Nice to know that my thoughts yesterday—about having a jet-lagged internal clock—were right. I forced myself out of bed around 5, 5:15 this morning, turned on the coffee pot, jumped into my workout clothes, packed my work clothes, put the coffee in travel mugs, packed the car, and hit the road. There is something *so* satisfying about traveling on the freeway at normal top speed the whole way and never slowing for traffic jams. Ahhh *sighs contentedly*

And then I was rewarded with the ability to pick my favorite parking space, workout, shower, dress, and wander into the office feeling alive and human and wonderful. How great is that!

The "Time Management from the Inside Out" book is rapidly becoming my favorite, and it's encouraging to find that when I stop to jot some notes to myself, it turns out that she covers that very thing I jotted down in the very next chapter. The internal telepathy is working (yippee), and the gaps in my understanding about time management for my personal style are finally getting filled in with the tools I think I can really use.

There's a tiny piece of me that wants to buy these books for everyone I know, but then again not only is that impossible financially, it's silly. The only way you'll read and apply these principles is if you have that personal internal motivation to do so. No one can hand you the book and *make* you learn to fix parts of your life that you feel need improvement.

But wow. I'm really glad I'm reading it!

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After work I went to see a friend who just got back from Wales and London on an almost 2-week trip. She's also my massage therapist, so we caught up on life, her trip, AND I paid to get a massage. Turns out I've actually been stressing (almost injuring?) my shoulders and the connected muscles in some of my workouts. I have almost no mobility to stretch my shoulders and arms back behind me, and what I thought was just working hard to gain mobility was really over-working the muscles and working too hard, too fast. So she gave me some stretching and exercise tips, recommended I take ibuprofen for a while to take down the inflammation, and NOT exercise those muscles on the machines in the gym for a while. Good to know.

Afterwards, I met up with Kristin (my best friend from college) for dinner. She's been on the road, training software installations for her bay area company, and occasionally she's been in town near me. So we've actually been able to catch up and see each other over dinner twice in the past month or so. We had this wonderful meal at Houston's, one of her favorite restaurants and one I'd never heard of or tried. She claims they were the real/first inventors of spinich dip (the artichoke, spinach, cheese heated piece of heaven, served with chips) and I agree—it was amazingly yummy. Some day we may come back to order just two orders of spinach dip and a side of veggies or beans & rice for dinner. I opted for their veggie platter, which sounds boring as "chilled asparagus, grilled cauliflower, tomatoes, and couscous" but was actually very VERY flavorful and yummy. The asparagus was in a lemony creamy sauce, very savory, and the grilled cauliflower was also in a cheesy sauce (very light). And the couscous had yellow raisins, currents, peanuts, chopped herbs, mint, and spices and was really sweet and wonderful. Definitely worth ordering again! The warm apple cobbler was a let down, but since we were sharing and mostly full already, it didn't break my heart to just put down the spoon and ignore the cobbler.

The drive home was very VERY tiring, and thankfully only 20 minutes or so. It'll be a long day tomorrow, so g'night folks.

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Recently Listened to: Iona, "Beyond These Shores" and IZZ, "I Move"