The Daily Grind (that should totally be the name of a coffee shop if it isn't already.)

A routine has slowly made its way into my daily life. I'm working early - almost always early, which is new, but surprisingly nice. I have begun to go to bed early almost every night and wake up fairly early in the morning even when I'm off. Opening here means being at work at 4:15 which shouldn't feel so much earlier than 4:30, but it does. However, I find it's slowly getting easier, and I absolutely LOVE having a more consistent schedule.

The afternoon routine is the harder one to figure out. I've been trying to work on getting a writing schedule down, but it's harder than I imagined to sit down to my computer or a notebook and not be distracted. I get lonely; I miss Ben. And then I end up watching reruns online - which, by the way, is not a good pattern.

I have, however, been walking/jogging for about a week now. Nothing to get too excited about, but I've established a decent working-out routine which should eventually feed into the writing routine by giving me energy in the afternoons. If only I wasn't hungry all the time and didn't have such time-consuming cooking habits.

I do enjoy being in the kitchen, though, and Jena has a gas stove! I've only been making vegetable pastas and simple rice dishes, but it feels so nice to come home and cook and sit down to a book (or a rerun). My hope is to spend an afternoon and make some soup to freeze for quicker meals in the afternoons when I have more writing to do so I won't spend so much time cooking and cleaning my dishes. We'll see. If anyone has any good "freezable" soup recipes, I'm all ears. I can only eat white chicken chili so many times before I begin to need a little variety.

Oh, and I'm still working on getting more photos up, but I have uploaded South Dakota which includes the Badlands!