I've complained often in the past few months that my computer desk was not meeting my needs. Since I have bifocals, it helps my none-too-strong eyes to have my computer monitor correctly positioned. Having broken my right wrist twice, it's also in my best interest to keep the joint as relaxed as possible.

My old desk was like many things in this house—freely given to 'the newlyweds' to help them furnish their first apartment. Since I hate buying things on credit, I decided to wait until I could afford to buy the kind of desk I wanted, without having to put it on credit. A few weeks ago, I found the desk I had in mind. Small and compact, it is a corner desk with a raised platform for my 19" monitor and a keyboard platform that is at the right height for my wrists. Since it was one of those assemble-it-yourself numbers, I got it for right at $100.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, but I'm surprised that it took this long. I've been found.

Someone who knows me from back home sent me a "Who are you?" email to one of my domesticat addresses. It's a disturbing feeling to see a name in your inbox that you haven't thought about in years, and to realize that because of the privacy precautions you've taken, that they don't know who you are. Gotta love having a very common first name while not making your surname public. This person correctly recognized that if I grew up in the [very small] town that I claim I did, and attended the [very small] high school that I attended, that she must undoubtedly know me.

She is correct.

I answered the email; I wonder if I'll regret doing so. I think Jeff wishes that I hadn't replied; I've said some pretty personal stuff on domesticat about a lot of things going on in my life, and I think he's concerned that some people (read: my family) might be offended or hurt.

*yawn*

I had to take Jeff to the emergency room at 1:30 this morning. Kidney stones, yum.

We just got home. Nothing like spending 3.5 hours in the emergency room early on a Wednesday morning to make me all nice and cheery. I'm currently functioning on an hour of sleep. Jeff just took some painkillers and went to bed.

I'm thinking that I'll be working from home today. Ugh.

A compilation of a day's worth of entries:

1:48 p.m.:

While under the best of circumstances I could be considered a worrywart, I think I'm at least a bit entitled today. My father underwent surgery this morning to repair his aortic aneurysm. So far, I haven't heard anything from my mother. I'm going to assume that's good news, though in truth I really don't even know how long the surgery is supposed to take.The surgery is fairly serious stuff. From what I can gather, Dad's aneurysm is serious enough that a section of the artery has to be entirely replaced. (It can't be clamped off.) Mom reminded me that the surgeons will have to stop Dad's heart for the duration of time it takes to graft the replacement vessel into his aorta.

No matter how you look at it, that's just a little bit terrifying.

The Christmas tree stands in the far corner of my living room, rising silently above the round tree skirt my mother quilted for me. We placed the crystal ornaments one by one on the tree, moving them close to the white and blue lights, to allow the lights to shine through them as much as possible.

I walk outside in sock feet and my toes get cold. Nice. It's gone from unseasonably warm to quite chilly. Today's high was around 46, and I have to wonder if that was one of those "daily high reached at midnight" temperatures. It certainly felt like it.

Had a frustrating realization today at about 4:30. I got an email from a client saying, "We're a bit disappointed—we asked you to design us a site with a look and feel similar to the Williams-Sonoma site, and this looks nothing like it."For the first time, though, she included the URL of the site. It took about ten seconds for me to figure out that there are two Williams-Sonoma sites—the kitchen store site and the corporate headquarters site. My design was based off of the store's site and theirs off of the corporate HQ site. Once that discrepancy was resolved, thigns were a lot more chipper over in the design department.