Running a bit late this morning. Matt took his car into the shop on Saturday (well, Friday night, actually) so that a faulty computer could be replaced. But Saturday was a really gorgeous day, and apparently lots of mechanics called in "sick," so the car was not actually fixed Saturday. So this morning I had to drive Matt and Penny up to work and daycare on the other side of Williamsburg before I came to work myself.

We had a relatively good weekend. We spent a lot of Saturday running around doing errands, and Penny was really calm about it. (It helped that we had her stroller along, so she was able to sit up and look around.)

Sunday was a little rougher. Matt and I think Penny's teething again, though she gets very angry if we try to stick a finger in her mouth to check. But she wanted to only eat little half-sized meals, which meant she wanted to eat almost twice as often as usual, and she was whiny and fussy for a pretty significant portion of the day.

I'm just hoping I manage to get a little sleep tonight; last night after Penny woke up (and didn't want to go back to sleep) I did a lot of tossing and turning. I couldn't seem to get comfortable; my back hurt or my shoulders felt like they were being pulled out of the socket, or my neck was stiff, or... like that.

I'm hoping tonight will be better.

My work computer crashed Friday. Several times.

And our IS person is out of the office for most of this week.

So before she left Friday evening, she brought me a desktop computer and stuck it on the side of my desk. I'll move everything I'm currently working on to my share drive on the network, and that way if the laptop crashes again, I can just move my mouse, keyboard, and monitor plugs, and keep working.

But of course, I can't put anything personal on the shared drive - the network drives are audited a little more closely than the individual ones. So if I turn up without a journal entry one morning, you probably know why.

What fun...

Matt and I have switched from the Atkins diet to South Beach.

The switch was initiated by a less-than-favorable cholesterol level for me, but it's got several other advantages, too.

For instance, we're allowed to have some fruit and milk again, and is more permissive with starchy vegetables. I was really missing milk and tomatoes. Matt was really missing fruit. And since beans are back, I can make chili, which I've been wanting lately. And we can have whole grain bread and pasta, and brown or wild rice.

We had sugar-free pudding with sliced strawberries for dessert last night. It was really lovely. Matt's going to have a sandwich for lunch today for the first time in two months.

I think South Beach will be easier to live with in the long run than Atkins. Which is important, because it's going to take me a couple of years to lose all the weight I really need to lose.

But it's got some disadvantages, too. Fats are more restricted, in South Beach - they want us to eat low-fat cheese. Which is uniformly nasty, in my experience. And do away with saturated fats (good-bye, bacon, sausage, and butter) and hydrogenated oils (good-bye, peanut butter).

But we'll make it work, I hope. Or if not, maybe we'll train ourselves to at least reduce the amount of sugars we're eating.

But I'm still looking forward to Easter.

(I decided that no one could stay on a diet without cheating for as long as I'm going to have to stay on a diet. So I am planning my cheat days in advance - if I've got one scheduled every two or three months, then it's a little easier to summon the willpower the rest of the time. My first cheat day is going to be Easter. And I will eat chocolate and candy, dammit.)

--Liz