Did everyone have a fun and safe Saint Patrick's Day? If you are looking to imbibe lots of alcohol, do what we did: watched The Boondock Saints (excellent film) and took a drink every time someone said the F-word or there was a cross on the screen. Wow, lots of drinking ensued.

My only thing today was a public meeting about AmeriCorps that wasn't quite interesting. It was too "technical" for little old civilian me; it was talk about grants and how they should be awarded, and to whom, and for how long, etc. I did enjoy hearing from the local community leaders about the impact of AmeriCorps members. There were representatives from a Whatcom County Fisheries place, Starbucks grantmaker, King County government, among others. (Did you know that King County is the 12th largest in the nation? I think that is fascinating and excellent.) People from organizations in Alaska and Montana also spoke, before I decided to leave.

This evening, I challenged myself to two back-to-back workouts. I really worked hard at Bodypump (weight-lifting) on Tuesday, and my poor biceps still hurt, so doing most of the same motions was pretty difficult (especially the squats and of course the bicep work). Then I stayed and did the Bodycombat (kickboxing) workout, which I last did in June 2003. (I'd been doing it regularly and enjoyed it, but June is when my knees went out, so I had to quit everything for the whole summer. That was a bummer. It did get me walking on my lunch breaks, which was wonderful.) Anyway, so I decided to try it out tonight and see if I held up. Well. It went better than I'd thought, sort of. The movements came right back to me, all the punches and kicks. Some of it was still really uncomfortable for one or the other knee. Because I work out but don't do endurance training, my face got bright red and my head hurt. Other than that, it was pretty fun!

Lessons in Being Poor, #1: Making Priorities. I appear to be failing this one. For most of February, I did well on cutting down extra expenses. I bought fewer things at the grocery store, especially the impulse/luxury items. I still went out to bars with people, but I refrained from ordering any drinks (healthy and cheap!). I didn't have the weekly massages at work. But then. I quit my job and I got in my head to spend an entire week in New York City. Ate all kinds of junk food, went shopping (only a tiny bit, hardly bought anything), went out to restaurants and bars. I came home and seem to have been leaking money. I went to Costco the other day and I bought a pair of jeans (Calvin Klein for $19, can you really blame me?), not to mention a fifty-dollar computer program (a new Print Shop with all kinds of goodies, that I'd been eyeing for awhile). Ay carumba, what possessed me? Do note that I haven't ruled out returning the blasted thing, though. Anyway, I'm totally scrimping, carrying a balance on my credit cards (which I only started doing two months ago, but I HATE it), and so I guess that's how I justify buying or spending on occasional unnecessary "fun" things.