smacky and bucky

Had a dream last night that I was at a Willie Nelson concert (never have) and between songs someone came on stage and whispered something into Willie's ear and then Willie said "The test results are in: I don't have diabetes!" Then he made up a song on the spot about it:

"I... don't have... dia BEEEEEEEEEEEEE TEEEEEEEEES..."


What The HECK???

Can't begin to imagine what that means, beyond a poor night's sleep due to a cranky baby with a mild fever.

Game one of the next round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs is tonight. Caps are playing Tampa Bay Lightening (who I hope are very tired after playing all seven of their first round games to beat the Penguins, while the Caps only needed five games to take down the Rangers).

Spring used to be my least favorite season. Unexpected rains, the temperature fluctuates between freezing and 85 degrees several times a week, etc.

But that was before a long winter with a baby. Now it's just so nice to get outside and get some air, and the kid is old enough that he really likes seeing things and going to the park and riding the swings.

Spring, y'all. Count me in.

Three weeks ago, my boss stopped by my office and asked what the odds were I could get my last two Spring books to the printer before the end of the fiscal year (end of May). Through a series of setbacks (none my fault) both of these books had delayed again and again until finally we had put them down as July publications on our website. Now she was asking what I could do in six weeks.

Well, thanks to a lot of emails, nagging of authors, illustrators, and indexers (with some hurt feelings along the way I shrugged off. No time for a diva illustrator!) and a lot of cooperation from the production and art departments... those two books are BOTH going to the printer today. FIFTEEN days before the "to printer" deadline.

Wow. I did it.

Talk about taking one for the team. We've already been told there's no money for raises this year. I did it for the satisfaction of getting it the heck done. And I wish I had a T-shirt that said "BADDASS" on it, because I think I deserve it today!

This is me today:



Oh, and the Caps won last night in DOUBLE OVERTIME, so they lead the series against the Rangers 3 games to 1. Next game is Saturday afternoon.

Sorry to the blogger buds having sadness in their lives. A general hug to all.

I made an executive decision regarding my iPod the other day, and after doing a little research (and considering my age and hearing) I decided to click the box that said "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC for this iPod." Would I hear the difference? I don't know. Forums seemed to be 75% people saying you wouldn't notice the difference and 25% snobs saying "anything less than FLAC is a sin!"

All I know is that I had barely 2 GB left on a 160 GB iPod, and now I have 51 GB free. Isn't that crazy? The downside is that it took over 36 hours to transfer all the songs to the lower rate! The upside is I have 50 free gigs now!

Please tell me if I made a mistake. I can take it.

There! With this post, I officially shared a picture of my breakfast on Twitter, Facebook, and my blog. Apologies to most of you for the triple post, as the number of people who see each of these gets exponentially smaller from Twitter (thousands?) to Facebook (maybe 200) to this blog (maybe 10 at the most!).

What a week. Let's just say that Monday morning I had two books that were scheduled for publication in July. By Monday afternoon I was told to "do my best" to get them to the printer (and the warehouse) by the end of the fiscal year (May). Let's just say I worked like crazy and one is in final review (then to the indexer early next week) and the other is going to final review this afternoon. I ROCK THIS WEEK!

And with Wednesday's win, the Capitals are back at first place in their division (for the first time since December) and the Maple Leafs are officially out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Woo!

Got a box of records from my wife's aunt a few weeks ago. These were the "keepers."

So BP should be praised for "keeping their word" and cleaning up the disaster they caused? This is a banner ad from some random site. The embedded video in it is a grizzled shrimper saying nice things about BP.

Did I mention that BP wants to start drilling in the Gulf of Mexico again? This is the start of their PR push to sway public opinion. I'm sure much MORE money is being spent on oil company lobbyists to grease politicians (*cough*republicans*cough*) to get votes to allow drilling to recommence. Next year is an election year, and folks have to raise a ton of money to pay for campaigns, so why not use oil money to fund it? See how it's a rancid snake eating itself? And the regular middle class sits on the outside of this spectacle, being told it's the fault of illegal aliens, terrorists, and Planned Parenthood that our country is in the state its in.

Sorry. Work is uber-stressful at the moment (a rare occurrence for me) and I'm just pissed that BP (and the congressmen they fund) wants business as usual and for the regular folks to just shut up and get out of the way of "progress." Meanwhile we're paying about $4 a gallon for gas and being told it's because we're funding public television and NPR! But we can't let the Bush tax cuts expire. That would hurt the economy! What a crock! You know the deficit (which is ALL you hear about any more) would be cut in HALF if we just sucked it up and let the tax cuts expire? But no, that view will not get you elected. The problem MUST be welfare leeches. And not the fact that we spend more on military spending than any other country on the planet or that we're actively fighting two or three wars or that we continue to maintain a HUGE military presence in Japan, Germany, South Korea, and so on.