Wonderful Wednesday?

So yesterday was kind of a frustrating day...

...I rushed my butt to work earlier than normal and panicked when I got to my desk 2 minutes after a meeting - across the hall from me basically - was supposed to start. So I dumped my stuff in my office and dashed to the meeting. Guess what? Meeting was cancelled. Last week. The secretary didn't send a cancellation in Outlook, and no one told me it was off. Are you kidding me? Frustrating.

...Went home a bit early (coming in early = leaving early) and instead of spending the hours writing that I wanted to last night, I was in Christmasland. See...we hadn't done our letter yet. Or set up the mail merge for addresses. Or gotten stamps. Or checked to make sure we had enough envelopes. Or ordered Christmas presents for anyone. Gee, ya think we've been busy with OTHER stuff? Frustrating.

...Chris helped out by pre-writing the letter. He did good! My non-writer of a husband put together a pretty decent letter...we only spent about an hour editing it, mostly for little grammar things, and then to get it short enough to fit on one page. So I headed upstairs to check to see how much stationery we had left from our last letter, in 2005...78 sheets. Buying a new pack would mean 150 additional sheets. We didn't want to buy a new pack. So we took our Christmas card list and started slashing. Yikes! We pared it in half, basically. I'm so sorry if you don't get a letter this year. I really am. We'll hit ya next year. All of Chris' first cousins got the ax, parents and relatives living in our general vicinity (sorry, Patti!) are off, all of my second cousins were x-ed off, no coworkers (past or present, other than a few we're pretty close to) are getting letters, APOers will have to read their letter online, and well, little surgical snips were made here and there. Got the list down to 78, from a starting point of nearly 200. Achievement!

...Until the printer started eating paper. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! So our list of 78 became our list of 73. Argh. The first 20 or so letters printed just fine. Then the damn machine got hungry. Then another 20 or so printed just fine. Then it got hungrIER! Fed the last sheets in one by one by one by one... Frustrating.

...Haha...we only had 23 envelopes left. Fabulous. Off to Office Depot. Got a pack of 50. Which makes, if you're counting, the exact right number of envelopes.

...Got a Christmas card from our old neighbor, who we'd left off the list. Damn. She doesn't get a letter. I dug out an old pack of cards. She gets a card. AND SHE WILL LIKE IT.

...Postage? Haha. We have 15 33 cent stamps left from Christmas a few years ago, 9 39 cent stamps left from a couple years ago, 10 41 cent stamps that are actually current, and 15 3 cent stamps that just don't couple with any of the other stamps very nicely. Guess where I'm going at lunchtime today? I'm hoping that since the post office that's across the street from my office is in a purely business area, it isn't as busy as say, every other post office in America this week. Wish me luck.

...The unnamed place where we ordered presents for 19 of the 23 names/couples/familes on our list sucks. I mean really and truly sucks. We basically already knew what we were ordering. Got it all set up. Wouldn't import the address list. Had to add each address individually. Had to pick each delivery date individually. Then...2 hours later...got to the payment screen, and it said that 1 or more of our delivery dates was invalid. Sent us back to Go and we definitely didn't get $200. Didn't tell us which were invalid! Had to go back through the list of 19 one by one by one. Didn't change a single date. Got back to the payment screen. It went through. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!

...Got 2 more presents ordered off another site, and it worked like a dream. Something had to. By then it was almost 1 AM!

...Last 2 presents will be purchased in person. They're the gifts for Chris' mom, and Chris' Dad and step-mom. Have NO IDEA when this will happen, but it must, it must, it must. Perhaps on Saturday after we help Mike and Mellissa move but before my in-laws roll into town. And then there's shopping for Chris' present. Hahaha. Yeah. When!?

So yeah, got the slightest bit of writing done, which means, of course, that I'll be doing nothing BUT writing tonight and tomorrow night since El Huge-O project is due on Friday. In the process of scoping out El Huge-O's second act for January and a far different timeline will be built. My wrist hurts. I guess I'm back to wearing my brace. Dang it.

Today: leaving work about 4 or 4:30...tomorrow, about the same. Friday, considering working from home. When I say that no one will be here, I'm really not exaggerating. Might as well work in my jammies. We'll see.

Hope everyone is having a GREAT week! I cannot WAIT to hand off this project on Friday and then spend the next 9 days being a lazy bum on Christmas break! Besides our trip to Beaumont 12/26-12/29, all that's on tap is relaxing, eating, relaxing some more, perhaps tweaking my Hot Kiss entry some more, relaxing, and being a lazy bum. YAHOO.

Tiffany