At 6pm I managed to find a seat at Borders. My Borders has exactly two electrical outlets… and one is right next to the trash can. I suppose I should buy a new battery for the laptop, but the only time I remember is when I walk into Borders and it’s packed.

Dutifully I collected a stack of CSS and Perl books, and sat down at the table. Launching some screamingly loud music, I pull up the index page for RealityFuel. (*quote courtesy of AltoidsAddict) It’s Launch Day - and I had an assload of pages to code by midnight.

No stress, right?

The stress actually began in the morning. The city cited me yesterday - my first of the new year - for “tall grass.” Give me a break. I live on the edge of a park, which is maintained by the city. As I was headed for work on Friday, I noticed that the park’s grass was twice as high as mine. Oddly enough, as I pulled away from the house a crew of city employees with big ol’ lawnmowers passed me. And then, in the afternoon, I was cited. Bastards.

With much resignation and loud sighing, I mowed the lawn. Blech. Mowing led to killing weeds led to gathering up branches led to sanding the deck, and all of the sudden it’s 3:45p. Holy Schnikes! I’d been outside since 10:30a. This was not in the plans. Then again, when you’re ultrabusy and have self-diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder with Seriously Dysfunctional Hyper-Focus, shite happens. I will spend my entire day wandering from project to project, but never quite sure how I got from one to the other or where the hell all the time went.

So. Back at Borders.

I’m finishing up the last tweaks on the index page (ignoring the fact that I haven’t checked the site out in Netscrape at all) and there’s a tap on my shoulder. A family had piled into the cafe, keyboards and microphones in hand. The boys looked to be high schoolers, and apparently they’d arrived to regale us with the evening’s live music. (ugh) The trouble was … I was using the only viable electrical outlet! Would I mind moving to the little table next to the big smelly trash can? Pretty please?

First of all, the only time Borders is good for live music is when Javier is playing there. Secondly, the trash can was full of the entire day’s garbage. Gross. And… and… and…

Yeah, okay, so I moved. And set everything back up. And then went in to find the next file I needed… and couldn’t. Oh my. The main part of my evening’s project was missing. Panic! I checked six floppies and the entirety of my hard drive. Nothing.

During this panic attack, the mother of the band decides to thank me ad nauseum for moving from my original seat. My responses begin at a polite and pleasant, “no problem at all,” and fade to a brusque, “yep.” She just wouldn’t go away.

Cue Michelle throwing everything back in bags and running out the door.

By the time I reach the house and boot the pc, I have five or six e-mails from Jen. “are you there?”   “hello?”   “where are you?”  Ack! Ack! I’m here! So she’s making pancakes and I’m sucking down Mountain Dew to stay awake, and we’re strategizing. It’s 8:30p and I want to shoot myself in the head for the hours I wasted sanding.

Jen hacks away at one page and I hack at another. We swap pages at one point, and I realize (again) that Jen is a creative genius. Her page rocked on so many levels. Mine, a template of sorts, sucked. Or at least that’s my opinion. She assured me it was merely performance anxiety, and we continued on.

Around 10:30p she was off to a birthday tea, and I was charged with bringing the site live. ACK! ACK!

Somehow we did it. RealityFuel went live at 1:53a. It isn’t complete by any stretch of the imagination. There are more sections to be added, more tweaking and changing, but at this point, it was time to launch. From first hearing the “term” over three years ago, to the birth of the idea in September’02, to purchasing the domain in October’02, to sketching the site out this February, to actually live on June 1st at 1:53a. I can’t believe it. I’m not sure where it will go, but I’m damned willing to see what it becomes.

Exuberant,

michelle