Earlier today I was walking through the office when a woman I work with stopped me and said “You look good, have you lost some weight?” This is the third time in the past week someone has said that, yippee!

We don’t own a scale, partially because I don’t want to get wacky obsessive about weight loss, but I knew I had lost some. Michael said he could tell, and last week I was easily able fit into the pants I wore when I started doing the office job thing in September of 2004.

It’s actually pretty surprising that I was able to lose enough that people are noticing, since it’s only slight diet changes that I’ve made (not starving myself), and I’m still not exercising like I should be.

I’ve been really good at avoiding bad snacks around the office. I’m only eating when I’m hungry (no more “it’s time to eat $meal because that’s what you’re supposed to do at $time) and sticking to smaller portions. I have granola bars, instant oatmeal and fresh apples at my desk for when I get hungry. I enjoy a fairly light lunch (but not too light, salads make me hungry too quick). Dinner hasn’t changed at all, but Michael and I eat pretty healthy anyway.

I haven’t backed off enjoying myself while eating out, when we go to a brewpub I drink the beer and enjoy something delicious and packed with fat and calories – perhaps even eating a dessert! But this is maybe once a week and it satisfies my cravings for all that bad stuff.

I’m still not down to my “look-hot-in-wedding-dress” target, but I am feeling good enough about myself to start shopping for dresses. Getting into an exercise routine and having the weather get nicer so I can take walks at lunch again will be important, as I know these first few pounds I lost are the easy ones.

Last night we did the Superbowl thing.

We hadn’t planned on it, but at 5:55PM Michael said something about it and suggested we head up to Sly Fox to watch.

It was chilly out, which immediately put me into an agreeable mood. We arrived at Sly Fox around 6:30. We got a couple beers and some nachos and watched the game at a booth in the bar area.

I am not into sports, and don’t particularly like football or commercials. But you know what? I had a lot of fun. It was the perfect excuse to get out of the house and chill out.

I haven’t been in the mood for writing much, that emo mood I wrote about on Wednesday stuck with me through Friday. I never ended up making plans with anyone Friday night and Michael was at the men’s sweat lodge. Once I got home from work I realized that it was probably too late to make any plans, since people wouldn’t get here until 8ish, and I’d have to kick them out around 11 because I needed sleep for the Shaman class Saturday morning.

So instead I headed over to Moccia’s Pizza and got some chicken fingers and fries, along with a 6-pack of Yuengling Black & Tan. Greasy food and beer in hand, I sat down in front of my computer and chatted with (who was similarly eating pizza and drinking) and the rest of the folks in #13thHour. We had fun.

Looking back, Friday would have been classified as a good day if not for my mood. The weather was unseasonably warm again and I went for a nice long walk during lunch. During the walk I stopped into the thrift store to check out the books, there were a bunch of scifi books and I picked up about a dozen. When I got home from work there was a check from a recent contract job and a letter from my pen pal in England in my mailbox. Much good stuff and yet I was still mopey!

Saturday we went to the shaman class. Jim had some guests there to teach us, John Cooke who is a native american a Presbyterian minister, and his friend Owen Owens, a retired Baptist Minister. They had a very interesting presentation that was about a Native American healing ceremony. The ceremony was captured in the book COYOTEWAY: A Navajo Holyway Healing Ceremonial, which is out of print but you can read most of it online with many more pictures than the book had. John Cooke was the Navajo interpreter for the ceremony captured in the book and had much to say about the ceremony and how universal it is.

Late in the day we were having a break and Owen asked me what I was thinking about since I “was so quiet” and he likes to know where everyone is coming from. Of course I’m always quiet, and told him so, and then explained that I’m an atheist and am trying to come to terms with the God stuff they were presenting. He reflected upon this and we had a nice little discussion about it, it was refreshing to talk to a Minister (and a Baptist one at that!) without the judgmental vibes I usually get from such people. Eventually we started talking about books and he suggested I read Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn, I think this is one I’ll grab from the library.

Today we don’t have any plans, Michael just informed me that he wants to make french toast and omelettes for breakfast – yum!

I think I’m done being emo.

I’m feeling very “emo” this week; I wish I owned some good drama films that would make me cry. Maybe I’ll find someone to drag along to Brokeback Mountain Friday night.

I think I’ll blame the weather, my lack of projects and President Bush on this mood.

It was one of the warmest Januarys on record, and I really pine for those frigid winter days. I heard one woman in the office complain this morning how it was cold out and I idly wondered what winters she is used to, since it was in the 40s this morning. I want cold, I want snow, and I want to wear my pretty new winter coat damn it!

The lack of projects thing I can actually do something about, I think it would solve my warm winter woes if I were absorbed in something at home. But what? Nothing has really jumped out at me lately, and for the first time in a long time my To-Do list is short, only including regular maintenance stuff.

It’s Bush’s fault because I listened to part of the State of the Union last night and it annoyed me. I did the usual annoyed eye rolling until he got to the first (only?) time he used the world “evil” in the speech and I rolled over in bed and stopped listening. I hate when he uses the word “evil” to describe his enemies. And that got me thinking about my views on “evil” in general and I realized that I don’t know what I really think. It was a subject during one of our shaman classes, but I couldn’t quite pin it down there either. Whatever my definition ends up being, I know it won’t include people who believe they are doing Right.

Yesterday was a pretty mellow Sunday, it rained pretty much all day.

I went out and got my haircut, did some grocery shopping, made some veggie burgers for dinner and finished off the last bit of our final Victory growler. Then we watched the next bit of Bleak House on PBS.

Today was a beautiful day, and of course I was stuck inside at work. I did manage to get out during lunch to run some errands, had the car windows open and it was so refreshing. Car windows open in January – madness!

When I got home Michael was in the kitchen making a sushi-like dinner, you can see pictures and grab the recipe in his entry here (CaligulaWantsNow.jpg makes me laugh, he looks so evil begging for fish).Perhaps needless to say it was a very good dinner.

Tonight I spent some time reading COYOTEWAY: A Navajo Holyway Healing Ceremonial for our shaman class. It’s very interesting, but I doubt I’ll finish it before class on Saturday, and i really should copy it into a terminal so I can read it as white on black – much kinder to the eyes than the website itself. Too bad the book is out of print and so hard to find, I am not the biggest fan of reading things as long as books on my computer screen *itches eyes*

I wanted to spend some time making my desktop on my laptop prettier, it’s mostly just the default that comes with Ubuntu. But I got side-tracked after reading one of ‘s posts that mentioned the new Opera browser – and then OF COURSE I had to install it. It’s really neat that Opera’s linux download page lets you choose binaries for lots of different distros, I was able to download a .deb for Breezy Badger (which had “etch” in the filename so I assume it’s the same one as for Debian Etch). Opera 8.51 seems pretty nice, it launches faster than Firefox on this old laptop and uses less resources once running, both very important. Once I bound opening new tabs to alt t (rather than default of alt n) I started getting pretty comfy. We’ll see how it goes.

Now I am very tired. Bedtime.

I’m sitting here in our TV room with my laptop, a beer, the new sweater that a friend of ours knitted for me and Star Wars on the TV. Could I ask for more?

Friday night we held movie night. The usual crew of , and came over and we were joined by , who had spent the day driving up from North Carolina. We watched The 40 Year Old Virgin and ordered some pizza. The night went too quickly though, it was midnight before I knew it and people had to head out. and I stayed up talking until a little after 1, when he decided to leave so he could get to his hotel in Center City.

This morning we mostly just chilled out, made plans with at Sly Fox for lunch, which was great. We got a picture (even if it’s not the best one ever).

After lunch Michael and I headed back home. I spent the afternoon reading and Michael was outside splitting wood. It was a beautiful day out, we even turned off the heat and opened a couple windows, which sure made Caligula happy.

Around 4 we headed over to see our friends Barry and Rae. When we got there Rae said she had a couple gifts for me. Gifts? Apparently Michael knew about it, one of Rae’s biggest hobbies is knitting and she actually knitted me a Wallce and Gromit sweater! Oh my gosh!

I’m wearing it right now, it’s so snuggly warm! Caligula seems to like it too, he keeps trying to snuggle with me (but I have a laptop on my lap, silly kitty!). Also, when they were in Ireland recently they found a Wallace and Gromit watch – I should take a picture of that too, it’s adorable %D They rock!

We ended up going out to Houlihan’s for dinner, and afterwards headed over to Barry and Rae’s house to hang out until about 10.

And that leaves me here, it’s almost 1AM now, I’m gonna have a glass of water and go to bed.

Well I got my beer last night.

Michael took me out to Victory. We brought our growlers along.

With dinner I had a HopDevil and a Golden Monkey, both of which are very good. We got to talk a lot, and it was a very relaxing evening. We ended up leaving the brewery with our two growlers filled with HopDevil and a jug (which is like our “growler” from slyfox, but Victory calls them “jugs”) filled with Golden Monkey.

This morning I woke up feeling good, refreshed and ready for work %D

Tonight we’re planning on doing movie night at our house. As a wonderful treat, is going to try and stop by, since his vacation route takes him through the area, yahoo!

Things are good.

I won’t be sad when this week is over.

A beer tonight would be very nice!

This evening I decided to clean out the middle drawer in my desk. I’ve attempted this several times in the past few months to do this, but I always ended up taking everything out, looking at it, getting bored, and dumping it back in. D’oh. This time I thought I’d take pictures and plan to write a journal entry about it, it turns out that is great motivation because I was successful!

First, here is a list of some of the amusing things I found:

• a cassette tape (what is on this?)
• a litty tiny cellphone from my Scully toy (as well as Mulder’s flashlight and Ryoko’s lightsword and Esmeralda’s earring)
• an x-wing
• TWA chopsticks
• a letter from Michael from 1999 (we were friends in IRC and he sent me a photo of him to scan *hot*)
• pink shoelaces
• my old glasses (ack! I can’t seeeee)
• receipt for my geforce3 (dated 12/24/01 it was my christmas present the first christmas Michael and I were together)

Now on to the pictures! In the picture of lots of stuff I didn’t reduce the size that came off my camera, so they’re big so you can see detail, because I know you are all that interested.

the beginning, it was completely full[lj-cut]

after removing about half the stuff

Neat, the bottom of the drawer is off-white

All the stuff removed and piled on my desk

It is complete and neatly organized now!

And now we place bets on how quickly it gets filled up with junk again.[/lj-cut]

I was getting ready for bed last night when I heard a crash that shook the house.

“Michael? Was that thunder?”
“Yeah, I just saw a huge bolt of lightning too.”

I don’t think I’d ever experienced a thunderstorm in January. It was pretty intense with plenty of rain and freezing rain. By the morning it had all cleared up except for the patches of ice on the road.