I've got blisters on me fingers

Been working on my house the past couple of days getting it ready to go on the market sometime soon. Yesterday was was extremely long and exhausting. We pulled out the sliding door that went to the deck and replaced it with french doors. Then we sanded a couple of patches in the ceiling that we fixed a few weeks ago, and to finish off the day, we repainted the ceiling in the living-dining-kitch-hallway room (aka big ass ceiling space) I woke up this morning with jelly for shoulders they were so freakin sore.


The new french doors, freshly painted.

Today was not as stressful. We pulled out the front door and replaced it with a nice energy-efficient one, and I painted the new french doors. Also got a great estimate for the old windows that need to be replaced (also energy efficient) The first company we had come in estimated $5000 for 5 windows, installed. Home Depot came out and estimated $2500 for 6 windows (we found a semi-new one that had been damaged when we remodeled the kitchen) Granted the Home Depot ones are not as high quality, but they have all the bells and whistles of modern-day windows and are energy-efficient, for less than half the price.



The new front door

My dad is coming over again tomorrow, and we are going to knock a few more things off the list like power washing the deck (If you've never power washed anything, I highly recommend it, it is very fun, and a pretty descent workout)

I've been casually looking for houses to buy, and I've narrowed my search down to 4 zip codes, 22302, 22301, 22204, and 22202. They are all in the Arligton/Shirlington/Del Ray area. There are some pretty cool places in my price range that have a lot of great amenities (I feel like using the word amenities makes me feel more adult, but not in a good way, in the "I can't have that beer, I've got a big day tomorrow, you know going to the Home Depot, maybe the Pottery Barn if there's time.." kind of way...crap, I'm becoming domesticated)

Update of the Miscellaneous Type

Hello good people in www land. I wanted to send out a quick update on some stuff that has been going on.

I've only told a few people so far, but I think it has been long enough that I can start to share. I finally quit smoking again! And this is not some half-assed attempt, it's been over 2 weeks already, and I've been feeling pretty good so far, no real cravings at all. I also have taken a hiatus from my good friend and sturdy companion, alcohol for that same time, which has been surprisingly easy as well. I was going to start drinking again after I got through this conference I had to work at for work, but now that I'm past that, I am actually thinking about staying away from the sauce for a little while longer. The past year or so I had been kind of reckless with my drinking, Not that I was getting plastered every weekend or trying to relive my college glory years, there were just some really bad nights, and even worse mornings where I would wake up and think, "what the fuck did I do last night?" I had a couple of nights where I blacked out, and that had never happened even in my glory days.

But fear not my friends. I will come back to the good juice, just hopefully with a little more perspective and wisdom.

The other lifestyle change I made with the new nonsmoking moniker is my diet. I'm back to cooking a lot more, and cutting out preservatives and all that horrible shit they put into processed foods to make it "taste better" and survive a mustard gas attack. (I've been doing some reading on MSG and aspartame, and I'll write on that in a little while)

My last post was a little rant about the wasting of time, and that day was a bad one. I ended up spending 11 hours at that meeting on Sunday, and did a grand total of maybe 2 hours of work. Monday was similar, 14 hours at the meeting, and probably 6 hours of work, a better proportion, but still a whole lot of wasted time.

I had kind of a redeeming day of meetings today. A couple of bad ones, but some good ones, and one really good one. A small group of us spent an hour and had a very productive discussion. I actually left feeling like I learned something. There may be some hope for this job yet...

Last thing I wanted to talk about is the Weather Chanel web page. I was checking the weather for the week the other day, and they had a video on there talking about the arrival of the Aurora Borealis being a sign that Spring is coming in the US. I've always been fascinated with the Aurora Borealis and it is a life goal to experience them in person. Here's a pretty cool video that shows what causes them, and it has some pretty good video of them as well.



I also stumbled on a pretty cool picture that I felt like sharing that shows the earth at night from space. It is a composite picture since the entire earth is not experiencing nighttime at once, but it is pretty cool and scary.



And the last thing abut the weather is a little bit of a rant about DC weather the past couple of weeks. We had better weather, and it is getting warmer, but damn it if the weekends have been kind of shitty, and Monday's have been awesome. And this weekend is no different...



All I want to do is toss some frisbee, can't a hippie get a little love from mother nature one of these weekends?

The true defination of wasting time

So I was asked by our CEO to give a presentation to our board of directors about the membership magazine, which I am the production manager for. He said I have 5 minutes to report on the readership survey we just finished. I thought this would be a good thing, and get myself in front of the big wigs in the association.

So I spent the better part of 20 hours over the last month or so working in this 5 minute, 8 slide presentation. A good portion was spent analyzing data from the readership survey, but then I spent probably 6 hours over several days writing what I was going to say, and having my boss give me revisions that mostly consisted of, "Oh, they don't care about that info" and, "Cut this section down by...well go ahead and cut it completely." I'm all good with that, if they don't want to hear something, then there is no point saying it.

So I'm sitting here at the board meeting, well, actually I'm sitting outside the board meeting because right now they are talking about "important and confidential" stuff. Another coworker who is giving a presentation early in the meeting was just told he is up next, but what they are talking abut now could take an hour. I looked at the schedule, and I should be going up about an hour after him, so that means I am about 2 hours away form giving a 5 minute presentation to a group of people who mostly don't care (and will likely be exhausted by the time I get to speak) and I spent 20 hours preparing.

I'm starting to wonder if the time I spend at my job has any value at all...

At least we have good health benefits

My Celery Has Water

I had one of those moments today where you wonder what am I doing with my life?

I was in a 90 minute webinar (that's a online seminar for those lucky enough not to have heard of/experienced one) about the best way for associations to make the most money from corporate relationships. It took me about 45 seconds to realize the next 89.25 minutes were going to suck, and I was already grumpy from having to scarf down my lunch in under 10 minutes, and tired from the food coma that is post-pesto pasta yumminess. But then my mind started wandering as to what I was achieving by being there? What impact on society would I make by learning the best way to bundle sponsorship opportunities to get the most money out a greedy pharmaceutical corporation? I'm going to go with...none.

Luckily I got a phone call that I didn't actually answer answer, but I still left the room for about 15 minutes and walked around the office doing nothing. Then I ran into someone I didn't want to talk to, so I went back.

At this point the guy was talking about how it was more important to focus energy on companies that can give you large sums of money, "because doesn't it sound easier to manage 5 companies that can donate $1 million that 50 companies that can donate $100,000?" And yeah it does. But I started thinking, what about all those companies that can only spend $100,000, but need the exposure corporate sponsorship affords more than the big boys?

Anyway, I then traveled down a path of thought that lead me to the homogenization of our society, and how we've relinquished control over our free will and our desire to chose what's best for us. I know, it's just more of my bitching about evil Starbucks, and how "big box" stores are killing the mom and pop stores and therefore the fabric of "good" society. But for once I caught myself, and thought back to an episode of Penn&Teller's Bullshit, a really good show on Showtime, yes with that magician guy that never speaks and the other one who never shuts up.

The show looks into things that are bullshit, like the war on drugs, the death penalty as a deterrent, or ESP. The show doesn't take itself too seriously, so I don't either, but taken with a grain of salt, it has some good info (I'm now ok using public toilets for #2 is they are clean) and you get make fun of some fanatical idiots.

Anyway, the last episode I watched was about Wal-Mart haters, and how they are usually full of shit when the say Wal-Mart is bad for communities or an evil corporation. Sometimes they are, but most of the time they bring jobs to areas that need them, and they offer affordable merchandise to people who need it. Sometimes they put the mom and pop shops out of business, but in a lot of places, they were out of business before Wal-Mart came to town. It seems like the natural progression of things lately that these large corporations are increasing their market share. I see that as a potentially bad thing because we become over-reliant and more homogeneous, which leads to a loss of individuality and then creativity and intelligence (a la Idiocracy.)



But I've come to be more optimistic lately...well at least slightly hopeful. My friend Pat mentioned one day that all of this is necessary and part of greater information access which will lead to a renaissance of thought. I hope he's right. But I can guarantee you that it will not happen if the intelligent are stuck in meetings listening to speaker phones drone on about the value difference in offering logos on tote bags vs. keynote speaker sponsorship.

Oh, and here's part 1 of one of my favorite episodes of Penn&Teller's Bullshit