computers

Countdown III (Pictures)

/ birthday, christmas, life, meme, pictures, to do, work

Six more days!!
One more till my birthday! I’ll be &@#&@&#@. Ooops, must have missed something in the translation there….

Today, I got a a gift certificate to Amazon.com from Adam’s dad (and my future father-in-law). THAT makes me so happy. Books! This evening, I got a package from Rosa (meimeigui) and Richard, with strict instructions not to open anything early. So I have a birthday present next to me, and a Christmas present for me, and a Christmas present for Aidan, under the tree.

Janet spoiled me yesterday at work. First, there was this at my desk:

Cake!

Then, a bunch of us went to La Chatelaine for lunch, and Janet treated me. I had the lunch combo: ham sandwich, tomato basil soup, and Caesar salad. Yummmmo. I really like that place and want to go again SOON. The prices are not unreasonable, either.

Karen gave me a card and told me not to open it until tomorrow. I sat it by my computer so I can remember. If I am up at midnight tonight, I’m going to open the present from Rosa and Richard. 🙂

This morning, I came into work and found a poinsettia, two cards, candy, and two books on my desk. What a nice surprise, yes? This time of year is so awesome. One of the cards had a lottery ticket in it. I didn’t win.

E Mae treated the copy editors to lunch at Spagio. It was good. I had leftovers. It’s really rich food, so I can eat like, 1/3 of a serving at a time before my mouth says NO MORE FOR NOW, you!

I have to wrap all of Adam’s gifts tonight, as he’ll be here tomorrow. (!!!♥!!!) I don’t take him for a snooper, but I just want to have it done. Some of the boxes are soooo cute that I’m not bothering to wrap them. But the animal print ones I picked up at Marc’s—DEFINITELY getting wrapped. LoL.

Aidan’s disappointed because there are things under the tree for him and he can’t open them yet.

He’s still cute though:

My Favorite Present Ever
My Favorite Present, Always!

I took a Spending Style test on Tickle today. Here is the result:

Ronni, you’re a Bargain Hunter

In your life, you’re willing to go the extra mile in order to find a good deal. Whenever possible, you hold out until you can find the least expensive version of something you need. Your patience and persistence generally leads you to significant savings, which you likely take great pride in. While some may mistakenly think you are cheap and puzzle over why you prefer thrift stores to overpriced boutiques, you’re content to let them squander their cash while you chase down a great bargain.

When it comes to your financial state, you tend to feel like you’re about where you think you should be.

Except for that last statement, it’s pretty much right on.

To Do, Revisited:

– renew driver’s license (12/20)
– renew license plate tags (12/20)
– clean my room (that includes finally unpacking my clothes from my Atlanta and NYC trips, changing the sheets, and general tidying up)
– finish Christmas shopping
– Christmas cards
– insulate windows with some of that plastic stuff you use with a hairdryer
– hair
– clean little Lucy’s litter box (thorough cleaning, not just litter exchange)
– burn a Christmas CD
– wrap gifts
– get groceries

My computer is SO SLOW. It’s driving me nuts. Takes freakin’ Facebook forever to load, and to switch between programs… the thing acts like it’s straining to do that. I have 1.5 gigs of memory and it’s a 2.something gig processor. Web sites take ages to come up. The thing takes at least ten minutes to fully boot up. It amazes me how much Windows deteriorates after a few years, or months even. I also hate how certain programs steal focus. I’ll start something in the background and then go to something else while I am waiting for it to open. Instead of the other program blinking in the taskbar to let me know its ready, all of a sudden, whatever I’m working on disappears and a new IE window or something is in the way. Drives me bananas. But the new Flickr Uploader is awesome. I can do EVERYTHING I need to do to the photos right in the uploader, so no need to wait for the site to load to finish editing (tags, sets, etc.). Good times.

At about 11am tomorrow, I will be leaving ZB until next Friday. Can’t wait. No more Core TEs to bother with for days and days and days. *glares at vendor*

OK, gonna go finish with the gifts and trying to make Aidan giggle. Later! 🙂

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Whatever

/ aidan, books, life

My laptop is officially dead. It doesn’t even bother to turn on anymore. The motherboard finally fried itself out. Aidan is a little bit sad; he used to play many Nick Jr. and Sesame Street games on that laptop. I’m sad too. I liked having the option of mobile computing. But as I said before, I’d originally gotten a laptop for writing, and seeing as I haven’t done much of that lately….

Aidan doesn’t say “four.” He says “foe-uh.” It’s soooo cute. He’s also been eating like a little piggy. And watching the Care Bears movie where they go to Joke-A-Lot. Over and over and over and over.

I have a headache, and I want to sleep. Aidan was up at 9am wanting to play Hide-and-Seek. I was like “Dude, it is way too early for this.” He’s a bundle of energy, so I’m thinking a nap today is out of the question. Last week we got to take a nice long one together.

Last night, as I was putting Aidan to bed, he said “Let’s talk about feelings.” I figured it would probably be the last time he ever said anything like that, so I took it and ran with it. Boys, ya know?

I started reading Fast Food Nation today. Not sure if I should finish or not. I’m already pissed off enough at big companies and corporations. I finished Love, Stargirl and I really enjoyed it.

It’s hard to focus with a four-year old hanging around.

He’s been so cute though, helping me in the kitchen. Now he’s gathering lots of toys together for some sort of toy road trip. They’re going “somewhay-uh.”

I also enjoy it when my friends who don’t use their LJs often have RSS feeds on the sites they DO update more regularly. I’m not inclined to go to sites, but if everything is included in a nice list on Google Reader, then I’m happy.

I need more light in my apartment.

The people who live in the apt. complex I live in are psycho and nuts. This morning I got treated to slamming doors, a revving engine, and loud conversation outside my bedroom window. I’m afraid I’ll have to deal with psychotic neighbors the rest of my life. Houses in Chicago cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and let me tell you, editors/secretaries will never, ever, ever make enough to afford one, plus they’re all smashed up against neighbors as well.

I updated Anywhere Is just a little bit. I have too many Web sites. I might close the review site down, no one ever visits and I keep forgetting about it. I’m having more fun with the wedding/ronni&adam site (http://booknerdsinlove.blogspot.com).

I can’t believe tomorrow’s the last day of September. Months in which I see Adam move much more quickly than months I don’t get to see him. I wonder what that will be like once I’m living in Chicago with him?

Okay, it’s time to get off the computer for a while. Later.

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An Update (Lots of Pictures/Survey)

/ adam, atlanta, family, life, pictures, recap, ronni, survey, Uncategorized, vacation, work

Hello, LJ people.

Yes, I’ve been away. Well, not exactly. I’ve been reading, just not posting. And it’s not because I haven’t had much to say. Okay, sometimes that was the case. But often, I was just too tired to sit here and write an entry.

But I am here now, so sit back and brace yourselves. It might be a long one! 🙂

Here are the things I’ve done since I last posted:

– Took my laptop to Best Buy again because the power adapter thingy was overheating and melting the cord. I mean, it was getting uncomfortably hot. It will scald you. Was told that there was liquid damage to the motherboard and they wouldn’t fix it unless I paid them more than $1200. I told them to leave the computer as is. I’ll just not touch the damn AC adapter part. It’s at Best Buy now, waiting for me to pick it up. I’ll go get it tomorrow. Seriously, who’d pay $1200 to repair a two-year old laptop when one can buy TWO NEW ones for that price?

One of these days, I’m going to get a Mac.

– I’ve subscribed to a bunch of feeds; The Bargainist, WiseBread, zen habits, The Happiness Project. I call the folder they’re in “Lifestyle” The Bargainist has lists and lists of deals, free samples, coupon codes. It’s neat. Wisebread is a money-management blog. The other two are just for me to become more at peace and happier. Good stuff, those. I have a ton of feeds on my Google Reader, actually. It’s such a convenient way to get loads of info in one place.

– Downloaded the new version of Flock. Got irritated because the pages with feeds and searches on them kept bringing up this little bar that asked me if I wanted to subscribe to them. I finally went into configurations and turned them off. Now I like Flock again. Except I can’t figure out how to turn off the media stream notification. Ugh.

– Had my one-year evaluation at work. It went really well. The copy editors are all going to start taking classes for Copy Editing certification. We wanted to start this month, but we’re waitlisted. We’ll see what happens. At any rate, work has been really good lately. The new lead copy editor is very cool. I won’t have page proofs coming in until October (sigh), so I’m doing a lot of pick up work for marketing and leftover stuff for everyone else. Plus errata. Always errata. Boo to errata. But yay to the style guide coming together!

– Became ADDICTED to enchiladas from El Vaquero. Seriously, they are SOOOOO good. I had some yesterday for lunch. Yummy.

– Started listening to the following bands a lot: Lacuna Coil, Grateful Dead, and The CrĂĽxshadows. I also decided that I love the song Breakin’ Dishes by Rihanna. And If Tha Mood by Esthero. More songs, too.

– Went to Atlanta to meet adamselzer‘s parents and also for Dragon*Con!

Read about and see pix from Atlanta/Dragon*Con

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Sunday Afternoon Randomness

/ books, life

My friend crimsonghost_oh visited me for the weekend. It was fun. I made him watch The Boondock Saints, and now he wants to go buy it. YESSSS, another convert! 🙂

My laptop is home from the doctor. The Geek Squad said they’d need $130 to do an “XP Reimage” because it had spyware and viruses on it. As if I have $130 lying around to give them for something I can do myself?

I just finished The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith. There are blurbs all over the back of the book, and one of them is from Julia Stiles. My first thought: How in the FRESH HELL did a first-time novelist get a blurb from JULIA STILES? Well, turned out that this author co-wrote some very famous screenplays—one of them being Ten Things I Hate About You, which if I am not mistaken, Julia Stiles played in, so yeah. Ha. Can you imagine, getting blurbed by an A-list actress? Well, she’s A-list in my eyes, anyway.

Speaking of writing, I entered that contest over at Gather.com, and I haven’t been back in two days to check my score or any comments. I kind of just want to forget about it now—if I obsess over it, I’ll be miserable and stressed. I’m proud I had the balls to enter, but now I just want to block it from my mind.

In the meantime, adamselzer‘s book is kicking butt in reviews. I saw it at the library the other day, and when I looked it up, the Columbus Libraries had 14 copies, 9 of which were checked out. Now, the library owns 16 copies. Go Adam! (If you can’t guess, I’m doing my favorite thing again—reserving books at the library! It’s like shopping, only FREE!)

Last week, I finally got through Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. I had a HARD time with it, only because it was very stressful to read. It felt like a continuous assault to me. Description, action, bang bang bang. I like fast-paced novels with strong voices, but this one was too much for me.

And now I am reading My Brother’s Keeper by Patricia McCormick, and Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares. After that, I will read Monster by Walter Dean Myers, and maybe I’ll try Envy by Robin Wasserman again. Actually, I might do Monster before the Sisterhood book because I’ve had that one longer.

Firefox updated itself on my computer and now none of my fun extensions and themes work. Let me tell you how annoying that is! As far as FF is concerned, my computer has no freakin’ clue. I can’t even import the bookmarks in another browser because the computer doesn’t know they’re there, although THEY ARE VERY CLEARLY IN FIREFOX. I don’t know what to do, I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled a million times, deleted directories and all that good stuff. It’s just a hot mess. Which is a shame because I love Firefox normally. Flock is okay, but the backward and forward arrows are just that. There are no drop-downs to get you to the other pages you visited. But all of my Firefox extensions are working in Flock so maybe I’ll just switch to that one, once I get all the bookmarks moved over somehow.

Tomorrow, I see Aidan for the first time in about 20 days. So weird, not seeing him for so long, although I did talk to him on the phone.

Here is a question I have: Why in the world would someone pay $249 for an 8 gig iPod nano, when one can get a 30 gig regular iPod for the same price? I mean, the logic should be obvious here, right? And yes, I am dreaming of a new iPod. Mine stays charged for about 20 minutes these days, IF I am lucky, and it’s not color nor does it play videos. I want a NEW one. I also want a MacBook Pro. Just because. I can’t afford any of these things, but I sure do want them. All because I love technology. Blah.

I have a coupon for a free panty from Victoria’s Secret. I’ll go on Tuesday to get that, yee-haw. I also have one for a free aromatherapy thing from Bath & Body Works, but of course, THEIRS is with purchase. Poopheads. But here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy a $2.50 bar of soap or something and then get my $13 value aromatherapy thing. I love their Cherry Blossom scent, so I’ll probably get a bar of the soap. Mmm. Soap.

I’m hungry, but I can’t decide if I want spaghetti, or a turkey sammich. I guess my stomach will decide for me before long.

Til next time!

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