vagina vagina vagina!

Muchachos y muchachas!

I keep trying to find the time to write because I have things to tell you. I DO!

This week has been so awesome. I have that energy that makes it hard to sit still, so my time at the gym is even more about calming down than exercise. Monday night, I hopped on the crosstrainer and had a thought I couldn’t stop smiling about. Then I thought, stop smiling! you look like a freak! But it didn’t work, and then I was laughing! And I did look like a freak! As usual.

Later that night, I had to go to the post office at the airport with the Valentine’s Day Box^TM. I was out of packing tape, but I knew they’d be happy to sell it to me for a ridiculously-marked-up price. So I was standing there in line with about 20 other people, and the place was dead-silent in a bizarrely creepy way. I was trying to fit the last thing I had bought into the already-full box, half-laying on it and ripping tape off with that loud SCRIIIIITCH noise, and I started giggling again. But it’s ok, because I’m fully aware I’m that crazy girl in line at the post office or at the gym or the coffeeshop. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Monday morning before the work insanity began, I got a call from the owner. He asked if I’d be ok not going through the 3rd-party payment service anymore, and getting my checks directly from the company. I’m sure I’ll miss wondering where the hell my check is every month (it’s perfectly timed to not arrive just as my rent, mortgage, and car payment are due), as well as having to go to US Bank to cash it before running the cash over to my credit union. I’ll try to manage somehow. And then! He asked if I’d be willing to switch to a W2 contract instead.

The difference between 1099 contracting and W2 is that with 1099, you pay all your taxes yourself, in huge quarterly chunks, and you have to estimate your next year’s income, which is sometimes a complete shot in the dark and almost always drastically wrong. At least, that’s been my experience. With W2, you’re still a contractor, but they take the taxes out for you. Not only does this save me future tax nightmares, but it also knocks at least $4,000 off what I owe this coming April. So yeah, I think I can deal with that as well.

And direct deposit! I was jumping up and down. He kept thanking me for agreeing to all that. I couldn’t have been happier to accept.

Tuesday I got here on the late side, and pulled in to find the parking lot empty and the building locked. I sat in my car and pondered for a moment, then called Micci at work. She didn’t answer after three tries, so I pondered some more, then called her cell. She was at home dying of a cold. Jim and Josh (the guys who are usually here to let me in, since Pam’s out of town) had both been ill Monday, but since Josh was on the upswing I was hoping he was just late. I had nightmare visions of clients driving from around the metropolitan area, soon to converge on my office with torches and pitchforks. It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t be there to attend to their every need, but I still felt responsible.

I ran an errand and came back at 9:30. Still no Josh! I called Micci again and went home to get my VPN set up so I could try to work from home. I didn’t do a very good job of working while I was there, but I did have a damn good time. Josh called a while later and said he had made it in. I think he expected me to be crabby about my very long drive, so I freaked him out by running in and being all chatty. Luckily, no one seemed to be dealing with anything torch-worthy, and all was well.

OK, now it’s time for some geekiness I found kind of fascinating. I looked at 404lab the other day and the graphic at the top of the page was missing. I checked my files and the image was in the right place, and the html was correct. When I’d view the source, the whole img tag was gone. I thought I was losing it; same thing in Firefox and IE. It turns out it was my Norton ad-blocking thang that was surpressing it, presumably because it’s named banner.gif and resides in the top 20% of the page. Granted, that’s kind of a red flag for advertising. However, the fact that it’s two colors, not animated, and delivered by the same domain that hosts the site should maybe have indicated it’s not.

Better heuristics are needed in the battle against the unwanted! Also, I’d prefer maybe adding some text to the page source to indicate its removal, instead of just pretending like it was never there at all. So I guess what I’m saying is that if by some chance you happen to work for Symantec, you should probably get working on that right this second.

So, dudes, I bet right now you all are wishing you did like me and voted for Heston this last election. Seriously, could a senile gun-nut be any worse? My new theory is that your president is going to use all the casualties to build a levee to hold back the seething tides of, um, whatever it is we’re afraid of. I forget.

In other disheartening news, there is now a Starbucks in my grandma’s town. Something in the universe quietly shifted while I wasn’t looking.

So I told Scotty I was thinking my next post would be:

dear internet:
i’m all in loooooooooooove.
jenni.

He said I’d get a followup:

dear jenni:
we know.
the internet.

I just can’t help myself!*

I’ll stop gushing now and get back to work, right after I show you this thing I saw on my street yesterday. Sad!

Jenni