goals
07 Apr 2012

the sweetness

Almost exactly one year ago, I decided to give up sugar and simple carbs.

It took me quite a few months to muster the courage to completely quit, but I spent most of last semester without it. Favorites I went without include…

  • Energy drinks
  • Baking/complementary baked goods
  • Toast
  • Unlimited amounts of fruit
  • Sugary coffee drinks
  • Ice cream
  • Granola bars
  • Cereal
  • Hard cider
  • Yogurt
  • Oatmeal
  • Bread
  • Grains
  • Pasta
  • Chips

In the beginning, there were headaches, moodiness, lack of energy. Heartburn. But after awhile, I figured out how much food I needed and when to strategically apply a square or two of dark chocolate or a small, cold coffee with half & half.

I allowed myself to indulge on the weekends – from Friday night to Saturday night, I could eat a slice of toast or a take-out sandwich, some white wine or a beer – but then back to the grind on Sunday morning.

I liked it. The most significant change was not only did my sweet tooth disappear – my food cravings in general disappeared.

I am not a lady who often feels the pull toward particular tastes – I don’t run out for ice cream or order pizza in the middle of the night or buy large bags of chocolate. But I do get hungry a lot – in general, I eat every 2-3 hours. But after a few weeks without sugar, I stopped thinking about food when I wasn’t hungry. Maybe the extra protein made me feel more satiated, or maybe flooding your bloodstream with sugars messes without your brain, but either way, I liked it.

Christmas happened, though, and I fell off the wagon. Then, in January, my finances changed and I had to trim down the grocery bill. Goodbye, grass-fed steaks and frozen salmon. Also: it’s January, so goodbye fresh veggies. I have been off the wagon since Christmas – even though I resolved to continue my sugar-free lifestyle in January, I have made no progress. Basically, I need to go cold turkey again, but I’m having trouble finding the motivation. My budget doesn’t allow me to buy the enticing array of meats and cheeses and nuts that kept me fed in the Fall, and I don’t have a lot of time to get truly creative. I’m in a corner. This upsets me sometimes because I know I would be happier without the sweet stuff.

However, I am not going to beat myself up because even going 3 or 4 months without sugar helped me get in tune with how my body feels on different foods. While I don’t always eat 100% clean, I have developed a bit of a natural aversion toward some foods that are bad for me, aversions I never had before:

  • I can feel a headache coming on when I take even one bite of a brownie, cookie, cake.
  • I know that if I drink a Diet Coke, I will probably be miserable for the rest of the day.
  • I ordered a pumpkin spice latte once, had 3 sips, then threw it out and bought a large iced coffee. No regrets.

Fun side effect of being sugar-free: if you are avoiding added sugar and simple carbs, you pretty cut out 95% of processed, packaged food.

I will probably waffle and struggle and work on this for a long time, but I would recommend that everyone at least try to do without. It’s really not as hard as you think – you’ll need a new grocery list, some new menu ideas, and the will to resist sugar when it’s right in your face, but that’s about it. You’ll appreciate the sugar you do allow yourself even more, but eventually you probably won’t even want it that much. After a few weeks, you’ll probably like it, and even if you fall off the wagon, I think the changed perspective is priceless.

 

book lists
05 Apr 2012

reading wishlist: the books i like to write

There are 6 books standing between me and the End Of Grad School.

I’ve already read 4.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO BOOKS STANDING BETWEEN ME AND THE END OF GRAD SCHOOL!?!!!!

We have already talked about how I have no idea what I am going to be doing post-May-2012. I’m sure I will be doing Some Things that are Functional and Good (don’t worry, I already have some things in the works…) but one thing I know for sure is that I will be READING. And I will be READING WHAT I WANT TO READ.

What do I want to read right now?

  • Contemporary realism with female protagonists.
  • Series in which character evolution and exploration is the Reason You Read.
  • Writing that is funny/emotional/true/smart.
  • Books that look good in pink.

I’ve so enjoyed and appreciated the wide range of YA/children’s lit that grad school has provided me, I feel like I’ve lost touch with the kind of books that resonate with me, personally.

That’s completely okay, by the way. I’m a professional. I didn’t sign up for a degree in Reading My Favorite Books.

But yeah, I’m basically two books away from returning to the motherland.

Which are, I’m realizing, the kind of books that I’d like to write.

The Ouevre of Sarah Dessen

Last summer, I wanted to re-read all of Sarah Dessen’s books in order of publication. Summer is a great time to read Dessen – even her books set in other seasons just feel summery in your hands.

However, there were also other books I wanted to read and things like… oh… classes. Work. Trips. Life. I read That Summer and Keeping the Moon (somehow managing to forget I was supposed to read Someone Like You in between), but then summer was over and I entered The Fall of Sci-Fi Fantasy.

But it’s almost summer again, and I want to jump right in. I love how every heroine and story in a Dessen novel is completely distinct, but that the books feel like series-in-spirit. I love the intricate communities Dessen creates with her characters. I love the offbeat love interests. I love that romance doesn’t come easy, but the payoff is worth the trouble.

Her books, her style, her career are basically The Dream.

Megan McCafferty’s Jessica Darling series

I have written an exceedingly excessive review of this series already. But all personal-endearments aside, I think that it’s safe to say that these books’ success lies heavily on McCafferty’s successful creation of Jessica Darling’s voice. It’s the same voice that I think can turn people away from these books – the zippy language, the pop-culture jokes, the snark. But there’s nothing about Jessica’s voice that is ever NOT Jessica’s voice. Every line is authentic and reflective of her character, of where she’s at in her life’s journey. She has a lot of attitude, but she has a lot of pain behind it.

I also like how McCafferty takes the sometimes-tired Diary Format in odd, completely meta directions. Jessica writes in the journal – the pages you, the reader, are sharing – but then she stops because she’s worried that she’s been too honest. In between two books, she reports she has burned the first one. In Charmed Thirds she only writes during college breaks, because the school year has been too busy, but also because she’s done things during the school year she can’t justify to herself if she visits the honest-journal space. It’s a variation on format, but it always serves the story, which is so difficult and admirable. Lots to learn here…

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice books

For a recent job application, I had to put together a 2 minutes video pitching a favorite children’s book.

No, I am not going to link to that video because I kind of hate myself on camera, but believe me when I tell you I wrote about the Alice books.

These are not necessarily terribly elegant books, the issues are issue-y, the conflicts tend toward the superficial. But I do not care because I am so attached to these characters. I grew up with them. I love that Alice starts as a middle grade series and inches slowly toward YA in a path that seems natural, authentic. I’d love to revisit this series (especially with the fancy new covers…) and I would love to write a world so enduring as Alice’s.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

Okay. By this point you probably think I am a ridiculous person. However, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is not just a packaged-concept series, a somewhat stupid title, a fluffy teen movie franchise! This is a series with deft third-person narration that dips into our four narrators heads with ease. And unlike the movie, the relationships between these character don’t add up to a  big nostalgic “We’ll Be Friends Forever!!” love fest punctuated by moments of unrest. These are DEEPLY complicated friendships layered with personal issues, family traumas, and just life.

I am more impressed every time I read this series, and I would like to give them a re-read before I get around to reading the last book, Sisterhood Everlasting. I’ve heard mixed reviews, but I must read for myself. I must.

This book has inspired me to “must” read a potentially bad/upsetting/tootoosaddening book. That says a lot.

Anna and the French Kiss & Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

This is the only “series” here that I am not personally attached to over a long period of time. But in January, I finally read Anna and the French Kiss. I wasn’t instantly hooked, but by the time I finished, I found myself “accidentally” starting to read Lola and the Boy Next Door, Perkins’s second novel that very same day. Perkins takes the Sarah-Dessen school of romance and brings it to the city, and also brings a tighter narrative focus. I think this worked against Anna, in some ways, but worked well for Lola.

I’m interested to follow Perkins’s career, and I’m also interested to re-read Anna and take a look at the first half that I looked over.

Ruby Oliver series by E. Lockhart

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is the book I love. But what pulled me into E. Lockhart in the first place was Ruby Oliver. The series begins with Ruby losing her first love and also becoming a school pariah. The rest of the series is her recovery… she rebuilds friendships, makes new ones, finds new loves, yes. Yes, this is all to be expected. But this is also a series about Ruby realizing her own weaknesses and negative tendencies… and then trying to fix them.

I can’t think of a writer who captures the real-ness of teen romance with more acuity than Lockhart. Horrendously bad, but at the same time horrendously amazing, and always an exercise of loving yourself. She does all this in a miraculously short span of pages. Envy.

4
life maintenance
04 Apr 2012

letter to a beginning runner

Dear Beginning Runner,

You:

  • Have never been a runner
  • Are pretty out of shape
  • Aren’t of the body type to be a natural runner
  • Don’t eat healthy 100% of the time
  • Have some running shoes, a sports bra, but not much else…
  • Every time you run any distance (a half mile, a mile, 2 minutes), you feel like you may die.

Me too.

I started running almost three years ago because I knew I was moving to Boston for grad school. I knew that I would be too broke to afford a gym membership and that my apartment was across the street from a little park. A financial necessity. And heck if I can afford a trip to Lululemon – I’m stuck with my Target bra, my college t-shirts, my sister’s gym shorts that are at least a size too big.

I hadn’t run since utterly failing at middle school gym class. I’d never run more than a mile on a treadmill or indoor track, and it had been years since I’d tried even that.

I am not overweight, but I am closer to that than underweight. I am 5′ 10″ without much muscle. Pulling my own weight around a track is not effortless. I don’t feel light. I don’t feel easy.

Three years later, my body is still bigger than it should be, I still fall off the wagon and trade vegetables for chips, some days, I run a half mile and feel like dying.

 

But not every day.

 

I started out two years ago, trying to get a handle the mental process. I wrote about it here. I ran at least a mile 3 or 4 times a week, sometimes running as much as 2 miles.

Then it became winter and I stopped. Weather happened. Life happened. I was still running a few times a week, but never more than a mile. There was always a good reason to stop, so I didn’t ever push myself. I ran a few times a week, usually, but sometimes I would skip runs, skip weeks. Inconsistent.

Last October, I had some weird work-related things go on. Basically, for a week or two, I was told not to come to work. I had some free time. I had some frustration to work off. Around this time, every person on my Facebook friends list was doing Couch to 5k – the old, the young, the overweight, the pregnant, the infirm – and then running in the mud and posting pictures. Apparently this is a thing?

I came home early on a Monday – I’d been sent home from work. I just decided to do it. I sat down at my computer and made a really, REALLY annoying Couch to 5K playlist for myself so I could switch from running to walking when the songs changed. The first few weeks of C25k is like, Run 30 seconds, Walk 1 minute, so I sorted my iTunes by length and listened to a LOT of weird little songs. I knew I could easily do the first few weeks, but I didn’t know exactly when it would get hard and I didn’t want to just do the first hard workout repeatedly waiting for it to get easy. I wanted to make progress, so instead of repeating workouts, I did the first week’s workout on Monday, the second week’s workout on Tuesday, and so on until it got hard. Then I stopped and did the rest like a normal person.

Doing three runs a week, I finished the program, but I never ran 3 miles. The long 10-15 minutes stretches of running were really hard for me. I focused on running slow enough to make it through them, which means the most I ever ran was 2 and a half miles, but it really helped me change my mindset about running – that I didn’t need to run a mile and turn back, I could stay out for 20-30 minutes and it wouldn’t take that much time out of my day, that I wouldn’t be too tired or hungry or sore or bored… or if I was any of those things, well, I would be home within the span of an episode of Mad Men or whatever.

Then it became winter and I stopped.

Weather happened.

Life happened.

All that stuff happened, but here I am in this entirely new place of running. More than two years after I started, but I finally made it.

    • I can run three miles. With stops, but not excessive amounts.
    • I can run two days in a row without my muscles screaming at me.
    • I can run when I’ve eaten a little too much or not quite enough.
    • I can run inside or outside (but not on a treadmill…)
    • When I’m done running, I no longer collapse in a pile of sweat. I can still talk.
    • Occasionally, I can enter that “my brain has ceased to function” kind of run.

And this weird one: sometimes, I’ll run in the afternoon or evening. I’ll run a lot: 2 or 3 miles.

Later in the day, I’ll be hanging around the house and I’ll catch myself thinking about my legs. Thinking about how I want to run again. How I could have run farther.

So, Beginning Runner, I just wanted to tell you that people are not either Marathoners or Never-Get-Off-the-Couchers. Reading fitness and running blogs can be incredibly motivating, but everyone in the world is not running laps around you in designer track jackets and Garmins and the latest in minimalist running shoes.

There are people who are in between, who are working hard at fitting fitness into their lives but who fall on and off the wagon. And there are people who find running deeply unpleasant who do it and do it and do it and then eventually, their body caches up with their brain. A little bit.

That’s basically what I wanted to say about running:

It might take weeks, months, years, but eventually, it doesn’t suck so much.

Eventually, you might love it.

 

 

2
weekly
02 Apr 2012

2012: week twelve & thirteen


March 18 – April 1

I’m not sure I can remember what has happened in the past two weeks. So much. So busy. SO MUCH SO BUSY!!

Here’s what I remember:

1. Ate cheese and drank wine in the dark in Boston Common for a friend’s impromptu birthday celebration.

2. Woke up early on a Saturday. Ran 2.25 miles around the park, then stopped at JP Licks for an iced coffee, ran some errands, and took the bus home.

3. Attended a friend’s fancy-fancy wedding shower, aka day-drinking & desserts!

4. HUNGER GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. Successfully applied for two jobs – job application docket temporarily clear.

6. 450 dollars in dental work. My face still hurts.

7. Read a bit from one of my old manuscripts in public with other people. Far less painful than dental work.

8. Children’s Literature Brunch. Three of my favorite words, right there.

9. Started playing Skyward Sword!

 Aaaaand that’s about it. Fun fact – only 5 more weeks of school! And only 3 more weeks of schoolWORK – all my finals are due in April. How about that?

Reading:

  • Shine by Lauren Myracle. I was excited to read this after the National book Award debacle, but I don’t know what to think about it right now. It’s a bit confusing, and so, so dark.
  • The Radleys – kinda silly family drama… where the family are all vampires. I liked it. Clever.

Listening to:

  • All I am listening to is the Hunger Games soundtrack. I think my coworkers are probably getting annoyed.

Watching:

  • Suffering from television ADD. Bouncing between 30 Rock and Scrubs and Mad Men and on the suggestion of a professor, The Secret Life of an American Teen. I am all over the place.
  • Um, has there ever been a sadder movie than 50/50? I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt, though, I really do.
  • Sooooo the boy and I kindamaybesorta started watching LOST again. Ahem. This is like our 4th try. Halfway done with Season One! We’re at the part where Michael starts spending half of every episode running through the jungle screaming “WAAAAAAALLLT! WAAAAAAAAALLLLLTTT!!”

 

book reviews
30 Mar 2012

Frost by Marianna Baer

When I was about twelve years old, my parents invited me to watch my first scary movie. For two or three nights, I joined them after small-children bedtime and we watched the miniseries version of The Shining. I was old enough, mature enough, and it wasn’t the R-rated Stanley Kubrick version… but it still scared the crap out of me, and to this day, I am still heavily freaked out by “Haunted House” type books and movies.

This is probably why I couldn’t read Frost at my apartment, alone, after 9 p.m.

Leena is looking forward to her final year at boarding school – she’s a student leader, an overachiever, and she and her three best friends are going to live together in this cute little cottage by themselves called “Frost House.” But on the first day of school, Leena finds out that Celeste Lazar – weird, art-freak, loose-cannon girl on campus – is going to be her roommate – Leena and her roommates are miffed that their perfect bubble has been broken. What makes things worse is that Celeste hates Frost House – the windows freak her out, she thinks the closet smells, the creaky old house noises keep her awake at night. For Leena, though, everything in her life starts to go downhill EXCEPT for when she’s at Frost House. Leena can’t keep peace between her roommates and Celeste, she loses the trust of a valued teacher-mentor, and she finds more and more excuses to self-medicate from her stolen pill stash. Celeste’s complaints about the house become more and more bizarre, but Leena sees Frost House as a sanctuary; so maybe the house knows something that Leena doesn’t? Maybe Celeste just doesn’t belong and needs to leave?

This book is a mysterious-haunting book/psychological-who-is-crazy, who-is-not? book, which again, see: The Shining. Baer also does some freaky things here to just create a sense of Uncanny: Things Are Just Not Right about the book. Celeste’s brother David for example, is prominent throughout the book as Leena’s love interest and Celeste’s ultimate protector. But Celeste and David’s relationship is full of family secrets and their closeness becomes kind of… creepy.

On a lighter note, Baer’s writing feels very contemporary YA – she gets the language, the issues, the friendships between teens. But for me, that just made the creepiness even creepier, like whatever is going on in that house could possibly show up at any time in my favorite Sarah Dessen book or something. Urghhhh.

You might want to keep this book in the freezer when you aren’t reading it. Just sayin’.

2
grad school
29 Mar 2012

relief

The nice thing about being Really Very Busy is that when you are done being busy, it feels really very good.

It takes a little while to realize that you are done being Really Very Busy, but at some point you will find yourself sitting on a couch and saying to yourself “Hmm… I guess I don’t have anything in particular to do for the rest of the day.”

And then you will breathe a deep sigh of relief.

And then you will finally sweep the floor and fold all that laundry and watch that movie that needs to go back to the library and go to the gym and make a soup for dinner.

If you are me.

I have returned to normal amount of busy, which on this particular afternoon means I am revisiting a piece of fiction I have not touched for years in order to prepare to READ IT OUT LOUD IN FRONT OF PEOPLE IN A PUBLIC PLACE.

It’s not too bad. It’s a whole book. There are lots of 10-minute readings that I like, and nobody has to know the rest of the book exists!

So this afternoon, all I have to do is tinker and drink this coffee and try not to look like a sleepless hag,

then read,

then go read,

then go home.

Tomorrow I will wake up and do some other things, and then it will be the weekend.

If you are driving in the dark and can only see as far as your headlights shine, you will still make it home. Or something.

 

books
23 Mar 2012

susceptible to hype + a break

When news about the movie and the casting and the posters and the pictures and the trailers and everything else came out, I was indifferent. Books into movies are tricky. I don’t get disappointed, I don’t get invested.

But I have to say, I am having trouble thinking about much else other than my Hunger Games tickets, which will be waiting for me at the box office at 7:30 tomorrow night.

That was a lie, actually. I have a lot a lot A LOT of other things to think about. So much, in fact that, I am going to take my first ever official Blog Break.

First. Ever.

I have been blogging since mid 2003.

I used to scoff at folk who “needed some time away.” Blogging, for me, is more of a sickness than a hobby. I don’t want to stop. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes I don’t post as much as I want to or think I should, but I never WANT to leave it. I want to keep trying. I know I will keep trying.

But this morning, I understood.

In the next week I have to…

  • finish an assignment and a paper
  • pull together a last minute, high-stakes job application with multiple written portions and a video
  • get another I Really Want This Job application together (with essay questions)
  • work on another assignment due a week from Monday
  • do something Really Emotionally Hard (Nothing major, but with my current stress levels? Ack…)

And do all that while maintaining my usual online class stuff, working 30 hours a week, interning, sleeping, feeding myself, etc

I have so much to do and so little time that my procrastination urges are in overdrive. This morning I was sitting around watching 30 Rock after eating breakfast – instead of working on something productive – and The Things I Need To Do were brewing around in my head and then I thought to myself, “Oh, but when will I have time to BLOG!? I need to BLOG!!”

It hit me that no, I actually should probably get a job rather than blogging this week. And that unless I actively step away, tell the universe SEE YOU NEXT THURSDAY, I will come back here and then I will not only be more stressed out, I will not get my shit done.

So, SEE YOU NEXT THURSDAY!

2
book reviews
22 Mar 2012

The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

I love YA romance, but I am extremely picky.

  • I don’t like a lot of gratuitous descriptions of the characters’ hotness.
  • I don’t like a lot of completely obvious foreshadowing – it’s a romance, we know you are gonna hook up no matter how star-crossed your love may be.
  • I don’t like love that comes on too quickly, or can be easily confused with that of an obsessive stalker (sorry, Twilight)

I like romance, but I’m a smart girl. I don’t fall for silly romantic ploys, in real life or in fiction.

Pete Hautman’s The Big Crunch is probably the smartest romance I’ve read in quite some time. Apparently I am not alone in this thinking, as it was given a Los Angeles Time Book Award nod a few weeks ago, standing up against former Printz winning author Libba Bray, critical darling Life: An Exploded Diagram, Printz Honor The Scorpio Races, and the immensely popular Patrick Ness. The Big Crunch doesn’t feel out of place in this bunch – he did win a freaking National Book Award – but it is of  certainly quieter than the LA time nominees. Contemporary realism that doesn’t scream LITERARY. Lots of pink on the cover. Romance.

It’s quiet, but yes: it’s smart. Very smart.

The Big Crunch is the story of two teens and their completely typical love affair. June and Wes remind me that teen romance is rarely of the Romeo & Juliet, the Edward & Bella, or even the Sarah Dessen variety. Teen romance is not often foreshadowed, not always quick to bloom, not always logical. Teen relationships are weird.

June is new at school, but she’s used to it. Her dad’s job has her at multiple schools every school year. She knows how to fit in enough to get what she needs – a group to sit with in the cafeteria and maybe someone to kiss, if she feels like it. Wes broke up with his long-term girlfriend over the summer and he’s not sure why he did it, especially now that she’s moved on and it’s stressing him out. It’s not love at first sight for Wes & June – their social circles occasionally collide, they meet by chance walking home, and eventually, these tiny moments add up to a love.

But even then, things are not easy. Some factors that challenge their relationship are beyond their control – parents, friends, timing – but Hautman also doesn’t hold back from exposing, through close third-person narration for both Wes and June, the many tiny ways that people in love can betray one another. The pettiness. The exhaustion of being together and the tendency to blame the other party.

People are not always nice. All endings are not happy. Love is awful sometimes, and this is the kind of love that can shapes our future relationships sometimes, shape who we become.

I find that much more compelling than anything perfect.

 

books
20 Mar 2012

social mediums

I didn’t think this would happen, but the iPad is certainly changing the way I waste time on the Internet.

I usually resist acquiring new social network accounts. I have enough websites sucking my time. But the iPad! It doesn’t feel like wasting time on the Internet – using an app instead of a browser doesn’t feel like a time-suck, it feels like fun!

Urm. Yeah.

Anyway, these two apps/sites have me pretty enthralled lately.

1. Goodreads

It probably seems strange, but I haven’t really been that into social-reading-catalogs. I got excited about LibraryThing, but I found out the hard way that they had a cap on the number of books you can enter in. This was four years ago, so maybe now that they are bigger they’ve dropped it, but I felt pretty sour about the time I spent, only to find out I couldn’t finish the task or make any updates. I returned to my old method of… oh… keeping a list.

I’ve had a Goodreads account since then, I flirted with Shelfari for awhile, but neither stuck, UNTIL I GOT MY IPAD! The Goodreads app is easy and fun to use – I like seeing the “feed” of what my friends are reading, I like rating books when I’m done reading them, I like reading what other people thought about the books that I am currently reading, etc.

It’s possible that I waited long enough for lots of people to join, and now I’m back to hang out with them, but I log onto Goodreads most times I am using the iPad, just to check in on things.

I update a lot, so if you are into knowing what I am reading IN REAL TIME, feel free to add me as a friend! I also write tiny non-reviews sometimes… stuff like “WHAT WAS THAT BOOK’S PROBLEM?!” and other nuggets deeply critical analysis.

2. Dailymile

Occasionally I decide that my health would be much better if I could just keep track of how many glasses of water/pieces of fruit/calories I ingest and then track those figures against how many minutes I spend on an elliptical machine/times I run around a track/number of sit ups I can do without experiencing muscle collapse. It’s dieting common knowledge that people who keep a food log eat less, even if they don’t make any other deliberate changes. Why not cash in, especially if you are an anal retentive person who likes lists more than she likes people?

The process, though, goes like this:

Step One: I start writing things down on paper. 

Step Two: Get annoyed by carrying around an extra notebook/my poor handwriting/the lack of room on a single page. Begin to create some kind of new-fangled spreadsheet.

Step Three: Want to do more things that I know how to do using Excel. Think “Hey, aren’t there people who made websites for this crap?” Sign up.

Step Four: 2 days later, I don’t even remember my password and I’ve added half a meal or one workout or whatever. Return to stasis.

I started running again just around the time that we got the iPad. I wanted a place where I could keep track of how many miles I was running – I was trying to work up from 1 to 3 miles pretty quickly, but I didn’t want to go too fast and give myself some kind of stupid beginner’s injury. I went through the above process, but when I got to #3, I found Dailymile, and I’ve stuck with it.

Life tracking is much easier on a mobile device. I think I use the mobile site to update Dailymile – I don’t think they have an iPad app – and it’s easy, fast, and voila! Cool little charts! Weekly mile counts! Fun! Fun! Fun!

I also like to look at these lifetime stats when I log in.

I have run more than 75 miles this year!!! Holy crap! I have not, however, made it around the world yet. And I don’t even have to feel bad about eating those four dozen donuts this year – I burned them all RIGHT off!

I have all of 2 friends on here, so if anyone is a runner, we should be friends. Unless you are a crazy marathon runner and are going to make me feel bad about running a grand total of 6 miles last week. Just kidding, we can be friends! Motivation! Right?

Now that the gates are open, I am open to wasting more time doing other pointless things. Anyone have an app they are obsessed with, for iPad or iPhone  and have a time-suck recommendation? I’m all ears!

weekly
19 Mar 2012

2012: week eleven


March 11 – March 17

Hectic. Stressful. That about sums it up.

My schedule is so tightly packed that anytime something else gets tacked on to my schedule, I feel it immediately.

This week was a perfect storm of assignments for both classes, job interview that killed my free afternoon, asking people for references (urgh), lots of stuff going on at work, online class video-chat class meeting, etc, etc.

I fear my ears may become permanently glued to my shoulders. I might wire my jaw shut with stress-clenching alone. Everything I eat, I feel like I have eaten lead.

It’s not a downward spiral, though. It’s just a season. Things are not going to feel better until I have more time on my hands, which will happen in May. It sucks because things aren’t going to ease up – except incrementally and intermittently from day to day, week to week – in fact, they are likely to get worse before they get better.

But it’s 100% situational. This is comforting. Situations change, and in eight short weeks, I will have an entirely different life.

One in which I can read whatever I want, whenever I want, lest you forget.

Other notes of optimism:

  1. I can’t wear a pair of pants I bought last summer because even fresh out of the wash, they are huge-mongous.
  2. I got to eat a St. Patrick’s Day brunch cooked by actually Irish ladies. It was decadent and consisted mostly of Kerrygold cheese. Although I’m not sure if the green mimosa was all that traditional…
  3. It’s getting dangerously close to skirt & dress season! I love you, global warming!

 

Reading:

  • Frost by Marianna Baer. SCARIEST BOOK EVER. I couldn’t read this alone in my apartment at night. I don’t think that’s happened to me since I read the freaking Shining.
  • Purity by Jackson Pearce

Listening to:

Watching:

  • I officially ran through every How I Met Your Mother episode. Again. I tried to download Season 7 but realized that’s the season that’s still going on…
  • So now what do I watch when I want to watch a 30 minute comedy that I really don’t have to pay attention to while I eat/clean/live, etc? The winner: Scrubs.
  • My podcast habits are turning me on to stand-up, which I haven’t watched since I was like, 14. This week was Louis CK (excellent) and Patton Oswalt (not as excellent)
  • There was also a night with me, homework, a bottle of wine, and It’s Complicated. Ahem.