The short list...

Leaving implementation details aside, the following represent areas of my life that require improvement:

 Health, especially in terms of weight and fitness. A lighter me will look better and feel better, and will likely help offset a tendency to exhibit - oh, but can I euphemize! - high BP; a more fit me will enjoy life more. Desired year-end result: 200 lb or less, solid record of exercising

 General organization, especially of financial records. A small effort each day beats a huge, soul-sapping effort - often broken up into several sessions - at some later date. Desired year-end result: To be able to put my hands on what I need, when I need it.

 Financial, in terms of beating down debts. This monster will not be slain all at once, lest I hit the lottery, which I play about twice a year. Desired year-end result: Progress. I'll know it when I see it.

 Personal, in terms of relationships. Don't be a wallflower. Correspond. Call. Get interested. Desired year-end result: Progress. Again, I'll know it when I see it.

The rest - the work, the language study, the reading, et al. - will take care of itself, the way it always does (though I am sure a periodic sit-down session to think about things won't hurt).

Cheers...

Blow me away...

After carefully applying myself to massaging the CSS file for my professional site, I finally get something that looks reasonably good - if perhaps a bit bland - in Firefox. This morning, on a whim, I took a look at the site using Internet Explorer, which is a program I fire up sparingly.

In IE, my site looks horrible.

Farblegarg, and other epithets.

* * *In better news - and without trying to cast the ol' jinx on it - it would appear that, for the first time ever in my experience, an orchid plant that was bought while in bloom and whose flowers have long ago fallen away is steadily pushing out new growth, including three flower pods so far! I don't know what it is I may have done in terms of lighting, watering, and temperature, but it would appear I have done it (more or less) correctly.

Life is grand.

Cheers...

Work update...

So there we were, dead in the water, fourteen miles off Shanghai...

Whoops. Wrong story. Sorry.

I have something under 1,000 source words left, and if I never get to test a "self-contained chemical power source" (known to the rest of us as "batteries") for use aboard the Space Station, my life might yet be thought of as complete at some future turn.

Galina's stomache was acting kinda punky earlier (how can you feel nauseated and hungry at the same time?), so I hied myself to the market to get some yogurt, figuring that the flora in said yogurt would do the girl good. As I walked by the flower department, I noticed they had orchids for sale. (This store has - or tries to have - it all, and management would likely shed no tears if every other business in the center were to close its doors permanently, but I digress...)

Of course, to convince people to part with a whopping $30, the orchids have to be in bloom, which they were, and quite beautiful, I might add. This leads me to believe that it's "that time of the year" for orchids, which figures, as there is really no other rational explanation - except possibly for UFOs - to account for the growth on the plant in my office.

A couple of nights ago - the night of the 30th, if memory serves - I took down the Trechmann translation of the Essays of Montaigne and started to leaf through the introductory material. I was struck by a passage that contained a word that truly baffled me. When I went back to look for the passage, I could not find it and actually began to believe I had imagined the whole thing when today... wham!... just like that, I turned to the right page of the introduction (by one J. M. Robertson), where I found the following:

His quiet success was the outcome of three factors, his manifold matter, his unmethodical method, and his unmannered manner. His serious counsel was the febrifuge that most men needed. But it was blended with a vast variety of expatiation on a hundred topics of human interest, the talk of a widely read and widely interested man, chatting with his fellows as having no axe to grind, but merely delivering himself of most of the thoughts and comments on life that came to him in the chances of his discursive reading and his daily experience. (My emphasis.)

A quick gander in my Webster's New Collegiate (rescued from the Methodist Thrift Shop's remainder box) shows the italicized word to mean a remedy to mitigate or remove fever. Oh-tay! That clarifies it all! Danke shön!

I think I will look in on Galina, take a short break, and then get back to the job.

Cheers...

Done!

I am still at some kind of loss to explain the logic of the text in the document I just finished. A strange mix of Russian and English, with no rhyme or reason as to why some parts are in one language, while other parts are in the other. One gets the feeling it was thrown together by someone with Some Other Place To Be After Work™. I am so tuckered out with this job, I well and truly think I'll put off checking it until tomorrow morning (although a look at my assignment form says it's due at 8 am my time... hmmm).

That means either splitting the task (yech) or getting up around 5 am tomorrow to do the job.

What I need to keep in mind is... the payday!

In the meantime, I think I'll take another break and see if Galina needs anything, like a footrub.

Cheers...