This afternoon I felt something I haven’t felt in a heck of a long time: actual, honest-to-goodness happiness. The kind of feeling that, down to your very essence, everything is well. Life is in balance. I had forgotten how good that feeling really is.

Ever since this term fell off a cliff (back when I forsook math for the term and the UHC for eternity), and for the entire build-up to that decision, nothing felt right. I couldn’t handle school, work, or my home life—or, rather, I tried to handle them all and failed on all accounts.

Today was a (mostly symbolic) turning point. I enjoyed chatting with Joel, Misty, and Jessie—and later chatting with Sunriver Tom—earlier in the day, and smoked my banking quiz soon after. I got in to work, which (after surviving my crisis point yesterday) now houses a modicum of hope for getting out of my (and Marin’s) current backlog of papers to shuffle. I enjoyed the sun, ate dinner with my family, and then headed over to Andy’s to play Hearts, followed by a smattering of several types of poker.

About the poker…. If Andy were Alan Greenspan, and the poker chips on the table the monetary supply, then the United States would be experiencing double-digit inflation after he decided I needed support under the Too Big to Fail doctrine. [That’s a clumsy way of saying that I lost all my pretend money, and then lost the extra tower of chips Andy sent my way.]

Hearts, of course, was a completely different story. I kicked ass. That, of course, means that I got my ass handed to me on a plate. With a nice garnish and some wine on the side. On the house.

It stings to be schooled that bad. No matter how wonderful the rest of your day was.