Round Up

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and that means that even though it's normally a school night, it's not!  I get to stay up later and don't have an alarm to worry about in the morning.  Unless there's cat trouble, the sun should be up before I am for a change.  And since I'm not in bed, I have time to play here.  Not that anyone cares, but this is just going to be a quick round up of things I've been up to lately.

First and foremost, the (OCD induced) project I've been working on for the last year plus came to it's official end last night around 5 o'clock.  That project was to make sure everything* in my iTunes library has been listened to at least twice. (*Everything, that is, except the Christmas music.)  My library has 65,755 songs in it (62,290 if you exclude Christmas music).  All my play counts were reset to zero when I got this computer three years ago.  A little over a year ago I made a smart playlist and since that day, I've only been listening to things with less than 2 plays.  I've rediscovered a lot of stuff that I'd forgotten about.  Mostly of it was good stuff.  I've listened to a lot of things that haven't aged well, too, though to be honest, I don't know if Neneh Cherry's first album ever didn't sound dated, even when it was first released.  The only music I've kept on my iPod since I started this project were songs that fit that criteria.  It's an 80 gig iPod and it all didn't fit on there at first, but it was awesome when it did.  Last night I had to create new playlists to fill my machine back up.  I'll fine tune the lists when I get a couple minutes, but it's nice to have my iPod full again.

I've not been going to the gym much at all.  It's killing me to stay away from the treadmill, but the last time I got on, my feet paid the price.  No matter how good they're feeling, they need time to properly heal before I fuck them up permanently.  Last weekend I finally did a little research into what's going on with my feet.  I believe what I have is Metatarsalgia.  Basically, it's pain in and around the ball of your foot and it can extend down your entire foot.  Running and incline training on a treadmill are two major causes of it.  The symptoms I have all match.  The cause matches.  Rest and ice are two things that can help make my feet feel better.  An informal consultation with an orthopedist came up with the same conclusion.  What I need to do now is make a real appointment with him and discuss my options.  What I'm afraid is going to come out of the appointment is a pair of orthopedic inserts for my shoes.  If I haven't said this before, I FUCKING HATE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF GETTING OLD!  I also hate myself for pushing myself way too hard in the first place.  I'm not 24 anymore.  Staying away from the gym has been hard.  I can still go and do the bike (which kicks my ass harder than I thought possible) or the elliptical (which I've never tried before, so I'm going to wait for a really quiet time to try it), but I really have this great love/hate thing with the treadmill.  I dread it sometimes, but I always end up feeling pretty good after a good walk.  

I feel like my eating is bordering on out of control again.  The other night after work, I let Ken talk me into going to Five Guys for dinner.  I wasn't hungry at all and when he suggested going to grab something to eat, I initially shot him down.  Then he mentioned Five Guys and I was done.  We have banana bread in the house.  We had a bunch of bananas that were about to go bad, so I decided to make a loaf.  I've made chocolate peanut butter banana bread before, but never just regular banana bread.  It came out really, really good, but it's nothing I need in my house.  Plus, bananas do something odd with my digestive system and I don't like it.  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and although I don't have a large menu, I'm sure I'm going to over do it.  I made my first homemade pumpkin pie tonight and I'm excited to try it.  Friday I need to refocus my eating habits again and get serious about it this time.  It seems like every Monday I refocus and by Wednesday I've shot myself in the foot.  I've come way too far and fought all too hard to start to lose my grip.  

I started my Christmas shopping the other night.  My sister was easy to shop for.  She's got an Amazon Wish List.  My parents, too, will be easy.  I know what they want, but I can't get their stuff online.  I'll have to venture out one night after work.  Ken's proving to be difficult, though.  We're to the point in our lives where if we want something, we go buy it.  There's nothing that he wants.  He did mention getting a digital picture frame and I may end up just doing that for him.  I told him all I want is an external hard drive for my computer.  Pretty easy.  The cats are getting something pretty special.  I want one of those six foot tall perch things.  I've always wanted to get one, but they're so damn expensive.  Petsmart has the one I want on sale Friday (for still way too much money) and I think I'm going to get it.  I'm 90% sure the cats will have nothing to do with it, but I really want it anyway.  Just try and stop me!