OBX

(7:10am)
It is looking more and more like we'll be heading to the Outer Banks for that week in April. Doug has spent many long hours researching rentals, and we can pretty much live like kings and queens and princes and princesses for a week.

We invited Aaron and Michelle to come with. They're considering it. This'll be a long assed trip for them -- 5 hours to our house, 12 hours there. We'll have to plan this right so everyone is comfy, and life is good.

If you've ever gone to the OBX (I just like typing it. Makes me think of "The OC" only without furrowed browed actors hanging around) tell me your stories. Use the comments.

(7:58pm)
Not using Journalspace during the day means that I'm not able to throw my pithy updates at you higgledy-piggledy, or whenever the wind blows up my writer's skirt.

It's late. I'm home, we just grilled Salmon, and are waiting for yet another winter storm to begin. Joy of joys.

I know, I've maintained in the past that you (and I) are NOT allowed to bitch, kvetch, whinge or otherwise complain about the weather if we live in New England. It is our collective cross to bear. And it is no party.

I'm reaching my tolerance limit though. This late in March, when it was 57 degrees just the other day -- this chafes my britches.

Anyway -- grilling in the cold is so much fun. I greatly enjoy standing out there and smelling the cold air, and the fish and the charcoal. I can't wait for campfire time... which now will be in July thanks to the extra coat of snow we expect tonight. Grrr.

Today at work (I know, I don't talk about work... but) we received content from our Flash designers.

Each month the content gets better (don't ask me about the aneurysm I had in early February when we received that batch of content) but there are always errors in the text or the layout and it just makes me crazy.

Yes, I'm hyper critical.

Just because they know Flash and I have yet to conquer it, they get to do the content and make it look assy.

The latest batch contained the line "Here's some suggestions" in the text and the voice over.

Isn't it "Here ARE some suggestions?" You'd never say "Here IS some suggestions" (unless you are Cletus Squatford). So doing the contraction to "here's" is not possible, not grammatically correct and simply punishable by DEATH in my book.

I pointed this out to G and told her that I thought we should send it back to them and say "correct the mistake or eat it."

She told me that the amount of time to have that done, and the cost, were not justified. "You're the only one who is going to notice, you're the only one bothered by it."

Which is true, but not true.

How many of you go to the grocery store, or any store for that matter, and notice huge, glaring errors on signs (hearken back to my "Dinning" sign picture on Flickr.com)?

How many of you are made mental by such signs? Especially fancy pantsy design studio signs, not just Sharpie on Cardboard signs. I'm talking stuff someone paid pantloads of money for.

I'm irritated beyond belief that this error is going out into the world. It bothers me so deeply, down to my core being, that I see it in my mind, and hear the voice over in my head and I get sick to my stomach.

I told G that the death of the English language and the accountability of our vendor supplying this content are incredibly important to me, and I'm devastated that it doesn't seem to matter. I know she's busy, overworked, picks her battles carefully and has been hyper critical to the content providers in the past for other reasons. But hell -- don't they have a QA staff at this production house? Don't they have proofreaders? Doesn't someone have to look this over and sign off? More than just the professional who does the layout and design.

Two people could have corrected this from the outset -- the voiceover person, and the person typing the content into Flash.

Someone reviewing the documentation, a third set of eyes, also should have caught it.

Why does it come to ME in the scheduling phase, the last notch on the ladder, to catch these things before they go out to the consumer? And yes, 9 out of 9.8 people aren't going to catch it... but I know you. You're like me. Yes you are. And you will catch it. And you will think the content and our service are shite. Yes you will.

Now, before I get the snark comment, I realize right off the bat that I'm not the world's greatest writer. I make mistakes left and right ovah heah. I type too fast, and then I don't use the spell check built into Dreamweaver, and I push things up to the web without a QA department. I end sentences with prepositions. I start sentences with And But and/or Or. Yes I do.

My sister will catch things, write me a snarky note, and then I'll fix them. But. Without her, I doubt it would matter to anyone.

And you know why?

a) this is a blog
b) I'm not being paid obscene amounts of money for my work

And that makes all the difference in my mind.

Grrr again.

We went back on Atkins this week, which could explain my hyper sensitivities towards sentence structure, agreements, tenses, grammar and other crap. And one should never start any diet right before the cycle (unless you're a guy, in which case, knock yourself out) begins. I am cranky. I'm like Grandpa Simpson.

After Christmas, we got off the low-carb bandwagon. We were still low carb, meaning lowER carb compared to the year before when each of us would eat a pound of spaghetti for dinner.

I think I was hitting about 40 grams of carbs daily, most of that from bread and beer, not from salads and other healthier carb choices. I had lost over 40lbs total, and I think in the past three months gained back about 10.

Doug did the same.

So, we're back at it -- I'm hoping that the break from the low/no carb thing kicks our bodies back into gear and we're able to lose the weight. I've already lost 3 lbs. But damnit, I want a bottle of wine. And a cheesecake. Wish me luck.

Grrr redux.

Well, there isn't much else to write about. I want to go read to Geoff before he goes to bed. We're reading Lafcadio by Shel Silverstein, and it is well received by him. We're laughing our asses off. And it makes the evening wind down to a comfortable purr. Doug is going to look at more rentals online (OBX rentals... 800 bucks for a 5 bedroom 4 bath house with hot tub and billiards!) so I want to get off of here and let him have at it.

Talk at you later folks.