Fun with Polaroids! My nephew got me while I was working. Writer Jean needs a barrette.

I'm just no damn good after the Ritalin wears off.

My friend Terrence called me! He also (finally) returned my e-mail. Now the balance of power has shifted, and I'll start feeling obligated to call him. Great, he just ruined everything.

Just kidding, Terrence. You know I love you.

I'm going out, but I don't know what for. I need to buy my nephew a birthday present, for one thing.

I hope I remember to tape the Pretender.

Procrastination! Somebody on the ADD forum I frequent once posted a theory on why we're such champion procrastinators. It went something like, because the rush of adrenaline we ("we" being persons with ADD) get when we try to beat a deadline at the very last minute better enables us to focus than any medication ever could. It makes sense, and I must admit that I have some of my best ideas when I'm under last-minute pressure; but then again, that's also when I've done some of my sloppiest work. Either way, it's no excuse for why I'm on here instead of working on my article.

Josh's web address is dangerously (and coincidentally) close to my own. I like his design. I also like what he has to say.

Outside it's 62 degrees and sunny. It's not a day for staying inside and working. But I am anyway.

I finaIly know what I want to do with my Web section. Now I just need time to do it. Not tonight, though. I have to get up in the morning to watch Batman. Oh, and, um, to work on my article (that's important, too).

I almost forgot! Joker's Realm is mentioned in print!

There are at least a half dozen books on my shelf that I've never gotten around to reading. I want to start one this weekend. I'm trying to decide between Christopher Moore's Practical Demonkeeping, or a book I picked up in London last summer, Disco 2000: Nineteen New Stories from the Last Hours of 1999. That second one might have been more entertaining if I'd read it before the anti-climax that was New Year's Eve 2000. A few months ago I read Bloodsucking Fiends by by Chris Moore, it was pretty good.

Or maybe I'll just read The Phantom of the Opera again.

I think I should do another page of stuff.

This morning started with Mitzi waking me up at 4 a.m. to go outside. I went back to bed and dreamed about my dad again.

When I drove to work this morning it was raining. Hard. Windy, too. I would have been scared but I'd been listening to the news all morning and there were no tornado warnings. This evening I found out that one touched down near the airport. No one was hurt.

I still can't log on from work.

I've got the TV on for background noise (killing time waiting for Space Ghost: Coast to Coast). 20/20 is running a story about schizophrenia, and it is seriously creeping the hell out of me.

Mitzi has to go out again.

No updates in a week. Sorry. I was offline all weekend (which was probably good for me), and for some reason I haven't been able to access blogger from work, which is where I usually jot down my random thoughts. It was a good arrangement -- it got the stuff out of my head (can you say obsessive-compulsive? Good!) so that I could get on with my day. For the last three days I haven't been able to blog, and for the last three days I've left the office more stressed out and exhausted than I have in a long time. Coincidence? I think not.

Sometimes I hate the 45 minute commute because it gives me plenty of time for introspection (sometimes I hate it for other reasons, but that's a whole 'nother rant). During today's drive home, I kept thinking, as I often do, about what a manipulative jerk my dad was, and then I started feeling, as I often do, tremendous guilt that I don't really miss him. I had a dream about him the other night. We were in our old living room with a bunch of other people, and he was sitting in his usual spot on the couch, no shirt because he'd just gotten out of bed. His face was messed up, a patchwork of stitches where it had been sewn back together (I never saw him after the accident, but I was told that his face went through the windshield). He sat there and smiled the whole time, and never spoke. It was a warm and pleasant moment, despite the scars. When I woke up, my first impression was that I was glad I made it through the dream without him yelling at me. Then I remembered that he didn't even speak, and I realized that I can't really remember what his voice sounded like anymore. This didn't bother me as much as you'd think it would.

I wish I could miss him.

Fixed it! Stupid mistake, I didn't close off the table tags.

Well, no ... for some reason, they're just not showing up in Netscape.

All of my posts have disappeared!

What a lot of people fail to understand is that you can't just hand someone with ADD an organizational tool and expect them to know how to use it.

You know, there is a very fine line between cool and pretentious. Sadly, some people never learn the difference. Sadly also, I'm fairly certain that I don't walk on either side ...

Of course, come to think of it, Terrence should also answer his e-mail once in a while, so I s'pose we're even.

I should call Terrence.

When I was a kid, the 4th & 5th grade music classes at Sequoyah Elementary, under the direction of Mrs. Chambers, used to put on a Christmas play every year (they probably still do, come to think of it ... I'm not sure Mrs. Chambers is still involved, or even if she's still around, but I hope she is). When I was in first grade, my first year to have any involvement with the Christmas program, the play was a live-action enactment of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." I remember that play as fondly as I remember the cartoon of the same title. I remember being enraptured as the big kids (when I got older, I was shocked to learn that the play had been put on by 4th & 5th graders. In first grade, they seemed as big and impressive as any of the junior high or high schoolers I occasionally crossed paths with) re-created characters I loved, repeating lines I'd already committed to memory even at the tender age of six. Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang had already left an indelible impression on my life, and my fondness for them has only grown deeper over the years. I can't help but smile whenever I hear those familiar jazz notes played on a piano.

People of my generation tend to fondly reminisce about "the great ones": Watterson, Larson, Breathed. Since they each layed down their cartoonist's pens, the comics section of the local newspaper has hardly seemed worth reading, with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions, for me at least, was Peanuts. Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and dare I say it, even the Far Side all owed something to Snoopy and the gang. Now the Great One truly is gone, and our Sunday papers will never be the same.

Farewell, Charles Schultz.

Past five, killing time

Princess Mononoke at 8

Gaiman's my hero

This is neither here nor there, but I loved Scream 3.

I also love Liev Schreiber. I don't have HBO so I didn't get to see that movie about the making of Citizen Kane where he played Orson Welles. I wonder if they'll release it on video. John Malchovich was in it too, which is as good a reason as any to buy it.

By the way, "Being John Malchovich" is a very twisted, very wonderful movie.

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The other night a pretty kick-ass idea occurred to me for "Short Attention Span Girl," the ADD-/self- parody section that I knew I wanted to do but didn't really have any direction for so I'd pretty much given up on it. So now that I know what I want to do it's back on the project list. The only problem is that my initial inspired idea calls for good drawing talent and Flash animation knowledge. Since I have neither (and don't know anybody who has either who is willing to work for free), I'll have to scale it down to something that is actually doable.

Oh, but if I had the skill to match my vision ...

screwed up, sorry

Earlier today I pre-ordered my copy of the Special Collector's Edition of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. No, I couldn't just order the regular video. I had to have the wide-screen edition, and all of the goodies that come with it. Yes, I'm feeding the Lucas machine. Yes, I'll also buy whatever "special edition" they release of Episode 2, and of Episode 3, and eventually, when they package all 6 movies together in a boxed set, I'll buy that, too, regardless of the fact that by then I will already own multiple versions of each of the six. Why am I such a sucker, you ask? Simple. Because I'm a flaming fangirl.

Serendipitously (now there's a word I don't get to use often enough), since I've been in a Star Wars frame of mind all day, the Fray renewed a link to a Star Wars nostalgia story. I, of course, had to share, so I posted my own Star Wars memories (they're right there, on page 32. Scroll down a bit, you can't miss them).

I'm slacking. Still trying to get on top of things, and neglecting my web sites in the process. I've been staying late after work every night just trying to answer my personal e-mail. It's almost 6 now, I need to get out of here. I'm too tired to work tonight. I just want to go home and vegitate in front of the "idiot box." I found a link earlier that I wanted to share, but I didn't bookmark it and now it's lost in the ether. Maybe I'll find it again tomorrow.