A long work day, unfortunantely. At night my in-laws came in for dinner and then we both went to a movie called “Notting Hill”, which was quite harmless and fun (review on the right).
Not a bad day, considering Dee usually has quite bad luck with birthdays (no one showing up, no one remembering…). In fact no one did remember except for my family and her parents… no one else did, her cousins, aunts and uncles and even grandparents forgot… oh well.
Happy birthday anyway :)
PS – At the movie I finally got to see the trailer for Episode I on a huge screen… I was in such a state that I started to sweat… I’m looking forward to this movie… oh boy, am I!…
PPS – Shame about the people in the back row all excited about “Austin Powers” opening next and immediatelly turning a frown at the Phantom Menace trailer, saying: “not THIS one!!”… anyway, I left them in a pool of blood… and yes, I did remember to drop the murder weapon.
My wife’s a teacher. She was a teacher last year, she was a teacher the year before that, and she wasn’t a teacher before because she was still in school.
As it is, you can’t really be a teacher. You can compete for a vacancy in a school. If you get placed, you get to teach at that school for a year.
The kids might like you (as it happened, they did like her), the other teachers may get along with you (as they did), you can help in school activity, get involved, make exhibitions in town with your student’s work, have students that are not your students look forward to being your students the next year. Sad news is… your head is for sale at the end of the year again.
Forget all about it, you were never a teacher at that school, you are now up to face the competition all over again.
So I went with her to take care of that, to fill in lists with school vacancy codes in order of preference, to be in line for hours waiting to deliver all the stamped, filled in a checked papers and hope. Hope that you get placed on one of the vacant spots in a school near you, or even hope it might be the same school as last year.
Thousands of teachers go through this every year, thousannds of kids never get the same teacher two years in a row… and dozens of school remain without teachers for this or that subject. And why?
No, it’s not a local celebration for war veterans, this is the day we stuck Scully and Yellow in a box and took them to the veterenarian clinic.
The vet was disgusted to just look at them… I must admit, they do look terrible and it was all our fault.
It appears the product we had been advised to put on their “bald spots” was actually helping the fungus on their skin develop. Result: they are now massively infected by fungi, which are destroying their fur. Michelle has it too, obviously, but she stayed home because we simply couldn’t manage to carry three cats to the vet.
So now we came home with a daily ear gel (because the ears are also affected), a daily half-a-pill of anti-fungus medication, a daily, quarter of a pill of anti-inflamatory medication, an every other day half-a-pill of skin acidifier medication… and… la piéce de resistence: a bath every four days with a special fungus killer… anyone who lives with cats knows exactly how fun it is to bathe not one, not two but three cats…
In the meanwhile it’s definitely confirmed that my skin affliction came from the cats but, thanks to modern medicine (i.e., over a month of daily pills and creams), it will not make my hair fall. I should, however, refrain from touching little children, animals and all human beings in general, since it’s contagious.
“Housework could be really fun if it was called ‘relaxing on a Hawaiian beach’ and you could wear a swimming suit and were actually in Hawaii, at the beach.”
Today it was cleaning day once again.
I finally changed the furniture around in my office and assembled the new bookcase which we bought last week. Things are looking a little better, since the space is nicer now, more adequate for actually working… although there’s still plenty of mess around, especially on my drawing table (how will I draw, you may ask…).
Well, I decided to take a little bit off to work on the redoing of my diary and, of course, take a stroll through the Open Pages webring and see some more online diaries. The truth is, I don’t like all those worked up diaries, except perhaps this one, but I’m not yet totally convinced I know what I want to do with mine exactly.
There are some online diaries so complicated that you have to go through 235 clicks just to get to the latest entry page.
The way I’ve set up the home page, allows me to change my money level (I wish), the latest CD or movie I went to without having to write an entry if I don’t feel the inspiration for it. However, I can still come in and write an entry and upload it, having only to add a small link to the dropdown menu for people to visit it.
I still haven’t decided what to do on individual diary pages. For example, this one looks exactly like the home page, except there’s no dropdown menu (or else I’d have to update it in every page), and there’s some navigation going on at the bottom of the page, instead of the LinkExchange counter.
There’ll be some people wondering why I don’t use frames. I hate frames, frames are the velour flares of webdesign if you get my meaning.
Well, there’s just still a lot of deciding to do… I suppose I could use my left column for… say… quotes, small stories or song lyrics, and the right columns I should use for… say… uh… I go see a movie and write a review, or I buy a CD and review it… sounds like a good idea.
Here’s what: I’ll add a phrase, a quote or something that fits the mood and feel of the day in question on the left side. Under that should come my levels table, but referring to the specific day, and not (like on the homepage), to my general being. Let’s say I am generally calm but had a stressing day…
I’m running Analog on my company website’s logs; I’m running it with the DNS option set to read, so I’m online resolving host names… how interesting. Since it’s not interesting I’m browsing through other online diaries, journals and the like and realizing there’s one thing I’m missing, the “about me” page (among other things, I know). I used to have one, but it was too “real”. Meaning, it wasn’t anonymous enough for my taste and this diary has become anonymous some time ago.
I found a pattern online diary persona. Usually, both real and made-up online diary people are white females, some young, 19 – 23, producing simple and sometimes naïf entries. They’re usually with some boyfriend or husband whom they like a lot and speak of in very innocent terms. Then there are the older ones, usually in their thirties, they’re strong independent women, married or with boyfriends of whom they don’t much like to talk. Almost everyone that writes an online diary has pets, mostly cats, although there are plenty of dogs. The majority thinks that they have writing skills, that writing an online diary fits in the category of literature or some way of creative writing. I haven’t found anyone yet (yet…), that’s not American, English or Australian.
What about little atypical me? Am I so different from what I have found? No, of course not… I also have cats!
I’m a 26 year-old white male from Europe. I’m married and work for myself, on my own company, as a web designer, illustrator, cartoonist, general manager, master of numbers, supreme lord of monkeys, ruler of the red eye people and tyrant dictator of answering machines.
I work from home, we all do, and use the internet, phones, cell phones, faxes, running couriers, pigeons and telepathy to stay in touch with my colleagues. I’m still trying to figure out if this stuff is worth making into an “about me” page…
Usually there’s a “likes” page… meaning that if you know what I like or enjoy you might learn more about me… fair enough, I like Star Wars, Mike Oldfield, comic books, Jungle Music, football (not that incredibly much, but still), movies (I rate star wars outside of ‘movies’), The X-Files, Gillian Anderson (I rate Gillian Anderson outside the X-files :) ), cats more than some people, few people more than my cats, working out, annoying my friends with silly one-liners to the limits of their patience, guitars, my house, computers.
I really like to eat: shanghai-style fried shrimp, lasagna, Häagen Dazs ice cream (almost any flavour that has chunks in it), cheese and ham toasts with fried eggs, eggs in general, shellfish, spaghetti, nice fresh salads, spicy potato chips, pea stew (yup, mainly made out of peas), Smints (the blue ones) and steaks (although I am considering vegetarianism, especially after trying out some veggie burgers last week).
I drink truckloads of: coffee, milk-caramelized sugar-coffee combination, Coca-Cola, orange fanta. I also drink (albeit less than truckloads): Vodka, whiskey, beer (only recently, I used to hate the stuff).
I really hate: very fat people, soft handshakes, fish, techno, someone trying to bullshit me, bullshit in general, stupid people, unprofessional people, politics, governments, spanish people, the fact that I’m messy and disorganized, long repetitive loud annoying noises (I lived by a ship yard for years), heat, bad oral hygiene (especially from my clients), fashion, the fact that people live through famous people’s lives, not having a stupendous amount of money to spend, a lot more stuff than I like.
Hum… maybe I will make that “about me” page… it’s also time I actually put some effort into redesigning this site. Not that there’s much wrong with it, it works, it’s user friendly and readable, which is more than I can say for many other online diaries out there… but hey… I AM a designer, should try harder… and try harder I will.. hmmm, yes… see through you I can!
Today was my wife Dee’s 26th birthday. A long work day, unfortunantely. At night my in-laws came in for dinner and then we both went to a movie called “Notting Hill”, which was quite harmless and fun (review on the right). Not a bad day, considering Dee usually has quite bad luck with birthdays (no […]
My wife’s a teacher. She was a teacher last year, she was a teacher the year before that, and she wasn’t a teacher before because she was still in school. As it is, you can’t really be a teacher. You can compete for a vacancy in a school. If you get placed, you get to […]
It’s Vet day! No, it’s not a local celebration for war veterans, this is the day we stuck Scully and Yellow in a box and took them to the veterenarian clinic. The vet was disgusted to just look at them… I must admit, they do look terrible and it was all our fault. It appears […]
SENTENCE OF THE DAY “Housework could be really fun if it was called ‘relaxing on a Hawaiian beach’ and you could wear a swimming suit and were actually in Hawaii, at the beach.” Today it was cleaning day once again. I finally changed the furniture around in my office and assembled the new bookcase which […]
I’m running Analog on my company website’s logs; I’m running it with the DNS option set to read, so I’m online resolving host names… how interesting. Since it’s not interesting I’m browsing through other online diaries, journals and the like and realizing there’s one thing I’m missing, the “about me” page (among other things, I […]
