Even though I drove many miles to swim for over an hour straight, I still feel like a slacker because I didn’t swim as hard as I could and then I went home and slept for an hour and a half.  But this time last year, to swim 3,000 yards at today’s effort level would have taken me an hour and 15 minutes.

I still have a ways to go with my swimming.  The people in the lane next to me were doing a 2-hour workout, 100 100′s on 1:30.  (Perspective for non-swimmers: I did 5 100′s on 1:30 before I could do no more.)  That workout is as boring as it is impressive, however, so I’m not even going to set that as a goal.  Just a thing I’d like to honestly say, “I could do that, but I’m not gonna.”

I have been cheating on you.

It may seem like I am not blogging, but in fact I am. 

I’ve been writing at another blog.  It’s on the USMS (United States Masters Swimming) website. 

It’s called “Too Neurotic to Be Suitably Aquatic” and it’s all about my swim workouts and the music selections I play at the pool.

If you would like to see where I’ve been moonlighting, you can go to the website, but I warn you that it’s full of passionate swimmers, and strange emoticons, and nobody there calls me “Noelle.”

While we’re at it, I might as well make some other confessions.

• My copy of Stay is still on hold for me at Oblong Books.  I have not yet read it, despite considering myself a hard-core Allie Larkin / Greenists fan.
• I don’t think I’ve read your blog lately, unless it was about swimming.  I feel guilty about trying to break into a new cadre of bloggers while ignoring you, my dear old friend.
• I make the excuse that my 2-hour commute is wiping me out, but in reality, it’s a 1 hour-45 minute commute. 
• Last night, I meant to organize my finances, but I went sailing instead.
• My job doesn’t pay me enough to live on, and I have to get a second job.  I would like a job where I work from home, be myself, not have a crazy boss, and possibly write books.  I think that means I have to make money by using the internet, but I am at an impasse on how exactly to do that.
• I meant to make money off of this blog, and now there appear to be ads on it, but I didn’t put them there, and I don’t think I’m earning anything from them.  If anything, this is all costing me money.  I am scared that there are people out there who have figured it out, but I should be smarter than them.
• Am I too old to work as a waitress for the first time?
• That was bullet point wasn’t really a confession as much as a rhetorical question. 
• I changed my Facebook status to “In an open relationship” which means that I finally gave into Birmingham’s charms again, but this time I’m the one who’s not ready to commit. 
• It’s been so long since I’ve blogged, I wrote this post as a new page instead of a new post, and then freaked out when I couldn’t find it and I thought I lost my draft.  (That also explains where this post went, which I thought I lost many months ago!)

Almost on a daily basis, I wish it was 2006 again.

He he.  Get it?  Cheek – to – cheek.  When learning this, I was partnered with this super shy kid who’s a freshman on the high school swim team.  He was so cute and embarrassed, and probably trying even harder than I was not to pass gas.

Another observation about high school kids, who filled this class: they are not familiar with The Monkees.  When learning to do an underwater search in shallow water, where you link arms with other lifeguards and sweep the ground with your feet while walking forward, none of them got the reference to the dance they were so obviously emulating.

Also, one of the instructors brought her 4-year-old and plopped her in the pool with a purple swim cap, pink goggles, life preserver and kickboard and let her float around while we did skills.  That image alone made me re-think my stance on not having kids, because she was capital-A-Adorable.  But I promise that if I ever do have kids, I will not post sonogram pictures.  Or maybe I’ll post sonogram pictures taken from random animals, and see if anyone notices.  In all honesty, I’ve never looked at one and seen anything but blurry lines, and I but no one else does either.

Speaking of, guess who’s certified to lifeguard and CPR at pools!  This girl!  On Wednesday, I’ll be taking the test to see if I can also lifeguard at waterfronts.  This test is also at the pool.  As of now, I am not employed anywhere with this certification, but everyone around me is just a little safer.

I’m still competing, too.  There’s two more meets this season, and I think that the meat eating experiment is working well.  Two weeks ago, I accomplished my goal of doing the 100 freestyle faster than 1:14.  I did it in 1:11.61.  It would have been even cooler if I had done it a little slower, becasue 1:11.78 would have been my birthday.  But that’s the only time you’ll hear me say I want to go slower. 

Lately I’ve been trying to assess what I want to be when I grow up.  I’m still stung from the job loss a year and a half ago, because that really was perfect for me in so many ways.  There’s always this voice in the back of my head telling me I should be a writer.  Because “novelist” is a classic back-up job.  All I can say is I went to the DMV yesterday to renew my car registration (it only took 5 minutes, but cost half a day’s pay) and I actually momentarily thought it might be fun to work at the DMV.  Maybe I was just jealous because their printer was working, and it was very fast, and ours is not.

Other than that, in the past month I neither got engaged, pregnant, or got someone else pregnant.  I didn’t convert to a new religion, and nobody I’m close to died or was born.  Saturn is still out of business, and Battlestar Galactica is off the air.  Lucy the cat is still cute, devistatingly so sometimes.  I have not broken any bones or cars in at least 90 days.  Oh, and Birmingham?  Back in the picture.  Just please don’t ask us to caption that picture.  We’re simply having fun spending time together, creating witty banter.

• Right before I left for the trip, I attempted to cook chicken for the family, and undercooked it on the inside while burning it on the outside.  I deemed chicken too scary to cook on my own.
• I’ve never had huge cravings for meat.  Growing up, steak night was always “chewing night,” and the blood grossed me out, and pork chop night was “dry meat night” and I liked the side dishes better, anyway.
• When you go to a new country where you don’t know anyone, there’s no precedent about who you used to be, and easy to make a fresh start.  If you say “I’m a vegetarian” no one’s going to coerce you to eat a hamburger by reminding you that you just did that very thing on Thursday.
• I was a student buying my food, and veggies are generally cheaper than meat.
• England is not known for its cuisine, unless you’re talking about all the yum-tastic Indian places.  And the people of India know how to make vegetarian dishes so tasty, you’d never miss meat.
• Also, there was that whole “mad cow” scare about a month before I went.
• English grocery stores and restaurants diligently label items vegetarian or not, so it’s easy to choose.
• There is no meat in Cadbury’s chocolate.

After my six months abroad, I came home and kept up my vegetarian ways, thanks to having roommates who were also vegetarians, and a dining hall that provided awesome salads.  And pizza.

I kept up the vegetarian thing, learned more about it, and defined rules for myself.  Nowadays, I eat vegetarian because it’s better for the environment and my health, and on top of that, it seems odd to eat animals that I know have personalities like my cats.  Moreover, it’s become a habit.

Every vegetarian defines him or herself differently.  There’s no absolute rules to what you “can” and “can’t” eat, and you don’t have to go far on the internet to find vicious debates about who’s a “real” vegetarian.   I’m technically a ”pescatarian,” I still partake of fish.  I simply like it too much, especially in the form of sushi, lobster, fillet, clam chowder… basically, if it swims, I’ll eat it. 

I have trouble with the vegan extremes of not eating anything that comes from an animal, including honey, casein, or cheese.  It’s too difficult and time-consuming to narrow down all the ingredients of foods, especially when eating out, although I appreciate the idea of eating things that are as close to their natural state as possible so nothing sneaks in there that you don’t want.  As loyal DT readers know,in the past few years I observed “vegan March,” challenging myself to cut all animal products out of my diet for a month.  I’ve enjoyed it as a way to experiment with new recipes, but it’s not a full-time diet for me.

Once a year, I have allowed myself to eat meat, which is a personal ritual.  The first year it was because I broke down and got a hamburger from MacDonald’s when I was so hungry and only had two bucks on me.  Instead of beating myself up and giving up vegetarianism entirely because of one slip, I forgave myself and gained some flexibility.  After that, there was always one occasion or another once a year when I either couldn’t avoid eating meat because I purchased it by accident, or was deeply curious about how something tasted (like my friend’s pulled pork that he raved about for months), or like when was in France and knew there was no way I would be sure of what I was eating.  Oh, and every once and a while, you’ll catch me chomping on a marshmallow at a cookout or slurping a cup of soup with unknown stock origins.  The little exceptions…

The bottom line is that I’m flexible and laid back with my diet, while generally avoiding things that look like dead animals.

That was wordy.  But I needed that preface to get to this:

The other night, a friend of mine from the swim team made an off-hand comment as we were talking about ways to go faster.  He said that I might do better, have more energy and endurance, if I ate meat.  His wife pshawed him, which lead to a discussion about blood type.  She said that type A’s (like me) fare well with vegetarian diets.  That ended the discussion, but didn’t stop me from thinking: I’ve been a vegetarian for so long now, how do I know if it’s really the best for me?  The night after that, I attended a fundraising event listening to many people speechify about National Heart month while standing next to a platter of chicken tenders and thinking about the next day’s swim practice.  And you know what I did? 

I. Ate. A. Piece. Of. Chicken.

And then I ate another one. 

And then I missed swim practice the next day because it snowed, and lost out on the opportunity to see if poultry, after 12 years, gave me super-human powers and red bullish energy. 

But the next night, I went out for sushi, and the swim practice the morning after that was pretty good.  Walking out from practice, I divulged to my friend that I’m thinking about experimenting with putting meat in my diet for a few weeks, and together we came up with a plan.

We determined I must be scientific.  The great meat experiment is not about going out to White Castle and then seeing how many yards I can get in the next day.  I’m going to add foods slowly, and try keeping to healthy, lean meats, locally grown when available.  The next step is to record how my energy levels feels each day, and keep it on a spreadsheet.  Or a blog… Like this blog!  It’s incentive to keep writing AND a log of my progress!  Two birds with one stone!  Delicious, tasty, tender birds…

I told my friend I was most excited about trying bacon, since no one seems to stop talking about it, or wrapping things in it.   But that’s gotta be one of the last things I do, because bacon is seriously taboo: both meat and non-Kosher.  Also, pigs are wicked smart, which is why my meat-eating friend doesn’t partake of the bacon.  And like a sign from above, this link was in my RSS feed this morning:  5 Reasons Pigs are More Awesome Than You.  I’m not entirely convinced I should eat pork.  I’ve always loved “Charlotte’s Web.” 

But still.  I’m curious about this bacon phenomenon.   I’m also a little competitive.  In order to get over the ethical bacon hurdle, I decided I’m only eating the pig because that link above makes me want to prove that I’m more awesome.  I swam 3,400 yards this morning, and the pig did not.  Therefore, sausage.   I guess.

Damn, I’m on shaky moral ground here.  But that’s O.K., bacon’s going to wait a little.  This week it’s about poultry, because turkeys are mean.  I’ll keep you posted.  And in the meantime, does anyone have some good recipies or suggestions of how I should venture into this brave new world? 

One note:  In order to have a control, I’m going to offset this meat festival with “Vegan April,” and compare the two.  Why not “Vegan March?”  Because at work, our biggest fundraiser of the year, which I am planning, is on March 28.  I am anticipating long days and crazy hours and stress, all of which will require pizza.

“No, just wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”  Oh!  That too.  Since I love patterns, I guess it’s neat that I’ve got one degree for every year.  Thanks to global warming*, if we keep adding a degree a year, it will always be that way!  Can’t wait for next year when I’m 11×3 years old on 1/11/11, although that makes me wish I was born on November 11th. 

Anyhoo, my little exchange got overheard by song-happy teammate, and during practice this morning, right in the middle of my 200IM, that teammate got everybody to stop swimming, and I did as well because 1) I thought somebody was injured, or 2) I always do what everyone else does but 3) it turned out that they stopped me 1/4th of the way through my 200IM to sing to me, even though ABBA was on the radio, and already doing the singing so well. 

It was a nice gesture wrapped in my very least favorite thing: being the center of attention.  I tried to keep it a secret, but it’s true.  It’s my birthday, and I’m looking forward to a 3:00 conference call and maybe I’ll get myself a cupcake at lunch. 

*If you believe in that sort of thing.  And by “that sort of thing” I mean “years of fact-based science.”

All the swimmers were given a colorful cap with our number Sharpied on it to identify us as we crossed.  While the Hudson is clean enough to swim, it is quite murky due to the silt that’s natural to the river.  So our caps (I was assigned bright yellow) became our identifiers as we bounced up and down through the Hudson.  Additionally, a channel of kayaks and police boats floated alongside of us to protect us from the barges and speedboats that pass through on a regular basis.  (Officially, the river was not closed to traffic, but the swim was announced months in advance over the mariner’s radio and police boats were there to “highly discourage” anyone from coming through.)

We also had the tall ship, the Woody Guthrie, sailing ahead of us and showing us the way.  As we got to the far shore, it was our beacon to Beacon.

The Woody Guthrie Sloop, pictured on some other day.

I found the swim to be refreshing and wonderful.  The water temperature was in the mid-70′s, although as I passed through, currents of warmer water would alternate with currents of colder water.  And speaking of the current, one of the cool things about the Hudson is that it’s the river that flows in two ways.  It’s subject to both current and tides, so at sometimes it flows south with the current, and at other times north with the tide.  And at just the right moment, the two meet and create a slack tide.  That’s the perfect time to swim across.  As we got started, the southerly current was still flowing, and we were directed to point ourselves north so we would make it straight across.  And it worked!

As the crow flies, the distance from one dock to another is about a mile, but when you add up the extra swimming against the tides, it’s probably an extra 1/8 to 1/4 mile.  While the swim was not a race, you can take the girl out of the competition, but you can’t take the competition out of the girl.  From the moment I pushed off the dock, I was in full go mode as I swam by and over other swimmers.  We were all given ankle bracelets with a chip to time our swim, but the problem was that the timer start device wasn’t in the same place where we started.  Also, the finish line was a few yards from the exit off the docks.  When I finished, I waited around for a while for my friend to get out of the water.  So my official time is 33:22.00, but I was probably a little faster than that. (I was swimmer #16.)

As I swam, I kept the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge to my left, and Bannerman’s castle to my right.  As I got to the middle of the river, I stopped for a little while to tread water and look around.  It was beautiful.  I was so small, and the sky was so big, and I put a lot of effort just to get to that half-way point.  Just as I was spotting the sloop to get my head back into the water to swim, one of the kyackers asked me if I needed help.  I gave him the thumbs up and said, “never been better!”

I didn’t take any pictures of the event, but I did see this article with the picture below, and I think I’m somewhere in that group.  If you spot someone rather pasty and buoyant with two tickets to the gun show in a blue suit and a yellow cap, then go ahead and assume that’s me.

me: I’m a financial planner!

lifeguard: Cool. So you can help me make millions?

me: You bet.  No promises, though.

lifeguard: So, did you, like, have to go to school to be an accountant to do that?

me: Actually, I was a theatre major.

lifeguard: Meaning you studied Russian acting technique and all that?

me: Exactly.  And you’d be surprised how handy all that can be, even when you’re doing finance.

lifeguard: I bet.

me: In fact, I now practice the Stanislavsky Method of Financial Planning.  I made myself poor, and now I’m making myself not poor.  It’s very method.

lifeguard: you should give me your card! (yeay!)

And that’s probably going to be the opening chapter to the book I’ll write in a few years titled, “The Cherry Orchard Financial Technique: Get Yourself From Serfdom to The Middle Class Through Smart Estate Management.”  I’m going to be bigger than Suze Orman, at least in theatre geek circles.

And since I need to make up for the embarrassment I feel about the last post’s “B1″ “BI” mix-up (I drove past it today, and now all I can feel is DUH! and HOWEVER!, they do use the same exact letters for “I” and “1.”) Moving on in this project of things I pass on my way North to South, here is a picture of everyone’s favorite shop that sort of comes out of nowhere when you drive on route 9D in Wappingers Falls, Nesting Dolls:

Oh, and I do love my little Garmin, even as it takes up most of this field of view.

Yes, this curiosity shop almost exclusively sells Russian Nesting Dolls.  It’s run by a globetrotting couple (they’ve even been to Antarctica!) that collect items from the places they go.  But everyone needs a niche, so theirs is nesting dolls, and oh, this store has so many wonderful varieties from classic to baseball players to cartoon characters, and as you can see, has just about the brightest paint job in the entire Hudson Valley.  The day before I shot this photo I was running early to an appointment and had a moment to stop in, and I purchased something wonderful that will either become a birthday present of some sort, or mine.  I haven’t decided yet, so I’m not sharing what it is here.  I have no idea how a store that only sells one item stays in business when it is nowhere near a destination point, but if you ever find yourself driving down 9D on your way to somewhere, I recommend stopping in.

This is my towel:

I bring this towel to swim practice and meets. I have a meet this weekend, actually, the New England Short Course Yards Championships at Harvard.  That makes this the one year anniversary of my competitive swim career.  In the past 12 months, I have smelled like chlorine almost every day of my life, and I’m much faster now than I was back then.

This towel is almost always hanging here on my shower curtain rod.  The other day while I was going potty, I started thinking about this towel, recalling buying it for $9.99 six years ago at the Penn Station K-Mart.  I was waiting for the LIRR train to Long Beach, when I realized I left my towel at home.

It was cheap, and it’s functional.  But that’s not all!  This towel has a cool design, and sometimes, when I am taking necessary extra moments in the bathroom without reading material, I start to wonder about the person who designed my cheap towel.  It didn’t just come out of nowhere.  Some person, somewhere in the world, has the job description of “K-Mart towel designer.”  I want to know who that person is, and I want to shake their hand, because this is a well-designed towel for only $9.99.

I will use this towel this weekend in conjunction with my pink Speedo brand Chamois that I bought from SwimOutlet.com.  That thing sucks all the water off any surface it touches.  But only if it’s wet.  It’s a mystery.  Chris, I promise someday I’ll give it the full post it deserves, but I need to get on to:

My coffee pot:

I thrive on a schedule.  And I won’t do this career if I can’t also fit swimming into my life.  So this is how a typical day goes for me:

5am – arise, shine, feed the cats.

5:05 set my coffee pot time and timer, because I keep it unplugged when not in use.  Put a vegan pumpkin muffin on top.*

5:10 – move Lucy’s food to the top of the fridge so that Micki won’t eat it.  Eat my own breakfast; either Cheerios, GoLean, or Kashi Island Vanilla, an awesome alternative to Frosted Mini-Wheats, which this vegetarian was recently distraught to discover are made with gelatin.  Read the internet while eating breakfast.  Hope my neat-o blog buddies understand that I’m trying to keep up, even if I have no time to comment.

5:30 Put on my swimsuit and get all my stuff together.

5:45 Lock Micki in the bedroom (where she has her own litter box, food & water.) Give Lucy her remaining food.  Warm up the car while I listen to “almanac” on the radio.

6:00 Get to the pool and swim.

6:45 Stop swimming, shower, put on make-up, dry my hair, dress up in a monkey suit.

7:20 Drive home, feeling a little guilty that there’s still 10 minutes of swim practice left.

7:30 Get home, put out my swimsuit to dry, pour my coffee that just finished brewing, and pick up my muffin now that it’s warm. Drive to work.

8:30 Phew!  Arrive at work caffeinated and pumpkiny.

*I started off March trying for an all-vegan month.  That lasted until the 15th, when I decided that life without Fage Greek Yogurt (mixed with Bear Naked Granola and a teaspoon of apple butter) just isn’t worth it.  But at the month’s start, I made a batch of vegan pumpkin muffins.  Without hyperbole, I can say that they are more awesome than Barack Obama.  (Full disclosure, I’m annoyed right now that his press conference is preempting “The Biggest Loser.”)

From my batch of 18 muffins, I kept six fresh, and froze the rest.  I find that if I leave one of the frozen ones out overnight, it’s kind of mushy and just okay in the morning.  But if I put the defrosted muffin on top of the coffee pot while it makes coffee, the muffin becomes warm like new, and makes my hour long commute feel only like it’s 56 minutes long.

You know what you don’t want to come home to after 56 or more minutes of driving?  Cat puke.  Cat puke on your comforter.

In this photo, my comforter is draped over a chair, because yesterday after I sat in a three-hour seminar on annuity products, I visited the laundromat with the industrial-sized dryer that’s big enough to handle all that puked-on comfort.  I didn’t have the patience to wait for it to dry fully.  The kicker is that the offending cat has taken up residence on the cleaned comforter.  (Eagle eye’d viewers can also see my aforementioned swim stuff drying, and my fancy shoes in the place they landed when I kicked them off.)

What caused the kitty to spew?  My theory is after I spent most of my Sunday cleaning the hell out of my apartment, including using Method floor cleaner on the hardwood (thanks to Allie for the tip!) and Micki staged a protest.  She doesn’t like it when I clean, because it means something changed.  Drastically.  I figure she threw up out of spite, because she also managed to get it all over the newly cleaned floors, the sheets, and the blanket.  It’s also possible that she licked the delicious almond-scented floors and made herself sick.  But I somehow doubt that.  Cats don’t live seventeen years if they’re that stupid.  I’m sure she’s protesting because she’s still angry about this:

Lucy.  The most ridiculously perfect cat in the history of cats.  This is her new cat bed.  Actually, this is Micki’s old cat bed.  The one that I bought for Lucy also had to be laundered.  It seems that one of the cats used it as a litter box instead of a bed.  I figure that either Micki peed it is some perverse territory marking ceremony, or Lucy peed it because she was too scared of a sneak attack from Micki to venture to the litter box.  Eternal thanks go to besties Flick and Tucker who let me use their washing machine last Wednesday night.

And despite all this consternation, I love the kitties.  All it takes is one head cock from Micki or one full-body flop from Lucy for me to instantly forget the death wishes I had for them.

However, I feel I’m lots of laundry due stuff coming out of all ends of them.  I wish this is a problem that could be solved with a solid whole life insurance policy.  Because I know a reputable agent who represents some world-class policies.

That’s my nutshell.  Now I’m off to bed so I can do it all again tomorrow with a twist: tomorrow I’m going to the home office in Albany, which means more commuting, and no swimming.  Maybe I’ll take some time to do “The Biggest Loser Weight Loss Yoga” DVD I have at home.  Becasue I’m nothing if not brand loyal.

Cadiz asked about my favorite book as a kid.  I was a Dr. Seuss fan through and through, and I devoured every new Babysitter’s Club book as it arrived.  I had an unreasonable hatred for Beverly Cleary, but I think that was just me establishing my personhood.  The one book I remember reading over and over was Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe.  I used to wish that my family was a camping kind of family, but Mom is 100% hotel-(or B&B)-centric.  But I got my fill when I went to summer camp, those were the happiest of my life.

Chris, aka apollocreed, asked me to write a post on swimmer’s towels.  He’s right, they’re weird.  They only work when they’re wet, and they had a ridiculous capacity for absorption of water and smell.  An inferior version, the sham-wow, is sold by a freak with a microphone.  Maybe I’ll save that topic for an in-depth discussion when I get back.  It’s always good to have a back burner post.

-R-, Courtney and Abbersnail wanted to know about the cult of commenting.  See yesterday’s post, which I believe you did.  Courtney also wanted to know if there were any new boys in my life.  Honestly, no.  Since November, when I realized I would probably have to find a new job, that’s been all-consuming for me.  I have a great group of friends here that I see almost every day, and they provide my daily companionship needs.  Sometimes I worry that it’s keeping me from going out and getting someone, but I can honestly say that I’m not worried about it right now.  There is one person on the far-far horizon that I’ve met twice, and a mutual friend is trying to facilitate our future meetings, but he’s geographically undesirable at the moment. Birmingham and I remain good friends.

Howling Hill asks that I keep blogging.  And I ask her to get a full RSS feed.  But I’m not promising that I’ll come back once she does.  I will probably keep Twittering and Facebooking, though.

Bing asks about my favorite local eats.  While the Culinary Institute of America is so close to here, I’ve only been once, and it was meh.  I might should go again soon, because it was still fun to be there.  When given the choice, my favorite lunches come from Adams Fairacre Farms.  They have a great salad and sushi bar, and the best ingredients when I’m cooking for myself.  I’m currently writing this from Panera Bread, because they have an awesome comfy couch next to a fireplace, and I need to get away from my own couch.  I wish hadn’t just checked online to realize that the egg souffle I ate was 470 calories, and probably has enough sodium to kill a horse.  I probably won’t eat out again for the rest of the week because of that, unless I go to the movies in Rhinebeck and eat at the Garden Street Cafe.  The woman who runs the place is a lioness, and she scares me, but it is worth it for their fantastic salad with brown rice and Japanese dressing, or whatever insane dessert she’s concocted.  I also love all the ethnic restaurants near Vassar College (Thai Spice!) and the new bakery, Baby Cakes.  Osho is a fun place for Hibachi parties, and the Chinese restaurant across the street from my apartment did not give me food poisoning, and that’s about the best thing I can say about that.  I’m probably missing a few others, but lately I’ve been working hard to save money and calories by eating at home more.

The Modern Gal wants to know who was the boy on my April 2008 masthead.  Thanks for bringing back up that MAJOR INTERNET CONTROVERSY, MG, but I’ll still never tell.

Tomorrow is my fourth interview with the insurance company.  I’ve spent much of this potentially final unemployment week watching the Academy Award nominated movies, which have been great.  Thumbs up to Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon.  I also really loved Milk, but I kind of wish that it didn’t start out with Harvey Milk being desperately unhappy because he is an insurance salesman.  I also got a little bummed out on Tuesday when one of my top ten favorite movies of all time, Groundhog Day, was playing on TV.  The idea of being a financial planner, a.k.a.: glorified insurance sales person is growing on me, but I do not want to become Ned Ryerson and I do not want to be punched in the face by people from high school, even if I sure as heck-fire remember them.

That is all.  See you soon, I’m sure, but maybe not before this year’s Blog Share.