*Big DumpTruck*

I can't stop laughing. This blog, In Passing... is one of the funniest things I've seen lately. Got the link from my pal Tim's blog.

Hey! In that article I mentioned about NaNoWriMo, there is a line on page 5 that says "Others complain on the message board. "The honor system thing is taking the wind out of my sails," one writes. "I know it shouldn't matter, but it does." "

That was me! I wrote that on the Yahoo message boards! I knew I wrote it, because I remembered writing it. That was exactly how I felt. At least on that day, which was well into the month, when you were already behind pace to finish. Anyway, I got quoted in the article! Cool.

This is a great article on NaNoWriMo and Chris Baty.

I officially started re-writing/editing my novel over the weekend, because I just couldn't take it any more. I missed writing it. Of course, now that I'm editing, I wish it was still November and I could focus on quantity instead of quality.

Hey, I'm married to a rock star! Mr. Dump went to a private benefit concert Saturday night with a friend who was going to play drums at the concert. Mr. Dump ended up singing backup for Steve Miller on Abracadabra, and PLAYED THE DRUMS for Peter Wolf on Centerfold!

I think I'm more excited than him! If only I could find some information on the concert...because it was private I couldn't find anything last night.

I am down on my knees right now thanking God above that I don't live in Buffalo. 6 feet of snow? Just hit me over the head with the shovel, thanks.

I'm also glad it doesn't appear to be headed this way. Cause that would be SO stinky. I don't think I know anyone who lives there, but hey, if you're a regular to the Dump and you're in Buffalo, drop me a line and I'll post your thoughts here.

There is nothing better than a short work week. Four days off, and then only working 3 days. I could get used to this.

Mr. Dump's task for today is to find the Page-A-Day calendar I wanted for Christmas. He wasn't able to find it when he shopped for me. Hey, only 3 days are left on the current one!

I think we're back! WOO HOO!

Wow, I am so sad that someone hacked the blogger.com site. Two days of no new entries...is everyone okay out there? Did you all have some egg nog to calm your nerves? I was just testing to see if everything is working again. I'll give another update in a short while.

And here is your Christmas Eve Day Traffic Report:

Man, shoulda waited until this morning to go to the grocery store. It was just a normal morning there, as opposed to yesterday, when you literally couldn't find a place to park. Mr. Dump had to go to a different grocery store when he got sick of looking for a space. I breezed in, picked up the few things I forgot last night (dinner rolls, vanilla ice cream for the apple pie my mom made, etc.) and had my choice of registers...no lines.

Traffic wasn't too bad. I know a lot of people do work today, and I figure the rest are like me. Now that I'm home, I'm not stepping foot back outside until it's time to go visit my aunt. I'm not going NEAR the mall.

Oh, and another thing I learned. Mr. Dump mentioned to his boss that today is Christmas Eve, and his boss replied "Not until 6pm it isn't." I'm thinking this guy should try out for next year's production of A Christmas Carol.

Only two days until Christmas. I want to put in request for four or five days until Christmas. And make them all weekend days so I'll be off work and I can get things done. Thanks.

I'm having a craving for the sweet potato ravioli at the Monument Grill in Leominster. I wish they delivered.

I love this time of year. It's so cool to get Christmas cards from people with pictures of their kids in them. I can't believe how old all my friend's children are getting...scary.

I have to make sure I get a formal picture of Mookie done soon. The picture of my niece and nephew was SO nice.

You know that scene in A Christmas Carol where young Scrooge is sitting alone in the classroom because everyone else has gone home for Christmas break?

That's me right now. They let everyone go home early today and I have a conference call with a west coast client. I hope the ghost of me at 80 isn't wandering around here.

Helloooooo out there. I'm all full up with Chinese food, thanks to the department director. A nap would be good. Two would be better.

This Chick is auctioning herself off. The highest bidder in less than 4 days gets to marry her. She seems rather young to feel this hopeless about marriage, but who knows. I will have to go back to see if they put up a picture of the guy who won.

So if yesterday was Wednesday, not Friday, that makes today Thursday, not Saturday, right? That's what I thought.

Let's give this another try. Hello? Is this thing on?

I started my day by asking my son's babysitter why her rubbish wasn't out. She looked at me like I had two heads. "My rubbish is picked up on Fridays."

Oh good Lord, I thought it was Friday. That's not good. Not good at all.

How can it be two o'clock already?

Oh Poo...junior still isn't feeling well. Woke up with a fever and won't eat anything. We are currently fighting over him eating a half a piece of toast. I hate to have to miss work because he's sick; it drives me buggy. But I can't very well expose him to the other kids in case this is more than an ear infection.

I need to find the JanuaryYankee Magazine because a relative of my uncle's who is a year older than me wrote an article called "Coming Home to Leominster".

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is an unbelievable writer. My Aunt Barbara lets me know whenever she has something published in a magazine I have access to. The last one I bought was an article in the New Yorker that just took my breath away. If she doesn't win journalism awards, nobody deserves them. Oh wait, it looks like she does win awards. And her hair is like, way better than mine.

I have a link to the The Screaming Blogger (Teapot) over there on the left and I guess the gal who runs the place just found out because she blogged about the DumpTruck. Thing is, I was going to reply to her Blog to tell her that she doesn't know me, I just found her blog one day and liked it, so I linked. BUT THE GIRL HAS NO CONTACT INFO so what am I supposed to do?

I realized I didn't have any either on the Blog page, but it is on some of the other pages. Okay, so I at least wrote my name out.

Looking to embarrass yourself? I have a suggestion. Send an email out to your entire company thanking them for donating to the food drive, and mention that you dropped everything off at the food panty. Ugh.

Yes, one guy (so far) caught it. I'm sure there will be more, unless people don't actually read any emails from me. This time, it would be a good thing.

I wish I could figure out how to get the webcam to take good pictures of it snowing. It's coming down like crazy right now!

Blech. The weather today does NOT look merry. According to Yahoo! Weather - Leominster MA US Forecast the drive home should be a barrel of fun.

Wow, something freaky happened...my home page just got wiped away by someone or something, and replaced with a blank page. Luckily I HAPPENED to load the home page, or I wouldn't have known! Sheesh!

Happy Sunday. I mailed off a Secret Santa gift this morning, and to my complete and utter dismay watched people removing all the remaining furniture from my favorite Chinese place that closed for "remodeling" a few months ago. King Garden. I loved that place more than any other. *sniff*

I'm going to take a nap. I was up all night with my son, who decided to get a horrifyingly painful ear infection overnight. No pain yesterday, horrible pain last night.

After a 7am trip to the Urgent Care place, he's about to take his nap, and I'm going to take mine.

I've spent the past four years getting used to the idea that it's too big a pain to just pop into the mall with Jr. First he was a screaming baby, and then he was the toddler who would never ever never listen and would try to keep us from doing whatever it was we needed to do.

So tonight when I said to him "Hey, we have two errands to do before we go home" it wasn't a big deal! Sure he wasn't paying attention to me in Staples, but he can be trusted to not seek and destroy. I don't have to hold him or hold his hand. When I say "Come this way" he does. SO cool! I got to go to Blockbuster (and settle up our overdue fines so they don't take us to court, cause well, I don't have a reason for not bringing the movies back on time but I haven't been IN Blockbuster for like 3 months so they were getting a little ticked) and Staples. I think I'm now done shopping for my parents, with what I already have and what's due in from Amazon.

I'm getting close to being done, which is nice, but I should have been done two weeks ago. I was just waiting to get paid today. I think I still have 4 hours or so of shopping left.

Tarter Sauce! Does anyone out there know what setting I need to change to make screen captures from a Word 97 (or 2000) document look GOOD when saved as a .PDF? Anyone?

I am giving myself a gold star this afternoon. I was feeling a bit peckish, so when went to rinse out my coffee cup I took a peek in the vending machine. Even though there was plenty of yummies available, I chose to go with a bag of pretzels because they are fat free.

I need it to not rain tomorrow (it's raining right now) because I have to load up my van with the food drive food and then UNload it at the food pantry. I do NOT want to have to do this in the rain.

Doing a little tweaking to the template so my blog doesn't look like everyone else's. It's not my fault the template I picked is simple, therefore popular.

So far, so good. I got a good nap yesterday afternoon and slept like a log last night. I do feel a bit better this morning. YEA! And the coffee is good this morning...another YEA!

I forgot to mention that yesterday I got to go to the pre-school to watch my son's Christmas sing-a-long. A group of 3 and 4-year-olds forgetting all the words to all the songs is just too funny. Man, were they ever cute. But there, in the back of the room, we my son, who apparently has ants in his pants. I stood watching and the next 12 years of parent-teacher conferences spread out before me, clear as a bell. "Mrs. Dump, Mookie is a wonderful boy but he has trouble sitting still long enough to do his assignments. If only we could tie his legs to the desk." He was a crazy leg jiggling, not sitting still boy. Good thing he's so darned cute and funny!

What in the heck happened to my last entry? I typed the whole dang thing up, pressed publish and whoosh, it disappeared into the atmosphere, never to be seen again. Goodbye, little ones and zeroes. Um, so I've still got my voice, possibly because I actually sent myself home from work to take a nap. I do feel better right now, thank goodness.

Lunch was a ham and cheese with tomato. Tasty. I like those, but I'm certain they are bad for me and I will rue the day.

Oh, and following up yesterday's discussion, churlish was sort of on target. Definition 2 in my Webster's is "Ill-natured, peevish" and 3 is "difficult to work with or deal with." I did feel kind of cranky, but I don't think I was particularly difficult to work with. I'd ask my coworkers but I don't want to find out that I'm a beast.

The odds that my voice will be gone by the end of the day? 2:1

Luckily, my typing fingers are all intact.

Uh oh. I'm starting to get cranky. I'm starting to get, um, well, churlish. (What does that mean?) I thought I was doing such a fantastic job fighting this cold thing. I mean, I've had the sinus deal for about 2 weeks now.

About 2 hours ago it started heading for my chest. I am so screwed. I hate being sick. And my step-kids are due up this weekend, so I'll get no rest. I'm feeling incredibly sorry for myself, and I'm just sharing with all of you. I know things could be worse, so don't send any "It's just a stupid cold, you baby" emails. I know that. But it's my web page and I'll complain about anything I want.

Tuesday...that means it's not Monday anymore. That can't be anything but good. I slept REALLY well last night, for the first time in a long time. I could have stayed in bed for about 3 more hours than I actually did. That was the stinky part.

I did find my third and final watch when I got home last night, so the pressure to go to the *shudder* mall is a little less. I do need to get it done, though. This watch is all silver, and I usually wear gold jewelry. What would Mr. Black say?

Why do I click the "remember me" box EVERY time I log in when I know it's not holding the cookie? sigh

Anyway, go to Orisinal : Morning Sunshine here for some GORGEOUS and very creative games. Thanks to Steve for the heads up.

I took an online personality test to see which online personality test I would be. Heh.

I'm How British Are You?!

I know the differences between Brits and Americans, and I'm just so glad to tell you all about them. I won't say too much, though, or I'll exceed my daily bandwidth limit. Again.

Click here to find out which test you are!

I had an entirely cool weekend. Most of it was spent at home. Oh, and we learned not to tell Mookie ahead of time that snow is expected cause we got "no snow yet" updates every 10-15 minutes on Saturday.

Yesterday Mr. Dump was forced to a company gathering (ON A SUNDAY! THE BASTARDS! HE EVEN HAD TO PAY FOR PARKING!) and during Mookie's nap I watched my chick movie, "Little Women" (the Winona Ryder version). Sometimes it's good to be queen.

Mook and I made a snowman yesterday. I don't remember it being that hard to make one. Has it really been 20+ years since my last snowperson? We used two green Sunkist Fruit Gems for eyes. It looked like a little snow alien.

Okay, I'm over with the snow now. It can melt. Spring can come. We played, we shovelled, we made a snowman. Isn't that enough?

I like looking for links to my pages using Google. The think is, when I do a search for related:www.bigdumptruck.com I get some odd sites in the list that don't seem to have anything to do with me, and then on closer inspection, still don't have anything to do with me. But I did find this link to sarcastra.net which is interesting. I like the domain name.

No sign of snow yet. We're all sitting around trying to decide what to have for dinner. It's an interesting conversation when an almost-4-year-old is involved. Somehow Mr. Dump found out that I had said something about going to Friendlies but really, I have no explaination for saying it. Mookie doesn't really like anything on the menu there. I, on the other hand, really dig the Fishamajig.

It's going to snow tonight! They are predicting 4 to seven inches, so I'm expecting either 1 inch or 2 feet. Cause that's how this works.

I need to buy snow/ski pants for myself. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a bit of quality time out in the snow this year.

I love people. This guy wrote a log of the results of his Home Depot Bet where he spends 16 hours inside a Home Depot trying to be inconspicuous.

Rated pg-13 for language.

The article I wrote for Thyroid Expert Mary Shomon, A Letter To My Pal Santa -- Is Santa Hypothyroid? A Humorous Letter to Santa is rerunning in her About.com forum! Cool!

Once again, I am having email trouble at work. I guess I'll have to get to all the fan mail later.

Oh, and speaking on fans, why is it that I I had seven times the regular amount of traffic to my web site, but the subscription list for people who want to know when the page has been updated was ONE PERSON LOWER than it had been the day before. All those visitors and not only did nobody sign up, one person left!

It was seventy degrees today.

I missed it.

Why can't the good weather wait until the weekend?

Do you know anyone who has ever won anything under the cap of a bottle of soda? I mean, other than maybe a free soda? Danged Pepsi company getting my hopes up.

I think it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.

I've got an ad on The Top Five List. Welcome to all the new sets of eyes!

Went to be way too late last night (as I mentioned yesterday) and now I'm dragging. Hey, maybe this cafeteria chili will help!

I am up waaaaay too late. Had to update the main Dump page because my hit counts should be huge in the next few days. But what a drag to do all this work and know I have to get up tomorrow.

I changed the working title of the novel today. It was "Ordinary World" which is kind of blah, but who cares, it's just a working title.

Then I was listening to ELO's ZOOM cd on the way to work and got to my favorite song, Ordinary Dream. OF COURSE! So there you go. Ordinary Dream it is.

I wasn't going to write any more tonight, but I just saw an ad for this Hello Kitty 3 Cup Rice Cooker and Warmer and I thought you would all want to know about it.

I renewed the domain today. Merry Christmas to me! I think that's pretty much it. I hate when I know what my present is ahead of time, but how would I wrap that gift?

Not too much shopping left. I am trying to be good with lists, but darn it if I don't always screw up and forget someone. I hate that. Then again, I don't want to buy a ton of extra stuff just in case I screwed up. I do keep a bunch of toys on hand for kids' birthdays and stuff, and I'm dipping deeply into it for Mookie this year, but there is still some stuff in there. I'm just not sure my mom would appreciate a Hot Wheels Fed-Ex play set. I wish she would though. As it is, I'm giving her a Fisher-Price tea set for her birthday Friday (but she wanted it!)

I don't see myself buying one of these Segway thingies. Where the hell would I use it? To cruise my neighborhood? Not really worth $3000 or whatever just for that. It looks heavy, too.

I don't see anyone building CITIES around it though.

Tomatos taste really great with mayo.

I'm just sayin

Monday, Monday, so good to me....

I started editing the novel last night. Cleanup, actually, to trim out all the stuff that was in the first two chapters that I never mentioned again after my big plot change. So far I've cut 7000 words. Do you know how painful that is to do when you've just been through an exercise like NaNoWriMo? The good news is that I have four pages of notes and content to add back to the novel as soon as I'm done this pruning. And more in my head.

Is the weekend over already? I demand a do-over!

We put the Christmas tree up yesterday, and decorated it this morning! It's pretty festive in here!

We didn't put a lot of ornaments on it this year. I think we may add some later, but for now it's nice. I found three Santa ornaments that I bought at one of those Mall Christmas stores last year when they had that "75% off cause we're closing next week" sale. They are BEAUTIFUL. I wonder why I only bought three? Maybe that's all they had left. I like them so much I wish the whole tree was decorated with these Santas.

Got some good ideas on how to change the novel. I've got some writing to do, but I'm happy with the changes I'm going to make!

Someone just pointed out the autosummarize feature in Word, so I ran it on my novel. Here is the output, reduced to less than 200 words. I can't guarantee that it makes any sense, it's just damned funny to see what Word thinks is important.

Remember? What if he doesn't respond? What if the water heater goes? 
"Dad, if I buy a house, I'll buy a house. Right Toby?"
Angie. If I can find the list. "One more time, Angie. Angie's eyes widened. 
"JIMMY! JIMMY LEE! What if she hates me? I also call Angie.
"Angie."
"Angie." "Jimmy Lee? "Jimmy LEE!!!!!" James. - Jimmy
If Angie "Mrs. Jimmy Lee" can remember, why the hell can't I? I wonder if he needs a roommate. 
"Angie will kill me if I kiss you."
Friend? If I didn't work nights, I would. Right? Right? "Oh, right, right. 

Wow, that sounds, uh, ya. Thanks Word.

It's December. Coooooool December. I have to tell you that it feels good knowing that I don't have to work on my story unless I want to. I do want to. I need to edit the heck out of it and come up with a real ending.

It's about 65 degrees today. Don't expect to see much of me today.

p.s. The hotel had CRAP for champagne. What a disappointment.