08willbegreat's Journal, 04 September 2008

Hello, you beautiful people! How're my precious buddies doin' tonight?? Yes, as you can tell, I'm in a nice, fuzzy place (and no, I'm not drunk--haven't had a drop of vino in ages in fact!)....but tonight, I just have this calm, peaceful feeling (may disappear by the morning, but I'm just enjoying it right now!).

After being up until the wee hours of the morning (4.30 am or so, obsessing about today and too stressed to sleep), today turned out to be surprisingly GOOD! The usual drill, 3 classes, ie., 6 hours of lecturing, being articulate, funny, and un-boring to a brand new batch of students..normally daunting especially after a night of minimal sleep (sometimes that feels like early stages of dementia!), but today it was good! The students were interested, participating, and managed to even stay a few extra minutes past 5.30 pm after a long day of classes!! Guess we're all suckers for work! Or, perhaps I'm that GOOD! ;) haha!

The meetings interspersed with the classes, the evening reception and networking with colleagues (typically a forced schmooze and face-time!), but was actually quite nice today--short and sweet. The provost surprised me my coming up and HUGGING me! o..kay..this honeymoon period can only last for so long, i know!

My colleague took me out to dinner to celebrate my b'day on Sunday, and I got three other b'day cards in the mail---all on a day when I was quite apprehensive, and in a week when I'm not looking forward to a milestone b'day!! But it did feel good to be remembered and appreciated---very touching indeed!

In the food-department, I sorta did ok. I did have my morning cereal, but went with the fiber one cereal, which has low net carbs (9 g or so), with soy milk. For lunch, I had my pre-made tofu stir fry (low in carbs)...at the reception, I managed to skip most appetizers, desserts, wine, and beer (damn! how are you supposed to drink and then go teach?!!), but did have a couple of slices of melon and a small bunch of grapes, and 1.5 little artichoke fritters (fried!).

At dinner, we went to an Irish place (couldn't really say no to the place as it was my colleague's idea and a sweet gesture!). Well, they were seriously lacking in anything vegetarian. My entree option was a pasta dish, which I skipped. Instead, ordered a salad and an appetizer (brie en croute with a side of little BREAD pieces!!)...the salad had a rich blue cheese dressing, so I'm sure that's bad on points and carbs...didn't drink any wine or other drinks, and had coffee instead of dessert. Oh! and the company was GREAT !! So many laughs! And we closed the place down! Like we always do! We're gonna start doing this on a regular basis...I feel guilty about all the time spent, but what the heck, one can't always be productive---time spent chilling is time spent healing! Life's too short!

Oh, no workout today either. Don't ask why. And I don't want to berate myself either. I'm just gonna sit here and enjoy my little warm, fuzzy feeling :)

P.S: Now I'm so wired! And none of you are here to chat with!!! I must be still on west-coast time! Just had an epiphany! I should permanently move to west coast time-zone, and communicate/work only with east-coast people! That way I'll always have 3 hours and long late nights!!!!!!!!!