stellaluna

I managed to pull or strain something in my neck and back on Sunday night, although it didn't start paining me until after my shower on Monday morning. This made sitting at my desk all day rather uncomfortable, as my range of motion was limited, and sleeping was problematic too: the only comfortable position was flat on my back, and I prefer to sleep on my side or my stomach.

The think-positive part of this is that it's starting to feel better now. I'm still stiff and achy, but I'm no longer in the same kind of pain and I can move a lot better, and I no longer have the fear that I'm going to move the wrong way and something is going to go snap for good.

I've started using the Tea House theme on my iGoogle home page, and it's adorable. I love watching the little fox go about his day.

scarletts_awry has been getting bids from movers, and after having a conversation with one company today, she forwarded me the bid sheet. I've had a few moments of "OMG, we're really doing this!", like when she booked her plane tickets for the end of April, and when I purchased my one-way ticket for the beginning of June, but none of those things made me teary-eyed the way this one did. I don't know why. I had to get up from my desk and go to the bathroom until I had composed myself, but that was all right, because these were, needless to say, good tears.

Replies to comments and messages tomorrow, I promise! Right now I need sleeps.

Busy week, so I've fallen several days behind, but now seems like a good time for getting back on schedule.

We started watching the BBC miniseries Jekyll tonight, and I'm quite delighted with it, at least on the strength of the first episode. The lead actors are very good, we got surprise bonus Paterson Joseph, and the whole thing has a nice sense of menace to it. As I said after it was over, this is Steven Moffat. If the premise of the source material weren't enough all on its own, add him in as writer and you just know something horrible may happen at any second.

Time Warner sent me three coupons for 1-cent pay-per-view movies, which pleases me very much.

And now I'm going to go make myself a cup of tea and some kind of snack.

I do not like Mondays on principle, but this one is over now. I had Trader Joe's Middle East Feast prepared meal for lunch, which I find very yummy and fairly guilt-free, and it was a more or less peaceful day.

I think I may have found a dress for my friend J.'s wedding in April. It's a very pretty dress and I like it a lot, and the style is perfect for a garden wedding, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I like it as much in person and that it works for me.

I am now at the halfway point of thinkpositive30!

I think the effort is working out well so far; I started this because I wanted to have a focus on the positive things in my life, rather than dwelling on the negative, in particular because a few frustrating experiences had brought home to me recently how draining and upsetting it is to deal with people who are focused on the negative.

The biggest danger of dealing with people like this, I think, is buying into their negativity, unconsciously or otherwise, and allowing it to affect your own outlook. That was the last thing I wanted. And like I've said before, I'm not perfect by any means, but I truly do believe in the value of putting out kindness into the world and striving for a better outlook. We all have our genuine sorrows and troubles, but I also think those are distinctly different from negativity. Someone who's grieving, someone who's struggling with illness or a difficult family situation -- that isn't someone who's negative.

A person who sees little good in anyone or anything, who always has something bad to say, who responds to interactions with hostility or rudeness -- that's the kind of person and attitude I'm talking about here. That's the kind of thing I want to avoid. That's my blueprint for who I don't want to be.

Not every day in my life is sunshine and rainbows. Some of these entries have been a struggle to find something to write about, not because the day was bad or anything, but simply because it was an average day in which not much happened. That's part of the challenge, I guess, to find the good in the ordinary, in day-to-day life. That's an outlook I need to keep striving to make a part of my everyday outlook.

I got to sleep in today, which is one of the things I look forward to most about the weekends, and eventually I made my way to Trader Joe's, where I got milk for my tea and some of their heat-and-serve Indian meals, and naan to go with them. Now I'm curled up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and my laptop, and I've just finished watching this week's Project Runway.

Earlier, we watched the season finale of Leverage, which was yayarms! worthy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was ( spoiler ) and now I just can't wait for the third season to start.

And I still really want that Sterling and Maggie spin-off.

I am getting a bonus again this year! Entirely merit-based and not everyone is getting them, so I can chalk this up to the fact that I got a good review.

It was a very happy surprise, and heaven knows the extra money will come in handy.

Back at work today, and, while it was a fairly quiet day, I'm glad that this is going to be a short week for me. I'm still feeling congested and sore throat-y and just sort of generally wrung out and tired.

I decided to start pricing fares for June today, figuring the earlier the better, and I ended up booking a red-eye flight out of LAX to Atlanta, leaving at midnight on Friday, June 4, and getting into Atlanta at 7:15 the next morning. It was only $139 with tax for the one-way ticket, so I'm very pleased, as that's about $300 less than what I was expecting.

(It's a one-way because we're planning to drive back to L.A. beginning the following Monday, after the movers show up and collect most of scarletts_awry's things. We're both really looking forward to doing the cross-country drive and making some stops to see things that we're interested in.)

Buying the ticket made the whole thing feel really, really real. We're doing this!

The weather was beautiful and sunny again today. I only needed to wear a lightweight jacket in the morning and evening, and didn't bother with it at all when I went outside at lunchtime.

I'm back in L.A. now. The flights home went smoothly, which is good: I really didn't want to leave yesterday, but since I had to, I also didn't want to get stuck again somewhere.

Unfortunately, I seem to have come back with a sore throat and some bad congestion, so I called in sick to work today. My throat still doesn't feel great, and I have a headache on top of it, probably due to sinus pressure.

But the weather is lovely here; the temperature has finally gotten up into the 70s, which is good after all the chill and dampness of the rainy season. I love spring.

I'm reading Patricia Highsmith for the first time, since I borrowed a collection of her short stories from scarletts_awry, and really enjoying her work so far. Graham Greene's description of her in the introduction as the "poet of apprehension" seems to be a very accurate one.

I will catch up on comment replies tomorrow, since my head still hurts and I really need to go lie down.

I am spending Valentine's Day in the arms of the woman I love.

I don't want to go back to L.A. tomorrow. On the bright side, we only have about three and a half months now until we're doing the big move and won't have to be living on opposite sides of the country.

We're going to stay up tonight and make the absolute most of the rest of this vacation. This includes watching The Middleman.

♥ ♥ ♥

And Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there!

scarletts_awry and I spent most of the day inside due to the weather, but by 5 the roads had cleared enough that we were able to go out for an early dinner at the sushi restaurant we like. We had an edamame appetizer and hot green tea, and then I had tekkadon for my main course -- tuna sashimi over sushi rice -- and it was to-die-for fresh. I love living in a world where good sushi is readily available.

In a little while we're going to have a beer and watch The Shawshank Redemption, which is one of my favorite movies and which scarletts_awry has never seen. I'm really glad that we're going to be watching it together for her first viewing.

We killed Maxwell for the first time in Scribblenauts today. (I include this as a positive thought because it was, honestly, really fucking funny.) Oh, and we got a cat off a roof by throwing a cheeseburger at it, causing it to fall off the roof and land on a mattress. Said mattress made the cat go boing-boing-bounce until Maxwell grabbed it and returned it to its owner. STARITE GET.