Oh. I just realized it’s Friday the Thirteenth. Happy 13th everyone.

Took the day off today, because it was Kelly’s (40th) birthday party. It’s a fair drive north from either my apartment or where I normally spend my weekends, so I took the whole day off to sleep in, wander the shops in search of a perfect card, maybe a small token gift (they asked for no gifts because basically she already has plenty of “things” in her life), and beat the traffic. Well, I mostly beat the traffic, but I spent way more time sleeping in and enjoying a leisurely day than I was expecting. Caught up on several hours of tv in the morning, over breakfast and coffee, and that’s a wonderful treat every now and then. Of course, another motivation is to watch everything stored on my TiVo so I can disconnect the old one and hook up the new one some time soon.

Oh! And they took Stefanie in for a C-section this morning, so I’m just waiting to hear back from Petula that everyone’s doing okay. I’ve left a couple of messages, but I’m sure she’s swamped with the family phone tree.

The drive was started to get backed up when I finally left the house, but I did get to enjoy the view of Pacific Coast Highway and find some relief from the heat of the inland freeways. Dropped off my things at Dayle’s before going up to Santa Barbara, where I was able to spend an hour browsing shops downtown. I miss being in Santa Barbara (my college town) and should probably find ways to visit more often. It has a real sense of “home” for me, even more than anywhere else. Of course, I just remember “I love my job, I love my job” and since I cannot commute 3-4 hours one-way, I remember that Santa Barbara is just a weekend-visit away.

Neither Dayle nor I was in much of a party mood at Kelly’s, but not for lack of a lovely party thrown by Richard. The food was yummy, Kelly was as adorable as ever, several friends/acquaintances I know from the Middle Eastern ensemble were there (including one of my former bellydance instructors), and had I been thinking I could have remembered to bring a swimsuit and enjoy the pool. But we still enjoyed the visit and had an easy drive home. A friend of Dayle’s writes for a show on PAX, and we watched one episode before finally passing out and getting some sleep. It’s going to be a lovely, lazy weekend, and I’m looking forward to it. Gee, I should have more three-day weekends.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

I had to start a phone call with my college best friend, Kristin, this evening with “Are we just too smart, too well-educated, too organized, and too young for some of these financial workshops nowadays?”

Last week I took a little lunch-time seminar at work about 401(K) programs. It was *sssooooo* basic that I summed it up for my co-workers as 45 minutes to say (in a chippy excited voice): “You should invest! It’s good for you! And when you invest in a 401(k), you put your money in these little categories!” Ahem. Yes, dear, I know that. *sigh*

Today’s seminar I almost didn’t even sign up for, because the title slighly offended me: “What Every Woman Should Know” (about money or something). I thought there can’t possibly be something gender-specific about money that women need to know that men don’t need to know, or that men already know, or whatever. And I said as much to the instructors when I arrived. And after trying to have an open mind about the presentation, I still came to the conclusion at the end of the presentation that there was nothing gender-specific about the suggestions and instruction. This would be the financial advice I would give any friend.

Kristin helped me put in perspective. She and I are just, thankfully, from a new generation of women. We’ve both been through divorces, but neither of us went through the type of divorce where the woman has to suddenly be on her own for the first time, suddenly without income or retirement or savings, suddenly without her own personal credit, etc. Even the mom-figures in her life had it remarkably harder in their lives, because they’d all been married over twenty years, had nothing of their own, and struggled to be on their own right away.

So I suppose there still is a need for a seminar like this, but I’m not their target audience. And yet now that I think about it, there are some ways in which I had to buckle down and be *more* responsible than before, when I divorced, but not because my identity financially had been tied up with my husband, but just because I tossed off some of the laziness when I divorced, and I just started being responsible in the way I knew I should have been all along.

I very thankful to my Mom, for all those years she taught my sister and I how to be strong women. She rocks.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

I finally took the time to look over mypyramid.gov, and compared my food and exercise of Monday and Tuesday this week. Looks like if I never ever exercise, and eat like I normally do right now, I’m still going to gain roughly a pound a month. Just like back in college. Gee, how disheartening. But the good thing is that when I *do* exercise, it would be the equivalent of losing three pounds per week. This should be some helpful encouragement when I’m trying to work out 3-5x/week… workout days send me down the path to weight loss. Non-workout days not only don’t, but aren’t active enough for even just a plain plateau. *blech* Guess I’ll have to work some actual walking, real exercise-type walking, into a non-gym day if I want to hold steady and/or continue losing weight. Good to know.

I also got most of the church website updated again, which was satisfying. I’ve got to work on having the hosting and registration switched over to my own accounts, to be able to add the coldfusion database elements that I’m learning from Hope and the shire website, but it’s nice to finally get back on track in projects that were slipping by the wayside.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

We had a great inter-departmental meeting over lunch today, where the folks working on the user guides got together with other technical writers in the company. There’s always been a bizarre wall up between some of the writers and developers, and there’s new leadership over in the user guide group. Sharon wants us to all work together, not have to re-invent the wheel, and all think about writing for the correct audience and writing in the most efficient way. It reminded me of the excitement I had at my last courseware developer job, when I saw people learning to reach over the departmental lines and do the best work possible for the company.

Have I mentioned today how much I love my job? *hee hee*

Of course, I was lazy today about going to the gym, but I’ll try and get there sometime later this week.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

I nearly cried this morning with joy. My best friend from Junior High has written me a short email to say “Hi, is this you?” Back in seventh grade, I met Mary in the first week of school. She was late for gym (I was too, but I can’t remember why) because she was at the dentist with her mom. Mary is the only child, and hearing, of two deaf parents. So she was interpretting for my Mom’s appt. with the dentist. I was facinated, and we talked all the way to gym that morning. And we never stopped, for several years—we were “joined at the hip” as they say.

Being so warmly invited into her family, her friends, and her church, was a defining moment in my life. I learned a lot of sign language from them, growing up, but we lost contact when I moved from Ohio my senior year of high school. But I’d never forgotten them or how much they meant to me, and I’ve missed her for twenty years now. It finally dawned on me, about two weeks ago, to try looking up deaf churches back in my hometown to see if there was anyone I could email to see if they knew how to get ahold or her, her family, or friends of her family. She wrote me just a sentence or two, but it meant all the world to me to hear from her. I can’t wait to catch up further.

I did make it to the gym today, but what an effort that was. Well, maybe not the workout itself, those seem to be getting a tiny bit easier each time. But just the mental block of “ugh, now I have to go exercise.” I’m going to have to find a way to get through that more often.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)