I went to a hockey game and a happy dance broke out.

Just got home from a hockey game. The good news: my second-favourite team absolutely slaughtered the opposition 9-0. The bad news? My favourite team was the one being slaughtered. To add insult to injury, my sister (and 50 of her team's fans) came to town to watch their team squish ours. I may never live this down.

At one point during the game, I decided to invoke the Sacred Law of Murphy, and went to the concession stand, thinking we'd score a goal when I wasn't looking. Great (but ineffective) plan.

That's when terrific, non-hockey-related things started to happen.

First of all, I'd realized that I had flexpoints up to my eyeballs left for the week, and since I'd already weighed in this morning, I couldn't mess it up. This was on top of basically eating nothing but rabbit food for supper, so I decided to splurge and have a hot dog (protein!) and a pretzel.

I was walking towards the condiments with my treasures when I saw someone I hadn't seen since last spring. I called her name and she walked over to me. She looked shocked and kept staring at my mid-section. "You look GREAT!" was the first thing she said. I tell you, Gentle Readers, I nearly burst into tears, I was so happy. I get lots of great feedback from my friends, but to have someone who hadn't seen me in months look visibly stunned at my "new and improving" self was just such a tremendous feeling. I'm still misting up just thinking about it.

I was still beaming when I ran into my friend and co-worker, H, a few minutes later, so I shared what had just happened. It turns out that H. has been secretly reading my blog, and she told me that she is finding inspiration in my journey. I am trying to put into words how much that meant to me, to have someone silently cheering me on without me realizing it. I know there are people out there reading this, but to have someone unexpectedly say "I read your blog" is such an incredible feeling, and to learn that someone has been rooting for you without you knowing it is a total "warm fuzzy". Words are failing me (must be the hot dog), but I think you get the drift of what I'm trying to say here. It's kind of like running a marathon and there are a lot of unexpected people at the side of the road, all holding signs with your name on it. It's a great feeling.

This evening (aside from the score at the game) has pretty much rocked since I finished school. At 4:00 PM, I met my aforementioned sister and her fiance for dinner. I hadn't seen my sister since September, so I was pretty sure she'd notice a difference. She did. Her eyes grew wide and she exclaimed, "Where'd the rest of my sister go?!"

And the coolest part of all of this, Gentle Readers? I feel better, I look better, I'm noticeably different, and I'm still less than a third of the way there! :)