*Yawn*

For some reason, I woke up around 5:15 this morning. I decided to just go
ahead and come in to work, so I've been in since 7:00. At least this will
let me go home early and pack.

Why am I still awake?

I have a meeting at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and here I am, still up after 11:30. If I don't go in early, I won't be able to leave early, and if I don't leave early, I won't be able to pack for my flight on Tuesday without staying up late. My sister's wedding is next weekend, and I'm flying home early enough to get some good family time in. My sibling and I intend to go shopping for a wedding dress for me. I haven't found something out here, so I'm hoping that I can find something at the same store where she got her dress.

I'm going log on and check my work email in the small hope that tomorrow's meeting has been cancelled. Of course, even if it has been cancelled, I should go to bed and get up early. If I don't go to work early, I should get some clothing together for my trip. (My flight is early on Tuesday morning, so I have to make sure I pack the night before.

It worked!

Having BookCrossing send an email to my blog worked... mostly. There was a lot of HTML formatting that I had to remove before Blogger would accept the post. If BookCrossing had sent out a nice friendly text-only email, we would have had no problems.

Check out BookCrossing.com...

I found this cool site for book lovers...       BookCrossing.com ...and thought you would appreciate it. The website encourages people to Read, Register, and then Release their books "into the wild" and then track where they go and the lives they touch. Great concept... share your books and follow their progress forever. Best of all, it's FREE. Help spread the word by forwarding this to your friends, and of course be sure to visit www.BookCrossing.com! Personal message from Brooke: After recently picking up a lot of material for $2/bag at the big library booksale, I've decided I should start using my bookcrossing account again. Many of these books will be appreciated much more by letting other people have them than by just sitting in a box or on a shelf in my apartment.

In case you forgot I live in a desert...

85 degrees Fahrenheit, 12% humidity

This morning there was a man with a jackhammer outside my office window. I'm not sure why he was tearing up the pavement, but it was nearly impossible to get any work done until he stopped. It was really loud and the floor was shaking. Why couldn't they have waited until people weren't working in here? Was it that urgent to dig a trench today?

My code hates me...

I make what should be a minor change and suddenly it refuses to behave. Stupid program!

Gardening

I went to a nursery yesterday afternoon and bought some plants for my patio. If all goes well, I'll have a nice supply of herbs all summer, and if all goes very well, I'll be able to harvest some tomatoes. (I'm not sure how well tomatoes will grow in containers, but it is worth a try.)

I have a few avocado pits in water that are sending up shoots. I'm hoping to get a decent avocado plant or two from them.

I've been thinking I should dig out my sprouting jar and buy some seeds. I used to grow alfalfa sprouts all the time, but got out of the habit when the jar was boxed up for an apartment move. I was reminded of it when I saw a book on sprouting a the used book store yesterday.

Lazy weekend

I had stuff I should have done yesterday, but I mostly just sat around the house knitting. (At least it wasn't a total loss. I got a few more inches done on a shawl for my mother.) Today is shaping up to be just as slow. Here it is after noon and my biggest accomplishment is that I've showered and washed my hair. I'm living the high life now!

I'm thinking of going out to a plant nursery and picking up some herbs that I could grow in containers on my patio. The sunlight out here should be great for plants, provided I remember to water them enough.

I still need to come up with a gift for my sister. I'll be flying over a few days early, so I might put it off until I get there so I don't have to wrangle a package on the plane.

I'm supposed to start how early?!

My FMIL bought me a couple of wedding planning books. The timeline given starts at least a year in advance. Apparently I'm really rushing things by not being in the finishing stages by now (with over three months until W-day). I don't think my attention span is long enough to start planning a party that early. At least I am able to save effort by skipping a lot of the nonsense in those books.

Engagement announcements? Anyone who doesn't know already isn't close enough to us to care.
Engagement party? Come on, who really has those?
Lots of expensive stuff that nobody notices or cares about? Ha!

Yes, planning this thing remotely will probably drive me nuts, but at least it isn't going to drag on forever. I refuse to let this take over my life!

I must go shopping!

I just realized that I haven't gotten a gift for my sister's wedding, which is coming up in about two weeks. I would have liked to have knit them something, but at this point there is no way my needles would be able to fly that fast.

Hmm, what on earth would they like? They already have a well-equipped household between the two of them. (Actually, I think my sister alone was set up pretty well, so adding her fiance's stuff ensures it.)

Perhaps some sort of southwestern-themed item? (After all, I do live all the way out here, so I should take advantage of what is in this region.) I don't want to give them a useless dust-collector, though. I must think upon this.

It lives!

After much work, my program finally does something! It is amazing how long it took to get the components to actually interact, but now my agents can talk to each other. (They're still really stupid, but at least the framework is in place now.)

Short break for a happy dance before getting back to work!

I ended up in the back of the room with a pen and paper, "taking notes". Well, actually, I did write down some notes, but they were things to do later rather than anything to do with the presentation I was watching.

I've a meeting with my manager in the morning. I really hope this whole knitting controversy isn't going to get out of hand.

Some paranoid person at work thinks that it looks bad for me to knit during meetings. It's not as if I do it when I'm actually part of the meeting, but if I'm going to be stuck in a four hour meeting as an observer with nothing to contribute, I need to keep my hands busy to pay attention. I was sitting off in the back of the room out of the way! I bet this guy wouldn't have had any problem if I had paid no attention at all and doodled on a piece of paper, but since I had my yarn out it could "give the wrong impression to the customer". What impression is that, that people in our company are capable of multitasking? I wonder if he is one of those people who can't walk and chew gum at the same time?

Anyway, just because of one anti-knitter in another department, I'll have to find something else to do if I'm ever in one of those interminable meetings with people from outside my department. Knitting was perfect. I could channel my fidgeting into something constructive, and I didn't have to look at my hands while I did it. *sigh* Oh, well. I guess I may just have to give up on paying attention in those things. I have a another long meeting in the morning, so I'd better come up with something quick.

I'm not feeling as light-headed now. I think drinking a bunch of water and just sitting in my office all afternoon helped my body recover a bit from the blood donation.

I just gave blood today. Feeling kind of light-headed, but not too bad. Two months ago when I gave, I got really pale and dizzy. I suppose it was rather shocking to my system to have a pint of blood drawn just when my body was finally adapting to the altitude.

I think I'll have a hamburger or some other meat for supper tonight to make up for the lost iron and stuff. I also think I'd better not try to make any major design decisions on my code today, since I'm not exactly working at full capacity right now.

Time to get another drink of water and go back to work.

Wedding dress shopping is insane! I went on a whirlwind tour of six shops in two days with my FMIL. The whole wedding industry seems disturbingly manipulative.

It's supposed to get in the mid to high 80s today. I can feel my contact lenses trying to suck the moisture from my eyeballs. Oh, by the way, it's still spring!

I must find a way to get to the yarn store in the near future. I ordered a cone of Harrisville Designs Shetland in a nice purple shade and it has finally arrived. Now I'll be able to finish the shawl I had to put on hold a while back. Of course, I've started a couple of new projects while I was waiting, so now I have to choose what I should try to finish first.

No new knitting projects until I free up at least one set of needles!

Brief post while waiting for my code to compile...

It's springtime in the desert. I'm still trying to adapt to this climate. I drank a whole bottle of water on the drive to work this morning. I've found I get headaches if I'm dehydrated. On the plus side, my hair dried quite quickly after my shower.

Yay! The project compiled with no errors! Back to work for me.

My future mother-in-law will be in town tomorrow. I spent most of last Saturday cleaning my apartment in preparation. I think I somehow hurt my back mopping. I had two days of pain, but today it has subsided to a mild ache. I hope my efforts are appreciated. I don't move my clutter for just anyone, you know!