So, less than a month until my birthday-

Do you all have your presents picked out and your travel plans arranged? Kidding, of course. It's weird that I'll be 30 in less than a month though. I know I'll at least have fun on my birthday, because Eli & Jack are driving down, and we are going to visit R in NorCal for the last day of his week-long training there. Then we'll be back here, I hope hanging out with other people who come visit, but at the very least enjoying ourselves immensely. Hm, I just have to make sure that if we go camping that night I can set up my tent sufficiently far enough away from the snoring....

Anyway, R is gone yet again this week, at a fire training in Redmond. He is enjoying spending his per diem on the abundance of restaurants there. I wish we had better restaurants here, or at least more variety (not that we ever go out). It's pretty much all your typical American-style food, including loads of Gringo-tastic mexican places, and a few totally old-school inauthentic Chinese food places. At least Porta is damn good Italian, and you can get good pub-grub at a few places. Apparently there is a Thai restaurant at the new concert place downtown, and there's also been an Indian restaurant sign up for months now with the place never open. 2 of the Oriental restaurants in town sell sushi, but at one a guy I know has gotten food poisoning twice, so that's not so hot. But tomorrow I'm going to the other one with a couple friends (well, at least Gloria, we'll see if anyone else shows up, it was kind of last-minute).

I'm kind of obsessed with food lately (well, more than usual) because I've been trying a detoxifying diet this week- no alcohol, caffeine, dairy, gluten, meat, or eggs, so that basically reduces me to fruit, veg, legumes, and nuts. It has me craving empty carbs and sugar like crazy, even the yummy coconut rice pudding I made isn't working. And honestly, I can't see that it's helped my stomach any, which is frustrating. Stupid stomach, just be normal!

As for knitting, I haven't gotten much done lately (sucked away by my first love- books), but I just got my Christmas present from V in the mail (call it a half-Christmas & birthday present!), the book "Custom Knits" which has some good patterns, but more importantly, teaches you the details of how to make a pattern that works for YOU and looks the way you want it too, hooray! I need to finish up my sexy vesty, I'm just in the middle of the back now and need to break into my third ball of yarn, unfortunately. Hm, I just looked at my projects page on ravelry, and learned that out of 50+ things I've worked on, only 1/5 of them were for me! I clearly need to be more selfish. ;)