i'm a shit

i was going to call my good friend tonight when i got home from work, but i feel asleep and didn't wake up until 11:30pm (i may be coming down with something, i think).

i made a big deal about calling her cause i know she could probably use some love and support right now.

and then i failed to be that support.

i'm a shit.

you're not your fucking khaki's

how much stuff/money/status does one person need? at what point does a person realize that the wealth they have accumulated and the house/car/pool is more than they actually need to survive happily, and that it has actually started owning them?

my theory is that people with amazing wealth and infinite possessions are actually less capable of leading a satisfying and (for lack of a better word) happy life, since all the stuff they own actually clutters up their relationships and confuses their personal reward system.

so we all want to be happy. we can get happiness from 1) the things money can buy us, and we can get happiness from 2) the successes we have in our relationships. is it possible to focus too much on one of those avenues? is it possible that the quality of the happiness from one is different than the quality of happiness from the other? is it possible that people who can buy more stuff are off balance, and need progressively more things to make up for the lack of happiness derived from successful relationships?

or is this the perspective i take to reassure myself that they don't actually have it better than i do? can you have a ton of money/possessions and have the same intensity of happiness that you can have without it?

who ya gonna call?

ghostbusters!!

aaron has never seen ghostbusters, so i put it on our netflix queue and we watched it last night.

it's always fun watching an 80's flick and checking out all the futuristic computer equipment (and don't forget the cool fashions). the special effects brought me back to my childhood. it almost made me want to see the whole movie redone with what we can do now. someday, we'll be looking back on film's from 2005 and laughing.

i ain't afraid of no ghosts...

life changing experience update- 50% penetration

tivo has aaron hooked. he talks about it when we're away, he talks about it when we're home. he has personified it and talks about it very fondly as 'the tivo man'. he becomes sad and hurt when it records a show for me and not him. i would say that tivo has been a life changing experience for him.

me, on the other hand? well, i like it. it's nice. but i still don't watch a lot of tv. maybe it just takes longer for some folks.

transition update: 50% complete

i am unemployed today. a bum. didn't get out of bed until 11:30am.

monday, i'll be completely employed and the transition will be complete. then will there be duck in the fridge? or is that too hokey even for me?

digging in the fridge- ready to climb in and shut the door

bret treated the whole ham team to lunch today as a welcome to jamie and i. my computer and office are coming along nicely, and bret and i talked more about what i'll be doing there, including some of the projects that are in progress. i didn't really want to leave- i'm so ready to dig in.

soon enough, i suppose.

happiness is the wilderness

will i ever tire of extraordinary wonderment? I can't possibly.

(no fishies this time, though no mosquitos either)

let's burn that big tree over there (dedicated to aaron ray)

i would like to personally meet the kind of person (aaron insists it must be a man) who, while camping out in the middle of nowhere, decides it would be a good idea to stick one end of a very large (and long) log/tree into the fire, in order to burn it.

after speaking to them for a short while, i'll probably learn that there is nothing about them that would identify them as especially stupid, for maybe there's a piece of all of us that is incredibly stupid- it just manifests itself differently for each of us.

at the conclusion of my conversation, would i find that they are also the kind to leave their cigarette butts in a wilderness fire pit and a full roll of toilet paper near the latrine?

life changing technology

so i won a tivo a few weeks ago for being a geek. it has arrived.

we had to buy a new tv with audio/video hookups (our previous tv was 10 years old) and we are now prepared to have a life changing experience with tivo.

i do it to myself

everytime i feel overwhelmed by all the things going on in my life, i have to remember that i do it to myself.

today and tomorrow- clean this mess up
tuesday- kickball practice/party
wednesday- shop for bwcaw trip
thursday through sunday- bwcaw
next tuesday- first kickball game
next wednesday- last day at CL
following monday- first day at ham
labor day weekend- camping with m and m
september- camping with tk
september- am i really thirty bday party
somewhere in all of that- cello, working out (eek), insanity.

Susan Quakkelaar prefers the other white meat

Ham in the Fridge is a small web shop that has helped us with our web development over the past 4 years - whenever we were too busy to do it ourselves. Well... They just made Susan an offer she couldn't refuse. So she is leaving CL to go and work for them. Her new post at Ham will offer her a chance to immerse herself in cool, geeky web stuff and give her the opportunity to play a key role in building their business - two things she just couldn't pass up.

Since Susan first joined us as an intern in 2002, she has been full of positive energy and always the first to volunteer to take on something new. After her internship, she became a Project Coordinator and in that role, she re-invented the NWA online process, making it possible for us to have online ads running 24 hours after the announcement of a sale. She also began our DART online ad serving program and helped us convert our web trend reporting to Urchin. Earlier this year she was promoted to Project Manager and seamlessly took on our biggest client, Porsche, with much success. She will be missed.

Susan's last day will be August 24. Stop by and tell her pork jokes. And wish her well.

Melody Lentsch
Interactive & Direct
Carmichael Lynch

the glasses are half full

who knew that a cool new pair of glasses could make a person feel so good.

did you ever know?

ham in my eyes

i'm ready to start the transition to my new job at ham-in-the-fridge. i hope they are ready for me.

i hope CL get's everything they can out of me in the next 2 weeks.

carmichael lynch- i've loved you

thanks to you, CL, for:

giving me a chance
guiding me in the right directions
pushing me to grow myself
allowing me to practice what i've learned
sharing your clients with me
loving me the way i am
valuing me enough to make this decision as hard as it was
being the kind of place that makes me cry today as i begin to let go

forecast for the weekend

this weekend, there will be strong gusts of excitement and anticipation, followed by extended periods of doubt and apprehension lasting into the night. temperatures to range from lukewarm to overheated, coming back down to around average by monday morning.

the sunshine always prevails.

needles in my skin

last night, i was standing by the counter in a 'store' of some sort. i realized i was nude from the waist up, and that someone (i suspected my sister, of course) had inserted small needles into my skin everywhere.

someone else was there with me, helping me pull them out, though i don't really know who they were, but we kept finding more.

that's when i realized there were crabs crawling all over the floor and so i tried not to step on them. i got good footing and figured i'd just let them crawl past, but they started biting me.

it's obvious that my mind was working through a lot of feelings in my dream last night. today will be a difficult day for me.

stressing

i'm starting to stress about this. i want to get it over with so i can start sleeping again.

focus on the now.

hypnosis, you have failed me

last night i tossed and turned almost all night long with stuff on the brain.

it's the first time since 1995 that my hypnosis tricks didn't help a lick.

but when i took a shower this morning the heirarchy was clear to me:
1. what's best for my career?
2. what's the best fit for my personality?
3. what kind of compensation are they offering?

maybe the sleepless night was worth this little bit of clarity.