So the two enormous herds being sent from the West cancelled, leaving me with a total of 9 samples today instead of 190. Woo!

My technical audit just ended.

After I have a few minutes to breathe, I’ll start getting excited about seeing U2 tonight!

This is just getting silly.

After 3 days of overtime and 350+ samples and running out of primer twice last week, today I got one sample. ONE.

Ok, great, I got to catch up on stuff that was shoved to the side since the 9th.

Tomorrow, I’m getting 178 samples from the West, plus whatever Ontario gives me. On the day I’m having my Standards Council of Canada audit. On the day I’m leaving early to go see U2.

*twitch*

*cue insane laughter*

I didn’t have to go in to work Saturday after all. I just had to work a 12 hour day on Friday. Which isn’t so bad, except it made getting ready for the garage sale into a late-night affair. :p

As for the garage sale itself, it went pretty well. I had a couple real losers (the kind that think they are hot stuff for haggling, and then after you both agree on a price, they say, “Ok, I’ll give you [lower amount]”. Whatever.), but mostly everyone was nice. I made about $80, but more importantly I got rid of all my stuff! All the stuff that hadn’t sold by the end of the sale was taken and donated to Value Village (except a small TV, which I listed for sale on the UofG classifieds site).
The dresser my parents send down to go into the sale didn’t sell, presumably because it sagged in the middle and the mirror had a crack in it, but we left it on the curb with a “FREE” sign while we dropped off the stuff at VV and did a couple other errands. It was gone by the time we got back in about an hour and a half. Sweet!

Happy 09/09/09!

Today is a day like any other, but with a cooler date stamp. ^_^

The only things I know that are going on today is a movie release (“9”) and a sale on print photos at Wal-Mart (99 prints for $9.99). I wish I’d been organized enough to take advantage of the photo print deal. I have a bunch of photos I’d like printed out (not anywhere near 99, but I could pool with friends), but I’ve had too much to do lately. Ah well.

Enjoy the day, everyone!

I had a really great time at Dragon*Con this year!

Big post later. Now I sleep!

Testing, testing!

This should be an LJ username:

This should be a community:

Did it work?

Guess who’s going to a U2 concert?

Me!

Well, me an everyone at RIM.

Well, me, everyone at RIM, and like 45,000 other people.

Still pretty sweet, eh?

Dear North America,

Catch up to Europe in terms of employee vacation time.
plzkthx

Love,
Caitlin

I was talking to a scientific associate of mine in Finland today, and he mentioned he was going to Barcelona for 9 days starting next week. He just got back from a 3-week vacation around other parts of Europe at the beginning of the month.
And no, he hasn’t worked for his company for millions of years and worked his way up the vacation ladder, he’s about my age. Maaaaaybe 2 or 3 years older, max.

I think it would be very nice if our culture embraced the idea that employees can still be productive with more than 2 weeks vacation time. That the economy won’t collapse if we all got to stop and smell the roses a little more often. That work is important, but not more important than actually living life.

Today I was reading through my RSS feeds, checking out the blogs I always read, when I came across this:

The perfect is the enemy of the good. When you spend so much time looking for the “best” choice that you never actually do anything, you are sabotaging yourself.

Open the door, put one foot in front of the other, and go.
–Get Rich Slowly

In another blog:

Sometimes done is better than perfect.

I know I do this. There are lots of times (like yesterday) when I look at the things I need to do and just sigh and think “Why even bother?”.
… it’ll just need to be done again tomorrow
… it’ll never look like a home in a magazine
… it’ll never taste as good as when others make it
… it’ll never make me look as good as that girl I saw yesterday
… it’ll take a long time, and I only have 10 minutes now

Maybe I need to print out a sappy little saying and pin it up on my wall.

This one is particularly bad when I try to declutter things. I look at a room, and see the hours of work needed to make it perfect. I don’t see the work I could do in the 10 minutes I have right now. I don’t see the “little by little” that will chip away at the whole task.

I don’t want to settle for “good enough”, but I also don’t want to always be waiting for the right time to make it “perfect”, as perfect rarely comes. I will learn to settle for my best, and I will learn to understand that my best can depend on the circumstances.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Sometimes done is better than perfect.