Diet and a Sock

So Scott sent me flowers for Valentine's day, and I never posted the picture, so here it is:

In the middle of my very messy office. My office is much cleaner than when I inherited it, though!

I learned how to knit a sock. I found an online tutorial and I went through it step by step. It took forever because I had to frog and start over several times. Here's the process: First, you cast onto three needles instead of just one and knit in the round instead of back and forth. Harder than it sounds until you get used to it.Next step is to make the cuff then start the heel, which is really complicated especially since I'm a beginning knitter!Eventually you do a lot of magic, etc. and you have a sock. A hideous sock. But it's the most comfortable sock I've ever worn. Scott and Mim were kind enough to say it looked great, but to my perfectionist eyes, I could only see the myriad of mistakes I had made.

And, sadly (but happily at the same time-YAY WARM), winter is coming to a close. Here is a picture of a place near Mim's house with the snow:

Gorgeous. But it's ok that it's melting. Heating this big house is so much more expensive than the apartment was so we've been trying to keep the temperature a little lower than we'd like and just wearing sweaters and blankets around the house. It works pretty well. I have a cashmere sweater on. I found it at Saver's for like seven dollars! Amazing, since cashmere is so ridiculously expensive. I found out it comes from a very rare and particularly soft and fluffy goat somewhere in the Himalayas. No wonder it's expensive.

Work today wasn't too bad. I got everything done early, so I figured to get the rest of my hours by surfing the internet. I had everything shut off and closed down when someone was like, can you run this test? At least it wasn't a hard or complicated one. It was just a little annoying to turn everything back on and set up again and the instrument has to warm up for an hour so I ended up staying for more than 8 hours, which is fine, because it means I can leave a little earlier tomorrow! YAY Friday!

So we were going to have a B-day party for me next Saturday, but Mim got asked to be the producer of the latest community theater's production of "Zombie Prom". Definitely going to see that one. Anyway, it means she didn't have that weekend free anymore, so we decided to do it this Sunday instead. That will be the first day of phase 3 of my diet, so I'll be able to eat all the stuff we grill-just not in buns. And no chips. But Em said she knew how to make a low-carb cheesecake, so I actually DO get to have birthday cake!!! I'm craving something sweet.

It will be so nice to have a change of pace with the diet. It's been more than six weeks of eating specific small amounts off of a specific list of foods, so it'll be nice to have fewer restrictions. The rules for this phase are simple: eat anything you want, as much as you want, but no sugar or starch. So all cheese and meat and eggs and most vegetables are fair game, so that opens up many many options.

I've lost 27 pounds as of this morning. Three more days and we'll see where we end up. I'm predicting about 30 pounds total when I'm through with this phase.

Then, after six weeks, I can do my second course and I will lose the rest. If I can lose another 15-20 in the second course that will bring me to my target weight, and it will be the first time since 8th grade that I will not be labeled "overweight" according to those doctor chart thingies. Then, I'll go in to the doc and have some tests run and see if my blood pressure and cholesterol are down. Hopefully losing all the weight will correct those.

I'm just so excited for all this!