Happiness Is...

Having an external hard drive. And knowing that the hard drive on my Dell laptop that I use courtesy of my employer can crap out all it wants, and I won’t have to have a meltdown along with it.

The way work has been lately has been making me think about what I’d really like to do if I didn’t have to worry about trivial things. Like paying bills. It’s not that I don’t like my job, I find it interesting much more often than not, I think we do some really great work around the country and around the world, and I work with some really great people. But there are those times when I feel like I’m no closer to finding that oft-mentioned balance, and I think about what I’d find truly rewarding. It probably goes without saying that I’d like to be a writer (among other things), as most, if not all, bloggers have something of the frustrated writer buried in them somewhere. Blogging is a forum for people to read what you have to write without those pesky middle men known as agents, editors, and booksellers. Not to mention reviewers.

But for now, I will, I suppose, persist in the stroll down Narcissism Lane that is this blog.

I've Seen Better Days

The last week or two, ever since we got back from Charleston, have been insane. Work has required more all-nighters and is completely wearing me out. Any time lately that I get a reprieve on one project, I’ve got to try to tear through another project that I haven’t been able to attend to because of the thing that had the more immediate deadline. I also feel like my work has been sloppier because I’m tired all the time. I’ve missed a couple weeks of my small group at church, I’ve missed a lot of sleep, and I feel like I don’t have time for all of my commitments, for the things I want to do, for my job, and for a life, if I want to do them all at the same time.

In the middle of all of this stress last week, the hard drive on my computer crashed. They tried to save as much as they could, but since I don’t have my own computer, I had some of my own stuff on my work computer. I lost a lot of my writing, which just breaks my heart because I can’t even think of how I would replace it – basically, I can’t. I also lost a lot of photographs, although fortunately I had uploaded most of them to Snapfish. And I also lost most of my bookmarks and things, because they only copied over my internet profile from Explorer, not Firefox, which is what I use primarily. That’s not much more than a pain in the butt, but it’s still a pretty big pain in the butt. Special K and I have been talking about buying our own computer, but we just don’t have the means to do it right now, so it’s part of our plan for later. For the time being, I’m going to buy my own USB external hard drive and keep my stuff there. The first person who tells me that I should have either backed up my stuff and/or not kept anything personal on here will be punched straight in the mouth (if you’re out of state, it may have to wait until the next time I see you). Tell me something I don’t know. Please. I back up my stuff, just clearly not often enough. I need to check my most recent backup CD and see if I’ve got more recent versions of my writing and stuff – but generally realizing the extent of what I lost was incredibly upsetting.

Not that I’m feeling hostile about the situation or anything.

Did I mention that I’m getting sick, too?

Could I get some cheese to go with all this whine?

I also got a call from a doctor’s office with whom I had an appointment this morning. Their confirmation message last week said that if I didn’t call back to confirm the appointment, it would be cancelled. So I thought “great, one less thing to do”, so I didn’t call. Well, they called me this morning, and I have a feeling that, despite what I was told, they’ll be sending me a bill for a missed appointment. This will tick me off. I also got out to my car to find a parking ticket on it, because I had moved it after being in my spot for two hours, as you’re supposed to when parking on the street in DC without a resident sticker, but I moved to the spot directly in front of me. And they gave me a ticket for not moving my car. I have no way on Earth of proving this, but I suppose I’ll contest the ticket anyway.

This was, I believe, the pickle on the crap sandwich of my day.

In other news, however, wedding planning is going really easily so far, Special K and I seem to agree on a lot of the same things. We’re making plans for a 90^th birthday party for my grandmother, whose birthday is a week, to the day, before the wedding. Fortunately, that also looks like it’s going to be pretty easy, I think we’ve all agreed on a plan of action, and it should be nice to get a lot of the family together, since we’re doing it the day after the wedding. We went wedding ring shopping on Sunday on a spur-of-the-moment decision, and I think we found ones that we like. I also found a really beautiful, and completely unnecessary, sparkly thing that totally had me making puppy dog eyes at Special K, immediately followed by my practical side saying “I really don’t need it.” (I said it out loud, not just in my head. I promise.) I don’t normally consider myself materialistic, but it was Just. So. Pretty.

This weekend coming up should be on the quiet side, which I’m glad about. The weekend after that, Special K and I are heading out to Illinois and Wisconsin to see old friends and introduce him to my grandmother. It should be a great trip, we’ve been planning on it for a while. (Which is why I’m going to be chugging all the zinc and vitamin C I can, because I can’t be sick for this trip.)

And now I think I’d best get some work done.