This week may not have been the most stressful one in my life, but it was definitely in the top 10. Thank god I started a new job to get away from it all!

The new job seems cool. It's only supposed to be for 1 month, but could go longer if I can stand the commute to Napa. The good news is, I can also work from home. At least it would be good news if my home wasn't a construction zone. But, I'm getting ahead of my story...

Working for a catalog company is fun. It's like shopping all day. I even get to put stuff on sale. Sweet!

I got a tour of the "merch room" where they keep a sample of all the merchandise. It was like walking into the coolest antique store ever. Their buyers go all over the place to find unique stuff that matches their style. I'd love to give you a sneak peek of some of the new items -- like this cool bike from Amsterdam that just came in on Friday -- but I'm still feeling out implicit rules. The guy I'm replacing took it for a spin, although he got spanked for it later. Since it was his last day I don't think he gave a sh!t one way or the other, though.

I would remind you what company it is (since my alter ego deleted the earlier post about it, oops), but my new boss mentioned she has google alerts for the company name, and for the famous (in Napa anyway) TV chef founder's name. Turns out foodies are avid bloggers. Who knew? Anyway, (e:enknot,77)'s many points about the Internet being an all-encompassing small world, and what you say here may never go away, hit home with my paranoid alter ego. That's all I'm going to say about it. My alter ego can start her own journal if she wants to, haha.

There's a helluva a lot more I wanted to tell you, but I'm out of time. Peace out, peepniks.

What gift do you get your general contractor when he passes his state licensing exam? especially if you thought he was already licensed? Oops! I could've sworn I asked that question!

Demolition is ridiculously dusty, so I found a cooler on craigslist, and bought a flat of water, a gatorade variety pack, and a boxed set of Kudos at Costco. Would've gotten the rice krispee treats, but I KNOW what would have happened to those!

God, there really are not enough hours in the day...

Among other things, this week I discovered I needed scaffolding. Which is something I never envisioned needing. But when you pick a path, sometimes you just have to go with it and see where it leads. You can't keep basing all your judgments on yesterday's reality.



The thing with scaffolding is, it goes really high and doesn't seem to afford much protection. So when I look at it (which is hard not to do), I keep envisioning someone plummeting to their death from it. As if I didn't already have enough to worry about! Oh well, now that the calendar is done, maybe I have room for more, haha.

Speaking of the calendar (see how I weaseled that in?), here's a pic of my niece that didn't make it in, but that I love. It reminded me of a picture of me around that age. Although now when I look at them side-by-side I can see it's a stretch to say that. But what's the point of having a mega-cute niece if you can't convince yourself you once looked that cute? ;-)



p.s. - new usersound. I think my brother-in-law will like the wallflowers.

My friends' dog Maggie died on Wednesday. They've really been through the wringer with her health issues the past six weeks or so. I feel so badly I couldn't be there for them more throughout this ordeal. I put together a photo collage and brought them some comfort food last night.





It was really hard to go through all my Maggie photos knowing she's gone, but it was also comforting/cathartic in a way. I was already in photo collage mode with the family calendar production deadline being today. I had a few setbacks this year. Had to get Dad to resend his 33 emails each with 4-7 photos attached. Oh, they all came through loud and clear. Twice, in fact. (When my web host switched servers I got all my email since November 22nd a second time as a special bonus. Just what I wanted!) About half-way through the first round, I noticed he was sending them at low-res, and told him I'd probably need a higher resolution for print. He switched midstream, and I just figured I'd deal with it later. I have a bunch of his photos on my PC from when I rescued them off his 1G memory card that for some reason no one else could read, so I figured worse case scenario, I would dig through those and match them up with the low res ones he sent.

Well, he's taken about 5G more pix since then, so that didn't work. Anyway, then it turned out Kinkos online calendar maker is down until Monday, which would make it really hard to make my deadline today. Customer service said I could bring my photos into any Kinkos and they would honor the 20% off coupon. I know you might think who cares about 20% off? But when you're getting 5 calendars at $20/each that's like getting one free! Plus I need a deadline to finish anything.

























I hope there aren't any duplicates in here, because God knows there are tons of duplicates on my hard drive. And the spacing is really all over the map. But who cares, it's done.

Wow! That looks like quite a [inlink]metalpeter,755[/inlink] birthday bash! I don't even remember what I did for my 30th. Too bad I didn't have a blog back then, haha.

Oh wait -- now I remember! Thanks to (e:Jenks,130) that is. Guess it's never too late to start documenting your life. As long as memory serves, that is.

Better get back to it, then.

I've had a hankering for lobster (my typical birthday dinner request) for a while, so I headed down to the wharf and decided to play tourist in my own town for a bit.

Most locals would say it's nuts to venture anywhere near a tourist area on a weekend, especially in the height of Christmas shopping season. But it was fun, and beautiful, and tasty. I'm not jaded enough not to appreciate that.



Only (e:j3sse) could probably decipher this pic, so I'll interpret for anyone else who may be interested. You can see Coit Tower lit up on the hill, with the pointy pyramid-shaped Transamerica tower to the right. The box-outlined buildings to the left get lit up every year like Christmas packages. And that's the start of the Western span of the Bay bridge on the far left. Boats decorated for the holidays along the pier in the foreground.

So for my birthday I found out I have a tree stump under my front sidewalk. You might think, so what? But turns out this tree stump was heaving the b'jesus out of the sidewalk, and lo and behold it's my responsibility to fix it before someone breaks their neck and sues me. Who knew? Anyway, I've been researching some options, thinking maybe I could take this opportunity to put in "permeable landscaping" (that's the term the SF Department of Public Works "Friends of the Urban Forest" uses, and yes, you do need a permit to do that, which doesn't seem that friendly to me).

Anyway, long story short, when the second round of upstairs demolition came along, I decided I'd better grab the opportunity to have four brawny guys haul away that damn concrete. I've been breaking it up and putting it in my garbage week by week. (You're not really supposed to do that, so don't tell anyone.) They made short work of it, and therein uncovered the root of the problem.



The tree stump. I hope it's not still growing, but recent events might indicate otherwise.



Here's a pic before the guys hauled away the concrete. Oh yeah, and a random car parked in front of my house with it's passenger window smashed in. Welcome to the 'hood!

p.s. to MMK -- Thanks for the birthday wishes! And for being a loyal reader all this time. ;-)

p.p.s. to (e:Paul) -- THANKS!