Friday: Got a bunch of hair cut off (and Bill somehow managed to not notice, which amused me), donated blood, and had a write-in with Kate. She wrote while I talked and updated various blogs and talked some more. She's remarkably patient with my gabbiness when she's trying to get stuff done. She also gave me all the leftover books from Gaithersburg, which I journaled when I got home.

Saturday: Took a driving tour of St. Mary's County, Maryland. I started at St. Clements (but not the actual island, which is only accessible by boat), went up inside Piney Point lighthouse (and met an absolutely delightful museum volunteer; we shared bird stories), rediscovered how uninterested I am in beaches while visiting Point Lookout, walked the length and breadth of St. Mary's City, and finally supped in Leonardtown before heading home. I also released a few books, changed my shirt in public (twice), and somehow managed to break my sunglasses. I never ceased sweating pretty much the entire day, and thus kept shoving liquids down my throat, which only fed the sweat problem. By the end of it I was starting to seriously consider dehydration if it meant non-damp armpits.

Sunday: Saw The Avengers, cut up some brochures from the previous day's adventures, and felt generally lost. I just didn't know what to do with myself. This happens from time to time, and it can be pretty paralyzing. Ultimately I just went to bed.

Today: Did basically nothing, save a trip to Michael's where I'd intended to purchase gesso and/or gel medium and ended up with Mod Podge I haven't opened yet. Then I spent hours upon hours working on a gluebook for a friend while watching assorted Doctor Who episodes (fourth, fifth, and seventh Doctors).

And now I think I'll get my crap together for tomorrow. I predict another very long week at work.

Some thoughts:

1. If they ever make a live-action Dragonlance movie, I want Tom Hiddleston to play Raistlin. His wicked grin was perfect.

2. It was actually my darling husband who made the first comment about Chris Hemsworth being really great eye-candy, but I won't pretend I wasn't thinking it the entire movie. (And yes, I have seen Thor, and I had similar thoughts then.) (Really, I'd just kind of like to take the boy home with me, hammer and all.) (And if he wants to bring along Tom Hiddleston, sans ridiculous helmet, that'd be fine too.)

3. Robert Downey Jr. really made the entire movie. The could have called it Iron Man 3 and not changed a thing.

4. Jeremy Renner was okay, but I couldn't shake the suspicion that he was hired because they couldn't get Nathan Fillion, and Joss Whedon just wasn't comfortable doing anything without him.

5. Speaking of Whedon, I was impressed at how true he was to the characters' existing voices, rather than making everyone talk like the cast of Buffy. Sure, there were a few unnecessarily "clever" one-liners, but by and large I got a real kick out of it.

6. Thor couldn't have popped by to say hello to his lady love while on the same planet? I mean, I appreciated the quick explanation of why she didn't appear in this film, but if I were her, I'd be pretty hurt.

So yeah, it was just as awesome as I'd expected it to be. It has not, however, convinced me to give Firefly a second chance.

I hit forty hours for the week at noon today. I was asked to attend a meeting this afternoon from 1 to 2, even though it would be casual overtime. (You don't get paid for the first eight hours beyond forty. "Casual" is a euphemism for "unpaid".) The meeting organizer asked me if that was okay or if I had commitments for the holiday weekend. I told them I had commitments, but really it's just my commitment to not working for free.

Had a session with Jeev this morning, and I must be having an off day, because everything was way harder than it usually is. My balance was crap(pier than usual), my legs kept seizing up on me, and my arms barely wanted to work. But I powered on through, and evidently did my stair runs at the end so quickly that Jeev thought maybe I'd skipped the second flight of stairs. Heh.

So after that bit of torture I was feeling exhausted and hungry. I thought very seriously about treating myself to some fast food breakfast, but you know what? I stuck with my oatmeal and protein shake. I didn't eat one extra thing than what my diet called for.

I feel like I should be more proud of myself but I'm having trouble mustering up a damn to give. I guess apathy is better than outright depression, which is how I spent the first couple weeks on Nutrisystem. Small victories.

The in-law visit was fine. Friday we hung out and after they went back to the hotel I popped over to Kate's to give her my books for Gaithersburg. Saturday we visited the International Spy Museum (interesting but not worth the admission price) and then headed across the street to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (or whatever they're calling the Portrait Gallery's roommate these days), where Bill got to see the Art of Video Games exhibit again and I finally found the Art-o-mat machine. Sunday we had Todai for lunch then lazed about the house, watching "The Muppets" and "My Neighbor Totoro." Bill cooked red beans & rice for dinner, then we called it an early night because we were all exhausted.

Last night I spent the evening gluebooking and watching "Othello" (the Lawrence Fishburne/Kenneth Branagh one). I have about a half hour left, so I'll probably finish that tonight and then maybe watch the Doctor Who episode Jen from Cake Wrecks recommended. She and her husband are, unbeknownst to them, definitely Our People, so I trust her judgment. Gluebooking is good for the soul (or my soul, at any rate).

Bill is already so sick of my whining that he's started looking into alternatives to Nutrisystem. The thing is, the problem isn't the food - it's the hunger. And I'm hungry just all the freaking time. I've started eating my "dessert" in the morning because I'm usually not starving after dinner, and that seems to be helping a little bit. But this morning's cheese puffs had the consistency of SunChips. Whole-grain cheesy poofs? Blasphemy!

Yesterday Jeev put me through an entire hour of nonstop cardio. That was pretty rough, but I am pleased to say that at the very end of the session he had me doing stair runs, and despite my exhaustion my last one was only 31 seconds! Me = awesome*.

*Some restrictions may apply.

Alas, I have no other news because I've been so miserable this week I've done basically nothing besides exercise, work, and play mindless video games until it's time for bed. Nutrisystem really takes the joy out of eating for me, and I'm taking a lot longer than expected to adjust.

Since I'm awake anyway, I suppose I'll take this time to update. First, Nutrisystem: I'm hungry. Like, all the time. But that's something I just have to deal with.

Saturday was fabulous. It started a little strangely, when I discovered the package in my PO box was the same width as the box itself (and thus wider than the doorway), but I eventually managed to force it sideways and out. Anyway, then I headed up to the Book Thing, where I met up with Ixy and Six - and my penpal, Mary! So exciting to meet in person finally. After the books we lunched at Panera, where we were joined by MaryZee.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of Baltimore, but Mary adores it, so I trusted her judgment for something awesome to do. We (Ixy, Mary, and I) ended up at the American Visionary Art Museum - or more specifically, at its gift shop, which is quite possibly the most amazing shop ever. One of these days I'll have to go inside the actual museum, but I'm not sure I'll be able to ever go to Baltimore again without visiting the Sideshow store.

I arrived home later that night hungry but happy. The next morning I registered all the books I got at the Book Thing and made release notes for everything I'm taking to Gaithersburg - 138 books in total. Not bad, not bad at all. Too bad I can't attend the actual festival.

In cat news, Ryo-ohki is fine. She hadn't lost a significant amount of weight, all her tests came back normal, and she doesn't have any sores or infections - she's just kind of bald on her belly, feet, and elbows. We got a prescription for kitty Prozac, but we're starting off by using this calming spray to see if we can fix her anxiety without drugs. The spray, recommended by the vet, contains the same pheromone that mother cats emit to calm their kittens, and so far we haven't caught Rokes licking endlessly at all. She and Echo haven't been fighting either - an unexpected bonus that I'm sure can't last.

Jeev's already bailed on me for our morning session (as of 10pm he was still about 4 hours from home). I don't want to skip the gym, but if my insomnia lasts too long this does at least give me an hour buffer if I need it.

It seems I am incapable of writing a short post. Heh.

Huh. It's evidently been a week since I last updated.

Saturday I visited eleven countries with Ixy and Six: Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Chad, Peru, Bahamas, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, and Australia. Okay, so it was only their embassies, but I was technically on foreign soil, and thus I had to fill out foreign travel paperwork. No, I'm not kidding.

Anyway, it was fun, super-sweaty times. Those two crack me up no end. Indonesia was my favorite building but Australia had beasties on loan from the National Aquarium. And Six gave me a Peep ATC and a little book about Irish sheep. She knows me well. :)

Saturday was also Free Comic Book Day, when Bill and I have a tradition of wandering down to Nova Comics in Springfield to get our swag. I was going to just go into DC a little late to accommodate it, but then we discovered that Nova Comics closed in October! Oh no! So maybe next year we'll find a new place to get our goodies.

Um. Nutrisystem began on Friday and I've been mostly okay, except yesterday when I was feeling blue and ended up hitting the McDonald's drive-thru for lunch. Sigh. But I am resolved to get back on track. My session with Jeev this morning went well, and avoiding fast food breakfast is much easier now that I have a protein shake to sip during the drive from the gym to work.

Tonight I take Ryo-ohki back to the vet for another physical, since she was far too much of a monster last time for them to actually examine her. That, and she's licking all her fur off and Bill thinks she's lost a fair amount of weight. So we just want to make sure our dearest Demon Spawn is doing all right.

This Saturday I'll be heading up to The Book Thing in Baltimore, where with any luck I'll get to meet Mary, a pen-pal of mine. This trip is to restock for the Gaithersburg Book Festival the following weekend, which once again I will only be at for an hour or two to help set-up. Last year it was because I had to paint the deck; this year my in-laws are going to be in town.

Okay, back to work. I have a can of soda in the freezer I don't want to forget about!

This has not been my week. Granted, it's almost all first world problems, but it's still annoying.

( TMI and general grumpitude )

Anyway, that's enough of that. Saturday Bill and I toured the Old Jail Museum in Warrenton, VA. Bill took a lot of great photos. Sunday we finally saw The Hunger Games, which we both enjoyed very much. I'm really looking forward to the next two. This Saturday I might be joining Ixy and Six for the embassy open houses at Passport DC. It'll depend largely on the weather, as DC is not all that much fun when the thermometer nears 90.

But enough about me. How've you been?

Kensington was cold and rainy all freaking day, and I suspect my hours standing out in it probably did not help my health much. Most of the intervening days I've spent whining about being sick, to the point where a friend commented that I get sick "a lot". I disagree. I get sick as often as the next person; I just complain about ten times as much so it seems like way more.

Anyway, I still had a pretty good time at Kensington, even if the weather was miserable and we gave away barely any books. I hope next year they'll rethink their "no rain date" policy. The following day I hung out with Kate, who was fresh off the plane from her vacation in the UK, so I could help her register and release her World Book Night books - twenty copies of The Hunger Games. Well, that was my excuse. Really I was there because (1) I missed Kate lotsly while she was gone and (2) I wanted to give her birthday presents. We ended up taking the WBN books to a movie theater where the movie was playing. I haven't heard whether they were all picked up, but the theater employees were super nice about it.

Being sick has taken up a lot of my time this week. I don't sleep much because when I'm not so congested I feel like I'm drowning, I'm coughing ceaselessly and unproductively. Sleeping with a cough drop in one's mouth does not make for restful times. And if I don't sleep, I don't get better.

But I'm not complaining. (Much.) This past Tuesday marked one year since I screwed up my ankle (yes, already), and this morning I had my one-month LASIK follow-up appointment (yes, already). Both are doing fine. This weekend Bill and I are going to tour the Old Jail Museum in Warrenton. I've been there before but evidently we're going to be able to see a section not normally open to the public. Should be really nifty.

And finally, my friend Yibble is filming again this summer, this time a sort of ten-year reunion movie of a series she did back in college. We'll be filming over the course of three (presumably long) days in late June, and better yet, Bill's going to be joining me in this madness. He's primarily going to be doing sound (and even purchased a nifty new 360-degree field mic for this and other projects), but I'm sure he'll get pulled in as an extra too, because I'm not sure it's possible to get within 100 feet of one of Yibble's productions and not get pulled in as an extra. :) Anyway, I'm super excited about it, and at some point I need to work out the rest of my trip since the filming will be part of a longer visit with the fam.

Blah blah blah I talk too much. Back to work. Today has gone quickly. That is how I like work to be: busy enough to fly by but not so busy that I want to beat my head against the wall. Life is good.

Now if I could only breathe properly...

My trip to the mothership this week wasn't bad. I got to eat at a BBQ restaurant owned by my former/current coworker. (We worked together at my previous job, then he left in 2006, then he started working at my current company about a month before I did, though at a different office.) He was actually there, which was unusual for a weekday, so we got to chat a bit. And the food was delicious.

Since Bill's at T-Mode this weekend, Jay picked me up from the airport yesterday, and we hung out until Bill got home because I didn't have any housekeys with me. (Thinking ahead: not something I'm very good at.) It was fun to hang out with my evil twin, just the two of us. He and I can talk for hours about everything from books to relationships to utter silliness, including this bizarre exchange:

Me: [A certain gay friend] really likes my boobs.
Jay: Gay men like boobs.
Me: Straight men like boobs too.
Jay: And I know a lot of women who like boobs.
Me: Boobs are really popular.

Then today, texting with Bill, I had this conversation:

Bill: The English voice actor for Light [in Death Note, my favorite anime series] is sitting across from my table right now.
Me: Is he hot? He sounds hot.
Bill: Just google him. :) He's not bad.

I really love that I can have conversations with my husband about the relative attractiveness of other people, regardless of gender, without anyone getting jealous or upset. I'll hear about other relationships, both in real life and in fiction, and I am once again grateful to be in such a comfortable marriage.

In related news, Cookie got married yesterday. It was just a courthouse wedding, no ceremony, but I am still just so happy for her. Last I heard she was planning to visit sometime this summer. I sure hope so. I miss her lotsly.

Aaaand tomorrow is Kensington, then Monday Kate gets back and I'm going to help her register and distribute books for World Book Night.

Today I have the house to myself, and so far I haven't done much: registered and pre-released books for tomorrow, played stupid online games, avoided unpacking. I think Jay and I might be having dinner again tonight, but I get the impression he has other plans after. I am such a party animal.

Last Monday we drove up to Vermont to visit my sister and stayed until Saturday. And managed to cram a whole bunch of stuff into those four full days. A quick summary, in no particular order:

* Browsed Vermont Salvage Exchange, a nifty place with all kinds of interesting furniture and architectural bits.
* Visited a huge antique mall with all kinds of amazing and often hilarious curiosities, plus a small toy museum.
* Much snarfing
* Drove over my very first covered bridge
* Watched a hilariously terrible movie at the Main Street Museum
* Played with the educational toys at the Montshire Museum of Science
* Drove through a snowstorm. Seriously. The snow was falling thickly and there were already a few inches on the ground. Funny how elevation can have as much or even more impact on weather than latitude.
* Saw my very first true general store. Seriously, this locally-owned place looked like a gas station quicky-mart on the outside but was TARDIS-ly huge on the inside, selling everything from groceries to clothing to tools to garden supplies to ammunition.
* Ate eggplant fries, which were basically fried pieces of eggplant, and OMG SO GOOD.
* Drank Maple Soda. Surprisingly refreshing and non-syrupy.
* Saw the gorgeous Quechee Gorge.
* Visited with the birdies at VINS.
* Breezed through Windsor, the birthplace of Vermont, but didn't see any embarrassing childhood photos. I know how Vermont hates it when Windsor shows pictures of it in the bathtub.
* Met my sister's boyfriend, who is a bit loony tunes and thus seems to be a good match for her.
* Attended two art shows: one of collage at the MSM, the other of mixed media at AVA.
* Played with watercolor pencils.
* Celebrated my birthday (belated) with an amazing Suzy-Q cake (a childhood favorite, which Becca made just for me!)
* For those of you on Facebook, Bill posted a bunch of photos. He said they were on Picasa too but I can't find them now.

Sunday I spent gluebooking and watching Torchwood: Children of Earth which was kind of horrible. (The show, that is; my gluebook pages came out rather nicely.) I finished all my pages for the trip and even scanned them all in, but heaven knows when I'll get around to posting them on the blog. All in all, it was a pleasantly relaxing day.

This morning the space shuttle Discovery took a piggyback ride on a 747 from Cape Canaveral to Dulles. Though I had a great view from my office window, my cell phone photos were, in a word, shitty. Bill, however, got some really great footage of it as it passed right over our house. Sometimes being on the flight path of a major airport has its perks. (Not often.) (In fact, this is the first time.) (Once counts as sometimes, right?)

Tomorrow I head to Rochester for a few days. I haven't heard from anyone up there all day; I hope they haven't had an outbreak of zombie plague. That would make my trip far more eventful than I'd like.

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I'll post about the Vermont trip later, but for now I have a full day of extreme laziness planned. :)

Happy Easter! Bill surprised me with a Peep basket this morning, which was quite sweet of him. Unfortunately, he's curled up on the couch right now, feeling terribly sick. I hope he starts feeling better soon - we're supposed to leave for Vermont in the morning. If he's not well, I'm not sure what we'll do. I'd feel bad going without him, but rescheduling at this late date would be such a pain. So I guess we'll wait and see.

Otherwise, things are going well. I had my one-week post-op on Thursday. They said I have 20/20 vision and I no longer need to wear the goggles. You have no idea how happy this makes me. In related news, last night I went to brush my hair and caught myself plucking at the sides of my head. It took me a second to realize I was attempting to take off my glasses. Old habits die hard!

Friday afternoon I got all dolled up (gloves, face-mask, goggles) to use this etching/cleaning stuff on the front walk to prepare it for being sealed. The following morning we used the refinishing goop, which turned out to be more transparent than we'd expected, and thus not quite so good at covering up the blotchy bits. At least it's clean and will be easier to keep clean. If we want to we can always paint over it at some later date.

Then yesterday evening I headed into DC for a BookCrossing meet in Dupont Circle. Jare was in town for the White House Easter Egg Roll, so we arranged to meet up with him. There were eight of us there despite it being planned at the last minute. It also turned out to be the last time I'd see a bunch of folks for a while, so it was nice to be able to say goodbye to Rodney (going to San Diego for five months), Six and Kate (headed to Dublin), Nathan (vacationing in the Carolinas), and LittleWhiteBird (moving to Pasadena). Next stop: Kensington.

All right, well, I guess I should get back to work on the assumption that I'm leaving town tomorrow regardless. Happy Eastering!

I didn't do a whole lot this weekend - mostly reading and sleeping - though yesterday I was reasonably productive. I finished up David Tennant's episodes of Doctor Who (thus completing one of my 101/1001 things) and wrote reviews for six books and a movie. So there's that.

I've been sleeping very poorly since the surgery, which I suspect is due to (1) naps, (2) sleeping in the recliner, and (3) wearing goggles. I can't wait to get back to my regular bed. On the bright side, Echo has enjoyed lots of lap time. There's something just so comforting about having a cat snoozing on my tummy.

A lot of people have been asking me how I am, and there really isn't much to say. I'm fine. I can see. I don't need glasses. I'm not in any pain. I take a lot of eyedrops. That's about it. If you're curious, Bill took pictures during the surgery.

I've been feeling a need to do something creative but haven't been able to settle into what. It's an undefined restlessness I get from time to time, where I want to do something but I can't figure out what it is. So maybe I'll see if I can scratch that itch this evening.

Or maybe I'll take a nap.

LASIK is a pretty basic procedure, and as such it takes almost no time at all to perform. Bill even got to sit outside and watch through a window, and evidently there was also a camera trained on whichever eyeball was being worked on. I think this alone made his day. Since you can look up how it's done, I've decided to write down how it went from my point of view.

( But don't worry, I'll cut it for the squeamish )

So I put on my fancy-pants sunglasses, Bill drove me home, I took eleventy billion eye drops, and I took a nap. Then I got up, took more eye drops, and soon fell asleep again. When my eyes are tired, the rest of me is tired, which is a lot of my problem with wearing contacts. Things were pretty foggy that day, mostly because some of the drops are extremely thick. I didn't sleep well last night, probably due to (1) the late afternoon nap and (2) wearing goggles. When I got up this morning, I spent some time wandering around my house, marveling at everything. I haven't had much discomfort at all, though the reality of the situation hasn't quite set in yet - I can feel enough strangeness in my eyes that it almost feels like wearing contacts. But that will pass, I'm sure.

This afternoon I had my post-op (and I drove myself without any trouble whatsoever), which was extremely brief and included this conversation:

Her: You're healing beautifully.
Me: The surgeon said it went perfectly.
Her: I can tell!

So that's good news. My main recovery time is over the next week: wearing goggles to sleep, avoiding the litter box, wearing sunglasses indoors, that sort of stuff. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about the gym yet, since I'm not supposed to let the shower spray my face directly. That's no problem at home, where I can wash my face at the sink before getting into the shower, but at the gym I don't really have that option. So we'll see.

So far everything has been far easier than I'd expected. I'd been warned about feeling like I'd chopped a hundred onions, or like there was grit in my eyes, but I haven't had that at all. A little dryness, sure, but nothing serious. Life is good.

Late Tuesday afternoon I got a call from the LASIK center, saying there had been some cancellations and would I like to reschedule my surgery? So I did. And my surgery is now today. In about *checks watch* seven hours. Am I nervous? Oh, a little bit, I suppose. One of my coworkers is convinced that REM sleep can screw up the flaps before they heal, thus destroying your vision permanently, but that's kind of a crazy idea given how many thousands of times this procedure has been done and presumably at least some of those people slept. Hell, I'm supposed to go home and take a nap right after the procedure. (Yes, I've been prescribed a nap. This is medicine I can really get behind.)

The best part about rescheduling like this is that I'll take Friday off and have the entire weekend to recover before returning to work. And we have zero plans this weekend so the biggest trick will be remembering to blink often and take my bajillion eye drops on time. At the moment I have five different eye drops; I fully expect to receive more today (along with some truly stylish goggles).

Really looking forward to seeing the stars and the moon in focus for the very first time.

And once again we have a bulleted list.

• Went to my LASIK pre-op this morning. They dilated my pupils, which causes a weird blurring of vision and makes me look like a cartoon character.
  
• The eye doc was quite taken with my right optic nerve, calling it "beautiful" and "so cool". No comment on the left one.
  
• The eye doc and I cheered for numbing eyedrops, and then also for the dilation drops so they didn't "feel left out" (her words).
  
• Saw Thomas Dolby at the Birchmere for the second time, and it was mightily awesome.
  
• Rediscovered my love for dueling banjos.
  
• Had Korean barbecue with David and Bobby at Honey Pig and it was delish.
  
• Learned I'll have to fill out foreign travel paperwork if I choose to attend the embassy open houses in May.
  
• Haven't watched any more Doctor Who since "Journey's End". I think it's a "once bitten twice shy" sort of situation.
  
• My dad broke his foot, evidently forgetting that there is no Law of Conservation of Foot Injuries in our family. He's buzzing around the house on his little knee scooter and happily won't need surgery.
  
• I'm going to be taking a photo a day in April, so if you have any requests, let me know.

It's a good thing I did so much pre-birthday celebrating because I spent much of yesterday evening extremely grumpy. As I was heading down the stairs to my car after work I discovered I couldn't find my keys. I looked all over the office and all the hallways and the garage and everywhere, and they were nowhere to be found. I know they're at work because I locked my car that morning with the fob thingy. I've asked a couple of the guards and one of the janitors to keep an eye out for them, but I think they're just plain old gone. My suspicion is that I didn't realize I dropped them because I was so distracted by being covered in syrup.

Luckily, I keep the valet key in my purse, so I was able to drive home, and I had a spare car key, fob thingy, and house key at home. So all I'm really missing are the keys to my mailbox and P.O. box. I hope those aren't too expensive to replace.

My aunt pointed out that my dad once dropped his keys down a storm drain and my uncle flushed his down a toilet, so there's a possibility I'm genetically predisposed to this sort of thing.

On the bright side, this weekend will be great: I get to see David on Saturday and Thomas Dolby on Sunday, though in somewhat different contexts. (Unless David feels like singing for me, which I would be totally fine with.) Now I just need to get through these next few days.

Welp, I am now officially 33, which is the product of two primes. Hooray, I'm a really weak encryption key!

Yesterday was friggin' awesome, man. I met up with Kate, Ixi, and Six at Mount Vernon shortly after it opened. We enjoyed the intro video, wherein Pat Sajak showed us around the grounds and some guy who isn't Liam Neeson gave us a peek into Georgie's pre-Presidential life. Nearly three hours of nonstop walking was good exercise, but I'm not positive it held a candle to how much laughing we did. After lunch at the food court and a quick gander through the museum (where we learned that "handle" really sounds nothing like "nipple"), we all piled into my car and headed to Fort Belvoir.

There are a good number of historical markers on post, but Kate wasn't comfortable going in by herself and Ixi didn't even know you could get past the gate without a CAC card, so I drove us in and we had a good time navigating the bizarrely winding roads to find the markers. We also had an additional walk down by the ruins of the Belvoir Mansion, and the weather was just perfect.

By the time we finished our snarfari it was basically dinner time. We ended up at Pema Italian Restaurant on Route 1. So delicious! Around 7:30 we finally called it a night. Pleasantly exhausted, I tumbled into bed not too longer after getting home.

And as if their entertaining company for an entire day wasn't enough, these three amazing ladies kept giving me things. Not just books (Cold Sassy Tree being the first of the day, natch), but art stuff and crafty stuff and Doctor Who stuff and a somewhat insane amount of Peeps. So awesome!

So this morning I skipped the gym (and in fact even received a free "Skip the Gym" card from Gold's for my birthday, which is kind of hilarious), and thought I'd treat myself to some pancakes for breakfast. And promptly spilled syrup all over myself, from my chest to my ankle. (I am nothing if not thorough.) Ooh, but when I got to work I discovered I'd been put half-time on another project, meaning I'll have more work to do! I know this sounds sarcastic, but when you've had as much downtime as I have lately, you'd be excited too.

No plans this evening (save a change of clothes). I feel like I've already celebrated my birthday several times over, actually, so it's not like I feel any pressing need to do something special today. Maybe I'll eat some Peeps.

Yesterday's write-in was marvelous. I <3 Kate.

I slept in this morning then went and played some Neopets. I was in the middle of a Mahjongg-esque game when it was starting to get late, and Bill actually volunteered to play my game for me while I took a shower. That, my friends, is twu wuv.

Then we headed over to Todai for sushi with Chris, Jay, Cyd & Joe, and Keith & Judy. Funny how we invited the same group of people to Bill's birthday last month and got a completely different set of folks for mine. But it was loads of fun and I ate way too much delicious food, as usual. I hadn't seen Jay or Chris practically since they moved out of the Herndon/Reston area. Jay and I made plans to go hiking sometime soonish. He's no Flora (she's way prettier) but we enjoy each other's company, so I'm sure it'll be good times. Judy & Keith came back to our place afterward for a while and we had a great time hanging out, mostly chatting about cats and pop culture.

Side note: Cyd & Joe's daughter is the most chill infant I have ever seen. Nine months old today, and she didn't make a peep the entire time. Don't worry, parents: they are well aware of how insanely lucky they are. :)

Tomorrow I'm off to Mount Vernon with Kate, Ixion, and 6of8. I suppose I could start using their real names (I usually do as long as the name is fairly common), but I think I should start using their real names in person before I worry about LiveJournal. Seriously, I call them Ixi and Six. They seem to flip back and forth between Kate and melydia, but I won't be surprised if mely is the one that sticks after tomorrow. It's just easier when you have two people with the same birth name. I mean, we could pull a Doctor Who and be Proper Kate and Other Kate, but how would we decide which was which?

Okay, yeah, time for bed. Big day tomorrow! :D

My week had been pleasantly busy until yesterday afternoon when I finished what I'd been working on and everything came to a screeching halt. So today's been quiet.

The subject line does not refer to the week I've had, but rather the weekend to come. Tomorrow I have a write-in with Kate; Saturday we're going out for sushi to celebrate my birthday and there's a possibility we'll end up at The Old Brogue later for some Irishing; Sunday I'm going to Mount Vernon with Kate, Ixion, and 6of8; Monday I'm skipping the gym in honor of it being my actual birthday.

I suppose it has been a bit of an emotional week, but not for any rational reasons. Tuesday I watched "Journey's End", the season 4 finale of Doctor Who, and cried all the tears. I don't really do the whole fandom ship thing, but if I were to have an OTP it would be Rose and the Doctor. That said, Donna is by far my favorite companion. If you've seen the episode, you understand my reaction.

All the tears, man. All of them.

Last night I spent the entire evening reading Fashion It So, an absolutely hilarious blog about the questionable sartorial decisions on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I started in the living room, but I was laughing enough to shake the couch, which interfered with Bill's video gaming, so I went upstairs to my study...where my mirth was apparently still too distracting, as Bill asked me to shut the door.

This morning 6of8 texted me to remind me not to hang out with anybody named Brutus today. Wise lady, that one.

This morning I had my LASIK consultation. It was a lot like a more involved version of your standard eye test except there weren't any spinning lenses and "is this better or is this better" crap. Cornea thickness is evidently one of the major determining factors; mine are normal. In fact, I'm just about the perfect candidate, as my eyes aren't all that bad (just barely bad enough to need glasses all the time, really). My surgery is scheduled for three weeks from today. I should be able to drive myself to the post-op appointment the following day.

The weirdest parts were the tear collection (sticking strings in my eyes that irritate them much like a stray eyelash would) and the yellow dye (which tinted my vision yellow for a short time). I have several prescriptions to fill and can expect a rather extensive array of eye drops for a couple weeks after the surgery. Many of the post-op prescriptions tell me to take them before my nap - evidently I'm supposed to go sleep for three hours when I get home, which gets a thumbs up from me.

The only annoying part is that I am no longer allowed to wear contacts at all, which will make the gym interesting. (The other annoying part is the price, but hey, what are tax refunds for?) I mean, it's kind of awesome to not wear contacts because I hate them, but I sweat enough that glasses are simply not practical while working out. Hopefully Jeev won't make me do anything that requires keen vision.

Speaking of Jeev, he didn't make our session on Monday because his car was stolen. Poor guy. Luckily, he has built-in GPS so the car company was able to find it...250 miles away. He has it back now, but evidently they stole a bunch of stuff inside. That so sucks. I can only hope they didn't take anything irreplaceable.

But as bad as I feel for him, I can't shake the awesome mood I'm in. This whole LASIK thing is just so excellent. There are so many things I am looking forward to, like the moon and stars being in focus, and watching television while lying on my side, and being able to see as soon as I wake up in the morning. It's expensive, yes, but I can afford it and, more importantly, I realized that this is something I really want, and it's rare for me to really want anything.

Now I just need to manage to sprout some patience for the next three weeks. That'll be tricky.

Not enough has happened to form a coherent narrative, so you get bullet points instead.

• Cheaper by the Dozen is such a horrible movie I cut my cardio time in half just to get away from it.
  
• Jeev and I are currently at odds regarding a song called "Love and Memories" by O.A.R. I am just so sure I have heard that song performed by a female singer but I can't seem to find it anywhere. It's driving me nuts.
  
• Still watching Doctor Who like it's going out of style.
  
• Finally got to move into my new office. It's perfect: I have the room to myself, my back's not to the door, I have windows I can occasionally peek out, and I can't even hear the white noise generator.
  
• I have a LASIK consultation this coming Tuesday. Here's hoping I qualify.
  
• Long week is long. Ready for the weekend.

I've started carrying around my little Pac-Man Moleskine notebook and a ballpoint pen. It really changes the way I see the world, man. Sure, most of my drawings are of drinks or condiments or the occasional face, but from time to time there's something extra interesting, like the fish sculpture above.



Saturday night we drove over to Seven Corners of Despair to see The Dreamscapes Project (above; thought bubbles added by Bill) perform an acoustic set at Dogfish Head Alehouse. (Well, it was only three of them, so it was more like DreaProj.) I have a lot of trouble sitting still, not using my hands, so I spent most of the evening drawing various things, like a lamp, that fish, and the band. Drawing to pass time is a great way to make myself slow down and pay more attention to details. Sure, drawing in ballpoint is not exactly my forte, but the band really appreciated my little doodle of them:



And when I say little, I mean it: the notebook is only 3.5x5.5". My meaty fists don't handle such a small space very well. But it's probably a better way to spend my time than playing endless games of Bejeweled.

I went to bed early last night, and probably turned out the light around 9:30. At midnight I woke up, and didn't manage to get to sleep again until 4:00. In the meantime I put away my laundry, packed my bags for gym and work (but ended up skipping the gym, for obvious reasons), finished reading one book and began another, and snuggled with Echo, who was all kinds of excited to hang out with me. I also caught up on my internets (and may have done some obsessive refreshing here and there) and played a few games of kakuro. I got up at 6 instead of 5, and so far have not needed to partake of the 5-Hour Energy that Bill had leftover from Katsucon. I fully expect to drink it tomorrow. Three weeks from today I'll be 33, which seems a little soon as I've only just gotten used to being 32. I read some of my LJ entries from this time ten years ago and discovered that I haven't changed much. This troubles me.

I don't appear to have much interest in paragraph breaks today.

Dunno 'bout the rest of y'all, but I have had a fantastic weekend. Friday I donated blood and got a haircut, then headed to Panera for my first write-in with Kate in aaaaages. We did a lot of giggling and even a little bit of writing. When I got home, Bill was there with a bunch of OCR buddies. We played several rounds of Karaoke Revolution, during which Amy offered to be my friend in low places and I wanted my new ringtone to be Kaiser screeching in falsetto, "You have a phone caaaallll!" Everybody left by midnight, which was good because we were exhausted and wanted to be well-rested for our Saturday plans: heading into DC to see a play at the H Street Playhouse. The walk from Union Station to H & 14th in the frigid wind wasn't the most fun we've ever had, but it all turned out for the best. We ate lunch at Star & Shamrock, a Jewish Irish pub. (No, I am not making that up. They even served matzo balls and shepherd's pie.) The delicious sandwiches in addition to Bill's scotch and my cider made us quite sleepy, so since we still had some time to kill we stopped by Sova for some coffee. That was possibly the best mocha I've ever had. I didn't even have to add any sugar. By the time we'd finished our drinks it was time to head to the theater to see Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers. It was more or less the traditional Peter Pan story, but with a much darker feel to it. We both really enjoyed it. By the time we got home, we were both pretty exhausted, so we hurried up and ate dinner before we fell asleep. This morning I knew I'd do absolutely nothing if I didn't get out of the house, so I drove down to Montpelier because why the hell not. Madison was kinda nifty, being the author of the Constitution and all, but his house wasn't especially fascinating, mostly because it's still in the process of being renovated. They finally got the main structure back to the way it was in the early 1800s, but there's still almost no furniture inside. It was still fairly early by the time I finished, so I snarfed the rest of Orange then took the long way home, lazily winding my way back north along the Zachary Taylor Highway. I brought dinner home with me, and now I have a couple hours to chill before the work week begins once again.

Wednesday was not so great. Jeev confirmed our session when I texted at 5, but a half hour later (when I was already on the way to the gym) he canceled the rest of the week. What a punk. ( Work rant )

I was up half the night being irritated about work and dreading going in, and ultimately decided to take a mental health day. It was probably the best thing I could have done: I slept in, mailed a package, returned a library book, sorted my ephemera collection, and generally relaxed. Now I'm back at work, calm and rejuvenated.

And tonight is a write-in with Kate, which always makes me happy. My goal is to catch up on my book reviews. Bill, in the meantime, has plans with Amy. He commented how glad he is to be married to someone who doesn't get jealous over those sorts of things, to which I replied that I was glad to be married to someone who never gives me cause to be jealous.

When my alarm goes off at 5:00am, the first thing I do is check my phone for texts and emails. Keeping in mind that I thus far have been unable to handle more than five minutes on the stair-climber, I present to you my conversation with my loving trainer first thing this morning:

Jeev: You are probably going to kill me but I can't go in today, about to go to bed now for the night. Today I want you to work on 20 mins arc trainer and 20 mins of stair master.

Me: 20 min of stair master? Seriously? You actually think I'm capable of that?

Jeev: I don't think it I know it, you have come a long way strength wise now it's endurance building time

Me: Good thing you're not bothered by people cursing your name, as I surely will be.

Jeev: I encourage it lol

Spent the weekend in National Harbor at Katsucon. Ran into Cookie's nephew and his amazing rainbow hair, played with finger puppets, had a couple of famous detectives as neighbors, saw some truly outrageous cosplay, and purchased only one thing (but it fills me with joy). All those links, by the way, are to photos, some of which make me giggle uncontrollably.

The girl who played mustachioed Watson showed up Sunday in a miniskirt and corset, much to everyone's confusion. Against her boyfriend's protests not to ruin it for him, we later convinced her to put the mustache back on briefly. Too funny. (Holmes was still cross-playing, though what character in particular I'm not sure. She showed me her driver's license photo when I asked her what she looked like in real life and yes, she actually does look like a girl most of the time, though her deep voice still makes me do a double-take.)

With the exception of leaving an hour early Saturday night, Bill and I were at our table the entire time Artist Alley was open all weekend. On the way home we were disappointed to discover our favorite Chinese buffet was gone, but were consoled by tasty vittles at Red Hot & Blue. We were so exhausted, even after both partaking of a 5-Hour Energy. I don't understand how sitting at a table all day can be so tiring!

Finished watching the first season of Torchwood. It certainly picked up midway through the season. A friend commented that people only watch Torchwood to adore Harkness, and while that's certainly a large part of my purpose in watching it, I think the character I find most attractive is Rhys. Not only is he more my type physically, but I about swooned in that scene when Gwen comes home to find him in rubber gloves, cleaning the oven. Does that make me old? I don't care.

The Jack^2 snog was trippy but touching. I don't understand how Owen gets so much tail despite being kind of a trollish-looking little man. I've discovered that I don't feel the slightest bit of discomfort watching two people kissing, regardless of gender (which is good, or I wouldn't be able to handle watching Torchwood, like, at all). The huge gap in Gwen's front teeth never fails to distract me. Looking forward to the crossover episodes.

I sort of started using Tumblr last week. If you have one, let me know and I'll follow you. Which doesn't sound creepy at all, I know.

Still tired, so I'm glad Jeev gave me the option of moving our session to tomorrow. Bill didn't even give me crap about it, but that's probably only because he was still asleep when I left this morning.

I snuck this little guy into Bill's truck last night so he'd see it this afternoon when he went to the store. I think he liked it. I sure was pleased with myself for thinking of it.

And this morning, Bill posted on Facebook: "You know, I don't need anything special for Valentines Day. I already have Kate. :)"

We may be old boring married people, but we can still be pretty sickening from time to time. :)

Jeev somehow managed to seriously injure his arm while playing with his 4-year-old niece, so he canceled this morning. Which is fine. I was so exhausted, I was going to go back to bed, but Bill pulled out all the stops. He ordered me to get up and get dressed, he pulled the money card ("you're paying for the gym!") and the you-always card ("you go back to bed every single time Jeev bails on you!") and the ultimatum card ("if you don't go now you're going after work"). Thing is, Bill knows I react well to the annoyance tactic: enough badgering and I'll agree to almost anything just so I don't have to hear about it anymore.

So I went to the gym in a black mood, and now I'm here at work, still grumpy.

In other, more cheerful news, I spent yesterday with Claire, an old high school buddy of mine. She's moving from Orlando to BFE New York, meaning she'll only be about a 5.5-hour drive from me now. I'm thinking of spending the weekend up there in a few weeks if I can swing it. We went out for brunch then headed over to Tysons to see Ewan in 3D. It had been her idea, but she'd forgotten several key things about Phantom Menace: (1) There's a very large chunk of the movie where you barely see Ewan at all, and (2) it's an unbearably terrible film. I heaved an exasperated sigh after every single of Jar Jar's lines, and cringed at all the blatant racist stereotypes. The fact that hardly any of the movie was actually in 3D didn't help any - wearing 3D glasses over my regular glasses isn't the most comfortable thing in the world. We bailed shortly before the pod race and went shopping while Bill finished his movie (The Woman in Black, which he said was well-done but very depressing). After a little more tooling around back at my place, she headed back to her hotel for a nap, and got on the road for New York this morning.

Over the last few days I've watched the first five episodes of Torchwood, but I'm finding it a little slow so far. Most of the characters aren't very interesting (though I'm willing to give them a full season to gel), and even Captain Jack hasn't been very, er, Captain-Jack-y. I also haven't found the storylines to be too engaging yet. Here's hoping it improves.

This coming weekend is Katsucon, so my week will be spent working late (to minimize Friday's PTO use) and making ornaments. This con will be a little different, as we'll also be selling wee behbeh yarnimals, courtesy of my extremely talented sister. I hope they sell well. They're certainly adorable enough.

Jeev promised suffering for last Friday's culinary transgression, and while I did indeed suffer (for example, the timed exercises that used to be 30 seconds are now a full minute of torture), I'm not convinced it was markedly worse than usual.

He also gave me an assignment: do a 5k on the treadmill and report my time back to him. So I did that this morning and made it in 50 minutes. That's certainly not great time - about a 16-minute mile - but I also wasn't running the entire time, nor was I running all that fast when I was (4 mph). But I made it and I didn't die, so that's a vast improvement over previous attempts.

It's been a nice, restful weekend. Saturday I spent most of the day watching Dr. Who, then that evening we went to a party. Bill's friend Amy had a birthday earlier this week so she invited a bunch of Overclocked Remix folks over for drinks and games. Though I didn't really know anyone, I had a good time chatting with various people. We left around midnight.

At noon we went to Todai for our traditional sushi lunch to celebrate Bill's birthday. We had a great turnout, being joined by Jon & Marie, Kat & Ed, Keith & Katelyn, Jarel, Kaiser, and Wes. The first four are from Faire, Keith is the leader singer of The Dreamscapes Project and Katelyn is his delightful girlfriend, and the last three are from OCR. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we all ate way too much delicious food. Jarel, Wes, and Kaiser came over for a few hours afterward, playing with Bill's theremin and laughing at silly video games.

It's a good life.

I told Jeev about the free donuts at the office on Fridays. He told me I couldn't have any donuts. I told him he couldn't come between me and my love for donuts, but he said he was going to, and threatened all sorts of horrible punishments. When I got to work, I ate a donut hole anyway. And then I texted him: "I ate a donut hole. It was delicious." And Jeev texted back: "Monday you will suffer."

Oh, but it was so worth it.

I started my day by doing something insanely stupid at work, so I figured I'd lay low for a bit and check my internets. It being Groundhog Day and all, I decided to see what old Phil did this morning.

As you probably know, the legend goes like this: if the groundhog see his shadow, he'll get spooked and go back into his hole, thus predicting six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't see his shadow, then we'll have an early spring. (Yes, it seems a touch backwards, being that a sunny February 2nd implies more winter, but whatever.)

Oddly enough, the multiple sites I checked all agreed on two things: that Phil did NOT see his shadow, and that he DID predict six more weeks of winter. The Huffington Post even said outright: "Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, and predicts 6 more weeks of winter."

Figuring I probably have at least one friend who pays attention to this sort of thing, I asked on FaceBook: "According to various websites, I'm seeing that Phil the groundhog both did NOT see his shadow AND predicted 6 more weeks of winter. So....which is it?"

This apparently was an extremely confusing question, as three different friends chimed in, not one of them with a straight answer to my question. One corrected me on the legend, which struck me as kind of odd since I thought it was pretty clear that I knew the legend, since I was pointing out conflicting reports. Another friend joked about people complaining about Phil's accuracy were "missing the point". Another shared their opinion on the winter we're having.

Only on the internet, man.

Current Mood: amused

Thou shalt not tell thy trainer of goals achieved without him, for he shall become jealous and vengeful.

I really should have known better, but for some stupid reason I told Jeev about running that mile last Friday. Usually stair runs is only a single lap at a time (up a flight, across a bridge, down a flight, back up that flight, across the bridge, and back down a flight) with a rest in between, but today he had me doing two laps at a time. I felt like I was going to die. Even worse, he kept saying, "Shouldn't've told me about that mile."

I need a new inhaler. My old one was pitched when Echo peed in my gym bag, and I lost the prescription a long time ago. I also want to get a second opinion about this whole asthma madness, since I don't really trust the people who diagnosed me in the first place. (Likewise with my so-called allergies.) That said, my breathing was pretty asthmatic while I was running today - that is, it was no problem breathing in, but terribly difficult to breathe out.

I want to post about something unrelated to the gym, but work's not all that interesting and I've been pretty useless at home lately. So unless you want to hear about my high score on assorted Neopets games, I think I'd better sign off.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Bill was still on the couch in front of the TV when he suddenly heard the all-too-familiar crunch of an automobile striking something else. Turns out some dude (probably drunk) had driven into our neighbor's yard, bashed into her dogwood tree, then immediately peeled out and drove away. The tree was completely toppled and the yard is churned up with tire tread, but the house was undamaged. Even more miraculous, he only barely scraped one of the other cars, which is saying something since he'd driven through a parking space with cars on both sides of him. Bill woke me up afterward to tell me about it. He also spoke with the police when they arrived, though he didn't really have anything to tell them since he hadn't actually seen the car.

When I say "neighbor" I mean the townhouse about three doors down from us, so our property was never in any danger. To me, this event is more noteworthy because we'd been watching Law & Order SVU earlier that evening and I had commented that these shows gave the impression that witnessing or being questioned about a crime was an extremely common occurrence, while I'd never had to speak with the police about anything other than why I was speeding.

I guess it's actually more common than I'd thought.

Jeev was MIA when I got to the gym Friday afternoon for our makeup session, but I'd known his aunt had passed away earlier that week so it didn't really surprise me. My suspicion is that he texted me and it didn't go through. Wouldn't be the first time.

Anyway, since I was already there and dressed, I went ahead and did my own workout: some basic weight machines, then the treadmill. I managed to run an entire mile straight through without stopping or feeling like I was going to die. I think that's the very first time I've ever done that, so I felt pretty spiffy.

That night, Bill and I went out for Korean food at one of the local places. We both had the bibimbap and man was it delicious. And it certainly cleared our sinuses. When we got home I made a perler bead Bloop but we were both tired so we didn't stay up too late.

Yesterday morning I headed out early to snarf the last of Vienna. That town annoys me because of its distinct lack of places to leave my car. But I managed to get all the markers on my list. I also made a stop by the dollar store, where I purchased all kinds of bizarre things, including a 2012 almanac that said it's supposed to be windy and cold right now when it's actually more like 60F. A friend asked if I was sure it wasn't one of those Chinese bootlegs. I replied that I was absolutely sure it had been purchased at the dollar store. Which, really, is all the explanation it requires.

I arrived at Ballston Common Mall just before 1:00 for the BCinDC meetup, where we had an excellent turn-out. I finally got to meet beautyredefined in person, and I spent some very enjoyable time in conversation with firegirl. And I had Pad Thai for lunch, which only added to my joy. After the meetup I tagged along with Kate to the free book shelves at Arlington Public Library and a stop by the OBCZ at the Crystal City Sheraton to restock with meetup leftovers. There were fewer books than we'd left on our previous visit, plus three unregistered books, so that's a good sign. It makes me happy to know the shelf is being used.

I also brought home Kate's Bin-o-Bookmarks once again, this time to satisfy my OTC tendencies and sort it once and for all. Oh yeah, and Tia had a box of video games and DVDs she didn't know what to do with so I offered to take them for Bill, who was quite pleased with his unexpected gifts. So I had more than a few goodies with me.

When I walked through the door around 6:00 that evening, Bill gave me a choice: we could eat the dinner that was on the stove and stay in for the night, or we could go into DC to see The Dreamscapes Project at the newly-opened Hamilton Live. I opted for the latter, so we turned right around and headed out again.

The Hamilton is quite lovely. The upstairs dinner portion is extremely posh, but the concert venue was comfortable with good sound and tasty (somewhat overpriced) vittles. The entrees were very small so we split a cheese plate as well. That was good, but there wasn't enough raisin bread to go around.

Taylor Carson opened for TDP, and we liked him enough to purchase his CD. I also got a free hug later. He's a cutie.

TDP was, as always, excellent. They just keep raising the bar for themselves, and I am impressed anew every single time we see them play. They've been spreading out, musically, incorporating blues and Celtic and bluegrass and other styles into their set. At one point Keith (vocals), Gordon (drums), and Jeremy (bass) all shifted one to the right - and did one hell of a performance. I hadn't even know Keith and Gordon could play those instruments! Of course, I hadn't known Jeremy could play trumpet either, so I was just learning new TDP facts left and right.

They brought Ted from Ted Hovis and the Stolen Camaros up on stage for the last two songs. For a band already consisting of 12-string acoustic guitar, cello, electric bass, drums, and a whole range of percussion, I was pleasantly surprised at how much Ted's electric guitar added to the performance. He should join them again sometime. In short, it was an excellent night.

This morning after breakfast we bottled the beer we brewed a couple weeks ago. We had just added the sugar for carbonation, but Bill tried some flat and said it was pretty good. I'll taste it in a week or so when it's completely ready.

This afternoon I've been attempting to reclaim my study. I paid bills, sorted the Bin-o-Bookmarks, logged my Vienna snarfs, and did all the requisite post-meetup journaling and registering of books. I still have a small amount of cleaning left but nothing major.

And now, well, now I think it's just about time for dinner and a quiet evening.

Finally had a session with Jeev this morning (he canceled again yesterday). It was a difficult, full-body work-out, but I managed somehow. Bill tried to encourage me this morning by singing "Eye of the Tiger" but it only made me want to smack him.

Gyms are full of diabolical torture devices, but my personal nemesis is the endless ladder. It's like a stair machine, except that it's a ladder and it's completely manual - that is, you control the speed. This sounds great until you think you're getting behind so you speed up a little bit to catch up, and the ladder moves faster to compensate. On my first experience with this infernal machine, months ago, I totally let it get away from me. No good. But today we started the morning with three whole minutes on the endless ladder, and I didn't die! Which led to this conversation:

Me: I don't think I've ever done 3 minutes before.
Jeev: Actually, you did, a while back.
Me: Oh yeah, but I think I died.
Jeev: Yeah, you did.

I love my trainer.

I did another two minutes later in the workout and while I was panting pretty good, I didn't die then either.

And I did push-ups! Real ones, and it was hard as hell, and I've never appreciated girly push-ups so much. Alas, Jeev says we're not doing girly push-ups anymore. I later asked him if the exercises were getting harder or if I was having an off day, but he assured me that the exercises were undoubtedly harder. So that made me feel better.

I seem to have finally shaken off the last of my funk. I suspect a fair amount of this was due to having a really delicious dinner last night: homemade cheeseburgers, chips'n'salsa, pistachios, and a Woodchuck cider for dessert. Bill made an effort to let me pick out goodies at the grocery store yesterday, and during the meal we had this exchange:

Bill: Eating good food really improves your mood.
Me: That's why I'm fat.

And it's true. The trouble is that it doesn't always work, and it certainly doesn't work with all foods, but that doesn't keep me from trying again and again. In related news, it's the 25th and I've managed not to have any fast food. I haven't killed the cravings, but I'm hoping I may have killed the habit.

Rough weekend. I managed to catch up on my book reviews but did pretty much nothing else. Bill says I should talk to a doctor; he thinks I'm showing signs of bipolar disorder. I don't like doctors, so this will undoubtedly go unresolved until my next physical.

I slept poorly last night, my first NyQuil-less night, and it wasn't until after I got to the gym for the first time in over a week that I noticed Jeev had texted me to postpone our session until tomorrow. What a punk. So I did a little light cardio and headed to work. The roads were strangely empty, which I didn't understand until I learned from the television in the locker room that pretty much everywhere is on a 2-hour delay this morning due to icy/foggy conditions. I encountered no slick roads, though.

The hallway at work this morning is lined with chairs waiting to be cleaned, which of course prompted me to start singing, "All in all we're just another chair in the hall." I'm such a loon.

I promised you more deets on the life drawing marathon on Tuesday, but then I ended up staying home sick from work that day and doing not a whole lot of anything. So if you're curious, I did a long write-up on my blog. All the models were nude so it's probably NSFW, but it's here if you're interested. There's a sketchcrawl this Sunday at the National Portrait Gallery but I sincerely doubt I'll be up to a trip into DC.

Ah, but I do seem to be slowly getting over this nasty case of blarg I've been suffering from. I went to work yesterday and today, and though I've been crazy-tired and addicted to all things ending in -Quil, I've managed to not feel any worse. (Can't say if I'm feeling better, but hey, I'll take what I can get.)

First world problems: I've been reading a lot since I can't do a whole lot else, and while that's good, it also means I've gotten further behind on my book reviews. Now I'm, uh, something like five in the hole. Oh well.

Despite being sick, I drew literally all day Saturday (literally - more on that tomorrow), then made beer on Sunday. I also got reasonably caught up on ye olde blog, though I'm still two book reviews behind. Last night I felt pretty terrible so I took some NyQuil and turned off the alarm. I slept for 15 hours, and only went to work because I would have fallen back asleep had I stayed home. (No, MLK Day is not a holiday for me.) And if I'd fallen asleep I probably wouldn't have been able to get to sleep tonight, starting a vicious cycle I just don't have time to deal with. I still feel pretty awful, though. Good thing my work doesn't require much in the way of physical exertion.

They'll never find me here!


Maybe if I squeeze into this corner I'll disappear.

Taking the cats to the vet is never my idea of fun, but usually it's fairly painless: the cats are unhappy but in general they just deal with it, and then it's over and we go home. Last night I could tell something was up as soon as we got into the room. Neither cat got out of her carrier, which is especially odd for Echo, who loves to explore. We had to dump them both onto the floor. They were well-behaved for the vet tech, even having their temperatures taken, and then we had to wait for the vet.

And wait. And wait.

By the time she finally arrived, something in Ryo-ohki had snapped. Now, she hisses and growls a lot regardless, but when she starts screaming, there's really nothing you can do to calm her down. She transforms into a fluffy ball of rage and she will cut you if you get too close. So they had to wrap her in a towel to perform the exam, and the whole time she was hissing and growling so hard she was snorting like a pig.

The snorts are pretty funny, but I was so embarrassed to have brought them such a monster. David probably believes that she's always like that, because she hates him more than anything and so he's never seen her any other way, but the poor vet had barely even heard her hiss before. They said to make sure to request the "kitty room" next time - it's an examination room where dogs are never let inside ever. I don't know if that was the problem, but something was. I'm so glad to have it over with for another year.

In other news, two nights on the recliner with NyQuil has marginally improved my cold. I'm doing a "draw 'til you drop" thing in Rockville with Flora tomorrow: 12 hours of live models and sketching. I figure I'll show up around the time it begins and leave whenever I start feeling crappy. I'm hoping this will also be an opportunity to meet some local SketchCrawl folks so I'm not quite so shy about participating in the future.

Well, my weekend was fan-freakin'-tastic. I was a busy bee Friday afternoon: I bought a few groceries, washed and put away all the dishes (including the hand washing), did all the laundry (including sheets, pillow cases, and bathmats), and generally tidied up. Friday night I treated myself to Thai food for dinner, as Bill is not so excited about it. It was yummy as usual, though I would have appreciated not being seated next to the dysfunctional family. (Bill, by the way, had a phenomenal time at MAGfest.)

Kate showed up shortly after lunch on Saturday. We chatted lots and enjoyed a Ewan-a-thon, watching four of his films: "Amelia" (very good but, as expected, a teary ending), "I Love You, Phillip Morris" (all kinds of weird), "Miss Potter" (OMG tear-jerker!), and "The Island" (unintentionally hilarious action film that desperately wants to be a Philip K. Dick novel). By 2am I was absolutely dying, so we called it a night. The next day we went on snarfari, clearing out the rest of McLean as well as all of Riverbend and Great Falls Parks. I thought I'd been to Great Falls before, but I clearly hadn't, because it's gorgeous and I would have remembered that.

My session with Jeev yesterday morning went well, but today's time at the gym really sucked. I tried the treadmill but - get this! - the ankle pain returned. After about twenty minutes I was limping so badly I had to stop, which discouraged me so much I just gave up entirely and went back to the locker room. I know it's a not a personal failing, but it kind of feels like it. I hope this is a one-time thing due to not warming up enough. On the bright side, Jeev said we're going to try boxing tomorrow and I get two free hits.

I just have to save this for future amusement:

melydia: Just found a Canadian 10-cent coin on my floor. Weird.

grubsneerg: Perhaps you're not as alone in that house as you thought you'd be ...

melydia: Can I blame janeycanuck somehow?

janeycanuck: Did I not tell you I stalk people I haven't met in real life and leave Canadian change in their house? Sorry. My bad.

grubsneerg: That must be how the Canadian quarter got in my car. Those darn Canucks!

Echo doesn't trust me. Bill is usually the one to feed the cats, and she's convinced I will forget without her constant vigilance. Last night I was sitting at my computer while she flopped about on my arms, purring and looking at me longingly. This morning she sat on the toilet lid while I showered just to make sure I didn't escape to Narnia without feeding her.

( Long-winded exercise blather )

( Read more... )

• With Cookie and Kate, entered the Ballywood movie contest on BookCrossing. Eight months of badgering later, the winners were finally announced (and we were they). Which was nice, but terribly anti-climatic.
  
• Attended my first AWP bookfair and got all kinds of inspired. (Then promptly didn't do anything about it.)
  
• Joined Nutrisystem and lost 25 pounds. Later gained it all back.
  
• Produced a fantastic DVD full of booky and snarfy goodness.
  
• Hosted the BookCrossing Convention, which made the two years of planning and stress totally worth it.
  
• Completely screwed up my ankle.
  
• Quit my gym and later joined another one.
  
• Said farewell to Cookie, Flora, and David, all of whom moved out of the area this year.
  
• Watched Moonlight & Magnolias and was impressed anew by Bill's talent at sound design.
  
• Painted the deck.
  
• Accepted a job offer from the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, then ultimately turned it down when they couldn't figure out how to send me a written job offer after over two months. Spent the entire intervening time completely stressed about the Big Move.
  
• Celebrated the 15th anniversary of Sine Fine Films.
  
• Saw my mom's side of the family for the first time in a dozen years, at a reunion in the tackiest place on earth: Wisconsin Dells.
  
• Visited Gettysburg - both the battlefield and the emergency room.
  
• Started having near-weekly write-ins with Kate.
  
• Saw Stephen King with Kate.
  
• Completed 24-hour comic book day.
  
• Attended Balticon, BrickFair, Dragon*Con, SPX, Intervention, and Anime USA.
  
• Visited Asheville, North Carolina.
  
• Attended my very first Centreville Day.
  
• Started a new blog: The Glue Stick Tourist.
  
• Rode a bike for the first time in about a decade.
  
• Spent Christmas with my family for the first time since 2002.

I think that's it. Looking at it now, that's kind of a lot of stuff. I'm actually hoping that 2012 is a little less...eventful, you know?