New year, New duties

I've decided to restart this blogging thing.

I'm still missing my dad, but the pain isn't a sharp daily hurt.

More like a dull ache in my heart.

Our work webpage is migrating and supposedly we're getting a bit more control to directly publish it. My branch chief wants me to take charge of this and I'm all for it. The pages look a lot like blogs with a main panel and side panels. We can do HTML or simple design editing just like on here; so I'm the likely candidate. Not that they know I have a blog, but I'm pretty sure no-one else in our office even knows what HTML is. Here's an office directory from a couple years ago. We are an odd group.

I don't really need more "other duties as assigned" but with work being down because of the economy, it'll be good to have something to keep me working. Plus, I think my bosses are all for it because if their underling volunteers for something it looks good on their year end review too. 

Making lists

Okay, so I could be queen of the procrastinators. No, you might think you have me beat; but it's really my one true talent. Sure I knit, I play piano, I blah blah blah.... but I can really procrastinate like nobody's business. I've actually tried to commit a little afternoon time once a week to blogging just to get stuff out of my head. Of course, it always falls in the last half of the week in the last half of my day!

So I've always heard to make lists.

"If you cross stuff off your list it's very satisfying."

"If you put everything on your list you can get a feel for how easy it is to tic things off."

That's all crap! If I make a list I can procrastinate doing any actual work. Making lists at work is just too damned depressing. My job is one where my inbox is never empty, my plate always has something on it and that's just hard to swallow in hard print. Look, I'll admit here (I'd never admit it to someone in meatspace) that I've even had utilities shut off because I procrastinate paying the bill and forgot about it.

Which, btw, is very different from when I lived in Iowa and worked a bunch of part-time jobs and sometimes had to choose what bill to pay and.... well.... sometimes I didn't have enough to pay even the most dire bills. 

If you're ever in that situation, my advice is pay the water bill. Not because water is essential to life - hell, I always could get water to drink at work - but because the water man comes to your house and shuts it off and then has to come back to your house to turn it on. See, the phone and electric were shut off not at the house. Well, not right away. They did some kind of soft shut off a few days before they came to the house. I didn't have a cell phone or cable back then, so I have no idea how that last one works.

Anyway, my point is I'm not a list maker but I am a master screwer-upper of important tasks.  I'm also a lover of technology. So I downloaded a calendar app for my android called pure calendar and also there is pure grid. These put a calendar on my home page with little bars of color showing what event is on what day. I think someone said HTC phones have this type of calendar already. But, BUT, that's not the cool app. I also downloaded Astrid, which is a task manager. Saying it always reminds me of Asterix, which is some kind of French comic book hero - but the little icon that represents the app looks like the warm fuzzies that the nuns handed out in high school. I used to have one somewhere, but it was a line drawing of a happy furry little guy that looked like a ghost from Pac-man.

So, Astrid has really helped me get my shit together. Seriously. Which is good, since I'm buying a house! So, I can put the due dates for all my bills in this little app, and tell it to repeat every month and on that day - or earlier if I set an alarm - it pops up and reminds me to do it. I can have it appear on my calendar or I can put a widget on my home page so that I can see what's coming up.

I just learned a neat new trick too! I can make lists. So, I made a list of all the things I need to get done before moving or just after moving into the house.

Now, I don't have a due date on most things yet. But as they get closer I can go back and set a date. Like I did with contacting my insurance agent.



Instead of letting it auto-order things, I did some click and drag and put things in the order I'll probably need to complete them. It lets the procrastinator in me breathe a little bit since there isn't a hard and fast date.






It's not fancy; but it's at least kept me on time with bills. Oh, in case you are wondering why I don't just set up bills for autopay.... It's a leftover from my days of not having any money. It's not that I can't pay bills these days - but I spent enough time having to only pay what I could that I don't like to autopay things. It's not a paranoid "then they know all my info" conspiracy crackpot thing like it is with some folks (not that there's anything wrong with that) its just a leftover bad habit.

Kind of like rubbing the sating edge of the blanket when I need to go to sleep... it's something that I probably should get past but as long as I'm aware of it, it doesn't hurt anything


Yeah, the folks who made PureCalendar, PureGrid and Astrid didn't pay me, didn't give me jackshit and don't really give a rats ass who I am - but if you need to get better organized like I did.... it's a little less painful than a paperlist.

Color my world

So I've heard back about the house. There were some issues that came up in the inspection I paid for.

This is a good time to point out that you always want to pay for your own inspection, but especially in the City of St. Louis. The city inspector didn't even go downstairs to the basement, or upstairs to the attic.

WTF?!?

The sellers have agreed to fix all the issues and give me copies of the receipts.

Which means it's time to decorate the house in my head. I mean, I was already doing that a little. But I've lately developed an addition to Design Seeds. I actually had this bookmarked a long time ago; but now I've been actively searching for colors to paint my walls. Of course it helps that Sherwin Williams has this site called Chip It!. I can find a picture I like and click the Chip it! button on my IE toolbar and then I can see what Sherwin Williams paint colors correspond to the photo. 

I might be seriously addicted to decorating my house.

These are the leading contenders for my living room:

 
(all from Design-Seeds)

I have a couch which is brown and light blue and I kind of don't want white or tan walls. But I'm not sure I'm brave enough to go orange or pink. But a Nemo colored wall kind of intrigues me.

These are the leading contenders for my kitchen:

 
(all from Chip-it)

I have cream counters and a really yellowy cream tile in the kitchen with stainless appliances and a multi tonal floor which has tans and greys. I really want a hot color in the kitchen but something about that fig picture kind of talks to me.

I even have this one marked:

Which I could use in the living room with the blue furniture, or in the kitchen with the cream tile. Ooo or maybe the dining room which is in the middle! Although I seriously like the last color on the Design-Seeds tile; why did Chip-It not pick up that one and instead pick gray?

Aaaand this one:

From my my Pinterest (because I can't find it again on either of the other two sites)

Which I'd love in the living room; but that's kind of a bright pink. Who wants artificial sweetener package pink on the wall? Will people be in my living room and suddenly crave aspartame, or saccharine or something more horrible?  (I love diet soda/foods, please don't send the fake sugar cops after me.)

Seriously, how much fun is this? Hella fun, that's how much!

(This is ridiculous to say, but this post isn't sponsored by anyone, dude I'm lucky if the Sherwin Williams folks won't throw me out of the store after spending hours in there just touching paint chips.)