February 6–7, 2002 — Not so far from here

I was jolted out of bed this morning by the mailman ringing the doorbell. (The ringer is still in my room, so it can make for quite a jolt, even at 11:00 am when normal people have been awake for hours.)

I put pants on over top of my pajamas and ran downstairs. The mailman noticed the “Kill Your Television” shirt that I had worn to bed, and, after thinking about it for a second, he got excited and said, “Ned’s Atomic Dustbin! Good song.” I said that I hadn’t heard it, and he told me to download it. Coolest mailman ever.

The package was from my mom. Last night, on ICQ, my sister asked me if I’d received my surprise in the mail yet, so I assumed that today’s package was the surprise.

Then I read the letter in the package, which goes on to explain that my mom has a “surprise package” for me that she still hasn’t sent. All this buildup is just going to set me up for disappointment, but it’s still kind of fun. (And there was enough candy in today’s package that I managed to spoil my breakfast and become sick of flattened fruit products in the process. So there are no complaints here. Now I just have to convince myself to give Thrills, everyone’s favourite soap-flavoured gum, a try...)

And now I’m killing time until I can leave for work. Which brings us to yesterday. (I guess? My transitions between days are getting pretty tired, I think...)

Yesterday was actually one of my most productive days in a long time. I woke up early and started on a quick freelance job that a coworker of mine from summers past had asked me to do. It involved sending the contents of forms through email using ASP. I hadn’t used ASP in while, but it didn’t take much to remember what I needed to remember. I finished early in the afternoon, having earned $150 for the antigreg t-shirt fund.

Then I found a bunch of things that I’d been meaning to mail out and walked down to the post office. I spent a lot on postage, but I think it was worth it, and a few people will be getting packages that they weren’t expecting. (There was an order from the US for four pin sets waiting for me, too. Income from pin sets has now reached $76 Canadian. Which means that, with the $150 from yesterday’s freelance work, I’m only $74 away from having enough money to print forty t-shirts. Fun.)

Returning home, I played the Harry Potter video game that Andrew had borrowed from his work until I hit a glitch in the game, freezing it. Video games always put me in an awful mood, and I’m starting to remember why I stopped playing them. (I never did finish Final Fantasy VII, either, and most of my interest in finishing it has disappeared. A bit of a waste, probably.)

(Speaking of not finishing things, I haven’t read any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in weeks. I’m in the middle of The Two Towers and I just can’t take it anymore. I think the Ents were the last straw: When I started reaching pages and pages of discussion on the language of the tree people, I’d read a page at a time, become exasperated, and then leave the book sitting on my desk for longer and longer periods of time. I’ll probably try again before the movie comes out, but it feels too much like work for me to keep reading now.)

Then I got caught up on emails, finished a tentative design for a web site that I’m working on, and talked to Kerry on ICQ for a bit.

A pretty good day, all in all.

Meanwhile, I’ve decided that I’m going to be redoing a lot of antigreg over the next few weeks. You probably won’t even notice the difference, but there are things that have been starting to bother me and that could be organized better. For some reason, just as I was starting to sort of give up on the site, people started visiting again — more than there have been in months. Which is encouraging, and might just be enough to get me to care about the site again.

Anyway. It’s time to shave and make myself presentable for work. And to psych myself up for another round of friendliness and forced smiles. Thankfully, it’s getting easier...