Once again I have no idea what I’ve been working on all evening. I can think of things I want to do, but A wants to use the laptop a bit so I am going to let her use it as long as she likes, and if I get it back I’ll play around some more. Meanwhile, I found a couple of sig codes designed for lesbians and created mine, and revised my geek code slightly. How exciting! (If you know of more of these codes, send ‘em along. I know I’ve seen others.)
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I’m not black, so I don’t usually stop at the table on the street where they sell African-American books. I look at it, and I figure maybe I’d be interested in some of them, but I’m afraid to stop. (I know I shouldn’t be. I just am.) But today they had a copy of the Nanny Diaries, which is one of the books I’ve been wanting to read (along with Running with Scissors). I looked for a price tag and found the list price of $24.95 inside, but when I asked the kid behind the counter he said it was “fifteen dollars - but you can have it for ten.” He was maybe fourteen and said it absolutely seriously, he wasn’t being flirtatious or anything. So I wonder - where are they getting these books that they can sell them that cheaply? I told him I didn’t have that much cash on me (which was true) and left.

I missed out on Metafilter again. I can tell it is my connection, because their network gets congested right when it’s time to sign up. It’s the same situation as the Neopets Money Tree - the available stuff just moves too quickly for those of us without broadband connections. Maybe I should be reloading the actual signup page rather than the pre-signup page. If I don’t figure this out, I may take Gwen up on her offer of having her username. I don’t even know much about the community - just that a lot of people consider it cool, and if it’s that hard to get into it must be something I would want to check out. And yeah, I could just browse without participating, but what if there were something I wanted to say? I e-mailed the guy who runs Metafilter and asked whether or not he’d consider giving accounts in exchange for a donation, and what the minimum donation would be.

I finally got a reply from R about the movie tonight - he can’t go. So I guess I am going by myself, blah. I haven’t been to a movie alone in a long time. I posted on Lambda’s DC mailing list inviting people, and I’m having an IM conversation with a guy I know from Gallaudet but he can’t go until tomorrow, so maybe I’ll wait till then.

Morning squirrel count: 5

I was working on writing an entry when the computer crashed hard, and I have yet to learn to save my work while I’m still writing it. It was mostly about the Elmer’s glue I have on a fingernail to keep it from breaking before I can get to a nail clipper or file. Both of my bosses are out for most of the day today, attending a funeral at Arlington Cemetery, so I might be able to get both real work and some personal stuff done today. (My boss wanted to find directions to the chapel online, so I told him to try arlingtoncemetery.org, and when he did he complained that it wasn’t the right site and it was spawning lots of pop-up windows - no, he didn’t use those terms - and I just now realized that he must have gone to arlingtoncemetary.org. So it was definitely not my fault.)

Some good news is that I made it to the next round in the plans for nodetropolis, but now I have to do character concept revision or elaboration. Blah.

I’m trying to decide if the response to my question about squirrels is good enough. The woman obviously did a lot of research, and gave me lots of interesting information and links…but she didn’t answer my question. I have yet to look at the sites she’s given me, so I will hold off on rating and payment until I do.

My space bar is sticking on something, and doesn’t respond 30% of the time when I press it. Argh.

My first post to Dykewrite went over pretty well, I guess. A couple of the women said they don’t like porn at all, but some others have indicated they’ll answer it. I’m smiling all over because of Tracy’s comment:

My God, Meredith…you’ve done DykeWrite a wonderful service by just stringing together a few sentences with your powerful prose. I scrolled through this site today and said to Sorrento, “Jesus, there’s some good shit on DykeWrite today.” And there is. Brava, women. Brava!

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Dammit! I got shut out of signing up for MetaFilter again. See, I knew that line about it being a “rare occurrence” was bullshit. The same thing happened yesterday, and it’ll keep happening. I didn’t even screw up today, I saw it and clicked it and filled it out fast and still didn’t make it. I did notice a sudden slowdown right before the top of the hour, so I’m sure it’s just my bad connection that’s keeping me from getting in. The offer of money or services for MetaFilter membership still stands. Either $5 or tell me what you want service-wise (!) and I’ll see what I can do.

From the Topics Blog comes this question: How often do you take a “day off” and just do nothing? Do you call in sick to work/school just to do this, or do you schedule time in advance?
Because my company has just four people working here, I don’t get to take a day off like that. There have been times when I’ve called in sick, but generally I really was sick - either hives or the flu. I am, however, thinking of planning a day off sometime soon, on a day when the weather’s cool, so we can go to Six Flags when there are slightly fewer people there.

I might add this to my sidebar eventually, I’m not sure. Meanwhile, here’s the link to vote on if my blog is HOT or
NOT.

Morning squirrel count: 21

There were so many nutty squirrels in the park this morning that I went looking for information about why they get crazy like that. I didn’t find anything, so I submitted a question to Google Answers…I don’t mind paying five bucks for the info. I did learn (via the Squirrel Place FAQ) that the world’s largest concentration of squirrels is in a park a few blocks from where I work.

I’ve spent a fair chunk of the morning working on making the link directory more attractive. It’s pretty and functioning now; please feel free to use it. Note, however, that the Individual Designs and Feeds categories probably won’t be of interest to anyone, they’re for my own purposes. I was going to say that I’m not trying to replace Weblog Madness, but then I saw the note on that site saying that the page has frozen as of July 2002. It’s been duplicated and improved at Eatonweb Portal, so I guess I will try not to step on their toes instead (while still stealing all of their links!). And I am still trying to develop the paddlesports section of the directory, but the script I wanted to use to spider the categories isn’t working.

I just saw that we have an Excessive Heat Warning in effect until 8pm. Yuck.

Nike iD
For less than $100, you can have a custom pair of Nike iD shoes at your door within weeks. The customizing applet lets you pick colors for every part of the shoe (they don’t check first to see if they match, so you can go ugly if you want), and you can put a word (up to eight characters) on the heel. I’m not sure if you can use any word or not. When I personalized the Air Trainer ($85), I chose DYKE and it was happy; I tried it on the the Air Presto ($95) and it was declined. The site is mostly for serious athletes, as the only shoes offered are those for basketball, running, cross-training, soccer, and other sports.

Customatix
Now this site is really fucking cool.
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I noted a few things while on my way home from work tonight, and after I got in.

• When I got on and sat down, I spotted a SmarTrip card on the floor. I picked it up and put it in my bag, figuring I’d give it to the station manager when I got off. I was a little bit worried she would shrug and claim not to know what to do with it, but as I approached the kiosk I saw she was helping somebody who seemed to have lost his farecard. I handed the SmarTrip card to her and said I’d found it on a train, and she said “there it is, he was just looking for it.” So it was lucky that I found it (as an honest person), and lucky that the guy went to my station.
• I think I have lost enough weight that my feet are a little smaller. When I bought new shoes a few months ago, they fit fine - and now they are constantly slipping off and I end up tripping.
• I am way, way too self-absorbed.
• I saw an SUV go by with the license plate “2C KAYAK” and grinned to myself. There are a lot of SUVs around with license plates that are excuses for owning such a monstrosity in this urban/suburban area (”4MYGRLS” and “3 BOYS” are two I’ve seen), but that was the first one I could actually appreciate. It reminded me of the Kayaking Makes Me Wet sticker, which my girlfriend has promised to let me put on the car as soon as it’s available for purchase. (Right now they only have shirts, but I wrote to them and they said a sticker is in the works.)
• Yesterday I inadvertently wore socks that are too old to keep wearing - they slip down and get under the heel of my foot. I borrowed some better ones from devorah, and today I wore really new socks that fit very well. I didn’t worry about the socks all day, but when I got home and took them off I found I’d developed some hives around the area where the top of the sock was. Dammit!
• There is software for every little thing now. Even software to customize the scrollbar colors in IE. There’s a fine tutorial for that, but why write it yourself when you can download a damn wizard? (There’s a lot more crap like that at download.com - come on, people, just do it yourself!)

From the Associated Press newswire - a train derailed at 1:55pm today in Kensington, a few miles north of Washington DC. At least 60 people were injured, some of them critically - they’re saying there are “no immediate reports of fatalities” because those people could presumably still die.
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