motivation

How to keep from eating ALL of the chocolate your operations manager made YOU go buy??

Keep repeating to yourself your plan to DRINK your carbs later.

watch out for the POISON IVY

HAPPY HALLOWEEN ("Poison Ivy" from Batman, kudos to Danielle for the makeup!)
And, yah, I ran out of hair paint (it's actually red, looks pink in the pic)...have fun today!

the odds

I composed a tight, concise email to my boss explaining some work stuff. I think it was good: relevant and informative.

And maybe it was, but it was also delivered 3 times in a row due to the web version of Outlook we use. So, brilliance aside, my boss now has to overlook the marketing person's inability to master technical tools in CONTEXT of an email regarding technical tools.

It's a sign. Step away from the tappity-tap.

your what hurts?

The internets were a big gulp of vinegar today. Good for you, I guess, but I'm a little twitchy there is just SO damn much to process out there.

This little "work experiment" may have some casualties, we'll see.

Well that was fun

So, a little work experiment.

In other news..am already confoosed by noblomopowhatev...

NoPoBloMo

Or something like that.

It's where you post every day for a month.

I'll try.

The show went well, but I was glad to get a ride home early since Jeff was gonna keep going. It seems all the shows are going late now, methinks we're spoiling our clients.

Lola was up and chirping before my alarm clock. She managed to lay still and sorta sleep with me for a bit before playing with my head and whispering and randomly tracing x's on my back with her cold little feet. She got up to torture Unca Buh and while she's mostly funny and endearing and so damn smart, she is one bossy little toddler and that really needs to be reigned in. Unca Buh though, ever the pushover...

Beaner had a great blog post up today (scaling mountains in Scotland) and I tell ya, it's a trip being a mom to 5 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT souls on this planet. More on that later, back to my disgusting coffee.

money for nothing

I'm experimenting with GoDaddy for website hosting, and by "experimenting" I mean trying to get as many features as I can without actually paying for anything.

Well, you get what you pay for. Ads aside, I'm not a fan of the 'website tonight' site builder, even though I've successfully built client sites using that tool in the past. I don't like their (free) blog tools, primarily because of what you can't integrate, ie Flickr photostreams (you can upload one pic at a time, no thanks) and the Twitter feed is spotty at best.

I may use it for lolawillamena.me but I think I'll either host marivic.me somewhere else or pony up and upgrade. Still don't know what to do with my blogger account but hey, at least I know what DOESN'T work.

epiphany

On the bus ride home, I realized 'it is what it is' which for me, had to do with my life is about what it's about.

And since my life these days is working and parenting and losing weight, that's what this space needs to be out. I read blogs work for work and for me, but what I publish for work is separate from this, and that's ok. So, I'm home now, it's the mad dinner dash and then hopefully a little downtime. First stop: Good Lord Lola sounds cranky. Crumbs.

already done with blogger...maybe

It was fun while it lasted, but if I'm going to do this ("this" is...dunno) I need to jump in with an actual hosted site. Good thing I grabbed marivic.me when the .me's were made available.

Anyway, I'm posting this pic as a "before" and will do the "after" once we have The Joker in place. As Lola would say, "duh da da duuuhhh!"

frakkin SNOW are you kidding me?

I know, it's late October in Madison this happens EVERY year and will continue to happen EVERY YEAR yet EVERYTIME it happens I get grouchy.

It's snowing, just ever so much. I, however, am wearing a dress (albeit with tights) and my commute involves walking and busing. Oh, poor cold me, right?

Today's blogoworld has been interesting, to say the least. I'm getting my feet wet by commenting more on blogs I admire, and following links to other blogs I feel would be fun to read. Some of the vitriol today, however, has me gun-shy.

The blogging exercise is, for me, two-fold. It's a social experiment related to work (online communities, etc.) as well as basis for eventually promoting the work being done on cyberaoke.com. There's the added benefit of forcing me to actually write, a discipline long-neglected, but it's the exercise itself that ignited my recent efforts.

I see the shitstorms on other blogs today though, and make myself close out of the tabs, "x", just like that. Just for a little while. I do not want to be discouraged.

in no particular order

I love tights (hate nylons) but would kill for a pair that wasn't quite so CONTROL with the control-top. Ow.

Managed to pack breakfast and lunch and make my own coffee. For some reason though (filter still dry when I loaded it up last night?) the coffee was overwhelmingly disgusting, went right down the drain as soon as I got to work. Crumbs.

Solid 131. I'll take that.

We had a good week-end (the little black dress that actually for real really fits was an unqualified hit Saturday night). Lola was a BEAR yesterday morning so we left her with Danielle and went to breakfast just us; we couldn't shut up about being able to read the paper, not caring how long the food took to get there, blah blah nutbars we were grooving on "the good old days".

And then we went back to pick her up for the rest of the errands. It's our only day with all of us together, we actually kinda missed her. We wore her out with the grocery shopping and run to the mall (I was inordinately excited about the purchase of a food processor, how'd I get old?).

We napped (!) I cooked, check this out:

Bacon wrapped asparagus (1.6 each bunch, they were SO good)
Cauliflower mashed potatoes (1-2 per serving, with the blender this was super easy)
Biscuits (>2 each, and 2 are part of my breakfast this morning)
Steak (0)

Watched Dexter and marveled at the plot twists; holy hell is it getting good.

More later, time for work and non-ass-tasting coffee.

OH and Danica was lovely and talented and wicked-good as the bitchy snotty girlfriend of the high school football captain. It was weird seeing her in a play with her dad (my first ex-husband and I did a fair amount of theatre together when we were both in high school) but overall the play - the world premiere of "Ballots" - was infinitely worth missing my Saturday nap.

D2

IMG_1182
Originally uploaded by msmarivic

My oldest-by-a-minute twin...nope, won't even make it 5 seconds into the show.

Weighty weights

I hate my scale. It's probably not the scale's fault, but the needle doesn't ever reliably just fall; instead it drops a pound or two, pops back up maybe one, then, meh, eventually dips back down. Maybe. Hopefully.

So I get why you're only supposed to jump on the damn thing maybe once a week but it's maddening nonetheless.

Moving on...

I used to love Fridays. Because after Friday came Saturday and Sunday, two days during which I didn't have to go to work. Now week-ends mean tapping out shit on my blackberry while at the grocery store vs. the convenience of a laptop. Week-ends (and Wednesdays, actually) are karaoke shows. They're grocery shopping and cleaning and herding errant teens and wondering what the hell Lola's still doing awake at 11pm on a Friday night. Sometimes they're exercise and a new magazine but more often than not...week-ends are just different scenery. With crappy coffee since why the hell can I not make a decent cup at home?

On the good news front: progress on cutting back spending. I only went out for lunch once this week, and then it was a side salad with a scoop of tuna (no dressing) and with tip it was about $4 yet filled me up completely. The rest of the week I managed to bring lunches, snacks, coffee, etc. And, D1 has her show this week-end (I missed opening night last night) so I'm really looking forward to that. She's been in theatre all her life, this is her first lead role and if I can make it through the first, oh, 10 seconds without crying all of my kids will be mightily impressed.

I wouldn't bet on it.

Sorry, this pic has always cracked me up

crash boom

Too busy to post, yes. But mostly just so damn tired.

The scale said 130, maybe 130.5. That was weird.

who's on where

I take the bus to work. The bus stop is a block and a half from my house, and I can see it from my front living room window.

Which means I can see my house from the bus stop. What I saw this morning...as I get on the bus, I noticed D2 getting in the Saab.

1. She's not allowed to drive that car at will.
2. She's not allowed to drive right now at all (grounded for quite possibly ever).

The real problem though, was that she (D2) was sitting on the couch watching TV with Lola when I left, the nanny hadn't arrived yet.

As the bus pulls away, I get a text msg from the nanny: on my way running late. I texted back, Danielle WAS home when I left...

Per the nanny, Lola was still sleeping.

Enter...wtf??

ANOTHER text from the nanny: I thought she was sleeping cuz I didn't see her, she was playing in D2's room.

I'm not sure who to yell at first.

Happy Wednesday.

PS Weight: Uh, 132? Probably 132.5. So - - 30 lbs off.

My mood on Lola's face

too much Tuesday already

This needs to be a day where you blink and it's over, clear the grit from the eyes and start fresh...tomorrow.

Or maybe have some coffee.

Apace

Everyone's struggling, pulling back on spending, so H. and I are hit twofold: 1, no one's buying new furniture or appliances or exercise equipment or pool tables; without those purchases, his company is hurting. 2, people are staying home more. We've had one show negotiate a reduced rate, and another show cancel altogether. I'm grateful for my real/day job, and things are healthy overall, yet still. Suckage.

redux

I've tried blogging a couple times. I've failed a couple times.

So I'm not going to approach this as a new habit or "thing" I do. If it's fun GREAT if not, well, it's shaping up to be another great season for Dexter. Baby steps.