No, I won’t be doing a post for each day.

So second day wasn’t bad. I seem to learn a lot more about CSS each day, which is going surprisingly well.

I’ve finished my first site I think, I don’t know if they’ll want any additional changes or not. I actually got to work fairly early this morning and had to wait around for someone to give me the password to get into my computer (they forgot to yesterday). So I was able to leave early today, first time in two years I’ve been home by 6pm during a work week.

Apparently they don’t keep track of exact hours, which is weird for me because every place I worked tracked it down to the minute. Except when I worked at the motorsports park, and they just paid you by day.

I almost got into an accident both yesterday and today. Both in Mt. Airy. I hate Mt. Airy drivers. I’m going to try an alternate route tomorrow. I also noticed that gas in Frederick is at $2.89/gallon, whereas down the street here it’s $3.10/gallon. Quite a leap, so I’ll probably start getting gas in Frederick.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all this free time.

I discovered this band on Myspace this morning called Green Mistletoe. They mention that they play forestfolk grovesongs. I don’t know how to really describe their music, but I like it a lot. I would almost consider them to be what Jim Morrison would do with a folk/paganish band. They play a lot of acoustic instruments, but the vocals are somehow….different.

I don’t know, just check em out.

My dad finally put the air conditioner in the window yesterday. No more suffering through this intrepid heat, especially since my room windows face the sun. So I was able to sleep last night, and of course have a dream about TERMINIX.

It was a short-lived one, but Executive Services (the head honcho office of customer complaints, if you don’t resolve them within 24 hours, it goes up the line to Division), had been trying to get ahold of me to schedule service for a customer who was completely insane and ranting/raving on the phone. I called Joe, our reinspector, because he was the only one we had available and told him he would most likely have to do a pest stop today.

So I call the lady up and she’s screaming in my ear, saying we need to bring Pro-19 out right now and treat her house (I don’t even know wtf Pro-19 is spose to be, I don’t think it’s a real chemical). So I look up Pro-19 and it says that it’s for moths, so I ask her if she has moths. She says no but she doesn’t care, she wants it and wants it NOW.

Typical day at the office for me. But why do I have to dream about it?

I got home from work about 6:30 or so, not bad considering I left a little late.

I got to work about 8:30 this morning, not many people were there yet, so I imagine I was fairly early. They actually didn’t set up my area yet, so I waited around about 45 minutes or so for them to set me up with a temporary laptop and my login, etc.

After that I checked through some backlogged email. I was also informed that people tend to communicate through AIM there, so I went ahead and gave out my AIM name and collected everyone elses. Imagine a company that encourages you to be on AIM? I made sure not to abuse it though, I mostly talked to my sweetheart off and on.

They gave me my first assignment, which for as simple a layout as it was, was far from easy. Mostly with how they wanted to set up a particular search form and the way the footer coincided with the 3 column layout. But with a little help from my co-worker/helper Mike, I finished it.

It took me a while to do, but I’m already learning new things that I just haven’t had the chance to learn yet. I guess doing this everyday will give me the opportunity to learn things I just haven’t had the need to learn yet with my own websites. And I’m very grateful for the opportunity, especially since I have absolutely no college training.

I’m not quite sure how they track hours yet. Mike showed me their system for inputing hours per job for them to bill the job I guess, but I don’t know if that reflects my paycheck or not. I’d worry if it does because I only logged 7.5 hours today, when I’d prefer to make sure I put in 40 hours a week. I don’t know if it conflicts or not, but I have time to ask questions tomorrow.

The boss lady came to me sometime during the day just to see how my work was coming. She seemed very satisfied with it, and told me that yesterday they were fighting over me and who would get to use me for what project. That was amusing

Everyone there is extremely nice. They bought me lunch today to celebrate my new hire and a few other things. The guys there that I’ve interacted with so far are all very sweet, and very cute, which is a nice change from the old cranky farts I was working with before.

It’s nice starting at a new place with a clean slate. Working at Terminix got so old, people started butting heads, and it started to create bad blood between employees. This place seems a lot more laid back, a lot more friendly, just make sure you do your work.

So a good day at the new job, I hope I do well enough that they’ll want to keep me. That’s my biggest fear right now.

Yes it’s 3:55am, and yes I have to get up at 6am to start my new career tomorrow.

I can’t sleep, too much on my mind. One being very personal and I don’t want to repeat here…..the other is me questioning my position in the Grove.

This is going to suck for my first day of work tomorrow.

While battling the heat and humidity in my house with no air-conditioning, I noticed that TNT was running a marathon of the mini-series “Into the West. Great mini-series, I’ve never been able to watch it all.

It’s about the indian wars of the 1800’s, from a perspective of two families, one white and one native american. It’s somewhat disheartening to think that this was going on only about 150 years ago. Innocent natives slaughtered, and what must have been going through the minds of not only the chiefs, but the military men who were doing it.

Granted only 60 or so years ago we had the whole Nazi wars.

The last 50 years in world history have changed a lot in the America’s. My generation couldn’t fathom such a thing as a massacre like our ancestors did. Though I’m wondering if we would categorize 9/11 as such.

I guess when you think about it, it just doesn’t seem real. It seems like, at least to me, that these things just happened so long ago, when really they didn’t.

I’m not native american, but I have native american blood in my family from I know of at least 3 separate tribes. One reason I’ve always wanted to visit the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is to honor the history there. Though I imagine as a white person, I wouldn’t be very welcome.

I’ve been slowly teaching myself Cherokee for a long time now. I haven’t messed with it much in the last month or two due to being so busy, but it’s still something I feel very strongly about. Lakota-Sioux as well. People keep asking me why I’d want to learn a dead language, and why don’t I learn something more useful like Spanish or French. But it’s not about being able to communicate, as beneficial as it might be. It’s a spiritual thing.

This particular recipe was in my DHC catalog/magazine that they send to people who buy their products. For those unfamiliar, DHC is a japanese cosmetic company, and though expensive, is where I purchase my facial cleanser.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon butter, softened
2 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 eggs
3 tablespoons fresh lemon jice
2 cup chopped pecans, toasted

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325.

Grease a min-muffin pan with either butter or olive oil, making sure all surfaces are evenly coated. Dust surfaces with an all-purpose flour; set aside.

Sift cake flour with cream of tartar and salt; reserve.

Beat sugar and olive oil until well blended. Bea in eggs, one at a time; add lemon juice, mixing thoroughly. Gradually add dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Fold in pecans.

Pour batter into prepared pan, filling the mini-muffin cups to the top. (Dough will not rise.) Bake at 325 until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean, about 18 minutes.

(You can use a 9″x5″x3″ loaf pan. Bake about 1 hour if using a loaf pan.)

Glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
4-1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

When the cakes are almost done, combine the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla in pan. Heat and stir constantly, until sugar dissolves.

When cakes are done, slowly brush or drizzle the tops with the hot glaze coating the whole surface. Let hte cakes cool in the pan, then run a spatulay around the sides and remove from pan.

Tip:
To make every bite sweet and delicious, brush glaze onto cakes while they are still warm and porous.

Options:
If you are a lime lover, substitute fresh lime juice for a special twist. To dress up your dessert, serve with fresh berries and a dollop of whipped cream.