Hi everyone,

It's been a quiet day for me.  Quiet, but not entirely comfortable.  Some people talk about not feeling comfortable in their own skin, but today it was the skin itself that was the issue.  You remember the blister I mentioned in yesterday's post?  Well, the biggest one is at the base of the middle toes on the right foot, and is about the size of a fifty-cent piece.  For obvious reasons I've been hobbling like buggery today.

The skin fun continued when I noticed either a rash or a nasty breakout on my shoulders and forehead.  For a while I tried to figure out what I'd eaten that wasn't agreeing with me and couldn't think of anything unusual.  After a while I twigged that my forehead was the effect of wearing a cap while on the walk yesterday - the really irritated bit was where the band was on my forehead.  And my shoulders were where the strap of my bag had been.  My chance to feel like I'm fifteen again!

The day itself got off to a slow start.  I'd planned to do a load of laundry this morning but found I was a dollar coin short of being able to run the machine.  I'm not short of clothes but I want to keep on top of it.  Anyhow, instead I attended to some paperwork here and then decided to go to the office to get things ready for tomorrow.  On the way I got the minimal groceries I needed for the week (basically, bread rolls, ham and oats).  Work was productive and I was out the door at 9pm.  I know that sounds late, but I was OK with it.  I had a flash of insight that saved me a couple of hours on one job.  Part of our work is preparing summaries of significant cases we've finished.  I had two I needed to have done by tomorrow, and with a heavy heart at about 6pm I thought: OK, better bite the bullet and do them, expecting a good couple of hours work.  After about 30 minutes I realised that most of the details I needed were in the letters of advice I'd already written and had approved for release.  About 45 minutes of copy, paste, and edit had both jobs done!  Maybe the first time I've successfully "worked smarter" - I can't believe it's taken me so long to twig to doing this.  Yay me!

I checked Fedex's website again today.  Our bloody box is still stuck in sodding Anchorage and won;t be there for the girls' party and probably won;t even be there for their birthday.  If I sound cranky it's because I am.  I actually got them what I thought were good gifts (those of you who know me know that I'm usually a bit hit-and-miss with gifts) and I want them to have them.  Gripe.  Still, it's hard to hang on to a gripe with the girls' party coming up tomorrow morning (Melbourne time).  Can't wait to see my three ladies!!!

The evening was a quiet one here.  I finished last night's bag of gumbo with some rice for dinner.  I polished my shoes (attached - you can tell I'm running out of things to include as pictures!) and now the room smells intoxicatingly of shoe polish.

I guess that's it for the moment.  As I said, it's been a quiet day here.  Hope you're all having a good day too.

See you tomorrow.