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1. Got back from the John Day Fossil Beds. Really neat trip. Photos on my FB and Flickr.

2. Flickr just sucks really hard now. I need to migrate all of those photos somewhere else.

3. Got a new car, a Prius V, a few weeks ago. It was great on this trip and I have high hopes for it. We got a new car in 2001, so we tend to hold onto vehicles for a long time. . .

I love 3 point updates.

1. I'm so pleased that today is my short day at work. I really wish I could take more time off and just sleep and not have to do anything, but I don't have the cash for that and TBH, the amount of vacation days I have left is mildly concerning, especially since next year I'm planning on taking off 10 days in a row.

2. I was released from the North last night! Hooray! I now move on to Spirit (the last one!) once I hear back from my sponsor who is going through a rough time right now (his mother passed away and he's fostering 4 kittens). One of my sisters just finished the North last week and the other is almost done with the West. I have a wine date with all of them tonight, which I'm totes looking forward to.

3. I've got 2 dance performances this month, eek! I still need to put a shorter hem in both my skirts, mend my bra since it is missing some sequins, take in my belt a little bit after I let it out too much, and steam my skirts plus my House of Cards costume. Ahhhhh! (Of course, they're both on the same weekend. Ugh.)

1. Mom got arrested Monday; that's her in the picture. She's fine, it was all well-planned and organized and everyone cooperated, but she said the experience was "sobering."

2. Daughter graduates highschool next week, so there are all sorts of things going on there--parties and visits and emotions.

3. Getting ready for a big campout in two weeks. Taking a date. This should be interesting.

1. Moving on Saturday! The house is almost packed- or so I'd like to think. We've made great progress but there's still so much JUNK EVERYWHERE. I seriously should have just set everything on fire and started fresh in the new place.

2. Sunday is the TONY AWARDS! My favorite! I watch on TV and I loooove it. A dear friend is in "Matilda", so I look forward to seeing him perform, along with all the other shows! Another friend and I talked about getting together to watch, but I'm not sure I'll be up for going out, so I might just watch at home.

3. Lunch time! Walking to the Italian place to pick up a sub shortly.

1. My visiting family leaves today. I will miss them and yet simultaneously I am looking forward to getting home tonight and just doing the normal stuff instead of bing a host.

2. The weather has been fabulous lately. Seattle is beautiful always, but especially when it is in the 70s and the sun is shining.

3. I didn't realize how really time consuming the Finnegan's Wake MeFi reading group would be. Even at 5 pages a day, the book is dauntingly dense. It is also delightfully funny. I'm torn about whether this was a good idea but also committed to staying with it.

1. Long slow work weeks lately with the confusion of learning my new job in the mornings and the hectic pace of my old job the rest of the day. At least I am spared overtime now.

2. I am becoming obsessed with typewriters.

3. I have just woken up to the fact that I have a 3-day hiking trip planned for September, so I need to get a move on and get new hiking shoes and break them in, otherwise it will be a very short and painful hiking trip.

1. I'm on Day 6 of the General Motors diet, and am feeling great. I've stuck rigidly to it and so if I haven't lost a few pounds when I weigh myself on Saturday morning, I'll be really cross. But tonight's dinner is steak - yay, meat.

2. At last we have some lovely weather. But I've hardly been able to leave my desk this week (even when I was working from home) so today on my way home from the office I got off the train a station early and walked home - about 3 miles in all, a nice walk, although I was a bit sweaty and stanky by the time I got home.

3. I have a lazy night planned, with TV and messing about on the internet, starting with a double bill of The Big Bang Theory, which I recently got into. I love nerds.

1. Origins Game Fair next weekend - a lovely 3 days of relaxing and playing board games. I'm so excited!

2. My grandmother is doing better. She is done with her antibiotic and the UTI seems to be going away, and her memory is better. Not as good as it was, but we remain hopeful that she will recover in another week or so.

3. Planning fun costume things. So excited!

1. It's a weird day today for me, because the kiddo is off school. Which means that she's in daycare all day instead of school + after school care (which I have to pick up and drop off from). So I have a whole uninterrupted day in the office. Have been quite productive.

2. sushi for lunch. yum.

3. I got nothing.

1. 9 years later, my dad's estate crap is still popping up. This has been a pretty bad week for me, anxiety-wise.

2. I, too, am becoming obsessed with typewriters. I wrote a letter to my grandmother as if I were living at a moonbase. Mailed one to JanetLand, too, this morning. ;)

3. I am holding gaspode's #3 ransom, and will not release it until she meets my demands. YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE, LADY!

1. Trying to get various paperworks done so that I can get my private therapy practice up and running, with clients. Today's goal is to fax off all my paperwork to one of the insurance companies to apply to be a provider.

2. Kittens! Kittens everywhere! Kittens in everything! So much kittens!

3. Trying to start a new business while also having just moved is kind of a lot of things, even without the kittens.

1. I'm not pregnant. We haven't been Officially Trying, but there is almost no way we could be closer to doing so. Within the last couple of weeks, there were a few signs that made me think "Hey, this time is different," but then it wasn't, really. So I'm not unhappy... but I am, a little.

It's probably just lupus.

(It's never lupus.)

2. Two days in a row, now, I have done semi-urgent Very Important Public Governmental Things here at the office, and I've ended up as the lead-ish person mostly by dint of being here. And, as I said to my colleague yesterday, "it's always good when you don't fuck things up." Which I haven't.

3. After like six months of vacancy, we got a downstairs neighbor who is new to town, and I was so happy to see a girl roughly my age that I may have glommed onto her like Dug from Up. But she agreed to have dinner with us anyway, which we arranged by text last night.

We were very happy... for about ten minutes, until I accidentally texted her the latest in a string of melodramatic romance novel lines I had been swapping with my OTHER friend.

Honestly, explaining myself to her wasn't as awful as sharing said line with my husband :P

1. Work is manic, with constant pressure from above to 'do moar', so now my team is stressed and falling behind on deadlines while other teams continue to ignore their workload targets, placing more stress on my team because they have to pick up the slack.
2. My ex is being very nice to me and friendly, which makes me wonder when the bombshell is going to hit.
3. Still haven't really got used to coming home to an emply house most nights. I think it's worse because I often have to work late to make up for starting and/or leaving early to pick-up/drop kids off. Also getting into bad (worse?) eating habits because I can't be bothered to cook an actual meal for myself so baked beans on toast has become my most common meal.

1) did early yoga, cuz I had to leave my place so their could be an open house for realtors (I'm downsizing)

2) had a huge lunch at Nando's

3) looked at a couple apartments for sale and walked the 4 miles home, in order to walk off the big lunch :p

danf, I'm moving my pictures to 500px. I am not crazy in love with them the way I was with flickr - big sigh - but I like them okay. ipernity is another choice, free, French, seems pretty chill.

1. I got promoted! I am now a full time used bookstore clerk instead of a part time used bookstore clerk. This comes with BENEFITS - not much more money, but health insurance! - and I am so, so excited. In a month I can get the prescriptions from three months ago filled. Now if I get sick they can't take my house! Hoorah! On the downside I will never have two days off in a row again. Ah retail.

2. Am just about finished completely rearranging the house, or, well, my floor of the house. It looks good and I love my new bedroom; it's so cool and breezy at night, it's great. I just have to take a whole day and finish up all the annoying odds and ends and clean the whole thing down to the ground.

3. Also looks like I have a big freelance gig coming in so. . drumroll. . while I may well have to have a fundraiser this fall, I might not, too, and I think I might just not lose my house this year or have to move away. This is pretty awesome.

Congrats, mgl! Having insurance is a stupidly good feel.

1) It's been nearly two weeks since my last cigarette. Feeling better and better about my odds of staying off with each passing day. Very glad to have the worst of it behind me.

2) Got a big package of information from the V-School in the mail yesterday that answered a bunch of lingering questions I'd been having, mainly based on what my actual schedule will be and cost of books and all that. Flipped through everything about four times last night and now things are really starting to feel real. And exciting. Now if I could just find a decent place to live with a fenced in yard that allows dogs over 40 lbs. So tired of checking Craigslist several times a day.

3) Having a really good June so far and more to come. Between some fantastic local events and an upcoming road trip that I'm rather excited about (plus the absence of academic stress), it's shaping up to be the most fulfilling month I've had in years. So, yay.

FANTASTiC news, mgl!! Congrats!

Yay, mgl!

1. I got a Washington state ID card. The first 3 digits of the ID# are 420.

2. The funniest meme of the week was a highway sign reading, "This year thousands of men will die of stubbornness." Beneath that, someone spray-painted, "No we won't!"

3. Best pun in a song title, Vampire Weekend's "Diane Young".

1. I need some kind of badge or card that successfully transmits the command to "stop yer yapping and just give me the test." Everything would be so much easier for everyone involved.

2. TPS is kind of cracking me up, because I'm prepared to decamp in less than half a day but don't have to, it feels like some kind of slothful luxury. I moved a couple appliances, a folding table and a few other things today and just went, "and now I'm tired," and called it quits. I did only get around 4 hrs sleep and been at it since 8, so, feels fair.

3. I believe I am currently in full blown Cumberbatch crush mode. I've really been stalling on this and crush really doesn't seem at all the right word. I'd seen him in so many things without much of a thought, but just the range of him, acting and otherwise, and he's just so-- polite and decent and well rounded... one just doesn't run into ridiculously well mannered, quietly interesting fellows who can channel depths of intensity in any run of the mill way. I do believe he's a dragon as well.
Freaking Sherlock is going to take ages.

1. Business Name I Saw and Liked: The Avant Gardener.

2. Picked up lunch and ate at the beach, which I also did yesterday and the day before.

3. Was pleasantly surprised to find that my ancient iPod still holds a charge.

Congrats, mgl, and ignore my flickr question in today's photo phriday.

1. So glad there was no departmental meeting today. Boss didn't like how me and one of my more useless coworkers answered a form we hadn't seen, and got snippy about it. It's the one thing I don't like about the boss - unnecessary overstatements that can be hurtful.

2. Changing my schedule around because the kids are in summer camp. I get a lunch hour back and I can volunteer again. Horsies!

3. Counting down to vacation. Ironically all I've wanted to draw are desert and mountain scenes, and vacation will be lots of beaches and ocean.