Pour Some Sugar On Me

(Gotta love Def Leppard. Other contenders were "Sugar Sugar" by The Archies, "Lollipop" by The Chordettes, and "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow)

I had a dream last night that I went to Maverik in the morning before work and was choosing something to grab for breakfast. I swear the dream was like an hour long, and the entire time I was walking around the store, picking up something, then changing my mind and putting it back, choosing something else, etc. I ended up with a huge soda (not diet) and a ton of candy and donuts, and when I got to the cash register I looked at it all and said, "Scott would be ashamed of me!" and I put it all back. Then I woke up.

It was awesome.

I've been having an awful time with cravings lately. I think my body is like, "It's cold, therefore I need more fat to keep warm, therefore I must eat CANDY."

I've been a lot better about eating Halloween candy before Halloween this year than last year. A LOT. Still, I've had a bit here and there. I feel a little bit bad, since I've not been able to get to the gym much lately (but I went yesterday and my ankle didn't hurt much at all!), but I think I'll just have a few pieces over the next few days and then on Halloween I'll go ahead and indulge, and then Monday I'll bring in any leftover candy to work and make my coworkers eat it.

I was thinking about why I'm craving bad foods so much, since it's usually connected to how I'm feeling emotionally, and I find that figuring out what's making me sad/mad/whatever helps me not eat crap, even if it doesn't make the cravings go away. I'm 99% positive it has everything to do with not getting enough exercise over the last month and not having happy endorphins all over the place. I'm constantly amazed at the HUGE impact exercise has on my depression. I mean, the meds keep me at a pretty good baseline, but getting a good workout in at least three or four times a week really pushes my moods up into HAPPY HAPPY LAND (it's a really nice place, in case you were wondering).

Halloween is where it all starts. From there it just goes downhill. Halloween (candy), then Thanksgiving (pie), then Christmas (traditional Christmas Eve cheeseburgers, then traditional sugary cereal on Christmas, and all the candy), then New Year's (just another excuse to have yummies), and by the time it's January I'm usually heavier. BUT NOT THIS YEAR. I'm going to be reasonable. Treats, yes, but smaller portions, less often, and, above all, I'm going to keep exercising!

Now excuse me while I go eat one of the Halloween cookies my boss brought in today.

Don't worry. I'll burn it off later at the gym.

Chocolates, hCG, and Fog Machines, Oh My!

My favorite kind of chocolates are Queen Anne cherry cordials. Every year for Christmas someone in my family gets me a box, with the "e" scribbled out and replaced with an "a", which makes me the queen. I eat all of them in one day and it's delicious and amazing, but after I eat a whole box of them I'm sick of them and I don't want any more until next year.

I hate when people argue on Facebook. I got caught in the middle of an argument yesterday and it was mostly my fault...oops. This one involved someone ragging on the hCG diet, saying it doesn't work in the long run and it'll just make you unhealthy, etc. Well, let me tell you, I've kept 30 pounds off, my blood pressure and cholesterol went down, and now I can keep up with Scott while we're walking through a store. I can see how the weight would come back if you didn't change your eating and exercise habits, but I did and it's amazing. The end.

I ordered an industrial strength fog machine from Best Buy, and I chose (and paid for) the faster shipping. the website said it would be here by...YESTERDAY. They were supposed to send me an e-mail and charge my credit card when they shipped it, and I got neither an e-mail nor a charge. So last night I called customer service and tried to find out what was going on. I feel sorry for customer service people, because all they do all day is handle people's problems, and most of them aren't as polite as I am. Anyway. Even though it said nothing about it on the webpage, this item was special order through Best Buy from another company. The other company hadn't told Best Buy if they'd gotten the order or anything, so they were still in the dark. I'm mad. If, on the website, it says I will get my item by a specific day if I pay this much for shipping, I better get it then. As it stands, we may not get it at all before Halloween, which would totally suck.

THIS JUST IN:

I'm talking to Scott on messenger right now and he said Jon just told him a large package just arrived from Best Buy. I forgive them.

Work has been really slow lately. There are way fewer samples coming in from outside labs, so it's just our own every day, and it's not enough. I find myself killing time so I can get enough hours.

Me: Afternoon is the worst part of the day for me because everything is all done except I just have to wait for the machines to finish. And wait. And wait.
Kwiddens: Oh darn, you get paid to sit.
Me: I know, but I don't like waiting.
Kwiddens: Silly.

HOLY HELL I just got hit by a craving for Chinese food. I've had really intense cravings lately, and I don't know why.

The women at my new crochet group all do a different kind of crochet called Tunisian. It's almost a hybrid of knitting and crochet. I'm going to attempt to teach myself before we meet tonight.

Antibiotics Are Useless

So I joined a gym, right?

Right.

I was going all the time and feeling awesome for about two weeks. Then, everything just kinda...well, stopped.

First, Li came to visit. I did go to the gym (and brought her with me) on a Saturday morning, but the other several days I just wanted to hang with my best friend and get some well-needed rest.

As soon as she was gone I was planning on going back. Unfortunately, I got sick. I had some kind of cold or maybe a mild flu. I was tired and dizzy and stuffy and generally miserable, so exercising was just out of the question.

After I got better I started going back, until my ankle exploded. Fun times. The doctor told me to stay off of it for two to three weeks, so I did two weeks (I was itching to get back onto that treadmill) and took it a bit easier for about a week.

THEN.

Maybe this is TMI, but THEN I developed a raging UTI. Have you ever had one of those? Did it make you want to walk on the treadmill? Or walk at all? Nope.

So I went back to the doctor and got antibiotics and went on my merry way. At this point, we had been spending a ton of time working on the kitchen, getting it ready for cabinets, so there just wasn't much time to go work out, even when my symptoms had subsided.

Unfortunately, that relief was short-lived. Ugh. My symptoms came BACK, like BAM, so suddenly...awesome. So I went BACK to the doctor and they tested me again and apparently Macrobid does absolutely nothing (at least in me, I'm a medical mystery) and it had gotten worse, even though the symptoms had gone way for a while. The doctor prescribed a different antibiotic, in a larger dose for a longer duration, and I went on my merry way.

Cipro has a few warnings. One is to avoid eating dairy and taking the meds at the same time (which wasn't a problem, really) and the other is NOT TO EXERCISE. Especially if you have tendonitis in your Achilles tendon OH LOOK THAT'S ME. Because apparently Cipro makes it worse and you could actually end up badly damaging your tendons. Super. It's also been making me extremely nauseated and bloaty (TMI again, I know) so that doesn't make me want to exercise, anyway. I totally threw up at work. Gross.

I just took my last dose! Yay!

So tomorrow...it's back to the gym. And I'm going to get skinny if it kills me.

At Least It's Progress

So we have, for a few weeks, been working on our Halloween prep. As you know, Halloween is our favorite holiday and really, the only one we do much for (at Christmas I do put up a tree and some icicle lights over the garage, but that's about it).

Last year we had a few tombstones in our front yard and a fog machine blowing fog over them. Unfortunately, it was just one of those cheap 400 watt fog machines (only about 1500 cubic feet per minute or cfu), and the tiniest breeze would come along and it would all just blow away. Boring.

So this year we decided to try something more. When the fog comes out of the machine it is pretty warm so it floats upward automatically. If you want it to creep along the ground, it needs to be cooled. There are fog machines with built-in coolers, but they're way more expensive, so we decided to go to Home Depot (surprise, surprise) and make one ourselves. First up we got a bin (black so it wouldn't show well at night) and some dryer ducting, and coiled the ducting up inside the bin.

Then we cut a hole on the left side and the front side (look at the picture below) and attached the ducting with duct tape. Then the fogger went into one end and the fog came out the other side.

Then, we took an irrigation tube and attached that to the "out" end of the ducting.

When the fogger was hooked up, the fog came out all the little holes in the irrigation tube and, theoretically, would spread out all over the graveyard and not just in one direction.

We took it outside to give it a little test run. Into the bin we put ice (about four bags, I think):

We made sure all the ducting was completely covered:

Then we got everything assembled and let it cool for a while before we turned it on:

We turned it on and we were so excited to see it work...and it barely seeped out over the grass. There just wasn't enough fog coming out of the holes in the irrigation tube. I took a picture but Blogger just deleted it and I'm at work so I don't have a copy. Sad. Anyway, let's just say it wasn't exactly awe-inspiring.

We tried to rectify the situation by widening the holes, and that actually helped quite a bit, but it still wasn't that much fog, so we had to brainstorm. The nice thing was that the chilling mechanism was actually working great; the fog was staying low to the ground.

So we decided to buy a more powerful fogger. Two, actually: one for each end of our brilliant apparatus (the other end of the irrigation tube was easy to open up) (we had capped it). So I went around town and looked for a 700 watt machine, which is the next step up. Last year Target had them, but this year they didn't. I went to Wal-Mart, Shopko, K-Mart, and even the Halloween Spirit store in the mall, but no luck. So I got online and started looking. I found several sites that had them for about $40, but the shipping was RIDICULOUS. Like, as expensive as the machines themselves kind of ridiculous. So, I was just going to give up when my dear Scott convinced me that since Halloween was our favorite holiday, and we keep good care of our stuff, and it would last for years and years, we should just buy one really freaking awesome fog machine and use it. So I got online, and Best Buy had a fogger that is 1200 watts (!), and the output was 7000 cfm (four times as much as our little baby foggers) and it was $150 with free shipping (but only $6 if we wanted it rushed) (and of course we did) (it'll be here by tomorrow at the latest).

Tune in next time (or maybe the time after that; I have other things to post about) for a story about how we built a coffin in our front yard!



Why Pay More?

There are a few things I am willing to pay more for to get the name brand. In some cases the quality is actually higher, so I make up for the higher cost by being able to use certain products for longer.

Of course, there are other things, like food, that are exactly the same, no matter what brand they are. I'll gladly pay half price for Great Value macaroni and cheese that tastes exactly like Kraft.

I generally don't understand why people insist on paying a higher price for something that is EXACTLY THE SAME.

That's why I don't understand why people want brand name medications, either over the counter or prescription.

Let me tell you a little story.

Once upon a time I worked at a giant pharmaceutical company (Cephalon). In the particular location where I worked they made a product called Actiq, which is fentanyl (a narcotic 80 times more powerful than morphine) (you would not believe the amount of paperwork required for ANYTHING involving a Schedule II controlled substance...). In the factory they made brand name Actiq...AND generic fentanyl. Exact same formula. Exact same production process. And, most importantly, EXACT SAME QUALITY CONTROL TESTING PROTOCOLS. Very strict ones, in fact.

For one dose of Actiq, Cephalon charges somewhere around $50, depending on the dosage.

Guess how much they charge for a dose of generic fentanyl?

$17. Yep. Almost three times as much, for the exact same thing.

People, it doesn't matter what company makes the medication. The FDA monitors very carefully the production and testing of every single drug available in the US. There are inspections ALL THE TIME, and they are very strict. If there are any violations, the companies get fined heavily, so to avoid this, the companies are very very careful to do everything properly and safely.

On a related note, I hate when people are wary of something that's made in a lab versus the same thing found in nature. Keywords being the same thing. And, chances are, they can get the substance more pure if they make it in a lab, and many times for a much smaller cost.

So now you know.

Go forth and buy generic!

Three Layers? Really?!

These pictures are somewhat out of order. Just a few more little things about our ongoing kitchen renovation.

When we pulled up the linoleum to replace that section of subfloor a few weeks ago, we had found a bit of water damage. In order to make sure we didn't have any water damage anywhere else in the kitchen, we pulled up the rest of the linoleum and took a peek behind and under cabinets and appliances.

We found this:

It looks pretty bad, yes?

Well, it wasn't! It turned out to be just a surface stain, so we didn't have to replace any more subfloor. I call that a win!

When we pulled out the hood over the stove we were surprised to find it wired into the wall instead of plugged into an outlet, but the most surprising part was that instead of cutting a nice hole in the drywall, they had just knocked a little hole in the wall and yanked the wires out:

We continue to realize that our house was built by Special People.

Here's Scott attaching corner bead (I told you these were out of order...):

And here's the back door, looking more and more like a door instead of just a hole in the house where we stuffed a door. This has since been mudded over and the boys are, in fact, almost done so I can jump in and start painting:

And a picture of the pulling up of the linoleum:

They had put a new layer of linoleum over the old one, and in a few places we actually found a third layer of linoleum... Oh well, it's all gone now. We just have subfloor now, so we pulled a few carpet scraps we had lying around in the basement and spread them over the kitchen floor so we wouldn't be walking on bare wood.

Oh, and P.S. We ordered the countertops, and we were lucky that we went in when we did because they had a special: free edging upgrade, so we saved about $500!

Potions Class Would ROCK

So, it's no secret that I'm not much of a cook. I can make basic things, like pasta and sandwiches and almost anything pre-packaged that you just have to microwave, or throw in the oven, or throw in a skillet and simmer over medium-high heat for 7-9 minutes, or until cooked thoroughly (I make Bird's Eye Garlic Chicken enough to have it memorized, oh yes). I have, however, messed up these sorts of things. And I can't for the life of me boil a freaking egg.

You'd think that because cooking is following recipes and chemistry is following recipes (sometimes) that I would be totally awesomely awesome at cooking, but for whatever reason, I'm not (although I'm convinced that in Harry Potter's world, I would be AMAZING with Potions).

So here, I give you some of the reasons I don't cook.

Enjoy.

1. I don't enjoy doing dishes. Something about food residue sitting on dishes, getting gummy in the soapy water...blergh. It gets slimy on my fingers. Shoot me now.

2. The logical thing to do would be to use the dishwasher, right? Well, Utah has hard water. The hardest water I've ever encountered. And the dishwasher is really really good at coating all of our dishes with a crust of minerals. Yum. I mean, they're still clean. We eat off of them. It's just...well, we don't need to take extra mineral supplements is all I'm saying. After the kitchen cabinets and countertops are done, we're going to invest in a water softener. Expect a post about how happy that makes me.

3. I have plenty of time. I go to work for 8 hours, the gym for an hour, add in an hour for travel time and showering and such, and 8-9 hours for sleep, and VOILA! I have 5-6 hours each weekday for NOTHING. And even more on weekends! However, I just can't see spending much time making food in the crappy half-kitchen while there's so much YARN to be dealt with (and my new complete BSG series to watch...). So spending ten minutes making sandwiches? Absolutely.

4. Half-kitchen. HALF-KITCHEN. There's almost no counter space. All of our dishes are crammed in and stacked as tight as they will go into our little baby cabinets (they're going to be gone soon, WOO). All it takes is like one dirty bowl and spoon and then I'm out of counter space and there's nowhere to work any more and it's really frustrating, even when I'm just making sandwiches! Our new kitchen layout adds like eight more feet of countertops! Joy!

5. Since there are only two of us (well, three for now, if you count Jon), we don't need to make such large portions as recipes call for. If I did cook, there would always be tons of leftovers. WAIT. Then I might not have to cook the next day. Ok, maybe this isn't such a bad thing... But when I bake things, the baked things get eaten. Quickly. And in large quantities. And then my hips get bigger. I don't need that.

6. Lastly, my Scott is happy to cook, so why should I bother? Ha, just kidding Scottie!

This Post Is So Boring I Couldn't Think Of A Title

This morning I tried to redeem a Free Mountain Dew cap that I won from my last one, but Maverik doesn't redeem them, so I had to buy one instead. Fail. I have no idea where I can redeem it.

Last night I joined a crochet group run by a lady in my town in her home. I had been on Ravelry for a few weeks trying to get something together and she found me and  invited me to come to her group, so I did. It was pretty fun! There were only four people, but I got to show off a bit, and they were all working on Tunisian crochet (which is basically a hybrid of crocheting and knitting), which I think I might like to learn. I have instructions for it in my Harmony Guides, but I've never actually tried it. I think I really need to finish some of my current projects first, though. I have a baby blanket (for nobody in particular - just thought it might be wise to have a spare, just in case someone gets babied) that's almost finished. In fact, I think it's big enough now and I could be done any time I want, and then I just have to put an edging on it.

Mercury has been giving me issues this week. They're not major, but if it happens again I'll need someone to come out and take a look at it. For now she's running just fine, so I'll just cross my fingers.

I'm still working back up to where I was at the gym. It's slow going, and I hate it, but there's nothing I can do to speed up the process, since I still get pain. It's less pain, though, so at least I'm making progress.

We're inching toward being able to paint in the kitchen.

And that's all I can think of today. I'm getting boring.

Thoughts on Pride And Prejudice

So while I was watching Pride And Prejudice (BBC version) with Li during my vacation, I just kept noticing things more and more that are just so very radically different than how things are today. It's so interesting how time can alter customs and etiquette so much.

1. I love how they're supposedly "poor", but they have a maid (and/or a cook; I don't know if Hill functions as both). I know compared to other Gentlemen Mr. Bennet has little money, but obviously there are a lot of people WAY worse off than they are. I remember when my family was poor, and that meant no food sometimes. BIG difference.

2. I know that Mrs. Bennet is very obviously lacking in social graces, but even the very worst sorts of people don't talk about someone else's salary, especially loudly, in the middle of a party, while making it seem as if she wants her daughters to marry for money. Oh wait, she does. The only people who know how much money I make are me, Scott, Mim, Kwiddens, and my boss. Oh, and the woman who does payroll.

3. Etiquette played a much larger part in society then, so how is it all right for the rich to snub the poor (if they can be called "poor") when nowadays people would think you a tremendous ass for doing the same? So and so lives in Cheapside! Who cares?

4. When Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth and she cites his previous "bad behavior", wouldn't it have been simpler for Mr. Darcy to, right then and there, say "Oh, Miss Bennet, you are quite mistaken! Here is the real story..." But then I suppose there wouldn't be occasion for the lovely letter he then writes to her, or for the rest of the novel. I think this sort of thing often, and I have to remind myself that if things went the way that seems logical to me, the movie/book/show/whatever would be far less interesting and quite a bit shorter.

5. Mr. Wickham "must have something to live on". Um, whatever happened to getting a job? If you need more money, go find work. A lot of people back then seemed to think they were entitled to a living without any effort on their part.

6. A seeming contradiction: the five Miss Bennets are not allowed to own property, so Longbourne estate is entailed upon Mr. Collins, but Miss Darcy has a fortune of 30,000 pounds (or something like that). So how is owning property and owning a large sum of money any different? I'm not really a  feminist, but that just doesn't seem to make sense.

7. Pedophilia! Colonel Forster must be something like 40 years old, and his new bride is 14ish. Gross. Think of the difference in maturity, especially considering Mrs. Forster's closest friend is Lydia, who is only 15 and more than a little silly for her age! Also, what happens when her husband dies eventually and she still has years and years left to live? Apparently, she's not allowed to own property, so how will she live?

8. Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins would be a perfect couple, don't you think (once you got past the cousins marrying thing...)? Mr. Collins, however, seems to feel like he deserves someone more beautiful because, oh look, he's a pompous jerk.

9. Mrs. Bennet is the most obnoxious human being every to grace the earth, either in fiction or real life. When things aren't going her way, her poor nerves! And when things are going her way, will she please just shut up already?! No wonder most of her progeny are ridiculous.

10. I'm in love with Colin Firth. Also, the guy who plays Mr. Bingley, although quite amiable, is not attractive at all. He has bug eyes.

The end.

I think I read into things too much. I do, however, and always will, enjoy watching this movie.

It's About Time...

...For more Nyah pictures!

I haven't seen her in a while...I'm thinking it's about time for a trip down to Kwiddens's house!

There Was Makeup EVERYWHERE

I am a total klutz. You'd think that as a knitter and a chemist, you know, someone who works with her hands, that I would have very agile little fingers. Think again.

This is why I'm not allowed to use the super glue any more:

Yes. I glued my thumb to the glue. And seconds after that, I glued the Q-tip soaked in acetone I was using to try and pry it off to my fingers on my other hand.

This weekend has been...crazyish. Em and three of her friends were planning on attending the Anime Banzai in the Davis Conference Center this weekend, and I'm super nice so I offered to let them stay at my house instead of having to get a hotel room for three nights. We pulled out all of our extra pillows and blankets and sleeping bags and let them crash on the living room floor.

Scott and I generally go to bed rather early, but we needed to stay up late enough to let the girls in each night...LATE. Also, between their regular stuff and their costumes (like 3 different costumes each) my living room and bathroom were CHAOS. There was makeup everywhere. HURGH. I got home and hurried to clean up as much of it as I could before Scott saw it and had a conniption. Ha!

They're over at the convention right now, and later today they will gather all their things and head back down home and then my house will be SILENT again. So nice.

They were gone during the day though, so on the plus side, we got all the ugly linoleum in the kitchen ripped up, and we were happy to find that there wasn't any more water damage under the dishwasher, so we don't have to replace any more subfloor. Happy!

Sunday Spackling!

So Sunday we picked up where we left off. The floor was done (where we needed it to be; we still need to pull up the rest of the linoleum but that can wait) so we needed to build the new half-wall, do the electrical wiring, drywall, and mud.

Our kitchen was already messy just from moving things out of the way so we could pull sub floor up, but it was only going to get messier.

We needed to pull out some of the cabinets so we could patch some holes in the drywall and move electrical outlets.

Here's the beginning of the new wall (which, funnily enough, ended up only a few inches from where the old wall was...) (but we still would have had to demo the old wall anyway to get it to the right height and get the electrical stuff in the right places).

Scott did all the wiring himself, saving us hundreds of dollars compared to having an electrician do it. Scott never ceases to amaze me with the amount of things he can do around the house!

We started drywalling over the old back door:

Screwing dry wall on to the new wall:

The ceremonial last piece of drywall (well, on the new wall, anyway):

Putting on the first layer of mud:

Here's the end product (well, not really end, but the end for Sunday):

We got a ton more done on Sunday than we did on Saturday. Saturday everything just seemed to get messed up a bit here and there, and it made everything SO. SLOW. But Sunday we had only planned on building the wall and getting the electrical outlets wired. We didn't plan to get drywall and mud done, but we did and it is starting to look AMAZING!

My kitchen is going to be fabulous.

Sub Floor Saturday!

This past weekend we got a lot of work done in the kitchen in preparation for the new cabinets that will arrive next month. I briefly mentioned it before, but now you get to see the pictures!

This is the section of floor where the pantry closet used to be.

There was an air return in the other side of the wall behind it, and there are several holes where electrical wires had been threaded. When we put the new flooring down we are going to need as perfect a sub floor as we can get, so we decided to replace a section of it. It's a good thing, too, because there was a bit of water damage we didn't even know about!

The first step was to rip up the old linoleum (yuck!) and what do you know, there was more, even uglier linoleum underneath it!

After that we started pulling up sub floor. When we're ripping the guts out of this house, we always come across something weird the builders did that makes us think they didn't get it inspected...here's Scott, with an incredulous look on his face because OH LOOK, THEY USED PEGBOARD INSTEAD OF SUB FLOOR. Idiots.

Once we got the giant hole torn out of our floor (and Scott was being goofy and stuck his head up through from the basement), we were able to start putting in new sub floor.

Scott is enjoying a well-needed break.

And, tada, the finished sub floor:

The end. Well, not really. But that's all we got done on Saturday.

And by we I mean Scott and Jon. I wasn't very useful most of the time.

Text Time 10

Me: I just said "3/4 of our parents suck!" and Scott said "But the other 1/4 makes up for it!"
Mim: Thank you! I love you guys.

Me: Hungry! Making some dinners.
Kwiddens: Grood. What are you making?
Me: Garlic chicken. Premade, frozen...so I can't screw it up!
Kwiddens: Haha
Me: I am truly rotten at cooking. I made muffins the other day and they ended up gross. Scott liked them though...weirdie.
Kwiddens: What did you do?? And how were they wrong?
Me: I don't know what I did. They just tasted kinda odd. Not muffiny but more bready.
Kwiddens: Haha you messed up boxed macaroni once too didn't you?
Me: Shhhhhhhhh.

Me: Okie. I feel like a jerk but I messed up dinner so I'm feeling like I want to cry...it's so stupid...
Kwiddens: How did you mess up dinner? I think sometime you and I should cook together.
Me: Gravy didn't thicken. Gravy soup!
Kwiddens: What did you use to thicken?
Me: It was a mix...
Me: I just...suck at cooking. You'd think I would be great at it, since chemistry is basically following recipes!

Kwiddens: I need to learn how to apparate.

Me: YEAH!

Kwiddens: Mim and I decided we would do it with hulahoops and wands and sparkles.

Kwiddens: Right now I'm eating Oreos and throwing the cream away

Me: I need to be there!

Kwiddens: We need to have a tube that goes from wherever I am to wherever you are and we can pass notes or pills or ice creams or whatever.

Kitchen, Gym, Gym, Kitchen

This past weekend we started getting the kitchen ready for cabinet installation. BIG JOB! There's so much that needs to be totally finished. This past weekend we got a large section of water-damaged sub floor replaced, then got the half-wall that will be behind the stove built. We filled in the old back door with insulation and drywall and got the first layer of mud on. It was quite a bit for one weekend! Don't worry, I lots of pictures of it all. I just need to get them onto the blog... We still need to do a few more layers of mud (with sanding in between), primer, drywall and mud and sand around the new back door, prime all the walls for painting, and pull up all the old linoleum in the kitchen. THEN I can paint. THEN we can put the cabinets in. So all this needs to be done rather quickly (the cabinets are being delivered on November 3).

I finally got back to the gym yesterday. The doctor had told me to stay off of my ankle for two to three weeks, so I decided two was good. I have to take it easy for a while, though. Yesterday I got up to the same speed I was doing before I got hurt but I didn't add any incline. I felt like I only got half a workout, but my ankle was hurting so I wasn't willing to push it any farther. At least I burned off the triple chocolate cookie I ate yesterday.

I've been at the exact same weight for months but I still feel like I'm getting fatter. I think it's a depression thing, since I haven't been exercising for a while and that made the happy endorphins go away. As soon as I get back into the groove and go to the gym every day again, I'm sure I'll feel fine.

Later today:

I was able to do a little bit more on the treadmill today. A little. I should just be grateful I'm allowed back on it. I do love the exercise (and I never thought I would say that!)!

Scott just went to Home Depot to get more supplies for the kitchen, and while he was there he talked to the guys at the pro desk. When we built the deck, Home Depot had us order WAY more Trex than we needed, and that stuff is EXPENSIVE, so we were kinda mad. It was special order, so we thought we were just stuck with it. It turns out, for a restocking fee, we could sell it all back and get $660 credited onto our Home Depot card! That means we just got $660 closer to affording some counter tops! Woo!