GAAAH

I did nothing yesterday.  Not even read a chapter in a book.   Just zoned out playing stupid # jigsaw puzzle (sudoko) and a bit of web browsing, mostly just reading what other people were doing and watching myth busters marathon when Dad had that on.   I'm not superstitious that what I did on Jan 1 influences the whole year but I don't have all that much time on my hands.  I should have cleaned, installed curtain rod,  addressed some greeting cards .... something.

We got shocking and depressing news that Dad's good friend of 20 years or more that he met when trucking at Leprino passed away.   I can't blame that for my sluggishness  though, because I hadn't done one thing in the 5 or 6 hours before that call.  

I came into work today.   Lots of empty offices as folks took PTO to get 4-day weekends or maybe 10 day blocks with Christmas.  I did not get much work accomplished,  frustrations abounding with programs mysteriously deleted from the processing CPU,  and then I have forgotten -- again, how to recompile our code.  You have to remember a hidden directory to put code edit patches in and I always forget the path.  I couldn't even find it in history and it was not only not showing up today but when I was trying list commands on the parent directory it was freezing the terminal window.  Very frustrating and the freezing windows was a new wrinkle.

I did some end of year donations on Monday or Tuesday but was going to do more and forgot.  I probably wouldn't have itemized deductions this year anyway so I can just give more next year and make any needed adjustment.  I don't attend a church so I try to hit about 10% in donations to various outfits instead but I tend to come out low.  This year I was definitely way under as far as IRS deductible stuff went but I gave some $ directly to a friend that runs a an animal rescue because she had vehicle break downs hit.   Possibly I could have done that thru the rescue,  she uses her vehicle(s) for the rescue and has used personal funds to make ends meet to feed the critters and stuff. But since I usually don't itemize anyway why risk an IRS hassle.   I'm probably still low, but I've been too lazy to  try to compile my various donations.  

I need to do some shopping for sister.  I feel lame, all I got her for Xmas was socks and 1 pr of wool long johns and I didn't even arrange gift wrapping or anything.  

She sent us some homemade carmel-corn and snack mixes with popcorn.  I managed not to break a tooth on any of the old maid kernels so yay me.  Yah, glass houses and throwing rocks big time but I'm a bit like "gee thanks for going the extra mile of putting the popcorn in a bowl and lifting out only the popped kernels before adding the syrup and making it easy to miss and bite down hard on the old maids"   She also sent me wool long johns  and some nice Avons lotions in handy sizes for packing (LOL on us sending each other the same thing and I believe neither of us requested long johns.)   I was borrowing her lotion hunting so I guess she thought I needed some travel packs.