Pay it Forward Friday

Yesterday kinda sucked. It was busy and I had class. Class was long and I had to meet with my teacher afterward about my thesis project. And then it rained the entire way home. Also, not sure what I did during my workout, but my left leg was killing me.

I got home and Chris had dinner ready. He's so wonderful :) He made homemade mac 'n cheese with cauliflower and it was yummy! He's a better cook than I am :( He's also just better than me in general because he always waits for me to get home so we can eat together and he cleans up after dinner and puts the dog to bed. I suck.

So I woke up this morning, leg feeling a little better, but freaking exhausted. I've been at least 20 minutes early to work every day this week, so I figured I'd stop at Starbucks for coffee (my fourth in three days...oops). I decided while I was sitting in line in the drive thru that I was going to pay for the woman behind me as well. I figured I was having a rough morning and maybe she was too, and maybe it'd make her smile and make her day a little better, and hopefully she'd pay for the person behind her too.

Obviously, I have no idea what happened, but I felt a little better after I drove off. Maybe she didn't pay for another person's (who knows...maybe they ordered a lot) but I hope she does something nice for someone else at some point today. We all deserve it. And it just feels good to do something nice for others. I'm also thankful that today was payday and that I could afford to pay for someone else's drink ;)

So what do you say? Let's all do something nice for someone else today--even if it's as small and simple as holding the door open for someone. And if you feel like sharing what you did--or what someone else did for you--leave a comment below! 

Thanks everyone for being amazing and have a happy Friday and a wonderful weekend!

Mmmmm coffee! Pass it on! :)

Workout Updates

Yesterday's workout was 40 minutes on the elliptical. I've been increasing the resistance/intensity each week. I started at 15 and I'm currently at 25. I also somehow managed to forget to pack a t-shirt to wear during my workout. Seriously, who does that? Well, me apparently. So I ended up wearing my jacket zipped all the way up for my entire workout.

Today I did core strength and it was rough. I'm finally starting to get better at planks--especially side planks (those are tricky!). We also did a lot of leg stuff and ab stuff that involved legs and I'm getting really sore and tense in weird places. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. There are some ab exercises I may never get the hang of. Like bicycles, for example. The whole elbow-to-opposite-knee-thing is pretty much impossible for me to do, especially at a fast pace.

Even though I took my inhaler before the class, I was still having a really hard time breathing. And it seemed to take longer afterward for my breathing to get back to normal. Boo :(

I'm really enjoying these classes and my other workouts though. I really wasn't sure how I'd feel about working out on my lunch breaks, but I actually like it. It gives me a break (one that I actually take unlike most of my previous "lunch breaks") and I usually feel a lot better once I get a workout done, even more so if I've been having a bad day.

The only downsides are being all sweaty and not having time for a shower before I go back to work and being really exhausted by the time I get home after work. It's worse on the nights I have class. But it's totally worth it.

I haven't noticed too many changes with my body like weight loss (although I can't remember the last time I actually weighed myself anyway, so I really have no idea what my current weight is). I haven't noticed my clothes fitting any differently, which is slightly disappointing but I'm sure that will come eventually. I've been trying to eat healthier. I make sure I have fruit and veggies in my lunch. Breakfast is usually just cereal. I try to eat veggies with dinner, but that doesn't always happen.

I've been keeping track of my meals, hoping that it would give me some insight to my stomach issues but I haven't had much luck with that so far. Then again, it's only been a week and a half. The only thing I know for sure that gives me lots of problems is fast food, which I've only had once since I started this. As bad as it is, it's so hard to cut it out completely. I'm working on it though.

PS Did you notice it's Wednesday and I'm still posting a blog? Go me! I learned how to schedule my posts! Still, posts on Wednesdays and Thursdays might remain pretty rare. :)

Broccoli Cheddar Soup Adventure

I made broccoli cheddar soup last night after work. Lemme tell ya: it's not so fun to do after a long day at work and while letting a puppy in and out several times.

Overall, I think it took me about an hour and a half to cook which was just painfully long for someone who doesn't enjoy cooking and was starving.

There was a lot of stirring for 20 minutes and simmering and chopping and measuring. Blah.

The end product:

Okay, this is leftovers, because by the time I finished,
I was too hungry to bother with taking pics for you all.

It wasn't bad. I personally think it could have been cheesier. I also didn't follow the recipe exactly (I swear I can hear my mom tsk-ing me all the way from here), so that might have something to do with it not tasting amazing. 

I added more carrots than the recipe called for: I bought a 10 oz. bag and only needed 8 for the soup. Well, I wasn't going to measure all that out, and what the hell would I do with 2 oz. of carrots other than throw them away? 

Second I may or may not have used too much broccoli. Scratch that. I didn't use enough broccoli. I bought a 16 oz. bag of broccoli and guesstimated half as it called for just 8 oz. of broccoli as well. 

I do think that those extra 2 oz. of carrots made the soup a little too sweet so maybe next time I'll follow the recipe more exact. ;)

I initially used the exact amounts of cheese, but when I did a little taste test, it didn't taste very cheesy at all. So I added more. That seemed to help--I still don't think it was cheesy enough though. 

Given that this was my first ever attempt at making any kind of soup, I'd call it a success since it was edible. And Chris said it was "delicious" (his word, not mine)--although I did tell him last night to let me know what he thought, and then added that since it took so long to prepare/cook, anything other than "it was good" was going to get him in trouble ;)

I definitely want to try making this again sometime soon, but it's going to be a weekend meal when I have more time and patience to take the time to cook. 

And seriously, cooking while trying to watch a puppy is nearly impossible! 

Bucketlist for 2013

If you're new here, welcome! I'm participating in a blog-hop with other writers and we're going to be talking about things we want to cross off of our "writer's bucketlist" this year. I hope you enjoy it and check out some other blogs as well!

I've already done the obligatory "goals/resolutions/plans" post for 2013. But not a whole lot of those had much to do with my writing.

Here are some things I want to accomplish with my writing in 2013 (both academically and here on the blog):

1. Get one of my poems published. I have to submit my poetry at least once just this semester for my poetry class, so I'll probably send out to more than one and hope I get something other than rejection letters in the mail :)

2. Build my readership here on the blog and get all of you wonderful people more involved! I get very few comments on my posts, even though I seem to have a lot more readers than I've had in the past. So I want to work on that and get to know you all better!

3. I want to spend more time blogging about fitness, since that's why I started this in the first place. Of course it helps if you're actually doing "fitness-y" things. I'm working on it.

4. Get started on my thesis. I've officially decided that I'll be doing the editing project rather than a creative thesis. I'm really excited about it and although the editing project will contain a little less writing and a lot more editing, it's still going to be a lot of work.

5. I want to read more. Reading improves your writing, so I really want to be able to spend more time reading--other blogs, novels, poetry, etc. (especially things that aren't required for my classes). And in case you're wondering, I'm still on Book 4 (American Psycho) of the 100 Book Challenge, but I'm making progress (mostly thanks to the fact that I forgot some of my homework at work over the weekend--oops).

6. I want to make a difference. I read quite a few blogs that regularly raise money for a certain cause or family or group and I'd like to somehow be a part of that. I'm not sure when or how I'll make that happen, but it's definitely something I want to try sometime this year. Plus, it just really feels good to be a part of a community that will band together and do nice things for others.

That's all for now. I suppose the next step is finding ways to implement these things. Some will be easier than others, but I hope to accomplish all of them, or at least make progress toward each of them, this year.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday Funday

Yesterday was a pretty fantastic day. We got ZERO snow, unlike everyone in St. Louis who got between 3 and 4 inches (ha!).

We attempted to go to breakfast at a coffee shop in town that Chris had tried but they are not open on Sundays. The only other place besides fast food that we could find that was open was a donut shop and neither of us were in the mood for donuts. So we had Jack in the Box for breakfast.

First and most importantly, I discovered that the bacon cheddar potato wedges ARE BACK!!!! Those are my most favorite thing on their menu and they've been gone for soooo long. If you're wondering whether I had them for breakfast or not, well, I seriously considered it, but decided to have a steak and egg burrito instead.

Unlike the tiny burritos you get at McDonald's (and now Sonic--boo), it was a nice full-size burrito and it was pretty darn good.

After breakfast we did our grocery shopping and got our foods for the crock pots. We got all fat, unhealthy things like little smokies, rotel dip and chips, and taquitos. Yummm.

After a nap and finding nothing on tv to watch, we decided to go to Walmart. Here's what we came home with:

A Lamb Chop for Copper

And a 46" tv for Chris (and me too, I guess)

It was a good deal and all that blah blah blah. So we "watched" the Super Bowl on our new tv. And by "watched" I mean ate, napped, and I read. The game was fairly boring (especially since I don't really like football anyway), and most of the commercials sucked. I felt like it was a pretty big waste of time. But what else were we gonna do? 

Tonight I'm going to attempt to make broccoli cheddar soup. Hopefully that turns out okay--I'll be sure to let you know! 

HughesNet Sucks (Still)

From now on, I will never buy a product or service that has not
A. Been used before by myself or someone I know
B. Been highly recommended to me by someone I know and trust
C. or been thoroughly researched on my own.

After spending nearly a half hour on hold on Friday (after speaking to a recording--which I absolutely despise!), and hearing several messages that they are experiencing a "high volume of calls and customer service is also available online" (it's not), I finally got through to HughesNet to change my payment method.

It should have come as no surprise that the person who took my call barely spoke English. Once I had finally given her all the information and whatnot and finally hung up, I wasn't entirely sure she had the information correct. Now I'm kind of hoping and praying she screwed up and they won't be able to charge me.

I started doing research online and OH MY GOD the things I've read that I wish I had read back in October. Complaints from people saying that HughesNet has essentially stolen money from their bank accounts, refuses to refund money for any purpose, and several have had my experience--totally unaware of the extremely low data allowance.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this, but I eventually just canceled my Netflix because I'd occasionally be able to get through one episode before my internet slowed down so much that it was impossible to watch (or do anything else even).

I figured even though Netflix is pretty cheap, it's stupid to pay for something that I can't use because my internet is entirely too slow. I'm still trying to come up with other ways to get internet so I don't have to go through HughesNet anymore. The main problem is that, from what I've read, it's not easy to get out of a contract with them (whether you try to pay a fee and break early or wait until the 2 years is up). Again, a lot of people have reported having money stolen from their accounts, even after they've paid the fees (which are a ridiculous $400 or more) and had the contract and services canceled. They also will not send anyone to remove the equipment--you have to do it yourself, no matter how dangerous, and then send it back to them. Some people have reported that even after sending the equipment back (and receiving confirmation from UPS that it was delivered), they were still charged and HughesNet said they never got it.

I don't care where you're living. If you absolutely need internet, find another way--any other way--than going with HughesNet. They are overpriced, offer extremely shitty service (which some people have compared to dial-up), and apparently will steal your money (hopefully I don't have to experience that). Right now we're looking into getting an iPad with an extra data plan (which isn't nearly enough for Netflix, but it would work for doing research and stuff) or we're going to look into getting one of those wireless cards. I don't know anything about those, but I think maybe next weekend I'll head over to AT&T and see what my options are. I know going the iPad/data route won't be a lot cheaper than what we're doing now, but the service will be better and more consistent.

If you know anything about wireless cards (or any other options) please let me know. I'd appreciate any help/advice!

Friday Fun

Today got off to a rough start.

First of all, it was NINE freaking degrees when I left for work this morning. NINE!!!
Disgusting.

Second, at least one of my tires was extremely low on air (probably the one I lost the little cap-thingy to the last time I filled it with air) so I had to drive to the gas station and get out on the ground, in the dark, and figure out which tire it was and then fill it up.

By the time I got that taken care of, it was 6:30. Normally, I'm half-way-ish to I55 by then. And of course, I got stuck behind all the grandmas and school buses.

I managed to make it to work and walked in the door at 8am. Idk how in the hell I did it (okay, I do know...I was speeding...a little), but that's probably the latest I've ever been to work. Crazy.

My classes weren't too bad this week. And I'm actually starting to sort of enjoy my research class. Not a huge fan of the homework assignments, but I am enjoying the in-class discussions we're having (both on- and off-topic).

I don't have a ton of homework this weekend either! I'm hoping I can get it all done tomorrow so I can just relax on Sunday and eat and be lazy and watch the Superbowl. We have no plans. No party to go to. And I'm perfectly fine with that. :)

In other news, I worked out every day this week and it feels amazing to be able to say that! Working out during my lunch breaks has been the best part of my day. It seems to make the day go by faster, and I have more energy in the afternoons.

When I got home, I was greeted by a puppy soaked in her pee. So I had to give her a bath. What fun.