I should have taken a xanax today

Don't know why everything is rubbing me the wrong way this week.  Is it just me?  Or is the world especially aggravating this week?  I DO want everything to go just my way and when it doesn't...

First I had a guy pull in front of me going too slowly and then he immediately slows down and pulls off to the side of the road without a blinker.  I couldn't help myself.  I HONKED at him, which I try not to do, cause I hate when people do it to me.  Then I got to the pool and the gate was still locked.  So I had to traipse back to the desk with all of my crap and ask them to unlock it.  But THEN...me, all alone at an Olympic sized pool.  Is there anything better than that?

But now I have one ear clogged up and feel in somewhat of an other-worldly state. Gliding through the world, 25 pounds less, but my clothes have not become too large!  They must have really been tight before.
It is weird how you lose weight in certain places (my knees) and not in others (my waist).

Thank you for choosing the Bridgeton McDonalds.  I love going to this McDonalds because THREE different people wish for me to have a good day.  You can't help but feel a bit more cheerful after that.

Don't kill my vibe

Cool title for a song, don't you think?  I am inexorably drawn to the poetry of rap, even though it is probably expressing some sentiments that I abhor.  That is why I am reluctant to view on YouTube.
But I might put this song on my playlist so I can figure it out.  Listening to Power99 on the FM dial today. Jay Z is one of the people involved with this song.  Oh dear, it is really called BITCH, don't kill my vibe.  Sigh....

Going out of my mind now that my CD player broke and I can't listen to my audio books in the car.  When did the AM dial get so LAME!

My addictions...
- Diet coke
- the Internet
- coffee
- newspapers
- cheese

Gorgeous day out...finally.  And no bugs, which seems unusual.  Took a little stroll just to get out of the library.

My mind is boggled

Went to a workshop on Google Chrome.  Interesting but intimidating.  Realizing that now that I am not working, I just try to get by on my existing knowledge.  OK, I have ALWAYS been like that.  The teacher of my class has TEN email accounts.  When am I gonna have time to investigate all of the things I learned tonight?  I guess it is good to stretch my mind occasionally.

Having a rough week.  Today we had TORRENTIAL rains.  And I was driving an hour to get to this class.  Also, the gas company is working on the street in front of my house and making quite a raquet.  Sounded like they were dragging something really heavy over concrete and they probably were.  It was making me feel out of sorts.  So I took a Xanax and laid down on the bed.

Still mad at the city and planning to rewrite my letter of outrage.  Pisses me off that I have received NO explanation and NO apology and PLUS I had to PAY for interest and costs of a late and unpaid water and sewer bill.  Plus the humiliation of having my name in the paper for tax sale.  No one has called me about it.  So either no one is reading the paper or I have no friends.  I guess there could be some other reasons.

Not really feeling like a "happy baby"

That's a yoga pose.  I am feeling more like a cranky adult.  Trying to forget my woes by using the computer, listening to my playlist and eating chocolate hershey kisses at the Cumberland County Library.  I thought scary Mondays were just for working people, but here is what has gone wrong so far:
- stopped in to Little Mama's cafe - they no longer have real cream, just powdered creamer.  Then I bought a chocolate covered graham cracker but there was too much candy and it was too sweet
- went to city hall to get a T-shirt left over from the walk on Saturday, but the mayor's secretary knew nothing about it
- visited the tax office as my name was in the paper for the tax sale.  I got so highly agitated and ungracefully paid the water and sewer bill including fees even though it was NOT MY FAULT.  They had changed my address in the system and the bill got sent to the owner of the house next door and then returned to them.
I am feeling wronged and not very forgiving.  May have to write a letter of outrage.
- then to yoga class.  She did a number of moves of which I am not fond....too many downward facing dogs, the plank (which seems suspiciously like pushups which I do not do), squats (another thing I CAN'T do).

Remembering a gorgeous hotel I happened to stumble across in Paris.  It took up almost an entire block and around the corner again.  It is called the Plaza Atheneum on Rue Montaigne.



Went on Facebook, although I really feel it is a pretty big waste of time.  Tried to send an encouraging poster to a friend.  Advice that it is hard for ME to follow, not sure why I think it might cheer HER up.

A little bit ADD

Went on a walk this AM with the mayor of Bridgeton and a bunch of other people I didn't know.  The annual health walk is a part of the "Let's move" campaign.  We signed a big poster which will be sent with our picture to Michelle Obama.  Our county of Cumberland comes in LAST in the entire state in terms of health statistics.  So the mayor had T-shirts made up that said, "From WORST to FIRST".  It was a beautiful day but I got hot and didn't have a hat or sunglasses.  Then I came in LAST.  Even though it was not a race, it was somewhat demoralizing.  And I was waiting for it to just be OVER.  I know I am slow and have no stamina, but really.  I DO work out but I realize I do a lot of different things during my one hour at the gym.  Doing ONE THING for 40 minutes is almost more than I can take physically OR psychologically (thus, the ADD worry).  Then I think, well, I can go ONLINE for hours.  But while online, I am jumping around from thing to thing.  Even when I read for an hour, I am reading a lot of different things, current newspaper, old newspaper, Nook, current book, overdue book, old magazine, current newspaper, open the mail, do the crossword puzzle and the sudoku, then read a current magazine.

Still have to come to the library for my entertainment.  This AM I had a snoring man to my left and to my right, a young black girl and an older white woman were attempting to order a magazine online (it did not work).  They were ordering a magazine called XXL which seems to be about rappers (?) and they were buying if for a GIFT for someone incarcerated in our local prison. 

So, I told a friend that I was losing weight without really trying.  That is not really true.  I AM trying, I just don't feel like I am being successful.  The exercising is going a lot better than previously, but the eating! About the only thing I have accomplished is to lessen the amount of snacking that I am doing.  If I DO snack, I try to eat something that is only 100 calories.  Nighttime is still the worst, though.

We had some wacky storms on Thursday.  Two storms, one in the morning and one in  the evening, each had about 10 minutes of really bad stuff.  Luckily, I wasn't on THIS street in Rosenhayn, New Jersey, during those minutes.....

Finished a bunch of books

Book review: Life after life : a novel, by Jill McCorkle.  I wanted to read this book as the author went to my college, Hollins University,  in Roanoke, Virginia.  I borrowed it from the Vineland Public Library (FIC McCorkle Jill).  Unfortunately, there is another book with the same title out right now.  Maybe because I am reading too many books at one time, I had trouble keeping the characters straight in this one.  The characters are all residents or workers in a retirement home.  There is the narrative which jumps around to all of the different characters.  In between the chapters are inserts about other people and little segments by those people.  They all seem to be people known by one of the characters, Joanna, who is a volunteer at the nursing home.  I liked the character  who was just faking alzheimers so that his son wouldn't bother him.


Book review: Tuesday's gone, by Nicci French.  I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (MYS French Nicci).  I learned from the flap that this name "is the pseudonym of the internationally bestselling writing partnership of suspense writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French".
It is the second novel in the Frieda Klein series and ended sort of mysteriously, leaving room for more books.  Our investigator is referred to as a "brilliant reclusive psychotherapist".  She assists the investigation into who might have killed a man who seems to have insinuated himself into the lives of quite a few people with money.  He was a different man to each of them.  Frieda tries to figure out who is telling the truth and who did what to whom and when.  London milieu.

 

 

 

Book review: L'étranger, by Albert Camus.  Quite proud of myself as I read this book in French.  It is not really difficult, being a rather short book.  Had to read it for a book club so I even took notes.  I know I read it long ago when I majored in French.  This copy came on interlibrary loan from the Matawan-Aberdeen Public Library in Matawan, New Jersey (FRE CAMUS).  This first lines are quite famous and can be recited by many people, especially French majors.  "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte.  Ou peut-ètre hier, je ne sais pas".  (Today, mother died.  Or maybe yesterday, I don't know).

The quintessential existentialist novel is about a man who drifts through life, getting into trouble after murdering an arab who is threatening his friend.  During the court trial, it comes out that he didn't cry at his mother's funeral and this adds to the damning evidence against him.  Waiting to see if he is condemned to death, he philosophizes that we are all condemned to death eventually.  And thinks that his mother was about to start a new life with a fiancé so no one should have cried over her.  I can't find the cover of my Gallimard 1942 paperback, but here is the link if you would like to read it.

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/31581027/A-Camus-L%E2%80%99Etranger

 

 

 

Remembrance of things past

My weekly laptop picture is of Proust in his bed writing his most famous book, A la recherche du temps perdu.  I saw his actual bed at the Carnavalet museum in Paris. 

http://carnavalet.paris.fr/en/museum-carnavalet

This museum is HUGE and free and lots of cool stuff including old store signs and fragments of stained glass windows from churches.

Not many people can say that they have read all of this multi-volume work.  I have tried but ended up skipping some.  Very dense, he can go on for pages about the sensations evoked when he bites into a madeleine.  I love the fact that he wrote such an evocative book IN BED.



Starbucks is really incommodious today.  I came here because my exercise class ends at 9 and the libraries don't open until 10.  Here is what I don't like about Starbucks:
- only one table big enough for me and it is continually occupied
- small round table barely big enough for my laptop and mouse.
- table is sticky
- chair is hard

On the plus side:
- they have a plug
- they have newspapers for sale

Exercise for arthritis class was strange this AM.  I ran over there for 8 AM since my excursion for today was cancelled due to extreme weather which is nowhere in sight.  Teacher was not there.  Another attendee was there with an audio cassette of our teacher.  So the two of us did the class looking at an audio cassette player instead of the teacher.  It worked!