So yesterday afternoon, about fifteen minutes before I was going to leave, my task lead came in my office to apologize for ignoring me for the last two weeks - he'd been really busy with wrapping up another project. I told him it was all right, because I'd been out sick most of last week anyway, and so what was on the agenda for us now?

"Well... Not much of anything, really."

So I still have no work to do. Any my supervisor is supposed to be out of the office today, so I don't have a lot of hope in that direction, either. Maybe I'll work on this site today. I've been told that Next / Previous links would be good things to have in the journal entries. I almost never use them myself, and I've been putting off adding them here because it would take so long, but what the hell? I don't have anything else to do!

Some of you may be wondering why I care. It certainly seems like it would be a good thing to get a paycheck without doing any work! But when it comes time for my annual review, I have to fill out this form that explains what I've been doing for the past year. And if I don't have anything to put on the form, then my raise isn't going to be very impressive. It almost happened to me this past year - I'd finished a major project just before Matt and I got married, and then I spent a whole year with mostly little piddling little obnoxious projects. I'd do a few days' work, and then spend weeks with nothing to do. When it came time this past March to fill out my review form, I could only think of two or three little baby projects. And while my raise was still respectable by industry standards, it was the smallest raise I've ever gotten - measured by percentage points or plain dollars - that 3GI has ever given me. Now, I'm sure some of the reason for that was that when I started working here, my salary was way below industry standards (because I wasn't actually a programmer when they hired me - they hired me cheap because I'd have to learn everything on the job) and they spent a couple of years giving me pretty amazing raises to bring it up to par. So it may be that this last raise was just a "standard" raise. But I'm pretty sure that if I spend another year working on my web page and reading novels, my next raise will be pretty pathetic.

Enough of that. My dad called last night to tell us that he'd dropped by the house after he got off from work, and they've delivered all the framing lumber! Yay! Maybe that means they'll start building today or tomorrow! Matt and I are planning on dropping by this evening to see for ourselves. It's a little nerve-wracking, because we'll have to decide soon whether to renew our lease for an extra two months. I think it may depend on how far they get in the next few weeks.

We're also going to call our friends Chuck and Anita to see if they'll be home this evening for visitors. They had their first child a couple of weeks ago, but I was sick then so we didn't visit. (I'm sure the last thing they need is for us to give their new baby a cold. Or give them a cold.) But I'm mostly better now and I'm pretty sure I'm no longer contagious, so we're going to try to swing by and see them and the baby.

Matt found out yesterday that to catch his ride to the airport on Saturday, he's going to have to leave at just about our usual time for leaving for work Saturday morning - about 7:15. I'm grateful that it isn't any earlier, but I'd been hoping it would be a little later. A 7:15 departure means that I'll be able to wake up enough to say goodbye, but by the time he leaves I probably won't be able to go back to sleep. ::sigh:: Maybe I'll go shopping. Though the malls don't open until 10. I'll think of something, I suppose. Maybe I'll get domestic and make cookies or something for Saturday night's game.

I got an issue of Cooking Light yesterday. The first half of the magazine had nothing whatsoever to do with cooking - it was about fitness and such. Hmph. I signed up for that magazine because I need recipes, not exercises! But there were a few recipes in there that I might try. They had a recipe for fish fillets where you coat the fillet with potato flakes and then pan-fry it that I might try. (I don't usually like fish, but I'll happily eat fishsticks and other breaded fish. I'm hoping that this recipe will have the same effect.) There's also a tomato soup recipe that I might try, and a whole section on low-fat Crème Anglaise that looks like it makes wonderful desserts.

Have a great day!