And I'm not even in a frame of mind to go back

My work, the American Heart Association, had a huge push to our year end last week. It was a six state concerted effort to get the last bits of donations scraped from the sides of bowls and added to the cake of year-long progress. Baking started again the next day for this analogy. It's a bad analogy, but it works because this year we will spend the whole year preparing for next year. Meaning the money raised this year will be put into the oven and out comes something substantial. Sometimes its research, sometimes its community programs, sometimes its cool stuff we haven't even seen before.

All that is a long way to say that we're in a perpetual cycle that is beginning again. And I'm already behind. How can that be? I still have an open position so while I shift focus from my duties to cover the position, I lose ground on my job and while I'm focusing on the duties of my job, I'm losing ground for the open position. It's a battle that will only be won when the right candidate is found. Actually, it's a battle that will only be won about three months or so after the right candidate is found.

But I digress. That is all a long set up for me to say that I'm not quite ready to go into work today. It's Tuesday, but feels like Monday. If I had meetings scheduled back to back to back today, I might've called in sick and curled up on the couch to watch New Moon again to get into the mood to watch Eclipse. But it's a planning day. We have them monthly and its our time to graciously plan out what needs to be done and how we're going to do it. I must say that if there ever were a planning day that I needed to have, it's today's. And I'm now slightly more ready to go back.

Slightly.

Working for Fun

Last Friday we had a fun day in the office. Meaning that we were supposed to celebrate the dawning of a new fiscal year. It's so weird to actually have a new meaning to Happy New Year. This year it was like "Happy New Year!" said with a huge sigh on the end for two meanings: 1) being truly thankful to have survived what has been a tough year for everyone and 2) having survived and still have a job.

Both of those notwithstanding, it takes a lot of effort and planning to have a "fun" day. There's the obligatory theme, the planning of the secret activity, the coordinating of the potluck, providing favors for a kick off, cooking for the potluck and then bringing all the stuff in for the activity. There were so many details going through my head on Thursday night, that you'd have thought I was planning a wedding. Alas, it was merely a potluck and a scavenger hunt.

But after all that, there's still nothing more fun than watching your co-workers run around town in cowboy hats or oversized polka dot bow ties looking for a library or a hardware store. Except maybe the pictures that came from it all.

Then I had a group of volunteers that were meeting on Saturday for a social gathering and were nice enough to ask me to go along. They also said the magic words "Dinner and wine" and POOF I was there. It was an unusual group of ladies, ones that I wouldn't have met in any other way, but it just worked. So many backgrounds coming together to share stories. I learned a lot and had fun.

Of course, none of this was particularly helpful to my overall goal of kicking Chef's butt in weight loss, but despite travelling, cheating and drinking an occasional glass of wine, I still manage to have lost a few pounds in the last couple of weeks. Not as many as I could, but it's nice to know that I can live alittle and still not blow everything that I've worked for so far. (Which is a 4% to 1% percent weight loss lead so far). Now it's time to get down to business. I'm getting buff, but it's only supporting my eating habit. Damn you, tasty foods!