I had an eye doctor appointment this morning, so now I'm still in "ow it's too bright" squint mode while I wait for the dilation in my eyes to go down. The dog woke me up again this morning with its barking. Grrr. Though at least this morning I did have to get up early.

I have to go to work again tonight. Seventh day in a row. I am more than ready for my weekend. Hopefully the schedule is all straightened out now though and there won't be any more changes. I am very ready for my vacation!

And now I'm going to go to the coffeeshop and play ... er ... write with my new laptop!

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The new laptop definitely gets the thumbs up so far. The screen is easy to read (something I had a wee bit of trepidation about since I'd decided to go with dual-scan rather than active matrix due to a $300 price difference,) the keyboard is easy to type on (I made no more typos than I normally do,) and it's nice and speedy. I went to a newish coffeeshop that I'd never been to before. My old one that I used to do all my writing at closed down, so I had to hunt up a new one. This one looks like it's going to be even better though. Coast Espresso and Books is sandwich shop/coffeehouse/bookstore all in one, and pretty pleasant for writing at. Their book selection is very slim, and their sf/f section is even slimmer, but I was surprised to see that they had a lot of the trade paperback sf/f of the more "literary" variety. I wonder if they actually sell any? I also found out that they have another location in Biloxi, and that one might be closer to where I'm living now. Tomorrow I'll go check that one out.

And I actually did get some writing done. I started on a new story that's been festering in my mind for a while. I really haven't been much in the mood to write lately, and I'm trying to pull myself out of that. Extreme life changes don't seem to be too good for keeping a thought in your head for more than 3 seconds. I guess things are settling down now though. I've been living in the new place for almost a month. I've developed my daily routine now, and thanks to the new schedule I'm actually getting enough sleep. (Except when the dog wakes me up.) The weight loss continues as well, though painfully slowly. So far it's 6 pounds lost and 1 inch off my hips. (Hips are pretty much the only place I bother measuring. I see in these exercise mags about these people who lost "56 inches" or something like that, and I've never been able to figure out where all you're supposed to measure for those kind of results. Obviously they're factoring in several bodyparts. But which ones? Besides, about the only place I'm paranoid about is my hips anyway. I know that if I lose it there the rest will be fine.) But it is rather nice to see that the pants I bought last month for work are now a bit loose. And I seem to have lost most of my gut. I really should get a picture of me taken now so that after I lose all this weight (how's that for thinking positively?) I can have a before/after shot. Right now all I have is pictures of me from when I weighed 120 pounds, and those before/after shots are pretty depressing.

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Okay, here's a "before" picture from when I was skinny. This pic is damn near ten years old. As soon as I get a current pic done I'll post it too.