It’s memorial day, parades and barbeques are taking place everywhere across the US. Unfortunately for those of us in the northeast, we’re all sweating our asses off! Today is a very sticky 85° and it’s NOT a good time. I woke up freezing this morning because the AC is right next to my head. I thawed out almost instantly when going outside. It shouldn’t be in the 80′s at 9am but I guess that’s how things go.

I took a little trip to Walgreens this morning, the cat decided to destroy my brand new flipflops by using them as a scratching post while I was asleep last night. I did NOT appreciate that at all but really didn’t appreciate the fact that they no longer had the same pair, even though I’d seen a whole rack of them two days ago. I didn’t like any of the other ones either. Again, not a good time.

While browsing around the store I picked up a 10 pack of solar lights for my aunts house, they were on sale for $10, I couldn’t pass that up. The front of her house is hit with beautiful sunshine all day long but at night you wouldn’t even know the house was here without the driveway light being on. So, I picked them up and spread them out in the front yard. Thankfully they’re getting a full 9 hours of sun so hopefully they’ll be nice and lit up tonight so I can see how everything is going to look, the spacing, and can adjust things from there. It should be at least 10 to 15 degrees cooler tonight so I’ll be able to tolerate being outside for a little while, instead of dripping with sweat like I was when setting everything up. I was hardly moving, it’s just way too damn hot.

After the little bit of dressing up in the yard I made lunch for my uncle and then conquered the dishes in the sink that I was too tired to take care of last night. Of course it’s never simple for me, I was getting a little sick of the stuff piling up on the counter so I wound up just completely cleaning up the kitchen, scrubbing the counters and clearing some of the dust out. It’s not my house but considering I’ve been here for the last four days I finally had enough and just went ahead and cleaned everything.  Once I’ve gotten some rest (I am still dealing with a cold afterall), I’m going to tackle the bathroom.

It was my ultimate goal to sit down today and just complete the new template, I just have so many areas to focus on I honestly have no idea how to even begin to tackle it. I should probably just roll through the categories but even there I don’t know where to start.  The one thing that I always was good with at work was my problem solving. I think the fever has officially screwed with my brain.  Starting on Wednesday I’m going to create a daily to-do list.  Why Wednesday? Because it’s my first official “I can do this now” day. Tuesday is the get my shit together and go home day.  Wednesday at 9am will be the start date/time and I’ll go from there.

Time to lay down for a few minutes and then tackle that bathroom.

As of 6pm on 5/27 I am a free woman. The last almost three years with that company completely sucked the life out of me and now I’m doing everything I can to scrub their evil scent off of me. Unfortunately my energy bursts are limited thanks to the uber nasty cold that I picked up over the course of the past week. I’m patiently waiting for my nose to unclog itself, and the meds to kick in so that this fever can go away. It’s the worst feeling in the world to even have a fever when it’s freaking 90° outside. Hopefully something will kick in soon. I’m hoping it’s after I eat some dinner though, I don’t want to spend another night going to sleep without something to eat simply because I can’t TASTE anything right now. I HATE IT.

I spent a few hours on Thursday getting my laptop in order. I’ve got Microsoft Office Suite setup… one benefit for working where I did for the past few years is Microsoft Outlook. I know that not many people use it, but when it comes to scheduling, organizing and keeping tabs on EVERYTHING, it really is just a necessity. The customization is much nicer than Thunderbird, and I’m sorry but the options that Outlook 2007 comes with are just mind blowing. Different colors for everything, inserts up the wazoo and for some reason the line spacing on the emails is always perfect no matter what fonts you use. My default font of course is a black century gothic 10pt, it blends nicely with the logo I setup for my signature. There’s no way that I’m going back into everything without having all of my shit in order, outlook is part of that shit.

Photoshop is where my problem is, I’ve spent so damn long looking at estimating software that I’m having trouble getting myself back into the swing of things. Of course since this is a new laptop I don’t have the luxury of all of my old brushes/fonts. It’s hard to start completely fresh but it’s a “Challenge Accepted” situation at this moment in time. After a few days I’m sure I’ll be back up to speed, it’s just the ability to unlearn everything I’ve learned in the past few years to open the file deep in my brain where my ultimate creativity is.

There’s a few ways of triggering it, unfortunately it’s not going to happen overnight. I always had much, much more going on in my head when I was living down in Delaware, and with the addition of the new truck, Sean and I will be taking frequent trips down to Delaware, especially the boardwalk where all of my inspiration came from. Jersey is turning into an inspiration point for me too. I honestly don’t know why, could be all of the interesting people, cool looking diners, and the fact that every job offer I’ve been getting lately is IN Jersey. I will not be moving there, however. It would be the halfway point between my family and Sean’s, but if I go anywhere it’s out to Suffolk County. I love the Centereach/Ronkonkoma area – no idea as to why – but I will be looking into it more seriously when money gets to where it’s supposed to be.

Sean and I have been discussing financials a lot lately. We know exactly how much needs to come in, in order to handle all of the bills, and how much additional would need to come in, in order to be comfortable. It’s our ultimate goal to bring in about $6,000 a month, which is doable considering the industries we’re in, it’s just the matter of scheduling and contacts. I’m starting off small this time, I’ll start local and then work my way to the corporate accounts that I used to have. Those were the ones that paid the bills and god damn were they great to have. I thankfully have all of my old mailing lists so I can send out a blast to get the ball rolling, it should be smooth sailing from there. :crosses fingers:

In any event… I was able to locate the template I’ve been looking for and need to do some major tweaking to get it to where I want it. I’m also loading in some new aps/plugins that will make things easier for me. You can’t be a member of the DROID community and NOT utilize all of its benefits. I’m giving myself a week off from “work” and getting myself back up to speed. I’m taking it easy this weekend only due to the fact that I am nursing myself back to health at this immediate moment in time. I just popped a few more NyQuil Gelcaps, hopefully I’ll be sound asleep in the next half hour… if it actually works the way it’s supposed to.

In the meantime I’ll be watching the rest of “Scott Pilgram vs. The world” Let me tell you this movie is dumb as shit.

In just a few weeks I will be closing the book on a major part of the past 3 years of my life. Today I sat down with my manager and informed him that I will be leaving the company. I’m no longer capable of working for a company where having a conscience is considered a handicap, where employees and vendors are used up and then spit out. I’ve been blessed with friendships that I hope will last for years to come, but I can no longer physically have anything to do with the company. The corporate office can go fuck themselves as far as I care, the ladies in the east coast office… I’ll miss them deeply.

So where do I go from here? This should really be titled “Guess Who’s Back?” I’m going full force back into the world that I left so abruptly. There will be no begging for money, no bull shit internet dramas. I will be solidly working in the code/design world and am spending the evening, and the next few weeks getting myself back into the swing of things. Unfortunately the position I was previously in required the ability for me to retain as much information as humanly possible. With this, I’ve lost a lot of the key skills to be successful elsewhere. I’m doing everything I possibly can to get back into things and hope that with just a few weeks of a refresher course, and a lot of reading (HTML 5?) I’ll be able to get myself back into it with absolutely no problems at all.

This will not just be a personal domain, I will be working with sponsors and frequently updating for just about everything. Twitter will more than likely overload, projects are in the works (in my head) that have yet to be put on paper (err… Photoshop). I purchased a new laptop in September that I haven’t used more than twice. It’s fully loaded and capable of handling everything I could possibly need. I just need to get my hands on a copy of Microsoft Office Outlook. I’ve been using it for the past three years and the functionality really fits where I’m looking to go in reference to mailing lists, contact storage, calendar dates, etc. If there are two things that I picked up in the past few years it’s my love of Outlook and the ability to bite my tongue.

Obviously with my personality the ‘bite my tongue’ will go out the window the second I punch out for the last time. Thankfully I will be leaving on good terms with just about everyone, if there’s a big ‘ol fuck you coming out of my mouth it’s primarily targeted to the corporate office.

In any event, it’s going to be a few weeks but a new template is coming up (well, recycled old one that I was in love with) that will be compliant for whatever standard is the norm these days. Alternate sites (AGN Designs, Health Blog and other stuff in the works) will be popping up as well. I’ve got a lot of space just sitting here and little time to fill it up, but bet your ass I’ll get it done.