I have so many facets to my life that it’s sometimes difficult to say, “Today was a good day,” or “Today was a bad day.” It might be good in one sense but not in another. Take yesterday for example. Was it a good day? Here’s the things that suggest so:

• My weight was down to the lowest it’s been in months, back to that set-point weight I always bump against but can’t seem to get through. I think I have motivation to break through it this time.
• The mediation preparation in the morning went well, although I think the City (our client) is too willing to compromise. If they let the contractor sue them and they counter-sued, I think the City would win on 14 points out of 15. What some people do to avoid litigation.
• I had a pleasant lunch with our Transportation department leader, after the mediation prep. He’s leaving us in a couple of weeks, going back to Texas, so this was sort of our goodbye lunch. He’s a good friend, and an excellent engineer. Hmmm, should this be on the good list or the bad?
• I studied some floodplain issues I had been putting off studying, since our young engineers have been asking me questions about these issues. I’m aiming to give a training class on this within a month’s time. And, I found I could probably get three articles for Suite101 out of my prep. Of course, the bad news part of this is that my Suite articles still aren’t earning much.
• The editor at Buildipedia e-mailed me, asking me if I wanted to write a certain article for publication in late October. I believe this is the first time that an editor has solicited me, which is a good feeling. Now I just have to see if I can write the article he wants.
• I prepared a mailing to our former pastor, returning a book I borrowed from him. I included copies of the adult Life Group lessons I wrote from the book. To the P.O. today to mail. One more item checked off the to-do list.
• I balanced the checkbook, an easy task this month. I had one $2 error, on the third-to-last entry. Took less than 1/2 an hour.
• Even though I was tired in the evening, I went to the basement bathroom and did the trim work on the painting. I had finished the primer touch-up the night before, so this is the finished color, a nice lavender the wife picked out. In fact, she came down and helped me with some of it. I’m sure we’ll need two coats, but it’s looking quite nice. Progress in home improvements by inches and feet.
• Went to bed at the time I wanted to, and fell right to sleep; slept well until 5:15 AM, when the arthritis pain woke me and let me sleep only fitfully thereafter.

But in other ways, it was a bad day.

• After a morning without too much pain, my rheumatoid arthritis flared up by the end of the evening, and I went to bed in considerable pain in my right wrist and arm, the place of “Arther’s” current interest. Woke up in the night with much stiffness (guess I said that already), and worse this morning. Typing is quite painful. Oh, wait, I can’t put that on yesterday’s good and bad list, can I?
• My powers of concentration at work were poor. After the mediation prep took up the entire morning, I was not terribly productive. Yes, I did the floodplain issues study, but what should have taken me 2 hours took 4. I’ve got to recover my powers of concentration.
• With the evening activities, I did almost no reading and no writing. The Suite floodplain article was 90 percent done, but I couldn’t push myself to pull up the article editing screen and do the work. I have two Buildipedia articles under contract, but I couldn’t push myself to spend even 15 minutes working on one of them.
• I did nothing on stock trading. I had no trades on to take advantage of the recent market run-up. And I call myself a stock trader.
• I missed my noon hour walk, although I walked 12 minutes in the evening, two laps around the circle plus up to the stop sign once. So maybe that wasn’t all bad.

So was it a good day? I say yes, though in many ways it good have been better. Today, except for the arthritis, is starting well.