boyfriend could work from home running a "mom and pop ISP". While it might seem that I'm the luckiest girl in the world -- what with the whole not getting up til noon some days, not getting showered or dressed until afternoon, etc -- I can assure you that each of those "perks" comes with a price. I sleep until noon some days because I'm up until 5am dealing with a network issue. Not showered or dressed until afternoon? Well that's because as soon as I woke up at 7am, there were 10 issues that needed to be dealt with ASAP and I couldn't even take a 15 minute break to tend to basic needs like a shower and clean clothes. But I am SO lucky I get to work from home! With no set office hours, that means there's no start or end to my day. There's also no start or end to my week. Let that sink in for a moment, and then tell me again how lucky I am :)

It's been a while since I updated, I know. Richard went to Nanog in San Jose and came back bearing a hearty little cold. That knocked me on my ass all day Saturday and half the day today. I'm still trying to summon the will to shower and dress and head out in search of some more yummy Robitussin capsules. Today I'm making orange cinnamon rolls -- hopefully they turn out okay, as I'm kind of improvising the orange part. There's a bunch more to report, but I really should get back to the rolls.

The menagerie is home, and life is good :) I've been running around like a chicken with her head cut off though, trying to get Richard ready for his trip to San Jose this afternoon. This Nanog, I approve of -- Richard will be doing so much other work at all of our bay area POPs that it's totally worth the expense of sending him down there. My plans for while he's gone include doing lots of laundry, using the Space Bags to suck and store a lot of it once it's clean, and generally catching up on housework.

Overall I was quite pleased with Cascade Kennels, everyone seemed happy when we got them, and no one smelled like pee, or had been housed in a dirty converted garage (hello Cat Spaw - ugh!). Pricing was inline with what we'd been paying at Old Mill in Leesburg, and it was a really nice set up. We'll definitely be boarding the animals more frequently now that we've found a good sitter :)

To round out my weekend, I have NetFlixed March of the Penguins and Land of the Lost disc 1, woo! I also have tons and tons of reading to catch up on, which will help break up the monotony of cleaning and network babysitting.