I made someone's day yesterday. I was headed across Clinton street when I looked down and saw a wallet on the ground. I had to look twice. Just a wallet, sitting on there. ID, credit cards, membership cards, and about $7 in cash. I picked it up and looked around, kinda hoping I'd see someone looking for a wallet (?), but nothing. I also thought about taking it in to the lost and found at the mall, but who knows if she would think to go there, if she even knew where she lost it.

I saw that she was a student, so I stuck it in my pocket, and when I got back to my computer, I looked up her email address on the University website. A couple hours later, I got a very grateful phone call. "You are so nice! I love you!" I told her where I was and that I would leave it at the front desk for her. I went out later that afternoon to see if she had gotten it. The receptionist said, "She said to tell you, 'Thank you'. She looked inside and said, 'The cash is even still there!'"

My good deed for the day. It is so unnerving to lose your wallet, or even to think that you've lost your wallet. And the hassle of canceling your cards, replacing them, and not knowing if you're going to get your identity stolen. I saved her from all that. It gives me a warm fuzzy.

Last night I dreamed I took a go-cart-type vehicle (to be exact, it was the cart the guy was testing in Numb3rs Sunday night) north up Highway 38. As I crossed the interstate, I was suprised to see that they had built a cowboy/prairie/Iowa history museum near the north east exit. I got out and explored the museum. It was pretty interesting, actually, and the building was beautiful.

I say this because I am now inspired to take a trip down to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Mansfield, MO. It's only, what, a six hour drive? Completely doable in a three-day weekend. I can't believe, on all our travels, we've never been there. Especially when Dad was reading the books and constantly saying how Emily and I should live up to Laura and Mary's example.

And maybe I have. I am, after all, halfway blind.

Partially vindicated! My dryer is all ventilated. I found some venting that was much easier to deal with, and it went on just like *that*! I have not gotten around to putting up curtains, mainly because I'm not in the mood.

I'm gonna try and do some work this afternoon. I spent five hours yesterday trying to get a trial balance into our system, and now that it's in, it doesn't balance. So I have to go find out what's going on, assign leads, and enter the next year's balances. New audit clients suck. The end of January sucks.

My mom and I are a lot alike. She and Dad stopped by my office on the way to Ames last week, and after they left, our temporary receptionist commented on how much we look alike. We have very similiar body structure and Mom has apologized on more than one occasion for giving me her knees. On occasion, it's come in handy, especially when I wanted to borrow her clothes.

Recently, however, I've discovered I've developed one of her less appealing qualities. Bananas give Mom gas. I happen to love bananas. It is one of my favorite fruits, especially when they're green or in my oatmeal. As part of my new eating habits, I've increased my fruit intake as well...let's just say it's a *very* good thing I have my own office.

I think my sister did a post on irony a while back. Here's mine:

While watching The Biggest Loser last night, they interrupted for a weather update at the exact same time they showed how much weight Maurice lost. The one thing I wanted to see, they preempt.

I think television is trying to piss me off.

I haven't eaten so many vegetables in my life. And liked it. I've been trying to change my eating habits to include less processed foods and less sodium. The sodium is because my blood pressure has been too high the last couple times I've been to the doctor...I've already cut out most of the caffeine. (And trying to spell 'caffeine' drives me nuts, because it doesn't follow the "I before E, except after C, and when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh" rule.) I don't drink nearly as much pop anymore, though when I do it's caffeine-free, and I do drink more coffee, even though decaf is horrible-tasting. Not that coffee didn't already taste horrible at work...

My snacky foods have been more along the lines of raw carrots and cauliflower. Eating a whole head of cauliflower before it goes bad all by yourself is proving to be a challenge. I've been on a hummus-and-sprouts sandwich kick this week. I find it ironic that I like hummus, because I hate beans and chickpeas and beans are almost too close for comfort. I've also been on a green tea kick. Mmm...anti-oxidants.

I have not been doing so well on the excercise, because TKD doesn't start until tomorrow. I have been doing Pilates while I watch television. Which is less than it sounds, because I haven't had time to watch television lately (already!). I even picked up a mat I saw on sale the other day, which will greatly help. Much easier to do the excercises if you're not also trying to keep your feet from sliding all over the place.

And speaking of television, I'm hoping Maurice has lost enough weight to get the second prize tonight on The Biggest Loser. I've been pulling for the guy through the whole thing, something about my tendancy to root for the underdog. I was in tears during half the thing last week...when they got to go home and their family and friends were so surprised...I was just so happy for them! [crying]

My reputation as home improvement maven has been besmirched. I tried two projects yesterday, and both of them flopped. I tried to replace the vent from my dryer to outside. Turns out this stuff is made mostly of aluminum wrapped into a coil. The thing kept falling apart on me, and what started out as 15 feet turned into eight. Which comes up way short. So now I'm still venting moist air into my basement until I can buy more venting. Not good.

I also finally bought a drill so I could drill holes my wall to put up my curtain rods. The curtain rods I bought at about the same time I bought my living room furniture...yeah, that project's been sitting a while. So the drill bits I bought weren't big enough for the screw anchor thingers, and trying to force them into the wall with a hammer resulted in broken screw anchors. So now in addition to a bigger drill bit, I have to find screw anchors that are similar to the ones that came with the curtain rod.

After that I gave up and watched Lost and Alias. I was all excited when I thought they were going to kill someone off on Lost. I thought, "How Joss Whedonish!" and then they copped out. Cowards.

When I'm writing letters, you know I must be pissed. Channel 9 preempted both Lost and Alias last night. And do you know for what? An Iowa State basketball game! Talk about pouring salt in the wound! Now I have to wait until Sunday afternoon. Argh! I wrote an email to the programming department, registering my complaint.

I watched Peter Pan instead, which just made me wish I'd watched Hook again instead. *sigh*

I don't often dream about working at Econofoods anymore, being as it's been around eight years since I've worked there, but I did the other night. I had come back to work there after a long absence, and I was having a hard time with the PLU codes. It was very frustrating, because there was a time when I knew almost all of them. We'd have PLU challenges in the breakroom, someone would shout out, "Avacado" or "Gala Apple" and the challengee would try to remember the PLU code. I was rarely stumped. Anyway, in this particular dream, there was an area of the store in which I lived, and after my shift, I went back there to eat. There were refrigerated shelves stocked with food, and I had to go through the food and throw out all the old stuff. The funny part about it, is that I remember buying the food and stocking those same shelves in a dream I had when I still worked there.

So I tried out the gym last night. I'm iffy. I liked the Pilates class. It was fun and I hurt in all the right places today. Their circuit is also pretty good, alternating resistance training with cardio. But even their most expensive package only allows five free classes a month. I'm leaning toward not doing it. I like my original plan to just add yoga/pilates workouts to my routine. I mean, if Mediacom is providing all these free workouts, and I'm paying for cable anyway, it just makes sense. Not to mention saving time not having to go all the way to Coralville. Time, especially now, is key. Besides, I can use the money to get someone to come clean my house instead. :)

When I got home tonight, the 10 inches of snow I had packed down into my driveway with my truck and couldn't get shoveled up last night was gone.

It's nice being on good terms with your ex-boyfriend's dad.

We ended up with 10 inches of snow. Winter Wonderland. And I did take the sled for a few runs. I crashed on at least half of them. Exhilarating stuff, especially when you end up with a pound of snow in your pants. Plus, tromping up snow covered hills: excellent workout.

I miss snow days. All the schools were canceled because we had all this freezing rain and then three or so inches of snow on top of it. More snow tonight. If I were still in school, Mom would yell up the stairs, "No school today!" and we'd smile sleepily and turn off the alarm clocks. A couple of hours later, we'd troop down the stairs for breakfast and The Price is Right, with an hour to wait for All My Children.

That afternoon, we'd play in the snow. Dad would have made huge piles of snow, plowing out the driveway with the skid loader, and I'd tunnel into the pile and make igloos. Making them was much more fun than sitting in them. I have no idea why I would have done any of that, because I'm slightly claustrophobic. I wait for the tunnel to collapse every time in The Great Escape.

When I got bored of that, if I wasn't exhausted, we'd sled down the front bank. I bet it would be good sledding today. I was reminded recently of the time all three of us got on the sled and our combined weight got us all the way up the other side of the embankment onto the Highway. Good times, good times.

Maybe, if I'm not too exhausted after shoveling the driveway tonight, I'll go over to the ravine and see if Leah's sled still works.