That was a date?

OK, so the guy, D, finally called (a couple hours after my "Men" post, actually). He still couldn't make a freakin' decision and basically had me hanging on until Friday night, when he finally managed to get his shit together and pick a place/time.

We met at Havana, along with his cousin, cousin's gf, and gf's friend. AND he was 20 minutes late. This is a first date?? Um, OK.

I had already eaten, so I just hung out & chatted with everyone while they ate. Cousin's gf's friend (V) was very nice & we had quite a bit in common so we chatted for a while. D basically ignored me. Well, didn't *ignore* me, so much as didn't really treat me any different than the other folks we were with. Again, I ask you: is this a date??

After dinner we went over to Groove (I keep wanting to call it Echo) and, thanks to cousin's gf, got in for free since she knows the lady who collects the cover charge. Inside, it was pretty crowded, and we all went to the bar for a drink. I was definitely done drinking, after two lemon drops, but everyone else got beers. V & I danced for a bit, but D? Again, not interested. Wouldn't dance, didn't seem to want to talk to me. He ended up spending a good half hour to an hour talking to some blonde. What an ass. I'm not a particularly jealous person, but seriously! On a first date??? It was just rude.

We stayed until they closed Groove, and then outside we got ready to leave. D? Gave me a halfhearted hug. No offers to walk me to my car. No attempt at a goodnight kiss. Not even a promise to call (even if he didn't mean it). What an ass.

V & I went to Hubcaps, because she was definitely too drunk to drive. I was exhausted but I made sure she got some food in her belly and sobered up a bit before I would let her drive. While we were there, we got picked up on by a couple of guys (one of whom was totally hammered, and basically snuck out after saying he was going to the bathroom - I don't know if he was sick or what). The other guy, S, was this hot black guy from New Orleans, and he got my number. We were supposed to go to the movies on Saturday night but I basically flaked on him. I went out to Livermore to see Dad & he called while we were at BevMo. I didn't have his number with me (and it didn't show up on caller ID on my cell) so I couldn't call him back then. And later that night I went out with K & M. We were going to a party in Lafayette, but it was dead so we didn't even go in. Instead we went to Ruth's Chris, had a drink, and then went next door to Tiki Tom's. TT's was loads of fun - one of K's clients (T) was there with a group of people who included J, the old bartender from Twist. We had more drinks & ended up going back to T's friend's house with the group for a little while. M apparently was very unhappy because she & T had hated each other in high school. High school! For God's sake, it was like a dozen years ago! Get over it. People change. Anyway, I had a blast and gave out my number to a few people. We'll see what happens with that.

But tomorrow, I'm off to DC for a conference. I swear, if I don't get laid out there, K will never talk to me again. ;-) It's been almost a year now, and she's sick of hearing me bitch about it, LOL.

Men

Why leave it to the last minute? Seriously, like I have nothing better to do with my time than to sit around and wait for you to figure out your schedule so you can "squeeze me in" for a date. I know your cousin is coming to visit and you're unsure of his plans...but make a decision. I don't want to leave my weekend wide open for you because for all I know, you're going to totally flake on me.

Here's the thing: we talked last weekend, right? And you didn't know when you'd be free. And now it's Thursday. That means that the weekend starts tomorrow evening. And do you still not know? Or what? Dude, call and fucking set a place & time already. If you don't do it tonight, I'm going to be busy (even if I'm not). I don't care how smokin' hot you are. I deserve better than last minute booty-call treatment.

HATE!

I am extremely frustrated. I've wasted nearly a whole day on trying to get FCKeditor to work with ColdFusionMX on Linux RedHat. It's just...not working. I can't get it to work with PHP either. It's really driving me insane.

For one thing, it appears to try to access index.cfm -- which is nowhere in the files. And it's not even referred to in the files, so I just don't get where that crap is coming from.

I tried going back to an earlier version of fckeditor - 1.6 (current is 2.0). But that doesn't appear to work with anything except IE & windows, so that's a complete waste of time.

I'm just very, very frustrated right now. The Wiki for the product has absolutely nothing on CF installation. You'd think it would be simple enough to install - I added the custom tag (we're running CF5 on some servers, so I wanted it to be backwards-compatible). I referenced the module. But nothing happens. Nada. No error, just...blank. I thought maybe it was a problem with iframes, but I can't find anything on that either.

Grrr....

Father's Day, etc.

Had a nice Father's Day. On Saturday, I cleaned & got some stuff done around the house that I'd been putting off for a while (installing towel ring in bathroom, texturing & painting the place in the stairwell that was patched after the kids accidentally ripped out the handrail). On Sunday, Dad, stepmom & stepsis came over around 1 pm. We ate the yummy guacamole I'd made...in about 10 minutes flat. Then Dad & Rugrat played in the backyard for a bit until Rugrat's dad came over at 3 PM-ish. More playing in backyard, since Babydaddy brought a Bionicle to put together. I went to the store to pick up ice cream & came home to fix the big dinner: pork tenderloin w/brown sugar-chipotle sauce, corn on the cob w/sage butter, green beans w/almonds, and cheese biscuits. For dessert: apple crisp & vanilla ice cream. Yum.

Then Babydaddy & I sat on the couch and polished off another bottle of wine while watching Love Actually, with Rugrat asleep upstairs. All in all: a satisfying day, a productive weekend, and a damn good meal, if I do say so myself. ;-)

It came, it came!

So yesterday, I saw that Amazon finally shipped out my crap. It was coming from Nevada, so I thought "Coo. It'll be here Monday, probably."

It came this morning! Hot damn, that was FAST. Now why couldn't they do this a week ago?

Oh yeah, free shipping. They like to make my blood boil and hold off on shipping til the Very. Last. Second. Then, what? Do they ship it overnight? Sheesh.

I hate Amazon's free shipping

I don't know why I always use it. Oh wait, yes I do, because it's FREE!

But it pisses me off. The original estimate said my items would be shipped on the 13th. Not the expected delivery date, you understand, but the date that it leaves Amazon's warehouse.

Well, it's the 15th, and the damn thing still says "Shipping Soon". I placed my order a full week ago. It doesn't take a full freakin' week to throw four items in a box and send it on its way. Really. I mean, I understand that my shipment is low priority (since I'm not paying shipping costs) but still! I've been a loyal Amazon shopper since 2000. Send the fucking stuff already! I want my new digital camera before it becomes obsolete. And I am really, desperately in need of that USB printer cord. My new laptop doesn't work with the serial printer cable. Throw me a bone here, Amazon folks. Just throw the crap in a box and send it out.

Got my hair done last night

$200 for highlights & a cut. *sigh* Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Do I REALLY need to spend that much money?

I think my hair looks too dark. She put a toner on all my non-highlighted hair, and it is a bit darker than it was before. It's pretty, but not really "summery", yanno?

This weekend...

I went out with my friends Saturday night. First we had dinner & drinks at one restaurant, where we sat next to two very good-looking men who were with a cute blond girl. We couldn't figure out which one of the guys was with the girl (therefore leaving the odd man out for one of us!). Then we went to another restaurant and had dessert & drinks (drinks on the house, as it was late & empty, and we're kind of regulars there). Then we went dancing...and who should we run into but the two hot guys & cute blond girl (along with several more of their friends)! Turns out, the two hot guys are just FRIENDS with the cute blond girl. So we flirted, danced, etc...and on the way out I gave my card to one of the guys and told him he could email me.

So yesterday, Monday (note: less than standard "three day rule"), the hot guy called me. Only problem: the number on the card is the office phone number, and I work from home. Which is why I told him to email me. Ah well, blame it on the drinks. So he called, and I get this very *surprised* IM and email from E at work: "[Hot Guy] called for you! His number is XXX-XXX-XXXX; he says he talked to you Saturday night." So then I had this barrage of IM's from work folks wanting to know about who called me. Oy.

Anyway, I called him back and we chatted for a few minutes. Just the right amount of time - no uncomfortable silences, no stupid foot-in-mouth moments. I learned that he's a high school history teacher, and is trying to find ways to keep busy during his summer vacation. He used to work at the high school near my home, but moved out to WC and is working in the next town over. I told him about the rugrat, and he didn't seem put off. He invited me out for dinner and we discussed mutually convenient times to do that...Anyway, long story short, we are going out next week[end] and will be chatting on the phone in the interim, to make firm plans and...well...chat. ;-) So far I'm not getting my hopes too high but he seems like a very nice guy and he is just smokin' hot.

Keeping my fingers crossed....

Septimus Heap: Magyk Book One

About halfway into this fun kid's-lit book. It's similar to the HP series, but more focused on adventure and less on mystery, I think. Anyway, cute book if your kids have "wizard fever" - it's something to keep them entertained while (impatiently) waiting for July 16!

iRobot is the BOMB!

I love my Roomba. Really, truly, I do. It is fantastic and one of the best purchases I've ever made (right up there with TiVo). But of course I wished for something that would also mop my floors - maybe a Roomba with a swiffer attachment or something. Now iRobot (who makes Roomba) is making Scooba, a vacuum/mop system that sucks up dirt, squirts cleaning solution on the floor, scrubs it with a vacuum-type brush, and then sucks up the dirty cleaning fluid & squeegees the floor dry. It will be on sale in time for the 2005 holiday season, and I can't wait!!! With about 1000 sf of hard flooring in my home, this is going to be the coolest thing ever!

Name of the Rose

Meh. The story might be great, but so far it's pretty hard going. Umberto just goes off on these tangents where he babbles incessantly about stuff that seems to have nothing at all to do with the story. Seriously, do I need to read three pages of description of the entrance to the freakin' church? No. Just get to the mystery. He seems to do OK with dialogue, there's just not much of it. He'd be better off with less rambling descriptive crap and more dialogue that actually propels the story along.

In other words, the author seriously needs a decent editor.

Yay, Series of Unfortunate Events!!

Book 12 is coming out on October 18, 2005! Still no idea what the title will be, but Rugrat will be glad to know that the audio book should be available at the library before we make our trip to Disneyland at Halloween this year!

Finished two books today

First: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Interesting fictional story but with quite a bit of historical fact thrown in. Story centers around a policeman, who's stuck in the hospital after a nasty fall. While trying to keep from dying of boredom, he stumbles upon the mystery of Richard III, who supposedly killed his two young nephews in order to gain/keep the crown.
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Our story's protagonist hooks up with a researcher at the British Museum, and together they uncover all kinds of interesting factoids about Richard which make it clear to them that he did not, in fact, kill his nephews, and while he's been reviled for about four hundred years as a notorious murderer and callous blackguard, he was actually a very enlightened ruler and loving family man.


Second: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. An unusual non-fiction book written entirely in comic strip format, about the author's childhood growing up in Iran, and all the political and social turmoil she was living through. Very touching in places. Also, a super-quick read.

Next up: The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.