I realize what with all the other good things going on in the world [Hugo Chavez calling Bush “Satan,” Saddam Hussein’s trial being the freakshow of the year, E.Coli in Spinach and iTunes coming out with V7 and making the damn icon freaking candy-ass blue], none of you have thought… “hmm, I wonder what the insider is doing and why she hasn’t blogged?”

None of you, that is, except my cousin, who coincidentally calls and tells me to blog.

And the Porkchop, who is sitting on the couch, mocking me for looking up old high school friends on MySpace (I WAS WEAK and I’m drinking… erm…).

Friday night one of the contract jobs called. He wanted to know if I could flip his new site now. Like RIGHT NOW. Tonight. At 9PM.

Considering I had promised to flip it by September 22, there were a few things that needed finished… according to him, things such as a working search engine, all of the images being uploaded and general site QA were unnecessary.

That was a fun call.

Four days and around 30 hours later, I flipped his damn site last night. And the search still isn’t working.

On the other hand, the other contract job, the deadly one in C (the land of the perpetually lost), has had me working on the same set of brochures for TEN DAYS STRAIGHT…. and there are only five products in those 12 (now 24) damn pages.

First I was just to redesign them. Did that in a few hours.

Then they wanted a different kind of design, one that wasn’t exactly like the website. Did that the next day.

Then they wanted me to rewrite the copy.

First of all, I don’t do copy. AND I am clear about that from the get-go. And, oh yeah, I don’t understand their products, I have NO idea why they are the best over their competitors and wait, wait.. oh yeah, I DO NOT DO COPY.

The head guy brought me into his office and attempted to cajole me into rewriting their copy. So I very nicely explained that it would not be the best use of my time and their money for me to write marketing copy on products that I have never seen nor understand.

The next day the sales guy (who’s been my general boss-type personage) suggested I just edit the copy until it sounds better. So I found myself doing that for the day.

Next day I went in and sales guy tells me that the head guy thinks the design should be a little different. Head guy comes out and says, “I think maybe it should look more like the website.”

At this stage of the game, I’m irritated and BORED shitless. There are only so many times I can redo the same pages with minimal changes for EIGHT HOURS A DAY.

And what’s even better? I’ve given them fully complete files every night and every day they promise to look at them, make changes and get them back to me.

To date: two pages, little notes in five or six places… on SEVEN DIFFERENT SETS OF FILES.

I have some rage about this.

Oh, and my damn refrigerator appears to be broken. It’s making a clicking noise every minute or so, the stuff is defrosting and I refuse to wake up my landlord at midnight. (It’s partially ’cause I’m nice, but mainly ’cause I don’t want to put on clothes and cart frozen food down to their freezer.) 😛

Up side: I’m going to see Regina tomorrow night… 😀

And if you got this far…

Here’s a random bit of nonsensical knowledge that may or may not improve your life: if you put in someone’s name and the word “age” in Google, as in :steve carrell age: you’ll get a little Wikipedia link as the first link that tells you their birthdate.

Random and totally useful when you’re arguing over who is older, Jay Leno or Steve Carrell. (I totally won, seeing as how I pegged Leno as 10 years older—he’s 13, but I was closest.)

I pose to you this question:

Which is worse, having too much work.. or none at all?

I now rescind everything I said about being bored in my unemployment. Those were the days people.. the DAYS.

I suddenly have two huge contract jobs who both want me in their offices every day.

And their offices are separated by almost 80 miles.

And the traffic… oh dear sweet mother of mercy, the traffic.

The days of lazing at the beach, getting up at noon and drinking vodka for breakfast have come… and they’ve gone.

I miss ’em. :”(

I just finished putting in the edits for the mammoth book.

It’s 3AM and I have to be up in about four hours… and this damn piece of shit is taking forever to upload to our server.

There was more shopping today… oh, and cousin, I got mom’s present from you, for you. 🙂 (I made my mom look at four different stores. It was a riot.)

When people are on the phone, but walk over to their office door, look out and call me an asshole.

Then, when said person gets off the phone, again comes to the fucking door and yells at me for initially answering the phone.

Lovely.

If you don’t want someone to answer the phone, SAY SO. Don’t just let the damn thing ring and expect me to read your mind through a wall and know you don’t want the phone answered.

Doesn’t that sound logical?

It snowed again. Lots.

And it’s very cold, the Boss emailed with a list of changes (big ones, not little ones… ones that require me to re-paginate the table of contents, among other things… ::giant tears, uncontrollable sobbing::) and while it’s yay! Friday, that means nothing in my world of perpetual work.

Sigh.

But at least there is Leo… what, you mean I haven’t told you about my newest blog love? The Daily Kitten.

Yes, I know it is sick. Shush. It will make you smile.

If it doesn’t, then you’re a cold, heartless sad-sack of a human being. 😛

Aren’t I pleasant this morning?

The coworker and I are staring at the first actual copy of the book. 724 pages of annoyance.

Ironically, the second I opened it at Staples, I found an error. Grrrr.

Even though I know the whole point of the first draft is to find errors and edit it, I forgot an image, so a page is blank, aside from a caption—and I checked for that twice. But nooooo, the moment I open it… boom, first thing I see.

Argh.

The coworker is rolling on the floor.
We are kinda buzzed. No wait, she just yelled, and we are “VERY BUZZED.”

It was a long day. I made my mother cry, the coworker found out her fbuddy has a girlfriend who’s seven years younger, we really don’t like our job, she just yelled she has heartburn and I am sad ’cause I miss this guy…

Ahem.

We had some vodka, no wait, lots of vodka for lunch, needless to say.

Coming back to work, after almost a week off, sucks uge donkeyballs.

There’s way too much stuff to do, and the coworker and I would much rather be anywhere else.

Particularly when we’re facing emails from the Boss that he sent on Thanksgiving.

His home life must really be subpar.

The book has now reached 642 pages… there are still three articles missing, so it’ll probably rise to about 700 by the time I’m through. It’s huge and monotonous—at least to me. I’ve been reading all of these articles for months, and while I’m a damn good copyeditor, it’s been tough to re-read all of these to find the tiny errors. Honestly, I shouldn’t have to put this thing together and edit it…

Fortunately all of these late nights are going to equal comp time for me… so next week I’m taking off a few days, plus the holiday, and going to Pennsylvania. I’ll probably only blog from there sporadically… seeing as how I’m going to be meeting someone and he says we’re going to be otherwise engaged. 😛

Tomorrow it’s up to the main office—oh the joy. I’m just waiting to hear that the Boss thinks there are some fatal “design errors” with this book. Sigh.

I can’t wait to run my own business.

Quark is an evil son of Satan. I’m working on quite a massive project—the first of five mammoth tomes. This first one appears to be the smallest (I think), and I’m almost done with Part 2 (of 4) and I crested 500 pages awhile ago. Quark has decided that it’s just too big of a file, and consequently, crashes every 100 or so pages. I’m going batshit over here people.

On the positive side, I’m working from home. 🙂 🙂

I adore working from home. I can sleep in a bit, work from bed for an hour or so, and just generally have a leisurely day. I don’t have to worry about traffic or customer care phone calls (yes, I’m checking the voicemail coworker :P) or any of that nonsense.

I do, however, have to deal with two cats. Cats who believe that when I am home, I am their personal pet. Right now, after many hours spent attempting to sit on my lap (I pushed her off) and crawl up my back, while meowing loudly in my ear, Izzie has made herself comfortable between my feet, wrapped in a blanket. (Blanket is on my lap, and falls so that it surrounds her without binding—she is quite happy with this arrangment.) On the other hand, Ellie won’t stop rubbing her head against my computer screen. It’s like having kids, except I can ignore them—more or less.

Anyway, in addition to this evil book, I still have to do my regular job… so yeah, I’m busy.

I must not be the only one, ’cause some people haven’t posted in AGES.

Just sayin’.

Update: He blogged! He must’ve heard me whining. (Actually, no, but anyway…)