Follow-up

1. The beef stroganoff I made for Dan's birthday was a success! At least, he and Steve pretended to like it. What I made turned out to be more of a beef bourignon because I used red wine instead of white. No fancy-pants cream of mushroom soup for my man! Instead, I used nonfat greek yogurt, a little bit of cream and butter, and a lot of seasoning. I didn't really like cooking the beef (mostly because it made the house smell like cooked beef) and I managed to figure out a way to cook the mushrooms and onions separately so I only ate that part and not the beef part. The rest of the dinner was egg noodles (a must with beef stroganoff), a salad, and a fantastic chocolate cake, the recipe for which I will post tomorrow.

Dan said he had a good birthday, so that's what matters. I gave him a nerdy t-shirt designed by Wil Wheaton, a copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and a bottle of fancy Jameson's Irish Whiskey.

2. My leg is having sympathy pain this week or something. I woke up yesterday morning with a nasty charlie horse in the same spot where I tore my calf muscle last year. Today is the one-year anniversary of that injury, so yesterday I took it easy in the class where I had the initial injury and it was OK. You'd think that my leg would have gotten it together to heal completely in a year, but it hasn't - I still have days where it hurts or aches, and there's still a funky divot when I flex my calf muscle in a certain way. Here's your lesson, kids: don't tear your calf muscle. It sucks and won't heal for a really, really long time.

3. Let's just say Project Hott is not going anyplace fast. I looked at the photos from my friend's party again for additional motivation and it just made me feel worse. It hasn't helped that my leg has been bugging me all week and that I can't do all of the abs portion of my classes because I've been having nasty vertigo for a few weeks now (Sunday was the worst; I had blurred vision and felt like I was falling-down drunk after we were out walking around the neighborhood taking photos, which is why we had to go home and didn't get more accomplished). Doctor Google tells me that there are three possibilities for why I'm getting this oh-so-fun sensation, and in all three cases the solution/cure is "wait and it will eventually go away."

Sorry I'm not all sunshine and rainbows coming out of my butt. I guess everybody has bad weeks. (Also, work stuff. I'm not even going there.)

The one really good thing that happened this week, though, was that I reconnected with an old friend who I'd lost touch with (from the same site where I met Dan). He's living in LA, working on films, was teaching high school for a while, and seems to be in a much better headspace than he was five years ago. (He even ran the Great Wall marathon with only two months of training! That is some serious business.) Once upon a time we were pretty tight, so it's nice feeling like I have my friend back again.

Grace in small things (because I haven't done this in a while)

1. Spoons.
2. Friend gave birth yesterday, 3 weeks early but now she no longer has pre-eclampsia.
3. Videos of Wombat and Spats.
4. Head rubs.
5. Husbands having good birthdays.