More squeeing...
you might want to cover your ears.
N. is flying in to Chicago on August 25th! Eeeeeee. I am all excite. Still no idea how long she'll stay, but I'm so glad to see her again after so long. I have been neglecting getting started on cleaning the spare bedroom because I didn't really believe it, but I have flight numbers and everything, so I guess I have to. Yay!
A surprising bit of good news is that my electric budget is going down by $27 a month. That's a nice little bonus. I'm kind of surprised with the amount of a/c I've been using this past month. It's been pretty insane because of the 100° weather we've been having. At least it's starting to cool off a little; high 80s-low 90s is sooo much more acceptable. And we've had considerable rain, so all the dead lawns are starting to look a little green again. Never thought I'd see this bad a drought in Wisconsin, ever.
More good news; I'm continuing to lose weight. Down 35 pounds since January. Even with a pinched nerve in my back that was making my right arm feel like it was on fire and I cut back on some of my weight workouts, sticking to Pilates only. Same problem I originally went into physical therapy for. Being the smart cookie that I am, I went back to doing the original exercises the therapist gave me and the arm has pretty much settled down. Still twinges a little, but when you go from 7 on the pain scale down to about a 1, a 1 is so much more tolerable. Plus, yesterday she gave me this real cool homemade neck traction sling. You put one end above the door latch, shut the door, put the back of your head in the sling and lay down on the ground. You can apply as much tension as you want to your neck. It really helps a lot. I've got three degenerative discs in my neck and it's not like they're ever going to get better, only worse over time. So this is like a huuuuge thing for me. I also bought one of those foam rollers and found some really good massage/stretchy things I can do with it that help the back and arms, too. It's going to have to do, because yesterday was my last appointment with the PT. We hit all the goals we'd originally set when I went to see her, so there's no reason at this point to go back, even with the minor relapse in the right arm/shoulder. As long as I stick to all the exercises she originally assigned me, I don't think I'll be needing it again.
This is the homemade traction sling:
So simple-looking for so much relief.
Went out for restaurant week on Wednesday with feels_like_fire, jou and infinityduck to a Peruvian restaurant in town--Inka Heritage. It was very, very excellent. I had a wonderful ceviche as a starter, roast beef shoulder in a yummy sauce for a main course, and topped it off with tres leches cake. Nomnomnom. I loved it all, but I'll never recommend it to my brother; it would be too much of what he calls the evil weed (cilantro), but I'd highly recommend it to anyone else. Oh, and we ordered a pitcher of Sangria, too, so we were very merry throughout. None of us wanted to leave when we were done, but our reservation wasn't until 8pm, so it was 9:30pm when we finally called it quits. I wanted to mope, but was in too good a mood to do a good job of it.
Haven't started on my big bang, yet. ::headdesk:: I just can't seem to come up with a plot I like. I usually write Kirk/McCoy, but for some reason I'm really feeling like a Kirk/Uhura story right now. But no fucking clue where to start. Blah. Think I'll stick to Kirk/McCoy for now. If I do ever write Kirk/Uhura, it will have to start out small, so I can feel out the voices and the dynamic before I go big with it.
N. is flying in to Chicago on August 25th! Eeeeeee. I am all excite. Still no idea how long she'll stay, but I'm so glad to see her again after so long. I have been neglecting getting started on cleaning the spare bedroom because I didn't really believe it, but I have flight numbers and everything, so I guess I have to. Yay!
A surprising bit of good news is that my electric budget is going down by $27 a month. That's a nice little bonus. I'm kind of surprised with the amount of a/c I've been using this past month. It's been pretty insane because of the 100° weather we've been having. At least it's starting to cool off a little; high 80s-low 90s is sooo much more acceptable. And we've had considerable rain, so all the dead lawns are starting to look a little green again. Never thought I'd see this bad a drought in Wisconsin, ever.
More good news; I'm continuing to lose weight. Down 35 pounds since January. Even with a pinched nerve in my back that was making my right arm feel like it was on fire and I cut back on some of my weight workouts, sticking to Pilates only. Same problem I originally went into physical therapy for. Being the smart cookie that I am, I went back to doing the original exercises the therapist gave me and the arm has pretty much settled down. Still twinges a little, but when you go from 7 on the pain scale down to about a 1, a 1 is so much more tolerable. Plus, yesterday she gave me this real cool homemade neck traction sling. You put one end above the door latch, shut the door, put the back of your head in the sling and lay down on the ground. You can apply as much tension as you want to your neck. It really helps a lot. I've got three degenerative discs in my neck and it's not like they're ever going to get better, only worse over time. So this is like a huuuuge thing for me. I also bought one of those foam rollers and found some really good massage/stretchy things I can do with it that help the back and arms, too. It's going to have to do, because yesterday was my last appointment with the PT. We hit all the goals we'd originally set when I went to see her, so there's no reason at this point to go back, even with the minor relapse in the right arm/shoulder. As long as I stick to all the exercises she originally assigned me, I don't think I'll be needing it again.
This is the homemade traction sling:
So simple-looking for so much relief.
Went out for restaurant week on Wednesday with feels_like_fire, jou and infinityduck to a Peruvian restaurant in town--Inka Heritage. It was very, very excellent. I had a wonderful ceviche as a starter, roast beef shoulder in a yummy sauce for a main course, and topped it off with tres leches cake. Nomnomnom. I loved it all, but I'll never recommend it to my brother; it would be too much of what he calls the evil weed (cilantro), but I'd highly recommend it to anyone else. Oh, and we ordered a pitcher of Sangria, too, so we were very merry throughout. None of us wanted to leave when we were done, but our reservation wasn't until 8pm, so it was 9:30pm when we finally called it quits. I wanted to mope, but was in too good a mood to do a good job of it.
Haven't started on my big bang, yet. ::headdesk:: I just can't seem to come up with a plot I like. I usually write Kirk/McCoy, but for some reason I'm really feeling like a Kirk/Uhura story right now. But no fucking clue where to start. Blah. Think I'll stick to Kirk/McCoy for now. If I do ever write Kirk/Uhura, it will have to start out small, so I can feel out the voices and the dynamic before I go big with it.