And not necessarily in that order, either!

My weekend was so busy it was incredible. Friday I was running around like crazy - made a bunch of phone calls in the morning (more on this later!), had a spinning class at noon, then dashed home to grab a quick shower, then was out the door again to audition for two commercials (same company). Stopped at Target on my way home to pick up a couple things, napped for maybe an hour, and then Anne came over to hang out and watch tv for a little bit. She didn't stay long, though, because we were both exhausted. I got into bed and watched TV for a little while (perhaps 10 minutes!) and fell asleep. I think my favorite techo feature is the 'sleep' function on both my stereo and my TV. At night I set whichever one I might have on to turn itself of in however many minutes. And I'm almost always asleep before it turns off. Love that!

Saturday I was up by 7:30 and shoved two cats into one carrier to take them to the vet for a quick check-up. Two little black faces peering out of one carrier is hilarious. Normally I would have them each in a carrier, as 20 pounds of cat is not easy to carry in one hand, but the vet's office is so close and I knew that they wouldn't be in there for long, so one carrier was fine. It was easier to get up and down the stairs and in and out of the car, too. We got to and from the vet without incident, I dropped the cats back at home, and headed for the post office, and then to spinning class. After spinning, we worked out on the machine we're doing the infomercial for, and then we all did some abs work. All together, it was a killer workout.

Then I went home and finished my shelving. I had to borrow Anne's drill - mine won't charge up well or hold a charge anymore. So I borrowed hers, and finished assembling my shelves. The hardest part was lifting the damn thing into place around the air conditioner and then bolting it all into place. That sucker is heavy! The shelves are 12 feet long, 9 inches deep, and 16 inches tall, with a few dividers and shelves to section it off, too. And even though pine is not a very heavy wood, add up the shelves and it gets heavy quick! So I finished the whole project and started putting stuff on them. It looks REALLY cool, and I got major compliments from both Anne and Mike for having done what looks like a custom job (it IS a custom job!). I am still figuring out what will go where, and just how much stuff I can get off my desk. The cats love it, too, since they can now sit on it and look out the window, whereas before they could only sit on the windowsill and look out. This is much wider, and they can flop on it in the sun.

Saturday night Mike and I had talked about getting together, but I was exhausted after finishing my shelves and exercising so much, so I wasn't too upset when I hadn't heard from him by early evening. Then my neighbor called me and asked if I could babysit, and I agreed to. Their daughter is adorable, and she's very low maintenance even for a three year old. So I went downstairs and took care of her for a few hours. Mike had called by the time I got home, but he was working on an audition piece all evening anyway, and was heading to bed by the time I got back to him. I stayed up for a bit puttering around the apartment, trying to get through some paperwork, and actually filled my office trashcan with papers to toss. Yay! Still have a ways to go, though, and I still have to CLEAN my apartment, but it is coming along.

I definitely got my exercise in this weekend with the spinning classes. They are so awesome! As for eating, I have been totally compliant these last few days, but I have been eating too much sugar, too. Those wheat-free Pamela's cookies from Whole Foods just don't last around my place! I can't buy anymore!

Sunday morning I slept until 10am, when a friend of mine called to remind me of the cocktail party that he'd invited me to for later in the day. I had agreed to go, but then when I tried to get out of bed, I knew that I wouldn't be standing around at a cocktail party. My back was killing me. I overdid it with the exercise and the shelving on Saturday. I called my friend to let him know that I wouldn't make it to the cocktail party, and then called Anne to see if she could come and work on my back for a few minutes. She did, but it didn't help much. After she left, I slowly made some breakfast (eggs, spinach, goat cheese) and then I got down on the floor and put my feet on a chair, then slowly started to do a few yoga stretches. And I already had a chiropractic visit scheduled for tomorrow, so that will help. And my back did start to loosen up considerably with the stretching.

I did some more office-type stuff, balanced my checkbook and dealt with a few more papers, and then Anne called and asked how I was doing. I was still sore, but otherwise felt pretty close to normal, so when she said she was going to the mall, I asked her if she wanted company. She did, so I showered quickly (which also helped loosen things up) and went downstairs to meet her. We hit the mall, and we both bought some new bras (desperately needed) and I found a pretty pink cotton blouse. All in all, a good day, and I got a few things I needed. I am on the hunt for some nice cotton blouses, and even though I probably tried on at least 10 of them today, I only found one that fit right and looked nice.

Anne and I got home, and I headed upstairs to take a nap. Made some cod and spinach for dinner, and got into bed around 8pm. Woke up around 10 or so when Mike knocked on the door, and we had a nice visit and caught up on the latest news we both had. His audition today went well, and he suspects he'll get a part in this short film. I had to kick him out to get ready for work, and was flying out the door to get here on time.

Now. Back to the phone calls Friday morning. I've been researching Tempur-Pedic beds for a long time, with the thought that 'someday' I'd get one. First heard of them at least three years ago, and had been slowly saving money to get one.... eventually. Well, since my car repairs were so inexpensive last week, and I had the money, I thought I'd see if I could afford to get it now. I had planned on getting one in a few weeks after I get my next tax refund (from amending my 2000 return), but I wanted to take a few weeks to thoroughly research it and get the best price possible from a reputable dealer, etc. So Friday while I was at work, I googled 'Tempur-Pedic' and started going through tons of websites. I probably looked at a hundred different sites, and kept coming up with one place that was $100 cheaper than anywhere else, had free shipping, free bed frame, no sales tax, TWO free Tempur-Pedic pillows, AND threw in a $100 gift certificate to one of several different stores. By the end of the night, I'd made a list of about 25 different places to call for quotes and more information.

I started making phone calls as soon as I got home, calling the place with the best known quote first, and then told every other place I called that I had one quote that they had to beat. Nobody, including Tempur-Pedic themselves, could beat it. One competitor even told me that the company I was thinking of buying from (foambedsdirect.com) was being sued by Tempur-Pedic! (Which is apparently not the case, BTW - I asked both Tempur-Pedic AND the other company, and both denied that was the case). I thought much less of the competitor who told me this rumor - whether or not it is true it is not nice to badmouth the competition! I made a number of phone calls, but when the gentleman at Tempur-Pedic told me that it was a great deal and that even HE couldn't match it, I knew I'd found a winner. He confirmed for me that Foambedsdirect is a licensed Tempur-Pedic dealer, and that I wouldn't find a better price. So I called foambedsdirect.com back, and told Brent (who I'd spoken with earlier) that I'd like to buy a bed! Apparently my timing was perfect, too. The price was $100 cheaper by doing an on-line survey that took about 2 seconds to complete, and that offer was ONLY good through Sunday 4/18. And the deal with the supposed lawsuit is that Tempur-Pedic likes to maintain the product price, and has asked that Foambedsdirect.com restrict their sales to a certain georgraphic area, which they will start doing as of May 1st. So my timing was REALLY good, and even today I wouldn't have gotten as good of a deal.

And it is WAAAAAAAAYYYYY better than sleeping on a mattress on the floor!

So I will get my new bed in a couple of weeks (yay!) and now I am looking for an inexpensive headboard so that I really WILL have a totally new bed! I chose the Linens 'n' Things gift certificate, too, so I can get new sheets to go on my bed!

I got home this morning and got to bed by 9:45am. Delightful. Even though I slept until 6pm, I could have slept even more! I got up, though, and dragged my tired butt to acting class. For a minute I thought I was there the wrong night, though - didn't see anyone else! There was only one other person there for the first hour or so of class, so our acting coach gave us some monologues to perform on-camera (always weird to see yourself on film, btw). Three other people did trickle in over the first couple hours of class, so everyone got to do a monologue and there was lots of chatting and fun going on that normally doesn't happen during class. We ended up getting out of class ten minutes late!

My scene partner and I didn't do our scene, either. We'll solidify it this weekend and perform it next week. I'll be far more comfortable with the material by then anyway, so it wasn't a bad thing.

My car is driving like a dream! Such a pleasure to drive it now! I'm still so thrilled that the repairs were so much cheaper than anticipated. Already burned rubber on the new tires when I had to stop very unexpectedly on the highway tonight getting to work. Scared me half to death! I'm still a little wired because of it.

Made some scrambled eggs with turkey sausage, spinach, and feta cheese for dinner tonight, and then only ate about half of it before class. Then was feeling a little shaky during class, so drank the soy milk that I'd brought with me. Before work I ate the other half of the eggs I'd made, and brought sausage and feta cheese and rye crackers to work with me for lunch since I didn't have time to prepare anything. Thursdays are tough - I have no time to prepare anything, so I have to make sure I've got something made ahead of time, or something that I can grab as I head out the door. It ain't easy being an O!

Tomorrow is spin class and an audition. I've got no dates planned for this weekend, so I intend to finish the shelving I've been working on, clean up my apartment, and get organized a bit more in my place. I've been SO busy with work, acting stuff, and making sure that I get enough sleep that housekeeping has been, uh, LOW priority to say the least. But I can't live like this, so I've got to get cracking!

So my mechanic and I started talking, and he's Belgian, and speaks French. So we chatted for a few minutes. I love doing that because I always remember or learn vocabulary. Today it was a few car-related words that I couldn't have remembered yesterday if my life depended on it. I told him that I was having transmission issues with the car not wanting to go into gear sometimes, and that sometimes I feel a slight little 'pop' under the brake pedal, and also that I needed an oil change, new wiper blades, and that the trunk latch doesn't always release from inside the car. I fully expected the transmission and brake issues alone to take a couple days and plenty of money.

After I spoke with him, I made the phone calls I needed to make, printed off resumes to go with my headshots in preparation for tonight's meeting, and went to bed about 11:15 or so.

I got all of 4 hours sleep. The mechanic called me at 3:30 to let me know that my car was ready, and that the transmission issue was only that whoever worked on it last had put the wrong kind of oil in it and it was too thick for it to easily go into gear when it was cold. I'm not 100% sure that was the only problem with it, but it seems to be working fine so far. He replaced the wiper blades, fixed the trunk latch, and found nothing wrong with the brakes. Total cost: $124.61. I just about jumped for joy when he told me the price. He could have charged me well over $1,000 and I would have been content enough to have the car fixed. I'd EXPECTED a charge of well over $1,000. To have it be such a low charge was incredible to me, and I was thrilled. So what I had earmarked from my tax refund for car repairs will go into savings for future car repairs or other unexpected/unplanned expenditures.

Mike took me back to the mechanic's to pick up my car, then I ran a quick errand and met up with him again at the commercial agents discussion tonight. The man who spoke tonight is a real character, and tells it to ya straight. It was a pleasure to listen to him speak, and to hear more about the industry. He also looked at everyone's headshots and commented on what he thought of them. It was great information to hear and great to get the feedback about our shots.

Then I dashed home to meet with my scene partner and rehearse our scene for tomorrow night's class. I was nervous about it - have been having trouble with brain fog and memorization, which isn't helped by not getting enough sleep, so I'm not entirely off book yet. Rehearsal tonight made the lines make more sense to me, and they started coming more easily. Tonight at work I need to practice them until I've got them fairly solid, and then a few minutes when I get up tomorrow should be sufficient to get through it in class.

Food-wise, I had a bit of goat cheese and a small lamb chop as a little snack before coming into work, a glass of soy milk when I got up, and earlier tonight I had a lamb burger with grilled onions wrapped in lettuce for 'breakfast' before Mike took me to pick up my car. He was strapped for time, and since I was awake and he was doing me a favor, I told him I'd go pick up some dinner for him - didn't have my car, so that limited where I could go, but he was fine with a burger from the place on the corner. They also have lamb, buffalo, venison, turkey, and ostrich burgers, so if I want a burger, that's where I go! Good stuff.

I'm really sleepy tonight and have been fighting a headache for a few hours now - I have GOT to make sure I get enough sleep! Tomorrow I should be able to get my 8 hours in, and then I head to acting class.

Had a few errands to run this morning before heading home to sleep. I decided to take my car into the shop this week after all - why put it off any longer? There will never be a convenient time to take it in, so I'll just take it in now....

So I dropped a donation off at the Salvation Army (to empty out my trunk) ran to the grocery store to get some goat cheese, salad stuff and soy milk, and also went to pick up my new fitness machine that I'm doing the infomercial for. Yay! So that is currently in my trunk (and is the reason it needed to be emptied beforehand!). Then I headed home to sleep. Made a couple of phone calls, and was in bed by 11am. I left my phone on during the day in case my friend I was meeting for dinner called and needed directions or to confirm plans or anything, and I did get a couple of phone calls - one from my scene partner for acting class Thursday night, one from Blockbuster saying I hadn't returned the movies I rented (which I did last night) and another one, too, but I have completely forgotten who it was!

I got up at 6pm when my alarm went off, and was trying to get ready for dinner with SF (who I adore spending time with) and then my cell phone rang - it was my best friend from high school and college, Suzanne, who is a physician in NYC and who I'll be visiting later this year. So we chatted for about 30 minutes, settled on the dates for me to visit, and then I realized that I had less than 30 minutes to get ready for dinner with SF! Aack! So I threw some clothes on and was trying to clean up the place a little bit before she arrived. Not much cleaning was done, though, since she arrived 10 minutes early! She'd never seen my place before, and today it looks worse than I think it has EVER looked. I am in the middle of construction for these shelves that I'm making, and all the stuff that goes on that wall is everywhere ELSE in the apartment. And I haven't vacuumed, because I figure there isn't much point in that as long as I'm building stuff, so there was black cat hair all over the grey carpet. Oh, well. I did know that she would understand, but still, I really DO try to keep a relatively clean and neat place, and it just SOOOOOOO wasn't....

SF could see that I was a little frazzled, and told me to relax, which I started to do once we headed for the restaurant, which was all of a few blocks away from my place. We had a nice dinner, and as always, it was lovely catching up with her. She's delightful, intelligent, charming, and always says incredibly wonderful and flattering things about me on some message boards we both follow - I've even printed out some of her posts and taped them to my kitchen cabinets to give myself a little boost when I read them. Sometimes you just need to hear good things said about yourself, ya know? : ) For dinner I was good and ordered the herbed chicken with garlic spinach, rice, and salad. It was good, but the chicken was a bit dry. There was plenty of it, though, and I brought half of it in to work tonight for lunch.

Once I got home from dinner, I put a movie on that Mike had lent me - "Rounders" with Matt Damon, Ed Norton, John Malkovich, Gretchen Moll, and I don't remember who else. It was one of those movies that I kind of wanted to see, but didn't care if I missed bits of it, so I was putting together my shelving while it was on and puttering around getting ready for work and stuff while it was playing. I got the gist of it, and that was enough. Not a bad movie, just not my kind of story - it was about playing poker for high stakes.... At some point during the movie, Anne stopped by to say hello and to borrow my laundry card, and we chatted for about a half an hour while I screwed shelves together. She's going through some emotional stuff right now, and wanted to talk about it and get my opinion. I hadn't even had a chance to tell her about my interview for the team lead position the other day, so between her stuff and my stuff, we covered a lot of ground in a half an hour.

Mike called briefly to let me know that he could take me to an acting event tomorrow night and to work, so that was good. I get to walk home again in the morning, so I dressed appropriately for it. Casual pants and shirt, running shoes. Because of my ankle, I have a medical permission slip to wear athletic shoes to work even though it's against company policy, and I just was NOT going to wear dress pants with running shoes. Fortunately, this place is so casual it isn't an issue.

Tomorrow I need to make some phone calls in the morning to schedule rehearsal for acting class tomorrow night, to schedule auditions for Friday for two commercials (for the same company, so really one audition), to call a life coach regarding a free 30 minute consultation and see what he can do for me and how much it would cost me, and to call a vocal coach to work on using my voice correctly (I have trouble being heard sometimes and am prone to straining my throat because I use my voice improperly). So lots to do. And I have to get up by 6 or so again to make it to this meeting tomorrow night, and I have to print out some resumes and headshots to take with me - this guy is a commercial casting agent who I would LOVE to be signed with....

I walked home from work today during a gorgeous, sunny southern California morning. Lovely weather. It was a five mile walk, but flat the whole way, so it was easy. Even so, by the time I got to the service center, I was exhausted. The place I'd left my car doesn't do tires (who knew?), so they filled my tire with air and sent me up the street to a good tire shop.

They patched it, and as I was about to pay, the man at the counter said that I ought to get 2 new tires 'soon'. How soon? He said it would all depend, and he didn't feel comfortable saying 'a month' or 'two months' or whatever. I said that they could go ahead and change them out now. So I waited about 40 minutes for the new tires, paid, and went home to get ready for bed. I was so exhausted from my walk, the stress of the drive on Sunday, and the lack of sleep Sunday. Got home, showered, set my alarms for 10:30 pm, and climbed in bed at 1pm.

For the first time in days, I slept like a log - didn't wake up, wasn't restless, nothing. Even had a dream that I remembered, which is a first since I started working nights. When I set my alarm for 9.5 hours of sleep, I didn't think I'd really sleep that long - I figured I'd wake up around 9-9:30. Nope. Even with sleeping for as long as I did, I am still just wiped out, and I think I could have slept another three or four hours.

Anne asked me if I could help her with an errand tomorrow, and I told her that I couldn't because I have to sleep. I could tell she was disappointed, but I have to be very protective of my sleep hours, and I also don't think that she 'gets it' when it comes to working nights and getting enough sleep. I don't know who does get it, come to think of it.... I know that I have dinner plans for tomorrow evening, and that I need to be reasonably well-rested, which means that in order for me to get 8 hours of sleep, I have to be asleep by 10am.

At some point this week or next I need to put my car back into the shop and get some transmission and other work done - it'll be so nice to have it all fixed!

I read something last night that indicated that lack of sleep can mean a 40 % increase in cortisol levels, and that cortisol levels are associated with increased fat around the middle. Great. So now it's even HARDER for me to lose these last 10 pounds. I'm working on it, though, diligently. Easter weekend I may have eaten a few things I shouldn't've, but all in all, I did pretty well. And I'm down three pounds from where I was this time last week. And the study on cortisol reinforces everything else I've read about working nights and not getting enough sleep - basically, I need to take really good care of myself for as long as I'm doing this....

Tonight when I got up I made some eggs with chopped onion and soy cream cheese - yummy. I would have liked to have thrown some spinach in there, too, but I didn't have any. Realized I haven't been to the grocery store in a week and a half, so I'm out of several things. That will be remedied, but probably not until the weekend. I've got fish and salad and a few other things, so I'll make do. I still have a lamb chop for lunch tonight, and salad. Almonds and pumpkin seeds for snacks. Good stuff.