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3:25 per Envelope
I had one task last night: get sender and recipient addresses onto 35-ish non-standard envelopes. This turned into an exhausting, stressful 2-hour task. My initial thought was to hand write them for a personal touch, but then Greg (or I? Are we blurring?) reminded me that we should be able to print them. …And there went an hour and a half of my evening. The envelopes were an unusual size–about 4.125 inches by 8.125 inches–and my printer just couldn’t figure it out. I could set a custom size in Word and in the printer settings, but it didn’t seem to matter a fig. Gutters, margins, nothing was behaving right and…
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Crocheting and Knitting: Having the MIPS
Um, that’s more this kind of MIPS, not that. I haven’t been a heavy crocheter since shortly after I left teaching in early 2008, but way back then, I started a blanket. It’s a gorgeous design, and I picked the colors based on the decor of a friend’s house. I don’t keep up with him anymore–and he’s married, so no telling what his house is like these days–but I still love the blanket. It’s wide: wider than 6 feet, which makes doing each row a painfully long endeavor. My favorite times to crochet (and knit, whatever) are when I’m watching television or on long car rides. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I’ve…
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The Pressure of Existence
In lieu of having gotten enough sleep to say anything interesting today, even after two cups of coffee, I’m just going to post a little exchange between two characters in my primary novel-in-progress. I’m not sure if this is a good idea at all, but I thought about it as Greg was criticizing my Uno game for being very unstrategic. Blackman is a human lady visiting and studying U’look, an alien with a rather different way of perceiving time. Blackman: We haven’t seen your people play strategy games, U’look. Do you have strategy games? U’look: Of course, we had and have concepts of strategy. Blackman: But do you have games?…
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Wedding Planning: How About I Just Get Married?
Dresses, shoes, location, wedding party, save-the-dates, invitations, food, guests, music, favors, party events, cake. For all that I love project management, I’ll admit I’ve been avoidant about planning my wedding. Not out of any lack of love of the Weir(d) One, but out of… sigh. Exactly that: sigh. I now have amazing help in the form of Ma Dre, which is helping me get off my ass. Which is good because, you know, I’d like to get married. In about seven months. I haven’t found a good tool for organizing all of this, which makes me a little sad. The Knot has a sweet guest list setup, but the budget…
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Task-tracking: paper vs. tech
Somehow, I keep coming back to paper. I’ve had no fewer than eight iterations of various Palm and WinCE PDAs as well as my current iPhone. I’ve tried plenty of task tracking apps on those, on the desktop, and on the web, and I always come back to paper. The main issue for me tends to be data entry. Quick notes, a quick sketch, a doodle–the iPhone (a slow 3G, no less) is way too slow. By the time I swipe, put in my password, and bring up the relevant application, it’s been 15 seconds and I might as well take the time to properly “file” the thought or task…