• Monday, I took Rennie to the vet for her annual checkup. She is fine, and we were able to get another year's worth of heartworm meds for her. The vet did make a remark about her summer haircut and I told him (though not in so many words) to shove it. :)
• As a result of working too much for a couple weeks in a row, my forearms were tight and sore and it hurt to do anything with my hands. So I went to the massage therapist on Tuesday for 30 minutes of torture therapy. It paid off, in that my forearms are fine now and I've been able to type and play the piano a bit over the last few days. I do have a couple bruises on my left arm, which are of course charming, but by and large I feel much better.
• Wednesday I got a haircut and a lovely pedicure. I now have bright red toenails. The color is reminiscent of blood, I realized later, which was not exactly intentional. I wanted red, yes, just not that particular shade of red.
• Thursday, I turned 33. I've now lived as long as Jesus. (Woo! Go me!) My pal Fran tells me 33 has been her best year so far, and I'm hoping it is likewise for me as well. 31 and 32 have not been all that great for me. Not awful, but not great.
• The last few days I've spent seeing and catching up with family and friends: my dad took me to dinner at Serratto on Saturday night (which, unfortunately, made me sick... :( Too much dairy, I guess), Sunday afternoon I met up with a good friend who's now living in Eugene and that evening I went and had dinner and cake with my mom's side of the family. All in all, a lovely week of birthday celebration!
• Presents are good...... in addition to the dining table and chairs from my dad, my grandma gave me a gift certificate to Macy's which I used to buy myself a tube of Inimitable Mascara. This stuff is so wonderful but, at $28 a tube, is not something I can justify buying myself (especially given the state of my finances!). So it was nice to be able to get it for (essentially) free!! I also got a couple of CDs, a charging station for my Wii remotes and a very generous gift certificate to Amazon.com from my older brother and his family. I ordered Dance Dance Revolution for the Wii - something else I couldn't justify buying myself but that makes a fun treat as a gift!!

Speaking of finances: I have only one payment to go before I've paid off another loan!! SO. Exciting. Of course, I will still have a lot of debt repay at that point but I think it's important to celebrate the small victories along the way. Once this debt is killed, I have a couple more months saving up so I can begin to live on my previous month's income (can't wait for that!!) and then I'm back in full-bore debt-pay-back mode.

So things are good. The weather here in Portland has been a bit weird (hotter than hell last week, now in the mid-60s and cloudy) but on the whole tolerable. And I am grateful to have reached another birthday and to have family and friends who love me and tolerate my quirks. I am truly blessed.