Tuesday, September 15, 1998

        I see a lot of pretty silly pictures come up in the camera window, and people sometimes send me the funniest ones. Joanna sent me a sequence a couple of weeks ago where the first picture on the archive page was of me walking out of the room, and the next five were of the empty office. And someone sent me a series the other day that showed me frowning at the screen in various ways, looking disgusted, and then the next shot was of my back, walking out of the office. He said that the pictures needed cartoon captions, and that maybe some day he'd write some.

        There are a lot of photographs that I see go by and that I'm glad aren't archived permanently. This one (the first one in the block below) really ought to be one of those, but it made me laugh, and it makes me laugh every time I look at it, so I thought I'd capture the moment, and the following moments as well (it's a yawn, in case you couldn't tell; one that I was apparently trying to stifle):

        You have to be able to laugh at yourself, right?

        Today was sort of a comedy of errors in several respects. I updated a web site, then found out that I had put the wrong text on the wrong page, i.e., switched the text between two pages, so I just renamed the two pages. Then I found out that although that worked in theory, it caused the navigation to be screwed up, i.e., when one page was on the screen, the opposite page was highlighted in the navigation. So I had to go re-name the respective pages and cut-and-paste the text out of one and into the other, and vice versa.

        And then the next project I worked on involved me making some minor corrections to a page that I had created and which had been out to the client for copy approval. The changes were fairly simple, but in the process of checking the page for formatting errors, I discovered that I had been changing the wrong copy. I'd made the new changes on an old copy, not the most recent one.

        And in another instance, I thought I could slip a new graphic in in place of an old one, but the new one proved to be a slightly smaller size and a different color to boot.

        It was just sort of like that all day.

        I went out a little after 8:00 and got a sandwich at Subway for my dinner. Subway makes me happy. It's sort of a compromise meal for me--it's fairly healthy (or at least it's not overtly unhealthy) and I like it--whereas there are all kinds of things I could choose that I like but that aren't healthy, or that are healthy, but that I don't like. Misty and I were talking about something today, but I don't remember what . . . oh, yeah. Cookie Blast oatmeal, I think it was. Instant oatmeal in cookie flavors or with bits of cookies in it (I haven't had it, I'm just imagining here). She said something about it being a good compromise between something good for you and something fun.

        Fun is important to me. I just figure you might as well enjoy yourself as much as you can. Food seems like a small way in which you can do that. Jaime was delighted the other day by Autumn E. L. Fudge cookies--sandwich cookies in the shape of elves in various Fall season pursuits: playing football or going trick-or-treating.

        I guess I'm still pretty much a kid at heart. I can still get excited about macaroni in the shape of cartoon characters, glow-in-the-dark bandages, little plastic toys. Given the choice between regular cookies or cookies shaped like elves, I'll pick the elves every time. I suppose it leads to a few impulse purchases from time to time, but my indulgences tend to be small ones. I'll spend twenty cents more for Halloween napkins rather than the plain ones, and if it's a choice between liquid soap in a regular container or a Winnie-the-Pooh pump bottle, I'll choose Winnie every time.

        I just think that it's usually worth it to indulge yourself in small things, as long as the ratio of cost:fun is worthwhile. In the larger scheme of things, the cost of a package of cookies is minimal. And if it causes you to smile every day at lunchtime, then it's worth it.