Day Seven. Or Eight. It's Early; Seven

Last night, Amber and I did a pretty half-assed interval for C25K, but we did it with mostly no pain. Amber tweaked her ankle a little, but we iced her when we got home and she seemed fine today.

The wine in the refrigerator is taunting me, but I only have to ignore it until Wednesday. I am pleased to say that I do not have the same emotional weirdness going on with turning twenty-seven that I did when I turned twenty-six. It could be because I am feeling more optimistic about this year than I was about last year.

My diet over the last few days has been pretty good, barring Friday night at Hut's. I was really stressed out on Friday and I am not sure why. Since Friday, however, I have been eating oatmeal (no sugar, extra cranberries), and tofu with broccoli and the like.

Yesterday was hellish, but the run helped. My sleep schedule is still screwed and I am really hoping that I will be able to get it together this week because I do not want to be struggling to sleep properly with the course load I have. I have added an additional goal to my list: in this, my final semester of undergrad, I shall make the Dean's List. I have never done it, either at State or at Lee College, and I shall do it now.

I think it is possible that I have cedar allergies. I woke up today with a stuffy everything and a sore throat, and a Zyrtec helped. At least I know that I am not sick.

I am contemplating going to Epoch to get some work done since I am awake anyway and apparently incapable of doing anything useful while here. I still want to get the work for my correspondence to the halfway point by next Monday.

Day Three: Tasty Food

Yesterday I got distracted by doing work, of all things. My stupid art correspondence class that I have to take in order to graduate is coming along reasonably well, and I should be at least halfway done with it by the time semester actually starts. Dietarily speaking I was not too awesome yesterday as I had a slice of Moon Tower while at Epoch. I have not had that much cheese at once in forever. SO TASTY. My other food yesterday was a Freebird with no cheese and no meat, so it is not as though I went on a binge or anything (my burritos are always about half tomatoes and cilantro). My exercise was minimal, consisting only of walking to Bouldin Creek Coffee, and then from the bus stop to Epoch, and then from Epoch to the bus, and a few blocks downtown. Perhaps a mile in total.

Tonight was Hut's night; we finally learned Hat Guy's name (it's Mark) as well as Host Guy's name (he's Austin). So, now we know the names of all the servers on Wednesday night at Hut's; our lives are complete insofar as burgers are concerned. Thereafter, we went to BookPeople; I had an Earl Grey with skim milk. We walked partway home and got a tiny car the rest of the way because Amber's legs were not doing well.

However! We went to the gym thereafter and are kicking C25K's ASS. We also did some core work with the medicine balls as a warm up and I did two sets of sixty pounds in the bench press (which is the heaviest barbell they have at Planet Fitness. Bitches).

Amber brought me nail polish remover so they are once more fabulous. Oh, and I am now eating carrots with Berbere sauce in yoghurt. TASTY

In summary:

• Fingernails: fabulous
• Cat: still alive
• Bench press: 19 reps at 60 pounds
• C25K: Week Two
• Brussels Sprouts: found a possibly not hateful recipe
• Waitstaff at Hut's: we have collected them all. WINNAR
  

My goals for this year are still a bit nebulous, but here's what I have so far:

• Get my thesis published, preferably in the Journal of Wildlife Management
• Increase fitness and stop gaining weight (fuck you, graduate school)
• Career advancement - I hope to be Adjunct faculty at ACC by the Fall 2011
• Reduce Clutter
• Reduce Spending
  
• Reduce Stress (which should hopefully be the easiest one on the list, since I'm no longer in graduate school)

Today I started my new workout routine at the Planet Fitness next to my work. I am following the beginner full body workout. I am using the JFIT app to track my progress. Because I can. Here's what I did today:

• Barbell Squats: 30lb 12x2
• Lat Pulldown: 70lb 12 and 9
• Barbell Shoulder Press: 20lb 12x2
• One-arm Dumbell Row: 20lb 10x2 (each arm)
  
• Barbell Bench Press: 10lb 12x2
• Calf Machine: 170lb 10x1
• Decline Crunch 12x2

So far today I have eaten leftover turkey, green bean casserole, and hot wings and 3 cookies. Not great, but could be worse. No word on dinner yet.

Progress on goals today:

• Thesis: nada
• Fitness: Fantastic (minus the cookies)
  
• Career: nil (not much to do at the moment, no one is there)
• Clutter: Office desk cleaned (go me!)
• Spending: I spent $2.50 today on a game for my phone and $2 to an environmental group. So, good.
  
• Stress: Volunteer work and video games. Fantastic

Overall: good

Day One

As of 19:00:

Food:

• Tamales! Not of the cat. They were actually sweet potato and pecan tamales and they were awesome. With them were
  
• two flour tortillas,
• two eggs, and
  
• half an orange.

That was breakfast; this evening I have had a

• Raisin bran muffin. Not nutritious.

I have also drunk about seventeen cups of Earl Grey.

Exercise:

I suspect that I have strolled approximately half a mile. I was going to take the bus to Java, but it is only like a mile over there, so I think I am going to walk. I have some mild pain under my right patella, but it is probably just inflammation from the stupid feet shoes -- which are awesome, but still stupid.

Academia:

I have read forty-six pages of The Foundations of Early Modern Europe; tomorrow I am going to get some of my correspondence course done so it will be finished prior to the start of the semester.

Very Well.

Amber has decreed that I shall make the first post.

We have been married for a year and a half and have been more or less easing along because we were both to stressed and exhausted to do anything else. She was working on finishing her Master's degree and I...was helping her work on finishing her Master's degree. Well, she graduated on December seventeenth and now we are going to try to bring a little more awesome into our lives. We have thus set the following goals (thus far) as a couple for the coming trip round the sun:

• Get me graduated and into graduate school
• Get her thesis published
• Avoid turning her cat into tamales
• Get into better physical shape
• Cook at home more often
• Reduce clutter
• Spend time enjoying our city since we are paying significant rent to live where we do
• Spend less money
• Go for day/weekend hikes at least once per month, preferably twice

There are a lot of sub points to some of those points; for example, part of the getting into better physical shape means we are doing the couch to 5K thing and running in one race at least five thousand meters in length per month. Our first is on 30 January in Houston.

We also have personal goals as well since -- despite the rumours you have heard -- we are separate entities. Mine thus far include the following:

• Run my first marathon in November
• Graduate
• Gain some fluency in French
• Get into graduate school
• Get a job at least tangentially related to my field so that I can start paying off my student loans
• Have nice fingernails
• Avoid turning Amber's cat into tamales
• Attend the Sommerhochschule in at the University of Vienna -- which might be problematic due to a family wedding, but that's irrelevant at this exact moment

To wit: this evening we had to return some movies to Vulcan (and by movies, I mean Star Trek: Voyager and How I Met Your Mother) and since we did not feel like going out to Amber's gym, we decided to get our Couch to 5K on. I was in charge on account of having the watch and we therefore did a bastardised version of Week Two (We were meant to be doing Week One. Oops.): Amber told me to run for a minute and walk for a minute and a half. I got that backwards, so we ran for a minute and a half and walked for a minute (unless we were going uphill; then we ran/walked 60/90). The nice chart says that Week Two is run 90, walk 120. We therefore are more hardcore than C25K.

Also, running in the cold through our neighbourhood beats the treadmill any day.

For dinner we had pho at the pho establishment on the Drag with steak, tofu and broccoli. Amber had two egg rolls and I had an egg roll and a spring roll. Total with tip: fifteen bucks.

Thus ends Day One of our year of becoming awesome:

• Budgetary goals: met
• Exercise goals: met
• Cat: non-culinary
• Fingernails: awesome
• Neighbourhood enjoyment: moderate to high
• French: très mal

Success!