Number Five

Juror Five, that is.

(SON OF A BITCH.)

(ALSO, THE MACHINE REFUSED TO COUGH UP MY $4. I DEMAND MY $4, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.)

HA! And Also, Shit!

So I take it y'all really liked the Noah video?

Whoops.

Anyway, I'm in meetings all day today, and am actually supposed to be in a meeting RIGHT NOW, but I had to escape to blow my nose because I am still dying of the deathly head cold. This morning, right as the meeting started, I forgot about my cold for a few minutes and breathed in through my nose and it made a squeaking sound and everybody looked at me, so all day I've been breathing through my mouth and obsessively trying not to sniffle or make ANY OTHER NASAL-RELATED NOISES, which means I've bailed on the meeting about a dozen times so I can snorf and sneeze in the relative privacy of the ladies' room.

It's been a great day! And tomorrow? I have jury duty!

Yes. That will be fun. So if any of you have committed any crimes in the District of Columbia recently, please let me know so I can claim to have a bias against you.

Also, bring some tissues. And possibly some kind of mask and antibacterial hand gel.

The Babies Like the Bandwidth

The purpose of this post is simply to give you some goddamn baby pictures already. Because you asked. Repeatedly. Yes, you personally, because when I address my readers as YOU, I am not referring to a diverse mass of far-flung individuals, but am instead reaching out through the Internet to YOU THERE, AT THE COMPUTER, IN THE TIN FOIL HAT.

YOUR DOG SAYS TO SEND ME MONEY.

Noah is five months old now.

He is officially aware of Coach's superior materials and workmanship.

He lets you know when he wants a hug, and will return the favor with gusto.

His hair is mostly blond, with just the faintest hint of red.

His eyes continue to baffle us, because they're looking sort of green.

He never, ever stops talking. Or making the turtle face.

He finds me pretty amusing, but not nearly as funny as the dog, who is the funniest thing in the entire damn world and also fun to suck on.

People are finally starting to say he looks like me.

Which: please. I have never been this cute in my entire life.

And here's where I will be extremely self-indulgent and post a video of Noah's wicked new babbling skillz. Which I have never done before and frankly, have no idea if this will completely crash the site, finally alert Typepad to my egregious bandwidth overages, kill us all in a hot molten death, or simply be kind of annoying and stupid.

Anyway, if you are here and do not see this entry, it is probably the video's fault.

The Turtle Speaks (Featuring Cameo By Small Brown Dog)

(I swear to God, we really do take him out of the exersaucer occasionally.)

(I mean really, he's also got a perfectly nice kennel.)

This Post Contains Entirely Too Much Discussion Of Nasal Cavity Secretions

I don't mean to be melodramatic here, people, but I have a cold and I think I am going to die.

Look! I see a bright light! I am heading towards the light! Take me home, Lord, away from this phlegmy and mouth-breathing existence and into the loving arms of...

Oh. It is not the light of heaven. It is simply the warm glow of my new 19-inch flatscreen monitor.

(Oooooh! Aaaaaaah!)

Lesson learned: If you want a fancy new work computer, you simply have to fuck your old one all the fuck up. Awesome.

And while I am very glad to hear that my trials inspired entire dozens of you to back up your own hard drives, or at least to comment about how you fully intend to back up your hard drives, you know, one of these days, you're just going through some things right now, I would like to bring this all back around to ME ME ME and how much it sucked when I lost my work computer and just how many people saw me in a hyper-caffeinated state of ABSOLUTE PANIC on Friday.

And also, I am so totally going to die. Death from a head cold, courtesy of our own precious bundle of infectious microbes, the baby formerly known as Noah, now affectionately and more accurately known as Baby Pukeface.

Speaking of His Royal Snotness, y'all are going to throw things at me when you get to the bottom of this entry and realize that once again, I have posted no baby pictures.

Words! What's with all the words? Does she not get that we care not about her stupid words?

See, I've been waiting for Noah's cold to go away, because while I will discuss the contents of his diaper or disclose that his nickname is, in fact and in all seriousness, Baby Pukeface, I really don't like posting pictures of him with a runny and/or booger-encrusted nose. And no matter how quick I am with the tissue (that yes, I've kept stuffed in my sleeve because I have suddenly become That Crazy Lady Who Keeps Used Tissues In Her Sleeve And Possibly Spits On Them Before Wiping Your Face Like, Fucking Gross, Dude), by the time I've focused the camera Noah's nose has once again gushed mucus anew.

So basically: If you want baby pictures, check back in the spring, or maybe once I reinstall Photoshop on my bitching new computer.

However, here is a picture of a DHL mailbin that has sat in my office lobby for well over a year now, and just this morning I noted that the sign is missing what I believe is the operative word, like, I'm an EDITOR, y'all:

This is very funny to me, as I now read the sign in an affected British accent: Oh, do throw away please! Please, do. 'Twould be ever so smashing!

Helpful Network Guy: What?

Entire Internet: What?

Amy: Cold meds, people. I'm really sorry.

PC Load Letter Paper Jam

So I thought today was going to be a good day.

Unlike yesterday, Noah didn't wake up at 4 am with a hacking cough and full of righteous indignation at said hacking cough because it interrupted the flow of his screaming.

Unlike yesterday, Noah didn't throw up an entire 8 ounces of formula all over me, my bed, my pillow and Jason's ear at 4:30 am.

Unlike yesterday, I was not doing loads of vomitous laundry at 4:45 am, nor was I at work by 7:45 am, because while I'm okay with tossing a towel over a baby pee-stain on the bed, puddles of regurgitated Similac are something else entirely and FINE, I will get up and just go to work already.

Yesterday was a bad day. I was at work for 10 hours straight, had to speak in front of the entire company and I may have murdered a coworker or two. I barely made the daycare pick-up deadline and Noah's teacher informed me that all the babies had the same cough, and now seemed to be moving on to sharing a case of hand, foot and mouth disease. So you know, watch out for that.

But! Today seemed better! Noah slept until 7 and there was no screaming, just a happy baby chattering away to his hands, who are really good listeners and find Noah to be an excellent conversationalist. The cough is better, the mucus is abating and no one threw up on me, not even a little bit.

And then!

Hello! I am Amy's work computer! I greet you with happy blue screen of death! You are doomed! You are welcome!

My work computer blew the fuck up. It is "corrupted." It is "riddled with hard drive inconsistencies and bad cluster files." It is "not under warranty." It is "currently in many little pieces after I beat it to death with a baseball bat."

Helpful Network Guy: You save your stuff on your network drive, right?

Amy: Um.

Random Coworker Wondering Why I Am Weeping: But you can still get to your network drive, right?

Amy: Well, yes, but...um.

Amy's Boss: I save everything on the network drive. You do too, right?

Amy: I am going to go lie down in the parking garage for a little while.

So yes. I am really, really dumb. Four years of files are more than likely gone forever.

I sort of take a Unabomberesque approach to data management, as I simply don't trust network drives for some reason and prefer to instead create the world's most crowded and bizarrely structured My Documents folder, which is where I put EVERYTHING, in a series of folders and subfolders that only make sense to me.

Looking for a spreadsheet of stock market returns? No, that is not in the "Spreadsheets" folder, that contains the Word docs of stuff that I need to create spreadsheets for, but haven't yet. No, the actual spreadsheets are in My Pictures, in the folder labeled "Money." I mean, duh.

I am also lazy and never back anything up. If Typepad eats it, a la Diary-X, y'all will just have to remember the archives from memory.

Anyway, I looked on my network drive and found the following:

1. My Outlook Sent Items folder, circa June 2003

2. Four photos of my shoes, circa God knows when, but apparently stacked heels were really in.

3. A Word document on why Enron is the commodity stock of the future, circa July 2001

Helpful Network Guy messed around with my computer for quite some time this morning, while I paced around my office, chewing on my fingers, drinking cup after cup of coffeecoffeecoffee and texting people on my phone because the lack of email was KILLING ME, and I was even texting COWORKERS because I don't really know where people sit and have lost my list of phone extensions because WHO NEEDS IT when you have EMAIL, GLORIOUS EMAIL.

Helpful Network Guy: I'll bring you a temporary computer while I work on trying to save your data.

Amy: *thinks about all the personal crap on her work computer*

Amy: *thinks about the spare copies of her resume on her work computer*

Amy: *thinks about the baby pictures. the belly pictures. the dog pictures. the shoe pictures.*

Amy: Um. Could you maybe...you know...recover stuff without really looking at it?

Helpful Network Guy: What?

Amy: Excuse me, I need another cup of coffee.

Amy: *realizes that the Irish Creme coffee creamers are not actually getting her drunk in the slightest and considers writing Coffeemate a letter about false advertising*

Amy: Damn it, I'd really rather just send them an email.

Helpful Network Guy: What?