Visit the kelpforest....

grrr... I am just battin' a 1000 lately.

So far recently, I have misplaced my phone, the camera's battery charger, and my little green SD card reader.

( too many details )

Interesting...I posted a while ago about a pelican on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, and only now stumbled across a February posting from the International Bird Rescue Research Center - they have a center in San Pedro, up the hill from the docks - that might explain some of the weird things pelicans were doing last winter.

California Brown Pelicans in distress: Event update


That's generally how I find things, I forget I was looking for them and then trip over them, months later...

Grrr. My cell phone has gone missing. I only noticed Monday afternoon when it wasn't in its case on my backpack and thought then I'd left it on my desk. However, it wasn't there the next morning and searching through my backpack and lunch bag (ostensibly for lunch but winds up holding whatever I throw in it when I'm too lazy to stop and unzip zippers) produced a distinct lack of phone. Tried calling it in hopes of hearing it in a forgotten corner, but now it's rolling right into voicemail, so either the battery has run out or whoever picked it up turned it off. I hope I didn't leave on the bus. That means a trip to the transit authority office to check the lost and found, whether I did or not, I suppose. I'm not too upset about the phone itself; although it was fairly new, there's only $10 worth of time on it, so it's not like I'm getting ripped off there. I'm miffed I've lost the little glow-in-dark Naruto charm I got at Anime Expo last year and my little year-of-the-tiger charm. And I'll have to enter all those numbers over. Again, grrr.

So, the plan for this weekend is drop all three kids off at John's mom's Friday after work my dental appointment (need a filling), then head down to San Diego to spend the night, get up bright n' early and line up for ComicCon tickets before it opens; hopefully, there won't be some movie star or director as a guest. I'm remembering VT's horror story of several years ago where she waited in a line nearly a mile long for over three hours. We've been wanting to go for years and have just never made it down there. I have several friends who go for the whole weekend every year.

I am a total doofus. It's next weekend, not this weekend. I kept looking at the dates and it never registered that it was a still a week away until I went to the website, and it was flashing in big capital letters, "7 DAYS TIL...." Grr, and Connie's going camping next weekend. What is wrong with me?

After finding out about it more than a year ago, and occasionally going back and checking it out again and thinking, "yes, I probably need to do this," I gritted my teeth last night and joined FlyLady.

I will not do anything unless I have structure, which I find difficult to create myself. I'm tired of the CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome). John was pretty good at the housework, but got tired of getting yelled at (and, I admit, at least some of the grumpiness was from me, not just from my dad), so he quit. My problem is that I see everything as a giant mountain that I can't possibly conquer, so a lot of the time I don't even try, unless of course I get absolutely sick of something. I think it's worse than it's ever been.

I have not shined my sink yet, but I did do The 27-Fling Boogie before I left the house, even if it was just mail litter that hadn't made it to the trash can and not the 27-items-to-give-away part. And I did throw spend five minutes after lunch, putting and throwing away papers on my desk here at work. Actually my desk is semi-neat right now (there are only two piles, but they contain everything) because the director was supposed to show up last week (but never did).

Well. Baby steps, she says.

A lot of it is based on the Sidetracked Home Executives system my mom used back in the 80's (I used it myself for a little while, but I'm obviously a backslider). There is an awful lot about "Blessing your Home" that makes me a bit uncomfortable (so does the pink and purple color scheme), but if I can take "blessing" to mean "having a place to live that is comfortable, that doesn't make others uncomfortable when come in the door, AND makes it so I can easily find everyone clean underwear in the morning" then I suppose I can handle that.

I do like the fact that FlyLady is not just a frilly pink and purple homemaker. She is FlyLady because she teaches fly-fishing as well! You can see a little fishing rod under her arm if you look closely.

*soft snort*

I will try not to whine. I acknowledge that I quite often need a kick in the pants. Where the hell is my planner?

Finally hit the Franklin/Covey store at lunch yesterday to get new planner pages. I am disappointed to find they no longer carry the Cranium or Shoebox versions; their licenses expired, apparently. I like the funny ones, but now I'm limited to Dilbert and The New Yorker. While I like both of them, they're both really aimed more at typical business people. I decided on the second one, but now that I've got it installed, I wish I'd gone for Dilbert. The pages are a monochrome blue and white, and while it does have cartoons, they're all shades of gray.

I did grab a package of glitter gel pens to liven things up, and the salesperson waskind enough to give me a discount because he thought the green and the blue were drying out, but now they seem to work fine. I thought one of them was purple, but it seems to be hot pink instead. Oh well, seems I am cursed to never have a purple one. Anytime I've gotten one, it's been dried out, lost by my kids, or had the cap lost, and therefore a very short life. In any case, I've declared this pack off limits, a statement which Avalon vehemently disagreed with. Quite the little drama princess.

I think I'm developing a pen addiction. I love colored pens, nice pens, and anything that looks like it would feel neat to write with, and I'm always trying sneak one in whenever I buy something. I am dangerous to myself (or at least my paycheck) in an office supply store, and I'm often found drooling over the Levenger catalog. I don't own a fountain pen, but I covet one.

What was I talking about? I suppose I should start using this planner thing the way it's meant to be used; however, I am rebelling against listing all my household chores as well as work stuff in it. It just feels too anal retentive to me...

Eewww! Picking up stuff on the floor and found the latest charity mailing label sent to my father. Reagan Ranch is now begging money off him and sent a slew of address labels with Ronald Reagan's picture on them. Bleh!

The bit I posted awhile ago about the Hormone Hostages - the part about nobody ever picking up trash around here, was only half a joke. For some reason, the junk mail seldom finds its way into the trash, and since Christmas is on its merry way, so are the catalogs. Now this is my own fault. I can't afford most of the stuff in them, but they sure are fun to look at. Then someone knocks the pile over, and the nice catalog gets walked on or torn up. Oh well, we have too many of them anyway.

And something from a funny email list I get:

"Men are like fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and
it's our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until
they mature into something you'd like to have dinner with."

***

"Women are like fine wine. They all start out fresh, fruity
and intoxicating to the mind and then turn full-bodied with
age until they go all sour and vinegary and give you a head-
ache."

I have been so busy the last few weeks the surface of my desk could not be seen - not an uncommon state for my desk. When I finished one project, I just began piling the crap from the next project on top of it. I made a halfhearted try to clear it away before I left today. At least now it's all in one big pile. Now if I could just get the same the done in my house!