Blog Addiction

I can't help it. I am totally addicted to checking my email and reading every article in my GoogleReader. I suppose it might be more of a desire to avoid the mountains of work that are piling up in my inbox. I have a whole bunch of things to do, but find myself so discouraged by the whole process of approvals that every time I look at my to do list I think, "Why Bother?" and so I just check my email/reader again. Projects that I started almost 6 months ago are still not approved, so nothing can really by all that urgent, right?

Well, the decree that we publish the internal newsletter once a month is troubling, but at least I have one project that goes to the printer consistently, and so I spent my afternoon shuffling the stories to try and have every story and every photograph fit in the weird 6 page layout that the outside design firm gave us (which is pretty ugly in my opinion, but they spent a lot of money on it, so I can't change it too much). I miss J with her compulsive organization. I am going to try and set up a meeting and see if we can make it a little more formulaic... something like keeping to estimated word counts would be helpful! Of course when it doesn't all fit perfectly there is space for cartoons :)

All is not bad though. I designed and got approval on a brochure in English and Spanish in about 2 weeks, so nice when other departments are cooperative in the process. AND I walked home today for the first time in quite a while. It has been too hot and my feet were too blistered, but today there was a nice breeze and i had a nice walk while talking to A. Working in The City would mean no walking home, so my job does have a few advantages. Trying to adjust my attitude. Wish me luck.

Things I Learned at Work Today

1. There is someone who programs the Jewish calendar into about 75 lights in LA so that they will turn on automatically without someone pushing the button (also mentioned that this is not a problem in NY since most of the buttons don't actually do anything, which I already knew thanks to Mr. SD) There were other interesting facts in the book review for 'Traffic' in the NYT but you don't have to take my word for it.
2. It is hard to find the right photograph to fit into an arrow shaped window.
   
3. You can make ice cream in a ziplock bag without a fancy ice cream maker!
4. No matter where you are working they will always ask you at some point to fit an entire word document full of text into an ad the size of a business card.
5. Based on my Google Reader suggestions I am a sports loving stay at home mom (The sports I understand, but I don't really know where they get the mom part, but keep suggesting that I read blogs about raising children)
   
6. I need more than one project to work on at a time or I get bored.