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?