A successful weekend....

...features at least one good nap. I've had a great nap today, and feel fine.

This is the level of news I can come up with today, sorry.

It's the going to work every day business that cuts into my amusing thought time. I'm getting better at highway driving--let's be clear: I'm always a careful driver--but the way other people drive gets my dander up to the point that I become a sputtering, muttering idiot.

Sputtering and muttering are not good for the blood pressure or for the soul.

So I'm getting less rattled by the insanity around me, and hope that driving to work will soon be no more fraught than reading the paper--it still can get my blood up once and awhile, but most of the time, I sail right through, and my sole reaction is a modest shake of the head.

As to work, I can say that it's very interesting--and getting more interesting all of the time. I appear to have skills these people can use, and that continues to be (a) gratifying and (b) a little amazing.

Yes, The Self Esteem can be an elusive creature where yours truly is concerned. I blame the eight month job-hunt. My childhood could be dragged into this, but I think I'm going to put that away. The statute of limitations may be up on that one....

Elsewise, my job has a health services department that hosts lunchtime talks on various topics, and I attended one last week on high blood pressure. My lunch choice for the day (a meatball sandwich on a white roll) was unfortunate in context, but luckily I ate it before we got to the good food-bad food discussion.

I now know all the bad things that high blood pressure can do (nothing good--unless heart attacks and strokes are your idea of fun).

High blood pressure appears to run in my family (my parents had it; my brother and sister are both on high blood pressure medicine), so the bad things are coming--unless I start eating better, exercising, and all those other things I should do to keep this carcass in tip-top shape, in the hopes it makes a difference.

Right now, it's exhausting merely to contemplate this carcass-saving strategy, much less to do!

But, perhaps this is just the new job exhaustion talking, and soon I will work at least exercise back into my life. A little.

But give up meatballs? I don't think so....

One last thing, while we're on food. Have been thinking about how we ate in Northeast Wisconsin, and I guess the line "strict meat and potatoes" line works best. I say "strict," because my father called the culinary shots (even though he never cooked--not odd for the times, sadly), and he would tolerate no experimentation in the kitchen. And by experimentation, I mean pizza. Pasta. Pilaf.

How's that? Mother was no Martha Stewart, mind you, but one day in the early 1970s she tried to introduce a nice rice pilaf into a supper in lieu of the usual potatoes. One would have thought she had put the severed head of Vince Lombardi on the table from my father's and brother's reaction--they both pushed away from the table in disgust, put on their coats, and went to go have burgers. Mother cried, I think. Just a little.

I, of course, told her it was delicious, but it didn't really help.

And a nice rice pilaf was never served at 1559 Pierce Avenue again.

My father was a good guy overall, but on rare occasion he could be a jerk, obviously. Or just a product of his times--who can really say? Lord knows he didn't corner the jerk market--I shop there on occasion myself.

And my brother is married to a gourmet cook and eats a mad variety of food the likes of which would never pass muster in the North Woods of Wisconsin. (And he loves it.)

Okay, that's enough. Time to go watch the Olympics and leave you folks alone.