1. My 3-day weekend, which was actually supposed to be a 4-day weekend due to government shutdown plus holiday, turned magically and sadly into a 1-day weekend, yesterday being the 1 day.

2. However, next weekend really and truly will be a 4-day weekend because I am attending my nephew's beach wedding in North Carolina. I have official authorization to take 2 vacation days, and they can't take them back unless they pry them from my cold dead hand.

3. I spent the 1-day weekend running many many errands, doing laundry, talking on the phone, preparing lunches for the week, and occasionally sighing over the weedy state of my flower bed. I seriously need to do some gardening before I leave town on Friday. My peas have nothing to climb, poor things.

1. On Saturday we came home from the beach, down on Jekyll Island, Georgia, after spending several wonderful days there. I took lots of pics, but haven't uploaded any of them to Flickr yet.

2. Yesterday we had a quiet day at home- unpacked our suitcase, did laundry, sat on the porch and read, that kind of day. Partner worked on his plants a bit, all of which survived us being gone for most of the week.

3. I'm back at work today, to find I'm assigned to project which someone else started last week. It takes me forever to get organized when this happens- we try never to change editors mid-project, because everyone has their own way of working, so just trying to make sense of a project that wasn't set up by you can be very frustrating. But what the hell, in my mind, I'm still at the beach.

1. Saturday I had to get blood drawn to get my Lamictal levels and had a serious case of the stupids (which is starting to get more frequent and therefore, worrisome) where I forgot the testing paperwork at home and had to drive back and get it. Luckily, they only needed one tube but I still got a massive bruise from it. (I'm a very difficult stick, in my opposite arm and it's a super deep vein but once they get it, it's a good one.) Then I ripped Swan Lake (music only) for iRock and drove up to my brother's house to get the oil changed in my car, only for him to realize that he didn't have a new filter for me. (So he 'washed out' the old filter with swishing some new oil around it and just said we'll have to change the oil sooner next time.)

2. Sunday was work. I failed to take into account just how much changing from a 4 hour to 9.5 hour day would tire me out. Plus, I wrenched my back badly when the roll doors went out. (The reset buttons are on the OPPOSITE side of the roll doors, so you have to kick the door out of the track, crawl under it, put the door back into the track, and climb up the wall a bit to get to the reset button.) My back's been unhappy on and off for three weeks or so, but yesterday was really bad. As in 'don't breathe too deeply or it hurts' bad. I took a Vicodin when I got home (still hoarded from the herniated disk incident, but this feels different, like really bad spasms, which makes me hesitant to go to the doctor since when I went for the first time I had spasms, they were basically 'take 2 Aleve and shut the fuck up about it' even though I couldn't stand up straight.)

3. Today is the start of my 'vacation'. I have the next 2 weeks off work, but I have tons of doctor's visits, a dinner with a friend, going to VA to see my aunts (one of whom just had a bad fall and went through surgery that they thought she was going to die at because she's 90+ years old but she managed to make it and is back to her assholish self), and all sorts of other shit. I found out last night when I was finally going to try and take a bath that the drain plug that came with the house DOESN'T FUCKING FIT THE TUB. So I am feeling extremely whiny and petulant and in pain and cranky that my 'vacation' is going to be anything but. *flounces and pouts*

not much to say. sigh. going off a nice mood high i had for a while earlier and settling into a grim treadmill like feeling with these work things etc. sigh

1. It's not a long weekend here in Canada, but we had ours last weekend, so it all evens out. Does this count as a point? I guess it does.

2. I stayed up late on Friday and Saturday nights (like, 1:00am, which is very late for me). Friday's was due to needing to unwind a bit after an irritating incident, Saturday's was because my family came to visit and celebrate a bunch of birthdays. I expected to be completely out of it today due to getting up early, but strangely I feel OK right now. I think although I didn't sleep long enough, I slept unusually well, so that made up for it somewhat.

3. Thanks to effects of a new blood sugar lowering medication, it has been really tough to avoid gaining weight the past few months, and nearly impossible to lose it again. I'm still trying to find the right mix of snacks to bring to work, for instance, and am trying to bring a little less this week to see how that goes. The problem is if I don't eat enough during the day, I end up not just hungry, but cranky, stupid, and potentially unconscious. Still, it's better than the old days when there weren't so many treatment choices, and I'd be injecting insulin (or just dead) by now.

I read more than comment on Metachat but:

1. Went over to my brother and sister-in-law's Saturday night. My brother fixed my bike while i fixed their computer and we generally had a nice visit. It was good to have good working brakes on my bike as I did a 30 mile ride Sunday AM and I had to use the brakes a lot due to crowds. The fog was so thick along the lakefront,very eerie and damp.

2. Dinner with friends yesterday then I went to a reunion party for a punk rock bar I used to go to ...ah 30 years ago. It was lovely to see so many cool and fun old folks. The dancefloor was hopping and it was wild to see a hundred or so 50-something people all dancing wildly to the Heartbreakers. It was packed but just full of awesome folks all glad to see each other. I almost didn't go but now i can't wait for the next opportunity.

3. Reconnected with an old friend last week and we talked Saturday about him using video and sound of me in an art project he's working on. It involves nudity and I am middle-aged, but it will be somewhat distorted and anonymous. I am intrigued and leaning towards doing it. I will not tell my children or mother.

And in general am adjusting to the fact that I am unemployed. I have been working part-time at my job tying up loose ends, but after 6/1, that's it. I think I will have enough resources to pay the mortgage and feed my daughter and I and pay the bills minimally. So seven day weekends for a while, hopefully not too long.

Welcome to the 3-point update, readery!

As to me:
1) Worked quite a bit this weekend. I have three interviews in the next two days and had to do a presentation for one of them. I'm a bit on the exhausted side.
2) Went to 2 pool parties yesterday, and didn't get burned.
3) At one they had the choice of Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers or Bud Light. I chose the wine coolers and laughed about the 1980s.

1. I'm alive.
2. I'm doing fine.
3. Here's your sign.

1. Friday night I went to the movies and a sport's bar with my sister.

2. Saturday day I did nothing. Saturday night I had dinner at my inlaw's.

3. Sunday night I went to a minor league baseball game and today I went kayaking with my parents, sister, sister's boyfriend, husband and kids. It was such a beautiful day. My mom and I spotted a manatee and we saw lots of dolphins as usual. I arrived home about an hour ago. I showered and painted my nails. We're having hotdogs and coleslaw for dinner tonight. I don't feel like cooking. Maybe I'll go for a bike ride in a couple hours.

1. We missed the Memorial Day parade, but I did hear a neighbor kid come home all revved up from the parade. His mom hollered at him to "settle down and get over here!"

2. Just returned from a gorgeous sushi lunch: avocado with miso dressing, vegetable tempura, inari maki, oshitashi, tempura maki, vegetable maki, and mackerel ginger maki. I had ginger beer, which turns out to be a perfect non-alcoholic drink to have with maki. I can't remember the last time a meal blissed me out like that. Wow.

3. Bought some Manic Panic Shocking Blue. I've been wanting to give my gray hair some blue streaks for a loooooong time. Tonight, I'll give it a try.

1. online coursework
2. online coursework
3. online coursework

(sigh -- tonight, I'm ordering a pizza, taking a shower, and going to bed early)

That was a shocking memory right out of nowhere; I flinched. Shocking Blue and Hot Hot Pink have a very distinct meaning for me. We once had to repaint a bathroom because of Purple Haze. That and the professional collection of OPI nail polish.

Atlanta, Little 5 Points, 1990.
It was a helluva three years.

Can anyone read "Manic Panic" in my comment? I can't.

I think it got stripped out, Ardiril, but I too know the horror of splashing Shocking Blue.

I'm planning to rinse it out in the stainless steel kitchen sink to avoid the Shocking Blue bathroom horror of which you speak. (I have long experience of blue hair sessions from my youth, when the parental penalty for dying the bathtub was much steeper than the penalty for dying my hair. I learned to be insanely careful.)

1. Ohmiygod it feels good to paint again. One day without rain and I managed to scuff up the easel only once. It is already stained with paint. It is doomed to hardship and bad weather.

2. Friend had a tree go down, just missing the house. Saw it on the news, powerlines and all. The power went out an hour ago and nipsco was a mess to deal with. They only have the street's old address so they will probably never find it. The power is back so I can ignore them. I doubt they will ever ind it, despite my explanations.

3. It's been a good food kind of weekend. Burgers on the grill, elaborate pork butt, eclairs. I'm just waiting for my next meal.

1. Home from a weekend at the beach! It was great fun. I spent a lot of time in the great outdoors and got a decent amount of sun (include red arms from too much biking without sunscreen). I also managed to stay on top of work for my online class and get an A on my first assignement! Yay! It's nice to be home with the dog and cat. They both seem to happy to see us.

2. While on the beach, I read a great article in Oprah magazine about dealing with negative people. I have a few in my life, but sometimes they feel like 10,000 because I let them bother me! Wish I could find the article to link to you all, but it doesn't seem to be online.

3. SUMMER IS HERE! I'm so excited, I've been waiting waaaaaay too long. So much good stuff going on this summer- apartment hunting then moving, taking a MAPP class with Stynxno, finishing up the online course, all sorts of various summer fun!

1. I've been having a fairly relaxed weekend, which has been nice. And ikkyu2's been all geared up to do a bunch of grilling, so I haven't had to do any cooking, which has been a nice break (plus we've been eating really yummy food).

2. Picked up my wedding dress and it fits! Which was expected but I was having nightmares that they had ordered the wrong size or I had gained 50 pounds without noticing or something.

3. I'm trying to find ways of strengthening my fingernails, which have always been weak and brittle and then got totally %$(**#'ed up due to an incompetent manicure. I just soaked my fingers in olive and avocado oils, which felt nicely self-indulgent. I don't know if it'll help my nails, but my hands are now nicely shiny.

occhiblu: My mother swears by those nail polishes that you can get that claim to strengthen your nails.

1) Working weekend, but pleasantly so, as all holiday weekends are for me. Got paid to not work at the f/t job and worked about 5.5 hours (today) at the clinic running/feeding/cleaning up after and medicating borders. Mostly smooth.

2) Had a dream last night that was fairly violent/graphic. I'll small it in case folks don't want to read it. I've been having some neck soreness that's probably half work-related (repetitive manual labor FTL) and partly the weird contortions my body undergoes when I sleep. In last night's dream, an unidentified but obviously sadistic guy was killing people in various ways. Unidentified guy broke my neck, in the manner that you do when you mercy-kill an animal with your hands, three separate times, because obviously I just wouldn't die. The third time I even had blood pour out of my mouth and nose, but still didn't die. Apparently dream-me decided to just fake death until all this noise was over, and at some point I woke up. Sound fairly nightmare-ish, no? But for some reason I was relatively calm during the whole ordeal and woke up without that "Holy shit, I just had a nightmare" feel. But my neck was sore. Go figure.

3) Picked up Erik Larson's most recent book yesterday and I've been devouring it in my downtime. Some folks may know him as the author of "The Devil in the White City". I'm a fairly big fanboy of his. I'm not a huge WWII nut (mainly because it's been done time and time and time again), but once again, Larson has found a unique angle and a bunch of source material (letters, diaries, etc) that make it really engaging. I guess this means I recommend it.

1. Lovely, lovely weekend at the beach. Most relaxing.

2. I have put on quite a bit of weight in the last couple of months despite ramping up the running. And it's all gone on my belly. I feel kind of gross.

3. Going to have a very busy week of work.

1. Spent all afternoon and evening partying in the middle of the street with my crazy neighbors with the neighborhood memorial day block BBQ. We have one today, 4th of july and labor day. Apparently we're going to roast a pig for the 4th.

2. Found out that my next door neighbor passed away a few months ago. There's a dozen units in the apartment building next door so we didn't know her well but she was always very nice to us when we saw her. Both my wife and I were saying that we hadn't seen her in a while and now we know why.

3. Going to a Mefi meetup on Friday at the Penn Brewery.

1. A stay-at-home weekend, but not a bad one. . .a mix of relaxing and doing stuff. . .Friday went to see a guy lecturing on Amelia Erhart and what he thinks happened to her. Interesting.

2. Wine tasting, walking, biking, gardening, cooking, going out for coffee, watching I Love You Philip Morris, among stuff we did.

3. Right now listening to NPR.org, the Decemberists live from the Sasquatch Festival in Washington.

1. My immediate and extended family had a surprise birthday party for my dad at a neat amusement park in Central PA. We had a crazy amount of fun, and my dad was completely surprised. It was awesome. I hope that it's set the stage for a relative-heavy summer.

2. Feeling horrible again, turns out this weekend was only a temporary reprieve. This is such bullshit. Would like a vacation from myself please.

3. Realized how jealous I am of all my siblings. Their lives are better than mine, probably because they're better people than I am. I hate being the black sheep.

1. I started out the weekend like a superhero. Friday was a half-day at the office, so I was able to work from home (otherwise it would have been time to turn around and go back home not too long after I got there. So I went in to see my therapist for the first time since starting this job almost 6 weeks ago. Which was good. Then I took some time off and went to the DMV (made up the time later in the afternoon; yay, halfday!).

2. Was so dreading the DMV. There had been a problem with my license that I was able to clear up on Wed., which I was hoping would be enough time (they assured me 24 hours, but it's the DMV, so you never know if those are "business hours" (like business days)) for things to be cleared up. I went to the DMV in Herald Square (remembering to remember you all to it while I was there—the Square, not the DMV) expecting the worst. It did take nearly 2½ hours, but it was otherwise pretty painless. Except for the woman standing behind me who was so impatient that she kept bumping into me and hitting me with her purse. Because that will make the line go faster (since I had my backpack with me with every important document ever, just in case, I set it on the floor between my legs and would only pick it up when there were several feet of room in front of me for me to pick it up and walk forward, further infuriating her). So after fighting with my insurance company the day before (I live in Manhattan, keep the bike in NJ, work out on LI; apparently you have to have a NJ policy if the bike lives in NJ, and btw NJ requires you to be there in person to get a policy, which is fun if you're over an hour away from NJ during anything resembling regular business hours), I finally got everything done on Friday. License, reg, title, insurance, and whatever else. All. Fucking. DONE.

3. This meant I could ride my motorcycle on Saturday, which I did. I took it to a shop for an oil change, because it was easier (got rid of my oil change stuff in MA; too much of a pain to transport without making a mess EVERYWHERE). They told me I needed new front brake pads. Desperately. I was headed to a birthday party out in Parsippany, so I figured I'd give it a shot, trying to ride without using my front brakes. It was a fun challenge, and not at all hard as I'd expected. Just plenty of following distance and judicious engine braking. The party was fun, though leaving at midnight got me home about 3:25am, because I had to go from Parsippany to Hoboken, change out of my gear and clean up the garage, then walk to the PATH, PATH to Manhattan, then wait FOREVER for a late-night D train. Still worth it.

Then I did NOTHING the rest of the weekend. Like a loser. Oh well. It was relaxing? Until it was 10pm last night and I realized I still hadn't cut my hair. Oh well. Today is going to be looooong.

(Can't wait for a real motorcycle ride, though. New pads arrive next week. Gotta take the bike in on Saturday then find a place in NY that does bike inspections on Saturday (my shop is in NJ).)

Oh, I left out part of the saga: There was the 24 hour period between Wed and Thursday where I spent probably 6 hours looking for my title, including a trip all the way out to my garage and back after work on Thursday night. Yay, lost sleep!

Still haven't caught up.

1. Went to Boston for the weekend for an old friend's wedding which was really fun and low stress. The place was pretty and everyone was happy and I got to see two of my high school friends who I don't see often.

2. My mom lent us her car for the weekend so we could get to the wedding and also so bf could go to his cousin's college graduation in RI. Only problem was that we all forgot that bf doesn't know how to drive stick, so I ended up having to drive him down and back and sit through my second graduation in a week (my sister was Wed). I am done with graduations for a while I hope. They are long and boring. Bf's mom was very touched that I came to the graduation and said "it's so nice of you and so unnecessary" and I was like "actually it was necessary bc you didn't teach bf to drive stick!"

3. Going to Spain in 3 days with bf and his family for his mom's 65th birthday which happens to be right around my 30th birthday (gulp). I am excited for Spain- we are going to Granada and Seville. I'm a little worried about eating there as a vegetarian though because everything I've read so far says that I should expect to only eat potatoes and cheese for a while. But I have lived on worse.
If anyone know any veggie-friendly places in Granada, please let me know.