I'm eating excellent smoked salmon and I'm finally going to shoot my four-months in the planning video!

Tomorrow I'm getting a Mohawk! Well, faux hawk, they'll be a little on the sides.

The switchover to my new ISP/phone company was seamless. So all those doom-and-gloom posts I'd read on various Sky customer forums meant I was pleasantly surprised when, at 10am when my old ISP cut me off, I plugged in my new router and it all worked beautifully.

Things are also going very well with the new man.

And I have a plate of cheese, fruit and nuts for my early dinner, whilst I watch another episode of Downton Abbey (I'm late to DA, but in anticipation of the new series, ITV is showing it from the start, so I'm on catch-up. Episode 5 is on in a minute, after Judge Judy.)

The recent 21 Jump Street flick has just joined Speed Racer, Captain America, and Battleship on my short list of low expectation/high reward movies.

My first month with a gym membership has resulted in six less pounds and the ability to walk a somewhat faster pace with a marked decrease in both foot pain and leg cramps. I still walk like a hobbling geriatric but not nearly as bad as it was. Using a cane now is an option.

I will probably buy Baldur's Gate from gog.com for this weekend. I never got the opportunity to finish that when a friend had it.

I discovered that audacity does an amazing job of normalizing mp3 files for mobile players. A bit of compression, a few dB of limiting followed by normalization and I can hear most songs fully over any outside noise like bus engines or crappy gym music.

Hurray for sweetie visits and new men and gym memberships and haircuts and filming and enjoyable flicks!

What's rocking me back on my heels lately:

Health Month! My August rules are well on their way to becoming habits. I'm swapping out one of them for something harder to see how that goes in September. The team approach works wonders for me.

An empty closet! Some construction/replumbing on our apartment building forced us to empty out our tiny bedroom yesterday, and now I'm going to sort through (and mostly give away) all that stuff. So nice to see an empty space! such a good chance to clean everything down to the wainscoting! Such a good chance to say wainscoting! So inspiring to realize I don't need these things and someone else might!

A new dress! After realizing that all my summer dresses are plain black, I bought a purplish-blue definitely-not-black summer dress last month and I looooove wearing it.

Many wonderful things:

1. My happy, relaxed Bear. It is a treat to come home to him. All the stress he was under has fallen away with retirement.

2. My bike. I love riding it, even when the hills kill me.

3. I am finally done with my tooth whitening course. It hurt like hell after the last session yesterday at the dentist, but the choppers look great, the pain is fading away, and on Sunday AM, when my "all white food" diet ends, I CAN HAVE BLACK COFFEE.

4. Our trip to the Mediterranean approaches! We fly out Monday to Venice, where we will be for four nights, then cruise the Mediterranean, then spend another 4 nights in Barcelona.

5. Health Month! Really worked for me in August, and I'm down 3 lb since the start of the month. This is meaningful at my age, when each pound is s l o o o w to fall off.

Ooo, Health Month! I am going to join for September as a way of keeping myself accountable for my new workout goals!

Hurray! I'll see you there!

It's getting SOCLOSE to the time I get to see the King Tut exhibit!

mr. lfr went a wee bit crazy and purchased us a pair of these:

≡ Click to see image ≡

For the unfamiliar, those are sort of the Ferrari 458 Italia of the mountain bike world. I don't have a photo of our actual bikes just yet, as they're currently unbuilt frames hanging in the garage, but they're the same color framesets with essentially the same build as that example, and the parts have been ordered.

he's basically cackling and rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of building them up by himself. And hey, new bikes! They'll be super fast, and the frames are sexy. And he's satisfyingly geeked out at the prospect of the build project. I'm a lucky woman.

Going to the DNC on Tuesday! Very excited. Going to rally with and canvass for Planned Parenthood. I'm trying to do more to do things outside of work for fun.

I am so happy for you all! Great stuff, everyone.

I know nothing about bicycles but I really like the looks of that one, lfr. Congrats!

I'll be honest here; I'm having trouble thinking of something. I guess the best thing is that a new semester has started and I have classes with the same people that were in mine last year - I'm starting to make more friends. That's good. Also, I've gotten to hang out with my boyfriend more often lately.