Perfect Friday Night

Yes, I understand that the perfect Friday night for someone in their mid-20s should not be how I am currently spending mine, but I can't imagine a better evening than the one I am currently having. It's been raining for three days here in DC, its pretty chilly outside right now, and I've worked a lot of hours this week. I left work at 7:20 tonight, came home, and curled up on the couch in front of postseason baseball with a bowl of homemade black bean soup and a piece of leftover cornbread. Perfect.

Later on I might watch the season premiere of Psych from Wednesday, but we'll see if I'm awake.

Some exciting news from the weight front: I lost my 5 percent! One of the things Weight Watchers has people focus on when they're starting out is losing a percentage of their starting body weight. I lost my five percent as of this past Tuesday, which feels awesome. It's possible I might be at 10% by Christmas, which is pretty exciting. It was even better because last week was a pretty rough week food-wise. I was starving pretty much all the time and I ate WAY more points than I was supposed to every day. Luckily I got a lot of extra workout points to help balance it out, but I was a little worried when I stepped on the scale. And, as it turned out, it was better than it usually was. Imagine that! Well, I won't question it too much, I'm just glad it is what it is.

Speaking of food, I promise that the pumpkin cupcakes will be posted about. In the meantime, I made more cupcakes that I took into work today: mummy and spiderweb cupcakes. The initial plan was to make all mummy cupcakes, similar to the ones found on the Better Homes & Gardens Halloween site. But when I decided that those weren't turning out very well, I decided to do a little bit of ad-libbing with the leftover orange icing from the pumpkin cupcakes, the white icing for the mummy cupcakes, and the black decorating gel I had bought. It worked out pretty well. They were really popular at work, which is good. One of the problems with bringing in baked goods like cupcakes to work is that I don't eat them, so I don't know if they're any good before I feed them to people.

Anyway, the finished results were made with Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge cake, Betty Crocker cupcake icing, Pillsbury Supreme vanilla frosting dyed orange, and red and black decorating gels.

 I didn't want to take any home, so I decided to add a note to encourage people to take some.

Finally, because I managed to take my camera into the office, I took some pictures of the decorations. It's nothing groundbreaking. Things are pretty straight laced in the school where I work, but people definitely feel in the spirit when they walk into our suite.

Jade's desk, when you first walk in the door. It's got the jack-o-lantern orange garland that I bought at Michael's. One of the professors walked in the other day and thought we were a little ahead of ourselves on the Christmas decorations and then realized it was for Halloween.






Vanessa's desk, to the left when you first walk in the door. The pumpkin on the left came from Wal-Mart or Target a few years ago when we hadn't had time to carve anything, and the one on the right is from Giant a few weeks ago. They both light up. Vanessa thinks the one on the left is scary, but said it was counterbalanced by the less scary one on the right.

The GA desk, opposite Vanessa's desk. I picked up these foam signs and decorations at Michael's for $1 each. You can see on the bottom jack-o-lantern that they sparkle. The black parts on the skull sparkle and the spiderwebs shines all over.

The door to my office, with the ghost and two pipe-cleaner jack-o-lanterns, from Michael's and HomeGoods respectively. I added on the rest of the foam decorations from the GA desk to my door later in the day after I took this picture.

And now picture spam of my office.

Well, that's the office. I'll hope to have more posts soon. I'm off to a corn maze this weekend, so that should be worth a few laughs on Sunday. And tomorrow is my last PT session, which is kind of sad because I really like my trainer, but I don't have the money to keep going to these sessions. What I've learned, however, I can take with me as I keep working out at the gym at work. And I have nail polish reviews. I currently am wearing a gorgeous purple glitter, but I haven't been able to take pictures because it's been so dark and gloomy every day and I haven't had the natural light necessary to make it look anything but black. Sad. But I'll get them. I promise!

Midterms and Decorations

I had a midterm tonight in my speechwriting class. We had to write a crisis speech, so the idea was that we couldn't have much time to prepare. We got a topic at the beginning of class and had the full class time (2.5 hours) to write a speech and submit it. I finished mine in about an hour and a half and was the first one done (OK, so I finished at the exact same time as another guy, but close to first).

I was actually really happy with what I turned in. I'm not the type of person who frets and fidgets during an exam. I walk in and I either know what to do or I don't. If I don't, I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure something out or remember something I never bothered to learn, so I generally finish those exams pretty quickly. If I do know it, I take the exam, review it once, and then submit it. I take tests pretty fast in general, so unless it's a really long test or I know an extensive amount on the topic and am trying to fit it all in, I usually finish pretty early. But I'm rarely so content with the responses I give as I was tonight. Usually I feel good after an exam because it's over (one of the reasons I prefer final exams to final papers: there's a finite amount of time between when you start it and when it has to be done and there's nothing you can do about it). Tonight, I felt good because I felt I had submitted a quality piece of work. Now let's just hope that my grade reflects that.

No one came in to work today except for me, so I didn't get a lot of work done. There are some things about the office environment that are really frustrating me right now, so I'm trying to relax and be more apathetic toward work. This sounds like it would be counter intuitive -- if I want something to improve, I should work to change it -- but really I'm annoyed and frustrated because I care too much about my job. If I care less about it, if I spend less time doing it, if I really work on improving my personal life outside of my job and just not thinking about work, I'll be happier in the long run. I'm debating whether to start a countdown to when I'll stop working there. It looks like it should be a year or less, but I don't want to start counting down until it's a little more clear.

On a note of making work a little bit more enjoyable, I took all my decorations into the office today. I put most of them up, sharing some of them with coworkers who do not have their desks decorated. Jade currently has the garland of jack-o-lanterns up on her desk like bunting, and I might be talked into giving up some of my foam spiderwebs and jack-o-lanterns for the GA's desk on the other side of the office. Then everyone will have some Halloween spirit when people walk in the door (technically, I have an office that is hidden from view, so people have to come find me to know I have Halloween spirit, thus decorating of the suite spreads the good cheer to people who can't see my office). I'll try to take pictures tomorrow, if I can remember to bring my camera.

I also have to weigh in tomorrow, which might be ok and might be ugly. I ate all of my weekly and all of my activity points this week. There are a couple of food items I may have overestimated, but usually we underestimate, so I'm sure that I made up for it somewhere. I've been really active, but I've also been starving this past week, and I'm not sure why. Hopefully I will have lost some weight, even if it's only a fraction of a pound. Three people at work have commented about my weight loss, plus my personal trainer, which is very satisfying. This is my last week of personal training, so hopefully I can take a lot of what I've learned and keep using it at the gym and keep losing weight. Most of what we've done is pretty easy to remember (not easy to do) and I can translate it at the gym or even at home. We'll see how it works.

I'm currently wearing China Glaze Mummy May I (actually MMI, this time, and not Zombie Zest, which I kept calling MMI in my post last week). It dried really matte last night even with topcoat, but I put another layer on tonight and I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow.

One week between posts...

Wow, has it really been a week already? That's crazy. Maybe one day I'll actually come home at night and have time to post, but that week is not this week. On Mondays and Tuesdays I have class, so I likely won't post then unless I do it from work, and on Wednesdays for a few weeks I'm going to have 8 p.m. personal training sessions, so that's going to keep me from posting on Wednesdays. So let's shoot for Thursdays and see if we can't get in something else a little more frequently.

I did have my personal training session last night and I really like the training with this new place. Once again, I'm doing it through a Groupon and I'm really happy with it. It's actually group personal training, so there are a couple other people, which I thought I would find annoying, but is pretty nice because there's a little bit more going on and it keeps things more interesting. Also, I'm not required to make awkward conversation with the trainer, though I totally could because he's adorable and awesome. This is the second time I've gone to this place and I'd go back there before I went back to the first one I went to, but I likely won't be going to either because it's just not something I can reasonable afford. I'd love to be able to make a down payment on a house and have a personal trainer, but that's not possible given the amount of money I make, and one day I'd like to move out of my parents' house and not spend every cent of my income toward rent, thus prohibiting me from ever having a down payment.

Actually, my ideal plan is to buy some place with two bedrooms and rent out the second room for half or more of the mortgage. Right now rates are so low that I could conceivably rent out the second room for the ENTIRE mortgage, which would be awesome. And if I'm the landlord, then I don't have to deal with awful roommates because I just throw them out. Or something. I should probably consult an attorney on that.

So, I finally decided to retire my gold flats. They've served me well for many years. They cost $14 from Target about six years ago, but a summer living in New York and everything else they've been through have made them pungent and I think it's time they were thrown away. I believe I will be replacing them with the Qupid Thesis Flat:

I think it will make for an acceptable substitute. I liked my previous flats because they were a neutral, understated gold. Not too yellow, not too silver, not too shiny, not too obnoxious. Neutral, easy gold. So we'll see if these will work and, if not, I'll send them back.

As part of my quest to wear all my shoes (which I still can't do because my ankle still hurts and I can't put on heels) I am interested in eliciting advice on how to wear pewter flats. I have a pair of pewter, pointed-toe super-low wedge "flats" from Target. They're really cute, but I never know exactly how to wear them because the color is so unusual. I never feel like it matches anything and it seems too different to wear in contrast to things. I've searched the Interwebz and haven't found a lot of help, but have found some really cute pewter shoes. Thoughts?

Busy week, man.

And here we are again. Whoops about the no blogging, but things have been busy this week. I finished my final project a couple hours ago for my class so now I'm done with school work for three weeks, which is a nice vacation. The final project actually came together really well because each piece of the research proposal we had to draft had been required of us earlier in the semester, so I basically just had to do the same thing on a different topic. I guess the professor knew what he was doing after all. Whomp whomp.

But yes, this week was busy what with school and work and softball and doctor's appointments, but now I get a bit of a break. The students aren't in class anymore until the first week of September and I don't even have to work next Saturday. Of course, I've basically used this free time to cram in every possible thing I need to do for the rest of my life, so there's that. I have PT and softball tomorrow and an exercise class scheduled every day from Tuesday through the following Tuesday. Yikes! I guess we'll see what happens. My Google calendar looks a little crazyface.

Ugh, craziness going on with my paycheck, though, which may keep me from doing anything fun for a while. Basically, I'm getting taxed on my tuition because GWU views it as income, which wouldn't be a problem, except that instead of adding $150 to my taxes, it's adding $400+ to my taxes, and since I'm not actually making any more money, all that money is coming out of what was already too small of a paycheck. So I guess real personal training is out for the foreseeable future. Good thing I have some Groupons. (Also, saving for a down payment is out, paying my credit card bill, paying my phone bill, storage unit rental, car insurance, gas money....) Yeah, I'm really not sure how this is going to work.

I was featured in my company's newsletter this week. There's a picture and everything. Several of my coworkers commented on it. I found it awkward.

But I also get to hang out with my awesome coworkers at softball tomorrow night! It's our last game of the season and we've done pretty well. I, personally, have done very well the last couple of games, including the game-winning RBI in the rain in our last game. We're having an after-party post-game tomorrow night so that should be fun. I actually really like my coworkers. It would be cool to, you know, be work friends with them and maybe go out for happy hour like a normal 20-something and not go immediately home to my parents' house every night where I watch NCIS and go to bed.

And, because Sarah specifically requested more nail polish pictures, China Glaze Pink Voltage.

My camera could only seem to capture this as a regular pink, but my cell phone got the full neon effect, so I'm putting up the lower quality picture. Gorgeous.

Oh, and I promise I don't take pictures of my nail polish while I'm driving. I was sitting in my car waiting for softball to start so I decided to take a picture. Just to reassure everyone.

My triceps hurt... more than I thought possible.

So forget what I said last night. That wasn't pain. THIS is pain. I have never been this sore in my life. My arms hurt so much that it woke me up last night. I can barely lift my hands to my face in the event of the need to scratch my nose or, you know, eat. Wow.

My triceps hurt...

I am sore. Normally I'm not sore until the second or third day, but I'm already sore. At 5:30 this morning, I rolled out of bed and headed to Chantilly to meet my personal trainer. His name is John, and he actually looks like the black version of my ex, also named John. So that was bizarre. But it's ok because he's pretty cool and I think he's the kind of person I would like working with. Unfortunately, he's also the most expensive trainer at the studio, so if I were to stay there, I would likely try to get someone else who was a little less expensive.

Anyway, I got on the treadmill to warm up, then the real fun began. And by fun, I mean he kicked my ass for 40 minutes and I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. I'm not sure if the muscles between my boobs and my armpits are my pecs, but if they are, then my pecs hurt. We did range of motion, which isn't a problem, then I did that thing where you have to step onto a bench. Then we did bench press, then dead lift, then other things, then measuring (ugh). It wasn't so bad except that my muscles are screaming out for relief.

I was actually pretty happy to learn that things are not as bad as they would seem. He gave me what I felt was a reasonable number for where my weight should be, which he based on eyeballing my frame. I appreciate that, because I have a huge frame and generally where I would fall for a recommended weight would put me solidly into the skin-and-bones category. I also was pretty happy with the weight I was able to lift. Through my post-workout research, I've found that most women can't lift the Olympic bar (45 pound bar with no weights used for free weights), which explains why he started me on a 30 pound bar. After 20 reps of that, we went to just the 45 pound bar and when I was able to do that, he added on 5 pounds. I made it through about 6 reps of that with him pushing me along, which is exactly why I need a personal trainer. If I were on my own, I would go "Ok, well 45 felt good for 5 reps, so I'm done." With a spotter and encouragement and someone to be accountable to besides myself, I was able to do a lot more and feel good about it.

I also had to fill out a questionnaire and when it asked me if I was sedentary, I circled in between the "yes" and the "no" options. John disagreed and told me I definitely was active, which I appreciated. I don't always feel active because I sit behind a desk all day, but I try to do something on a regular basis. I guess compared to the majority of the population, I am pretty active and for someone my size, I'm relatively fit.

Overall, I was really happy with it. This session was free, as are the next three that I have through a Groupon. Then I have 10 sessions that I got at a place in Reston through Groupon as well, so that should be a good comparison. If I really want to continue with personal training, I might work on finding a way to budget it in. I have to view it as an investment made in my health and not as money being spent for nothing. My health and fitness are things that will benefit me no matter what happens in the future, so I should definitely spend money on them.