I'm pondering many things this morning as I rev myself up to start my day. (Yes, I know it's sort of late in the morning to be getting "started" but us Ladies of Leisure feel little pressure to start the day at 60mph.)

First off, as mentioned previously, I'm giving myself a 2-week break from the job-hunting process. During this two weeks, I'm waiting for Buehler or Coco to step forth with the half-promised job offers. Should that not occur, I'll probably talk to Bernie and take a position with him, if any of his company's contracts have come through.

During this time, I had many plans for accomplishing many things, most of which I've decided to forget about. The apartment is cleaner as a result of my enforced vacation over the last couple of months. Not as shiny-sparkly clean as I'd envisioned (I consistently over-estimate my interest in domesticity) but cleaner. My urge to excel in that arena has waned

Today is a lovely, sunny day. You could even call it balmy. The air is warm without even a hint of winter chill. The sky is clear and blue and the sun is doing its best to convince us all that it's May, not January. Thus, today's to-do list includes taking the Christmas ornaments back to storage, swinging by the bank to make a deposit, and gassing up my car. It's the kind of day when it would be criminal not to be outdoors.

Thus, the laundry and vacuuming the living room floor (today's Indoor Chores) will have to wait.

Second, I've made a decision about the job-hunting process itself. When I do go back to sending out resumes, I'm not answering ads from financial institutions, including credit card companies. I think many of their business practices are predatory and evil and I refuse to become part of that problem. This is a touch worrying since the majority of the job offerings monster.com selects for me are actually from financial institutions, but I'll have to expand my field of inquiry.

It's like...a couple of years ago, I knew (and blogged) that anyone wanting to get rich quick should invest in defense stocks. Today those stocks are have doubled or tripled from their value then. But I didn't actually buy any of those stocks myself because I decided it would be immoral. Having standards can be expensive, but you do sleep better nights. (For the record, my investment portfolio, such as it is and sans evil stocks, has gained a whopping 4% or something in that same time period. Consequently, I will be living on mac-and-cheese and in a gutter when I retire. I'll have to skulk into the public library to check my e-mail.)

(I'm going to get some of those gloves with the fingers cut out, to keep my aged and palsied hands warm.) (And a hat. One of those knitted ones with a bobble on top that's supposed to look cheerful and never manages to be anything other than scary and pathetic.) (Grocery stores have those two-level carts these days. Smaller and easier to push than the old kind of grocery cart. I'm going to steal one of those.) (Or maybe one from a drugstore. They have a smaller cart size, easier for the faint-from-hunger crowd to push around.) (And the smaller size encourages you to be more discriminating about what you hoard.) (Fortunately, my recent stint of unemployment is already teaching me how many things I can live without, although I can't yet add "food" to that list.)

I'm not depressed. I realize that last paragraph sounds depressed, but really I'm not. I was just pondering the concept.

I can't be homeless anyhow. I have at least 100 pounds of books that life wouldn't be worth living without and I'm sure not pushing a cartload of books around in my old age. I may wind up working until I'm 70, if I don't get my act together, but I don't have any real fears of being homeless.

I'm also pondering the Christmas card I got from Uncle Chip and Aunt Mimi. The return address label says, "Ms Mimi Lastname" where the return address usually says "Chip & Mimi Lastname." I'm wondering if they just ran out of & labels or if this signals trouble in paradise? Aunt Mimi is of the generation before we all became "Ms." And when a woman flaunted her marriage ring.

They've seemed like a stable couple for the last 40 years, ever since they met when Mimi was nursing Chip's first wife through a terminal battle with cancer and they had an affair that produced a child that Uncle Chip eventually adopted after he was free to marry Mimi, but you can never tell about people, can you?

I'm toasting my toes in the sunshine pouring into the living room. And I have the doors and windows open to air the place out, a rare opportunity in January. This is my excuse for not having gotten out of my chair so far this morning. I'm doing a chore...airing out the apartment.

Next week, my bitty computer has to go to the computer doctor to get its USB ports fixed. I'll miss it, but I sure won't miss trying to surf the 'net without a mouse.

I've been back on the diet for four days, although not as strenuously as I should have been, and so far I've lost 1/2 lb. If I'd behaved myself, I'd have lost twice that much. Shocking. Last night I went to the grocery store and stocked up on Allowable Diet Foods. This morning I got up, looked in the refrigerator, and decided I really wasn't that hungry.

That's pretty much all I had to say today.