1. Still jet-lagged. I rarely get so affected so I am miserable and stressed.

2. Too stressed and too much work to do to go work out. Yes, I am aware that I should anyway, because it will make me less stressed, but I can't bring myself to. Instead, I am eating unhealthy food and not working anyway.

3. We are having roast chicken for dinner too! but with cukes/tomatoes in vinegar and a corn salad. Too hot for anything else.

1. Surprisingly quiet day at work. Scheming to get what little there is done early so I can go work out before I meet my husband to head home.

2. I have TWO The Wire, Season 3 DVDs waiting for me at home. That's at least 4 episodes, maybe 5. It is like having a box of chocolates.

3. Our poor dog is in the Cone of Shame as we discovered he's been licking a previously healing scratch on his side to the point of rawness. Hoping that works and he doesn't need to go to the vet.

1. My head is still spinning from the past couple weeks, but things are okay. My folks are coming into town sometime next week in their fancy new RV. I'm spending all weekend cleaning and am just now starting to stress about it. Thank god it's a long weekend. My mom's going to help me can lots of tomatoes, and I'm very grateful for the help and really excited about getting to spend some time with them.

2. I got an email yesterday from a long lost Austin friend. My long-term friendships from that part of my life have fizzled for various reasons (most of them owing to the fact that my friends turned out to be not very good friends), and when Winston died I felt like I'd pretty much officially lost all connection to most of my 20s. An email from my friend R came yesterday. He moved away from Austin before I did. Turns out he's now living in the Bay Area. I was really happy to hear from him, am looking forward to seeing him, and feel now like I can try to recover that part of my life that felt like it had gone missing.

3. Payday means I can go out to lunch anywhere I want. Haven't decided where, yet, because I'm still kind of burpy from breakfast.

1. Wondering how long my parents are going to treat me like an adult. I know that the end times are coming if this keeps up.

2. Busy weekend planned. (Therapy Thursday, pdoc and ENT on Friday, and then going to help my brother paint at projects at my folks house). I'm not sure I have enough energy for all this.

3. School has started. I've already done 2 of the assignments for Collection Development and fully tricked out my gcal with deadlines and so I am prepared. Bring it on Fall Semester!

1. Woke up early.
2. Ate breakfast.
3. Took a nap.

((((senyar)))) I HATE summer colds. Even though you are sick, it still sounds like you managed to cook up a wonderful dinner. I am jealous.
((((gaspode)))) I HATE being stressed out and jetlagged.
((((mudpuppie)))) Cuz I know that it still hurts that you lost Winston.

1. Pilates for the last time today :( For about a month or so. At least until I can pay off the dog's medical bills.

2. Looks like Hurricane Earl is going to mostly miss us, which is a good thing. I thought that much of my coastal brethren were going to be shacking up with me for the duration.

3. My brother will be in town visiting this weekend for the first time. I can't believe I have lived here for five years and he hasn't been to visit once! I am really looking forward to it.

1. A house guest is arriving on Saturday for a whole week. I haven't had a house guest I'm not related to for years and years; most people won't come to Maine.

2. I have to house clean. Luckily I have Friday off.

3. I have managed to get out of going to the "office retreat" tomorrow by volunteering to answer the phones in the (empty) main office. I really hate answering phones but I hate office retreats more.

1. Sleep deprived all this week, but only figured out why at 4:00 this morning, so

2. Forgot my wallet, and was thankful for my cash cache so I could buy lunch

3. ...cripes, it's only 2:03, 3 minutes after the last time I checked.

1. Back to work after a bit of a staycation.
2. Catching up on LOST (on season 3).
3. Cat threw up a hairball.

1. It's been way too long since New England had a good hurricane. I hope Earl whacks us good.

2. I was very moved by this askme thread, as were a lot of people I think. Damn, I wish I had askme 15 years ago. And GPS.

3. Going to Maine tomorrow. Woo-hoo!

1. Despite my best efforts (i.e., drinking water until I sloshed), I got dehydrated to the point of sickness yesterday.

2. Ended up pulling out the futon and sleeping in the cool, airy, ceiling-fan-equipped living room last night instead of our snug, smothering bedroom. Very pleasant!

3. Having a (late) lunch of goodies from the farmers' market: chilled green beans in balsamic vinaigrette with chili-spiced almonds, baguette with heirloom tomatoes and garlic butter. FABulous!

1. Going to try acupuncture next week for the first time. For fertility (though I hear the acupuncture they do for fertility may also cause weight loss, yay). Anyone have any experience with acupuncture generally?

2. Number 1 is a direct result of insemination 1 not taking. I am not surprised, but disappointed nonetheless.

3. I am in the process of getting flood insurance, which won't kick in for a month after I pay for it. Here's hoping that we don't have a bad hurricane before then.

1. I want to go live on the Wii Fit island. Failing that, I am seriously considering searching online for a walk through for the expert bike ride. Then I realize that is insane.

2. Doing a lot of contract work for the old job. Am glad I got laid off when I did; things are pretty dire over there. Hope they can even pay my invoice. Yowza.

3. Catering a party for my brother on Saturday. Planning menu now.

1. HR informed us that our work week will increase from 37.5 hours to 40 hours. There will be no increase in pay or other compensation.

2. Morale is low.

3. So I took a long lunch and had a nooner.

1. God, my desk is still a shithole. I may have to come in this weekend to dig it out.

2. I just had the supreme pleasure of chatting with two ridiculously talented friends of mine as part of my job. They're married to each other and recently moved away, but next week they're putting on the world premiere of this production, which looks so amazingly different and intriguing that it kind of scares me. It's not even supposed to be super deep and message-y -- they describe it as a romantic comedy! -- but they both said that it took them three years before they could even distill the description into a single paragraph. They've been working on it for five years.

3. Unfortunately, when you're excited and they're excited and everyone gushes and you're all pals, you have a lot of info. I already have 3100 words of interview text to distill into, oh, an 800 word article... and I haven't even talked to the two performers. And they're ACTORS, so you KNOW they'll want to talk. Blessing and curse!

[Note to self: next time you are chatting in a professional context, even with people you know, avoid the question, "So when you found out they would do it, did you just, like, plotz?"]

1. Wednesday = new comic book day, but it's actually been a good workday and a few awesome books came out (I highly recommend the Unsinkable Walker Bean--great adventure-at-high-seas-wtih-evil-mermaid-monsters story).

2. Going to Trader Joe's after work! Then home to finish my awesome book and play more of my awesome new DS game.

3. Yesterday I got sent two promising job leads which made me feel much better about life.

1. I never post here even though I've had an account for a long time. But Bearwife reminded me what a great community it is so I am trying to remember to visit and participate. This is partly because I'm feeling stressed in advance of an upcoming vacation and work busy-ness and like the distraction of casual chit-chat.

2. Champagne grapes with lunch make things better! Yum.

3. Am I doing this right? It's nice reading about everyone's day.

1. TocherAusElysium is doig it right!
2. Don't kid around with a hurricaine, if it comes to that. They leave a real mess.
3. amro, don't get the last accupuncture apt. of the day, you might fall asleep and wake up with needles in you after everyone has gone home!

1. Husband been gone since 8/21 for orientation, coming back Friday. Not a fan of the two-week separation. Once classes start, he'll be gone a more reasonable 4 night a week.

2. I am SUPREMELY PISSED that the banquet being thrown in his (and other scholarship recipients) honor in IL did not automatically include an invite for me. Seriously? You're throwing a BANQUET IN HIS HONOR and didn't think to invite his wife? He's checking on whether they will accommodate me if I pay my own way. I spent all last night being supremely angry about this, and then suddenly it hit me- I'm The Damm Pink Superhero. I will go whether I'm invited or not. Since then, I've been feeling a lot better.

3. I must, must, must go to the gym tonight. Gotta get back into that routine!

1. My brother's getting married in a month, and I just got my first "Oh, you're next in line, better start looking or you'll end up a bitter old maid!" comment. Oh, Uncle Charlie, the only person who regrets your saying that more than me is you.

2. There is so. much. food. in this damn office.

3. Got conned into going to yoga tonight, which means that I have to go for a run afterward instead of going to the gym. And it's hot outside. And if SOMEONE hadn't eaten the aforementioned office-food, then SOMEONE wouldn't have to run in the heat.

1. Appreciating the wisdom of whomoever said "having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your head."

2. Counting down the days til vacation. 2 more.

3. Dreading leaving work because it's punishingly, drainingly hot out and I don't think I'll get anything done.

1) too, too hot up here right now. We need some Aussies to show up and tell us what hot REALLY IS, I suppose.

2) Super tired, as I stayed up late, and got a little drinky out with friends to see a band last night. It was really fun, and was one of those nights when it really could have ended with the sun coming up, but I had to work, so...bed at 4:00am, up at 7:45 to get to work for 8:30!

3) Still and all, I'm wondering what I should do this evening. Goodness knows I don't want to just go to bed early. I like these weeks without my girls sometimes :-)

SO glad you are here, Tochter! (Also thought of you yesterday listening to part of the 9th in the car on the way home.)

So, amro, I am an acupuncture fan, though I used it for persistent back pain that my excellent M.D. and massage and yoga and stretching and everything else I tried failed to address. And I went to traditional, Chinese, Beijing trained doctors.

Yeah, I am going to a Chinese doctor, she comes recommended by a friend plus she's in Princeton and you can't afford to pay Princeton rent unless you're good at what you do.

As a side note, last time my friend went to see her, the doctor apparently said to her, "When did you get so fat?" (She had gained maybe 7 pounds.)

1. Partner and I are halfway through a week-long staycation. It's been great- a cooling trend in the weather, getting some projects done around the house, plenty of time for goofing off, and beer o'clock even on weekdays. Yay!

2. I got a postcard from ColdChef today! It's not terrible, just boring. Somehow he's guessed that I enjoy those.

3. I'm hoping to get out with one of my cameras before the week is over- I've been too busy at work to pay much attention to my photography lately, and when I go back I'm in for an insane 6 to 8 week stretch.

1. I think my boss may be moving from bumbling incompetence to outright manipulation and sabotage.
2. I managed to get out of work just in time to hear part 2 of the NPR piece about the U.S.S. Kirk. Yea!
3. My house is dangerously low on alcohol.

2a. Hurray, I'm invited! Alas, this means I cannot dress up and play spy and sneak into the hotel ballroom, but it's probably better this way.

1. Still excited from last night's Stooges concert in Boston. Hoping I have at least 1/10th of Iggy's energy when I turn 63.

2. Packing for a quick inmpromptu trip to D.C. Hoping that Hurricane Earl doesn't rain on my weekend parade.

3. About to start reading Dolin's "Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America." Still not sure where this interest in whaling history came about. Planning on taking a trip to New Bedford's whaling museum soon, and trying to decide whether this casual interest will become an academic interest, or if other projects will take priority.

1. Read about scody's operation today, then went and had a follow-up PET scan.* I can really recommend the PET scan for fun. It is like a CAT scan, writ very long.

2. Had to fast today until about 3 for above reason. Just had coffee. . .life is better now.

3. Wondering if any bunnies will be at Pioneer Square 9/11 for Colin and the gang. I'll be there and would love to say hi!

*since the day the melanoma was cut off of me (last 9/17) there has not been ANY trace of it in various procedures. This was yet another one of those. . .no "mission accomplished" moment, but am optomistic.

1) Turns out my acute-onset depression from hell was a side effect of a new medicine. Am crossing my fingers that all will be well shortly! YAY! I haven't cried all day, which is saying something.
2) Waiting on tenterhooks to hear about a big federal grant. If we get it, I have a LOT of work ahead of me this fall.
3) Spent a horrible hour(ish) at Walmart today buying a hundred $5 gift cards as incentives for another project I'm working on.
4) (Can I do four?) Jammed my right index finger last weekend, and the twinges I get from time to time hurt enough to make me swear. Must watch that.

/flips table in response to Stewriffic's audacity in doing FOUR GODDAMNED POINTS, storms out of thread.

Hurrah, Danf! No news is most definitely good news! (But tho in Seattle all the time, on 9/11 I'll be at a dog behavior event. Hoping Palin isn't announcing she's running for Pres in 2010.)

Also hurrah! Stewriffic re absence of tears today and bold 4 point post.

1. I mentioned a few months back I'd met someone. I thought there was chemistry in person, but e-mail correspondence seemed to fizzle. My only shot was serving on a committee with her, but this summer was too hectic for me to set it up. (I emphasize I had let this go.) Anyway, I was at a function tonight where she might show up, and I'm glad I got to make the rounds before she did, because it was with a date. They make an impossibly cute couple.

I've been getting feelers from someone else, so I'm not going off the deep end or anything, but it's still sticking in my craw. I didn't even really embarrass myself with her. I just looked for five minutes like a puppy ready to follow her home. *facepalm*

2. Getting into the local newspaper with my dad as the representative Alzheimer's/dementia family. Monday was the interview, today was getting photographed (dad, mom, and me). I hope my dental issues don't show too obviously. I wish I weren't so damned self-conscious about this, but really, mostly, I couldn't function if I were. (Fortunately, once I got my blood glucose under some control, the gum disease slowed way down. It's not getting appreciably worse, but it won't get better -- cosmetically -- without a load of money.)

3. We decided to leave the bankruptcy dismissed and refile sometime closer to sooner than later. We'd gotten major creditors on board for a reinstatement so it shouldn't be too hard, and this allows us not to come up with a lump sum for the trustee, but it also extends the BK. We will try to get loan mods from the mortgagors and then try a "Chapter 20" -- a Chapter 13 repayment plan for a while, then a Chapter 7 to discharge the unsecured debt, to which the secured creditors will have to agree. God this is hairy and complex.

1. Went to the U.S. Open yesterday and had a blast. Gorged on about eight hours of tennis, including a nail-biter five-setter with Nalbandian (Ole, ole, ole, ole...) on Court 11 that didn't finish up until after nine (he won!). I love those outter courts (despite the bleacher style seating that kills your back), where the players are practically in your lap. I also got to see Blake, who won in straight sets. Very cool. I feel a connection, since Blake went to high school with my nephew.

2. I had a day pass for the Open today, too, but I couldn't bring myself to go back out into that heat. I am rarely (very rarely) outdoors for eight plus hours of anything, and certainly not in 95+ degree heat. I mangaged, buying a large water and box of popcorn and sitting on the indirect sun side of the stadium and wearing my Vegas hat, but I felt it (Jon, coming home from work drenched in sweat today, is unsympathetic, alas). Still, I was happy to watch from my air-conditioned living room today. (I have a ticket for Friday, hurricane not withstanding.)

3. I go back to work on Tuesday. I'm dreading the condition of my school post-move (for those who missed my rather long-winded thread on the subject, my high school -- one of now seven schools in the building -- is "moving" from the left side of the third and fourth floors to the right side (why is this chicken school crossing the building?). I don't know why. It's best I don't think about such things. My work motto this year: mellow, man.

(4.-- cause I just remembered, and wish to share) My niece, who now lives in England, having moved there from Germany with her husband and kids, just had her sixth baby. She now has one girl (the oldest, at nine years old) and five boys. She and her husband are what you might call neo-Orthodox (Jewish, that is), since neither family is particularly religious. I'm only nine years older than my niece and used to play with her when she was a baby, and now she has six of her own. Blows my mind.

1. I used to have these long conversations with my mom about pretty much anything. We described a lot of the obstacles in our lives. I can't tell you how many times one or the other of us said, "But remember, you're doing this because you love it, right?" A lot of times I pushed thoughts way past reason and she laughed and said, "Oh, you don't mean that," and she was right. I would point out her hesitations or fragilities and she would thank me; the perspectives we gave each other on ourselves were invaluable. Since she died I have lacked those perspectives. Much of the advice I gave her was advice I took myself. Without these conversations I haven't been reminding myself, along with mom, to not worry that actions aren't reversible or that my clumsiness might wreck whatever step I need to take next. I haven't been recognizing and addressing my own frailties along with my mom's for a few hours every week. I haven't had the cap she provided for my steam by saying "Oh, you don't mean that," and I haven't been reminded that things wouldn't be frustrating if I didn't care so much about them. Over the past few days I've come to these conclusions, and to address this lack I've begun writing not the conversations I had with my mom then, but the conversations I would have with her now about what's going on presently. Now she's gone; I have to temper myself.

2. My dad's cancer was detected early, but it's relatively aggressive. As far as they can tell it is entirely within his prostate. We agree that it's probably a good sign that his doctors are not in a great hurry for him to decide whether to go under the x-ray beam or under the knife. The world's foremost surgeon for this procedure is close by, at the hospital where I was born. If he chooses radiation, he can have the treatments at the same place my mom went for hers, which is less than a mile away. It's a relief that my brother's family just moved to his town, since my dad will need some help whichever he chooses. My grandfather, his father, died of complications following heart surgery; my dad has had arterial stent surgery before but I have a feeling he might worry a bit about the operation. I told him he was an ideal patient for whoever his doctors might be. He is a career analyst. He divides things into categories: what he knows, what he doesn't know but can find out either by asking someone or researching it himself, and what he doesn't know and can safely ignore until it joins one of the first two categories. He is thus very good at ignoring bugbears and avoiding catastrophic thinking. A good patient. I sure hope so.

3. This week, my boss has been on vacation. I have spent the past few weeks making my work airtight to avoid being fired (with cause) at the end of this disciplinary probationary period. My boss is an impatient micromanager who seems to revel in her attempts to make me feel bad. I made a mistake yesterday, and she went ballistic over the email. I accepted that it was my error in transcribing her instructions during our rushed meeting before we departed on the company boat cruise last Friday, and then pointed out that I had signaled my intentions in the email and task list I sent her that morning. She's been picking at me via Blackberry. I think the writing's on the wall. I told a coworker at lunch that I must have been some kind of war criminal in a past life to deserve a boss like I have right now. She laughed and told me she was going to send an email to the guy who had my job before me, tell him I said that, he would really appreciate it. So I'm also looking for a job now because I don't know if my boss is going to fire me or not. Too bad, everything else about the job is awesome. All it takes is one big jerk.

1. Freaking out about lack of work.
2. Trying to remember that freaking accomplishes nothing.
3. Repeat.

1. I just bought my first smart phone. It does not seem to be working properly yet, in that I cannot register the phone, but I have been able to go online and I was able to record my voicemail greeting and really that was very cool. (I have never before accessed the internet through my phone. I never really believed it was possible; I thought everyone was just kind of making that shit up or something.)

2. I feel like I have been a very effective therapist for my clients this week, mainly because most of my clients have told me how much I've helped them. That is very nice.

3. My left eye, or under eye, or the area under my left eye, has been twitching for a week. And today my right inner eye, between my nose and my eye, has started to twitch, too. I wish they would stop.

Occhiblu - yesterday I was playing with my iphone and all of a sudden realized that I have the INTERNET on my PHONE. I'm boggled by the amount of thought, work, and innovation that went into allowing me to check the weather while on the bus.

Urgh, I've had those eye-twitches go on for weeks. The only thing that helps is switching to glasses for a while. Hope yours go away soon, occhiblu.

Thanks, Tochter. They've mostly calmed down, I think. I hope.

And punchtothehead, I know! It's so weird! And what's even weirder is the fervor with which I feel the *need* to check the weather while on the bus.

What I can't stop doing on the bus is looking at my OneBusAway app to see where the bus I am on is on the map at this very moment. Unsure why this fascinates me so.

bearwife, depending on the location of the scratch, the Travel Pillow of Shame might work just as well for your dog as the Cone, and be about a million times more comfortable.

mygothlaundry, I *love* the Island Cycling! The level after Expert is off.the.hook maddening/awesome. Took me almost an hour to complete it.