Ugh, I never know what to title these entries, anymore. It was easier when I was unhappy and writing entries about that, because there's no shortage of songs to capture that. But nobody writes good happy songs. Is that a thing?

Elvis Costello, for one, has probably never written a happy song in his life.

Like they say about the un-complex good-versus-evil stories: good is boring.

I feel like I am becoming one of those boring people who loves her job and doesn't have much to talk about. To be fair, part of the reason is that a large portion of my work is protected information, so I can't talk about it: datasets, project issues and resolution ideas, early findings results, all of that is confidential until reports are published. But even then, what can I say? Yes, I love my job. It's exciting every day, with a big variety of things to do. The work is interesting, and I feel like I am doing something really worthwhile. But it means I have nothing to complain about, and complaining about work is such a big part of conversations about work, right? Let me try:

Everyone is great, except my new officemate, who is unfriendly and has BO, both things because he is Turkish, but I don't ever interact with him except when going in and out of our shared office. He just started on Monday. He is the worst thing about this job, which is kind of petty: it's almost nothing, just a little bit of awkwardness and odor from time to time. But I don't like him, and I am not thrilled that we are sharing an office, and probably will be for a while.

(Did it work? I can't really muster up too much hate for this guy. He's smelly and weird, but it could be way worse, and everything else is so great that I can't really complain too much.)

Yesterday, it was snowy and cold, and I was exhausted, so I didn't do anything but grocery shop. (And make linguine with clam sauce for dinner. Yum.) But today I feel so much perkier, it's ridiculous. I popped out of bed, made a big breakfast (I had eggs and tea and strawberries; A--- had leftover cannoli), and immediately started thinking about what I could get done today. Clean up the boxes in the entryway, scrub the bathroom, vacuum everything, take out the trash and recycling, change the bed sheets, make muffins, plan a Valentine's dinner for Tuesday, maybe even run down to the basement and do a load of laundry. Don't you love those (extremely rare) days when you actually want to get stuff done? I have to take advantage of this.

At 23 degrees, it's too cold to go outside, anyway. Might as well make the inside of the apartment sparkle!

Monday is book club. We're reading {i]The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin. It should be so interesting, but I just can't get into it. I'm like 2/3 done, and I have felt like I am only slogging through it for the book club since about 50 pages in. It should be so interesting. It's not even terribly written. It's just... distant. Inaccessible. Uninteresting.

Hopefully everyone else thought so, too. Guess we'll find out Monday.