Sunday Nattering

I've been kind of lax with posting the last week or two. There have been a number of reasons I've been slacking, not all of which I feel the need to get into here and now. If you've read this blog before, you can probably guess a couple of the reasons right off the top of your head.

Anyway, this is meant to be a shortish catch up post. Most of the stuff I've store away in my head to write about is now gone, and it's probably for the best. I'm sure it was worse than the regular shit I bitch and moan about. Consider yourself saved.

I don't know why, but I'm in a fairly good mood today. Knowing myself like I do, I shouldn't be. Ollie started in his needy licking at 2:30 this morning, with repeat performances at 4:30 and 5:30. I got up when the 5:30 one started and have been up since. I used that as my motivation to get out of the house and do my walk. I walk 3 miles in about an hour at the mall. Six a.m. is the perfect time because there is only a small handful of blue hairs there then. The time went quickly today, too, which is nice. I had two podcasts to listen to and I did a little Twittering with Thom, who was at work at that ungodly hour. As per my usual pattern, I headed to the supermarket before heading home. I don't know what the hell is going on, but grocery prices are still climbing and getting out of hand. It seems I'm paying roughly $20 - $30 more for the same things I was buying six months ago. Anyone else noticing this? It's really pissing me off because I'm not earning $20 - $30 more a week than I was six months ago.

So I left the house just before 6 this morning and got home just before 8. My plan was to put the groceries away, look at the paper and then head back to bed. That didn't happen. I put the groceries away and then took off my coat. When I did that, I knocked my iPod off of my belt and it dropped to the floor. No big whoop, I thought. I've done it before and I'll do it again. I picked it up and it was still playing, so I went and grabbed the paper. But my song ended and another didn't start. I looked at it and it was still on and about every 5 seconds it would show another album cover and then skip to the next track, and so on and so forth. I had this happen to me once before and all I had to do was reboot the iPod. When I did it this time, it rebooted and gave me what I assume is the iPod equivalent of the blue screen of death. It was a big red X and the Apple support url. Not a good sign. I went there and followed the steps they said to restore my toy. Nothing seemed to work. Then I googled my problem and everything I read basically said to go buy a new iPod. For some reason, I was still in a relatively good mood. While reading some of the posts I found, someone mentioned that he had this problem and since his iPod was still under warranty, he got it replaced. That got me to thinking. Was mine still under warranty? I bought it just after Christmas last year, but I couldn't remember the date. I dug through my email and saw an email from Amazon saying it shipped to me on 1/17/2008. I'm guessing I got it a day or two later and that would still put me just outside the one year. I was curious as to when my warranty actually expired, so I dug out the box, typed in the serial number at the Apple site and found out that they claim it ends on 1/29/2009. This crap does not happen. My warranty should have expired a few days ago, no matter what the date was. Things like these always break just days after the coverage ends. I was now kind of hopeful, but not completely. When I went to find my warranty info, this is how it's worded on the website: "Our records indicate that your product is covered under Apple's Limited Warranty which is estimated to expire on January 29, 2009." Estimated. I made an appointment for the Genius Bar for this morning and hoped for the best. I got to the store just before it opened and although my appointment was for 11:10 this morning, I was seen almost immediately. I spent a total of maybe five minutes in the store. The guy helping me typed in my info, turned around and grabbed a shiny new iPod and swapped mine out for it. That was that. I was stunned it was so easy. I expected to hear that they were going to send it out and I'd be without it for a week or two. I didn't expect to be without it for the time it took to hand him my old one and for him to hand me the new one. Francine Fishpaw is dead, but Francine Fishpaw 2 is currently syncing to my iTunes right now. It's a beautiful day.

I haven't mentioned my weight in a couple of Sundays. Today the scale told me I was 192. Second week in a row. I seem to be holding steading at 192 and it's been like this for about two weeks now. To say that I wasn't down about this would be lying. It's been frustrating me that I'm stuck at 192. I've said before that I have so much self-esteem tied up in the numbers I see on the scale. It's hard to seperate my logical side from my emotional side when I weigh myself. My logical side sees 192 and says "Shit, that's an amazing number!!" while my emotional side sees it and wonders why I can't get back down to 190. I know this is a big problem with me because I'm having dreams that I think are inspired by those extra two pounds. The dreams are generally the same. I'm back working at the record store. It's closing time and there are all sorts of people still milling about. No matter what I do, I can't get them to leave. In some variations of the dream, I also have more people piling in. The dream is telling me I think things are spiraling out of control in my life. I tie a large part of it to weight control, though I know there are other things I'm freaking out about. I know how foolish this sounds and I know how foolish it really is. I've lost 108 pounds. Why I can't appreciate that and only focus on the 2 pounds I still want to lose is just not healthy. I'm working through my issues slowly but surely.