I think I will post more about this, but I have been in the apartment since Tuesday, and will probably be in the apartment through.. Tuesday. Snow's finally stopped, at least. I'll post some pictures tomorrow; oh well, I'm finished at OC, on to WSU (have housing set up and everything) on January 12th. Final quarter GPA was 3.83 with a 3.56 overall and 3.81 in major. A little bit of boasting and a quick update for people who don't keep up with me otherwise. Yesterday (today still for me) was the solstice, which is why the being stuck in was irritating, as Amy is in Iowa, so I'm alone, and this was the only holiday I normally celebrate.

 Very short summary: I broke up with Chris and ended up in a poly relationship with two other girls, which has been stable since the end of April. Switched to transferring to WSU and going for Nuclear Engineering due to credit limits, then utterly fell in love with the idea. My GPA in the past year has proved I'm a genius at engineering, and, uhm, really, other than the sheer magnitude of all that implies, what else can I say? 

 Oh, yeah, I have a new coat.

 

 On top of everything else I'm going through at  the moment, if I want to apply for FAFSA  aid  for school this coming year, I still need to update my draft registration with my new name and address. The best part is that this is apparently a common enough issue that:

How does the Military Selective Service Act apply to individuals who have had a sex change?   Individuals who are born female and have a sex change are not required to register. U.S. citizens or immigrants who are born male and have a sex change are still required to register. In the event of a resumption of the draft, males who have had a sex change can file a claim for an exemption from military service if they receive an order to report for examination or induction.


  So, though I would get punched in the face and thrown out of the office in short order if ever called for an examination for the actual draft (which is ironic, because, eh, a job is a job, and I wouldn't really care if I was in the military. I would however care if they tried to put me in the military as a boy, which I suppose is rather the point), I must still nonetheless update this registry,  which  I must dutifully maintain until my 26th birthday when it automatically lapses. Which is bad, because I need to contact them, get my original information, have that sent here to my new address (I hope the postman thinks its the boyfriend of one of us, bleh), and then send in the update information.

Hopefully no Jesus freaks in the establishment try to hamper this or destroy my information to fuck me over, as at this point, I really, really only care about the FAFSA. Ah well.

 I've also rather voluntarily ended up completely estranged from my mother, but I'd regarded that as inevitable for quite some time now. At least I'm getting along well with my sister.

 Though I was going through a very dark time; working very hard, and then  leaving that horrid job at the insistence of everyone (stories later, I suppose). Amy's still at her's, and hasn't found anything better yet, though we're finally OK and stable for  the moment. I'm reorienting my life yet again. We'll see how that goes.

 I hope I will not be remiss again in providing more details.

Sorry  for an even bigger lack of updates. I've been morbidly depressed while trying to get a job, and failing so far, though granted I've been looking for less than three weeks, but I've still sent out my resume upwards of 90 times. Including 20 in the past 24 hours, though granted I already have one interview set up from that for Monday. I'm also running low on pills; I run out thursday, I'm desperately hoping either my replacement shipment arrives by then (it should have already gotten here, yesterday as a matter of fact at the latest) or else that I manage an appointment with a friendly doctor before then. I have all my letters and so on in order, so it shouldn't be a problem now, but simply getting the appointment is the issue.

 Amy, on the other hand, has a full time job, albeit a mediocre one, doing medical surveys. She's interviewing down in portland for a part-time evening job teaching MCAT stuff on biology right now. Between the two she'd be making a fair bit, though the first is just a placeholder for a real biotech career for her. It also means we won't starve, get evicted, or have our power cut off in the middle of winter, having 6k in the bank and about, oh, 1.3k coming in a month now at the moment versus probably 1k in expenses a month (somewhat pessimistic, hopefully) plus food, which for us consists of bulk rice and pasta anyway. So I'm alive and safe, and I'll get around to posting some fresh pictures in a bit; I REALLY do genuinely like how I look now.

 Sorry for the lack of updates.


 After a very desperate search of two weeks, Amy and I finally got an excellent apartment in Bremerton, Washington, an hour's ferry commute from Seattle across the sound on the Kitsap peninsula. Yesterday we had a marvelous time going to Orcas island: I've already made up my mind that my honeymoon will be to Rosario there, no matter who it's with (or how many times it takes place if a Polyamorous family unit forms as I'd dream of).

 Anyway, tomorrow I collect the rest of my possessions from my family with Amy's help, which will furnish the apartment. Monday, there's an open house at the Verbena queer women's health clinic down in Seattle I'll be going to after re-sending in the application to change the name on my birth certificate (it was returned to me because I sent 17 instead of 20 dollars because the fee schedule had changed, blast it all) and file at Social Security to have my name changed and my old records impounded there, now that I have the information for it. I guess on top of that I'll troll for applications at all the weird and quirky places I can, though I'm hoping above all hell that I manage to get the open position at Verbena--I'd work for considerably less than everyone else and put sixty hours a week into it simply for the sake of helping the community, and the pride in having such a position. But we'll see. My innate pessimism recommends me to think it a very unlikely option; yet, overall, I'm confident at least of some sort of stable job within the next two weeks, and Amy and I still have six thousand five hundred dollars in immediately accessible cash, another two thousand in emergency reserves, and no bills to pay until the first of November. She's also got another job prospect to follow up on, thankfully.

 If anyone needs a place to stay up here for two weeks, let us know. The apartment is utterly huge, and the lease lets us have someone over for up to 14 days at a time. Sorry about the lack of updates, also. Now that my situation is finally stable again that will definitely change. And I'm back in Washington State, of course, which is better--and as a Peninsulaire, no less!

 

 Trip was hell. Danielle is a great person. Elise is friendly. Future's looking good. Amy will be here by the 12th.

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x129/Mrinia/Picture004.jpg?t=1187934628

 Since the link isn't working right now, just click that. My parents have already seen pictures, so.. In the clear.

 I'm leaving tomorrow. My next update will be.. Tuesday.

 See you then, Danielle, and thanks again!

 All is well, though the sooner Amy is able to follow me, the better.

Amy's mother thinks it's a good idea for me to leave and try and get everything accomplished back in Washington State, while working a job for a while. I am forced to concur with her, and, feeling a bit unwelcome from it, though I recognized her honesty and fortrightness and how it really was correct, begged my parents into providing me a train fare back to Washington State, where I shall be staying with Elise. There I'll try to find work and I'll complete the name change and so on. May end up down in Seattle. Amy is expanding looking for a job, and she's definitely coming up at the end of September. So I may settle back in Seattle or even the Portland area as well.


Very surprising, shocking, and a bit fear-inducing, but handled well as usual, even if it stripped away some pride in speaking to my parents in these circumstances, and, well, that's the breaks of surviving life in general. I'll be back in Washington State on the 28th, and I've already got Danielle, possibly the awesomest person in general I know, to gladly volunteer to take me from the Everett train station to Bellingham. So, all's well, and in some sort of weird imitation of my ironic title for this journal, I am indeed once again on the road, an unsettled traveling life that doesn't seem to easily stop.

Hard drive on my Mac is dead. Fortunately it's still under warranty, though I lost everything on it, but I just see that as a fresh start. All of my writings were backed up in other places, after all. And I would have had regular backups but I didn't bring my external hard drive with me since it was supposed to be a two week journey--which is now five months and indefinitely, ah well. I'm going to get it fixed and then give it to Amy so she can use it on her commutes to work by train in California. Then she'll buy me a linux desktop for me to have at home. It's a fair trade. And I have a two-hour electrology appointment scheduled for Monday with someone commonly considered to be the best electrologist for working on transwomen in the country--two hours with her is worth four hours with someone else. So, life goes on, pretty even-handedly, even.

Things are a bit uncomfortable. Amy's brother Daniel doesn't much like me, though he is civil. I don't know all of their routines, and have been extremely hard on myself when I make mistakes.

Yesterday, Amy and I explored the property--for the first time it was cool enough--and today we're going to drive around Commerce. Since I'm not getting out of the car I'm going to be daring and wear the sundress I have despite being in the rural bumfuck. Didn't get any word back from the other transwoman here via yahoo, which is maybe not a surprise.

Anyhow. Yesterday was rather a bad day with Amy and I being synergetically depressed--I'd almost say that we share some kind of psychic bond between the two of us, how that goes-- but by the end of it we'd cheered each other up, laughing and hugging on her bed. She takes anti-depression medications, and she's always thought she's worthless or defective for it. It was not an attitude that I helped with my own opinions about drugs back when I was in a stage of abject denial about my identity. I cleared that up by tossing my pill bottles on her bed and reminding her that I, too, have been taking those; and there was no reason for her to be off her drugs since, oh, June. Which I hadn't asked her to do or anything of the sort--she'd done it herself under that impression--which left her depressed the whole while rather than anything else.

I'm very glad that's cleared up. We're closer for it, and we are really growing comfortable with each other. We're both of the clingy sort and the less tension there is between us the better. I know that for some our relationship would seem to close to be friends--and they'd be right. We are, if only in a spiritual sense, sisters, and we've grown more and not less comfortable with that.

On the practical side, I'm getting around two thousand dollars from my father for my car, which he managed to wreck about ten days ago (he was very apologetic about it, which is nice, and has actually gotten some literature from PFLAG, which stunned me, but he keeps using my old name and correcting himself and he seems to view me more as a gay man than a woman, which frankly frustrates me FAR more than his simple hatred. I'd rather be hated than loved as a gay man--which is maybe extreme, I don't know), which will bring my cash reserves up to about 4,200 dollars. Amy currently has about 6,200 and the temp job she's working will go until the middle of September, which we hope will net her around another grand despite expenses (she's also getting paid by one of her co-workers for gas for them to carpool together). With any luck we'll have about $11,500 by the time we move in the middle of September, with plenty of places to stay for free lined up along the way, her car for our stuff, NO DEBT (the most important thing by far), and I have enough hormones until the middle of October, by which time we should be quite settled in down in Sacramento.

All in all, I count myself enormously lucky. Despite being cut off by my parents, Amy and I have a situation here which is frankly enviable compared to that of a lot of people who just graduate from college, let alone one of those and a transwoman.

Also, and incidentally, Danielle Askini has started a new website regarding transgender HIV, which I'm going to help out with to the best of my abilities--maybe write a few articles on my own outlook, since, well, being a rural girl who's never lived in a large city I've never found myself noticing objectification and so on save on the internet--nor being trapped in the cycle of poverty and enforced expectations which drive so many transwomen into sex work. I don't know if I'm really a positive role model or maybe just irrelevant, but at the least I can help around the website, which is www.transgenderhiv.com -- And I also hope to meet Danielle, who is a cool and impressive lady, once I'm back in the PacNorWest myself at some point.

First time in almost five months, actually, since it was the 5th - 6th. Damn geez wow. That was an experience worth remembering after so long on hard flat things or soft things which were not remotely approaching flat. It's amazing how deprivation turns trivial things into an awesome experience. Of course, there was a good matress, and a door to lock made me feel safe, which is always important for my good night's sleep...

But, yes, I'm very happy, and now just sort of lazily organizing my stuff.

I believe there's actually one other transgendered individual in this town, which seems like the most frightful place to be one in the Whole World, so now there's two of us, for the next month and a half or so. I've contacted her in hopes of making a local friend for the stay as well as Amy's family.

Graduation parties continued with dinner out at an excellent pizza place with Amy's aunt and her life partner (they're lesbians) and one of their daughters and her husband, along with me and Amy and David. I still passed perfectly, which has all in all left me very happy indeed. Then we packed up a bit when we got back (they'd already disconnected Amy from the internet), slept, woke up early, got food at the awesomely greasy Varsity (world's largest drive-in restaurant) as a last ritualistic celebration on leaving GaTech, and then stopped to get a wireless router and card at Frye (useful in the coming apartment too) and drove on to Amy's family's home, where I'm now settled into the guest bedroom on the wireless.

I may sleep here tonight or, if David and Amy are feeling modest, I'll sleep on the floor in Amy's room while David sleeps in this bed, and then, after that, I get a bed for the first time since the night of March 13th/14th to actually be able to sleep in! Since then it's been moving train bunks, a weird 60's lounger, and some couches. Being in a real bed again will be very nice for a change.

 Commerce is as rural as promised; Amy's family's house is incredible and I can't wait to live there; the area looks nice to explore, the main problem being the people. I met Amy's brother (for about five seconds as he drove past in a truck) and Amy's mother (made dinner for her, we talked over dinner). She hugged me as we were introduced and was very nice throughout. It would have been perfect.

 Except then she got a phonecall that her mother had died. So the whole day was damped by the knowledge Amy's grandmother had died, right the day before her graduation. Sometimes things have a strange sort of terrible interplay between them in real irony.

 We shall see how affairs develop from here. But at least I'm here for Amy.

 A bit nervous, as I want to make a good impression, but hopefully all shall go well today. We'll be heading up there in about three hours. As for Amy, well, she'll be graduating tomorrow!

 David arrived driving a Volkswagen Passat with a black leather interior, his sister's car. I drove it from about 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM, central. That part of the trip took us from Bolingbrook to Atlanta via Champagne, Paducah and Nashville terminating in Chattanooga, when I let David drive. After having a piece of texas toast, two cups of coffee, a glass of apple juice, a glass of water, and a glass of milk for breakfast at around 6:30 AM, I did not eat or drink anything again except a small glass of water with my pills on the way to Atlanta, even though I'd had only two hours, possibly less, of sleep.

 In central Illinois just to the north of Champagne I had a chance to drive faster than 100mph. I'd been following the police patterns for a while and when I crested a hill (with a couple people ahead of me pushing 85mph) I saw the road was open for a good 2 - 2.5 miles ahead, perfectly flat and straight with no vehicles off to the side anywhere that might be cops. A snap second later, I had the accelerator to the metal. The Passat's speedometer is geared to 160mph, and I easily broke one hundred before breaking back to a comfortable 80.

 Then the best thing ever happened: There was this police officer riding herd on a prisoner transfer van. They were both making 70mph, about five over in that stretch of Illinois. So the cop KNEW anyone who passed him was going over the speed limit. I knew he knew, so I settled back a couple carlengths behind him in the left lane (he was in the right behind the van) and matched his speed. All well and good, until someone came roaring up behind me at around 80, not realizing, apparently, that it was a cop (the car was of the semi-marked variety, no lights or insignia but with the antennae to definitely indicate it, and it was a white Crown Victoria, naturlich. So this guy wanted to speed past, and I obligingly got over into the right lane. But before he could accelerate clear, the cop had gotten in the left lane. He matched speed exactly with the prisoner transfer van, and.... Stayed that way for 45 minutes.

 Since everyone goes at least 15 to 20mph over in rural areas of Illinois (like, 80% of all drivers there I encountered), this soon turned the state trooper and the transfer van into the pace cars of I-57. And they kept it up. When they had to pass a slow truck, the prisoner transfer van seamlessly changed lanes just in time to prevent anyone from passing right and then dodging the truck; then the van shifted back, and the officer, throughout, stayed precisely matched with him, so that not a single person was able to pass them for nearly an hour, a situation that ended only when they got off at an exit. There's this egotistical part of me that wants to think that the cop did it for me since I was being nice and trying not to tick him off and then those idiots came along...

 Anyway, a while after Paducah I got extremely tired, and for a while was damn near falling asleep at the wheel, craning with my eyes, shifting my feet a lot, burst-accelerating then adjusting my shoe on my pedal foot before returning it to the accelerator, shielding my eyes with a hand, shifting hands, etc. I was determined to get us out of the Nashville area before stopping. And my sheer determination translated into my body finding another source of energy, somehow (I had abstained from eating afraid it would make me tired as my body was digesting), and I was fully awake and aware again not just through Nashville--where I rode out a powerful storm, often only making 20mph (others pulled off), and we hit some of rush hour but not nearly all of it, thank the Gods, with only two times we were reduced to stop and go and making good progress in the Carpool lane the others, often faster than the speed limit, thankfully--but all the way to Chattanooga.

 There we stopped at a Shell station and I limped my way over to the Hardees across from it, needing lots of calories to replace the reserves sapped from my body, and ordered a double-patty monster thickburger, 2/3rd pounds with two slices of cheese and two pieces of bacon. Note that I did not have a meal with it, I had a diet coke as my drink, and that burger along with a single slice of texas toast were sufficient nutrients for me for a whole day. That you can get a meal with a Monster Thickburger tells you something about Hardees, and America. David took over the driving, and I spent the rest of the trip making myself up in the car, fretting about how I looked, and saving him from getting lost twice in a row. Amy met us outside, transferred my stuff, and I settled in to hug her, and be at home at last--for no matter how much we move we'll always we at home when we're together, now, for good.

 Today is a wonderful day.

The problem with Amy's graduation was quickly handled, and so all is set for my heading down to Atlanta, effective early morning on the First of August, thanks to her boyfriend David who will also be visiting for her graduation. Then I'll be living with my truesister... Hopefully until the day I die, which is itself hopefully quite some time from now. Nothing like the poor survival statistics for transwomen to encourage me to make it into my 90's like everyone else in my family.

Switched my cellphone back down from monthly pre-paid to when-I-need-to to save money. Thinking of trying to find some way to use up the remaining minutes before they expire on the 31st. Anyone want to have a long phone conversation with me? Let me know and you will receive my number. I like showing off my voice, "showing", as it is, and a tad egotistical, because I have it down pretty well--I don't understand why so many transwomen seem to put absolutely no work at all into their voice, no matter how hard it may be. It's one of the few things that's also /free/ in the process of transitioning.

A bit more than three months After Chris and I'm in sort of a tentative quasi-girlfriend status with a very nice lady down in Pensacola, Florida. No plans to meet anytime soon and even if it comes to nothing it's nice to have someone to flirt with on the internet consistently, as strange as that may (or may not) be. Life is really looking to be up, frankly.

My first girlfriend was a massive Sharpe fan. I hope she's doing well--I've certainly ended up with as much an eventful life as she did, from what I'd heard in later days. I wish you well, Erica, wherever you are now and whatever you may be doing.

So, Amy is not listed as graduating at the GaTech registrar's office, despite having met all remaining requirements for the summer. She is going to try to get this straightened out... Later today. Hopefully it will be a minor and quickly fixed problem. If it isn't, well, it won't delay my vocational education but it means I won't have a place to stay until December with her, instead of heading down there in 8 days, if she gets delayed for some reason.

This of course a potential major setback; living here for 4.5 months has pushed things to the limit more or less, and I'd need to go somewhere else. Fortunately I have that someplace else in the form of a friend's house up in Bellingham Washington. Well, apartment. She's trans and works at a Borders and her name is Elise; I figure I'd either manage as a typist (107 wpm error-corrected, 110 wpm gross) or something similiar. She as a spare bedroom in her apartment even.

I can only hope that it can be comfortably avoided and Amy can deal with the problem. We shall see. If not, well, I've always been able to pick myself up from these sorts of uncontrollable events, which is more than a little like a soldier's life to me, thus the association and thus the Sharpe song.

So, I had dinner with Liz, Debi, Debi's girlfriend Bing, an awesome lady from Texas who is a friend of Bing's, and a reasonably fun guy whose house is that which Debi and Bing are staying at for the convention they're running (for Milliways Bar--SF fandom con, of course), he had a UK accent I think. Anyway, excellent Tapas, absolutely delightful unrestrained conversation about all sorts of geeky things and humorous anecdotes of the sort which make for a fine evening. It was a simply awesome meal, and an awesome time. I didn't have any problems at all--I didn't get clocked (read) a single time--and I received some positive affirmation. As Liz and I were leaving behind everyone else the Maitre'd said "goodnight ladies", which basically left me giddy for the rest of the night.

 Anyway, the whole experience was one of absolute perfection. Didn't get to drink because I was driving back and I'm very cautious about that, but otherwise utterly fine. Everything from the oiled bread forward was absolutely delicious, and the place was very fancy: since it's a Tapas bar you have a bunch of appetizers that everyone sort of passes around and samples, and our's were, roughly: spicy potatoes with tomato alioli; goat cheese baked in tomato sauce; fried green peppers & coarse salt; roast dates with bacon & apple vinaigrette; seared lamb chops, piquillo peppers; beef empanada; endive, blue cheese, walnut & membrillo salad; tomato bread; house marinated olives; roast eggplant salad with goat cheese; chicken salad with curry; and a melted cheese special dish on their specials menu. Plus the custard I ordered for dessert, we cannot forget that little perfection.

 The whole expense of the meal was considerable, we'll put it that way, but Liz and Debi covered almost all of my portion at their insistence (more like they just put the money down and I couldn't resist--THANK YOU TWO FOR THAT MARVELOUS TREAT!) so I ended up only spending eight dollars for the whole night, which was incredibly kind of them. We were there for almost three hours and it was certainly one of the most awesome experiences of my life. It's amazing how unrestrained Debi is in public and I really admire her for it. I was teasing her a bit by telling her girlfriend Bing--that's a nickname of course--about the message board we met at (Same one I met Amy at), and we got started about how there are "absolutely no rules about swearing whatsoever there, and you cannot at any time dismiss an argument because someone sprinkles it with swearing", and Debi abruptly blurted out "fucktard! They INVENTED fucktard there!" And then everyone is repeating it--right next to this family with small children who were waiting. It was great fun. The silly thing is that earlier in the restaurant Debi was affronted by Bing's effort to toast my water glass (which I demurred because I am civilized and cultured, and knew, just to be egotistical), because you're not supposed to toast with water. Brits are awesome: Both unrestrained and yet highly cultured.

 We talked about everything from the museums and aquariums of Chicago to the problems with public transportation and rail services and how to improve them, and everyone--despite having more formal education than I--complimented me on an agreeable and excellent choice for a career with good pay and benefits in going to that vocational school to become a railroad conductor, which made me feel quite assured in my decision there, showing that those who frequently have graduate degrees in this case or are studying for them think it's the perfect idea for dealing with my current situation, and even talked about the way the British hold the fork and knife in different hands than we do, and always have hands on cabinet doors in the kitchen and bathrooms. Then we got onto our favourite subject, geekery, and spent much of the rest of the time talking about everything from Hook and Pirates of the Caribbean to Harry Potter and the "Black manpanties in 300"!, homoerotic slash fanfiction, the distinction between how I roleplay fandoms and other people like me, and how they do. (Setting interesting viz. character interest.) The fun of ridiculing Very Bad Movies, and numerous other things that escape me at the moment.

 Bing is an excellent raconteur at table, and with her facial expressions which were so masterful and unrestrained and her rapid, excited delivery throughout the evening I was much amused, and of course I've actually known Debi for longer than she has and therefore was able to indulge in some light-hearted embarrassment. Though we both conspired to avoid talking about that message board TOO much; just enough for us to inadvertently cement our position as the most hopeless geeks at the table. Then again, since Debi met Bing while roleplaying at Milliways, perhaps they win the title...

 Debi is very tall and quite attractive with long blonde hair, and we actually look pretty similar--her eyes are darker than mine, and she has much longer hair, but our hair is of the same shade and (now that I've lost several inches of height on hormones through muscles shifting and cartiledge in the back degrading) we're about the same height, so I have some considerable hope of looking just as good as she does once my hair has fully grown out. Bing is shorter and from Boston with short dark hair and she can charmingly work the lesbian stereotypes into hilarity which I found was very amusing--both their friends were equally interesting, and Liz fairly met the conversation and we all ended up by the friends by the end with her asking for their e-mail addresses. And a conversation about livejournal and how Bing's contained "lots of swearing", naturally.

 This is an edited version of a letter I sent to my mother, but it seemed the best way to post things. Sorry for guttering up friends lists, but it makes me happy so I'll do it once in a while.

 Which is selfish of me. Essentially, plenty of bad luck on friday (no surprise), and living in what's frankly a depressing, dead-end living situation, without any prospects of doing anything: And it's over in less than three weeks. The result of this is that I'm depressed, frustrated, and sometimes angry, and seem trapped and surrounded by those I have difficulty relating with. Liz is very nice, but she's also very busy.

 Today was the first day I felt better enough to even write, and, well, there are plenty of positives. I'm largely fully healed now, and I'm looking positively beautiful--I hugely regret not having longer hair (though the home situation with my family made that impossible) and the way circumstances conspired to cut off a lot of additional electrolysis I'd planned--but I have hopes that in another two months, when Amy and I will be settling in Sacramento, I will be pretty much adapted to functioning, especially in a reasonably tolerant environment like that; the midwest tends to raise my hackles a bit, and I'm not even going to attempt to pass in rural Georgia out of sheer stark terror (not because I couldn't do it, but because of the police, and my name not being legally changed), which is where I'll be living effective August 4th for probably a month and a half.  But being with Amy will more than make up for that.

 Otherwise, I've met a second Amy--lives in Pensacola, the poor girl, but we've hit it off very well. Which is good, because my sister Amy's aunt in Japan died thursday and she's been with her mother back at home ever since without reliable internet access. That's indubitably contributed to the strain as I've felt guilty about not being there for her.

 Anyway, I'll be meeting Debi--innerbrat--on Tuesday, which combined with the prospect of lots of Tapas is at least a general positive to look forward to.