I am now returned and mostly recovered from my whirlwind trip to Seattle, which involved dropping off the pooch at my dad's place after work Thursday, meeting up with a colleague, and then sitting in traffic for 20 minutes waiting to get onto the freeway headed north. Once we got going, the trip was relatively quick (made it there in about 2 hours, 40 mins) and painless. When we arrived in Seattle, there were a few confusing moments involving the cutting across several lanes of (no) traffic and almost turning the wrong way down a one-way street but on the whole I think I managed to get us to Seattle and our hotel without completely freaking out my colleague. She didn't seem to have any concerns about returning to Portland with me, so I must not have terrified her too badly. (And yes, dad, I maintained the proper distance between my car and the car in front of me THE WHOLE WAY. All that nagging in Boston? Totally worked... :)

ANYWAY. We arrived at Hotel Max around 8:30, checked into our rooms and then headed to The Red Fin for dinner. This restaurant is a sushi restaurant and while I wanted some sushi I didn't particularly want to spend a ton of money and still end up hungry, so I went with medallions of beef with fingerling potatoes. It was pretty good but, unfortunately, a bit over-salted. Upon returning to my room after dinner, I opened a ($5!) bag of gummy bears and a ($4!) bottle of water and logged onto the Internet to get a few things done that I hadn't had time to do before heading north.

Our trip north was for the David Allen seminar, "Getting Things Done: Managing Workflow," which was being held at the W Hotel. In addition to my colleague from Portland, two folks from my company's Seattle office met us at the seminar and we all had a really good time. Despite having implemented and used David Allen's system since late January, this seminar was really great for me from a number of perspectives. My system was pretty good, I thought, but after learning about why David Allen recommends certain approaches and how to use them I was able to implement a few new ideas to really support the work I've been doing thus far.

For instance, I hadn't really been using a portable "in box" or capture mechanism for when I'm away from home or my office, which meant that when I would think of something I'd just pull out my little Pocket Moleskine and jot down the item onto whichever list seemed to make the most sense. After attending the class, though, I added a couple of notecards to my system to catch random thoughts/ideas. Now, when I get home or I'm ready to do a review, I can process the ideas and really figure out what I want to do about them, if anything. Obviously, for items like "get celery" I can just add them to my grocery list, but for bigger ideas I think this will work better for me. I was also finally able to see the value in creating project and "next action" support folders: they give me one place to capture and manage everything so I don't have to hunt around when I want to take an action.

However, the main piece of the seminar that I found most helpful was the illustration of how to get to the root of each of your projects, how to define what you'd like the outcome to look like and to determine the very next action. When I first read the book I think I glossed over this part, thinking, "Oh, I know how to do that!" The truth is, it's a key to making the system work and it seems to take some real practice and thought to get to the very next physical action to take to move a project forward. Obviously, I'm still not great at it yet but I do have a vision for what I'd like my weekly reviews to look like, so that's an improvement!

The pity party is over. Obviously.

Now I am home and reveling in the fact that I've made it through my third Tysabri infusion and I'm feeling... tired. Yeah. So no change. But on the upside, I had no rash, no hives, nothing remarkable. Yay! I also got to see a couple of my favorite nurses at the outpatient infusion clinic and the IV insertion was painless and left zero bruise. Would that that were the case every month. As someone who's had her fair share of IVs now, I can say my favorite nurses are the ones that a) can insert an IV and/or draw blood while I feel absolutely nothing, b) said IV does not leave a bruise or mark of any kind after the IV is removed, c) offer me a pillow and nice warm blankets and d) bring me Diet Sierra Mist and a sandwich.

I mean, if you have to be stuck with needles and sit there for two hours and watch some poor old woman get her blood transfusions, the least they can do is offer you a sandwich. Right?

But then, of course, I went poking around and.. my GOD, people. Some of these people are professors at big prestigious universities and/or living abroad and/or doing BIG THINGS. One gal from my high school class is, I kid you not, an astrophysicist living in Australia.

Shoot. I can hardly spell the word.

Subconsciously I knew this, I think, but consciously I blatently ignored it by putting on a brave face and just muscling through whatever was going on at the time. I'm not entirely sure from where this tendency stems but I think one of the biggest factors is with a complete lack of acceptance of my limitations. We talk about acceptance a lot in the twelve-step program I attend: acceptance of others' behaviors, situations in the universe and everything else that is beyond our control. And one key thing I try to remember, always, is that accepting something doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to like whatever it is I'm accepting. I just have to make peace with the fact that something is the way it is, and learn how to live with it as it is, to the best of my ability.

Anyway, so I got up this morning with only one thing I really wanted to do today: pamper myself. I did do some grocery shopping - because despite having a variety of food I could eat, there was really nothing I wanted to eat. When I got home I put together a Crockpot full of chili and after a couple hours of napping I set about the personal care ritual and I now have a pretty French pedicure, fresh, clean skin and soft shaven legs. Also, I have a freezer full of vegetable chili and most of a can of chipotle chilis in adobo sauce for which I need to find a recipe.

In general, it has been a good weekend: Friday afternoon I spent with my mom's family celebrating Independence Day and my mom's birthday. Yesterday was low-key and (mostly) spent around the house. Nothing terribly exciting but also not a bad way to spend a weekend. I feel refreshed and ready to head back to work!!

And now I'm off to bed because tomorrow I'm going to attempt to get back on the daily exercise wagon, but if anyone has any ideas what I can make with those chipotle chilis (besides making another batch of chili) I'm all ears.

What is Feedburner? Well, it's basically a way to trick out your RSS feed and make it more useful. :) I originally wanted to use it to stick some ads in my RSS feed, but they are currently not accepting new applications (as I found out after 45 minutes of digging around their entire site.) I'm a bit annoyed to discover this but, ultimately, it's okay for the moment. My whole goal when I put ads on my site was to cover the costs of hosting my own blog. Since I was trying to reduce expenses and bring in more cash, I just couldn't justify the cost of hosting my own blog, so the ads I've got up now cover my blogging costs every month and assuage any guilt I might feel over the (small) amount I spend to host it.

So what does this switch to Feedburner mean for you, gentle reader? Well, a couple things:

First, and most importantly, if you subscribe to my RSS feed: you will most likely not need to do anything. After digging through Feedburner's (rather pathetic, actually) help section, pulling out several fistfuls of hair and then creating an indefinite loop of redirects (which rendered my blog's homepage inaccessible for a short time) I was able to set up the re-directs to the new feed. This means that the majority of you won't need to do anything: the feed you're currently using should be fine.

For those of you whose feedreaders don't seem to be picking up any updates, you'll need to update your RSS links and resubscribe to the blog. The new link is over there on the side bar under "subscribe," or you can click here. My apologies in advance to those of you that this is affecting: definitely not my intent but hopefully this will only need to happen once. (It's looking like this might be the case with Bloglines.) On the upside, resubscribing shouldn't take more than a minute!

And, for those of you not interested in RSS, my "switch" to FeedBurner has also allowed me to offer email subscriptions to my blog's content. That link is also on the sidebar under "subscribe!" or you can click here if you don't feel like scrolling all the way down. :) It, too, is a super-quick and painless process.

First was a visit to The Good Doctor (my neurologist, for those of you who are just joining us), who - despite having a fairly open calendar - kept me waiting for more than 30 minutes. I make it a point, when I can, to schedule my visits with him first thing in the morning and he still cannot seem to call me in on time. I don't get it.

So, (lack of) punctuality aside, it was a decent appointment. My neurological exam produced nothing to cause anyone any concern and my response to the Tysabri has been good. So, he gave me orders for my annual MRI (oh goody!), a new prescription for my sleeping pill of choice (hooray Sonata!) and sent me on my way with an appointment to see him in three months.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned I'd decided to try out the budgeting software from YNAB.com. I'd been using Dave Ramsey's online budget planning software and while I liked it and it worked well for me, I really wanted something I could install directly on my machine and, more importantly, only pay for once rather than monthly or yearly. I also really wanted to be able to more easily compare budgets from month to month and quickly switch between each month's plan: YNAB's software does that. It's also made it SUPER easy for me to track my spending and see where my money is actually going. I had a good idea of this before, but now I have concrete numbers.

There is a ton of info out there on the web, since this "knowledge management" approach appears to be very popular these days. If you're at all interested, you can check out David Allen's website: DavidCo.com, but I found that reading the book provided the clearest guidance to me for how to get started and for the concepts themselves.

At its base level, Allen suggests that by having a system for remembering everything in your life, you'll be freer to be creative, spontaneous and productive. I'm heavily paraphrasing, and that explanation sounds sort of corny, but the point is that when you know you're in control you don't have to worry so much. And that translates to having more energy and freedom to do creative things. (And yes, I purposely avoided that tired phrase, "to think outside the box." :)

This was fun, yes, but it went on for about 90 minutes and by the time we all got back to the room in which we were having our meeting, we were all hot and sweaty and many of us had allergy-eyes (and noses and throats) due to the pollen and grasses and whatnot on the grounds of the estate.

After our "formal" event ended, several of us sat outside eating and drinking and enjoying the weather.

So, for starters, no PML. I am PML-FREE! I had my second Tysabri infusion on Friday and, as with the first one, I came home, went to bed and slept for most of the day. I'm not sure whether it's the Tysabri itself, the process of getting the infusion (dealing with the needles and setting up the IV, etc., etc., etc.,) or some combination thereof, but sleeping after my infusion seems like the best way to spend my day.

Oddly, though, I've been feeling pretty run down and tired the last couple weeks (beginning before my most recent Tysabri dose) and so I've been sleeping a lot anyway. So perhaps I'm staring a relapse in the face and just not realizing. In that case, I think sleeping a lot might be my best defense.

However, what I have noticed is this sort of "manic" feeling: one of my close recovery friends told me she thought I seemed pretty "hyped up" the day of the infusion and since then I've calmed down only a little... On top of that, I have had trouble shutting my brain down at night and getting to sleep. I knew these things were a bit of a problem, but last week I noticed I was starting to feel anxious and self-conscious and a bit paranoid. And when having a big glass of wine started sounding like a really good idea, I picked up the phone and called my shrink, who was able to get me in on Saturday afternoon.

When I first started to get out of debt, my only focus was on getting the debts paid off, as quickly as possible. Dave Ramsey suggests this as well - once you have $1000 in the bank as a sort of "baby" emergency fund - and he calls it "getting Gazelle Intensity." I had this "intensity" for a little while - I sold all kinds of things on eBay and Amazon.com and figured out new ways (like putting ads on my blog) to help bring in more cash - but after looking over my debts, my expected income and other aspects of my financial situation, I realized it was still going to take me quite a while to dig myself out of debt.

That was okay then. I didn't have any wiggle room at the time for doing anything but meeting my basic expenses and paying off the bills. As I've paid off the small debts, my income has been freed up bit by bit and I've come to strike a balance between setting money aside for expenses I know are coming, adequate funding for day-to-day expenses and debt repayment. This feels really good: that I can meet all my expenses and even have a tiny bit left-over to "play" with. Not a ton, but enough to help me feel like I'm living - which in turn, keeps me from busting my budget. (I've written about this before: it's like a diet; if you're too restrictive eventually you start gorging...)

JUNE SECOND.

We are smack in the middle of spring and barreling towards summer, and have had .... lessee ... 3 days of weather in the last two months that could be called summer-like.

My take is that "too much" is relative, based on your levels of income and other expenses. And each person has to prioritize based on their particular situation. Seems kind of like a "duh" concept to me, but it's really surprising how worked up people get when this topic comes up.

I don't currently spend a lot on Rennie, because I'm trying to dig myself out of debt. But she is well-cared-for, has everything she needs and is, in general, a happy pooch. My costs for her right now run about $700/year:

• Annual exams, preventative medical stuff (like heartworm) and vaccinations, plus periodic county registration costs: ~$230/year
  
• Special "low-residue" food that keeps her tummy from getting upset (and thus, keeps her out of the vet's office!): $30 every three months (~$120/year)
  
• Rawhide, Dingo brand Bones: 1/2 bag a month, or so, at $19.99 (~$120/year)
  
• Treats and toys (~$30/year)
  
• Misc. care items like shampoo/conditioner, toothbrushes/toothpaste (yes, really) and other random things: ($25/year)
  
• Veterinary Pet Insurance, $14.82/month ($178/year)
  

You will notice that there are no "training" costs up there. Going with Rennie to classes is one thing we both really miss, but when I started to live on a budget (i.e. within my means) the cost of obedience classes was just too prohibitive. I simply had too much debt to justify it. This hasn't always been the case: when Rennie was a puppy I had to prioritize her training classes because I just didn't know enough to train her myself and, well, she was a puppy. You gotta train puppies. So I did it and I have no regrets. But she is now (mostly) well-behaved and so the need for training classes just isn't as urgent.