Why is it sometimes so hard to be productive?

I may need a vacation. I will be taking care of that in a couple weeks.

For some reason gmail keeps giving me a bunch of baby food ads. Thanks to all my friends having babies, probably. (Are we talking about it that much? Over email? Maybe we just have to say the word "pregnant" in one email and we get thousands of baby food ads for years afterwards.) I keep wanting to yell at my computer: You can feed your baby.... actual food! You just put some veggies in the blender. Put whatever you want in there. (I mean, within reason. Maybe leave out the curry.) God only knows what they are putting in those jars. I'm increasingly annoyed at all these manufactured needs that aren't really needs. Anyway.

Saw a disturbing movie: "The Future of Food" on hulu.

Apparently it does not have to be "sunny" per se for me to get a sunburn, that is how talented I am.

For Christmas I asked for a calendar, and I got one. It's got fancy astronomy pictures in it. It's hanging up in my cubicle. But then I still needed one for my kitchen, and I just took forever getting around to it. I couldn't take the 2008 one down, because the calendar in my kitchen is hiding the fuse box, which I didn't want to look at. So it remained December 2008 in my kitchen for quite a while (the least outdated thing in my kitchen. except maybe the fridge and the stove, which as you may be aware, I purchased new quite recently. the 1950s cabinets are still there though, so it's not exactly what you'd call a finished project. but I digress.) until I finally, in like March or something, got a new calendar. There are not that many calendars around in March, let me tell you. I didn't have what you would call a lot of options. You know how you are always in the bookstore in mid-February and they still have calendars up, and you think to yourself, "What fool still has not got their new calendar?" Well I am that fool. (I was going to write, "that fool is me" but then Ms. Zikhur, my 7th grade grammar teacher, reminded me in my mind that I'd have to say "that fool is I" which sounded pretentious, so I reworked.) It would be a funny ending to my story if I were to tell you how I ended up with some calendar that I would never have selected under ordinary circumstances, and now I am stuck with Xena, Warrior Princess until 2010 or something. I agree that I have set this story up like it is supposed to be funny. But my calendar is a little on the non-descript side - probably wouldn't have been my first choice if I'd had the full selection, but it wouldn't have been my last either (unlike Xena). It's sort of asian-themed drawings with fake zen sayings on them. I say "fake zen" but that is my inner cynic speaking. Okay, promise I am getting to the point soon (why is the hot water heater making so much noise?). The May saying is the following: "May the hearers awaken from forgetfulness and transcend all anxiety and sorrow."
Today is the 6th so I have been looking at that for a while, but I didn't really start thinking about it until today. Now I am thinking about forgetting. How we do it in an attempt to heal ourselves, because we don't want to deal with that shit, we want to forget it. To transcend something, to rise above it, means you actually have to travel through it, and we don't want to do that. I don't, anyway. Right now I am dealing with one of those things I tried to forget, put it back there in a box with all the other old stuff. But you can never forget forever. These things are part of us... parts of us that demand to be heard, eventually. I think there is a place for setting aside, looking away, coming back to deal with things when we are maybe a little stronger, when we have the perspective to realize it was never the end of the world anyway. But we forget, truly forget, at our peril.

Here goes nothing.

Drinking a beer. I'm feeling pretty pissed. I'm not sure if the beer is making me more pissed, or less pissed. I may have to give up reading the news, I am so pissed. Now, I know I have said this before, that I'm going to give up politics, blah blah blah. What pisses me off? Oh, you know, same old same old. Wiretapping, torture, my soccer team losing. Or drawing after blowing a lead (three times). It all kinda makes me want to buy a yurt in the countryside. Maybe I need a better coping mechanism. I restarted my yoga class yesterday... perhaps that will help.

I need a poster for my cubicle. Lettuces are growing, carrots are growing, peas and parsley are getting started. I've been thinking about stuff.

So, I am going on to a new job! They called me today with the offer. I am THRILLED, which I'm sure you'll understand if you've ever been the audience to a work-related rant of mine. It is a little bit surreal, that's for sure, because I've been where I am for what seems like a really long time (three and a half years). I'm just really, really excited. I also just bought a new laptop. YAY, TECHNOLOGY!!! This is the first computer I've really bought with my own money and it's very pretty. Everything is new: new boyfriend, new laptop, new job. Ok, my car is not new. My car is still the same. It just turned twelve and is ticking along just fine, for the time being anyway.

I have a race coming up on Sunday (a ten-miler) and my training has been a little bit skimpy lately, but that's alright. I'm going to approach this as a training run, knowing that when I start my new job I'm going to have a lot more time for running, because I won't have to commute! The new office is three miles from my house, under a ten-minute drive. So I'm going to get back two hours of every day that I've been spending commuting. I can't wait. I CAN'T WAIT. Everybody get excited. ARE YOU EXCITED???? BECAUSE I AM!!!!!

I'm in love!

So I finally went running today. I have been so, so lazy recently. I have a ten-mile race coming up at the beginning of April and I would like to do well, so I realized that I need to start running several times a week, regular. It is really warm out today, and I have the day off (yay, dead presidents!) and if I can't get up the willpower to go running in that situation, I'm obviously done for. So I got out there and as usual, it sucked, but was great once I got done. When I was back in front of my house stretching, a couple came to visit my upstairs neighbor and as they were coming down the walk, the guy said to me, "What is your resting heart rate?" and I was like, "uh, I have no idea actually, I guess I should pay more attention to stuff like that." Hmm.

Did you know that I am taking another accounting class? It is driving me a little crazy for reasons I won't get into, but I need to tell you that double-entry accounting is AMAZING. It makes an almost incredible amount of sense. I can just get really worked up about the double-entry accounting system. You know Goethe? Some famous German poet? He called it "absolutely perfect." So there.

Ok, check this out: it's a box full of bedroom furniture. Every part of the box is used in the actual furniture, so there's no packaging, and it doesn't require any tools for assembly or disassembly, and it's even got a twin bed WITH mattress. I wish I had had this when I was moving every five minutes.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/casulo_an_entir.php