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!

Getting rid of that annoying LoudTwitter thing, now that I can get into my account again. Let me know if you're still seeing the updates on here for some reason. I've been able to stop them from posting so far by protecting my tweets, but now I've made them public again as a test.

Speaking of loud...I have to move out of this place, like NOW. The neighbors aren't getting any quieter and the landlord keeps just taking their stupid excuses and not doing anything about it and I CAN'T SLEEP. Not sure what to do here, because I need a super temporary arrangement (perhaps 6 months or so) and most places wouldn't be cool with that. Anyone know of anything? I'm a super good roommate!

I found this really nifty looking bag I like on Etsy this afternoon, but I am considering not buying it because the sELLeR WrITes LIke tHIs. Too crazy of me?

Kevin and I went to his sister's house in Concord and made dinner with her and her kids this evening. His brother and his girlfriend also came by. We made three different pizzas and I made a spinach salad with blood oranges, shallots, mint, and lemon-mustard dressing. I'm having a great time getting to know his family. It's nice to have "siblings" to hang out with considering that I don't have any.

Done with the house-sitting, finally. I walked in the door to my apartment a few hours ago, so excited to be anywhere that isn't the suburbs, and was immediately pissed off at the state of things in the house. My roommate has been out of town for a few days, but he was here at the end of last week and over the weekend, and basically, this place is disgusting. I was practically crying when I talked to Kevin about it. This is so frustrating for me, with all the mess AND all the neighbor noise I have to deal with. I told Kevin, I NEED TO NOT BE LIVING HERE MUCH LONGER FOR MY HEALTH AND SANITY, and he is in agreement with me. Looks like we'll be shacking up sooner rather than later, he's already starting looking into places for us. Having that to look forward to will make the rest of my time here a bit more bearable, but not by much.

A list, for my own records and for your amusement: the whole apartment smells like garbage from something left rotting in the trash, stinky and moldy stuff in fridge is making it unopenable at this time, the bathroom smells like a frat-house and there is shaving stuff gunked in the sink, the kitchen counter-tops are FILTHY and so is the stove (which I left in pristine condition, mind you), the kitchen floor is sticky (ew), there is random stuff of his strewn about the living room, and there is random dirt in the carpet.

WTF? Learn how to take care of yourself, damnit! My roommate is a nice guy, but I think I'm done here.

I've been looking into and thinking about buying a Kindle 2. I guess it's sort of silly, but I people buy all sorts of gadgets related to their passions, and reading is MY passion (as you may have heard...heh).

I think the coolest part is that it can turn ANY book into an audiobook. So, I can read read read read, and if I need to do something that needs my eyes (like driving), I can hit a button and the Kindle will start reading to me. This sort of literary efficiency kinda makes me overly-excited. Also, I have this thing about not writing in books...a phobia of sorts, that makes me cringe just thinking about it. Yet I always find myself jotting down notes elsewhere, only to lose them later. Digital notes! Need I say more?

Perhaps I'll wait for it's actual release, and read some reviews before making this leap. Does anyone on my f-list have an original Kindle that they'd like to share their thoughts on?

• 20:45 Strange developments today. #

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• 18:41 Good riddance to the most exhausting workday I've had in awhile. #
• 18:42 @u_m That's like the third day in a row that it's been total insanity down there. #

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• 12:01 Riding the post-insane-workout high. Take that, calories! #
• 12:26 (Will probably counter workout with eating this entire loaf of challah. Please stop me.) #

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• 17:47 Helicopters and sirens in the general direction of Downtown Oakland. What's going on out there, people? #

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• 12:50 Thai food on a long lunch...today is the most boring Monday ever over here in veterinary land. #
• 12:53 Eating tofu and pretending I'm still a vegetarian. #
• 18:45 @jasonpermenter Does this exist? Really? #
• 06:40 The Peacat alarm clock woke me up at 5am. Why why why why? #
• 07:53 Wondering if I'll be able to get off early enough to stop at Crixa. Also wondering why I'm already thinking about cake at 8am. #

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• 14:28 The kosher bakery down the street has whole-wheat challah! I am in carb heaven right now. #

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• 21:24 Sitting in a movie theater with my Kevin! Waiting to see Taken. #
• 09:09 Waking up with my Kevin! And thinking about gym and the rest of the day. #

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