Several interesting things have been happening in the past week. First, I've been getting amazing feedback about the new Career Services website, even if it's only half finished. And by amazing I don't mean heaps of praise, I mean constructive suggestions that have made it so much better.

Why is this interesting? Because as a freelancer, unless you charge a shitload of money, you don't tend to do a lot of user surveying and you tend to work in the dark - after presenting clients with wireframes and getting feedback, you go ahead and design it, program it, and leave, cheque in hand. And in my last job, well, nobody cared about it except me, so I pretty much did what I wanted and it turned out OK. But I've never worked for a design firm where multiple people are involved in a project and where collaborative design happens, so I've never had the experience of having other people to bounce ideas off.

But here, well, everybody cares. Everybody is very interested and invested, and they have a lot to offer the process. That is wonderful, but surprising - why is it surprising that people actually give a crap about my work and want to contribute? That shouldn't be surprising at all!

I think I was made a bit cynical after my last job, where the vast majority of the feedback I got was from strangers, not co-workers, and where I had to fight to keep other people from taking over and dictating platform and design (people whose idea of "content management" was to use Adobe Contribute and whose idea of "design" was using TABLES fer gossake). I tried collaboration with those people, but it turns out that "collaboration" meant "do it their way," and "compromise" meant "do it their way," and wait! That's not collaboration! Also, IT IS NOT 1999 ANYMORE.

Where was I? Yes, users. I have had lots of really astute comments and extremely helpful suggestions and IT IS SO AWESOME. PEOPLE CARE.

The other thing is that somebody left a romance novel in the lunch room and I accidentally started reading it and it's disturbingly well-written and entertaining. I am growing increasingly alarmed. And yet... I can't... put it... down.

How can I call myself a blogger? One post in two weeks? SUCH A THING HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. It's eerie, this unnatural silence.

I am in what is colloquially referred to as the Home Stretch, the time when all the stress and worry either pay off or they don't. For the most part, they're paying off.

Also, I read this in a research review and it made me chuckle:

Researchers discovered several decades ago that when learners are given a choice to short-circuit retrieval to get to feedback, they’ll do it. If the answer is on the next page, they’ll peek. If it’s a click away, they’ll click. Learners don’t seem to know that retrieval practice is critical to support long-term retrieval.

Just thought I'd share.

Things I love:

• Seeing tiny paw-prints in fresh cement
• Whisking through enormous piles of dry leaves
• My dual 22" work monitors
• Pumpkins
• The daily free build-your-own sandwiches at work for the past month. Mmmm, cucumbers.

Things I hate:

• Empty bank accounts
• That extra 20lbs that appeared OUT OF NOWHERE
• Participation marks
• Recalcitrant tech support

That is all.

Hi! I promise that I'll stop being boring very soon. It's just that I'm very busy, and trying to catch up from being The Sick. I am catching up, slowly, but it's likely to be uninteresting around here until the US election, at which point I promise I will post here much more regularly, and also spend lots of time writhing around on the ground with my head spinning around in full circles as I froth at the month as a result of all the idiocy on the Internets radiating from a southerly direction. But don't worry, I will post many videos. After the convulsions die down.

iTunes Radio is awesome. A whole sheaf of college stations! Plus a whole lot of crap, but hey. Did you know that the '90s is now listed under CLASSIC? Yeah, that's depressing. Me, I can still fit into my plaid shirts!

Anyway, while browsing around for something that wasn't generic yawn-rock, I discovered AM 1710 Antioch - old-time radio from this day in history. I'm listening to Campbell Playhouse from October 15, 1939. It's about a prison-break, and it stars Orson Wells as the fugitive.

Bored Rich Lady Helping the Sympathetic, Misunderstood Fugitive: "Here's a flask. And if you see somebody, take a drink. Nothing gives a person more confidence in a man than if he has a drink in his hand."

Quaint!

My cold finally "broke" yesterday - I've been feeling lousy since Friday, and through the week I had a really sore throat but didn't really feel sick enough to justify more time at home, so I went into work as usual this week. But yesterday afternoon I started feeling downright rotten, which is actually something of a relief - I had a cold, but now I have something to show for it. I have reached the, shall we say, productive stage, the sexiest part of having a cold, what with all the moaning, groaning and sniffling it entails. But that means that I'm winning! My body has kicked it up a notch, and little white blood cells everywhere are hurling themselves manfully at the intruding viruses, enveloping them in a coating of defensive goo and soon, they will drive back the invading hoards inch by inch, through the orifices from whence they came!

Eew.

In aid of the epic struggle I made my apologies to my profs, then I drove Damian to Chapter's to go in and stock up on cheesy fantasy novels for me. Then, I spent the day on the couch concentrating on being as downright miserable as possible.

But I feel better, in a way - I usually bounce back quick, and I haven't had a really bad illness in years and years. But this cold was dragging on and on since last weekend with no real clear pattern. I was sick to my stomach one day, exhausted the next, had a terrible sore throat the next, but nary a real sniffle in sight. Now I'm sniffling (and then some! eew!) and I know that this means it's almost over. I hate being sick, I particularly hate missing classes and work, and worst of all I hate the feeling of being tired all the time. But soon! Soon I will be well again! Hooray! Achoo!

That's all I have to say, really. Now I'm going back to bed to finish Book Three of the Serpentwar Saga (my prof, when I asked if there was anything I could do to make up for missing the seminar, said "I trust you're keeping up on your reading?" and I said "Er... yes!" but I think we meant two different things...)

PS: If you mock me for reading cheesy fantasy (my normal comfort food is science fiction sprinkled with some Ian Rankin, but I rediscovered Raymond Fiest while I was in Taiwan because it was the only-half decent English book I could find at the bookstore) then I will come over there and sneeze into your coffee. You try reading Heidegger when your head is full of snot. Actually, on second thought, that might help.

Argh.

I has a cold. It sucks.

I stayed home from work on Friday. I felt lousy, and I actually had kind of thought that if I was home anyway, I could get some work done on my class reading and the two other jobs I'm working on right now. Double whammy! Instead, I woke up at 11:30, headed downstairs, arranged myself on the couch to get some heavy computin' in... and ... woke up at 5:00. Crap.

Same story on Saturday. Now I'm even more behind. I'm tired. I quit.

One more month, and then I'm free. I haven't taken on any other work, thank god, so maybe I'll actually be able to, you know, go outside during November. That'd be SWELL.

In other news, Damian had a job interview with a local paper. Here's hoping! Much as we love living on a single income, well, IT SUCKS.

A conversation about dinner:

Me: That's right, you don't like noodles, do you?
Him: It's not that I don't like them, it's that they're...
Me: What?
Him: Inefficient.
Me: Inefficient? What?
Him: Yeah. They're an inefficient nutrient delivery medium.
Me: Er...
Him: They're not worth all the fiddling and whatnot.
Me: I love you. But you're very strange.

In other news, the doctor called me! They can get me in for nose surgery... NEXT WEEK.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

But I didn't want to say no, because I've been waiting almost two years. I called them back, and it turned out that they'd already given away the spot. Part of me was very relieved. But to compensate (I let them think I was very disappointed) they fit me in for the end of November. Merry Christmas: you can breathe! Yay!

No, wait, there is too much. Let me sum up:

I AM REALLY REALLY BUSY.

I'm busy.

I'm BUUUUUSY.

Busy.

BUSY.

I am taking two courses. I am doing two large websites in Drupal, by myself, and both are due in a month. I have to read and summarize an essay by Heidegger by Friday, and put up several e-learning modules for my third job.

And I'm trying to help out with the NDP campaign.

I am getting short-tempered. I am not being A Good Communicator, because I'm busy and people should just understand that I am great and I know what I am doing and leave me alone to do it and DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS, THEY WILL ONLY SLOW ME DOWN.

Yes, I realize that this is not a realistic outlook, but I found myself snapping at clients and fellow volunteers today and I realized that this is Not Good. I spent the weekend not working*, in a vain attempt to relax and chill out and restore equilibrium but it turns out that this was a grave miscalculation and I should have been WORKING MY ASS OFF instead.

You can tell by the number of times I've broken into all caps that I'm a little stressed out.

I mean, I'm usually a little stressed out, but this time it's kind of getting to me. I'll be fine once things settle down - there will be an election, and I will finish the websites because if there's one thing I'm good at, it's websites, and I will summarize Heidegger even though he is an obtuse German with a love of long sentences with lots of Capitalized letters in Them that are extremely Meaningful and Analytical, and I will be just fine. Or if I'm not fine, then I will have very understanding clients and co-workers, and life will go on, and Heidegger can bite me.

But I'm stressed out.

That's it, really. Ok. G'nite.

* By "not working" I mean producing several ads and fiddling with a website I volunteer to run and spending two hours staffing a booth at the Autumn Pow Wow for work and spending eight hours debugging a problem in the Panels module and adding several Drupal views to my work website, and also reading two novels at an average of four hours each. I AM SUCH A SLACKER.