Dinner did not burn down our kitchen. The fish as delicious, and the sauce was GREAT. We're already planning to make the sauce again and use it on chicken. I think I may throw in a bit of thyme for the next version; I think it'll compliment the black pepper nicely.

Also, in case I forgot to mention: We got to set our food on fire as part of the recipe.

Hell, I love cooking.

One of our cookbooks is nothing but recipes for sauces. The Husband picked out a whiskey and cream sauce for us to try, and I just looked over the recipe to decide when to start cooking. Part of the recipe requires the whiskey to be poured over the fish, and then the whole kit to be set on fire.

Awesome.

I left a message for The Husband to call me on his last break as I'm sure he'll want to be here when dinner gets set on fire. I'm thinking the answer is gonna be yes.

This is going to be sweet.

We've safely returned from the wedding. The trip went 95% smoothly. Our first flight started with some minor computer issues, but after that, all the flights and layovers went very well.

And I'm now reading The Poisonwood Bible for the ninth or tenth time. It's a great book for traveling because it always pulls me right back in.

Off to do nothing of import.

I have seven hours and ten minutes of required internship time to complete today. Today is the day I bury myself in the index. I'll be surprised if it doesn't require at least four or five more hours to get it polished up.

The style guide is complete, no thanks to the Word 2007 help screens. I ended up having an issue labeling some of the pages in the style guide because I wanted them to have "A-" followed by the page number for the appendix. I spent 20 minutes in Word 2007 trying to figure out how to set the page numbers, gave up because it was nearly 2:00 in the morning, came home, and did it in twenty seconds in Word 2008 for Mac. Dear Microsoft: Cross-Platform FAIL.

The style sheet is finished and needs laminating; the brochure has been adjusted per instructions and the reaction was positive; the manual needs at least one more round of hard editing before the proofreading edit, and the index needs...well, the index needs a lot. Indexes and I have kind of a shaky relationship. But I can do it.

I'm off.

16 hours of internship time that must be logged. Soon as I have dinner [The Husband's making chicken and pasta], I'm hunkering down and going to try and not come up for eight hours. It'll be...something else, I'm certain.

Pretty sure I blew my Astronomy test, but I'm okay with it. I've got two more, plus a project to bring the grade back up, and the lowest point for an A is actually an 87% once you figure the points. And before this test I had 102/100, so my concern is incredibly limited.

The Husband and I leave on Thursday morning for vacation. My baby brother gets married Saturday, and the rest of the time is general family time. I'll get to see my darling Carley for the first time in months, and it's possible we're both overly-excited at the prospect.

Off for dinner.

The style guide needs an index. It's 21 pages.

Nose. Grindstone. Go.

Spent half an hour on campus tracking down one of the computer labs I've never used. Got home, put down my papers and realized I printed the wrong draft of the manual.

Fuck a duck.

I worked on Astronomy vocab for an hour, and now I'm gonna go hop back in the car and get back to campus. I can't print at home because the printer hates my computer, and The Husband's computer doesn't pick up my font set [he doesn't run Word], so the print-out is not a reliable source of information if it comes from here.

Blergh.

I just broke the 100-hour mark on my internship [sitting at 102, actually]. I completed the rough draft of the brochure [10 hours on that, thank you], and I still have to edit my style guide, update my index [send tea], and complete at least one more proofreading edit on the manual itself [most likely two].

It's almost there, you guys. Busting my ass like crazy these last few weeks to finish this pile of work before the trip is paying off. And even if the entire project isn't complete before the wedding, I know I can get my minimum hours logged, and even that is a huge weight.

I have a brochure rough draft due to my client tomorrow, and I've only just figured out how to set the thing up and not fuck up my layout plan. I tend to work well on tight deadlines, so it's not that bad, but I won't sleep for awhile [I want the draft finished before I go to sleep.]

In a second bit of good news, I'm down to 38 hours left. There's a light on the horizon; now I just have to get all my shit done.

My Astronomy prof is talking about the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and their love of 3D models.

The JPL is where the standard levels of edit for technical communicators was invented.

So, wow, a gen ed actually made a passing reference to something I recognize in my major.

Apparently, Venus probably smells of rotten eggs and has a collection of melted space probes on its surface. I really, really wish this stuff was on the test. Be a funnier test.

Also, one of the continents on Venus is named "Aphrodite". Venus gets up to 900 degrees on a good day and smells of rotten eggs. Yeah, I think "goddess of love", too.

I can tell the difference between Cambria and Bookman Old Style without having to double-check myself. The internship has officially eaten my brain.

Hee. Blow job icon.

My incredibly talented sister-in-law, Carley Baer is playing in Manhattan tonight at a bar called "Otto's Shrunken Head" [538 E 14th St]. The show starts at six, if you're looking for something to listen to tonight.

Her website [linked above] has a few of her songs, so you can find out if you like her before you head out the door.

Thursday, noon: Get up, have cereal, check e-mail.
Thursday, 1:00 PM-6:00 PM: Internship work.
Thursday, 6:00 PM: Make dinner. I winged an entire recipe, and it was delicious. Very proud.
Thursday, 7:30 PM-8:53 PM: General dicking about to ignore the work I need to do.
Thursday, 8:53 PM-9:55 PM: Internship work.
Thursday, 9:55 PM-11:10 PM: Dye hair. Pictures to be posted soon.
Thursday, 11:10 PM-Friday, 12:30 AM: Internship work.
Friday, 12:30 AM-1:15 AM: Cuddled with The Husband.
Friday, 1:15 AM-4:15 AM: Internship work.
Friday, 4:15 AM-8:43 AM: Wrote progress report for my internship advisor.
Friday, 8:44 AM: Staying up another little bit because I need to send an e-mail.

I'll sack our somewhere in the 10:30 AM range. That way, when The Husband calls me during his lunch, I'll have enough sleep to comfortably function but not so much that my internal clock is screwed.

Also, no, I am not behind on my internship; I was determined to finish the giant revision letter in one sitting.

The epic e-mail is 8 pages long in Word.

And it's not complete. I need to add page numbers, the letterhead, page numbers that reference the manual, and I need to attach the bibliography. I have a fresh cup of tea, The Husband's gone to bed, and I may not get there tonight. I've got a progress report due to my internship adviser [advisor? Firefox is underlining in red, and I'm too wiped to care.] by tomorrow, and I've not started on it because I've been waiting for her to respond to an e-mail I sent asking about formatting.

She hasn't responded, so I'm gonna wing it. If nothing else, it'll be a detailed fucker. Luckily, I sent progress reports to my client, so I think I can easily change a few words, double check the details, and call the whole thing complete. Of course, I have to get there first.

It's 1:13 AM. Do you know where your intern is?

I'm doing away with the blonde and going red again. I just finished putting the dye on, and it looks like I've either suffered a massive, gaping head wound or bathed in someone's blood.

My ex-roommate is probably having a flashback to when our shower looked like a murder scene.

And only two have rules for lists.

No wonder everyone punctuates lists differently; the books I have that do have rules are both textbooks. [Document Design by Kimball and Hawkins and Technical Communication by Markel]

And, of those two, only one [Markel] goes into great deal about list punctuation. If I ever write a book on grammar and mechanics, there's going to be a full chapter dedicated to lists.

Back to the epic e-mail.

Accomplished:

--On-paper revisions for Version 6 of the internship paperwork are complete.

--Called the management company because our toilet would not stop running [but would still flush, weirdly enough]. The company sent a guy who is currently out buying whatever do-hickey is needed to fix the problem.

--Checked references for the epic e-mail I will need to send to my client. I have five books opened to various pages stacked together on my table.

To do:

--Put the on-paper revisions into the electronic copy.

--Send the epic e-mail.

--Make dinner. I'm going to season some flour, coat some pork chops, and throw them into a baking dish with mushrooms [canned, sadly], a chopped onion, and a bit of butter. This is a completely from scratch recipe, and I really hope it'll taste good at the end of it.

--Go to the gym.

--Watch at least one astronomy lecture.

--Write progress report for my internship advisor [Who has still not e-mailed me back about my formatting question. Crappers.].


What's on your list, flist?

I completed six hours on my internship today. Next up, a really long e-mail explaining why I made some revisions and why I prefer not to make others. It's gonna take some time, as I'm always concerned about making sure I'm saying things exactly as I want them phrased, and that I sound knowledgeable without sounding know-it-all.

Also, I pulled four sources for the difference between "affect" and "effect" to make sure I got it right. And, in a bit of amusement, I discovered that all my sources for affect vs. effect pretty much steal the exact phrasing from Elements of Style.

We're off to the gym in a few minutes, and then I think I'll start the e-mail tonight. I've logged my time today, but the sooner the e-mail is finished, the sooner it's finished, you know?

My first astronomy grades are posted. I got a 98 on the first test, and I got 19/15 on my paper. I honestly have no idea how I got a 98 on the test. I watched my lectures, yes, and I studied, but I still guessed on about 12 questions. Guess I knew what I was doing a bit better than I thought, or there was a curve, but I don't think so, because the prof didn't mention it. How I got over 100% on my paper, I've no idea. I guess a little extra effort results in a couple of extra points? I don't know.

Either way, I have 117/115 possible points, so I'm not going to ask too many questions.