today was my first day back at work. it felt like i was away too long. like when you're away so long that you have sort of lost the rythm of the place and the people and how to act with everyone. it's almost like you're a semi-stranger again and you have to break the ice and re-establish yourself. people seem to hold back a little, make strange, as steve would say. and i felt a tiny bit shy because they've all been going on without me--in my unit and i wasn't even returning to them. it's strange and it's hard to explain. but i tried to be cheerful and go about saying my hellos, singing and whistling, asking about people's christmases and if they got hair cuts and so on until i felt more comfy in the work space. re-established if you will. i'm still in that foreign land called the clerical unit, but i'm starting to feel better there and i'm trying to be industrious. i don't feel good unless i'm industrious. today i made forms on the computer, cut out menus, photocopied, gathered and took out the garbage, made a meal plan for tomorrow night and took down christmas decorations. that filled up my day. it doesn't sound like it would fill up a day but it did, and it wasn't a bad sort of day.

elicia gave me a book that holds 100 cds for christmas. it's kind of exciting because i just had that dumb little purple foam one that didn't hold very many cds. so today after work i took all my cds out of the car and took all of my cds off of the cd tower and put them all in my book. there were so many that i forgot all about and was sooo glad to find again. and now they're all in my book. my book of cds. .....um my pal oh pals just called and that means that she gets my full attention. it's only right.