Wank*

I need to remember this, even after all my years online:

                   DO   NOT   FEED THE TROLLS!

But really: who'd think there'd be trolls in the comments on Fb? Not I, that's for sure.

_________
* Used in the second sense, here.

Multitasking

Mood: ok
Hair: clean and purdy
Eyes: a little dry, but ok
Listening to: electronics

I love technology! Right now, I'm waiting for a translation of a friend's blog. She writes in a language I know nothing about. While she's doing that, she's IMing me directly from my blog.

I'm also IMing with Beast directly from my blog. Same blog. [unfortunately, there are some unpleasant things going on at work for him today--just the beginning of the sorts of things we know will be going on for the next several months, or longer]

And I'm on Facebook with a friend/colleague, chatting about salad and being a good person and tact, both in private messages and on her wall.

Plus, I'm watching CSI:NY on Spike TV.

All of this is going on while I shiver and occasionally snuffle. But the cold is slowly leaving my system. Must be all the diet DP I've been drinking.

Tip

If you get a new computer that's running on, say, Vista and you decided to download your personal dictionary off your old (really old) computer, do NOT follow the directions when the computer asks you to find your Windows 97 boot disc and insert it in the drive. Because then my laptop that I somehow broke won't get fixed as The Fixer (anyone else read that book?) is busy fixing someone else's computer, and I'll be cranky.

Just sayin'.

Yams

I am tired.

I am using a 'borrowed' laptop to type this--mine completely, and perhaps finally, imploded this afternoon after limping through the week.

I am leaving tomorrow morning on a whirlwind weekend trip to Vegas.

I am going to bed now.

(Have a great weekend, y'all)

Technology issues

Mood: not pleased
Hair: combed
Eyes: the less discussed, the better
Listening to: the air vent blowing warmth at me

My laptop monitor went kerflooey yesterday.

I am sad.

The silver lining that Beast keeps pointing out is that I can use the TV as a monitor. Of course, that means we can't watch TV--and Beast and Sparky can watch me blogging and emailing and whatever.

Technology sux.

---

Urban Word:

OPM: other people's money

I need to find some OPM to buy a New and Improved laptop.

Electronic fitness

Mood: Good
Hair: Pony
Eyes: ...sigh
Listening to: Sparky unrolling the yoga mat

I am--with assistance--setting up the Wii Yoga.

The mat is pink. Gaahhh.

Should be interesting.

No, I will not be posting video. You'll have to come to my house to laugh...

...oh, wait. We got the "Starter Kit" which doesn't include the GAME.

Nevermind. I'm gonna bowl instead.

Music news

Mood: Good
Hair: Keeping my neck very warm tonight
Eyes: Sore
Listening to: Wisconsin getting annihilated by FSU...sigh

I got an email about a week ago informing me that Yahoo! is selling Launchcast to CBS--or has sold already--and my subscription access will be cancelled in January. I use Launchcast virtually everyday at work, and I've rated over 10,000 songs, not to mention the albums (hundreds) and artists (thousands) I've rated. And they're taking it all away.

This should not be unexpected, really, but it means that I need to find a backup plan. I use Pandora on occasion when Yahoo! is acting up. However, I'm hoping to use this as a springboard for Beast and me to start using our MP3s. A lot of the stuff I've rated in Launchcast we own, but I will have to have access to Napster or something too. We don't have iPods--I am in permanent boycott stance there, for some reason--but I've had a Zen for two years, and Beast got one from me on his birthday. Time to join the 21st century.

I write that dripping with irony as all three members of my family are currently sitting with laptops on their laps, watching TV and surfing the net. When we get tired of that, we'll Wii.

Downloading songs onto our MP3s shouldn't really be that much of a challenge, right?

---

Urban Word:

The Spousal We: The opposite of the royal we, meaning "you". Used by your significant other to get you to do something.

I've suggested to Beast that The Spousal We will be using a downloading service when Launchcast goes away.

Tip

Mood: ...next question please
Hair: Pulled up with a barette
Eyes: Fine
Listening to: "Mercy" Duffy

If you keep your desktop CPU on its side, be careful using CDs in it. We now have a 'floating' CD inside the guts of one of our Reference computers.

"What do you mean, the CD isn't in the slot??"

hee

---

Urban Word:

Desk Rage: The peak of office employee stress levels which ultimately starts with the screaming of vulgar language within the workplace. It can often times lead to assaulting fellow employees, abusing office equipment and/or stealing of company property, abusing sick days and ultimately poor production at work. A possible side effect is that the employee continues to take out his or her rage at their residence in the form of kicking small animals and drinking heavily.

With any luck, today's hour scheduled at Reference won't cause a terminal case of Desk Rage. However, with an accumulation of hours over the years, it could erupt at some point.

What an awful day!

Work today was pretty much useless. Lots of rain brought out lots of people needing all sorts of stuff at the library. Our Tr!b carrier triple bagged the paper...then slid it across concrete and shredded all three bags, which meant the paper was 75% soaked upon retrieval. (Investors Business Daily was a complete loss: totally soggy and melting into itself.) The computers were moving so slowly by 10 that we were essentially working in reverse, and the staff functions were slower than the public YouTube and MySpace viewing. Residents of a group home arrived in the middle of that mess. I like these guys because they are almost always 100% up-front about what they need, but they are needy...and we don't have any books on dentistry. Or teeth. The printers weren't printing right, either. And I didn't feel good for the last half of the day: I was up in the middle of the night last night being friendly with porcelain, but felt OK this morning. By early afternoon, I was ready to head home, except I couldn't because we were short-staffed and barely hanging on. Oh, and people were registering to vote in droves today for some reason--I'm not complaining about this, really, just the timing.

Highlight of the day: wrangling three 13-year-olds out of the building at closing, one of the staff said something about knowing one of them along with his parents. Another kid pipes up, "You know my family? I doubt it. Go on, what's my last name!?" I burst into a guffaw--he was wearing a baseball shirt...with his last name printed on it. Goomba!!

I work tomorrow as well. Gaah.

Meanwhile, Beast has spent the day doing all the laundry and sorting through his parents' paperwork trying to formulate a way of organizing it. I just asked him if he feels as if he's crested the hill and can see the lay of the land, and he says he doesn't even know what the hill looks like. His back is, at least, a little better.

Sparky continues to plug through his stack of homework assigned for this weekend.

I think I've figured out (part of) my eye problem: computers. So this is about all I'm doing tonight online.

---

Urban Word:

poopular: Adj. Popular on the outside, poopy on the inside.

The more I see and read about Sarah Palin the more I think she personifies the Ultimate Poopular PTA Bitch. Sorry, no vote here; I never did like you ladies (term used intentionally--you have no idea how much I loathe that word).

In a rut much?

Mood: Good
Hair: Clean, curled, and actually looking good
Eyes: Pretty ok so far
Listening to: Angelique Kidjo's "Agossi" just ended and Solas' "Nil Na La" just began (which was then followed by Konono No.1's "Lufuala Ndonga" and UB40's "Red, Red Wine" and [omg omg omg LOVE this song!] Howard Jones' "I Must Go"). AWESOME MIX!!

I keep eating badly. That's one very deep rut.

But the biggest one is that when I get to work I have to open the windows on my PC in precisely the right order or it totally messes up my workflow. Reading left to right across the Start Bar:

- IE : Meebo (shrunk and open on the left side of my screen at (almost) all times)
- A second IE window with the following tabs (in this order): Yahoo!Music, the Launchcast player window, Connexion (and right now, Blogger, but usually our catalog)
- Word : My task list for the week, which I email to my boss on Tuesday morning before creating a new one
- Millennium (two windows: Java and the actual database)
- Notepad : for random stuff to be handled as I find it (right now it's got the YouTube URL for Cindy McCain's idiot comment about Palin's "foreign policy experience")
- Any other programs that are needed open after this: e.g., Excel, incoming emails, etc.

Outlook is open, but only shows in the widget window until I click to inspect it.

The kicker: if these are out of order, I completely can't manage.

Unfortunately, I don't always remember to open things in this order, so I often have to log out of something and start again. Anyone know of a way to move the programs around on the start bar like you can do with the IE tabs, without downloading crap?

---

Urban Word:

meatatarian: A person who eats meat virtually to the exclusion of vegetables. The meatatarian often claims to be conserving veggies for those who would actually eat them, and keeps the veggies out of the waste stream, helping the environment, or keeping produce costs down.

While not an extreme meatatarian, I have moments; for instance, this morning's 'need' for a bacon/egg/cheese bagel from McD's.

Why I Love the Public (pt. ...uh...4,000,000,000?)

The phone at the Reference Desk rang last night at 8:43, just as I was about to make the "we're closing, go home you manky dolts!" annoucement.

"Is there...do you know how...{pause} OK, are you busy? Can you just come up to the circ desk for a sec?" It's Thursday night just following a wing-dinger of a thunderstorm--of course it's not busy. I debate making the announcement and then decide that whatever's going on up front can be handled quickly and THEN I'll chuck people out.

So I arrived up front. As I round the corner to the circ desk, I realize with that I was far too optimistic. My current least-favorite Thursday night regular is standing there, Mr. I've-Been-Hacked-on-the-Library's-Computers. Dude has hit several of us up about people getting his password and logging onto his account and using his time!!! Oh the horror of that! He was so demanding about it the first time--several months ago--that we went ahead and created a new library card so he could start over fresh because he insisted that changing his password on the old card wouldn't stop people from continuing to hack in.

Mind you, all they seemed to be doing thus far was using his time. To clarify, everyone gets an hour a day, which is shown on the screen when you first log in. If you've already been in and checked your email once at 10 a.m. and come back at 3, the timer will say something like "34 minutes" indicating that you have used 26 minutes already.

So about two months ago, dude comes FLYING up to me while I'm helping someone at the Ref Desk: "Someone has hacked my account! They've used my time. I just got here and it's telling me I've already used up part of my hour! I haven't..." Since I was helping someone else at the time, I told him to go log off for now and I'll come figure it out when I've finished with the people ahead of him in line. He was huffy, but I got to him quickly. Of course, he is (always) using the computer farthest away from the Ref Desk--and the rest of humanity--so it's a hike. When he logs back on, he points to the timer and says, "SEE?? SEEE???????? It says I only have 27 minutes left! But I haven't been here ALL DAY!" I look at the time, check my watch, and say, "Well, it is a little confusing, yes, but the fact is that we close in about 27 minutes, so that's all the time you have left today...because the computer will automatically shut down then."

"BUT SOMEONE USED MY TIME!!!" I go through the mechanics of what I had just said several more times and he eventually settled down with some grumbling.

However. Last night. OMG.

He logged on. Someone had used his time again. (same reason, duh) Plus, when he got into the start screen, there were two email accounts open on the desktop. Now THIS is weird: when people log off, the hard drive is supposed to be wiped clean of every-damn-thing they've been doing. He wrote down the email addresses and then proceeded on to use the internet. And logged out.

And then came to the circ desk to get a new library card. Because SOMEONE HAS HACKED INTO HIS ACCOUNT! [Pay attention--you'll love this next part.] See, those two people who left their email accounts logged in? They were hacking him. From those email accounts. Yeah. Because, somehow they knew he would be the next person in, and they could sit at another computer somewhere and log into their email and...what? This is not a party line on a phone where everyone can talk to everyone through any receiver they've left off the hook (i.e. any computer they've logged into their email with). Is it?

For the love of Pete.

So I told him that a) no one had used his time, it was just counting down till closing; b) he needs to tell us immediately when he sees the computer doing something he thinks is bad--like having other people's email still open after he logs in!; c) what you are suggesting is technically highly improbable (hell, it could be possible--how do I know?).

Then I told him again.

And again. And again. I even, at one point, say, "Look, you have to come get us as soon as you see something weird. After all, you don't go to the doctor a week after you stop throwing up to find out what made you sick last week, right?"

Luckily, he had to "leave for work."

Once he left, I made the #)@$*% Closing Announcement. Then I talked to ILL Tyrant--who had called me for help--and she said she had basically gone through the whole thing with him and he wasn't listening. Then Sout’ Sider said the whole hot mess had started with him demanding a new library card because (all together now) his account had been hacked!!

Dude is terminally nutso. He doesn't seem to be capable of getting unstuck from this one subject. But yet, he will sit down at a potentially buggy computer and open his own email and type in who-knows-how-many other passwords? And he will continually use a computer that he thinks has messed him up innumerable times rather than using any one of the other 30 in the building?

So, I have a list of stuff from last night to go over with the boss this morning:

-- Mr. I've-Been-Hacked-on-the-Library's-Computers
-- the non-functional Line 3 that went out during the storm last night
-- the missing emergency light that used to be at the Ref Desk that is MIA now
-- the fact that the pages don't have time to shelve and there are probably close to 100 abandoned books lying all over the nonfiction area since last Thursday when I cleaned all the tables off PLUS the cartload of stuff that's been sitting since the beginning of June next to the Ref Desk
....

Hee.

This is why she gets paid the big bucks.

---

Urban Word:

combat nap: That 5-10 minute nap that you have to take when your body is completely exhausted and your mind is over stressed. Happens if you want it or not, and you usually wake up feeling like you've had a full night's rest.

I really could've used a combat nap last night at about 8:45.

Drive Time

Up this morning at 3:20 (yes, a.m.), out of the house by 3:55 on my way to a meeting on the other side of the state.

There are a surprising number of people on the road at that time. Really.

Anyway. Met up with a colleague partway there, in the city where she lives, and then we carpooled the remaining 3 hours, enjoyed most of the time spent at the meeting. Lots of good food for thought--if you like thinking about libraries and technology. Well worth the time. We were done by mid-afternoon, eventually found the car (when we parked we just followed all the other librarian-looking people rather than actually paying attention to where we were going), and drove back to our meeting place and thence home. We only got lost twice. And that was just cuz I missed exits. I'm a dope. All-told, over 8 hours in the car, for a 6-hour meeting.

Weird? Yup. Fun? Bolshoyst da. I have a little crush on one the presenters, but I'll get over that at some point. We cats had a lot of extra-fabu conversation in the car.

And tomorrow, back to the trenches.

---

Urban Word:

googleganger: Similar to that of a doppleganger, it is another individual with the same name as you whose records and/or stories are mixed in with your own when you Google yourself.

The unfortunate thing about having a relatively common name is that when Googling the aforementioned crush-subject, lots of really weird googlegangers showed up along with the person I was trying to stalk online.

Breakin' my arm

Mood: Exuberant
Hair: Clean, curled...whatever
Eyes: Dry but ok
Listening to: Better Than Ezra--Desperately Wanting

Awesomely weird afternoon.

The reason I'm "exuberant" is that I just figured out a way to keep a file on Stupid Schedule Nazi Tricks that's pretty much not going to be found by anyone at work.

Can you guess? Can you? I love technology: it's a Google Document! Google is saving it for me, and I'm virtually certain they could care less that I'm compiling a CYA list. Over the past 24 hours, I've spent time with at least four individual people who want to create their own, or a joint one, or who just are so incredibly pissed off at her ongoing antics.

The first entry: [S.N.] late to her shift at circ meaning [Librarian H] was 10 minutes late to her shift at Ref. and I was unable to leave the Ref desk till 2:15

Petty? Yes, but here's the text of an email we all received last week from the boss(which she promoted from the evaluations she did with people):

After discussing evaluations we thought that we would share some comments with everyone that might be helpful: This is the comment or request that we heard most frequently: When you are scheduled in a Department – Children’s, Reference or Circulation - please be there on time. And, really be present, not working on other projects or wandering away to other areas. Remember, service to patrons is the always the first priority. If you need to leave for a few moments, be sure that the desk is covered and that people know where you are going.

I *heart* Google!!

And, weird email today, too. Just...unbelievable. I need a "clueless" branding iron.

OK, back to the books.

---

Urban Word:

WSD: "Write Shit Down". A popular method of organization. Works equally well in one's personal or professional life.

Perhaps, rather than RIP, I will ask my descendents to engrave WSD on my tombstone. It's good advice no matter what the purpose.

Amazing fact

OK, so yeah. I just figured out/remembered last week that I can RSSify one of the cataloging listserves I have had delivered to my email for years and years. It is VERY ACTIVE--i.e. it hit the (apparent) 200-post limit in Bloglines in less than 4 days--and it just piles up in my email and makes me crazy. I set my email account to stop received emails...

...this morning I can't believe how much lighter I feel when I logged into my work email and it didn't immediately pop up with "400 Unread Emails--You SUCK!" I'm much more used to ignoring unread feeds than emails. Training? Dunno, but the posts are substantially easier to read in feeds than in email as well. Faster, cleaner, more easily disposed-of...

Ahhh. Technology working FOR me. Yay. Listening to Bob Seger on my old college station helps, too (they played Slipknot and Something Corporate and Hoobastank just before--don't worry it's not all crap!).

---

This one's for Aims--
Urban Word:

Irregardless: Without lack of disregard.

Irregardless, I feel your pain on the Net 2.0 webinar. Sux to be you, eh?

Things found while wasting time exploring

I was joking around earlier on my memes site about having magnetic hands, but it occurs to me that when one surfs around sometimes the things we stumble upon feel a bit like the debris picked up by magnets. Now, some of it's junk, clearly. But some of it is worth passing along. Unfortunately, like most situations in life, I don't always remember where I found this stuff.

• EveryBlock--only available in New York, SF, and Chicago now, but really cool. So, I searched SoHo in NYC and this is what came up: current photos, building violations, crime, news, business reviews, inpections... Kinda cool if you live in the right places.



• If you stay in hotels, you probably already know that the rooms are cleaned in a somewhat superficial way. Bedspreads are not washed that frequently, and dustballs accumulate, and so forth. However, I ran across and icky thing on Snopes about the glassware in hotel rooms. Gross. BYODrinking Cup from now on!!



• Thanks to Jed at Lorem Ipsum who did a lovely post on women in fiction and movies that really struck me as critically important for so many reasons. I love the so-called Bechdel Test: Does the work (1) contain two or more women, who (2) talk with each other, (3) about something other than a man? Yeah! This could be why I don't go to the movies very often....



• Now I'll whine: Why don't the forums on Wordsmith and Word Wizard have RSS feeds? I don't want to register anyplace, and I don't want to get more stuff sent to my email address. Gimme a feed!



• Speaking of words, have you played Free Rice lately? Why not?



• Using this wonderful setup, I can now access my computer at work from anywhere else with an internet connection. That means that, in theory, I could catalog from the comfort of my house. Hee.



• Another thing that I am absolutely LOVING is having access to Sparky's current grade situation. Our school system is using Home Access Center from SunGard to provide this info for parents (and students), and it is wonderful!

OK, I think that's all the useful debris I've picked up recently. Happy surfing.

Loopy

Vegetarian haggis? People, get real!

I love this site. I wish I knew why, but it makes me laugh, and then cry because I didn't think of it!

I want a notebook like this:

The last photo in this post is beyond hysterical. Don't say you weren't warned.

Mood: tired, brain in hibernate mode
Hair: tired, droopy, uncombed since morning
Listening to: CSI, Season 7 (Living Doll)

Cookie and Bloggy Break

I've been cataloging non-stop (well, as non-stop as possible around here in the Land of Constant Emergency) since about 12:30. This is my break.

A co-worker forwarded me an email today after she showed me in Outlook mailbox earlier. She has received approximately 100 listserv emails over the last week following up on a post that was made by on a listserv she reads. Well over 98% of those follow-up emails say something to the effect of "delete me from the list" or "stop sending me email."

Hey, Librarians? Three things to think about:

1. Listservs are old technology, and you really ought to know by now that to make changes like this, you don't email the list, you email the administrator. Different email address. Kinda like when you want to talk to circ, you don't call the director's office. Yeah. Like that. So, like, if you don't want to get mail from a listserv, you have to contact the owner, not the members.
   
2. Also, when the first, oh, 20 or so, messages have come through like this, I would think the average not-so-very-techy person would think that 20 messages with the same subject heading and almost exactly the same text but from 20 different people would be a hint that what those 20 people did was wrong. So, therefore, you shouldn't expect a different outcome if you do the exact same thing. (see Insanity--Einstein Quote on)
   
3. Also also, if the listserv exists specifically to discuss a specific type of "Library 2.0" technology, perhaps it might be a good idea to learn how to use "Library 1.1" technology (c. 1989) before stepping off the big cliff here. In other words, I don't think you're ready for IM, hotlinks, or even .jpgs if you still think Al Gore invented the information superhighway. If you think Second Life is something that happens post-divorce or after the kids leave the house, not an online social networking site...step off. Now. You are, in effect, hitchhiking on the autobahn.

And to do that--to step off--you must contact an administrator, NOT the listserv. If you don't know how...back away from the computer in front of you V E R R R R Y Y Y Y slowly.

Unusual

So I logged in to Meebo this morning, maybe an hour ago.

I know it's Saturday. Really, I do. And I know that "normal people" sleep in a little on weekends. I mean, my alarm went off 45 minutes later than usual, at 6:30!

But, hey. No one left their IM windows open overnight. No one is logged on today yet.

I think it's all because of the weather.

So I'm off to the sidewalks of town to sit and watch people while sitting in the sun and talking to a high school girl about God.

Oddments

• Work today was...annoying. I spent over an hour trying to a) download an ebook onto this here laptop, and then b) transfer it to my MP3 player. I was, eventually, successful on a), but failed dramatically at b). And now my laptop is snubbing my Zen. This came about after an abbreviated attempt at doing just this thing last Sunday. So, the upshot is that I have two downloaded books on my laptop, and no way to transfer them to the Zen...and I've lost the manual for the Zen here at home somewhere.



• The highlight of the day is that we got our copy of OJ's tell-all, the money going to the Goldman family. [This, by the way, was not the book I downloaded!] I *totally love* the cover layout. There's a tiny little "If" inside the first I of the title itself.



• What I should be doing right now: figuring out how to use the church website software. I've had the instruction manual for ten days now; it's less than a foot from my left elbow. I can't seem to make myself start.



• I also should be prepping for mentoring on Saturday. --sigh--
  
  
• My RSS feed for the local paper informed me this morning that there was a flight-for-life rescue going on about halfway between my house and work about an hour after I arrived today. I have since found out that a teenager blew a stop sign, and drove out in front of a motorcyclist who plowed into his car at highway speed. The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the hospital later in the afternoon. When that kid got up this morning, he was 17 and carefree; two hours later, he's got blood on his hands, and his life has changed forever.



• That sort of put the rest of my evening into perspective.



• There are some really scary people who use my library. I just wanted to remind you all of that fact. There are also some really ICKY people. I wonder if wearing a radiation suit while working in public would scare away the nice, normal people. Yeah. Probably so.



• We had shrimp arrabiata for dinner. I laugh whenever I say "arrabiata" because of Eddie Izzard. If you don't know why, it will only confuse you more when I say that Darth Vader has never been funnier than when ordering penne al'arrabiata at the Death Star canteen.



• I have "new hair" again. OK, it's the same old hair I had Monday, but it's slightly redder, a little shorter, and it smells really good. You'll have to trust me on this.



• I love Meebo. I am currently IMing my sweetie (who is in the city next to the capital of a state that looks a lot like an obese, left square-bracket) from my webpage--this very one--because his StooPid company software won't let him use Yahoo or Gmail to IM "normal." He's telling me about the oddballs in the hotel restaurant last night, including a woman who announced to the entire restaurant and bar that she sleeps naked on silk sheets.



• When I travel, no one does anything remotely bizarre like this in my vicinity. Or maybe I just don't notice? Probably the latter. Is that because the people with whom I travel ARE the most bizarre people in any given situation? No. That can't be it, can it?



• My eyes...don't hurt...! But they are dry and tired and itchy. So I think I'm done here now.



• Besides, I just had to do a hard reboot of the laptop to finish this post after it froze up during the uploading of the OJ book cover.



• So, yeah, I'm off to bath, then sleep. In pajamas. In my bed, made up with decidedly NON-silk sheets.

New Game!

It's called Stump the Doctor!

OK, it isn't new. I seem to play this game every once in awhile. It always very educational; I've come to appreciate doctors who are upfront enough to say, "Uh, dunno; let's try this, but if it doesn't work, call me ASAP and we'll try something else." Guess what: there aren't many doctors who will actually do this. Shocked? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Today's doc is one of the good ones this way. He did every basic diagnostic test he could do in the office. While I never enjoy having a couple of these tests done, he was able to eliminate the following:

• allergies
• obvious infection
• corneal problems
• iris problems
• glaucoma (not that this was likely!)
• retinal detachment
• nerve damage (again, not likely)
• blepharitis
• tear duct problems
• lens problems ("Wow, you really are nearsighted!" Huh.)
• general tracking and vision loss

The upshot: we're trying an oral antibiotic and an antibiotic eyedrop, but I'm only to use that in one eye. I am doing a controlled study on myself! I love science. (not) But that's ok, because at this point, we seem to be in the midst of the Elimination stage of the game. I went back to work feeling slightly less agonized, but unable to see anything clearly because my eyes were dilated, and still are to a degree. Apparently, eye color matters in determining how long your eyes remain dilated. Who knew? Probably everyone but me.

(I was going to link to some photos of what my eyes look like in the morning, but the photos I found on Google when I searched "Conjunctivitis" made me nauseous, so nevermind. Suffice to say that it's not a look most people are going for nowadays!)

My own self-diagnosis says that the situation is exacerbated by the long hours I spend staring at a computer screen every day: between work and home, I'm probably in front of a computer for 10-12 hours a day. So in the interest of testing this theory semi-scientificially (hah), I probably won't be around much for the rest of the week. My apologies if I don't get back to you in Blogland or elsewhere for awhile. It's going to suck.