7.21.99

    Managed to get a trip to the gym in last night. It didn't feel very satisfying though. I started off on the recumbent (sp?) bike and was stiff for the entire ten minutes I was on it. I hopped off to change the channel when the only other person besides T. left. When we came in this forty-ish woman was going a mile a minute on the treadmill and Fox News was on. You never know if they put this on the teevee or if it just happened to be on she came in. So, we didn't mess with it and watched the fluffiest piece of fluff on JFK Jr. than can possibly be imagined. The commercial breaks were longer than the program and the soundbites impossibly inane.

    I think the deaths of John-John and his wife and sister-in-law are sad. It's tragic, even. However, there's really not much to say about it. He came from a famous family and he was pretty cute. He wasn't in the public eye much and the public really doesn't have a feeling for who he is. How unfortunate for all the news magazines as they try to come up with retrospectives and specials and in-depth investigations. There's just not a whole heck of a lot to say.

    My personal tragedy is the fact that I am an idiot and procrastinated just enough that I won't be able to attend a friend's wedding this weekend in L.A. On Monday, we had tickets and reservations. On Tuesday we were told that we didn't because we were late on a credit card payment (should've gone out the week we were in Alabama) and the credit card refused the transaction. All day Tuesday we scrambled to rectify the situation but the only remedy is to spend twice the amount of money on tickets. And, we just don't have it. We don't have that money in our checking account and we'd kill the credit card if we put it there.

    I don't quite know how I'm going to make this up to the bride. She came out to my wedding and I definitely feel obligated to make it to hers. I want to go, though. I bought a new dress that is fantastic and is currently being hemmed. I bought new shoes to go with the dress. Her wedding is at The Ritz or some such place and all of my buddies are going to be there. It royally stinks that I'm going to miss out. I may try to go "stand by" and hope for a cheap ticket. I don't really know how that works, though. Argh. I hate airlines.

    On the Webgrrls front, I finally had someone approach me with a level head. As it turns out there's really only three original members, myself included, of the current Steering Committee. The others are new within the last four months. This partially explains why there has been little discussion on the SC list of the website issue and why no one has stepped up to talk with me or support me — they most likely have no idea of what's going on or their place in it.

    Bottom line is that the president is going to need to put me back in charge. Whether she intended to or not, she gave away my position. She needs to right things and quickly since this other grrl has been sending around emails to various people in charge making promises about things for the website. I only know because one of the grrls responded to her and cc'd the SC mailing list. That's the stuff that should have been happening all along. I wonder if she realizes what an incredible "heads up" that was or if she was just being professional. Whatever happens next, only the president can keep it from getting nastier. Someone needs to take control of the SC since it is obviously flailing.

    Here's some really great writing that I read today: "That Wasn't Me" from Lagniappe and "In The Zone" from Chuck's Take. I would read them in that order, too. They are completely different types of writing and cover completely different topics but they both caused an emotional reaction on my part.