I feel slightly stressed. Suddenly school is getting hard - though I think part of it is that I can't do homework on weekends. Student lab is closed on Saturdays and I don't have a Mac at home. So I have to do all the computer homework in the mornings and have to spend pretty much around 10-12 hours in school.

The weekend was FUN! Mike's cousin Nancy came to town and we got to hang out with her and her husband. She is the coolest! Out of all his relatives she just strikes me as the most fun and genuine person. Anyway, we went to two different bars. This was my first slip on the diet unfortunately. Not intentionally, of course. I just didn't eat most of the day because I wanted to save points for the evening and since we ended up at a bar, the food they had was only those appetizers, like buffalo wings or potato skins. So Mike ordered questadillas, which are of course loaded with cheese and floating in grease. So by the time those came, I had my passion martini - mmm, orange and raspberry and vodka, very good. But of course I was slightly drunk, being that I didn't eat much, so it didn't take a lot. Anyway, to make the long story short I had tons of those, and efficiently blew my diet. Therefore, today the scale didn't budge. At least I didn't gain! :) But - taking it one day at a time and not beating myself - that's the strategy. Today I am well within my diet and determined to lose weight next week.

Also last weekend we finally figured out how to play LOTR Trading Card game. It was awesome! For the full enjoyment u need at least 3 people to play. But let me tell u, it sure takes time. Once we got into it there was no stop, and there are so many varieties and infinite possibilities, especially if u play with different decks. Basically that game is based on Magic and there are different decks that have 63 cards each and are based on topics, like Fellowship deck features Aragorn and Gandalf, and the cards are quite different for those decks, different evil guys, armor, etc. Nikka got the Aragorn deck (of course), and Mike has Gandalf, and I got the Realms of the Elves set which features Legolas (of course :) and Boromir. Also two drastically different decks. But the point is, u can trade and combine, like Nikka's deck had Gandalf's horse, and she had no Gandalf, so she traded the horse to Mike for some weapon card that she had. Anyway, I won't go into the rules - it took us a long long time (several hours) to fuly understand those, but once we did it was so awesome!

I went to the decipher.com - the compnay that made the game and apparently altogether there will be nine releases (nine groups), and they are only on number five now. So actually in 3 weeks, the Battle of the Helms Deep comes out, which will feature Legolas again - yeah! and Eowyn decks. It is a separate from the Two Towers group although the Battle did come from the movie. It has some really awesome cards, like Gollum/Smeagol and also Ents! Ents are insanely strong, they have 8 to 11 points of strengh each.

Can u say I'm insane. Yeah. It is juts so awesome because again the game is so flexible that each time it varies. Plus u can buy supplemental cards, each set of which can have couple of rare cards, etc. I am not planning to spend too much money on it - but if it ever does get boring I can always spice it up. Mike loooves the game too, even though he is sceptila on spending money for it. How typical. But comeon, one deck costs $10, which is not the end of the world, especially since u buy stuff maybe once a month.. they dont get released too often. An expense? yes. But it's not like I spend too much money on myself. Actually more like - none. I haven't bought clothes for a long while, we hardly go out anymore (b/c of my diet and stuff) and even plays we didn't go much this winter too because of teh cold and general tiredness. So I do not feel bad about spending money on my hobby - even that peculiar! There. I justified myself before myself and that's what matters.