  7:41 a.m. Thursday, Day 171. Oh man this sucks. I pulled a muscle in my back yesterday, moving furniture. I could barely walk down the stairs this morning, clutching the banister and going one step at a time. Ate breakfast right away so I could take aspirin. The downstairs is bare now, for the carpet, excluding the big furniture like the sofa, which the carpeters will deal with.
They should be here in an hour. I guess I will spend the day upstairs. There's TV, a bathroom, and all my books, so I won't be bored. Ate well yesterday, about 1548 calories. I had a big salad for first course of dinner, so I wouldn't overload on pizza — a good strategy. I am glad I'm back in the mindset of making plans like that, instead of eating whatever "happens" to come along. I can't afford that laissez-faire attitude. 9:30 a.m. The carpeters are here and have already started ripping up. I'm watching Seven Years in Tibet. It's pretty good. [later: had to give up on it; the carpeters are making such a racket removing tack strips that I can't hear anything, and it's not close-captioned.
] 3:30 p.m. The carpet looks great. Same color as the old one but softer and of course cleaner. Spent most of the day in the bedroom reading Their Eyes Were Watching God. Fantastic novel, the language is incredible. It's written in dialect, or whatever you call that, so I can't just skim the letters quickly and understand the words, I have to sound it out in my head.
So it's slow, and like listening to someone talk. It's such a rich story, lots of ideas to chew on. I am devastated to discover that it was an Oprah book recently. I suppose that doesn't affect my experience with it, but I've noticed that a lot of Oprah books are pointless and vacant. More about that another time. 
