Are We Having Fun Yet?

It's been an unextraordinary day. The big highlight was filling the tank of my car for a mere $2.79/gallon. Woo hoo.

I'm calling for the Chesapeake Squares tonight so I think I'll try to squeeze in an hour's nap so I can be as refreshed as possible.

I didn't sleep well last night. It felt like I ingested a huge quantity of sugar and caffeine before going to bed, but unless those were the secret ingredients in kent4str's lime-pepper chicken & broccoli, it must be something else.

My best guess is that last night's restlessness was due to low level anxiety and stress. While I'm winding down a number of projects, this is still a busy week and job uncertainty isn't helping. A couple of nights at home instead of being on the run should help; now I have to see if I can schedule that in.

On the good side, my sore neck from yesterday now feels fine.

I dozed off while reading a book but woke up just now feeling vastly more relaxed than I have in days. Indeed, all the bitterness of my life seems to have lifted.

Well, most of it.

OK, maybe only 1-2%.

Still, savour it while you can 'cause I'm telephoning my parents later this evening and you can imagine what that is going to do to my mood and blood pressure.

Tuesday morning, I woke up with a deep-seated muscle pain between my shoulder blades, to the left of my spine. Apparently, the pillow I used that night distinctly does not agree with me.

It's generally been a dull throb; turning my head more than 45 degrees from center causes pain to shoot down from the back of my neck to below the left shoulder blade. It's made checking my blind spot while driving a complete joy.

The pain has generally been fading since the first bout. cuyahogarvr used our thumping hand massager on me Tuesday afternoon which helped a great deal and I left pretty good after sitting in the hottub last night.

At the moment, I think the pain is lower than in the past couple of days so perhaps it's my patience that's expired but I'm feeling seriously annoyed with my back & shoulder this morning. I'm more conscious of the pain even if my flexibility is nearly normal. It feels like I need to stretch just so that everything pops back into its proper place, but I can't either relax enough or push myself physically far enough to let it happen. The usual stretching exercises haven't helped, although I've cleared my cube twice to try so far today.

I feel I need a herd of elephants to tap-dance on my upper back, or at least have someone squeeze me intensely enough to realign everything. Any takers?

It was another ugly night of nearly no sleep. I'm not sure why I haven't been able to sleep well for two nights running... it's not as though I wasn't tired. Usually, I adapt to new accommodations fairly quickly but I'll be grateful to sleep in my own bed at home tonight.

I wanted to attend Ben Rubright's one hour "intro to C2" session this morning at 10 AM but I'm not sure I'm up for any dancing at all in my current state of mental exhaustion.

Our area was covered in a heavy fog this morning. The commute from DC to Urbana wasn't any worse than usual but it was prettier than normal.

I'm feeling a little sluggish this morning, like I'm short 3-4 hours of sleep. Tuesday is my (relatively) light workday so I'll push through the rigours of the day and plan for an early evening. Checking over my work tickets, the ones I'm executing today are ready to go and the two dozen I've submitted for the next couple of weeks are chugging their way through the management review cycle with surprising speed & annoyance.

There was one last surprise waiting for me: the bonus I learned I was awarded last week was deposited in my account overnight. Woo hoo!

This morning, I forgot my watch on the nightstand at home. Now I don't know what time it is down to the millisecond.

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For the second night in a row, I spent the entire night in my own bed. 2008 is turning out to be a banner year.

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Yesterday afternoon, I picked up kent4str at the Metro station. (I keep telling him he could make more money working more popular street corners, but he's there twice a day regardless.) Anyway, I was amused by the vanity tag on the SUV in front of me:

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Zipping southbond along I95 home from square dancing in Baltimore last night, we were passed by a huge tanker truck with markings indicating it was carrying molasses.

kent4str: "Considering the month, shouldn't it be going a lot slower?"
bjarvis: "Yeah, probably. But it's a sweeeeeeeet ride!"

Fortunately, he couldn't hit me 'cause I was driving and we would have both died.

I went to bed far later than I was originally planning --12:30 AM instead of closer to 11 PM. I thought it would make for a rough morning, but no!

The alarm went off this morning and I was fully rested! Even more surprising, I woke up in my own bed! (Get your minds out of the gutter... a certain someone's [kent4str's] snoring usually drives me into the smaller guestroom around 2 AM.)

The morning commute wasn't any uglier than usual and so far my pager has been utterly silent. Let's hope the day continues in this happy fashion.

Curled up last night in bed under fresh pre-warmed flannel sheets and a heavy bedspread. I slept well.