Originally posted by kylecassidy at War Paint is out today

Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably priced love! And a hard-boiled egg!

(This is not weight-loss talk. If it were weight-loss talk, I'd put it behind a cut tag.)

I've decided that being a lump on the sofa is boring, so I've started walking in the evenings when I get home. I used to love the evening walks that I'd take with my mom and my siblings and our neighbors when I was a kid: a big group of us would do a couple of circuits around the subdivision after dinner during the summer. Not only was it a nice bit of exercise and socializing, it would often get my bedtime pushed back from 8:00 to sometime after it finally got dark. ;) Eventually I want to do the couch-to-5K program, but I'm not quite there yet; once I get my average speed up some more, then I'll think about adding in the running. Stats so far, courtesy My Tracks:

Date		Total Time	Moving Time	Distance	Distance Unit	Average Speed	Average Moving Speed	Max Speed	Speed Unit
5/21/2012		00:39:20	00:39:00	2.12	mi	3.23	3.26	6.92	mi/h
5/22/2012		00:39:03	00:37:45	2.19	mi	3.36	3.48	7.77	mi/h

Today it's a pair of espadrille wedges from Zara that I snagged in Boston last year, perfect for a beautiful day like today. Even if I'm stuck in my office until after 6 PM. :-P

June Tabor & Oysterband cover "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

What I did with my weekend:

Flew to Phoenix for roughly 48 hours so I could attend the book release party for Kevin Hearne's Tricked. I first heard of Kevin and his Iron Druid Chronicles via his post in the wallet-emptying "The Big Idea" feature at Scalzi's. By the time I'd gotten no more than halfway through that post, I was all "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" (which is frankly not that uncommon a reaction when I read that particular feature). Then I started getting other people to read them. I got chadu hooked, and I even got brian1789 to get over his distaste for fantasy and read them. And then I apparently turned into the kind of fangirl who will buy tickets to a party called "Atticus and Oberon's Sausage Fest" more than halfway across the country where she can eat bangers and mash and drink beer and hang out with an author at an Irish pub that figures prominently in his books.


Sausage Fest
Originally uploaded by catherine_s

Kevin made it a point to come around and talk to everyone, and he is as entertaining and as nice a guy in person as you might think based on that Whatever post, and his mother (who monitors his Google mentions) is utterly charming. (Hi Mrs. Hearne! ;) )

This is the family-friendly version from the cruise, inasmuch as any version of this song can truly be said to be family-friendly. "Sluice box mucking" is a reference to a story told earlier on the cruise by John Roderick about his worst job ever held, working in a gold mine.

For my birthday, I'm taking myself to go see "Cabin in the Woods" again. Anyone want to meet up for the 7:50 showing at Tysons on Saturday? Earlier in the day (3-5) we're going to the monthly wine tasting/pairing at Foxfire Grill (http://www.foxfire-grill.com/) in case any of y'all are free and interested in that; reservations for that are required, number's on the website.

Today I'm wearing really boring black Payless wedges, so no fun shoes Friday. Instead, I have a fun handbag. Behold:



It's the "First Date" bag from Jump From Paper, snagged when Fab.com had them on sale a little while ago.

I am charmed by the idea of a Jane Eyre board book. I gather it's a counting primer rather than a baby-friendly version of the story, but that's okay. (All I can think now though is: <The Count>One! ONE mad wife in the attic! Ahahahaha!</The Count>)

(Via this post in genrereviews)

Happy Cheese Weasel Day!

Who brings the cheese on April 3rd? The Cheese Weasel! He's not a silly bunny or a reindeer or a bird, He's the Cheese Weasel! He's got a cute black tail And tiny buck teeth He doesn't bring fish and he Doesn't bring beef So you'd better be good if you wanna get some cheese From the Cheese Weasel.

(I forgot entirely about it until I saw dglenn's post. Whoops. And no cheese for me. :( )

scott_lynch's post re: the manga adaptation of Scalzi's epic The Shadow War of the Night Dragon and the comment thread that followed was the best thing I read all day yesterday. Even including Mr. Lynch's earlier post about bunny- and rainbow-powered Macs.

I said it last year and I'll say it again: I would read the hell out of the Night Dragon book if Scalzi actually wrote it.

Zandra Rhodes wedges, courtesy of my highly-discounted-shoe-finding superpower (and The Outnet's clearance sale).

So at my physical, my lab results returned a TSH result of something north of 5. My NP says "that looks like early hypothyroidism, you should go get a second lab done in a month to double-check". (To me, TSH of 5+ seems pretty straightforward hypothyroidism, but what do I know?) So okay, I went back last week and got another blood draw. Today's email brought a "your thyroid test was normal, recheck in a year"; the number they gave me this time was 2.72. (Is that significant a drop without any treatment likely? I honestly don't know.)

See, the thing is, the diagnosis of possible hypothyroidism was kind of reassuring. In the last several months, I've been noticing that I am having a very hard time remembering things. As just one example, I had a dental appointment on March 1 to get my permanent crowns installed. I forgot completely and entirely about it until I found the appointment card more than a week later. (For some reason they started calling my house instead of my cell phone, and I never got the confirmation voice mails.) I forget tasks unless I write them down on a notepad that's hanging in front of my face. I can't remember if I took medications, I forget directions, I forget random things that there's no reason I shouldn't know off the top of my head. I also forgot about the rescheduled multi-hour dental appointment I had today until I saw a note on my calendar at home, and then I couldn't remember whether the time had changed since the original appointment until they called on Saturday.

On top of all that, I've been feeling like I'm noticeably stupider than I was, oh, even less than a year ago. In addition to the faulty memory, I'm feeling like my brain is getting sluggish and foggy more often than not. Okay, maybe some of that is a result of getting older, but I don't think that's all of it. There are also a few other possible physical symptoms that seem to match up with things I've noticed in the last few months.

I need to make an appointment to talk to Marie about these labs. Because frankly, if the problem isn't hypothyroidism, the mental issues scare me.

As Chris and I were walking out the door last month to head to the airport and on to Good Good Beard Boat 2 JoCo Cruise Crazy, we were pretty much tackled by a small cat who wanted nothing in the world more than to come inside the house. We figured she must belong to one of our neighbors and had slipped out of their house somehow; all the doors in the neighborhood look the same, so maybe she was just confused. Since we were running late for our flight, we didn't have time to go look for her owners. Fast forward to last week, and we come home to see this cat sitting on our neighbor's doorstep. Once we came home, she wandered over to our porch to hang out, and in the morning I found her curled up asleep outside the door. Saturday night it got cold again, and being the big sucker for animals in distress that I am, I let her in the house and fed her. Chris talked to some of the neighbors, and apparently she's been hanging around pretty much since the time we first saw her, and trying to get into whatever door she can. We took her to get checked for a microchip yesterday, which unsurprisingly she didn't have. And, er, got her a collar with a bell since she's part magician and has a talent for disappearing into thin air
.

If nobody claims her we're going to find a rescue to take her because after all the damage our previous diabetic cat did to the carpets, "can we have another cat" is not a conversation I want to have with our landlord right now. (At least not until all the carpets have been professionally cleaned.) He wasn't thrilled with us having a cat with claws in the first place, but "willing to rent this place that's been standing empty for months right now" trumped that, I guess. We can't have another cat right now. Really, we can't. Especially one who looks like she might be bringing a few more cats along for the ride. (She's tiny, but suspiciously tubby.)

Anyone local in the market for an adorable little cat?