i’m at a loss for anything decent to talk about.

my trip to austin was short and stressful. beyond stressful. if i didn’t suck so much at my job i’m sure it would have been better. i just don’t get it. i really don’t. i’m not used to failure so it’s all coming as a bit of a shock. something just isn’t clicking.

beyond work i didn’t do too much while i was there. left work late on tuesday and then grabbed a bite to eat and a mexican martini at trudy’s with my friend brian. the mexican martini was a complete disappointment. i stayed at the stephen f. austin hotel which was quite nice. i had a huge california king bed. so comfortable.

the next evening i had drinks with a few co-workers. it was nice to sit out on the patio and just enjoy a nice drink, or two (or four or five, but who’s counting?). i ended up going to work the next day and all this shit just hit the fan. let’s not even recap that day.

i’m terribly torn between austin and chicago. going back brought a great deal of homesickness. more than anything i just miss the interaction of the austin office. it made me realize just how isolated i’ve become. i sit in my office all day with no interaction beyond my friend megan. then i go home and sit in front of the television all day. at least when i was in austin there were people around to chat with. i actually think i would take a cube over an office. i need the social interaction.

overall, the austin trip was alright. got to meet a lot of new team members and some other people around the agency. plus got to see some friends like blue falcon and all my old friends from when i was an intern. oh those were the good days. after a delayed flight i finally got home around 11pm.

it was a rather uneventful weekend. slightly relaxing although i’ve had a bit of anxiety lately that i haven’t been able to shake.

beyond the nothing i just said, i have nothing else to say. one day i’ll have something good to say.

i leave for texas in a few hours. as it turns out i’m the worst packer ever. i’m barely going to be there for more than 24 hours and i have five outfits packed. my motto is that it’s always good to be prepared.

that’s all i have. i lead a rather boring life. i have my nintendo and that’s all that matters i’m still trying to decide if i’m going to take my nintendo with me to austin.

hands down the best news of the year … the police reuniting to perform at the grammy awards and then announcing a US tour the next day. i don’t know if i can control my happiness. seriously, i don’t know if it gets any better than that.

You are Excel 2007!
People trust you to find the right answer. They call you “the wizard” and are in awe of your PivotTable. When you say you love functions, it’s understood that you’re referring to spreadsheets, not social events. You import and export with ease, always maintaining balance. Thanks to your mastery of numbers, people are constantly asking you for help with their own budgets. With the new Microsoft Office Excel 2007, you’ll see how those people can get their own answers - better and faster. They will be amazed that they, too, can create a new chart with only five clicks. You may not have been known as a trendsetter, but your ability to use conditional formatting to “see” new trends was well worth any wait. You can analyze the impressive productivity and efficiency gains in Excel 2007 and prove that the benefits justify the costs. Your favorite new feature in Office 2007 is likely to be the charting feature in Excel 2007.

yes. that’s incredibly cheesy and i can’t believe i wasted time on that quiz either. but i do love excel.

www.ontheofficecouch.com/

i was in a seriously productive mood this evening.

first, i got through a lot more of tidying up my room and getting things organized. once i get some of this laundry done i should actually have my room in pretty good shape.

after getting tired of doing that i was incredibly sad that i didn’t have anything to do from work. i can’t wait until the day i have full work-from-home capability. one day i’ll get a work-issued laptop with VPN access and i’ll be able to get so much work done that people will be astonished.

since i had nothing that i could do for work i ended up wanting to work on one of my sites. i chose to finally start working on the rough design of my flagship site: uselesslyclever.com

it will be a nice and simple gateway for access to all of my other sites. of course it still needs some work and perhaps a nifty feature or two. i’m going to have to restructure all of my site urls so that this can be the landing page for all of my sites. it should be a rather easy transition but i’m hesitant to do it at the moment because it will require some thinking. it might require some serious site map restructuring.

okay now i need something that doesn’t require too much thinking. off to play super mario bros. on my wii.

so i’m reading the forecast on the tribune website:

The current cold season is the least snowy in 24 years at Midway Airport and the 8th least snowy there since 1928.

so little snow makes me sad.

it’s 2 degrees outside right now, feels like -19. i can’t even comprehend the temperature being so low.

reading this weather alert didn’t make me feel any better, now i’m scared to go outside:

…WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 9 AM CST TUESDAY…

BITTERLY COLD TEMPERATURES WILL DROP BELOW ZERO OVERNIGHT…AND WILL STRUGGLE TO RISE BACK TO ZERO ON SUNDAY. ALTHOUGH GUSTY WEST WINDS OF 20 TO 30 MPH WILL GRADUALLY DIMINISH THIS EVENING…THE COMBINATION OF SUBFREEZING AND BLUSTERY WINDS WILL RESULT IN FRIGID WIND CHILL VALUES OF 25 BELOW TO 30 BELOW ZERO RANGE TONIGHT AND SUNDAY. BITTERLY COLD AIR TEMPERATURES AND BLUSTERY WINDS WILL CONTINUE TO KEEP WIND CHILLS IN THIS RANGE THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING.

A WIND CHILL ADVISORY MEANS THAT VERY COLD AIR AND STRONG WINDS WILL COMBINE TO GENERATE WIND CHILLS AT OR LESS THEN 20 BELOW ZERO. THIS WILL RESULT IN FROST BITE AND LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. IF YOU MUST VENTURE OUTDOORS…DRESS IN LAYERS AND COVER ALL SKIN. MAKE SURE YOU WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES. LIMIT OUTDOOR ACTIVITY TO MINIMIZE EXPOSURE…AS FROSTBITE CAN OCCUR IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS.

PETS ARE ALSO SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE EXTREME COLD AS MUCH AS YOU ARE. KEEP PETS INDOORS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. IF THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE… MAKE SURE OUTDOOR PETS HAVE WARM DRY SHELTER. PROVIDE SUFFICIENT FOOD AND FRESH UNFROZEN WATER.

CHECK ON ELDERLY FAMILY MEMBERS AND NEIGHBORS. IF YOU NEED ASSISTANCE IN THE CITY OF CHICAGO…CALL 3 1 1.

so i do something really bad and i feel a bit guilty …

people campaigning for random offices like to go and stand in front of the entrance to my train stop. the first time i was confronted by my local alderman. after hearing him rant for like two or three minutes i finally explained that i wasn’t registered to vote in chicago. it happened several more times before i finally got registered to vote here. now i’m finding that i’m still using that excuse so i can avoid having to talk to any of them. today one of the candidates for mayor and her campaign team were standing outside the entrance and i didn’t even take off my headphones. i just mumbled “not registered to vote in illinois” and walked by. i feel a bit guilty but they shouldn’t try to force people to talk to them, especially when some of those people [i.e. me] have social anxiety issues.

ooo … i bet i can turn that little incident into a part of my book. i swear i haven’t given up on it yet. i need some sort of creative outlet and it’s all i have at the moment.

i was talking to someone about exciting events at work coming up and sadly one of the things i rambled on about was how we were getting upgraded to office 2007 and how freaking excited i was about it. of course i don’t really like microsoft products all that much, but i love getting new software and what have you. i got a strange look and at first i was taken back. who doesn’t look forward to these things? we got a new intranet this past monday. i wasn’t feeling that great on monday and was almost going to call in sick, but when i remembered the new site was going live today i decided that i should suck it up. i swear i can’t help the fact that i’m a total nerd.

speaking of work … upfront season is coming up and i’m terribly excited. i’ve discovered that there are two prime seasons in the advertising/media world: television upfronts, when we get to see elaborate presentations and get neat gifts, and holiday thank-you season, when companies show their appreciation for your business.

in other news … it’s bitterly cold and i’m afraid to admit it to myself. the high tomorrow is 14. the high saturday is 10. the high sunday is 6. the high monday is 4. does anyone else see anything wrong with this? i was standing on the train platform tuesday or wednesday and it was 3. but with windchill it felt like -12. my face was burning with the bitter coldness and i literally thought i was going to burst into tears at any moment (and i probably would have had my tear ducts not been frozen shut). luckily the space heater i bought myself for my room works AMAZING. i turn that thing up on high for 15 minutes and it’s as toasty as can be.

time to go watch gray’s. until later.

i leave you with a last piece of entertainment ( i have software to download clips from my tivo so i can be entertaining now, forgive the quality of the first few seconds; i exported at a lower quality to get the file size down, i will have to experiment with video quality another night) …