Yay for the intentional, healthy weight-losing!

Ack, Kristin, sorry about the wildlife encounter, and good luck dealing with the aftermath. That's...tough. So far we've been skunk-lucky, though opossums abound here. They're pretty stinky, but skunks have the first-place stinky award pretty well sewn up.

Yay for all the healthy Bitches!

My sister tells me that in the Topanga Canyon Banjo & Fiddle contest, my nephew placed 3rd in the advanced fiddle division, my niece placed 4th in the intermediate fiddle division, and the family band came in 2nd to a family that homeschools and travels around in an RV from Bluegrass event to Bluegrass event full-time. They're pleased.

I am dieting and working out and I AM losing weight. Happy to say I have lost 9 lbs so far--almost halfway to my goal!

When are you back on roller skates?

(I like to imagine you in sassy satin shorts swooping around the rink.)

I'm watching Clean House. The homeowner on this episode seems to have real psychological problems with stuff -- like, she doesn't want them to sell anything because she just can bear to let any of it out of her sight. Usually on this show, people have a ridiculous amount of stuff, but they can admit that and they want help with figuring out how to get rid of it. This woman is hugging a pillow of an old ratty couch because she "loves" it and doesn't want to sell it. It's really uncomfortable to watch.

You know, my mom was like that. Seriously. We spent the last ten years ferreting stuff out of the house when she wasn't looking, and if she didn't see it leave she never missed it.

DH's mom ran as an 18-year-old bride from the communists straight into Hitler's Germany, spent the war and gave birth to DH in a Displaced Persons Camp, emigrated to the US with a husband, a four-year-old, one suitcase, a wooden box of handmade cobbler's tools and no English. Her house has always been preternaturally neat and clean, almost Spartan in decoration and furniture alignment. But not static. And as soon as something new comes into the house, something old goes to a neighbor, a co-worker, or a charity.

I'd think because of her background she'd cling to possessions, but she emphatically does not. I guess giving things up voluntarily before they can be taken from her is her form of control.

When are you back on roller skates?

In the Fall, probably. Depends on money. I can't be both in a gym and pay the rink fees, and I really needed the weight-training and pilates classes and all that gym stuff.

Ay. I just got a work email. About some acronymic meeting I do not yet know about. For a project I have just started on and do not know anything about yet. Saying that they have these twice a month meetings, and to accomodate the five people in China/Taiwan/Australia they've been having TWO meetings, one at 8AM and one at 8PM. But since there's been some reoganization, and none of the [people wiht my job title] has attended the last two 8PM meetings, they are canceling those as a waste of resources, and everyone will hereafter be attending the 8AM ones. And China/Australia should just send notes ahead of time. And email if you don't have the meeting on your calendar.

And so I email, all "I don't have this on my calendar, cause I'm new. And also, is that FIVE AM PACIFIC? Do you, er...send out meeting minutes??"

Cause I know I"m three hours off of the headquarters, and I know I work from home and have even bloody offered to attend a 7AM PDT teleconference....but FIVE AM? Regularly? The fuck I will.

I'm watching Clean House. The homeowner on this episode seems to have real psychological problems with stuff -- like, she doesn't want them to sell anything because she just can bear to let any of it out of her sight. Usually on this show, people have a ridiculous amount of stuff, but they can admit that and they want help with figuring out how to get rid of it. This woman is hugging a pillow of an old ratty couch because she "loves" it and doesn't want to sell it. It's really uncomfortable to watch.

It's like the women on WNTW with long ratty hair that cry when the hairdresser suggests cutting it.

Wow. They painted and put wallpaper on some wooden dressers in this woman's daughter's room, and she's so upset about them being different than before that she can't even look at them.

My grandfather had trouble getting rid of stuff. We've got just boxes and boxes of things that he kept -- a bunch of broken Super-8 cameras that he meant to fix, a box of music box parts, and pretty much every letter he ever received, plus carbon copies of most of the ones he sent. And now that his father kept it for fifty years, my dad can't bring himself to get rid of any of it.

This woman burst into tears saying that it's all horrible and she wants it back the way it was. It really wasn't a great design given her preferences -- she likes old-fashioned and flowered stuff, and they gave her green walls and an orange sofa -- but still just really painful to watch. This woman needs something more than a decorating TV show.