On...

On personal training: Fantastic. Fabulous. Fun. I used to hate the gym (I'm an outside kind of girl, when it comes to exercise), but Tyler is great. Basically, personal training feels like a date night, but with pain. I can work with that! I'm sore, but in that great "man, that was a good workout" kind of way, and the endorphins are amazing. Definitely will be keeping this up.

On my husband: Life is a bit brutal right now. This week, I have to finish marking 50 midterms, write a conference paper proposal for my Contemporary Poetry class, and finish my SSHRC applications, which are due on Friday. And we're having the hubby's parents & bro/sister-in-law over for dinner tonight. AND I have to work, and had to work yesterday! No time, and freaking out has ensued. So the hubby has been taking care of all of the grocery shopping and most of the cleaning this weekend so I can get some work done. Such a love.

On work: I'm resigning. I think. On Monday. I'm going to sit my boss down and discuss with her what we can do to help me not go insane (think reading until midnight every night, sleep deprived, stressed out, screwing things up at work, sounding like a dunce at school. That's me), but I have a feeling that the end of the meeting is going to be me handing in my letter of resignation. If I can only do one thing well, school is going to be it. I can't see a way that she'll be able to give me the support I need at work, and there are lots of other issues, like the amount of time that work sucks out of my week that I need for school, and my inability to focus on both at once.

I don't often have "break down and cry" kind of moments, but I had one over this, which tells me that I'm doing too much. Another thing that tells me I'm making the right decision is when I was chatting with our president's assistant, and she asked about school, she then commented that my face lit right up when I started talking about it. I always knew that doing both might not be something that I could handle, and I'm not going to feel guilty about putting me first and doing what's going to make me happy. It's a big decision, but one that I've talked about with a lot of people, who all back me up. I'll miss everyone, but I certainly won't miss the stress, and I'm looking forward to getting back into the serious academic groove I had in Halifax.

On friends: had a great break from work last night with a classical concert, in which Purple Mangos played violin and harp. Can't go wrong with inexpensive live classical, and it's always fun to support friends. Then Rhianon & hubby were in town to hit up the Apple store (they don't have one where they live), so we met up for coffee, which then turned into beer & wings. Love random friend nights.

On food: for the in-law dinner tonight, I'm making roast beef, Tyler Florence's fingerling potatoes (sans caviar), cipolline onions in balsamic, mashed squash, and peas. And chocolate lava cake for dessert, because it's easy, and the hubby loves it. Mostly things that I can just throw in the oven and ignore, which makes my life much easier. Should be fun.

I'm also really enjoying the two food blogs that I read regularly, 101 Cookbooks and Chez Pim. Despite the fact that they live fairly close together and often use similar ingredients, they both have different takes on food (Heidi is into super natural foods, whereas Pim has more of a French sensibility). I'm learning a lot from both of them (like pad thai from Pim), and I'm hoping to incorporate more, especially from Heidi and her use of unrefined sweeteners and interesting grains. I really like the concept of eating clean, and she writes about how to do just that. I think her Meyer lemon barley risotto (if you've ever eaten chez moi, you know well my love of lemons) is going to be my next attempt; I'm not into refined grains, and while I love risotto made with Arborio rice, barley will really do a lot to up the nutritional profile. I've also scoped out brown sushi rice at the amazing rice shop in the St. Lawrence Market, so there will be a brown rice sushi post on here sometime soon.

On the rest of the day: marking, cleaning, SSHRCing, cooking, entertaining, sleeping. And I'm off to get started!