— Lärabar, key lime pie flavor. Not even close to its expiration date—go me!

— Camera, in case, with PC cable in the back pocket.

— Flannel shoe mitt I sometimes use to put the camera in when the case is too bulky to fit wherever it is I want to carry the camera.

— Planner, which I use for to do lists. (I keep my calendar online.)

— Packet of blank Filofax paper that fits in my planner. Yes, the planner is also in the bag. No, I haven’t put the paper in the planner.

— Ziploc bag containing three kinds of throat lozenges and one kind of decongestant (the good kind, the kind one has to sign for at the drugstore because it can be used to make meth). Leftover from my July sickness. Sigh.

— Two—no, make that three—empty plastic bags.

— Notebook of information about my mom’s finances and medications and stuff. I really do not need to have this near me at all times, especially now that her health is better and she’s taking care of her own bills and things.

— Miscellaneous objects: a set of keys to my office desk drawers, two pens (one green and one pink), Sally Hansen Natural Shine not quite nail polish (most recently applied at red lights while driving to work earlier this week), scraps of sock yarn (why? I don’t knit at work).

— Folder with checklists on the projects I’m working on for DP. Work has been so crazy recently that I’ve been doing no DP stuff. I thought I might get some time on the days I worked at home, since I’d save the two commute hours, but no.

— Folder with pages torn out of magazines featuring things I thought I might like to buy, read, or do. I intend to go through these and decide which I was still interested in and transfer them to the appropriate lists in my planner.

— Three Sierra Trading Post catalogs and a bunch of pages torn from other Sierra Trading Post catalogs because I thought I might order some stuff soon. I don’t need more stuff.

— Many, many papers that need to be filed or recycled but most definitely do not need to be carried around day after day. Examples include: two expired Bed Bath & Beyond coupons from August (I do not recall the last time I was in a Bed Bath & Beyond), a map to a party I went to last month or maybe that was in August as well, the quilt show program from July (used to give credit in captions on the photos I put up on Flickr).

And now I’ve put my nano in so I’ll have it this weekend (I’d put it in a desk drawer at work when I was cleaning up last night). Maybe I can listen to some podcasts while I clean out this bag.

Weigh less and move more: I weigh about the same as I did at the end of last month, which really isn’t surprising considering I haven’t been doing anything remotely resembling dieting. There are times when it seems there’s no point in trying, like yesterday, when I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a bowl of soup with crackers for lunch, a piece of fish and some rice for dinner and gained a half a pound overnight. Okay, I did have some ice cream, too, but only a small bowl, the calories in which were about what I’d burned off during my morning run. If eating like that is going to put on weight, why bother? Yeah, I know—water retention, normal fluctuations, blah, blah, blah—but still, discouraging.

My running miles were down compared to August. I did a bit of a taper for the race (probably not necessary for such a short distance, but I did set that PR so maybe it was a good idea), then later in the month I lost a week when I aggravated my iliotibial band again (it’s seems fine now, so taking that time off seems to have been the right call), then finally got zapped for a few days by the mysterious abdominal ailment that arrived just in time for the weekend but didn’t disappear on Monday. I missed a few gym workouts, too, but only a few, and I’ve been adding reps and weight and even a few machines to my routine, so I’m pretty happy with that.

Keep less and organize more: On the keeping less side of the ledger, I donated two big bags of books to Friends of the Library (including a few I’d bought from them in the first place, so that’s like double credit or something). In the organizing category, I made some order out of the chaos of photos waiting to go into albums, sorting things by date then actually getting about six months of pictures onto pages and ordering prints for the next set of pages I want to do. So, not a lot of progress but not nothing, either.

I also finished up a dishcloth I started earlier in the week. I got the pattern from Dishcloth Boutique. It took me a few tries to get comfortable with scooping up those strands for the “wings” but overall it was pretty easy to learn the pattern and figure out what came next just by looking at the knitting. Cotton is still far from my favorite thing to knit with, but I’m giving it a few more chances before I move on. Besides, I may have to come up with a few extra dishcloths for a swap that I naively arranged in a non-hostess format (people sent their cloths directly to other participants instead of to one coordinator to distribute them, which means some people haven’t gotten their cloths yet almost a month past the target date).

I was also delighted to be able to meet up with Mel in Toledo and spend an afternoon chatting and lunching and shopping. Again, something I wouldn’t have gotten to do but for the internet, since that’s where we met. Of course I wish her visit to Ohio hadn’t been a result of being displaced from home by Hurricane Ike, but it was great to see her again. I am not entirely sure if it’s so great that one of the things we did was visit a bead shop; up until this point, I’ve resisted the lure of their pretty colorful shiny wares, but this time I gave in. I fear I may have a new hobby soon. Good thing I did buy some beads, though, since I couldn’t get any fabric since the quilt shop was closed when we showed up around 4:30. Silly quilt shop.

The only thing I had to whine about this past weekend was the weather, because the rest of it was just good fun. A couple of my friends at work know the owner of a craft retreat house up north on the sunrise side of Michigan; they reserved a couple nights there and invited several more of us crafty ladies from the office to join them. I took Friday off so I could take my time getting there, and I sure did take my time. I stopped to snap pictures at several Big Boy restaurants in my continuing quest to document all the outdoor Boys in the state even though the rain meant I had to shoot from under an umbrella most of the time. In between Big Boys, I met up with Jodie and her girls for lunch and shopping. The omelette place where we ate had so many good choices I seriously considered planning a stop there on my way home. After a stop at the grocery store for snacks, wine, and the ingredients for the Saturday breakfast I’d volunteered to make, I finally made it to the house around 5:30, the first one of our group to arrive.

The greeter gave me a tour of the house and just as we were finishing up the next two ladies arrived. The rest of the night was spent relaxing and eating and talking and taking another tour of the house every time a new person showed up. There were a lot of quilts and other colorful elements in the house so these tours never got boring. We also did some sewing; we’d all brought our quilting projects and supplies and the house had a very nice setup for us to work in. A couple of us brought knitting, too. Saturday was a continuation of Friday’s fun. Three of us went for a run in the morning even though it was drizzling. We did about three miles, and it felt much easier than when I do that distance on my own at home; we got to chat while we moved and the surroundings were more interesting than my usual routes, what with Lake Huron right there and a triathlon that happened to be going on at the time (we saw tiny bits of the swim and bike parts). Later, all of us made a field trip to the quilt shop nearby (so nearby we could walk) before settling in for still more talking and eating and crafting. It was so nice to not have any schedule to meet or to do list to mind. By Sunday morning when we had to pack up and go home, I was feeling really relaxed and happy. Driving home in the worsening rain dampened (hah!) that mood by the time I got home, though. I did get a chance to walk on the beach for a short while before the sky opened up but didn’t enjoy my stops at a couple of cemeteries I’d spied on the way up as much as I would have if the conditions had been less soggy. One bright spot was seeing a small group of wild turkeys grazing along the roadside; they didn’t seem to mind the rain.