Screaming Banshee, from Hallmark

I had a great Memorial Day weekend. I took Friday off and Mom & I went to Ocean City. I was off Monday anyway, but upon return to work Tuesday, I was immediately behind the 8-ball with stuff to do.

The weirdness started out on Wednesday night when a friend of the family passed out at her job. She was put on life support, but was brain dead. At only 50 years old. It’s sobering and sad and I feel heavy pangs of sadness for her survivors.

Then on Thursday, I got a phone call that Mom was in an ambulance heading to a hospital.

Wha?

She stumbled during a field trip and broke her ankle. She’s in a partial cast and using crutches. Her orthopedic follow-up is Tuesday afternoon. I’m pleased, because the doctor we’ll be seeing is associated with the Rothman Institute, known around here for skillfully reassembling South Jerseyans. But no matter what the doctor says, she’ll be off her foot for a bit. John and I and Kristen and WM and Mom’s friends are all pitching in and helping out, but it’s still chaotic. Tomorrow, I’ll swing by there before work to feed Chip, let him out, and get her settled for the morning. My brain is on hyperdrive trying to come up with crutch-friendly ways for her to go through her daily life without having to depend too much on other people showing up.

Work is a hot mess because I’m super-HYPER behind from missing most of Thursday, on top of the Monday & Friday before. And I’ll be off Tuesday afternoon, too. Yikes! I pre-emptively worked 2 hours on something today so I’d be set for a meeting tomorrow morning. (And so I can count the 2 hrs toward leaving early Tuesday & any other time I might need to leave to take care of something for her.)

And I have something else cooking too. Just can’t blog about it. No, it’s not a baby.

Oh, and everyone at work seems to think we’ll be having layoffs again before the month is out. Whatever. At least it’s summer.

But none of this is BAD, just chaotic. I used to pirouette gracefully when everything around me was up in the air but as I move more toward the “get off my lawn” stage of life, unpredictability leaves me cranky and short-tempered.

Anyway, dear CookieCrumbs, if you have tips on how to make crutching around any easier for a lovely lady, leave them below.

Examples:
2009 I liked the purple.
2008 (that theme makes me angry – it was free, and ended up getting some pharmacy spam code injected into the header)
2007 (a temporary breakaway from my usual font. I don’t think my hair will ever be that long again)
2006 (red hair, marriage falling apart behind the scenes)

Other than this, I’ll stay away from the ‘net today. I think the big companies have ruined April Fools with their slick productions that are designed to make us think “wow, they’re so cooooool!” I know I’m looking at it from the viewpoint of an overworked cube dweller, but I don’t think corporate frivolity belongs on someone’s task list.

I’m also looking at it from the viewpoint of someone who tore herself out of bed early to flip her page. So there is that, too.

Friday Five is here. Have a great weekend!

This is a free theme called Bueno from WooThemes. It took me about an hour to install & customize. And now I’m back on track!

One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you? (Author: Gwen Bell)

Disappointment.

>> And I know it sounds maudlin, but really, 2010 was disapppointing for many reasons, such as:
>> Despite a forest’s worth of resumes and cover letters sent out, WM has yet to find a full time job. He’s subbing, which sucks.
>> I thought the paper was doing better, but was disappointed to find that not only were we not doing better, but there was another round of furloughs.
>> The unresolved thyroid crap. I’ve taken myself off of the medicine entirely and feel fine. No more sleepy, no more freezing, etc. But I’m disappointed that I felt like crap for the entire spring and summer. I’m going to make an endocrinologist appointment in January.

>> I was disppointed by some people this year, too. Just, stuff.

(WHOOOSH!)

Whoa! It’s 2011! Neat! This is a cute hairstyle!

2011 was triumphant! How could it not be?

>> WM has a great classroom of kids this year.
>> My job is troublesome still, but I’m supplementing my income with a fledgling jewelry business.
>> We’re paying off all of our debts and are finding extra money everywhere!
>> Did I mention that we could also afford a vacation again. What a blast!
>> And I finally did that thing that I was afraid to do. You know that thing? From earlier in the year? Done. And it was great.

Too bad the world’s ending in 2012.

Charlie is unimpressed.

For me, this is slipping into Howard Hughes territory. Plus, I’m typoing a LOT on the keyboard lately and it’s bugging.

This picture was taken Sunday night. I’ve since painted them teal.

What do you think of dark nail polish? Is it tacky or trashy? I think they’re fine but last week I encountered some … lascivious … comments about dark fingernail polish which left me a little bit skeeved out.

My 20 year (weep!) high school reunion is being planned. Kudos to the ones who pulled it together, because I think we had over 500 in our graduating class. Anyway, it’s going to be $78 PER PERSON. Is this normal? It seems really pricey to me. At $78 pp, I may have to break WM’s heart by not taking him. I know he’s been looking forward to it.

I still miss my cat.

And finally, I want to thank you all for visiting. Commenters and lurkers, new folk and regulars, even those who don’t read at all anymore. I don’t have a niche topic or good traffic, but I love this odd little blog of mine. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy days to come by and share it.

Yesterday, my blog was down for about 5 hours. Except it wasn’t.

So why did my WordPress posts disappear?

Symptoms:
1) Page not found message on WordPress blog index page on load.
2) Blog theme intact
3) When I go to the admin tool, database didn’t load all the way. So wp-admin was showing 0 posts. The comment number was showing, but when I clicked on comments, 0 loaded.

Steps taken:
1) Freak out. Freak the hell out. Believe I’ve been hacked. Freak out more.
2) Connect to my server via FTP. All folders were intact.
3) Log into my cpanel. Immediately change password.
4) The wordpress database was still there. Great!
5) Use PHP MyAdmin to browse the database. My wp_posts table was “in use.” Hmmm.
6) Repaired wp_posts table using this repair table method
7) Browsed to the end (most current records) of the wp_posts table. Saw 6 data entries for the “My Pets” page. I was trying to perform some housekeeping on it earlier and WP was acting funky. I deleted all of those entries.
8 ) Log back into wp-admin. Huzzah! Posts are back!
9) Visit ladygypsy.net. Receive no theme at all, just “Unable to connect to database”
10) Freak out. Freak the hell out. Eight years of blog. Gone!!!
11) Realize I changed my server password back in step 3. Update wp-config.php to include new password.
12) Success!

I should have realized when I saw the 404 that it wasn’t my hosting service’s problem. And when I saw the proper theme I should have realized that WordPress was working correctly.

Anyway, in my travels, I found this ad:

You all pretty much know I’m not a reader of Dooce’s blog*. And I know a lot of you are. And that’s cool. But even you have to admit that “Family Fun Articles” and “Dooce” is a pretty big stretch.

I mean, if you’re looking for fun things to do with your kids you’re going to French Toast Girl or Secret Agent Josephine or … another crafty mom blog. There are hundreds of them.

Dooce isn’t going to tell you how to make Play-doh from scratch. She’s going to tell you how much Grey Goose she drank when she found some store-bought Play-doh that was ground into her fair-trade Persian-yarn looped rug while she was traveling to speak on a panel. Then she’ll link to the rug on some website and you’ll see how much she paid for it. Then she’ll post a highly touched up black and white photo of her left eye and piss off the LDS in one fell swoop. That’s blog talent. But it’s not Family Fun.

Which leads me to wonder what in the hell they were thinking at McD’s when they decided to create an ad that had to spider through YEARS of archives (her daughter is 6 now) to find four blog posts that may mention “fun” in them?

This isn’t Dooce’s fault – I almost feel badly for her because it’s like her name and image are being grossly misused to hawk Chicken McNuggets.

(Then I think about the dump trucks of cash her blog brings in and I don’t feel so bad.)

It’s the fault of the marketers who completely don’t understand the online culture – who think that you can just find the most famous blogger out there and they’d be a great fit for whatever you’re selling.

Or the ones who won’t run ads on the local news section of the paper because they want to target women.

Or the ones who pay big bucks to cookie my computer and run World of Warcraft ads on every site I visit – blissfully ignorant of the fact that I got that cookie in the first place because I visited WoW fan sites BECAUSE I play WoW so … showing me an ad beseeching me to try World of Warcraft free for 10 days isn’t going to work.

It’s a waste of money.

Everytime a woman clicks that McD’s ad and goes to Dooce and says, “That blog McD’s sent me to wasn’t about Family Fun” and stops clicking on McD’s ads altogether…

Everytime a woman reading about the town council meeting doesn’t see that breast cancer screening ad because it ran only on the food section…

Everytime World of Warcraft looks at their reports and puzzle over why the clickthrough rates are tiny, even though they have the best targeting they could possibly buy…

…someone gets the idea in their head that online advertising doesn’t work.

It does work. It just requires some thought.

*I used to be, long ago. We grew apart.

***
9/24/09: Musings on being 37

“So I’ve been 37 for 19 days now, and so far it’s not bad.

Thankfully, I still don’t get/like Chico’s.”

***
10/2/09: Friday Five – Story

Question 5 is all I filled out.

5. What song would be an appropriate soundtrack to the story of your most embarrassing moment?

Probably that “Bad Day” song that was popular 2 or so years back.

***
1/25/10: Weekend Wrapup

Saturday: Swung by the mall to see the sights and walk a bit. While the Disney Store didn’t have anything of interest, we spent some time in Urban Outfitters where I picked up this hat to match my blue winter coat. It was only $9.99! Then I had my customary Saturday Sonic meal (19 points for the meal, good thing I have that weekly points bank) and we went grocery shopping for all sorts of good stuff.

The worst part about eating healthier is that it costs SO much more than eating like crap. I could eat at Taco Bell every day and save heaps of cash. Fruit and vegetables and meat is expensive. :/

***
4/5/10: Untitled

There are hipsters. There are crafters. Then there are hipster crafters. Unfortunately, I think the hipster crafters have completely taken over the Internet.

Take the simple task of dying eggs for Easter. Last week I found quite a few links about how to create natural egg dyes. A few of them had the smug tone of being “above” those families that dyed their eggs with PAAS.

(My point was going to be: maybe instant egg dyes were invented because our ancestors were tired of boiling tumeric and red cabbage for hours to make drab Easter Egg dye? Some people have TOO much time on their hands. Your special snowflake isn’t going to grow up a troglodyte because of an instant dye tablet.)

1. Be honest: what are some rules you have for yourself that don’t really make much sense?

Nowadays I only get out of bed when the minute hand is on a :05 or a :00. So I’ll get out of bed at 6:30 or 6:35, but not 6:33. I have no idea what I do this. Maybe it’s laziness, because a rule like that only results in my staying in bed as much as 4 minutes longer.

Yeah. It’s silly.

2. What rules of questionable sense did your parents have for you when you were young?

Nothing really questionable although I will say the only kids I grew up with who had a stricter upbringing than mine were the “fundie” kids.

3. What’s a rule most people (if not all people) seem never to obey?

When you’re waiting to get on an elevator, let people exit first. It’s rude to push yourself on while people are trying to exit. Certain people in my apartment building will ALWAYS stand directly in front of the doors when they open and run right into people. I’m seriously not trying to be racist or insensitive or politically correct, but I wonder if it’s a cultural thing.

4. There are no rules governing the giving and receiving of Valentine’s Day gifts, but what rules should there be?

Speaking as someone who does not go out on V-Day anymore because I am old and cheap, I’d lke to see Valentine’s Day become a holiday for couples again. Cards/candy for kids are fine, but I’m slightly squicked by the growing trend of taking your daughter/son out on a “date” that day. Parent/kid dates are cute, but can we have one day out for the grownups?

5. If the Golden Rule says you should do unto others as you’d have others do unto you, what would the Silver and Bronze rules say?

Silver: Obey the Golden Rule, but don’t be a doormat. At some point, you have to quit putting yourself out for certain people because they’ll use you.
Bronze: Don’t leave an empty food product container where someone else could possibly think it’s still full. That’s cruel.

***
Wt: 167.8
Dream: I was hanging out at a NKOTB concert.

While I don’t have any formal background in banner ad design, it’s been part of my job for the last 10 years. I’d like to think I’ve improved greatly over that time.

Yesteday I got a request to build six (!) banners for a local fuel company. One of the banners is to “have a fuel truck pulling or towing a metal tank or container” across it. I couldn’t find any stock images of a fuel truck, so I decided to create one in Photoshop instead.

If this truck could be ANY cuter, Hello Kitty would be driving it. I deleted the logo because the customer hasn’t seen it yet.

Every Friday night, WM and I watch Lar deSouza (artist for “Least I Could Do” and “Looking For Group“) draw live on uStream. And I swear up and down watching him use Photoshop every week has made such a difference in how I use Photoshop in my daily work!

Something I’ve learned: Use highlights and gradients to create roundness and shadows to create depth. I can’t just tack a wheel on top of a truck, because the wheel actually resides inside a wheel well. That simple smudged “shadow” on the ground puts the truck on the ground instead of floating in mid air.

***

Dream: There is a bat in the apartment. It hides in closets and tries to pluck out my eyes. Nobody will help us get rid of the bat, as it is part of a big MTV Punked-type reality show that’s filming my abject terror.

Today’s weight: 177.8
Weight change: -2.6