I've been writing "off-the-grid" instead of in any sort of online format these days.

I doubt anyone is listening anyways.

I have moved. The old apartment is cleaned out. I am officially a Berkeley resident. I am finally living completely ALONE.

This apartment is flippin' HUGE. I have no idea about what I'm going to do with this enormous living room, besides my plan to turn one corner of it into a little office for myself.

I'm about 3 blocks away from the Downtown Berkeley BART station if you ever wanna come visit me. I need to figure out who lives around here so I have people to do fun things with, like raiding the farmer's market and lovely picnic lunches and tea/cake and thrift stores and book hunting and restaurants! So many restaurants!

Okay...back to unpacking, which I've barely started.

The plan was to ease myself back into my job, taking it easy at first so I wouldn't aggravate my back. Ha! I should've known that this was wishful thinking. It's the end of my second week back and I'm already doing 12-hour days and long, long hours in surgery. Today I got to scrub in on a leg amputation for a kitty, and that was pretty fun, but I spent about 5 hours total in the surgical suite (3 different surgeries), and standing around can get pretty uncomfortable for me after awhile.

I did get to leave early today, but only because my staying around the whole day would've thrown me into super-mega-overtime this week.

I'm pretty sore right now. I'm working again in the morning, and then I get to go sit on a plane for 4 hours. Joy.

Also, I am apparently doing a "reading" at the funeral on Monday. What? Whose idea was this?

They are thinking about closing the Super Longs in Oakland. This would be very sad indeed, just for the loss of the garden department alone. Where will I go at 3am when I can't sleep and absolutely NEED to buy craft supplies, potting soil, toiletries, various food items and camera equipment? (This very situation has come up, seriously.)

I scored the goofiest pair of boots from Kevin's landlord yesterday. They were having a sidewalk sale and I made a beeline for them, and they just happened to be my exact size. They are silly looking, from Turkey, and I am in love with them and want to wear them everywhere now!



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Started a new blog-thing, entirely devoted to my insane neighbors! I give you, Bad, Bad Neighbor! Not much on there yet, but OH YOU JUST WAIT.

I should explain, that my landlords decided to NOT throw them out after all. Instead, they let them "switch apartments" with some family members who also live in the building. I'm not sure who lives where at this point, but whoever it isn't sure isn't much quieter! The screaming video in the first blog posting was taken AFTER the switch.

So yeah. I am going insane. And writing a blog about it, apparently. At least it gives me something to do until I can move out of here.

I've been off sugar and refined carbs for two entire weeks now, and on the greens and veggies and healthy things and it feels really good. My skin is noticeably better and I dropped about 5 pounds really quickly, not that this was the point but it makes me happy nonetheless. My body fat distribution seems to be changing a little, evening itself out perhaps. I'm curious to see what happens if I keep going.

In order to quiet my screaming sweet tooth, I've been blending up a banana with unsweetened chocolate almond milk. That seems to work pretty well. If I'm still craving I'll eat a Larabar (one of those chocolate-raw energy things that they sell at Whole Foods), and once in awhile I let myself have a raw cacao ball from Cafe Gratitude. I don't know if this is cheating, but it seems to be working for me. Whatever.

I go through so much produce, it's ridiculous! I have to pop into the store every few days to re-up my greens and fruit stash. I guess this isn't really a bad thing, but it's sort of inconvenient.

I am having serious chocolate cravings right now, and it's not helping that my roommate has a bag of those chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels in the fridge, just DARING me to dig in. Those are my favorite. Ugh. Must be strong!

To distract myself, here are the good things that I ate today:
- earl grey lavender tea with a splash of milk and a bit of agave
- oatmeal (the steel-cut kind, that takes forever to make) with strawberries and a little milk
- a huge bowl of sauteed rainbow chard, with some other veggies mixed in
- more strawberries
- handful of walnuts
- smoothie consisting of a banana, a mango, and an entire bag of spinach
- artichoke-olive-caper-lemon dip on whole-wheat crackers

What food blogs do you read? I'm partial to Smitten Kitchen and I Love You More Than Food (which is my friend Caroline's blog), but I want more more more to add to my list!