A Random Assortment

It's been a while since I've done a bullet point, mish-mash style post here.  In no particular order, here are some of the things I'm thinking about:

• I almost never paint my fingernails with anything other than clear polish.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is that I feel like fingers are closer to your clothes and body than toes, and that it's more important for them to be either neutral or to somehow match.  Since I'm picky about that, that means that I just don't like the look of color.  The main reason, though, is that I am NOT one of those women who somehow seems to be able to maintain the perfect manicure.  When I paint my fingernails, they always chip badly, within days, or sometimes even within hours.  With all of that said, I painted my fingernails this week.  A fairly neutral and unobtrusive pink color.  More importantly, the color has lasted!!!  Without badly chipping.  I'm now totally sold on the higher quality of OPI nail polish.  (And I love the name of the color I'm wearing, a Pirates of the Caribbean inspired pink called "Sparrow Me The Drama")
• I'm seriously in love with an app I bought this week from the Mac App Store.  It's called Delicious Library.  It definitely wasn't the cheapest thing around, but for someone like me, with a huge library, and a fairly sizable collection of DVDs, it's brilliant.  It uses the iSight camera on my macbook to scan the bar code on my books and DVDs, and then loads the information.  If for some reason an item doesn't have a bar code, I can type in the ISBN number or search by title to find it.  It then adds the items to my shelves.  Best of all, if I loan a book or DVD to someone, I can drag that item from it's "shelf" in the app, onto that person's name in my contacts, and it records who I've loaned the item to.  This is fantastic, since over the last few years I've actually lost some much-loved books when they were loaned out and went missing, and I forgot who had them.  My one complaint with the app is that the iSight camera scanning can be quite slow and finicky, and that the compatible Bluetooth bar code scanner is crazy expensive.  But, that's a minor complaint, and if I get really frustrated with it, I can quickly type in the ISBN numbers instead.
• It's a long weekend in Alberta this weekend.  "Heritage Day".  I have no idea what it celebrates or commemorates, but I'm thrilled for an extra day off, and an extra day of sleeping in.
• I'm slowly and quietly beginning to toy with the idea of looking for housing some place other than Grandma's basement.  I'm keeping my ears open for friends hunting for roommates, and starting to watch rental ads for affordable bachelor suites or one bedroom situations, in neighborhoods that are still easily accessible to the rest of the things going on and important in my life via city transit.  (If you know of someone looking for a roommate in Calgary, definitely put them in touch with me!)
• I'm settling in to the reality that I will not be in school again until at least January.  I didn't make the cut for the September entry.  They had less than 40 spaces available, and the GPA for entry was astronomical.  I'm a good student, but not that good...  So, hopefully January will work out, and in the meantime I'm settling into this new "career" of office temping, and enjoying the flexibility and lack of pressure that it brings.  Nothing needs to come home with me at night, nothing needs to be worried about beyond the confines of the working hours.  Since my last office environment was the highly charged environment that my former roommates referred to as "the soap opera", this low-stress, show up and do your job and then go home environment is one that I'm loving!
• On a personal level, for the first time in years, I've been consistently feeling fairly healthy and good.  I'm loving it, but sometimes I wonder if my creativity ran away, along with the health and mood issues.  I wonder if people who have been reading here as I processed all of the negative and harder things are still interested in the me that is not struggling with those things on a consistent basis for the first time in the history of this blog.
• I'm discovering that I'm also needing to learn new language to talk about this different space in my life.  It's like the old adage about the many words that the eskimos have for snow - I have a highly developed and nuanced vocabulary to talk about pain, mental illness, depression, struggles, and wrestling.  I don't have as many words to talk about this news space yet.  In fact, in some ways I'm waiting to see if it even lasts, even as I work to find ways to share it.
• And, back to a lighter note to round up this mish-mash of a post, even though it totally does not do happy things for my lactose intolerant stomach, I'm in the midst of an ice cream craze.  I'm loving it, and eating it a couple of times a week or more.  My current particular favorite flavor comes from a local grocery store and is called mango swirl.  So tasty in a waffle cone.

On that note, I think I'm done.  My brain has been emptied of the random tid-bits I wanted to share with all of you!  Happy Weekend!