Warning: sappiness enclosed

Over the long weekend, Sonny came home and we celebrated our birthdays together with the family - just missing P.

First - the stuff I had been stressing about - my job was moved to California. I'm very much a Northeast girl - love the forests and the green and the seasons. The family is all here. Still, J and I thought quite a bit over the couple of days I had to decide and were considering it, a way to get out of any ruts we might be in. It ended up not working out because J will most likely be going to industrial design school here in the East when he finishes MCC and I couldn't be there alone for years.

Now, I have a bit of time to find another job within Kodak - here's hoping.

So, as we celebrated birthdays I couldn't help but reflect on the 33rd year of my life. The health scare that led to my adoption of bionic parts. The 4 days to decide if we could move across the country for a few years and start a different life. I am very blessed that I have such awesome parents, brothers (+ their others), and husband. Without them, this wannabe kickbutt chic would have been very lost and lonely and would have taken a lot more time to heal. Crises emphasize what's important. Good Lord, these really did. Thank you guys, soooo much.

OK, sappiness over:

Book #17: Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. This helped to motivate me to make some fundamental changes to my diet. It underlined the importance of avoiding processed foods and going organic often. I've nearly cut all of my pop consumption and really increased water intake as a result. I plan to switch to an unprocessed type of sugar - potentially crystallized honey. That said, I'm not totally swayed on the dairy and meat issues.

Book #18: Stranger than Fiction: True stories by Chuck Palahniuk. I have to admit the first stories in this are a bit fuzzy in my memory - I started reading it in the hospital on little sleep and stress, followed by pain meds. I did enjoy the vignettes presented and I think they have piqued my interest in his novels - now that I know a bit more about him I can perhaps overlook some of the more extreme elements of his style.