everythinglori.com

Ready for this shit?  I haven’t written on my blog in I don’t even know how long, but now, I’m just praying that ANY computer wiz will see this and reply to me ASAP.  The gist is this:  My job has laid people off.  I’m not one of them.  This is good.  However, this also means I have about 13 times the amount of responsibilities.  To increase my output, I need to do some mass emailings.  Problem here is that I need to use Mail Merge.  I tried using it on outlook, but the plug-in crashed my computer repeatedly.  So, I’m using Word.  I have Word 2007, which is kinda confusing.  I finally figured out how to do the mail merge for emails, but it won’t allow me to include an attachment, which is sorta important for what I’m doing.  Marketing department?  They had no idea.  IT department?  No idea.  I contacted people on Facebook.  I IM’d all my friends.  No one.  No one.  No one knows if it’s possible.  EVEN on Microsoft’s help box AND website, there is no specific reference for this.  The only reference is from people commenting on the page ALSO asking how, and the only response was from another guy who just didn’t know.  I tried "inserting object" but when you send the email – the object is not an attachment you can open, it’s just a picture of the attachment or of an icon.  Nothing you can click on.  

Can anyone anyone ANYONE on the planet, please explain to me how I can do personalized mass emailings while including attachments without using "Easy Mail Merge" plug-in for Outlook?  

HOURS have gone by.  HOURS UPON HOURS.  I would have gotten more done at work if I hadn’t attempted to do more than I usually did, but now this is personal.

PLEASE GOD - if you have ANY idea on this fucking earth how to attach files to email merge – would you please email me immediately?  And if you email me a general link to Microsoft Help because you think I didn’t try that, trust me – I did.  I just…I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that I can’t find ANYONE who knows the answer to this.  Like I’m the first fucking person on EARTH who needed to mass email with an attachment??  It’s just fucking insane.  HELP ME!!

everythinglori@gmail.com

Everybody wants to want to work out. Everyone gets motivated for a week or two and then drops the ball because it’s time-consuming and painful. It takes discipline, work, focus – and for the most part, patience, as you generally won’t see any results from your struggle for a long time. Not to mention – you also have to change your eating/drinking patterns entirely or all that working out is for nothing. Point is, it’s something we all SHOULD do because we’re not getting any younger, and the only way to prevent getting older even faster is to keep our bodies in top shape. In the long run, it’ll save us thousands to tens of thousands in medical bills and prescriptions, years of potentially excruciating physical pain, and a lifetime of guilt knowing that we did this to ourselves as we stare down on our a decaying bodies.

» Continue reading ‘How I Got My Ass to the Gym’

I once dated a recovering alcoholic nearly a year after he was out of rehab.  He was a good man with a very troubled past and a dedication to sobriety that ironically, only an addict could possess.  Though his laundry list of red flags unrolled as long as the Dead Sea Scrolls, he believed his handsome face and thus powerful conceit and bizarrely irresistible arrogance is what made him so attractive to others.  Sadly, he was right in that any man with enough confidence will grab the attention of women, but it will never be enough to earn their love.  What the man never learned, and still today does not understand, was that his truest attractive qualities actually rested in his complete vulnerability, and his absolute conception and thus articulation of his emotional battle with his former addiction.  He could bullshit about nothing and everything all day, but when he let down his guard and just talked about the intricate sensations that one experiences when battling addiction – the habits, the thought-processes, the patterns, the twisted and delusional rationalizations – he was nothing short of a poet.  Not one um or uh.  Not one sarcastic note.  Not a joke.  Not a cocky sentiment.  Just honesty is the purest form.  His ability to open up, his ability to love and be loved when he would FINALLY let the day and his insistent attitude melt away – THAT was the man that I really saw in him, and he fascinated me endlessly because of it. 

» Continue reading ‘Rehabilitated’

I used to believe that I couldn’t earn certain adjectives to describe myself without liking certain details.  I didn’t think you could be Cool without liking Phish, Dave Matthews, or attending the football games at the all-boys schools.  I didn’t think you could be Smart without enjoying Shakespeare or reading the paper.  There were so many "conditions" to being whatever it was that we were trying to be, and even though I excelled at a handful of things, I always felt like I was socially crippled by my lack of interest in that which we were supposed to be interested.

» Continue reading ‘Politics – To Be or Not To Be?’

Nobody likes a Gossip.  It’s an insult to be called one.  It means you’re up in everyone’s business, and spreading that information to everyone else.  General frustrations with this type of person tend to involve wanting that person to get a life, to find something else to care about than other people’s personal lives, to mind their own business, etc.  Truth is, the majority of us do enjoy gossip.  Sure, we don’t want to be seen as someone whose eyes light up when someone has some scandalous secret to reveal, but for the most part – a good story is a good story.  Think about any movie – if you told that story about the main character in pieces over time to your girlfriend as though the person was not fictitious, wouldn’t it be gossip?  So, what?  It’s only gossip if it’s not designed for your ears, but couldn’t you enjoy it just the same?  Harmlessly? 

» Continue reading ‘Gossip Gone’

I sat outside at the tables on the street in the South End with Laura at a restaurant known for its novel cocktails.  It was colder out than any mid August night should be, which is never a welcomed temperature seeing as I can never stop loving a warm summer night – even if it means it’s hard to sleep.  Laura and I exchange are usual stories of work, relationships, the dirty secrets of the fucked up lives of our friends, and we got caught on a topic of settling.  It’s a strange age – this one we’re in.  It’s odd.  I say that about every age – and by "every age," I’m referring to every year because whereas the 20’s are one big lump for some (like those who’ve been in the same relationship since college), the differences in the years have been as dramatically differentiated emotionally as my teenage years were physically.   And I know I speak to this often, but the observations never cease to amaze me. They are potent, obvious, demanding discussion.

» Continue reading ‘Evolution’

Let me tell you what’s going on because there has been a lot of confusion…

I never moved my blog.  In fact, not only am I not moving my blog, but I’m going to make all the previous entries visible again.  I kept it offline because of my job change situation, but now that I know this will not be a conflict, I will keep this blog as it always was.  No, I don’t know HOW to upgrade it so that anyone CAN register, and so that I can only have said registered users as exclusive viewers.  No idea how to do it, don’t care to learn.  So, thank you, but don’t bother with sending me suggestions because I know I won’t do it.  I have over 200 entries on this site, and moving it, or doing ANYTHING else is more work than I have time to do these days.  Not to mention – it’s just not necessary.

So then.  Why have I not been writing?  What has been the reason for the hiatus?   Quite simple, actually.  Happiness.  Yup.  Didn’t think it would ever happen, and I know it won’t stay exactly this way forever, so I’m taking the time to fully enjoy it while it’s here.  Yes, in these last several months, I’ve found that the unexamined life is the ONLY one worth living.

In general, I wouldn’t agree with this point.  I think reflection and analysis is important.  Sometimes, we absolutely need to take a step back to look at what the hell we’re doing, but the thing is, I’m starting to really believe that if you’re actually happy – not just content, not just accepting of what we’ve got, but actually happy and having a great time, and enjoying our lives AS we’re living it (not just in retrospect), then I think the absolute WORST thing you can do is think about it or talk about it.  I mean, look at me.  For you guys who’ve been reading this since 2001, when did I write the most frequently?  During the whole Texan fiasco.  I had a lot on my mind, a lot to work out – the poor decisions I’d been making, the distance from home and old friends, the shitbag relationships, the unfulfilling career, and then a quickly-decided large-scale move from LA to Boston with a massive change in job.  I had all new theories – so much to say, so much to bitch about. 

And then, I got laid off from a job that was about as far from a personal sense of accomplishment as a job could possibly get.  Ridiculous perks, but I was pretty much brain dead.  Now, new job.  Hard work, and I’m doing well, but I’m eager to be a fucking superstar, so I’m going to have to work smarter AND harder, which I’m excited to do.  My condo kicks ass.  My boyfriend’s fucking fantastic and is STILL NICE to me a YEAR later (sadly, this is considered a completely novel relationship as around this time, my ex’s would start emotionally kicking me in the gut.)  Though I don’t have the dream body I like to imagine myself having one day – I have high hopes as I’ve finally acquired my 4300 Trek Mountain bike, and I just got this kickass hydration pack specifically for woman bikers, so though I imagine I’ll end up with some tree trunk thighs made of steel, my goals are fatfree face, cut arms, and abs like a brick wall.  How long have I been "wishing" this on myself?  Have to DO it, not just talk about it.  Man, can you imagine what it’d be like if you could get in shape by talking about it?

Point is, my life is good, and it’s hard to sit down and talk about it when I’m busy busting my ass at work, or grabbing cocktails downtown on the harbor with friends, or cuddling up with man? 

However, there’s more to reflect on that just MY life.  I’ve found myself developing more poetic observations – particularly now that I’ve found a non-highway route home from work that passes by cows and houses built 200 years ago.  I will write more.  I just wanted you to know what the deal is. 

Allow me to clear something up here because you’re all saying goodbye.  I’m not making my blog only visible to people I know personally, I would just prefer that you all register, and that only registered guests can read it.  I mean, it still means that anyone can register, so I don’t know exactly HOW private this really is, but it’ll be one step in the safer direction.

Anyone know of a place to blog other than myspace where people need to register to read the posts?  I’m not comfortable with having a completely public blog.  Any ideas, people?  I miss writing, but…I don’t know, I want to approve readers.  I may create a myspace if no one has any ideas, and just have blogs there, but they’re ugly to look at, that format.

We look at earthquakes as bad things.  We imagine collapsing skyscrapers, devastated homes, fault lines stetching open to swallow us whole.  We feel this way about forest fires as well.  We envision celebrity Malibu homes engulfed in red heat, cigarette butts causing the end of certain species, a blackened landscape.  However, it’s not really how the earth works.  The earth isn’t thinking in terms of our personal schedules, our designer couches, our insurance policies.  Earthquakes relieve the pressure, fires refresh the soil.  Without volcanic activity, we wouldn’t have such paradise islands like Hawaii.  Our planet is in a state of constant renewal, and it does what it needs to do to survive.  And survival seems to require continuous rebirth.  It is a part of Nature to collapse and rebuild.  To wipe clear a fresh slate and begin again.  So why then are we so surprised when our own lives reflect this same routine?

» Continue reading ‘Renewal’