to-do, calendar, M's book. really random stuff, really.

You know I always talk about my to-do lists? I keep them in a notebook, and every so often, I recopy the remaining items from one page to the next and start afresh. I usually do this in a fit of productivity, or when I have actually ran out of room on my third column. That means that at the top of every list, there are the things that I am procrastinating on the most! Handily written all in one lump so I can ignore them more efficiently in the future. ;) It also means that when I actually DO one of those things, I feel SO proud of myself. And, usually, embarrassed because geez, how hard was it to spend ten minutes getting a free credit report? Since you can get one from each agency every three months, I'm going the check-one-every-three-months route... since clearly I am really good at keeping up with it all. ;) No, seriously, I added it to my calendar to remind myself to do it in a timely fashion now. (link)

Speaking of calendars, I love Outlook's calendar function, but I don't use Outlook at home for email. I have missed it sorely since I've been at home, but then I finally realized that Mozilla has a free calendar program (Sunbird) that is pretty good. It's kind of ugly (even with the skins I've seen) but it seems to do the job. How did people get by before the time of auto-reminders and electronic calendars? Never mind that *I* am sort of late to the calendar bandwagon. One becomes accustomed to certain things.

I am supposed to be working on M's synopsis. It's like, the final read-through I'm going to do before he actually sends his book off. I haven't talked an awful lot about M's book but.. it's really good. Also--not to be totally immodest here--but I am pretty good at the editing. By now it kind of feels like OUR book instead of just his. It was rough, at first, because I was afraid of hurting his feelings, and it was hard to find that line between this-is-how-I-would-do-it and this-is-wrong. Besides the editing, we have spent a lot of time talking about things that happen and finding ways to take something that was already perfectly good and making it better. A few of you have read it--it's much better now. The best edit happened after that, for one thing. Now all that's left is for me to read the synopsis, reformat all the files and print it all out and send it off. And of course, there is no guarantee at all that he'll ever get published, but I am so proud of him for actually DOING it. I have never gotten myself in gear to actually write like I say I want to. I know plenty of people who are talented but have never finished something up and sent it out into the world. But M HAS. He has worked on this off and on for several years and it's now just about ready. And what do I do? I sit here and procrastinate on the internets instead of doing one final edit. He may be cool for getting it done but I suck a bit. :)

Web design note: The one thing you should never, never, EVER do is switch the colors of your links and visited links so that the ones you haven't seen are purple and the ones you have are blue. ARGH.

My parents came down last night, and Evelyn was a bit fussy. She was crying, and she wouldn't really settle down very well for my mom. Usually, she behaves well for her Granny but last night she wanted her Mommy and Daddy, mostly. I mean, it's not like she was crying the entire time, or the entire time Mom had her--actually, she was fussy with us too, but a little less. I think her pants were too tight, but we didn't notice that until after my parents had left. Anyway, now I'm worried because I'm going to work one day next week (Wednesday) to finish up anything I have left to finish, and leaving Evelyn with Mom. What if she is upset because I'm gone? What if she needs me? What if she CRIES? I know, I know. It will be fine. I just hadn't been worried about that part too much. The truth is just that now that it's approaching, I'm dreading it a little bit because I have never been away from her longer than four hours, and that was only one time. I will miss her!

Anyone want to come clean my house before my in-laws get here in two weeks? No? *sigh* Darn.