1. My boss isn't at work today either and my one coworker and I are being serious slackers today. This is perfectly fine by me because I am laaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy. And I don't feel like working on my Special Collections work. Or dealing with the messed up dissertations. Or really anything work-related.

2. Went out for a walk with one of my sisters and the Zombies Run 5k training app. We didn't do the first week of stuff yet, but only the 'story begins' one, which doesn't have specific run/walk instructions on it. And I fucking love it. I think I'm going to go ahead and purchase the full blown version now, while it's 50% off, although it'll be a while before I really get into that version. (8 weeks or something, depending on how slow my fat ass goes.)

3. I really need to get my ass moving on starting the writeup for the duet choreography I'm writing for the June recital with the Laurel dance studio. I wanted to have half of it done by the end of this month, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not. I've at least got the music picked out and edited down to 2m43s. And I need to figure out costuming for that show as well. I have a matching skirt/veil set, but I'm not sure if that's what I really want to wear or not. (I also need to finish sewing the gold bra, but the costuming workshop was cancelled for tonight.)

1. Mrs Agogo is out of town this week so I have the house to myself. I'm not in the mood to work on the job search front today, so I'm taking a day off from adult responsibilities and declaring it DO NOTHING IMPORTANT DAY.

2. So far I've surfed the internet and filled up a few sketchbook pages with cartoons and doodles. My big ambition for the day is scan them and post them to my blog and/or flickr.

3. I've listened to the White Album Side 1 x 100 three times today and sense a fourth listen soon. My cats are not digging it nearly as much as I am.

(Senyar, does the Ninja do kale well? I've been debating getting one.)

1. I passed my therapist licensing exam on Friday!

2. I've been totally crashed out since then! SO TIRED.

3. I should probably go to the gym but I think I'll take a nap instead.

1. My tax refund is scheduled to hit my account on Thursday. This is enough money to find my own small apartment in the U District rather than rent a room in someone's house.

2. My BMI is down but my weight loss stopped at the beginning of the year. I am chest pressing 225, so although I still have a significantly large gut, my upper body is starting to balance out my overall appearance. Still no stamina though.

3. So many sunny days lately, I cracked the window a bit so Sookie could get a breather. Now she is shedding at a ghastly pace.

3.a. Sookie does not like "Side 1 x100" at all. She hid under the bed.

(Senyar, does the Ninja do kale well? I've been debating getting one.)

I've not tried kale in mine. Today it handled romaine, spinach, raw zucchini, pear and canteloupe, plus about half a cup of apple juice, with no problem. I have the Ninja Master Prep, but if I could buy it in the UK, I'd have got the Ninja Kitchen System, which is the big brother of my blender. My blender has the motor on the top, where as the Kitchen System is the traditional kind with the motor on the bottom.

1. Construction upstairs, today they're working on the bathroom.
2. It's my mom's memorial day, so in a few minutes I'm gonna go for a walk around the lake so I can talk with her in peace and quiet.
3. I was in the bathroom earlier and the worker upstairs hammered on the floor, "KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK." Since the bathrooms in this building are a real conduit for sound, I immediately responded, "Come in, I'm naked!" and was rewarded with laughter. Sometimes I actually use what I learned in college in my everyday life.

1. Monday is my one day off per week, so I'm doing all the domestic stuff: laundry, unload dishwasher, clean, small bit of organizing, catlapping. NOT listening to White Album, so my kitties will not have to suffer enormously. I did download some jazz to add to my jumbled collection, so have been listening to that most of the day. Kitties like jazz; not Beatles.

2. It's been quite cold the last several days. We had a smattering of snow overnight Saturday (even on the beach). It made the steps slick and roads black-iced in spots. Thankfully, I made it in to work at 6:30 AM Sunday with no problem till I had to very carefully negotiate iced-over pavement the entire distance from the far off employee parking to the building entrance. Only a few slips. Thankfully, the snow all melted by the end of the day.

3. The store (weekend job) has a new manager. He's been there 4 weeks now, and (big dog that he is) has been putting his mark on everything. He's never been a store manager before, but went to corporate training and drank from the company well. What used to be a nicely oiled team of employees who always exceeded the sales and service goals has now gone into disarray. I hope it smooths out before March, which is the beginning of our extremely busy season...

3.(more) A friend gave me a very very old stationary bicycle that I'm trying to get working properly. Thankfully, it doesn't have fancy electronics and probably just needs the gears lubricated. I'll now be able to do some of my knee rehab at home and cut down PT sessions to once per week. Several other friends have combined to give me an old 19" TV, a digital tuner and antenna so I can maybe watch something to occupy myself while exercising. I haven't been successful in getting the components to play nicely together and am doubting that it's going to be worth it. I may be too far away from a signal to get reception.

1 Got the day off today for Presidents Day, got in some exercise and am doing some patching on the plaster in the middle bedroom/den. Hopefully I'll get the room painted in a few weeks.

2 Got a call from the son to tell me that he's working as a stage hand for the union local, so that's good news. He's got a degree in theatre tech so I assume that he'll want to do more than just setup and teardown but it's a start.

3 They're promoting a coworker to be my boss and I like him a lot so that's making me rethink my job plans.

Crossing the pedestrian bridge over the Grand Central Parkway I heard an old man yelling at another old man. I think they might have been brothers: they looked similar, white haired, pink, and pudgy, wearing matching neon yellow parkas.

At first I thought he was yelling to be heard over the traffic but as I passed them I realized he was hopping mad.

"You've got to testify! What! You! Know!

You say what you! Know! Understand me?

So!

I'll tell you what I know!

How did you get that chocolate on your lip?

I know!

You ate the last cookie! You ate the last cookie!

You ate the last cookie!

I know it!"

And the other guy says, in a reallly mild and humble voice, "Can we just drop it?"

I wish I could get rid of that extra unitalicized "ate," because the guy didn't say that.

It's your lucky day! - gomichild x

Got my hair cut.
Ate tacos.
There was a cat fight under my house last night that scared me to death. Woke up this a.m. and both of my crawl space doors were open.

1. At home today. It is so wonderful to get to sleep in on a Monday. I love these 3 day weekends.

2. Still strangely upset about being essentially shunned off Health Month. You'd think I'd be happy about not needing to track all the rules, but instead I'm still wondering what I did to get so excluded from the Mefi team.

3. We are finally seeing Zero Dark Thirty as a matinee today. It's almost as delightfully decadent to see a movie and eat popcorn in the afternoon as it is to sleep in on a Monday.

1. I spent the long weekend visiting my family, which was nice despite my one aunt annoying the living crap out of me (as usual).

2. I had a baby shower yesterday and it was actually fun. My bff rocks.

3. Now I need to sort through the gifts and start writing thank you notes.

what I did to get so excluded - MeFi has become a very strange club over the last three or so years. The atmosphere of a friendly, boisterous pub is long gone.

1) just spent like $200 shopping on Victoria's Secret online (DON'T JUDGE ME YES I KNOW VS SUCKS but their tshirt bras are SO COMFY and do actually fit me properly...) because:

2) after cleaning up my diet really super clean for the past month(eliminated all cheats, sugar and dairy) I've suddenly dropped 2 sizes with basically no effort and my old underwear/bras are literally falling off me (plus they're all like 5 years old and ratty as hell) and:

3) my chronic lifetime sinus issues have magically vanished. Like, holy crap! I can breathe through my nose! It's weird, I tell you.

on the minus end, this sends me off into a new edition of the PANTS RANT. According to US women's sizing I am apparently now a size 4 waist, a size 6 bust, and a size 8 thigh (and biceps, too, apparently). What. The. Actual. Fuck??! What normally shaped human being actually fits in this stuff? It's like the modern standard for US sizing is a Mrs. Potatohead doll.

1. Three-day weekend, thank god, because I have been working so hard and so unhappily at work that when people ask me important questions I just look at them tiredly and say, "I don't care." Well, maybe I don't, but that's what it feels like.

2. One of my coworkers must sense my unhappiness because he gave me a Pepsi Throwback.

3. Things outside of work aren't much better, except that I'm not at work which is nice. I am reading a lot, including Gone Girl, also a gift from a nice person, and it's very well done and absorbing, but also reminds me of all those depressing AskMetaFilter relationship/money questions I've read over the years. Also reading Wodehouse, who I somehow have never read, but disappointingly am not finding him especially funny. Which are the really funny ones?

2. Still strangely upset about being essentially shunned off Health Month. You'd think I'd be happy about not needing to track all the rules, but instead I'm still wondering what I did to get so excluded from the Mefi team.

Oh I noticed you hadn't been around, bearwife and was wondering why. Although I'm kind of oblivious to a lot of stuff... I just tend to go online, post my thing and drop a comment in the two or three entries below me, so I probably end up commenting on the same people's stuff all the time. Huh. I'm sorry you've been excluded :(


1. Had the in-laws up for Saturday and Sunday. They left last night and today my husband and I have been taking turns with the kiddo so we can nap and exercise. We've been doing a lot of that lately, and it kind of sucks because it means no family time, but it also sucks to be tired and unfit, so blah.

2. Felt kind of ill on my run today, I think because I had a bit of an overindulging weekend. Also, I usually get up and run, but today I ran at about 2pm, so had lunch still in my belly. Took it slow, which made for a bit of a boring time. Still made 8.5 miles in under a 10 minute/mile average though (barely).

3. This week is supposed to be my daughter's winter break, however she goes to school Weds, Thurs, Friday now because they had to make up so many days from Sandy.

on preview: JanetLand, I only really find the Jeeves and Wooster ones funny.

1. Visited my aunt, uncle & cousins in Allentown last night/today. Was great to see their cute new house, and have them meet Oliver. I'm excited they're nearby; they're going to come to NYC a lot, I hope. Also, we made some summer plans to get to Ocean City, and hopefully drag my sister up here as well.

2. Learned many valuable Zipcar lessons today, such as: budget a few extra hours for driving back into NYC, even if you don't think you'll need them, because if somebody reserves the car out from under you while you're stuck getting on the GWB, you'll pay through the nose. Also, I hate driving. I either have to add Stynxno to the account, or just let him drive and risk getting in trouble. I'd much rather snooze and play with Oliver.

3. Got some good projects in the hopper- exercise, church sign, MefiRetreat planning.

bearwife, what happened with HealthMonth? I've been using it just for exercise tracking but have not been engaging with the team, really.

1. A nice and fairly relaxed work day, as my immediate manager was off today. He's great to work with (we are on the same page how we want things done, and agree that we are "work spouses") but he gets so uptight that it rubs off on the rest of us. Today things were smooth and got done in an orderly fashion, without the added angst.

2. Submitted my observations for this years Great Backyard Bird Watch. I have such fun seeing how many varieties of birds I get to my feeders. I have yet to crack my all time high of 17 varieties at one watch, however.

3. Getting my taxes done tomorrow, yay! One of these years I really want to travel..somewhere. Just not sure where, as I have several countries on my bucket list.

bearwife, what happened with HealthMonth?

I haven't a clue, all. It's a fairly small group, Ardiril, rather than all of Mefiland, where I find the temperature runs from very warm to very cold -- too big a pool to generalize about. I made it one of my rules on HM last month to post regularly on the Game Wall, which must be why I started noticing this month that more and more, I'd post and get no response at all. I think the last thing anyone said to me was a thank you from sperose last week for a recipe. Anyway, I put up a post saying I was having real trouble with my meditating and yoga. No response. Then I asked for fruit, which is kind of a basic reason we are all on the team, is to support each other with fruit and words. No response from anyone but me! Then I put up a post asking what was up, why was I all alone in my little echo chamber? Meanwhile other posts were going up and being responded to around mine. There was even a request for fruit from someone else about three posts after mine, which got a hearty response.

So . . . that's when I closed and deleted my account. But it still feels sucky. Except for the part about not having to feel bad about blowing my rules.

Gaspode, I'm just going to be impressed with your running here. And hope that gets me off my butt this week, as I ran not at all this past weekend.

Meanwhile, theloneranger, you are making me both snort here with your discussion of weird woman's sizing and green re the weight loss. Applause!!!

I am reading a lot, including Gone Girl,

I just finished this. I really enjoyed it until the last 20 pages or so. The ending sucked.

Hmmm. Oh well, I guess I won't look forward to finishing it then.

Bummer, bearwife! Hard to imagine it's personal; like I said, I've been ultra slack in participating on the game wall.

1. I'm sitting in my car waiting for Alternate Side parking to end at 10. Pain.in.the.arse. But there's Dunkin Donuts in the near future (as long as I'm out...).

2. Last day of my four-day weekend that was supposed to be a week (Sandy, like 'pode said). Much too much on the to-do list to ever accomplish. Through about two of three hundred pages of review/reading I inadvertently assigned my students this weekend. What was I thinking?

3. Badly need coffee. Part of a poem visited me this morning, idling in the car:

What might have been--
an avocado pit,
the hard center
of soft flesh.

bearwife: argh, I don't even remember seeing the posts you're talking about on the wall. Maybe you posted at a different time to a lot of ppl, I don't know? Sorry again.

But we are both running a half marathon in April, yeah? Let's make sure to check in a few times! I ramp up just a half mile a week on my long runs until a couple of weeks before and that seems to work out pretty well. A lot of the guides I've read say stuff like "if you are running between 20 and 30 miles a week, then consider a half marathon" but I never run more than 20 miles a week, never more than 3X per week - I just don't have time - and have found it to be fine, as long as I can hit an 12 miler or so a week or two before the race.

I'm so sorry to hear about HM being a twat, bearwife. I typically try to read at least all the posts on the wall between my posts, but I often don't comment unless I have something to offer. :(

Janetland, I just didn't like the way it ended, it's a still a great read.

I didn't even know about the Health thing on MeFi. I dip in and out of there, mostly on the green but don't post much on the blue, because of the element of 'ganging up' and cronyism that makes it an unpleasant place to be sometimes. I'm sorry you've had such a bad experience, bearwife.

I didn't like the way it ended either. But she's a memorable writer. I was impressed with Sharp Objects too.

Gaspode, I am absolutely cheering you on and us, I'm running the Edinburgh half in April. Sperose, I am going to miss your daily HM postings. Glad you are here too. And Senyar, thanks for the kind words.

1. Went upstate this weekend to do some wedding hotel and restaurant scouting, which was fun and snowy. E had a great idea for the rehearsal dinner on a boat but we are having a little trouble coordinating it. Plenty of time still, I think.

2. Having trouble motivating in the mornings, I know I need to do more exercise and then I will have more overall energy. Too bad this health month thing isn't great. Maybe I'll do that zombie app.

3. Going to Argentina on Monday! I'm excited but we haven't done a lot of planning because I assumed this was a family vacation and our schedule wouldn't be up to us, but now it looks like everyone is mostly on their own til Saturday so time to do some planning.
Anyone have tips for places to eat (that include veggie dishes for me) or things to do in Buenos Aires?

Janetland: I liked What Ho, Jeeves

1. First day of work today. Worked until 8pm. Good sign?

2. z_z

New job, Eid? Without the commute?

I've really got to log in more often.

1. Boss is gone, due to a death in the family. About the same amount of work is getting done, but it is more relaxed.

2. I do not read books by politicians, but I just finished Jimmy Carter's "White House Diary" and it was fascinating.

3. Older Boy is being recruited by area middle schools. That's creeping me out.