Apologies and excuses

Yeah, so I never blog anymore. Work has gotten pretty crazy and I also just lack much in the way of motivation right now. Everything I want to say to the universe I say on Twitter, which means it only goes to the 60-something friends on my private feed. Oh well.

But because I feel guilty, today I am starting a new series that I hope other people will pick up sort of like how we all wrote about jobs we've had. This one will be: adventures in dating. Rather than blogging about funny things that happen on my dates now (which would be tough to do since I so rarely date these days), I will tell funny, sad and/or bewildering tales from former dating escapades. Sadly, I have many such stories.

Today's story is coming up shortly.

NOLA (updated with a couple pictures)

I wrote a post about my trip, but Blogger eated it. No, seriously, it was almost done and then it went poof.

So, here's the highlights:

Drank too much, stumbled and twisted my ankle so I walked gimpy for the rest of the weekend, yes those things might be related.

Ate wonderful food: boiled shrimp and red beans & rice at Desire, shrimp po boy and gumbo at a restaurant on Jackson Sq. that I forget, beignets and frozen cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, wonderful dinner at Brennan's (shrimp remoulade, gumbo, veal with lemons and artichokes, chocolate cake that I thought was too rich), beignets at the airport that were actually better than CDM!

The power was out to the first 4 blocks of Bourbon St. from Friday about 6pm until Saturday at 8pm. This killed most of our eating plans as the restaurants we inteded to patronize were all within this radius. Sorry, Arnaud's, I will try you next trip.



Hurricanes are the devil's drink.

When I of all people am the voice of reason that convinces you to keep your clothes on, it is time to call it a night. It was pretty funny to look up on a balcony of beaded men begging women to flash and see one guy who looked directly at me, raised his camera in one hand, and gave me a nodding thumbs up with the other hand. But my goodies stayed covered.

Strangely enough, all of the women that I saw flashing, and there were several, were over 40. Some were WELL over 40. What is up with that? And I felt truly sorry for one woman old enough to be my mother who flashed a balcony and got no beads thrown at her. Perhaps that should have been a sign?

All the bars in New Orleans with live bands play the same 10 songs on an endless loop. I know this because in the world's longest walk back to the hotel with drunk people who wanted to go in every bar, I heard all of them at least 4 times. Did you know that everyone in New Orleans (other than me) knows the Cupid Shuffle? And loves to do it over and over again?



In the end, I got to do most of the things I wanted to do with the exceptions of riding the streetcar and eating raw gulf oysters. I lost the $200 I intended to lose in the casino, though it took me a lot longer than I expected. I met some great people and had a lot of fun. I neither removed my clothing nor made out with a random boy, and I had opportunities to do both. I think my ankle will heal, eventually.

New Orleans, I want to be back to see you in the fall. I hope I can make that happen.

I'm back!

Sorry for the disappearance without explanation, but on Tuesday my home computer died plus I left Wednesday night for a conference and have been far too busy pretending to enjoy myself to blog. While this conference was billed as an educational retreat, and one with a lot of our clients in attendance, in reality what it meant was that I was in seminars all morning, working in my too-dim hotel room all afternoon, and then expected to stay out schmoozing clients until the wee hours...only to have to be back up at the ass crack of dawn each day for yet more seminars. It ain't a retreat if you come back exhausted, that's what I say.

Anyhow, I figured I should explain the sudden lack of blogging around here. So, there it is.

...and just like that

Several videos that I tried to post last week just suddenly showed up. I don't know what I did to you, YouTube, but I don't deserve this. You suck.

Update: they may keep popping up throughout the night, I tried to upload a LOT of videos over the last few days. I'll delete them as I get to them, if they're repetitive.

Mood Music--let's try this again

YouTube and Blogger have been conspiring against me posting videos off and on for weeks now. I fully expect any second for the last 4 or 5 abortive attempts at video posting to suddenly show up on the blog. In the meantime, I'm going to try embedding today's Mood Music entry and hope it works. It's Kasey Chambers:

Mood Music

Since the videos I've been trying to post all week just magically showed up tonight, I figure I'll make it a trifecta.




Love this cover by Shelby Lynne of an old Dionne Warwick song. She gives it a completely different feel.

Uncomfortable Silence

Video posting from YouTube won't work for me now, so I haven't been able to post any of the music videos I've been trying to play all week. Not sure what's wrong, but that's why Mood Music has disappeared from this here blog. Maybe I'll figure it out later today, maybe I won't. I need more caffeine before I can take that kind of initiative.

Hmmm

Reading my 2 blog posts from on the road, I realize all over again the importance of proofreading. One of those luxuries I do not have when blogging from the Blackberry.

Ignore the bad, repetitive, typo-fillde prose please. I did the best I could with limited options once Twitter crapped out for me.

I am Spartacus!

Over the weekend, I noticed on my sitemeter that someone here in Atlanta was reading every single post, from the beginning, of my blog for hours at a time. It freaked me out, probably unnecessarily but given that I really like to believe that my coworkers don't know about or read my blog, I became gripped with sudden panic that someone here in the firm was printing out every post for either retribution or blackmail. What can I say, I'm somewhat prone to paranoia.

I have noticed this kind of regular and repeated archive perusal before, and it always freaks me out for some reason. I guess because it looks, from a paranoid sitemeter watcher's perspective, like someone is collecting a dossier of old posts of mine filled with personal or potentially work information I have shared. Probably I have this silly paranoid reaction because I presume nobody could possibly be that interested in what I blogged about every single day for the summer of 2006. It was a boring time, I swear! Why would anyone want to read every single boring post? They must be looking for dirt! That's sort of how my crazy thought process works.

At any rate, I Twittered about a blogstalker at the time I noticed it but did not do anything beyond that and mostly forgot about it. Whoever was reading stopped in the June 2006's, and I didn't really worry about it again.

Then the emails started. First one person, then another...all confessing to being my blogstalker and explaining how they found the blog and why they felt really guilt for scaring me. For the first one I felt awful and explained quite clearly why I'd been concerned and that I was sorry for making someone feel guiltly for wanting to read my drivel! But by the time the second one rolled around, I started to find it funny. So many guilty consciences among my handful of readers! How many embarassed confessions would I have gotten if not for this post? We may never know.

So as a result, I promise to never Twitter about a blogstalker ever again. I do not promise to stop obsessing over my SiteMeter because, well, let's be honest. That's not going to happen.

Blahg

I could tell you the story of my even more insane travel woes last night trying to get home from Paducah...but I won't.

I could tell you about how I went ass 0ver elbows due to high heels on a slippery office corridor floor yesterday, resulting in an f'ed up arm...but I won't.

I could talk about the vast wasteland of nothingness between Paducah and Nashville...but I won't.

I could gripe about how dumb it is that if I wear a skirt that shows maybe 8" of patterned tight-clad knee between dress and boots, that this is somehow considered "sexy" office attire and therefore probably not professional...but I won't.

I could whine about FSU losing to Wake Forest last night...but I won't.

I could talk about my own ineptitude with social media resulting in me having no earthly idea what this whole BarCamp Atlanta thing is about...but I won't.

I could bitch some more about noncommittal flaky people who are impossible to pin down...but I won't.

I could talk about tonight's game 1 of the ALCS and my sadness over not being there in person to cheer on my Sox...but I won't.

I could post a music video of a song I heard on the radio at lunch...but I won't.

I got nuttin'. Sorry.

Nevermind

Thanks, Richard. I'm an idiot, nevermind.

Maintenance

I'm trying to change my template around which is proving difficult given that I know practically nothing about HTML. Rather than use the Blogger-provided template I have been continually adapting an old template to suit my various changes and now I'm stuck with two page elements whose color I cannot find to change. I bet you can guess which two! Anyone who knows how to find the overall background color and the color of the little navigation bars, feel free to comment and be my hero.

And yes, I recognize that yet again I have chosen a banner image that makes reading the text on top of it difficult. I'll get around to that eventually. For now...oh well.

Edited to add: well, that didn't go so well. I might have to leave it like this until I have more time to tweak back to what I wanted.

Edited again to add: now it just won't let me make any changes to the template at all. Oh joy. Or rather, the changes apply but only halfway so it looks like the ugliest mishmash in history. Sorry about that.

Edited yet again to add: after much frustration I've gotten it kind of back to where it was and I intend to leave it this way until I can figure out a top-down redesign. This whole experience has been exceedingly frustrating and yes, I am a moron for not saving my existing template before fucking with it. I know.

Nuttin worth talking about today

It's a slow news day with most of the Atlanta blogosphere on vacation, and I'm swamped at work (what's new) and feeling generally uninspired. So basically my choices are to blog about how I think I'm getting an ulcer due to the near-constant feeling of a stomach full of boiling acid, or to sit tight and not say much. Thankfully, I'm choosing the latter.


Hopefully you're all on vacation anyway and won't even notice.

OK Blogger...

Why are posts that I made that are in the list of posts in the behind-the-scenes software not showing up on the front page?

All week I've been wondering why posts on other people's blogspot blogs would suddenly show up for me hours after their timestamps. Now it is apparently happening on my own blog.

Very strange.

As you may have figured out...

The 2 YouTube videos I tried to post this weekend just went up. Seriously, what the hell?!

"I lost my junk in a tetherball accident."

Sadly, YouTube still hates me and won't let me upload directly, but you have to watch this hilarious TV Funhouse from SNL clip about the presidential candidates coming clean to Oprah. I laughed so hard I cackled, particularly at Barack Obama's former name.

Whoops

Sorry about the multiple postings of the same video--they apparently went through severely delayed. Thanks to none of ya though for emailing me to tell me while I was out of town!

San Francisco has been exhausting so far, and I will be glad to come home. Trying to change my flight now so that I can perhaps make it to the tail end of 500 Songs for Kids tonight. Or just get home at a decent hour and collapse into bed...that would be good too.

Blogger Sucks Donkey Balls

This is ridiculous. Every single day it's all f'ed up for hours at a time. I may have to revisit Typepad, which I have been paying for but not actually using for like 6 months now.

Ugh.

Ugh, another post eaten

I can't muster the mental energy to rewrite it, either. I hate Blogger today.

Blogger Hates Me

I'm trying to post the video for "Grace Kelly" but it's not working. Here's a link, if you don't want to click on a dirty dirty MySpace link to hear the song. The video is nothing special but the song is making me so happy I can barely stand it.