You know something scary? I was in Washington DC just a month ago, to meet several friends from a moms mailing list for a gathering. We took the subways while I was there, and I remember being thrilled at how close to the Pentagon we were. I also wanted to go to see the capital, and the Washington Monument, and all those other places that you see on the news, and the movies. I'd been there once when I was about 13, but it was a blast being there with Daniel, and showing him all those places.

It's really frightening... we could have so easily scheduled the get-together a month later. I bet then I'd be able to cry.
posted by Amy Sage at 11:16 PM

I've been waiting to write something about the events of this week until I had all my thoughts together, and felt ready to try and sort it all out on paper, so to speak. However, that doesn't seem to be coming any time soon, so I'll go ahead and start, I suppose.

First off, I haven't really cried. It's strange, considering how easily I cry. When the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, I cried at the thought of all those people, and those 13 children that were in the daycare center when the bomb went off. When I heard of the bomb that went off at the Atlanta Olympics, I cried at the thought of how horrible it was that even the Olympics were no longer safe. Hell, I cry at Pampers commercials.

But the only time I actually shed any tears at all so far this week was when a survivor mentioned the fact that his dog had been left in a kennel in the basement of the World Trade Center. What the heck is wrong with me? I've been watching the coverage almost nonstop since it happened... I can't seem to draw myself away. On one hand, I'm blown away by the sheer horror and the scope of the tragedy. On the other hand, I think it's so large and so awful that my brain hasn't been able to really fathom it. I think one of the reasons I keep watching these stories over and over is to try to draw some tears out. Put some faces with the names, and help my poor brain get a feel for just how many people constitute 5,000.

I'm sure at some point soon the dam will break, and I'll get it all out of my system, but for now, I still feel like a zombie, watching the explosions over and over again, and listening to the cell phone calls from people who knew they were about to die. For now, I still feel somewhat at a loss for words.

And hi Ted... thanks for the mail. Glad to know someone's listening.
posted by Amy Sage at 11:43 PM

Oh. My. God.
posted by Amy Sage at 6:51 PM

Just showing someone how easy it is to blog... I'll get back to the Teletubbies later. :)
posted by Amy Sage at 5:52 PM

Oh, and remind me - when it's not so late, and I'm not so tired - to tell you guys about Daniel and the Teletubbies.
posted by Amy Sage at 12:30 AM

I am SO tired.

Friday Paul found a nice computer desk on sale at Office Max. Little did I know that would involve an entire weekend of work.

I took one look at the desk, which is a nice 3-section corner unit, black trim on brown wood, and said, "This was only 80 dollars?!?" It was, after the rebate. Amazing. So I then decided that I wanted to replace my desk too, and that I'd get the same one that Paul was getting, so they'd match. Actually, I already had a nice desk - one that cost us over $400 a year and a half ago. But the problem is that it was a nice light shade of wood, and there was no way it would match Paul's new desk, and the computer room would look like a bunch of mix-and-match pieces with no rhyme or reason. Not that it didn't already - that room has been so cluttered and messy it's pathetic. We actually have a housecleaner that comes in once a week, and she never takes a step in this room because it's so messy, cluttered, and disorganized. SO I decided that the desks had to match, which meant we were replacing both our desks.

Our first step after bringing the desks home was to move Paul's old desk into the garage as extra shalf space (I think Paul wants to just dump it, but I figure we need all the shelf space we can get in there). Then we needed to take apart my desk to move it into our bedroom... but before we could do that, we had to move the old broken down yucky entertainment center out of there that had been taking up a corner for years, and was starting to fall apart. You know the kind of entertainment center.. the ones with the particle board backing, and the glass that never stays closed. The kind that you only have because someone gave it to you while you were in your first college apartment and you had no furniture at all. That one went into the garage too, but only until we can find a way to get it into the dump.

We then moved my desk, piece by piece, and reassembled it in the bedroom.

Finally we put together Paul's new desk. And of course, I made a few mistakes in reading the instructions, so we had to repeat a couple of the steps multiple times. Fun! Then the cordless screwdriver went dead, so we let it charge while Paul put his computer back together.

We then put my desk together, which luckily went much more smoothly, but there was no time to put my computer together - it was already 3 am! I was seeing stars by that point.

That was Saturday. Sunday we went shopping for some more stuff we needed for the room, like a wall mirror for me (no, I'm not that vain... the TV in the computer room is positioned behind my desk, so I keep a mirror by my monitor and watch the TV through the mirror so I don't have to turn around), a drawer organizer, new decorative pullcords to replace the ratty ribbon I had tied around the ceiling fan chain, a TV for the bedroom (the spot where the monitor used to be looked awfully barren on my desk in the bedroom, and I've always wished we had a TV in there)... and we also decided to finally cough up some dough for artwork. We went to a prints store in the mall, and ordered 5 nice framed Renaissance art prints for the walls. We then came home and worked until 1 am or so continuing to try and straighten the mess we'd created when we took all the contents of the computer room and threw it all over the house.

Our new desks, while nice, don't have any shelf or drawer space, so we had to get really clever with our storage solutions. It also meant that we had to severely lower the sheer amount of junk we'd accumulated in that room! That took an unbelievable amount of time, but I'm so glad we finally did it. We now have an organized place for our comics, our magazines, important memorabilia, office supplies, random computer pieces, tools, etc. There's still a lot to be done before this house is truly organized, but this weekend was a huge step, and we got rid of a ton of junk at the same time. :)

So today (Labor Day), I went and picked up two of the prints we ordered (the others won't be in for three weeks since they had to order the frames), as well as a bunch of cool antique-looking ceramic planters to use as bookends on the shelves. We then proceeded to rearrange the bookshelves, which meant we also had to clean out the entire computer room closet to find room for all the books that no longer fit on the shelves, add the cool bookends, hang the new art, and somehow manage to finish cleaning up to the point where we actually reached something resembling pre-weekend status.

The result? It looks fantastic. Our computer room is now a home office. The cords are neater, there's a lot more desk space, everythign is hooked up, there's plenty of room to move, and it finally looks as if someone actually put some thought into the decor.

Also keep in mind that we had a one year old running around the whole time too, so unless he was asleep, only one of us could work at a time, while the other made sure he didn't get himself into trouble (and with all the junk strewn about the house for the majority of the weekend, that was no easy task!).

Overall, our three-day weekend was extremely productive. It was great for the house (we desperately needed to start trying to get organized), although not too great for work (at any given point in time, I either was too busy trying to finish a cleaning/organization task, or my computer was in pieces). This has been my first lengthy session at the computer since Friday! Ah well, I'll have plenty of computer time when I get to the office tomorrow.

Speaking of the office tomorrow... it's 12:20 am, and morning will come all too soon.

G'night.

*takes one more satisfied look around the new home office before heading for bed*
posted by Amy Sage at 12:18 AM

These last couple days have been hell.

I am beginning to realize that I have NO TIME whatsoever for ANYTHING during the week. I almost get everything done at work that I need to, and I almost get everything--ok, who am I kidding? I don't get half the things done at home that I should. *stops to push cat off her lap*

The most important thing for me to do at home is to pay attention to Daniel. I get so little time with him, since he goes to the sitter's at about 8:30 AM, and I get home around 7 PM, and he goes to bed around 8:30 PM. So I get an hour with him in the morning, and an hour and a half at nights. It's hard. But he seems to be really happy, and he's such a sweet kid. I love him more than I could ever say.

I love my job, too... but it's not easy. To me, it's more than a job. It's who I am, and it's what I do. It's my job to make sure that things go well at work, and that my department gets everything done that it needs to. This is by no means an 8 hour-a-day thing. I find myself checking work email from home before I leave in the mornings, sending a few key replies and requests, then making the 30 minute drive into work, hoping that the requests will be answered by the time I get there so I can jump right into what needs to be done. I work pretty constantly all day, stopping only for meetings on various topics, and often a nice lunch... but the surfing time I found myself having on other projects? Ha! Then I go home. After 8:30, when the baby's asleep, I play games for a while... usually an hour or two. When I get out of my game, I find myself inexplicably drawn... back to work. i tend to go back into work email around 11 or 12 to make sure there's nothing important I can take care of then, leaving myself more easily able to get to other things in the morning.

And you know the worst part? Sometimes customers who don't understand the lengthy processes involved in making changes to a service as huge as ours will write to me and tell me how pathetic it is that I'm not doing anything, and that I should be fired and replaced by someone who actually cares about their work.

My skin is pretty thick, since it's near impossible to please thousands of people, and there will almost always be people who feel you can do your job better. And you know - they're right. That's probably why I find myself working from home mornings, nights and weekends. And why I don't really mind it, I guess... to me, the satisfaction is knowing that I'm closer to accomplishing whatever goal it is at work that I'm finding it hard to budget the time for. But sometimes that skin gets stretched pretty thin, and I just want to crawl under a desk. Enter yesterday and today.

They say when it rains, it pours (literally!). There were several customers worried about account security yesterday, so I spent a good 75% of my day researching the topic of account security so that I was able to put out a public statement and try to answer questions, and figure out what we could do, if anything. Then a system that people have been waiting for anxiously developed a problem, and had to be halted temporarily. I'm supposed to edit a 180 page manual in 2 days. Our lead programmer couldn't come in today because a tree fell on his house (you should see this tree - I'd be heartbroken. It was a really nice tree). We put out a patch today. It had a problem, and people couldn't log in. We reverted the patch today. It rained cats and dogs all day, and when I went out to lunch, there was no parking so I had to park in the next parking lot over from the restaurant. I was absolutely soaked. I told people it was the "waterlogged rat" look, and that it was all the rage. Oh, and a cat puked right under my computer chair at home.

So I keep saying I'm going to find the time to update this site, and I just don't know when I will. I'm guessing that once I get started, I'll remember how much fun it is to do website, and probably do a lot of updating. I hope so, anyway, but I have no idea when I'll feel comfortable just letting work go and getting to it.

Maybe if I knew that anyone was even reading it would be easier to make the time. ;)

posted by Amy Sage at 9:05 PM

What a milestone... we put Daniel's food in front of him tonight, and just for kicks, I handed him a baby fork... and he USED it! How amazing!! :)

My baby's using a fork...
posted by Amy Sage at 11:29 PM