Three Threes

Three Things I Do Well

1. Fill out forms. Federal income tax forms. Probate Court forms. Questionnaires of all types. I'm currently filling out forms to open education savings accounts for one of the firm's clients. Now, while I balk at doing this sort of menial labor for coddled rich people, I do find a certain enjoyment in telling them that every box and line must be completed, and there's no getting away with this "using a business address or P.O. Box as their residence address" nonsense. My own special brand of passive-aggressiveness – just another service I provide.

2. Word games. Scrabble, crossword puzzles, that sort of stuff. I have no skills whatsoever in the visual or performing arts, but I know and love my words. It's a very strange place I inhabit, and I'll have to write more about it one of these days. For the moment, I'll leave the description of my internal landscape alone.

3. Procrastinate. At this I excel.

Three Things at Which I Absolutely Suck

1. Sports, especially team sports. I was always one of those kids picked last for the team in gym class.

2. Math. The math part of my brain reached it's limit my junior year in high school in Algebra 2 with Mr. Bomeli. I got an "A" the first semester, and a "C" the second (with a "D" on the final exam). My little head just couldn't hold any more than that and just gave up, I suppose.

3. Keeping up with High Maintenance Hair. I keep my hair short for a reason. All those clips, combs, braids, up-do's, ribbons, mousses, gels, and sprays simply don't work for me. My only styling product is water. I think that any woman who spends more than 10 minutes on her hair in the morning (including drying time) is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. That time could be used on many other productive activities. Sleeping, for example.

Three Things I'm Trying to do Better.

1. Develop a "poker face." My role model for this is Bud Cort in Harold and Maude. I'm setting the bar pretty high. I want to develop the perfectly affectless look. I do pretty well at not laughing at the absurdities I hear almost daily at work. There was quite the pot-kettle-black thing going on at lunch the other day, but no details here. Who knows who reads my blog? (/wave at Queen Frostine).

2. Stick to a budget. I decided that it was high time I brought down my credit card debt. I'm not going to say exactly what that amount IS, but let's just say I'm above the average amount reported in the news stories cropping up these days about Americans' problems with credit. I've got an above average FICO score too -- 800+. [I've always had to be above average. /sigh ] In any event, I copied the budget spreadsheet from Crazy Aunt Pearl's website, and plugged in my own amounts and categories. I like to think that I'm the only person in the world (well, the only person in my immediate neighborhood) who has a budget with line items for "comic books," "yarn," and "Sweetwaters' coffee cards." The simple fact that I have a budget is already limiting my spending. It's like keeping a food diary when you're dieting. If you have to write down every bite you put in your mouth, you don't eat as much. If I have to record every spontaneous purchase, I don't spend as much. I spent many years without credit cards and bought everything with cash, including a trip to Paris. If I stick to my budget, I can get rid of all my credit card debt in two and a half years.

3. Design mods for Morrowind. Like I said somewhere up above, I have no "artistic" type skills, so I'm not doing new meshes and textures; I'm not designing armor or creatures or weapons. I can, however, write dialog and journal entries and quests and similar things. The strange top-down dialog trees make sense to me (most limited entries first down to the most generic). I can't remember which modder in the online community -- one I respected highly for her excellent visual mods (armor, housing, texture replacers) -- wrote that dialog intimidated her. I was stunned. It seems so easy to me, but I know I can improve. I want to finish the "Cats of Ulthar" while I'm on vacation next week. I have one more quest to go. I finally found a texture for Carter's silver key.