Safire on fire

I've been trying to relax. I've been trying to accept that the language is ever-changing. I've been trying to accept that the distinctions between "lay" and "lie", "further" and "farther", and "was" and "were" are being eroded. I'm trying...

...but goddamnit, I'm having a really hard time getting over the fact that everyone says "backslash" when they mean "slash", just because it makes it sound more internetty. It's. A. Fucking. Slash.

In Michael's office, slashes are "strokes" and backslashes are "whacks". They are so juvenile.


...heh. Whacks.

What I have learned

I learned a few things in my first css lesson with Erica today:

• I learned how to add rules for classes and IDs and stuff to a .css file.


• I learned that the same content can look like any number of things when different css rules are applied, as demonstrated by the css Zen Garden.


• I learned that everything I have ever done with HTML in the past has been clumsy, clunky, ugly, and furthermore, impolite.


• I learned that this project is going to be a growth experience for me, if you'll pardon the pun.

I learned something at work today:

• I was nowhere near aware of just how many of my coworkers got to rubberneck at my car accident on Monday. *sigh* (I took some pics in case you'd like to rubberneck, too.)

The bad with the good

First the bad:

• I am apparently an old fart when it comes to webdesign. I thought that if Erica and I talked through my design concept and she made the first page as a template, that I would be able to pick it up by extrapolating... but I was wrong.


• I got bitten by mosquitoes at the site of my car accident yesterday. My left arm is a mass of itchy welts that I can't stop scratching and aggravating worse.

And now the good:

• The start page that Erica and I did manage to come up with kicks several kinds of ass. I'm very pleased with the aesthetics of it, and once Erica teaches me some stuff tomorrow, I hope I can wrap my head around it better.


• My Think Geek t-shirts arrived. They had a grab-bag deal to get rid of discontinued shirts and overstock. You specify your size and they send you whatever. I lucked out and got 4 kickass shirts that fit my personality, and one shirt that fits the personalities of several people I know. So for $24 I received 4 shirts for me and one for Michael.

So, I'm trying not to be mopey. I'm taking the bad with the good. I have to go into work tomorrow, come hell or high water. Then I go over to Erica's and learn some CSS. I hope that my balance improves, and I start feeling better. I'll try to keep you posted.

Sickie and Dizzy and Crunchy.

I've been sick for the last 8 days.

Last Monday, I was at work and I started feeling incredibly dizzy. More dizzy than I have ever felt before, dizzy. I discovered this by leaning down to the right to get something out of my desk drawer, and very nearly falling into it. I sat back up and almost pitched over the other way. I tried to sit up and the world would not stop spinning. I tried to relax and wait it out, but it kept going on. After 20 minutes or so, I started panicking.

I emailed my husband about it and called the doctor, and Michael told me in no uncertain terms that he was on his way to pick me up to take me to the ER. Since I had just recently gotten a big bill from my last ER visit which wasn't all attributable to deductible, I was reluctant to go to the ER. I managed to get my doctor to squeeze me in on short notice, so we went to his office.

My doctor said it was most likely an inner ear virus, and he gave me a shot in my butt of Vistoril (an anti-nausea drug), and prescribed Antivert, which is an antihistamene that is frequently used in the treatment of vertigo, and makes me pretty zombiriffic. I timidly asked if this could have been a flashback due to me burning LSD-laden fat cells from when I experimented with that in my adolescence, and he told me that there was extremely little chance of that after all this time. All this time. So, now I am dizzy and old.

Michael took me home, where I immediately fell into a blissful Vistoril-induced slumber. He went out to fill my prescription while I slept, and was very sweet to me.

Over the course of the intervening week, I thought I had this kicked. I took the zombifying Antivert in the mornings right before getting in my car so it wouldn't kick in until after I'd driven to work, and then after lunch so it would wear off before my drive home. I used a lot of caffeine, and on Tuesday and Wednesday a leftover appetite suppressant (from before my surgery), to counteract the Antivert driftiness and concentrate on work.

Yesterday, I began feeling what I assume was an accumulation of the Antivert and appetite suppressants(which I hadn't taken in 5 days). I had jitters and twitches. I experienced dislexia, which really-really fucked my shit right up, because letters and words are my thing. I took it easy on the caffeine, but that just contributed to my feelings of disorientation. I sucked it up and worked through it, determined to not leave work early again.

I made it through the day, and even felt "better" enough to drive home. Man, I wish I had not done that. I crunched my front right quarter panel all to hell and gone, against my coworker's bumper. She was stopped at a stop sign, creeping forward to turn right. I thought she had gone because I registered her movement and construed it as completion of her turn. I checked the traffic, waited until it was clear, accelerated into my own right turn, and heard a weird plasticky grinding crunch. The plastic grinding was my Chevy Aveo's bumper (which held up without breaking, thankfully) and the crunch was the industrial heavy-weight aluminum foil that my car is made out of. Lori's Jeep laughed at my car's pitiful attempt to dent it, and probably thinks that the little paint scrape that its bumper received will make it look more ruggedly handsome to other cars. We did the whole police report deal and the officer estimated for the report that Lori's damage would be around $400, and mine would be over $1000. *sigh* Lori was very cool about it, saying, "That's what insurance is for. Accidents happen," but I feel sick about the whole thing.

When I came home, I tried to muster up the enthusiasm that I was earlier feeling for working on my new personal website. I had been calming myself down throughout the day by doing freehand sketches of a layout that I want to do for it, and I was looking forward to coming home and trying to relearn how to make a webpage. Erica sent me a URL for a set of CSS templates to look at to try and figure out the stuff that has been invented in web design since I stopped dabbling in it. Between the fact that I am getting old (get off my lawn, you whipper-snappers!) and the fact that I am rattled from the accident, and the fact that I am still feeling dizzy and disoriented from this illness and its treatment, I can't understand shit, for shit.

So, yesterday was a really humbling day. Today, I called in sick. I don't know if it would have been a Charles Grodin Day, but I am not taking any chances.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm back to one partner, for the time being. Erica and I long ago decided that we were Just Friends. Sam and I just tonight had a Talk. We both agreed that we love and value each other, and we intend to continue hanging out as friends. I think we can do it. My friend James reacted by saying, "Oh no! The poly dream!" So, I apologize to any of you poly folks who were hanging your hopes on my polyfamily working out. I still think it's working since we're all still friends, but I'm pretty sure we won't be consolidating households. Ah well... NRE (New Relationship Energy) makes you fantasize bigly*.

On a good note, Erica has made my placeholder page for my new domain, AdhesiveThoughts.com. It currently links to my auctions, but will one day (very soon, I hope) be a full-fledged shopping-cart-oriffic extravanganza of commerce.



*Bigly is a word. I decided. It sounds too funny not to use.

ZOMGADDICTIVE