Whew. Life is strange. Add one or two new things to your schedule, and it seems to shake up your whole life. And you seem to have no time to do anything until the dust settles. February hasn't really been all that busy a month, objectively speaking, yet I am struggling--and sometimes failing--to squeeze in all the things I want to do or should be doing. Who knew that starting a yoga class and attending a meeting or two would make such a difference?

Well, I guess it doesn't help when the meeting is a weekend meeting, in a city that's over 4 hours away, and you have to drive up after working all day Friday. That was my first weekend this month. After a couple months of asking for information, not getting any, and starting to despair that I will ever figure out how to be the Chair of the FLA Continuing Education Committee, things finally started happening. One of which was that I was suddenly told I am also automatically a member of the 2005 Conference Planning Committee, and they have their first meeting in Tampa on the weekend, and gee, I know it's short notice, but couldn't you please come? Going was a good experience, but wow, that's a lot of driving. Added to the fact that since all the deadlines had passed for travel leave applications, and since I sure as heck wasn't using my vacation time, I had to manipulate my schedule to be able to go on personal time. So it went something like this: Friday: work 9-5. Hop in car. Drive 4.5 hours. Check into hotel. Fall asleep. Saturday: Wake up. Attend 5 hour meeting. Hop in car. Drive 4.5 hours home. Meet Michael at his place. Drive to downtown Hollywood to attend a drum/dance party for his drumming class. Sunday: Wake up with pounding headache (too many drums in too small a space for too long). Take Advil and relax a couple of hours. Shower and get made up and costumed for Harmonic Motion's monthly performance party. Drive to NE Ft. Lauderdale, attend event. Drive home. Shower and fall into bed. Monday: back at work. Not that it wasn't a good weekend, of course--it was. But I really could have done without all that driving....

Michael and I had a pretty good Valentine's Day. He had to work during the day, but we made a dinner date at a favorite restaurant in the evening so we had some quality time together at least. Sunday, we attended the Florida Renaissance Festival, where we walked through a maze, drank some mead, watched a demonstration about training and flying birds of prey, saw bits and pieces of some smaller shows and and did lots of shopping at the various vendor booths. Well...I did most of the shopping. But then, my goal this year was to spend lots of money, so I guess I achieved it! :)

And now I'm back at work. Sigh. Someday I'm going to get this getting-paid-for-not-working thing figured out. But until then....