I find it hard to believe that I could possibly be busier than I have been the past two weeks. Today was my first day off since I got back from vacation, and I spent a few hours proofreading and will spend more time proofreading tomorrow, my other ostensible day off. I work all the time, and yet have no money. How is this possible?

Part of it is that my stock plan finally kicked in, and now they're taking 10% of my paycheck to buy Starbucks stock. I fully endorse this, but my paychecks are smaller now. Part of it is that I don't make a lot of money in the first place. And the rest of it is the fact that I keep having to spend money.

A new cell phone to finally replace my old ghetto phone with the broken antenna. Car insurance again. Shoes-- hey, I needed shoes. Doctor co-pays, eye doctor co-pays, car deductible, blah blah. I feel the need to go out and buy something horribly expensive-- after all, if I'm going to be broke anyway, I may as well have a Prada bag to put my empty wallet in.

I think I have a schedule figured out. I want to take on as many tutoring hours as I can, especially since I got that $3 raise. But I need to maintain a certain amount of hours at the Bux, both for financial reasons (can't lose my insurance or stock options or 401k) and for keeping-the-boss-happy reasons (until we hire another supervisor, my manager needs me on certain nights). I hope I can go down to 20 hours a week for a while, until the SATs are over.

Fortunately my boss, a wonderful person named Janis, is very understanding. And while I'm on the subject, Janis has inspired me to join Weight Watchers with her. In the past two months, she's lost 25 pounds, and she looks great. I went to the meeting with her on Thursday, and she's agreed to switch my schedule around so I can go to the Thursday meeting every week. Now there's a boss for you.

The people at the meeting are extremely enthusiastic about weight loss. There's lots of applauding. Every time you lose five pounds, they call your name and everyone applauds. Also if you lose ten percent of your weight, they applaud. And if you are brand new, everyone applauds. I think these people are just looking for excuses to applaud. Or maybe that's the secret to weight loss, and applauding burns calories. I guess if you have really fat arms-- which, let's be honest, some of us do-- it's not a bad plan.

I weighed in at exactly one pound less than my highest previous weight. Now, I know I've regained some weight, but I am certainly not as big as my highest previous weight, so I know that some of it is fat turned into muscle. But it's still an alarmingly high number, and I look forward to putting it behind me forever. I think the structure of this program is good for me-- I have such weird eating habits that making sure I eat enough is almost as important as making sure I don't binge.

I watched a bunch of movies the other night. I forget why-- I probably just felt like vegging out and doing laundry for an evening. I rented About a Boy, Elizabeth, and Y Tu Mama Tambien. About a Boy was very good, and yes, Hugh Grant is adorable. I had seen Elizabeth before, but since I'm newly interested in the lives of the Tudors, I wanted to see it again. It was good, and Cate Blanchett was great, but nothing earth-shattering-- exactly as I'd remembered.

Y Tu Mama Tambien was wonderful, though. Very haunting, and I spent the next couple of days thinking about it, which is always the mark of a good film. Except that I also spend a lot of time thinking about The Bachelorette, so maybe that's a poor litmus test. Anyway, I didn't know what to expect, and I don't want to give anything away, but it's a beautiful story, and well worth seeing. Plus, there's a lot of hot sex in it.

In other news, my father wrote to wish me good luck on my "thesesus"-- god bless him. I have been working on my "thesesus" essay and trying to get in touch with Professor President. Today, I also decided to throw out a couple of poems and replace them with something else. Tinkering, tinkering. But in addition to my degree, I want to have a publishable manuscript. May as well keep working until I get it as close to perfect as I can.

By the way, I'll probably post the thesis essay as an entry for those of you who care. And-- yes, finally-- the vacation entry is being worked on. I figure I'd better write it now, because next weekend I'm going back to Los Angeles, and if I don't write it now, I'll never remember what-all happened the first time.