It hasn’t been a very good day, and it doesn’t help that I’m really, really, tired. But to make a very long (and completely, utterly, supremely boring) story short….-ish…

My best friend is interviewing for a job halfway across the country (and unfortunately, it seems the interview went really well).

I took a long walk which would have been wonderful if I hadn’t had to suffer through about 25 minutes of head-on wind that was so cold it gave me an ice cream head-ache. And there wasn’t even any ice cream involved. I don’t even have any ice cream in my house! So this was unfair to such a degree that I can’t even start to contemplate it. It was after this that my friend called to gush about her prospective new job…

To top it all off, I’m tired of doing what I should be doing, but there’s nothing on TV, so I started playing with iTunes only to stumble across a recording of my absolute favorite handbell piece that my choir recorded… back when I was in a handbell choir. In 30 seconds flat I was a teary mess. One minute in, the nose got involved in the fun. By the end of the piece (only 3 minutes and 52 seconds later) my face was just about as far as it could be from the face of any of those girls in Victorian novels who somehow manage to look prettier after crying.

It wasn’t that the piece was so pretty. You could even hear us turning pages a couple of times, and there was one point when the middle bells lost their place and went stunningly silent for a measure (and this was on a demo CD for a handbell catalog!). I just miss the life I had when I recorded that piece. I miss bells. I miss that particular choir. I miss living near my family. I miss … everything.

I would keep writing, but I have a date with a tissue box and some chocolate. It’s going to be one of those nights…

I should never have listened to that recording.

I had a session with one of the personal trainers my work offers it’s employees. People might wonder why it’s taken me a year and a half to do this, seeing as it’s a free service. But you see, they require a doctor’s signature, and I don’t tend to go to the doctor.

But I finally got all my paperwork lined up, had a fitness eval (which included being weighed and measured, which I like much, much worse than seeing how many push-ups I can do, or how much weight I can lift). And then today they set me up with my exercise routine. Long story short, my behind has been royally kicked. After this, I think I deserve to take a couple three months off, right?

But one good thing tame out of all this pain. I realized that I really do need (not want — no, no — NEED) an MP3 player. How can one be expected to spend that much time doing un-fun things without music or audio books to listen to? One can’t be. That’s all there is to it.

I’m the first to admit that I lead a boring -er- quiet life. Friday night, just to spice things up a little, I sat reading with E in a coffee shop for a couple of hours. I love being able to read and watch people without having any obligation to do anything or talk to anyone. There were even teenaged girls to listen to and laugh at (“Did you know Justin Timerlake broke up?!?” – “OhMiGosh No! You Rock My World!!!!!!!”). What fun.

Today my major adventure was going through the mail. I have a habit of leaving all my mail (other than the occasional personal letter, which I open on the spot) until the weekend. Then, each weekend, I open everything, pay any bills that came, and balance my accounts. Well, last weekend I was busy and didn’t get to the mail. That meant that some mail went unopened for two weeks. Imagine the gentle thrill that quivered through me as I opened each piece of mail, wondering if I’d missed a deadline.

And what happier resolution to an adventurous morning than to find that no bills had gone unpaid beyond their due dates. It’s kind of like watching a thriller — there are no consequences in real life.

I actually met another person who lives in my building yesterday. You’d think that with only 12 units in my building I’d have known everybody by now… but no.

I’ve seen this guy around before, and we’ve even said hi to each other before. He’s almost always either loading his jeep up with camping, hiking, or kayaking supplies, or he’s unloading the jeep so that he can air everything out before going back into the wild. He must go out to woods and lakes at least once a week, no matter the weather. It’s incredible.

He’s also deaf, or at least very hard of hearing. I hadn’t noticed before today that he relies almost entirely on lip reading. So as I walked past him this evening, scurrying for the warmth of the apartment, he called out, “Hi.”

“Hi,” I responded.

“I’m alright, just a little cold,” he answered.

[“Hmmm, he didn’t hear me. Is he just hard of hearing? Will he hear if I speak louder?”]

“IT SURE IS COLDER LATELY!” I said, with emphasis.

At this point he gave a little frustrated smile and ran to catch up with me so he could see my lips. And from that point on we had a rather nice conversation without any -er- emphasis on either side.

Turns out he lives under Mr. Never There, who lives across the hall from me. Just my luck that I have noise-sensitive Ms. Second Floor living under me (or rather, under my loud-as-all-get-out cat), but Mr. Never There gets Deaf Guy as his downstairs neighbor. The apartment gods were having a good giggle the day they dreamt this one up.