Or panic, anxiety, and fear in my case. I have completed my educational presentation for work. Not only did I finish it but I rocked it. Hardcore. I had 38 people attend, and they scored me a 96% satisfactory rating. It was the highest attendance for the whole year. Rock ON! I still hated it. I got more comfy after a few slides, but yes, it still sucked. 

Oh, this was fun. I had an 8am conference call for something else and discovered on that call that my headset wasn't working. So, with 45 mins left until my presentation, I ran to Office Depot and searched everywhere for the office-y headsets and not the mobile-y headsets. Once I found them, I bought two - just in case. Got home 20 minutes before I was to start, which was 5 minutes before I had to call in and make sure everything was set up. Talk about potential heart-stopper.

Yes, I totally freaked out. And maybe for no reason. But, let's think of this. Had I not freaked out, would I have done so well? Quite a quandary.

I've kept meaning to mention this, but I've just not gotten the chance to. On September 17, 2006, I started a diet. OOOh, *gasp*, shocker, I know. But, I don't start diets on a whim. My desire to lose weight is so strong that when I decide to start a diet, I commit fully.

I was on Weight Watchers for a year, and Jenny Craig for a year, and in those two years I only lost 17 pounds. So, I feel like most diets just don't work for me like the average dieter. One thing I did try for 4 months in 2005 was a low-glycemic diet on my own. I did it to the extreme though. No bad carbs at all - no rice, no pasta, no bread. I lost around 20 pounds doing that but that gets tiring quick. I consider myself extremely successful for managing that for 4 whole friggin months. One thing that did teach me is that out of all the different programs I've tried, the whole low GI was by far the most successful. So, recently while cruising online, as we all do, I ran across some stuff about Nutrisystem. They had recently redesigned their entire system to low-GI. OMG, I thought. So I looked some more. I was most curious about price, mais naturellement, and was still interested. For about $300, I could get food for 4 weeks. That includes three meals and one dessert. The fact that I hate to cook, and would by far rather not eat than have to worry about actually having to deal with the whole thing, this was looking mighty interesting.

I figured I'd try it for at least one go around. When you first purchase it, you get an extra week for free. So I got 5 weeks for just under $300. One of the shockers upon receiving it all, was that none of needs refrigerating or freezing.  Wow, another reason to love it. It's not like I have a ton of room in there. I took some pics of all the stuff after unpacking. My main goal with this was not to lose weight, but to simply eat more regularly. With this, I just have to add stuff like salads, veggies, diary/protein. I did a breakdown of what that's costing me daily versus the way I'd been eating out, and the difference is crazy. The NS stuff alone costs me about the same, if not less, than what I was spending on going out to lunch everyday. Throw in some veggies, yogurt, salad stuff, and it's still nothing. I can already notice the difference in the bank account. Now I just gotta get Mike to stop eating lunch out everyday. HA! We shall see.

Another thing about me and diets is, I can tend to get a wee bit obsessive. In the past, I would weigh multiple times a day and store it in a spreadsheet along with every bit of food I would eat and all it's nutritional info.  It was crazy. The only way I got over this was to stop weighing completely. I even started telling my doctors to not tell me what I weighed. I'm not that bad anymore, the only place I will weigh is at the doctor, and I don't mind seeing that anymore. So, I've gone to the doctor a couple times recently. Once a couple weeks before starting NS, and another time the other day. So, from those weigh-ins I have lost 5 pounds. That is so astonishing to me! I find it hard to eat so much frickin food sometimes, but I'm so excited. I'm totally diggin' the Nutrisystem thing, and am gonna keep it up. My next order from NS ships any day now. I know it sounds expensive, but it's actually saving me time and money, and I'm actually losing weight. Craziness.

So, I'm gonna try to keep y'all posted on my progress. Wish me luck!

(oh, and if anyone is interested in NS themselves... email me. as a member, I can give out $15 off referall coupons) 

Mike and I signed up with Yahoo! Music recently. It was a really good deal -- two years for the price of one. So, for $59.88 each, we have 2 years of streaming music. Cool thing about this is if you rate stuff, it will recommend music for you. Mike's already pretty excited about it because he's found a couple bands he's never heard of before, and loves 'em. Previously, he had Rhapsody, but decided to switch cuz his friends had moved over and the great price deal. Most of his friends had scooted over to Yahoo! Music, cuz of price, selection, quality, and other music snob reasons. Oh, should I call them "audiophiles"? Nah, snobs.

I did not have an account with Rhapsody, so Mike would just get me music when I wanted something. I like this dealio much better. The suggestions are mine and mine only. To say that Mike and I have different tastes in music would be a gross understatement. Overall, I would say Mike likes singer/songwriter type stuff. He does like some things out of that genre, but mostly, that's it. Me? Well, I'm all over the frackin' place. I'd say my reigning fave is Ben Harper. However, I listen to anything from DMX, Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake to Madeleine Peyroux, Imogen Heap, and Edith Piaf. I can almost say the only thing I will not listen to is country, but there are just no such things as absolutes in life.

So, after getting this all set up, I got curious about different plugins or whatever, mostly in order to avoid the work I needed to get done. What I found was a way to get listings of my music listening trends. So, I've put together a page that will list out what I'm currently listening to, and weekly stats, and overall stats. I put it up on the -----^ top bar as My Tunes and over to the side ---> as The Shit I'm Listening To.  I thought it was a pretty nifty idea. I got this all with the courtesy of the most interesting site last.fm.  I'm sure it's just the music industries way of keeping their finger on the pulse of the listening audience, but whatever. Maybe this way it'll actually be a more accurate picture of what people are listening to, instead of telling them exactly what they should be listening to -- a la radio. However, I am looking at it as just another way to peak into all that is MOI. You'll have to tell me what you think. Or maybe even suggest some tunes for me to add to my repertoire.

I have just turned in my presentation. I still have to get my talking notes together, but that's nothing that has to be officially turned in. Wow, it is such a friggin relief that this is turned in. I want to melt into a puddle now. I might just have to do that.

I'm gonna post another couple times, about different topics. I feel each topic deserves it's own entry and don't want them intermingling. Cope with it, it's the OCD in me.

So, last night I made sure I got plenty of sleep. Woke up, grabbed all my food, cuz I had actually prepared everything the night before, and went to leave. I didnt make it to the end of my driveway. The first thing I did was bring the garage door down on top of my Pathfinder as I was backing out. That bent the garage door, and took it off it's tracks. I cleared the door, then went inside to tell Mike what had happened. He said not to worry, he and his work buddy would get it situated. Go on to work, no worries. Sure, ok, right. Then I preceded to back out a bit further from my driveway and turn (it's an L-shape), and then managed to hit my husband's new-to-him Sierra 1500 truck. Nothing major, I don't even think you can see anything on either car. There might be an additional scratch on the corner of my bumper but I doubt it. After I did this, I slammed on the brakes, ran inside crying like a very big ninny. Mike thought I had hit the lady with her baby in a stroller that he saw going by. So, he was much relieved when I told him I just hit his truck. He then instructed me to not even think about driving. I am a menace to society, no doubt. I wrote into work, told them what happened, then proceeded to pass out for 2 hours. 

To say that I am a wreck, is an extreme understatement. I just hate feeling so uncontrollably weak like this. Intellectually I know I'm being a complete pyscho, but it doesn't change my emotional responses.

Oh, and today is the 1 year anniversary of my house fire. So, I should have known that it had to be an eventful day.