Well, I angered the neighbors by hammering repeatedly to hang a bulletin board on my wall. And my roommate and I rigged up the insides of a musical greeting card to play when the door is opened.

At a conference . . . woke up, listened to Susan Enan's Plainsong on Ipod speakers while getting showered and dressed. Grabbed a half whole wheat bagel and cream cheese and skinny latte at the hotel cafe. Went to conference educational sessions in AM. Ducked out for quick errand and lunch with a friend. Back for educational sessions this afternoon, which are just winding up. The same friend and I are going to dinner, and I'm thinking about whether I want to take a walk/do yoga or just read A Feast of Crows on my Kindle in the meantime.

I certainly will think of you tonight when I have a pre dinner cocktail. Hope yours was delicious and relaxing.

It was definitely relaxing, with the added benefit of making food delicious. I feel like I should stock up while I feel the urge, it's so hard to eat during the day.

Smoked a pork shoulder for 7 hours and we had pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. Very good.

chillin. plotting.

Went for a 5k run along the river. Came home and cleaned the cat boxes and put the garbage out in the alley with 15 minutes to spare before the trucks came. Walked to work with The Dead's Europe '72 playing on my Droid. Dug through hundreds of thousands of lines of server debugging output looking for bugs. Chatting on internal IRC about the damn Stillers and the new snack machine in the kitchen with chips and candy bars priced at $0.30 each, not a good thing for my diet at all. Walked home, got the car, drove to pick up my wife and stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home. Now sitting in the kitchen typing this, waiting for the Thai chicken and veggies to cook. Very tired and want a beer but I'm abstaining until the 10K race in two weeks.

I've started getting the stuff I ordered from Amazon*. Two packages arrived today. One was the DVD set of Rome. The other box had The Wilder Life (which I am currently inhaling), Mad Men (season four), The High King of Montival and The Tears of the Sun (both titles from the Emberverse series).

I also had some pineapple and my lips are still tingly several hours later.

*I don't normally just order a bunch of stuff off the internets. The mister and I saved up a bunch of coinage and I spent some on the family reunion in July and the rest on this order from Amazon. And there's still more books/DVDs to come, yay!

Had my 6 month skin cancer screen today. Aside from the derm yelling at me for too much tan (it's SUMMER!) all went well. . . . Went to a WEDDING yesterday (wait for it). . .Daughter came down for it and left this morning to take her gf to the coast to show her the old haunts, including the Newport Aquarium. Tonight, a stovetop eggplant/polenta/provolone/marinara/basil concoction. . .with a nice chianti. . . .

I want pulled pork now..

I did pretty much nothing at work today, which I'm totally fine with after a week of coming in early and staying late. Mr. Arkham has class tonight so I'm on my own for dinner...which means leftover hummus and crackers from Saturday's picnic and a bowl of frosted shredded wheat. Not sure what sort of cocktail goes with that.

called the insurance people to get insurance for our new place. it looks like we will be closing on next tuesday. this saga may have an ending. worked the rest of the day and blew off my run. kid, cooking, dinner, bath, bedtime. Breathe.

Writing reading blah blah blah. Then errands (Goodwill, library, bookstore, stuff like that) and an afternoon trip to an unfamiliar grocery store where I realized that OH NO ALL I'VE HAD TODAY IS COFFEE. I decided it made more sense to buy what little was in my cart and head straight home, eating crackers all the way.

Then more reading, writing, and a craft project (matting some prints to hang) while The Fella made dinner: pizza and salad. I do not know how pizza from pre-fab ingredients and plain undressed greens managed to fill both sinks with dirty dishes. He is a mystery to me.

And that brings us up to now. Ouch, I ate too much pizza.

Soon I will haul myself off the couch and tidy up a bit; we're having friends over for cocktails tomorrow.

Cocktail consisted of a rather robust Argentine cab/sauv. Listening to Cinematic Orchestra, feeling homesick for I don't know what. I'm home, aren't I?

Was having a perfectly normal day when all of a sudden at work I had one of those horrible epiphany moments where you decide that everything you're doing is crap. All that education and years in offices and I am *literally* sitting there shuffling papers. So, that put a damper on things. But hopefully I will sleep it off.

Brought home fabric from the dry cleaners that I plan to make curtains with. It is brown with gold threads.
Made good pasta with tomato creamsauce and cherry tomatoes and lots of garlic for dinner and there are leftovers so I can have it for at least two lunches.
Things at work are up and down. I feel confident and like I am doing a good job and then completely stupid and out of the loop ten min later. Not enjoying that, but my new project is mostly good.

Was not a productive day. Dicked around with my program in the morning, making small changes that do nothing. Tried working on my proposal draft but made little headway. Decided oh to hell with it and went to a panel discussion about 9/11 10 years later. Two of the panelists were interesting, but the third seemed a straightforward conservative hawk; it got me quite worked up to hear the same tired arguments ten years later about why the Iraq invasion was a good thing, even vengeance! Oh dear. Then the introductory session for a science communication workshop for scientists -- nice to meet so many like-minded people on campus. Now back home, used my new adjika sauce to make a Georgian egg salad -- yum! Missing my boyfriend.

I played tennis from 7:30 to 9, then showered and went to school . the most stressful part of my school day is finding a parking
space, Luckily, iI found one in 30 seconds today. I spent 4 hours preparing for my two classes and then came home to watch one of the greatest tennis matches I have ever seen. Now it's time to feed my anorexic dog and my obese dog who loves to sleep 23 hours a day and eat the 24th. Then I'll curl up with State of Wonder, Ann Patchett's new book. Goodnight all.

Rode the bike to work. Then remembered I had to go to another university for a workshop this afternoon. So I rode over there at lunch time. Wasn't the sweatiest biker in the room. Then rode home early. Wrote some work emails. Played some video games. Cooked dinner from the CSA. Then my totally swell Guy made cocktails (manhattans with Revel Stoke, which is a spiced Canadian Whiskey we buy by the case, cause they local shop stopped stocking it). Now I'm hanging out with a big grey cat in my lap, reading Connie Willis, All Clear

msali--I've moved a lot in my life. The only moves when I haven't felt homesick afterward were the two back to Chicago. I hope you & the pup are well and that your husband is there (soon, if not already!)

cp311 you want slaw with that too?

Limped my way into work and realized pretty promptly that this was a bad idea; I have a huge stupid blister on the bottom of my foot and it's painful and grump-inducing. Retaped it when I got to work. I am now held together mostly through tape and good wishes.

Put my headphones on and listened to Avett Brothers "Ballad of Love and Hate" on repeat for the entire morning while I pounded through some data analysis and client bullshit. Winced over to the library during my lunch hour, and got to see my favorite librarian. He had set aside a book for me, which I'm a few chapters into and loving.

On my way to class, confronted the fact that sometimes I'm going to be dispirited and sad and tired, and I'll need to go to class anyway, so I need to just buck up. Hobbled around Oakland a bit trying to feel okay again. Made it to class, and managed to be half pleasant to people.

Andrew picked me up afterward and we ended up at my neighborhood bar, where we had mediocre tacos and a BLT. And I realized that whatever it is I have with him is a good thing, because after being with him for two minutes I felt like I had had a great day. And I had, I guess, 'cause it ended with him.

And now I'm watching How I Met your Mother and drinking a pumpkin beer and relishing the fact that I get to work from home for the rest of the week (see: painful foot.) THE END

Last week, I saw a very clean, solid-looking twin-size mattress sitting on the open porch of a neighbor and I just HAD to ask her if she was going to be using it (yeah, asking a female acquaintance about her plans for a bed - I got a lot of nerve!). Well, it turns out to have been barely used and abandoned by a relative of hers (who does not have any diseases, yeah, I dared to ask that too), and she didn't know WHAT to do with it. Well, my twin bed is almost 4 years old, during which my 300+ pound body has spent more than 16 hours a day on top of it (I do my best computery work laying down with a laptop on my chest), so it is sagging, bagging, lumpy and threatening to let go a spring or two. So I made an offer: ten dollars. She said I could have it for free (I'd let her have a couple items for nothing at the end of my yard sale a couple months ago). I'd just have to wait until her young, strong son came over during the weekend to carry it the 100 feet that I probably couldn't. Cool, I thought. That was Friday.

Saturday morning I awoke to find that, for the first time in over six months, it had been raining. And the mattress was out there, exposed to the wet. It was less than a tenth of an inch, but still... well, Sonny wasn't coming over until Sunday and the neighbor was hopeful it'd dry out by then, even though there was a 10% chance of THUNDERshowers all weekend, so I crossed my fingers and waited. Well, there was no more rain and it thoroughly dried in the sun we did get (thank you, inaccurate weather forecasters!). Sonny the mover carried it like it was a pillow and took my old mattress out to my porch where I now have to worry about disposing of it - it sits out looking as ugly as the other one looked nice.

So I sat down on the semi-new bed, laid down, and it was the most pleasant thing I've enjoyed since [REDACTED]. I thought I'd go to sleep before it got dark but I didn't. I got into organizing STUFF in my laptop and the next thing I noticed it was 3 AM. Maybe I was so comfortable something in me didn't want to fall asleep and miss it, I don't know. But I finally forced myself into sleep mode and the next thing I knew it was just after Noon and all I wanted to do was sleep some more... but wait...

I may have mentioned before that I live in a beautiful but inconvenient location, far from the local bus stops (but the buses speed by on highway 101 a fifty yards from my door), so when my car died and I couldn't replace it, I had a little problem... which was solved because my doctor vouched that I was disabled enough to qualify for the Runabout Bus that provides door-to-door service to the old and infirm. Cool. But you have to make reservations at least a day in advance. Which I had for a grocery shopping trip - for 1PM. I dragged myself into some presentable clothes, washed only the visible parts of my body, shaved a week's worth of beard off and stepped into my shoes just as the mini-bus arrived ten minutes early. Whew. The shopping went smoothly, the return trip bus was on time and both drivers were among the friendlier ones on Runabout duty, which was nice since I was the only rider both ways (because of my odd home location, it works out that way half the time). And the driver on the return trip did not complain about carrying my bags (there's a not-often-enforced two-bag limit for shopping trips, and I have two bags from Trader Joe's that are double the size of your usual reusable shopping bags, AND the biggest things on sale this week are beverages, so I was packing over 5 gallons of liquid). So that was a win, and I returned to my comfy bed and my laptop with thoughts about posting something to MeFi.

I'd stumbled onto an interview with Alton Brown about him finishing the LAST EPISODE of Good Eats and I thought, dang, why hasn't anybody else posted that on the Blue? So I dug up some more related links, including thoroughly enjoying his 'salt site', composed it all, hit PREVIEW, and several warnings showed me the last dozen Mefi posts about Alton Brown, including one about the end of his series that was posted back in May when it was first announced... complete with ALL the info and links I was going to use now (HOW DID I MISS THAT? Oh, yeah, May was a BAD month.), and several unkind words about his Salt promoting. So, an hour wasted and a DOUBLEPOST embarrassment avoided.

Since then, I've been alternating between websurfing and dozing. I think I'll prepare to ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Got to work & discovered we had no a/c. Nearly mid-September and the temps here are still over 100 every day.
It wasn't so bad in the morning & the heroes from building services fixed us up by lunchtime.

We've been moving into the house we bought for the last week. Today was the first day since we closed that felt like it had any structure to it. Life is beginning to settle down.
But I feel so boring compared to foop's great story! And now I'm thirsty.

I'm late to the party, but I was in training all day at work for processing whole new collections. Then I went to the gym and went up on some machines, which was really hard. Then I worked on my performance appraisal and read all the warm fuzzy things my boss said about me and watched a lecture for school where the prof just read their slides and talked about their dissertation. Went to bed early after having a bowl of cereal and some cheese for dinner.

Had #1 daughter over for dinner and she brought along two friends, one of whom finished up my project of wiping and reloading a laptop for my son. No cocktails as daughter has embraced sobriety and this is a very good thing. Younger daughter is still basking in the glory of her first high school cross country meet this weekend where she was picked to run in the 'select' race for freshman & sophmores. Came in in the middle of the pack in a very competitive field, so this is a very good start.
Waiting to hear about a job I interviewed for and heading over to my friend's office to work on his taxes.