My hand still itches. I'm afraid to put anything on it for fear of making it worse.

I joined an office pool to lose weight. Whoever loses the most weight by the beginning of June, gets it. I wonder if this is the impetus I need to lose that weight. So far, not so much; I ate 3 pieces of chocolate today. On the other hand, I went for a walk at lunch.

I went to buy my ticket to the Triangle Dance Festival on Friday. No one else is available to go with me, guess I'll go alone.

sight of the day: Muslim girl who has converted to the local religion- basketball. She's wearing a college t-shirt & matching hijab.

books: Finished Only Companion & Pocket Book of Mischief; the former at lunch & the latter on the way home.

tatting: finished 5th round. whoot!

clothes: black beaded slippers; knee-highs; black slacks & belt; dark green Geoff polo; green amber necklace, earrings & ring; black stone band; hematite band; & moss agate bead bracelet.

update: finished Ex, Why & Me. It's pretty good. It has an unusual premise.

Got another 2 repeats done on the edging. Dropped my shuttle holsters in the water & now I'm waiting for them to dry.

Did not get the last 4 letters sealed.

Down to 178# in weight.

website of the day: Dice pouch. Alas, they are not taking any orders right now. *pout*

BTW: I have now lost 17.5#

Okay, it's been a month. I'm sorry.

I've finished 2 bookmarks (Kersti's Tabatha), forgot to take a picture of one. That's for the etatter sponsors' bookmark exchange. I also made one for Ira Simon as a good-bye present. And I made a third one as I lost one of the ones that I made. So I made one in variegated blue with a burgundy tassel (Carolina blue, Western Washington navy & Alabama red), the one for Ira.

One in variegated pink, almost white to dark pink; no tassel. Then in buff & burgundy, with burgundy on the inside & lined with buff. Then I did the reverse for the replacement. The only tassel I put on those are the loose ends, tied off.

I was going to finish a ufo next but decided to try & use up the thread on the shuttles first. So yesterday & today I worked on a cross by Lyn Morton. That will be a door prize at the Johnson family reunion in Apex. That's on Sunday.

I've lost 10 pounds in the last 6 weeks. Yay!

TV show:
Final Fu a reality show with real fighting..okay, sparring. It's a really cool show. One: the competitions are all based on martial arts techniques (like use a staff to throw clear boxes & cans from an area or go throw this bar set & grab flags from boxes you have to punch open). You get points based on how quickly you accomplish the task(s). Two: you spar with another competitor in a point-based fight. The points that you accumulate in the fight are added to your total score. So even if you screw up in the task portion, if you do a good job in the fight you can pull ahead. They had a marathon of them on Sunday.

Today's outfit: black jeans, very wrinkled salmon pink silk blouse (guess who didn't have time to iron this morning), sandals (leather flipflops really) to save my poor heels. My hair is braided again while I'm wearing dragon jewelry. The silver pendant was a gift from Steve & Anitra & I bought the earrings (Welsh dragons) when I was at Disney in 2000. I've had the two silver dragon rings for years. One is a band with the dragon almost hidden in fancy scrollwork. The other ring is almost plain with just the stooping, breathing dragon. The funny thing is; I've seen the latter ring several times; I even have two versions of it, differing only in size. But I can't find it on the web anywhere.

My attempt at a weight-loss diet:
Well, last week I averaged less than 1200 calories a day. There were a couple days that I hit 1500 calories but mostly I ate around 1180. If I just got more exercise I'd be certain to lose weight. That's one reason that I take the bus. It forces me to walk twice day, to & from the bus stop. Other reasons for taking the bus: price gas, insurance, traffic & pollution. As inconvenient as I sometimes find the bus, it beats dealing with the traffic & the gas prices.

My iPod news:
It's not charging. It's completely blank this morning. This is bad. This is very bad. I will do a search on Apple's webpage, maybe they have a clue about this.

And one additional note: I weighed myself this morning. I had gained 1/2 a pound when I weighed myself on the 28th, and today I'm 2 pounds down from that. I have now lost 25 pounds since May 1st. Since I ate a lot of cake & candy on Friday & Saturday, I think being sick helped with that weightloss thing.

Note to self: do not start the day with 4 glasses of juice. My system has been upset all day today as a result. Mind, the paint fumes from next door probably aren't helping.

Yesterday's task list:
Laundry: 1+ load in dryer, last load in washer (Most of the load in-between went to line dry instead of in the dryer)
Clothes: not looked for
Adventure: started writing it
Supplement: did not
Tatting: did not

But I finished In Enemy Hands. And I spent so much time in the bathroom today that I finished Echoes of Honor.

This week I am (to misquote the Bard) 'eating well but not wisely'. I'm eating whatever I feel like this week. I may gain a pound or two but right now, I just don't care. I will care when I weigh myself on Monday. Next week I'm going to the State Fair so I'll be lucky not to gain a pound or two that week as well. C'est la vie. I'll worry about it after the Fair.

And I've lost another pound. I'm down to 169.5#. I'm wearing a skirt I put away as too small. Yeah! Soon I'll be down to a healthy weight again (~130#).

My weekend: stay up a little late Friday night (don't even remember why). Tried to get going early, I had errands to run. But I got caught up in a discussion about which characters I could play at Hochcon. My primay RPGA Living Greyhawk character, Corporal Sr. Obedient Master Nadia Xianalannae, veteran of the Cleansing of the Oytwood & the Siege of Gorna (wow, what a string of titles), is down to 2 time units (vacation). Between her training as a junior squire, staying with the Fey king & then having a daughter, plus actually playing games, her time units have been eaten up. She's 7th level, almost 8th.

Then there's what started as my tertiary character but she's now my 2ndary: Combat Specialist Reed of the CatTails. She has 4 time units left. I've just played her a lot, and spent some time units with her clan as part of her qualifying as a clan protector (rank w/in the clan).

The other two characters are Edana Tiernan & Isolde. Edana is in the scouts; she's a 2nd level halfling rogue & has about 38 military & 11 vacation time units left, maybe more. Isolde is a human sorceress & has 39 military units left. I've only played her once.

Nadia is a half-elf bard/ranger who's a senior squire with the Knights of the Watch & Dispatch. Reed was a human cleric/fighter. Then she died & was reincarnated as a wood elf. She's still a cleric/fighter, though. All of my characters are in the Gran March military. Frankly, in my opinion, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Back to what I was saying, since my two primary characters are so short of time units that meant I was probably going to play Edana. Since she's 2nd level I had to check because not all the games had APL's low enough for me to play her. So I canceled one game (Rites of Spring, a double rounder - I want to play Nadia in that one because she played in the 1st one in that series) & signed up to play one of the core modules with Edana.

All told, that took about 2 hours, including email. So I ended up driving through part of the early game day traffic at Carolina on my way to Pittsboro to pay the rent on my storage unit.

I made it to Southpoint, bought the stuff at Victoria's Secret (yeah coupons). Then I passed by The Body Shop. But I had spent more than I had planned at VS so I didn't buy anything there. After that it was into Barnes & Noble to spend my $25 gift certificate. Ran into 2 people I knew. I managed to resist Monstrous Regiment by Pratchett. It's still in hardback.

Chris & I picked up Rosemary (yeah it was out of our way but she's having brake issues) and we all went to see T3 at Blueridge. In some ways, a predictable movie but it did have 1 or 2 surprises & it was well-done. Definitely worth matinee prices so we got a real bargain. We still plan to see The Medallion & Matris Reloaded, both of which are also playing at Blue Ridge. After the movie it was Ten Ten Diner for the buffet. Yum, great buffet. But I did not like their crab rangoons. I loved their sesame balls (with red bean jelly inside).

I finished one book I'd bought that day & started another one.

Woke up Sunday with a headache. We went to Pizza Hut for their buffet & I dosed my headache with food, caffeine & an ibuprofen. They never did have a chocolate chip pizzert, much to my sorrow. I had some salad, apple pizzert & blueberry pizzert, though.

Then we went to Southpoint. Chris wanted to see how much Sears was charging for ovens. Ours took 30 minutes to heat Friday night, averaging about 10 degrees per minute. He wants (& I agree) a double oven. We looked at Maytag's Gemini but the Sears' Kenmore with the tri-use drawer (storage, warming & baking) was $200 cheaper and had a half-removable rack for cooking tall items, say a roasting pan with a lid. It had 2 double burners on the range top. It has one of those flat top ranges instead of the burners we have now but that's a common feature.

While there we also checked out dishwashers (ours is probably as old as the oven so could go any day) & small fridges for when we have the game room aka the basement done. We decided that the 4+ cu. foot was bigger than we needed. And that there are a lot of dishwasher features that we just don't like.

Then it was home to finish working on our characters for Rosemary's Forgotten Realms campaign. I had lost my character sheet & the part of my notes that had the stats I'd rolled up so I had to start over. I remembered what sword I wanted; I need to make 2 notes on my character sheet though, -1 damage on the sword & that my character reacts less-than-well to sudden bright light (part of the whole 1/2 Drow, Darkvision thing). Chris had his stats & notes, he just had to fill out his character sheet, equip & name his character.

I picked up the living room a little. Disposed of the box (recycling) from Wizards of the Coast. I kept most of the stuff they sent, other parts of it ended up in recycling too. I finished another book that I'd bought Saturday (that's 3 read plus 1 additional book: A Gentleman's Honor, to Sir Phillip, with Love, Blood Price, and Blood Trail). Was up until almost 11 between finishing that book & picking up around the living room & kitchen.

Kept waking up with nightmares all night long. Most of them were different, too. Apparently I turned off the alarm clock at some point 'cause I woke up at 6:45. Only about 45 minutes late, & I needed to weigh myself, pick out clothes & pack my lunch. It was a little close this morning & I was 10 minutes late to work. On the bright side, I've lost 2 more pounds.

Ran into Shaw again, on the bus. He lives in Cary & parks at the same P&R lot. I saw him on the bus home Friday, too. He was late for an exam in his African-American History class.

Wow, this is a long post. I'm reading one of the stories in Changer of Worlds, again. It's the 3rd of the Honor Harrington anthologies. I picked up the 1st one on Saturday. I bought 5 or 6 books. If I actually stop & think about it, I'll remember how many & what their titles were.

Now I have work to do (I've been working - I started this post at 9 am & finished at 10:15 plus 10 minutes for editing)