Weekly Update: 1/29/2012

So not a good week, but oh well! I'll update anyway.

WRITING:

Yeaaaaaaaah. That thing. I didn't get to do any of the posts I was planning on! But I'm trying to get back to it. Just way too busy this week.

FOOD:

Ate terribly. Tons of junk food. Probably from being busy and my self-justification. "I have a migraine, so I deserve this donut." Or, "I had to write a paper today, so I deserve all the food in the house." Still no soda, though! Which was really hard this weekend  since I had a tournament, and soda is the easiest thing to fuel up on. But I resistedddd, woo! Also, ate horribly at the tournament, but that's pretty much a given when 98% of the "good" food you can get on-campus on such short notice is filled with gluten. One of my new teammates introduced me to veggie wraps at sandwich places, though! Lettuce, avocado, turkey, mozzarella cheese, and olives. It was pretty good, despite never really having eaten avocado before. Though I'm pretty sure mozzarella still isn't good for you, haha.

Drank less water, too. A lot of it was from losing my water cup, though. If I have a straw I can down water, so when I had a reusable cup with one that I could bring places it was easy. But I think I left it at Daniel's house, so I cut back a lot. Found a reusable water bottle with an opening that's almost as easy as the straw for me to drink mindlessly, so that helped. Not sure why I'm so picky about how I drink water, but if it's just in a normal cup I'll only take a couple sips of it. I forgot my water bottle when I went to the tournament though, but I did run to the water fountains a ton when I got thirsty.

FITNESS:

Hahaha, funny. Didn't really do anything to focus on  Though, tournaments are much more physically demanding than you'd think. Running up and down stairs trying to find rooms, power walking across campuses to get to your round on time, standing all of prep time so you can sprint back and forth between prep "camps," straight out sprinting to use the bathroom so you can be back to the room before they announce topic, plus all the adrenaline getting you hyped up the whole time. And personally, I put on music and dance all around our prep room before rounds to wake myself up (IT'S SUPER SEXY GUYS) (ESPECIALLY SINCE I WAS IN FRONT OF FOUR BRAND NEW MEMBERS WHO DON'T KNOW ME YET) (#FirstImpressions). And all of it in heels.

I'm not sure how physically stressful it sounds to others, but everyone I know who's gone to their first tournament was surprised by how much harder it was on them than they expected. "You just talk, right?" turns into "holy crap how the hell do you do this for three days straight my mind is dead and my legs are falling off." It's kind of funny to watch the people who laughed at me for claiming tournaments are exhausting basically die at the end of a two-day tournament that they only have one event in. Average for me are three-day tournaments with at least three events. Very little sleep, not much food, constantly on my feet or running around. The only time you really get to sit is during a debate when it's not your turn to speak, but then you're furiously writing and thinking of all the arguments you're going to have to put back against things like the brink of economic collapse, or the likelihood of Assad following through with his missile threats, or if we should negotiate with the Taliban in Qatar, or all these other world interactions.

WEEKLY CHALLENGES:
1. Successfully brought lunch to school every day for two weeks. Woo! And now that I've found the joy of veggie wraps I might start doing that to have something more substantial than a random assortment of snacks (hard to pack easy gluten-free meals, since so much of it needs to be cooked or refrigerated).

2. Didn't really get much of a schedule going, since this week was so weird. But I think it'll get easier over the next couple weeks.

3. Still no soda!

NEW CHALLENGE:
Get back on track? After such a useless resolution week, I should probably just focus on getting back to where I'm supposed to be.

Even though I had a pretty off week, I don't care too much. I've been doing well until now, and I'm sure I can get back into what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Sorry!

Sorry I've been missing all week! Way too busy for my life right now. And I'm leaving for a tournament in about an hour, so I won't be here for two days. On Sunday I'm hoping to have something though! Regular blogging will be resumed when my life stops being so crazy.

Weekly Update: 1/22/2012

Sunday again! Three weeks into the year, time for updates. This was a so-so week, probably because school started up again and I was focused on that more than anything else. Still did okay, though! (Kind of a long post, and not too interesting. Feel free to ignore it!) Comment with how you've been doing so far!

WRITING:
Have some posts, but nothing amazing. Karen's story was pretty great! Ridiculous, but definitely fun to write. But since I've had school and debate, I had to put my story for Danielle on the back burner. Hopefully I can get back to that soon, I really want to finish it! I'm hoping I can get into a good school schedule to make it easier to write more.

FITNESS:
I think I technically kind of did an almost-push up. I don't think I went down quite far enough, but I went down and up better than I had before. I mean, I collapsed and crashed into my nose a second afterwards, but still. Progress. Kind of.

Not much exercise, mostly because of school starting up again and having a migraine all week. I'm in classes all day, and when I get home I just have to sit or lay down to not be in pain. Gahhhhh. It should go away...eventually....probably.....

Still doing a bit here and there, though. Parking farther from places just to walk a bit more, doing a coupe jumping jacks (I want 100 a day, but with a migraine it's more like 1, 2, 3, ohdeargodnodeath), and I've been still working on push-ups every day.

I've been sleeping really well. Since I have to be up at 7 or 7:30 every day, I've been falling asleep around 11 every night. And I'm totally awake when my alarm goes off in the morning. Even on weekends, I keep waking up early and being totally fine with getting up. Weiiiiird. Now I just have to get rid of this migraine and I can actually get up and around in the morning instead of having to take it easy all day.

FOOD:
Still no soda! Two weeks without it, and I haven't been missing it at all. Though, yesterday I was super tempted because I went to get lunch with Mariah during a debate tournament, and the restaurant we found had a super weird soda machine that I wanted to use. But even then, I didn't really want to drink it, I just wanted to use the weird touch-screen soda machine. I also went to the movies a couple days ago, and resisted getting popcorn since I knew it would trigger me into downing a massive soda.

No fast food! I actually hadn't had any in a while anyway, but I know I would have had McDonalds or Burger King or In-N-Out by now if I hadn't decided not to. Especially at school, when all that is so close and all my friends go get it at lunch. All I can eat are fries, soda, and milkshakes, so definitely things to avoid. It's not too hard, though. Fries are good, but whatever, I don't really care if I have them or not. It's more the convenience that makes it difficult. "Five seconds to get cheap food with all my friends before class starts" is so tempting! Bringing my own food has definitely saved me from caving into fast food because of that.

Still drinking a good amount of water. 6-8 glasses a day, I think. And I feel dehydrated when I go too many hours without any, so that keeps me drinking it. I've started liking it more. I used to hate water, and now I crave it more than soda and juice. I still don't particularly enjoy it, but it's not bad and I can drink it mindlessly instead of cringing.

Eating healthyish. Better than before, at least. More vegetables, less junk foods, better-planned meals. Tracking what I eat really helps me figure out what I should be eating. It's easier to realize when I haven't had enough of something, or when I've decided that chocolate=life again.

Weakness: Snickers are the worst. If we have any other form of chocolate, I eat it in normal amounts. If we have Snickers, I'll eat all of them in a day. My mom bought a bag of those little fun-sized ones, and I swear I think I ate the whole thing by myself. Terrible but so worth it.

Accidental food thing: I discovered that the texture of just scrambled egg whites is sooooo much better than the whole egg. I've always liked the taste of eggs, but the texture made me gag. But without the yokes it doesn't feel as gross, so now I've been eating them all the time. I forgot who suggested that I try that, but thank you! Apparently it's also way healthier or something, but that's just a side effect of not wanting to be grossed out by eggs. So delicious.

WEIGHT:
I forgot about this one, haha. I said on the 11th that I wanted to lose a pound or so a week. Since then, I've gone down four or five, I think. But I'm pretty sure it's all from drinking water. We'll see if it changes from there.

WEEKLY CHALLENGE(S):
My first challenge was to bring lunch to school every day for two weeks. I'm only a week into school, but so far I've done it every day. It's much easier than hunting for good gluten-free food near campus. And like I said before, without having my own lunch I'm sure I would have been eating In-N-Out, McDonalds, and Panda Express with my friends instead of pasta, macaroni, bread rolls, fruit, jello, yogurt, and turkey. I'm still not sure how good for me any of my food is, but it's leagues better than french fries or fried rice.

My non-official challenge was to see if I could lift the 15lb weights. And the answer is: nope! Figured, haha. I think most of it really is that I can't do much with a migraine, so I've only touched them a few times. I can do two or three curls with them before I have to set them down because of my head. I'll make this a long-term one, I'll just post whenever I move up to heavier weights.

NEW (NON-OFFICIAL) CHALLENGE:
I still want other things to work on in addition to bringing food to school, since I don't feel like I'm doing much with just that. So for this week, I just want to get a schedule down to make balancing school and goals easier.

That's all the updates I have this week. Don't forget to comment with your progress!

Migraine. School. Gah.

Haven't had a post in a few days, but ohcrapitsthursday.

TL;DR: Debate, migraine all week, stupid freaking school, but a very sweet boyfriend.

We have a debate tournament next weekend, it's the first one I've had in months. I haven't debated in forever! I'm probably gonna get demolished since I completely ignored all news and practice during the break, but ooooh well, having time to be lazy and not worry about anything was totally worth it. I don't really care about this tournament anyway.

ADS is my favorite event, but I won't get to do it since there are no speech events at this one, just debate. ADS is 'after dinner speaking,' also called STE (speech to entertain). They're supposed to be funny speeches about socially significant topics. Mine's about superstition. I love it to death, it's so much fun to perform. I have a video of me giving it at Speech Night, so maybe I'll try to find a way to upload it. I'd love to be able to show more of my friends what I do with my life, and my ADS is perfect since it's only 10 minutes long and apparently pretty funny. Also, even though I'm way more of a debater than a speech person, I'm sure none of you want to watch a 45 minute debate round about infrastructure or China or whatever other random topic we get, haha.

Short post, but I'll have something better tomorrow. Basically just wanted to make my Thursday deadline to keep myself on-track.

Boring update stuff:
Super terrible week. Not as far as goals. Just felt sucky. I've had a constant migraine, so I've been ODing on meds every day. Stomach hurts when I eat. Haven't been able to do anything even resembling exercise because my head starts pounding from just standing up. Drinking TONS of water, though. Which is good in some ways, but I also think that constantly feeling dehydrated is probably not a good thing.

I don't think I'm sick, though. Maybe just exhausted. And pretty much everything is because of my migraine, so once that goes away I'll be fine. It's just not going away. Uuuuugh. killme.

Also eating like crap. But I get incredibly self-pitying when I have migraines and just kind of live terribly when I get them, so it's to be expected. "I can eat nothing but junk food for three days. I have a migraine. I deserve it." "I don't need to do homework. I have a migraine. I deserve it." "I don't have to brush my hair today. I have a migraine. I deserve it." I don't do it when I'm sick, but if I have a migraine I am the most lazy, self-indulgent, full of excuses person ever. But seriously. I totally deserve cake and three Snickers and pizza and ice cream and a popsicle. I have a migraine. Vegetables? Pffffft. Those are for healthy people.

And school started this week. FML. I would write more about that, but I don't think any amount of words could describe to you the intensity and depth of my hatred for school.

On the bright side, Anthony has been very sweet and took me to get a cupcake on Wednesday. So that was nice. I was very happy to have a cupcake.

I'll have something more interesting and less full of self-pity tomorrow, I promise.
(Or not. Because I have a migraine. And I deserve laziness.)
(And chocolate)

Karen's Story

My friend Mariah and I made this story for Karen. I wrote it, and she put it into a book, got all the stuff to decorate it, and wrapped it. Enjoy.

-----
Once upon a time there was a beautiful, rich, famous, unanimously loved princess named Karen. Except not really. She was actually a poor janitor at a nuclear treatment facility. And nobody loved her. Because she was radioactive. But she liked to pretend she was a princess by making crowns out of used uranium cases, so that’s kind of close.

One day Karen was on one of her nightly motorcycle rides. ‘If only people knew what a badass I was on my motorcycle! They would be astounded. They may know me by day, but they don’t know Karen by night!’ she thought to herself.

As she was thinking, she accidentally ran her motorcycle into a pole. Subconsciously, it was probably for attention, but it doesn’t matter for this story. Anyway, she ran into a pole and went flying through the air like a political joke flies over a hillbilly’s head.

‘At least if I die like this everyone will know of my badass motorcycling!’ she thought as she careened towards death. Then she hit the pavement and died.

JUST KIDDING. She actually landed in the arms of a tall, gangly man named Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth. He was wearing an outfit similar to the Warbler’s uniforms in Glee, except more stuck-up and pretentious. And also bedazzled.

“Oh my, what is your name, handsome stranger?” Karen asked.

“Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth,” Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth answered.

“I suppose I should have known that from the narration,” Karen said.

“Yes. Yes you should have.” Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth replied.

Karen thought for a moment. “Well, since I am a princess, and you saved me, that means we have to get married!”

“Um, this is moving a little fast…”

“IT’S THE LAW.”

“Are you even a real princess? Because you’re faintly glowing green…”

“I NEED BABIES MY BIOLOGICAL CLOCK IS TI--”

But at that moment, a GIANT MONSTER appeared from nowhere!

“Oh no!” shouted Karen.

“Thank God!” shouted Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth.

The GIANT MONSTER was so giant that it’s giantness could only be properly portrayed by ALL CAPS. In some cases, CAPS LOCK is cruise control for AWESOME, but in this case it was cruise control for SCARY!

The GIANT MONSTER was as tall as twenty one-story buildings, and had bright purple feathers to blend in to it’s natural habitat of drag show closets. Occasionally the GIANT MONSTER built up the courage to come out of the closet and live it’s dream of performing Tina Turner songs on-stage, but so far no talent scouts had signed him yet, so he always ended up returning to his closet to brood and wonder, why not me?

But I digress. The GIANT MONSTER, while trying to imitate Frank-N-Furter, was stumbling around town and smashing all the buildings in sight. It would take a true hero to defeat this GIANT MONSTER! Someone strong, and muscular, with years of training!

BOOM. Before Karen could blink, the GIANT MONSTER had mysteriously been taken down! It stumbled for a moment, then fell off of a strategically-placed cliff. Karen cheered. So what if all he wanted was to be loved? Karen hated ugly things, and didn’t even cry one tear over the fact that the GIANT MONSTER never got his GIANT PARENTS to tell him they loved him and accepted his lifestyle choices.

Karen turned to Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth. “Wow! How did you do that so fast?” she asked him.

“That wasn’t me,” Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth said.

Karen looked around to see who had slain the GIANT MONSTER. Suddenly, she saw another tall, gangly man! His name was Garry Kerpatchy.

“My hero! Are you unwed? Take me in a manly fashion!” Karen cried as she jumped from Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth’s arms into Garry’s. Apparently the narrator forgot to set her down. It was quite an impressive jump, not unlike the graceful skills of a marmoset.

Unfortunately, Garry was not expecting the jump and was quite thrown off at her proposition, so he dropped her. And then Karen died.

Fortunately, at that moment, Karen’s two fairy godmothers appeared! They were so breathtakingly beautiful that their mere presence could feed the hungry, stop global warming, and control the outcomes of every election. Today, their astounding gorgeousness was enough to raise Karen from the dead.

“Now I am Still Alive!” Karen said. She turned to Garry. “Don’t worry. I’m not even angry. I’m being so sincere right now. Even though you broke my heart and killed me.”

It was then that Karen noticed the indescribable beauty emanating from the two women in front of her. “Who are you?” she asked, again missing the narration.

“We are your fairy godmothers,” the brunette one replied. “Our names are Mariah and Brenda. We’ve come to help you with some issues you’ve been having.”

“Mainly, you being dead,” Brenda added. “But also your whole boy scenario.”

“Great!” Karen exclaimed. You could tell she exclaimed it because of the exclamation mark. “How am I ever supposed to choose between Garry and Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth?”

The godmothers stared at her. “Englandis. Sparrows. Downtown. The Fifth.”

Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth puffed out his chest. “It’s a nice name!”

“No.” Brenda said. “It’s pretentious. And weird. And long. And pretentious.” Mariah nodded in agreement. “I think that’s all the information we need. You should definitely not ever date an Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth.”

“But I call him England for short!” Karen protested. “So now it’s fine!”

“Seriously pretentious,” Mariah said with a cringe. “And on the other side, Garry’s last name is Kerpatchy.”

“Ew. That sounds dirty,” Brenda commented.

“Way to pick ‘em, Karen.” said Mariah sarcastically. You could tell it was sarcastic because seriously what the hell Karen.

“Wait!” Englandis Sparrows Downtown the Fifth called out. “I don’t want to be pretentious. So I’ve changed my name! Now it is Francis Robins Upton the Fifth!”

Brenda and Mariah stared at him.

“You have got to be kidding,” Mariah said.

“How the hell would that make it any better?” Brenda asked, incredulous.

Francis Robins Upton the Fifth went to sulk in a corner, like the pretentious prissy boy his name made him out to be.

Garry Kerpatchy hadn’t said much. It was as if the narrators had less fun making fun of his name. Even though it’s still horrible.

“Well, Mariah. How should we fix this?” Brenda asked. “Should we settle for Garry and his dirty-sounding last name, or should we try another option?”

“I’ve got it! We’ll change Francis Robins Upton the Fifth’s name! It may not solve Karen’s problem, but seriously he cannot be allowed to go on like that. For the sake of the world. It’s disgustingly pretentious.

So Brenda and Mariah huddled together to create a new name. After some deliberation, they finally had the perfect one.

“His new name shall be Americais Eagles USAtown the First!” Brenda exclaimed.

“There’s nothing pretentious about ‘Americais!’ Americais is definitely the best name ever. No other name could ever be as great as Americais. Switching from Englandis to Americais is the best thing to ever happen in the history of the world,” Mariah explained.

Americais Eagles USAtown the First stood up from his corner. “I feel great! Empowered!”

Karen was beaming. “Much better! And now I can call him America for short!”

America was so happy, he started singing. “I AM AMERICAAAAA!”

“Wonderful!” Karen said. “But still, Garry did rescue me from a GIANT MONSTER…even America’s awesome name doesn’t change that.”

“What GIANT MONSTER?” Mariah asked.

“Well…it was a 20-story-tall creature…with a 9-story-tall neck…”

Brenda rolled her eyes. “Those don’t exist, Karen.”

“Yes they do!” Karen protested.

“Where is it, then? Show me.” Brenda asked.

“I can’t because it fell off a cliff.”

Brenda and Mariah rolled their eyes. “Sure, Karen. Suuure.”

“I’m serious! Not only does it exist, but I’m also still not sure what to do about my boy problems!”

“Well, Karen…we’re here to answer some things about your life for you.” Mariah said. “First, you probably hallucinated that GIANT MONSTER because of all your exposure to nuclear waste.”

“But there’s one more thing you’ve been hallucinating,” Brenda said gently. “The truth is, you don’t have to worry about boy problems at all. Because you’re not actually a young woman in search of love. This whole time…you’ve actually been a marmoset.”

“What???” Karen yelled. But then it all made sense. Her inability to hold large objects. The fact that she couldn’t steer a motorcycle. Being able to jump from man to man. The fact that men were so shocked and put off by her requests to mate with them. The fact that she was approximately 7 inches long with a 9 inch tail and fur covering her entire body.

It was true. Karen was a marmoset.

So then she scampered off and lived the rest of her life happily eating sap from a tree.

------

A bunch of inside jokes, but most if it should be fine without explanation. Ask if you don't understand a part! I want you to appreciate this in its full glory. The physical version has pictures, but maybe I can figure out how to scan it sometime and put it up. It's amazing. Mariah had the best illustrations ever.

Bucket List

I found a show on Netflix the other day called The Buried Life. I'm not sure how many of you have heard of it, but it's really cool. It's a reality show, but a good one. Four boys decided they wanted to live their lives to the fullest, so they made a list of 100 things they wanted to do before they died. The show is filming them trying to accomplish their goals. And every time they try to cross something off their list, they help a stranger fulfill one of their wishes. For example, in the episode where one of them wants to spontaneously get married in Vegas, they help a homeless man reunite with his daughter. And when they try to sneak into a Playboy Mansion party, they help an underfunded school get a computer.

It's a really great show. There are only two seasons of it, but every episode is great. It's the most inspiring show ever. So I started thinking about things I wanted to do before I died.

Here are some things on my list, in no order.

1. Dive the underwater river in Mexico.
2. Be invited to speak at TAM or SSA or FFRF or any other skeptic's conference.
3. Visit the building I stayed in in London.
4. Do the Color Run.
5. Be the one to propose.
6. Befriend a group of Australian men while staying in a hostel.
7. Splash paint all over the walls of my kid's room with them. Leave it that way if they want.
8. Climb Machu Picchu.
9. Teach English abroad. Spain, preferably.
10. Volunteer for the Make A Wish foundation.
11. Make a picture wall of memories. All captioned.

So there are some of mine. Post a couple of yours in the comments!

Weekly Update: 1/15/12

As I said before, I'm trying to make Sunday the day I post how I did all week as far as progress goes. This week's been pretty good! But just a warning, updates aren't too interesting to read, haha.

WRITING:
I've kept up with blogging really well. I've posted five entries since last Sunday, and I'm working on stories for Danielle's book, which I'll be posting here as well when they're done. I'm just gonna have to see how well I can keep it up once school starts up again on Tuesday. But I should have a pretty light load for a bit, since it's the beginning of the semester.

FITNESS:
-I can almost do a push-up. Closer than I've been ever gotten before! Still not quite there, though.

-I've been trying to just do small things to be more active. I park farther away from places I need to go, carrying baskets at the store instead of using a push-cart, etc. I stand most of the time that I would be sitting, too. If I'm watching Netflix in my room I'll try to stand up and watch it instead of lounging around. It felt weird at first, but it's been making it easier to sleep at night, at least.

-I've been doing 100 jumping jacks almost every day. It's probably not much, but it's quick and better than not doing anything.

-Lifting weights, a little bit. Just some dumbbells we had in the house. I want to get at least a little stronger, since I'm so weak now. I moved up from 8lb weights to 10lb ones, but that's still probably pathetic compared to everyone else. It'd be nice to get to 15 soon.

-Ate okay most days. Stuffed my face with junk all day Thursday because I just felt like it, but other than that I ate pretty well. And to deal with my constant wanting to devour all of Powell's, I got chocolate chips and suck on those. Just two or three chips makes me stop craving it so badly. Also, waaay cheaper than buying full things of chocolate at Powell's, since I eat those in one go, haha.

-Drinking a ton of water. If I have a straw, I can drink it all day. If I don't have a straw, I won't touch it. Weird. But I've been drinking like 48-64oz a day, which is about how much you're supposed to, which is good. I just need lots of ice and a straw. The only thing is that I start feeling thirsty now if I go a couple hours without any, which never used o happen.

Also, along with drinking more water, I'm pretty sure I dropped a ton of water weight. Because once I started drinking a lot of water, I dropped like two or three pounds. Which was weird. I looked it up and apparently if you don't drink water, your body holds onto whatever it can get. But if you drink lots of it, you don't feel like you need to store it. So that was kinda cool.

WEEKLY CHALLENGE:
My goal was to not drink any soda. And I did it! Woo hoo!
I'm going to try to still keep it cut down, but I probably won't completely shut it out of my diet yet. It's just so good!
I realized that I have "trigger foods" as far as soda goes. I don't crave soda until I start eating foods that I associate with it. Popcorn and macaroni are the worst. I didn't happen make popcorn this week so that wasn't a problem, but I made macaroni and the second I took a bite I started walking to the fridge out of habit to grab a Dr. Pepper. It was so hard to not drink one! I downed a ton of water, but it still didn't make up for wanting the soda. So I didn't make macaroni again, haha.
It'd be nice to try to cut it out completely at some point. I'll see how long I can go without having another one. It's horrible for my body, but man I love it. Plus what else are you supposed to drink at the movies? It's like culture. #excuses

NEW CHALLENGE:
I think I'll do a two-week challenge. I want to bring lunch from home once school starts up. If I don't bring food, I always go out and buy the most unhealthy thing possible when I get hungry. Panda Express, quesadillas, even TacoBell nachos. Part of it is that bad food tastes the best, so if I'm going to spend money it might as well taste awesome. The other part is that it's pretty hard to eat well when you have Celiac, and all the food around is either fast food or gluten. Even grocery stores: If you want something to eat for lunch, almost all the pre-made food has gluten in it. So I eat fast food and candy.

Hopefully, bringing my own food will cut down on that. I can make sandwiches, bring fruits and vegetables, make noodles to heat up, etc. And once I start work again that'll be really nice. I'll be gone from 9am to 9pm Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So if I don't bring food, I spend money and eat junk.

Also, I got a new backpack that apparently has a mini lunch pocket? I didn't know that when I ordered it, I just looked again. The little front pouch is insulated and holds food and drinks. So I'm kind of excited to use it.

So for the next two weeks, I want to pack lunch every day. Hopefully a healthy lunch, but even if it's not the best for me at least I save money. I bought yogurt, tons of fruit, deli meat, and those little vegetable packs (sooo good), so I'll be set for a few days as long as I remember to pack it. And if I make noodles or macaroni or anything, I'll refrigerate half of it and use it for lunch the next day (the debate team room has a microwave, so useful!) (so does the cafeteria, but pffft, stupid commoner's microwave) (I MISS DEBATE).

Also, I might make it an unofficial goal to be able to do some curls with the 15lb weights by the end of this week. I think only having the two-week goal that I can't do every day (weekends, plus school hasn't started quite yet) will make me feel like I'm not doing anything. So I'll see if I can safely move to heavier weights by next Sunday.

AND I WILL DO A PUSH-UP ONE DAY.

Anyways, enough with this. I'll try to have an interesting post soon. I have a ton to do, though. Mainly, I have two days to memorize a 10-minute speech. Which I've done before, but it's never fun. At least it's more time than that tournament when I wasn't memorized, but accidentally left my script at home and had to make it up from memory (and I still beat Emma Henry! BESTDAYEVER).

I'll update again before school starts, but if I'm responsible with life I'll be focusing on the speech for now. Ughhh. It's a persuasive, which is the 2nd most boring kind of speech behind informative. Also, half of it is talking about how felon voting rights are discriminatory to black men, and as a white girl I feel awkward going on and on about how unfair it is to black people. At least it's less depressing than my speech about Native American rape last year. But still, I feel much more "white girl saying 'poor minorities!'" in this speech. Qghjqeiflguhw.

ANYWAYS. All done now. Awkward forensics issues aside.

How's everyone else doing with their goals? Two weeks in and I'm holding strong! Hopefully I can keep it up. The public goal thing is really helping me. Just watch out for false accomplishment! According to Professor Richard Wiseman, declaring one big goal ("I'm going to lose 50 pounds this year!") can make you feel like you've already accomplished something, so you're more likely to slack off. But declaring smaller goals and updating progress is really beneficial, since you rightfully feel like you're accomplishing things and it keeps you motivated step by step ("I'm going to lose five pounds this month. This week I lost 1!")

Writing small goals on my calendar helps me, since I can see where I am compared to where I want to be. And if it's on my calendar, I have a good sense of how long I have and I can look back to see how many other goals I reached. And I keep them pretty small and conservative, so I'm more likely to reach them and stay motivated. If I set huge goals, I'm less likely to make them, and then I get really discouraged. So I take what I want to have done and cut it in half. That's my system, anyway. Do you guys do anything like that?

Jessica Ahlquist, Part II

I'm sure you all saw my post about Jessica Ahlquist the other day, and how excited I was for her victory. And I am happy for her. But the whole situation has me seething right now.

Jessica shouldn't have had to go through that. A 16-year-old girl shouldn't have to be shunned and mocked, have her safety threatened, and have an entire town turn against her because her school was breaking the law. This shouldn't have had to happen.

In the first place, she should have been able to go to a school that respecter her rights. But it's not just her school.

Bastrop High School in Louisiana held an unconstitutional prayer during their graduation ceremony, outcasting non-Christians at a day that all the students should have been included and respected at. In addition, teachers at that school publicly insulted Damon Fowler, an atheist student who stood up against the prayer. Even when he legally won his case, the school had a student throw in the prayer instead of a teacher during the ceremony so they could try to get away with it, and by the time she started speaking there was nothing anyone could do. And during his struggle, Damon was kicked out of his house for fighting for his rights as a non-Christian and his rights to the secular public education the Constitution guarantees. Kicked out of his home, teachers denouncing him, and students bullying him because his school was breaking the law.

Discrimination against non-Christian groups (especially atheists and Muslims) is unbelievably common pretty much everywhere. But the amount of it that exists in public schools is especially disgusting.

So yes. To begin with, her school shouldn't have been doing it. But it gets worse than that.

From the second Jessica Ahlquist began to fight for her rights, her entire community lashed against her. Students at school shun her. She has been receiving hate mail constantly. Facebook groups were created to mock and insult her. And since she won her case, it's only gotten worse.

Her home address was posted online, putting her and her family in danger. Jessica's main response to this is worry over her family. She posted a statement saying, "My home address was posted in the comments on a projo website. I have little siblings and a sick mother. You cannot be serious." To which, of course, dozens of the "loving Christians" who hate her responded with things like, "hahhahaha!" "serves u right BITCH," and more.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites have been igniting with comments about her.

"your home address posted online i cant wait to hear about you getting curb stomped you ****ing worthless c***."

"definelty laying it down on this athiest tomorrow anyone else?"

"u little brainless idiot, hope u will be punished, you have not won shit! Stupid little brainless skunk!" 

"shes not human shes garbage" 

"Fuck Jessica alquist I'll drop anchor on her face" 

"Let's all jump that girl who did the banner #fuckthatho" 

There's more here.


Other messages (most of which are deleted soon after posting) call for her to be raped and murdered.


Local police have now gotten involved, since they feel many of the threats break the Safe School Act and could actually lead to Jessica, or her family, being hurt.


I love that she stood up against her school. I love what she was fighting for. I love that she was able to stay strong against all the hatred that came her way. But the fact that the situation existed in the first place is unacceptable. And the response to Jessica fairly and legally winning this case is absolutely disgusting. I feel sick.


And I really wish I could say this was surprising. I wish I could honestly say I didn't expect this level of hatred and backlash. But of course this was going to happen. People hate us. People in America rate atheists as less trustworthy than rapists. Coming out as atheist is often more traumatic for people than coming out as gay. And we're blamed for our anger, too.

"You should get over it," is always the response we get when we're marginalized and discriminated against. "A prayer banner isn't that big of a deal, you should put up with being isolated." "It's your fault you're getting rape threats. How dare you fight for your rights." "How can you be even mildy irritated with things like 'Under God' in the pledge? Christians should be able to put their religion wherever they want it, how dare you want everyone included equally." (Yes, I'm sarcastic here. But it's what these statements mean. 'Just shut up, you should let the religious groups have what they want and ignore your rights.')

It gets old. Because it's always the response. "It's not a big deal that the prayer banner is there." "It's not a big deal you have to mock-pray during pledges." "It's not a big deal that many organizations discriminate against atheists, it's their choice." "It's not a big real that religions get special exemptions, like not being taxed and being above the ADA act."

And if one of us says something about it, it's the same thing. "What the fuck!" "You're so arrogant!" "Can't you just deal with having religion shoved in your face?" "More people are Christian than atheist, so you should shut up!" "How dare you bring up your constitutional rights!"

And then it turns violent. Like always. "Fuck you bitch!" "I hope someone beats you up." "I can't wait to get my hands on you." "Maybe we should rape you and fuck you up, that'd teach you!" "Fucking arrogant atheist bitch. You deserve to be murdered. Rot in hell."

And no, not an exaggeration. I've had all of those things said to me (with atrocious spelling, though). And yeah, I'm pretty forward and outspoken and debate-oriented. But I've never done anything. So imagine what Jessica Ahlquist must be getting for actually taking this to court and winning.

I love Jessica Ahlquist. I will forever idolize her and strive to be like her. At 16, she is a more influential person than I will ever be. I love that she fought for her rights and everyone else's. I love that she took a stand when she saw that something was wrong.

But this whole situation is vile. She should have been able to have a normal life. High school is hard enough. She doesn't need exclusion, hatred, and threats to make it even worse.

And I'm scared for her. I wouldn't be surprised if things got physical. It wouldn't be the first time.

Thank you Jessica. As I said before (and as you already know), you weren't just fighting for yourself.

Fuck everything that made you go through this.
---
Help support Jessica on Facebook and Twitter! 
Friend her on Facebook or join the group "Support the Removal of the Cranston High School West Prayer"
On twitter, retweet "I stand with @jessicaahlquist!


You can also donate to a scholarship fund for Jessica started by TheFriendlyAtheist

Children's Stories!

I'm so excited about Danielle's book idea! But ack, I have so much to do if I want to contribute everything I'm planning.

Quick checklist:

1. Edit some of Danielle's stories
2. Do a re-write for a joint story with Rachelle
3. Write my Siblings story
4. Write me World Creation story
5. Edit both of my stories
6. Work with an illustrator for my stories.

So yeah, lots to do and school starting up in a couple days. But oh well, it should be fun! And hopefully we'll have computers in my Spanish class, so I can ignore lecture and work on this much more interesting project. 

I think I should be able to finish my Sibling story tomorrow or Saturday. I'll have to edit it after that, but hopefully it'll at least be fully written by then. Then I can post it on here and fulfill the "oh yeah this is supposed to have fiction on it" requirement this blog originally had!

I'm only having trouble coming up with names. I'm just using my cousin's names for now, though they don't sound right in a fairy tale. Though Jaxon's name is spelled pretty cool. I'll probably have to go back and substitute them later, but oh well. I always have issues with names! Oh well, I'll think of something. Maybe I can name one of my characters Celia*. I think that sounds fairytale enough. Though it sounds more like a princess name than the characters I'm writing, I think. But we'll see.

Really excited for this project. It should be fun.

But anyways, in other news.  My hair was awesome today. I used expensive shampoo and blow-dried it and it went straight and felt super soft and I felt like Rachelle and it was wonderful. /superinteresting

Sorry for the short post. But I'm gonna get back to the children's story and watching 30 Rock. Hopefully I'll have my story up soon! I might not have any posts here until it's done, but I'm not sure. I'll see how I feel, haha.

--

*Celia: For anyone who doesn't know, Celia is my all-time favorite name, ever. I am in love with it. And for years I was convinced I would name my future daughter Celia. But then one day I realized that Celia would have Celiac disease and that's really cruel so now I can't. So now I just name everything I can Celia since I can't name my kid that.

For Jessica Ahlquist

Jessica Ahlquist won her lawsuit today.

For anyone reading this who doesn't know, here's the backstory. Today, on January 11th, 2011, Jessica Ahlquist officially won her lawsuit against her public high school, Cranston High School West. The school had a large banner with a prayer posted prominently in the gym, with clear support of the Christian god. At least one parent (to my knowledge) had expressed concern over the prayer, but nothing had been done to take it down. Jessica finally decided that she wanted to take a stand. After unsuccessfully trying to talk to school and city administration, bigger actions were needed.Together with the ACLU, she brought a suit against her school to get the prayer taken down in compliance with the United States Constitution. Throughout the entire case, she's face obstacle after obstacle. Her classmates shunned her. She was mocked, both online and in-person. Idiotic protests were staged against her at her school. She has received messages from people threatening to rape or murder her (these people, of course, defending the "love of Christianity that Jessica is out to destroy!"). At every turn, the people around her have tried to knock her down. But she never gave up.

Thankfully, Jessica's family supported her the whole time (sadly unlike the case of Damon Fowler who was kicked out of his own home for standing up for his rights). Along with that, the atheist community came together to rally behind her, publicly support her, invite her to speak at conferences, and provide a never-ending stream of positive messages.

And after all her hard work, it finally paid off. Today she won her lawsuit, and the school has ten days to take down the unconstitutional prayer. Congratulations, Jessica! You've done more than most people ever do by the age of 16, or even their entire lives. You accomplished what you set out to do! You finally did it!

But congratulations aside. Thank you, Jessica. Because you didn't just fight for yourself.

You fought for me. For my right to a secular education that does not isolate me for my beliefs, nor my sister, my friends, or my future children. You stood up in a situation that I can't honestly say for sure that I would have. You stayed strong through obstacles, hatred, and ridicule that I don't know if I could have handled. You fought with more strength than I have ever had. I will always admire you, and strive to be like you.

You fought for all the non-Christians in America, who are often ignored or discriminated against.

You fought for all your fellow students who are too afraid to speak out, for fear of hatred and backlash.

You fought for atheists, in particular, as one of the most-hated, least-trusted, and misunderstood groups in America.

You fought, somewhat inadvertently, to improve the standing and respect of women within the atheistic community

You fought for the rights of everyone in America, even if they don't see it that way, for standing up for the constitutional rights this country was founded on.

You have fought to make this country something that I can finally start to be proud of.

You are truly an inspiration, and I will always remember your strength and courage. I hope someday I can be as remarkable as you are.
---
The atheist community has also started a scholarship fund to help Jessica further her education. If you'd like to donate, you can use the widget below.


Also, here is the link to the court's decision.

Time

Do you ever feel like time is flying by faster than you can catch it?

I’m always afraid of losing time.

Today I was at the picnic with Karen, Becca, and Danielle. For a moment, I just laid down in the grass, staring up at the clear sky, sun warming my skin, listening to Florence and the Machine and Mumford and Sons in the background. And I had one of those moments where I feel like the whole world has stopped for me. But every time that happens, I snap out of it panicked.

How long will I remember this? Will I forget this by next week, next year? What if I lose this memory?

It scares me. I fret about all the other memories I must have left behind over the year.

After snapping into this panic, I asked Karen and Becca how long they thought they’d remember it. Karen responded something like, “It’s a nice day, I’ll probably remember it for a while.” Becca joked, “Forever and ever and ever!” I think I’m the only one who worries when I think about this stuff.

I got this overwhelming urge to take pictures, so I took a few with my computer. It made me feel a lot better. I think knowing I have the pictures makes me feel like I can look back and remember this later.

Maybe I’ll use this blog for that, too. Post things I don’t want to forget, hopefully along with pictures, so I can look back and remember everything I’m so afraid of forgetting. It’ll be nice to have this to read through when I’m older. It calmed me down to have the pictures and videos of today. Maybe I’ll start carrying a camera around more often.

Anyway, besides my weirdness, it was a really nice day. It felt great laying around outside. We should do it more.

But back to the time thing. Does anyone else feel like that? I constantly feel like time is flying by and I’m helpless. I feel like everything in my life is slipping by and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. That serene moment at the Green is already gone. My childhood is gone. My cousins will be grown up before I can ever really spend time with them as kids. Friends I used to not be able to imagine life without are gone. And for every memory I have of my past, I know there must be thousands I can’t recall.

It’s my life. The only thing I have. And I can’t remember all of it. So much of it is just gone.

It drives me crazy.

---

Stuff that happened, so I remember:

Songs I listened to:

Dog Days are Over – Florence and the Machine (this was most of the “moment”)

The Cave – Mumford and Sons

Jack Sparrow – Lonely Island

Good Gone Girl – Mika

Rolling in the Deep – Adele

The King of Carrot Flowers – Neutral Milk Hotel

Salty Eyes – The Matches

Quotes:

“The Healdsburg bakery Moustache has much better cupcakes than Hitler. I mean, Sift. Sift! Not Hitler. Though, I mean, it’s not THAT far off.” –Adam P.

Photos!

Decided to take a profile picture, haha

Becca, Karen, and me!

This.

Super sexy

Pirates!

Becca and Karen

So that was my day. All in all it was a lot of fun, I just wish I could relax and enjoy these things instead of worrying about how long I'll remember them.

Best boyfriend ever!

So as I've been talking about on every single post so far, I'm working on fitness resolutions.

But it's haaaaaaaaaard.

Now, this is probably me being a baby, but I liked laying in bed all day and eating all the chocolate in the house. It was awesome. And trying to change that is difficult. And I'm taking on a fairly large amount of goals as far as this goes:

1. Cutting out fast food
2. Weekly challenges (no soda this week)
3. Tracking everything I eat (only way I can be aware of what I put in my body. Otherwise back to 100% chocolate, haha)
4. Lose 1lb per week
5. Generally eat healthier
6. Exercise more!!! Every day, even if it's just jumping jacks or a walk or something. Just get moving.

So it's a lot of lifestyle changes. And I really do want to get them in my life for good, but aaaah it's hard to resist temptations.

But what I realize about myself is that I do much better when I know that people are suffering working on the same exact things I am. So I thought I'd see if anyone I knew would be willing to match me on this. And guess which sweet, amazing person loves me enough to do this with me for a while? Best boyfriend ever.

 I'm not sure how long he's going to stick with it, but he promised to do it for a while to help me get used to the changes. It made me very happy.

I was actually half-joking when I asked him about it. I thought he'd say no since he has no real reason to do any of it (besides the generic "being healthier is good" thing) and it would be pretty hard to convince me to change my whole lifestyle to help someone else. But as soon as I asked, he said he'd do it with me to help me.

Such a sweetheart. I love him.

So that made me pretty happy. And it's really motivating to have someone else to both rely on and be accountable to. Also, it's just so sweet of him. I feel like I can work a lot harder, knowing he's there for me.

--

Anyway. Done with being mushy now. In other news...

Picnic tomorrow! (errr, later today, technically). Super excited. My plan is to bike to Safeway in the morning to get the food I'm bringing, then bike back home to make it. Then depending on how much of a pain it is to haul everything I need, I'll either bike or drive to the green. Then hours of hanging out with people! 

Today was good, too. Hanging out at the green with people was really nice. It was so hot for January! But it's been a while since we hung out there. Kinda reminded me of high school, actually. It was really fun. I need to get out of the house more, I forget how much I love being outside.

Maybe I'll try to go jogging in Foothills or something soon. The hardest part is just making myself go. Once I'm there, I love it. It's just impossible to remember that when I'm lying around the house. 

--

Anyway, again. Writer's block sucks. I started a story, but can't figure out quite how to write it. We'll see where it goes.

2AM, I'm gonna try to sleep now. Sorry this isn't too interesting, but it made me happy, so I wanted to post about it. I'll try to have something interesting one of these days, haha. Night, people.

Procrastination and a secret

So, I promise I am in the middle of writing two different posts, but neither of them is ready and I only have half an hour and I'm tired. So to teach myself not to procrastinate, I'm going to post stuff that I don't usually tell anyone. So when I miss deadlines, I have to embarrass myself. Should keep me on track, haha.

So here it is: I used to write fanfiction. Really, really terribly written fanfiction. Or, at least I assume it was, I'm too afraid to go back and read them. And only for one really obscure game. Not really sure why I get so awkward about this, but I don't really tell anyone.

As simple as that looks reading it, it was quite painful to write. Ack. But honesty is good. Rachelle's latest post has inspired me to be as honest and open as possible on this blog.

I'm not sure why it always embarrassed me that I wrote that stuff. I think I was just embarrassed of my writing in general. I don't like showing much of the things I do. Debate's the only thing I work at that people get to see, everything else I tend to hide. So all my writing (and other stuff I do) gets swept away and I pretend like it doesn't exist.

I don't know why. Probably some kind of insecurity thing. Or maybe from a lack of friends when I first started maturing, so I never got comfortable with showing my accomplishments to people. But whatever it is, I do hide a lot of the things I do or like or want.

I wonder if Rachelle remembers something that horrified me. There was one day in high school when we were all sitting at a table outside the AP rooms. We were talking about what we wanted to be, and Rachelle asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said something like, "Hm, I don't really know. I haven't figured much out yet." But over my shoulder, Anthony was mouthing "Author, author." Rachelle asked, "You want to be an author, Brenda?" I nearly died. I think I denied it with some "Where the hell did you get that, Anthony?" type statement. And it probably wouldn't be a big deal for anyone else in the world. But I was absolutely mortified and irrationally angry with Anthony. (I'd told him I maybe wanted to write. And while I did tell him not to tell anyone, logically I know it's not a big deal.) Anyway, just a random story for you. Weirdly awkward moments of my life.

Maybe I should make a post about all that stuff. What do you guys think? If anyone wants me to, I'll have an insecurity-related post for you all tomorrow. It might be good to get off my chest.

Tracking Progress and Fitness Goals

So, I know I won't ever do anything ever unless I have schedules. "Oh, tomorrow will be fine," is too tempting for me. So here's what I think I should do:

Monday/Thursday: Regular blog posts, if I don't already have two that week.

No-debate-tournament Sundays: Progress stuff. Because I should probably work on that, and public posts are more motivating than telling myself I should do more. This will mainly be me talking about:
1. How hard/easy blogging was this week.
2. If I have story ideas to work off of or not.
3. How fitness stuff is going (spoiler: probably not well, haha)
4. Any other goals I decide to play with.

Fitness stuff:

• Stop snacking, mostly. Like I said on the first post. 
•  I'd say "eat healthier" should be a goal too, but we both know that isn't going to happen, so I'm not going to lie to you. Let's go with "drink more water," which I also know won't happen, but we can pretend.
• I want to eventually be able to do 20 pushups. Because right now I can do 0. Seriously. I can't do a single push-up. I've never been able to. But how do you start doing more when you can't even do one to build up to it??? Ahhhhh. #patheticIknow
• Planking might help? Though I can only stay up for like 2 seconds before collapsing...
• Get outside more. I'm in my room aaaaaall day. Once I'm out I like it, but I always forget how nice it is to get a bit active when I'm lazing around in my bed.
• Promise myself "just five minutes." If I get outside at all I'll stay longer than that. Just have to convince myself to get out in the first place.
• Get out of bed within 30 minutes of waking up! If I'm up all day, I'll be more active. But I have a habit of waking up then staying in bed for hours and hours and hours, and I never do anything. I should probably stop that.
• Also, don't get up then lay back down as a loophole. Once I'm up, no sitting in my bed.

On a related note, I keep forgetting how much I love riding my bike. It's so fun! And I can do it for a fairly good amount of time without my body getting too beat up, as long as I take migraine pills right when I'm done. Which is annoying (I feel like I take so many pills, ugh), but manageable.

On a related-in-my-mind note, I love hashtagging things. I don't use twitter, but it's fun to label stuff. Usually I use a forward slash, though, not sure why.

ALSO. Went on Rachelle's Tumblr. Found a short film called The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. Really disturbing (thaaaanks Rachelle), but pretty good if you can make it all the way through. Link.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have a normal post tomorrow. Might go to the lake or something, so should be fun.

-------
EDIT: Since this is a Sunday, I'll do some progress stuff now.

Blogging: Got three posts last week, which is good! Had a hard time after the first post, but the random writing was fun, so I'll just do that when I can't think of a real story to do. I'll have to work on writing real stuff, though. Much harder than my "non-fiction" posts.

Fitness: Uhhhhh. Drank some water. Rode my bike for like 20 minutes. Jogged in place for like 5 minutes then got bored. Tried to do a push-up and fell on my face repeatedly.

General: Changed our facebook resolution group from Blogging to 2012 Resolutions, and added in the other people who made resolutions at Rachelle's party. I think it's better that way. Everyone can get involved, and we can help each other with all of our goals. From blogging to sewing to self-esteem, hopefully it'll help keep all of us on track!

------
EDIT 2:
Weekly goals on Sundays, too! Just small things to try to accomplish each week. Exercise for 10 minutes a day, don't eat out, blog every day, or any other small thing. I'll announce them on Sundays, then have Mon-Sat to do them.

This week's challenge: No soda! I've been meaning to cut down on soda, so let's see how a week without it goes. Dr. Pepper is the only soda I drink, but I get horrible cravings for it. Usually I drink one a day...ick. Hopefully I'll get through this week without giving in, and maybe that'll help me cut down in general.


Anyone think I'm taking on too much here? I just feel so motivated right now! It'll probably wear off, but might as well set goals while I feel inspired. I can always edit them if I have to, but it'd be great if I could stick to them. And with the public posts and our resolution "support network," hopefully I'll be able to uphold most of the promises I make. Here's to doing this together, everyone! Good luck on all your plans for this year.

idontevenknow

At Becca's house! Rachelle made a post here, so now I want to too, so here I am! (Becca says hi.)

Anyway, I'm having a horrible time coming up with any good stories, so here is a stream-of-consciousness one (Rachelle's suggestion):

Once upon a time there was a boy named Geoffrey who hated his name because Geoffrey is a stupid way to spell Jeffrey. Seriously. "Geoff"? It should be Jeff. So in his name-induced rage he drove home from college to confront his parents about it.
"WHAT THE HELL MOM," he shouted as he punched down the door.
"IT IS TIME YOU KNEW THE TRUTH," his mother replied, looking up from folding the laundry into various animals, like on a cruise ship.

Confused, Geoffrey sat down at the table. "What truth?" he asked, "Is there a deep family secret that I should know about?" This was it, he thought! Finally, the reason he had such a stupidly spelled name would be revealed. Maybe their family was on the run and they had to change his name, or maybe he had a very rich step-uncle named Geoffrey who promised to leave his inheritance to anyone who had to suffer the same name. He bit his lip, hopeful to know how his life came to be filled with strange spelling.

"The truth is, Geoffrey..." his mother paused to take a breath. "When you were born, and the doctors asked us what to name you...I was absolutely wasted."

THE END. or TO BE CONTINUED. One of the two. You people decide.

There you go. I'll have a decent story later, but this will do for now.
The inspiration comes from the fact that I really do hate the spelling Geoffrey. I actually didn't even realize that it was supposed to sound like Jeff for years. Once, during a speech in front of my students, I referred to a man named Geoff Marci and pronounced it "Gee-ohf-ree."  It was awkward. I was supposed to be demonstrating a really difficult forensics event, too, but started laughing so hard it kind of negated any usefulness of the demonstration.

Soooo anyway. I might update this again at some point tonight, but hopefully I'll write something tomorrow. Even if I can't think of a legitimate story, the ridiculous ones are fun to write, so maybe I'll do some of those for a while.

So. Bye for now. Hope you enjoyed my story.

/commentformotivation

College Application Essay

This is an essay I had to write for one of my college applications. Since I've been blanking on other stuff to write, I thought I'd post this until I finish up a new post. 

The prompt is, "If you wrote the story of your life, what would you label it, and why?"

Just don't laugh at me, I know it's cheesy. Ahhhhhh /embarrassing. And I know, it sucks, haha.

-----------------------

It took a lot of thought to come up with a title for my life story. The only thing I could think of for a long time was "Brenda's Life," since I couldn't seem to find another way to represent my entire existence in just a few words. But the more I thought about it, the more I was able to single out the most important parts of my life. I finally decided that if I ever wrote about my life, I would title it "Sayla," after my childhood best friend. I believe that our connections to other people are an essential part of what makes us human, and credit the entirety of who I am today to the people I've known throughout my life.

Sayla is the person who has changed me more than anyone else in my life. She was my first friend, and we were inseparable for years. And even though we've gone our separate ways, I still try to live my life with her in mind. Sayla is the girl who opened my mind and inspired my imagination. Without her, I wouldn't be half as enthusiastic about life.

The best times of my life were the late nights on her farm. Sneaking out after her parents had gone to bed and running through her orchard, down to the tree whose branches we could hide under while we weaved the tall grass into crowns. We told stories about things we thought must be real--leprechauns, wizards, learning to fly. We made plans about our futures; how we'd get married to any boys we wanted, then live next door to each other in matching tree houses. We tried to answer life's questions together. How big is the universe? Does time travel exist? Could animals understand us? Our answers were always wildly unreal, but we still fully believed that anything could be true.

As we got older we still spent nights under that same tree, going over life's new challenges. We helped each other through everything, from boy problems and fights with friends, to her parent's divorce and my depression. Sitting together under the stars or hiding in the loft of her barn, we always felt like being together gave us control over our lives. Together, we could have made it through anything.

Sayla is the one who taught me to imagine the impossible and hope for the best. She showed me how to get so lost in the beauty of the night sky that I forgot everything that was bothering me. And when I came to her crying at age thirteen, full of confusion and self-hatred and insecurity, she's the one who made me shout ridiculous over-the-top phrases about how wonderful I was until I couldn't help but fall down laughing. She helped me to love myself as much as she loved me.

If I were to write out my life's story, I know almost all of it would relate to her. There's not any other title that could reflect my life as well as her name does. Everything about a person's life is shaped by the people they surround themselves with. I know I wouldn't be anywhere near who I am now if it weren't for Sayla, and I'm grateful to have known her. I know that her friendship has changed me for the better, and every day I strive to make decisions that would make her proud. While I have control over everything I do in life, I know that Sayla is an essential part of what makes me who I am.

New Year's Resolutions

Hi people.

So this year my friends came up with resolutions in the best way ever. We put people without them up on a chair, had them state general areas they wanted to improve, and together the whole room of people shouted things out and edited suggestions until we found one that worked for everyone. (We should make that a regular thing, guys! So much more fun than just thinking of some random stuff on my own.) So anyway, that leads me to this blog.

It's kind of awkward writing like Anthony, Rachelle, and Adam aren't the only ones reading this, by the way, haha.

So anyway, here are my resolutions. Two that we came up with as a group, then one I thought I should add to this.


RESOLUTION 1: Writing

• What it is: This blog. I'm supposed to do two or more posts a week. Ideally one creative post, and one whatever-the-hell-I-want post.
• How I'll do it: I should probably pick two set days to always have one. Right now I think Mondays and Thursdays might work best, but I'll change it if those days don't work once school starts.
• Help me by: Commenting on my posts will keep me motivated, since I'll feel like this isn't worthless and abandoned. And bother me if I don't post all week! 
• Why: I like writing, I should do it more. It's fun, maybe it'll be good stress relief, and secretly I think I'm kind of good at it so we'll see if that's true or not.
  

RESOLUTION 2: Pole dancing

• What it is: Not sexual pole dancing, awesome athletic amazingness. I'll post a video of what got me hooked on wanting to do it at the bottom.
• How I'll do it: Well, the straightforward way is taking lessons. But if those are too far away/too expensive, I'll work on getting in shape enough to start up once I can. Especially in the Fall semester, when I'm (hopefully) in either Portland or Boston: If I can do enough to get my arms, legs, and core strong enough to even attempt to get on the pole, it will make my life easier later.
• Help me by: Uhmmmm. Bother me to work out? Yeah, push me to keep actually doing stuff to get in shape I guess, haha.
• Why: Because LOOK AT THIS WOMAN (awesomeness starts at 1:20). Do you know how awesome she is? I mean, I don't think I could ever do what she does, but I'm sure I could eventually learn some of that stuff and then I would be awesome too. Also, it really does get you in shape, so that's a good side effect. But mostly the awesomeness.

RESOLUTION 3: Fix an eating habit

• What it is: If I'm at home, I eat 24/7. I think I do it when I'm bored. And it's always junk food.
• How I'll do it: Be more aware of when and why I'm eating. Try to only eat when I'm actually hungry. Drink a glass of water before I eat anything. Promise to cook myself awesome dinner if I don't just scavenge snacks until I go to bed. 
• Help me by: If you notice it, mention it? I always forget anything related to restricting food, since I just pick it up the second I want it, so bringing it to my attention would help!
• Why: Can't have New Years without at least one health-related goal, right? Also, I think this is a good one. If I make a meal, I eat moderately healthy (and delicious) food. But as is, I just kinda snack all day. Probably not a good plan.

RESOLUTION 4: BE SUCCESSFUL WOOOOO

• Sit down and map out everything that works for me to keep my other resolutions going. And keep updating it. If I plan it all out, it'll be easier to do. 

So there they are! Let me know if there's anything else that you think of that would help me with these.

I have more stuff to talk about, but I feel like I'm boring you guys, haha. Oh well, I guess you can stop reading whenever you feel like, so it doesn't matter.

I'm torn on what I think I'll like more on this blog. I like creative writing a lot, I just haven't done it in a while. But I also like talking about my life and ideas and social change and all that jazz. I'm going to try to keep it split 50/50, so we'll see where that goes. Bug me if I've been neglecting the creative writing, though! If I'm not posting about political/social/whatever issues, I'm debating and talking about them. But if I'm not posting creative writing, I'm not doing it.

I should also probably have updates about how my other goals are going? Eating and working out. It might help keep me motivated with those, too. I won't make that a priority for the blog, but hopefully I'll be able to post my progress every once in a while to keep myself going.

As for some non-resolutional stuff:

I think this was my first New Year's with friends, ever. When I was little we went to a family friend's party down the street, which was fine with me since I was a kid. And once I got older we were always gone for Christmas and New Year's, so I never got to see anyone. It was great getting to be with you guys! 

So anyway, I think that's enough for now. I'll try to have a story on here soon. Good luck on your resolutions, everyone!