Recuperating from an illness or procedure for me is like living life in the outskirts, slightly out of focus. It's hard for me to focus on anything outside of my own health, and I keep to myself more so I feel like the world notices me less.

Today I finally feel a bit more in focus. Yesterday I did go back to work, but I barely communicated with anyone beyond the necessities. Today I feel more up to talking, and people respond to that unconsciously--more people are addressing me in the halls, etc. I'm moving down to 2 Ibuprofens at a time versus 3, and it seems to be working just as well, so I assume the pain is a little less and the healing is happening.

Anyway, beginning to post and follow everyone's blogs is part of coming out of my daze. I'll be going back through the past few days to catch up on your news!

Moneywise, not too much has happened, except:

- We did get about $32 deposited into PayPal for our 3 old, semifunctional iPods. I recommend the site: buymytronics.com. You have to pay your own shipping but they responded quickly and were legit.

- Half.com deposited about $85 for the last few weeks of book sales. The rush appears to be over, but NT did decide to drop one of his classes, so we posted the textbooks, some on half.com and the rest on textbookX.com. Never used that site, so I'll let you know my experience with them! They suggested a higher price for some of the books so I decided to try getting more money that way.

- NT got another $3 from Pinecone!

- Found a necklace my brother gave AS for Christmas many years ago, and NT took it to a jeweler to ask if it was valuable or just costume jewelry. He said that it was 14K gold and a real diamond, and that we might be able to get $100 or so at a pawn shop for it! We'll probably try to take it somewhere over the weekend and see if that's the case.

- Finally sent NT's UK taxes off. Really crossing my fingers again that I did them correctly! He normally does not file (UK will take care of it for you most of the time) so I'm slightly more qualified because I understand US taxes at least. But British legalese and bureaucrat-speak is just different enough (from the US jargon I'm used to) that I feel like I'm wading through clotted cream when I read it!

- Needed a new kitchen faucet; it sprang a leak when we put the new Brita filter on, and NT realized it had rusted through at the top. Was able to afford by using some of my paltry emergency fund, a bit of the home-improvement garage-sale money, and some of our household/grocery money.

- We also had to buy a new vacuum cleaner this month (they stopped making the replacement bags for our old one!), so our grocery money is looking a bit thin. AS and I have taken over the cooking since NT started college, so this weekend will be our first stab at a budget-conscious weekly menu. I think we'll do all right. We've actually been keeping up with the household work and cooking fairly well! This frees up NT to do his homework instead.

- Received a notice from the condo office about a noise complaint, which they suspect may be due to us not having the required 75% of floor covered by carpet. Now let me admit, we do not have any carpet and are in violation of this rule. BUT we've lived here for 5 years and never had a complaint, so I suspect the noise was from moving out the old furniture for the garage sale and assembling/moving into place all our new furniture. Which would have made a lot of noise even if we'd had rugs, I think. So we're not sure if we'll have to buy rugs and put them down, or what. I just hope we don't get some kind of stupid fine, because we've always been tolerant of neighbors' noisy renovation projects and NEVER have turned them in, even when they worked kind of later than they should. I hope instant karma favors us and lets us weasel out of this one without hemorraghing a lot of money.

Well, I guess that was actually more money news than I thought I had!