One of the things I'm trying to do on my recently created daily blog is to remind myself as often as possible of the good things in life. It's something that is really hard to do when things are going poorly, and something that doesn't really occur to me when things are going well. One of my hopes in creating the blog was that by really sitting down and counting my blessings, even when they are small, I'll consciously enjoy them more.

I have just found another way to do that, and I'm really excited about it.

One of my colleagues makes jewelry as a hobby, and I think she's actually quite talented. A lot of her pieces are beautiful, and I was telling her one day that although I can't see myself wearing a lot of them, because they aren't my personal style, they are really great. She suggested that I think about getting a piece custom-made. I initially laughed at the idea (not at her, just at the idea), because where would I even begin?

But then I thought about it over the next few days, and the idea intrigued me more and more, until I finally shot her an email, and over the course of a few emails and conversations, we figured out what it is that I wanted, and she came up with a design. I basically wanted a necklace that would remind me of some of the things that make me happy, and what I believe about happiness in general. My dog. Sun. Moon. Stars. Freedom. Scuba diving. Food, folks, and fun. The color red. Water. Blue skies. Luck. The feeling of being able to determine my own fate. Good things coming from tough circumstances.

And she captured all of those in one necklace. For real. Actually, I asked her to put about six or seven of those ideas in, and she worked them in, but when I looked at the way she did it, I found so many more things hiding in there, as well.

Check it out. We removed the citrine charm, because it made the charm cluster seem crowded. Although it looks like two necklaces, those pictures are actually of opposite sides of the necklace. The cuffs and key are actually the closing mechanism.

The handcuffs and red key: freedom and the feeling of determining my own fate. The color red.
The groups of five and three rings: bubbles (scuba diving), luck (eight is a lucky number), my dog (whose name comes from this character), food, folks, and fun (three things), and my general beliefs about happiness (it's made of three sub-components).
The aquamarine stone: clear water, blue skies
The pearl: moon, good things coming from tough circumstances, and another diving reference
The star: stars (and sun, since the sun is just another star)

That is almost everything that is good in life, captured in something I can wear around my neck. And it can be worn with either side in front: handcuffs and key, or charms and circles. I think she did a really great job, and I really love the idea of having something that is so personal and so full of meaning for me that I can wear whenever I want to wear a physical tally of the things I like in life.

I try to call my mom once a week, because if I don't, she thinks I'm either dead or unfilial.

I was too busy to call her over the weekend, so I called her this afternoon on her cell phone. Cell phone conversations with my mom are always funny, because they usually start with her picking up, but not realizing she's picked up, and I get to hear a few seconds of "How do I answer this? Hello? Hello?" before the conversation begins in earnest.

Today, it was even better:

[ringing]
[Mom picks up]
[lots of white noise in background]
Mom: Hello? HELLO?
Me: Hi, Mo--
Mom: HELLO?
Me: HI, MOM!!
Mom: I'M DRIVING.
Me: OK, I'll let you go, I just wanted to call to tell you I'm alive and--
Mom: HELLO? I'M IN THE CAR. I'M DRIVING. I CAN'T TALK TO YOU.
Me: OK, Mom, just wanted to let you know I'm back and I'm OK,--
Mom: I'M DRIVING. I CAN'T TALK TO YOU. I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I'LL CALL YOU BACK.
Me: You don't have to call me back, I'm just calling to let you know I--
Mom: I'LL CALL YOU BACK. I CAN'T TALK RIGHT NOW.
Me: NO, DON'T CALL ME BACK, MOM, I JUST WANTED TO SAY HI.
Mom: I'LL CALL YOU BACK LATER. WHO IS THIS?
[Mom hangs up]
Me: Uh, it's me, [Troid]. Um. Mom? Mom?

My officemates had overheard the conversation, and were cracking up about it. Such a classic "mom with a cell phone" conversation.

She later called back and told me that she had been driving (oh, really?). I asked her why she didn't know it was me, since there are only two people in the world who call her "Mom." She said it was because she was on speaker phone.

Every so often, I hit a sweet spot in life, where everything just falls into place and even annoying or frustrating things don't bug me as much, and all the good things just take over. There's no reason for the sweet spots -- it isn't necessarily that my life is actually any better than at other times, but it just feels better, and once that feeling kicks in, then each new good thing that gets dealt out is that much more amazing, and any bad things just fade into the background. It's as if the whole world is burning with a secret fire, and I'm the only one who can feel its warmth and see the glow.

I'm in one of those sweet spots right now, and I'm really trying to revel in it while it lasts. Most of the things I haven't been liking as much about my life are still true -- I'm still not living quite where I would want to live, geographically, and my work still sometimes spins out of control and gets a little out of control, and my friends are still living all over the place, but even so, just for now, in this little bubble of time, everything seems right, and it seems like the entire universe is on my side.

I haven't unpacked 90% of my stuff, and I keep having to make arrangements with the landlord to fix things in the house I moved into, but I love the house.

My wrists and arms hurt every day, I have fewer vacation days than I did in Europe, and I sometimes feel like I don't have enough time for all the work I am supposed to do, but I love my job. They flew our entire department, top to bottom, to New York last week, and we spent days just hanging out, going out, and eating out. Work events can be dreadful, but not with this group of people.

My dog's butt is balding, he farts a lot, and he is old and cranky, but he makes me happy.

Superman hasn't moved in yet, and until he does move in, I'm paying a small fortune every month for rent and utilities, but we're doing great. In the last week, we went to New York and Boston, I met his parents for the first time, and he met a ton of my old friends. It went really well.

I'm still not digging this "living deep in suburbia" thing, but I've settled into a little group of friends here, I still have my circle of friends scattered around the world, and I've just seen lots of good friends and re-established contact with a lot of old friends.

Looking further back, if I was in any danger of forgetting good things from the past, my free days in New York and my weekend in Boston would have fixed that. I got to do everything I loved (including singing the Brahms Requiem, which I haven't done since singing it in Lincoln Center freshman year of college) and see many people who represent a lot of special times in my life. It was pretty much a perfect week, so perfect that I actually cried (a tiny bit) a few times, because everything was just so breathtakingly great.

I don't know how long this sweet spot will last -- sometimes they come and go within a month, and sometimes they last for a year -- but these are the times that I live for.

I meant to post this a while back. It's closely based on Martha Stewart's recipe, although I tweaked it to make it a truffled mac and cheese. Superman loves this recipe.

Truffled Mac & Cheese
(adapted from Martha Stewart's Perfect Mac & Cheese)
Serves 12

6 slices good-quality white bread, crusts removed, torn into 1/4- to 1/2-inch pieces
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for dish
5-1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
18 ounces grated sharp white cheddar
4 ounces grated Gruyere
2-1/2 ounces grated pecorino Romano
5 to 7 teaspoons truffle oil, plus more for drizzling
1 pound elbow macaroni

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 3-quart casserole dish; set aside.

Place bread pieces in a medium bowl. Melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Pour butter into the bowl with bread, and toss. Set the breadcrumbs aside.

Heat milk over medium heat. Melt remaining 6 tablespoons butter in a high-sided skillet over medium heat. When butter bubbles, add flour. Cook, stirring, 1 minute. Slowly pour hot milk into flour-butter mixture while whisking. Continue cooking, whisking constantly, until the mixture bubbles and becomes thick. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in salt, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne pepper, about two-thirds of the cheddar, and about three-quarters of the Gruyere and pecorino Romano. Set cheese sauce aside.

Boil a large pot of water, add macaroni; cook 2 to 3 fewer minutes than manufacturer's directions, until outside of pasta is cooked and inside is underdone. Rinse macaroni in a colander under cold running water, and drain well. Stir macaroni into the cheese sauce.

Pour the mixture into the prepared casserole dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese; scatter breadcrumbs over the top. Bake until browned on top, about 30 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes; drizzle with another few teaspoons of truffle oil to taste, serve.

I'm all moved in, but terribly busy -- even after a move, the move still devours your life. There are utilities to turn on, cable guys to wait for, boxes to unpack (I've only unpacked the essentials so far -- TiVo, toiletries, rice cooker), keys to copy, former apartments to turn back over to the former landlords, and so on. And then work continues to explode, much to its own amusement.

Things seem to be mostly under control now. Mostly. Still pretty busy, but I have time to eat lunch again, and to get things done by the time they're supposed to get done.

And I've started another blog. So Xanga is my "private" blog, a journal that other people happen to read. Then I have my public blog on Blogger, which is dedicated to the quirks of wherever I happen to be living. Both of those blogs have their happy moments, but often are just a way for me to vent some kind of annoyance at the universe. I've decided to start a third (also public) blog that is themed around good things, just to remind myself that they're there. I've noticed over the course of this week that even in the midst of moving (which is probably my least favorite thing in the entire world), that there are still good things that happen, but if I don't think about them, I forget about them, and the bad things overshadow them. In fact, there were a bunch of good things that happened this week that, when they happened, I thought, "Oh, this is great, I have to remind myself that this happened when I'm stressed out tomorrow," and I've already forgotten them.

So we'll see how it works out.

So things have been going pretty well, lots of good things going on. Last week, Superman even finally gave me my Christmas present, a pair of diamond stud earrings (he had some, er, helpful guidance from me along the way).

Yesterday, however, my landlord emailed me and said we needed to talk, and with landlords, as with significant others, the phrase "We Need To Talk" is usually a bad one. I started thinking about all the bad things she might be Needing To Talk about. Did my downstairs neighbors complain that I walk too loudly? Did my upstairs neighbors complain about the time that they were playing the piano, loudly and badly, at midnight, and I thumped on the ceiling to make them stop? Did she want to raise the rent?

It turns out that it's even worse. She wants to sell the apartment, and so she wants me to move out, preferably by the end of April, but if I need to stay longer, then maybe for longer, but then I would need to keep the apartment neat enough to show potential buyers. Both of these are terrible alternatives. I hate packing and moving, so to do so by the end of April (especially when I'll be out of town for the last week of April) is a horribly repugnant thought. I also hate housekeeping, so the idea of trying to keep my apartment show-worthy for weeks on end is pretty horrific.

Superman and I have been planning on moving in together for a year now, but there are two problems: he owns a house that needs more work before he can sell it, and he has a cat (to which I'm allergic) that refuses to die. I can't really move into his place, because the cat is there, but he can't really move with me to another place, because he still has that house with a mortgage, and what would we do with the cat? I can't really get a place without him and have him move in later, because the place we would get together would be over my budget, since he needs a big fenced yard for his dog.

I've half-jokingly suggested that maybe I can solve all of our problems by burning down his house with the cat still in it. I think he thinks I'm just joking. But I might actually only be quarter-joking.

If there are five things I hate, they are, in no particular order:

(1) Packing
(2) Moving
(3) Apartment hunting
(4) Uncertainty
(5) Cats

Just perfect that they are all happening at once.

Ugh.

Some things I'm excited about right now:

(1) Work is going pretty spectacularly. I've been getting really good reviews. My bonus for 2009 was 50.4%, and I got an 8% raise! Take that, economy.

(2) Our department summit will be in New York in April, which I'm going to conveniently sandwich with catching up with friends in New York and Boston (there just so happens to be a reunion in Boston the weekend after our summit).

(3) I used my Chinese New Year money from my parents to get a humidifier, two cookbooks (including the one in my Now Reading, thanks to czarinaviv's suggestion), and a fancy rice cooker, which I am foolishly but stubbornly insisting is going to change my life (although I'm a bit foggy on how and why).

(4) No more meds.

(5) I've finally gotten around to downloading a bunch of apps onto my phone that help me fit a lot more stuff into my days -- organized To Do lists, podcasts of "This American Life," etc.

It seems like I have one or two doctor's or dentist's appointments every day this week and next -- it's almost time to finish up spending flex money from 2009, so I'm buying glasses, getting check-ups, and getting fillings fixed like it's my job.

My clients at work seem to be more aware of the fact that I'm back from vacation, so the deals have been piling up. My brain doesn't seem to be quite as aware of the fact that it should not longer be in Yap mode.

It will all even out eventually, right?

Last weekend, we had a belated Chinese New Year dinner with my parents, Superman, my sister's fam, my cousin's fam, and a few others. Mom sent me home with some of my favorite Chinese dishes to freeze and eat later. An even though I'm 31, my parents still gave me a hongbao (red envelope) with a check to buy myself something for Chinese New Year. No objections here, although it does mean I'll have to make one of my semi-annual trips to the bank to make a deposit. I don't own a checkbook, and I strongly encourage friends to pay me in cash or PayPal, when possible, because I just hate checks. I'm definitely getting boring, because I've decided to buy a couple of cookbooks and a humidifier for Chinese New Year.

It's odd getting money from my parents at this point, because I earn more than I need, and whenever I really want something, I just buy it for myself without having to calculate all the financial ramifications the way I used to. (Looking back at my college days, when it was a big splurge to spend $15 on a dinner out, and a second-hand air conditioner was too expensive of a splurge for a hot, humid summer, I'm not sure how Me Today would survive in My Circumstances Back Then). It's still nice to get a hongbao from my parents now and then, though -- it's nice to be coddled and taken care of now and then, especially when you get Tupperwares full of your favorite home cooking to take home, too.

A few more pictures from my trip.

These non-stinging jellyfish are in a lake in Palau. There were thousands of them, and we swam through clouds of jellyfish without getting stung.

Reefs are beautiful in profile and silhouette.

Up close, you can see how colorful the reefs really are:

Some people are really into the big stuff, like sharks and rays -- Palau is great for sharks, and Yap is manta central:

Fish are fascinating, as well -- they really vary in behavior from species to species. Some are solitary, others stay in schools. Some are territorial and aggressive, some are shy and lethargic, some are curious -- it's really interesting to observe them, if you have time.

This is a pajama cardinalfish. They don't move around too much, and mostly hang out near coral heads where mandarin fish live, so that they can wait for the mandarin fish to mate, and eat the eggs.

Sweetlips mostly hang out in ones or twos, and they don't move much. They just wait until something interesting to eat comes along, and then they make their move:

Jacks like to school and hang out in fairly shallow water:

I'm still sorting photos and catching up on work and errands, so here are a few more pictures from the trip for now.

Nudibranchs are amazing. They are usually pretty small (these were all somewhere between one and two inches), but they are gorgeous. If land slugs were as beautiful as sea slugs, people would probably spend less time and energy being grossed out by them.

They are small, slow, pretty much blind, and they live on coral reefs that are huge even on the human scale.

(Well, they're mostly small. This guy was probably over 18 inches long):

They also come in seemingly infinite variations of species, and aren't all that common, so it is baffling how they manage to find each other without the benefits of the internet and online dating. These two found each other and engaged in enthusiastic sea slug sex:

This one was a few inches away, and ran away as quickly as his nonexistent legs would take him:

I took the last three pictures on a night dive in Palau, which, incidentally, was a beautiful dive -- the water was empty of divers other than our group of four, we had some lovely swim-throughs and a space inside the reef that Superman described as a coral cathedral. Kanga was fascinated by a disco clam. A turtle circled us for a while. It was everything I could ask for from a night dive.

The best part, however, and one of the highlights of the whole trip (for me) was coming up out of the water and floating on the surface, surrounded by quiet water, and looking up. There is hardly anything out there, so there is very little light pollution. I have never seen so many stars in my life. There were so many stars that it was hard to find constellations. Even Orion, who usually sticks out like a sore thumb, was lost in a sea of stars.

We got in the boat and had a 30 minute ride back to the dock, and for most of the ride, I stuck my head out of the boat and alternated between looking up at the stars, inadequately described above, and peering down at the water, where the boat's engines were churning up phosphorescent plankton, which filled the water with tiny little pinpricks of light. It was such an unbelievably beautiful experience, and I tried so hard to memorize every detail of it, because I'm not sure if I'll ever see anything that beautiful again, but if I do, I want to be able to compare and catalog the two experiences side by side in my mind.

We got back from our trip on Tuesday (at 4 a.m.), and the week has been full of jet lag, moving to a new office building, getting caught up on work, starting to sort and weed out pictures from the trip, and so on, so for now, instead of a full trip summary, I will just tick off a few points about the trip.

Total luggage weight: 85 pounds
Number of flights: 7
Number of hours, door-to-door from Palau back home: 23
Number of hotels: 4
Number of light switches in one of the hotel rooms in Palau: 41
Number of books I read: almost 6
Number of times I checked email: 1
Hours of TV watched: 0
Number of dives: 15
Number of sharks and mantas: lost count
Number of stars visible from the dock in Yap: innumerable, 180 degrees of Milky Way
Number of mosquito bites: not going to think about it
Amount of trip awesomeness: infinite
Number of pictures taken: 300+

Here's one to start with: