Life's been the same, I guess. We were finally taken off mandatory overtime, so Whateley and I have been enjoying our full weekend. Though today we had to work overtime, and I'm afraid we might end up on it again. Sigh. Well, it's better to have too much work than none at all.

I've been prohibited from listening to NPR at work by Whateley cuz he says it makes me all paranoid about the economy. (But I do anyway. I just try to avoid listening to too many "how has the bad economy screwed you" stories.) I am pretty grateful to be at a company that's still doing well. Whateley got a call from a high school friend back in California who got laid off recently. Apparently, he was thinking of moving to Austin since a few of his friends had done so already. We're meeting a lot of ex-Californians here. Lots.

With our Christmas bonuses, we bought an elliptical exercise machine. A pretty fancy one, too. But all our research tells us that for a complicated machine like an elliptical, with a lot of moving parts, it's best not to cheap out cuz it'll break after a few years. Whateley's also... well, on the heavy side, so the cheaper machines can't support the pounding he'll give it.

Anyway, we've had the machine for a bit over a month now, and we've been pretty good about keeping up a regular exercise routine. No weight loss yet for me (sadly) but Whateley's already lost a few inches. I've lost just a bit of fat here and there, and Whateley's already lamenting that my butt has gotten smaller. I wish I could keep it there and in my boobs, but alas, biology is cruel. I'm sure the last fat to go will be the thighs and stomach. Curse you Mother Nature!

On a completely different note, the University of Texas is on Spring Break which is also coinciding with the South by Southwest Festival. I should probably go to it one of these days, but we've got time. But what I do love about it is there's no morning traffic! We live by an elementary school and I think all the school districts schedule their Spring Break for the same week as UT, so we haven't had to deal with parents dropping their kids off. And on the freeway, where there's usually rush hour traffic in certain parts of the freeway, it's free sailing with virtually no slowdown. Our commute got cut down from 45 minutes to 25. Crazy!

Living in a college town is bringing back memories of my years at Berkeley. I wonder if all the locals got annoyed by the college kids too.

And speaking of college, we got season tickets to the Broadway Across America series, where the University Performing Arts Center is one of their venues. We saw Spamalot last week. It was hilarious! The story is ripped pretty much from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, though they made changes here and there and the ending is different. It's funny how they handled the fight with the Black Knight, running away from the French, and the killer rabbit creature, of course. The songs are funny, though I wouldn't call them musical masterpieces. Of course they have the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

Next month will be Avenue Q. It's suppose to be about muppets singing about really wrong things. This is the show from whence came the classy song "The Internet is for Porn." Youtube it if you wanna hear it.