I took a leap of faith today. I thought that after all my pronouncing yesterday, I should take a stab (or at least a poke) at improving myself. I woke up with a knife-sharp pain in my shoulder, but one pill took that away. My leg was sore but not painful, so I decided to walk to the post office, for the first time in weeks.

Not all the way, of course. I got in my car and drove halfway, then walked the rest. I might never be able to try walking all the way from my house to the post office, especially in the middle of a busy work day. It would take up too much time, but even more, it would leave me in no shape to try to get anything done for an hour or two afterward.

But still, it was a gigantic leap of faith even to think that I could walk, after being hobbled for a few days. I couldn't walk without a limp for two days, so thinking about walking four or five blocks in the heat of the late morning sun could have been a challenge. As it turned out, it wasn't a problem. It also wasn't much of a workout, but hey, this is phase one, in the land of a thousand phases.

That's pretty much it. I didn't go overboard and start doing high-impact aerobics or put myself on a bread-and-water fast. All I really wanted to do was make a dent in my self-improvement list, just to say that I'd taken that first step. Can't see the light at the end yet, though. Can't even see the tunnel.

It's a good thing I made productive use of my morning, because it all came crashing down around me this afternoon. I wasted an hour trying to get a hotel in Los Angeles to fax me the time cards Tim insisted they'd already sent. (If they did, I never got them.) Then I got a fax from the health insurance carrier, asking me to call them about a billing problem tonight between 4 pm and midnight. (What?)

It was one of those times when everything was coming at me at the same time, and it was the wrong time. I don't appreciate putting in a full day's work and then finding out there's another full day's work to be done before I can relax. It kind of spoils all the good feelings, you know?