countdown

My birthday is less than two weeks away. Yesterday, the man asked me what I wanted. To be honest, it is difficult to tell the man what I want, but I should give him some sort of suggestion because I've been told by my closest friends that I am difficult to shop for. I really don't know what I would want for my birthday.

I'm hesitant to give the man any sort of guidelines because in the past few years we've been dating, something horribly wrong has happened to affect each and every plan we've made to do something special or even remotely special. He is a man, however, and left to his own devices may get me something that he heard me mention (but couldn't remember if it was because I liked it or disliked it so decided to throw caution to the wind). This is the man who wrapped a cheeseburger in gift wrap on my last birthday (at least he told me to open that one first and it was still fresh) because I do love cheeseburgers. But, when it comes down to it, wrapping perishable food is a bit odd.

Still, I think I will throw a couple nonthreatening ideas his way and hope for the best. Other than the food thing last year, he didn't do half bad.

work and work

I've decided, in an effort to subsist on more than a shoestring, to take on a couple side projects outside of work. I'll be beginning by doing a research project for a former colleague. The project shouldn't take me more than a week and a couple weekends, but will allow me to perhaps replenish my meager bank account a bit (there are a lot of birthdays in August!) and finance a couple tanks of gasoline.

My thesisn't is also time consuming and I'll be taking yet another brief hiatus from said thesisn't in order to do the other research project. Perhaps this new project will help me to focus my own work. One can only hope.

In other words, my time just became as tightly stretched as my dollars.