Ninja by day, student by night

This time she’s burning a few calories, okay maybe just one.

Typically I’m on the computer, and kitty just hates it when I’m not paying attention to her. Gus came in and decided to see if she’d stay on the treadmill while it was moving. The main reason she stayed on the treadmill was due to the squeaky (mouse-like) noises that came from the front of the treadmill. It was pretty cute, so I had to record her in action. She didn’t like it at first, but she hopped on again for another try (coming soon).

Today was so tiring, but it ended up being a great time after all.  I worked sooo hard, since today was cleaning day (yahoooo) and then I worked out for my hour (3.2 miles).  We went with Joe to a BBQ place and ordered a shared meal, and it was jum-jum yum.  Gus ate too much, I ate a lot but didn’t feel overstuffed and I think Joe was pretty buzzed from his beer.

So here’s the lowdown for this week’s workouts:

M – 2.38 miles

T – 2.81 miles

W – 3.17 miles

Th – 2.95 miles

F – 3.2 miles

and an approximate (according to the treadmill) calorie loss of (332+389+385+440+410) .  Not too shabby, eh?  According to the scale, I dropped 2.5% off of my fat percentage (whatever that means).   I’m taking the rest of the weekend off so I can recover, I’m pretty dead, feet-wise.  I might look into getting some new running shoes so I can minimize the wear and tear on my feet.  Maybe I’ll take a look tomorrow when I go shopping tomorrow.  I still need to pick up some gardening soil for my plants, hopefully I can use my $10 Ace coupon, yah yah.

In any case, Gus is going to Seattle tomorrow with Joe, so I’ll have some time to be completely lazy if I want to.  I definitely want to finish my anime series before school starts again.  I’m definitely reconsidering whether I want to keep my Blockbuster membership, it’s summer and I’m starting to work on fun projects that are not related to movies.  I’m still considering it though.

I’m also looking for an internship for summer, hopefully I’ll find something interesting or a good learning experience.  I would love to work for DMJM again, but I’m not sure if they are taking people or not.  Hopefully the hiring freezes won’t affect internship opportunities.

There’s a lot to think about, but I don’t want to get stressed out, so I’m going to try to think positive and keep active.  I think that’s the best I can do for now.

So I’ve been poking around the house, mostly doing some tedious, monotonous tasks (also known as stuff that I love to do).  For example, I decided I wanted to fix the tags on my music, which I have been working on all week.  Seriously, monotonous and absolutely addicting.   First I modified the mp3s by using a volume-leveler, then worked on updating the tags.  Now I’m half-way through the tag update, and now I’m attaching album art to the songs.  It’s pretty fun.

I really need to add the learning Japanese playlist to my Ipod, I think it would be great way to reinforce my anime watching and have something new to listen to on my way to and from school.  One of my life goals is to learn how to understand Japanese, and a subgoal is to learn to write and read Japanese.  I would also like to learn Punjabi so I can communicate better with my future in-laws, but I’m not sure how that will go.  I try to pay attention to what Gus says on the phone, but it’s hard to grab things without any context.

I’ve also played around with my kanji notes, I really need to write down my kanji in my ice cream sandwich notecards (they are SO cute).  I’m always surprised at what I remember when I go back and look at the list of 100 kanji on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Kyuu Kanji).  I’m using the Heisig method, and it seems to be working even though I don’t study kanji on a regular basis.

In other creative endeavors, I mentioned that I updated the theme for this journal and then I thought I could update it.  I don’t have any amazing pictures to use yet, so I decided to go to my favorite inspiration site, http://www.colourlovers.com.  You can find me there as cynja, but I found this great article on http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2009/03/19/lesser-known-color-vocabulary-a-through-c, which was really interesting, because I love color and new vocab words are always neat.  I saw a few that would make great band names.

So now I’ve downloaded a few palettes, so I can get my muse going, it’s really fun.  I’ve been sketching a few times a week, mostly practicing a single topic.  Last week’s topics were 3-D shapes and sketching bodies using circles.  I’ve also tried sketching my own hand (hard), hair, objects in front of me, anime eyes, fruit, flowers and abstract line drawings.  Practice really does improve my skills, I definitely won’t give up.

In other news, I’ve been working on my garden, and my green beans, and snap peas are ready to go into big containers, while my tomatoes, basil and cilantro are growing their first leaves.  The other plants are starting to germinate, so they should be ready for transplant by next week.  Even my cardamom seeds from our chai tea mix are starting to sprout, so I guess I’m doing something right.

Even the bonsai tree is getting a few new leaves each week and I’m noticing an improvement in the way the older leaves look, they look so green and glossy.   It really warms my heart to see all these plants growing and getting stronger every day.  I’m sure I will see more improvements over the next few weeks since Gus was sweet and bought me a container of Osmocoat (a plant feeding additive) for my container garden, as well as the containers from his house that the family were not using.

The nice part about having plants around is that you know they are helping the environment by taking carbon dioxide and converting it to oxygen, so I know our house probably has lots of good air.  Sounds silly in a way, but I suffer from allergies (especially since Prosser has a lot of allergy-producing trees, plants and grasses).  I’ve been taking my allergy meds on a semi-constant basis, but I forgot yesterday and I was down for the count.  All afternoon I lazed around because I was so sleepy and I didn’t know why.  I’m sure if I had done a check on pollen.com, I would have noticed that I needed to take some meds and I would have been feeling more energetic.

It could also be that I’ve been working out hardcore all week, but I’ve been all over the place, energy-wise, it’s hard to tell.  According to my calculations, I’ve done a little over 11 miles this week, basically doing an hour of jogging/walking on the treadmill.  I’ve been checking myself on the bathroom scale and even though I’ve haven’t seen any big changes on my weight, I have seen a 2% decrease in my fat content, which makes me very happy.  Maybe I haven’t been pushing myself hard enough in the past few months, because I haven’t seen many changes and it discouraged me a lot, even though I saw an improvement in my body tone.

Gus insists that he is seeing a change in my body, but who knows, he’s always very kind to me when it comes to my body, so it’s hard to take his support seriously.  I should though, I know there are a lot of guys who are not very nice about women’s bodies and I’m lucky that he is encouraging me and not making me feel bad for having extra weight on my body.

It’s been a big week for changes, I also got my hair reshaped and added some baby side bangs, they are very cute when I wear my hair in a bun.  I haven’t kept up with my Lent promise though and I feel a little guilty about that.   I will try harder starting today though, because my hair feels a lot healthier now that I got the dry ends taken off.  Gus likes it too because he doesn’t have to deal with a huge head of hair in his face, suffocating him at night.

I guess I better get working on my chores, today is Friday-cito and I definitely want to do some of the fun things I have in mind.  Gus might go to Seattle this weekend, so I might have some time to myself, so I definitely need to get things done so I can enjoy the weekend, with or without him.

Just kidding, it’s a boring spring break, but only because I’m doing so much work! I’ve been causing havoc and chaos throughout the house and (AND) I exercised really well today.

45 minutes of torture but I did it, I tried very hard to reach my 300 calorie deficit for the day. Technically if I exercise this way at least 5 days a week, I will reach a deficit of 1500 calories for the week, which is almost half a pound. I’m also watching my portions, so maybe I can lose a little more.

Gus helped me get my laptop hooked to the big television in our living room so now I can watch anime, ya hoooo! I’ve also worked on backing up my pictures so I won’t lose them by storing them on a huge dvd. I also went and started working on backing up my old backups, but I haven’t burnt a copy yet. My last project is to go through my docs and back those up too, but only if they aren’t corrupted. I have a lot of files though, so it’s a little discouraging.

I also went through my music files and fixed up the titles a little, and tried to update the beats per minute (bpm) so I can use it to gauge songs for running/walking/jogging uses.

I’ve been thinking though, my goal is to reach an hour of exercise, but it’s really hard to do at one time, maybe I should get up a little early and do it then. I’m not sure if it would work since I’m the breakfast cook, but it might not be a bad idea to try it out. The idea of getting up early though…blech.

I updated the site with a cuter tulip theme, but I’d like it to be more me, so I’m going to take some pictures and see if I can change it up so the colors work better. I feel a little dumb (or lazy ) because I won’t figure out wordpress myself, but tbh, I don’t really care to learn right now.

Anyway, time for bed.

I admit I’m just tired, dead tired.  We had a great time with Gus’ coworker, Joe, who came to our house yesterday and ate dinner with us.  It was truly nice to be around someone new, and he was very fun to talk to while Gus created his chicken masala masterpiece.  He’s the same age as Gus, but he is married and has three kids, go figure.   So we could talk to him about all sorts of interesting things and he had lots of good stories.  It was one of the few times that I felt on a semi-equal standing with Gus being around.  Usually people love talking to Gus and they forget about me, so I feel a little left out at times.  Not this time though, I felt like he was genuinely interested in what we had to say.

I made a quick run to Wal-mart for some gardening odds and ends because my seedlings are already growing out of their peat biscuit.  I am growing two types of peas and they are growing up fast!  My tomato plants are also germinating quickly, so I created a makeshift window box until I can find a better container to hold them.  There are a few others that are starting to sprout up, but the rest shouldn’t be ready for another week.  I also added some catnip so I can dry some for my kittykins, I hope she likes it.  I was very tempted to buy some Osmocoat, but I’m pretty sure we have some stored at Gus’ house or somewhere in my boxes.

Luckily I already did a lot of chores yesterday so the house is semi-tidy, all I have to do is write up the bills, wash dishes and finish up the laundry.  I’m so tempted to take a nap though, even though I still need to do a workout.  I hope Gus has a good idea on what to do this weekend, he hasn’t made up his mind on whether to go to Seattle this weekend or not.  It’ll be hard to top last weekend, when we met up with Rafa and then went to watch “The Watchmen”.

I always wonder why Gus asks me if I plan to rest…there’s just no time for it and if I didn’t get things done, who would?  I know Gus is pretty lenient about things, but I like doing it on a regular basis so things don’t get out of control.  He’s more of the wait until things bother him, then turn into a whirlwind and fix it.

I think I will sit down and relax, it isn’t my fault he hasn’t told me if we are eating at home or not.

I have a lot of goals for my spring break, one of which is to get copies of all my favorite anime openings and endings. I wonder how many I can get? It’s also great that I can watch anime now that I’m on break, sometimes I miss it.

I’ve also been busy working on fixing all my music tags, it irritates me to see empty spaces! So there, OCD!

I am going to exercise now…*shuffles off*

Update: 1.9 miles, 36:34 minutes, sheesh.

I feel like crap, I didn’t sleep well at all and I’m really anxious about my exam tonight.  I did get a 94 on my other exam, good job for me!   Still, I’d like to get a good grade and I’m sort of embarrassed at how lousy my first programming assignment turned out.  I shouldn’t be ashamed because I haven’t written anything from scratch in years, but tell that to my emotional side, she’s not listening.

I will probably exercise later, before I leave for my exam because I think it will calm me down.  I better go detangle my hair and get working on my notes, I still have a lot to go over!

Hopefully things will go well, I am going to be positive and think nice thoughts.   And speaking of nice thoughts, the Watchmen was amazing, I loved it although I was really shocked at the choices some people make about their children.  There were babies, young children and preteens at the 7:20 p.m. showing of the Watchmen when we watched it last week.  I couldn’t believe it and it kind of took away from the experience.  I don’t know what those parents were thinking.  Gus and I got into an argument about it because he was laughing at the people in the audience because they were trying to cover their kid’s eyes during the sex scenes, and I was getting irritated because I wanted to watch the movie and enjoy the sex scenes but it was hard when someone is laughing right next to you.  Anyway, we blew up and got over it, both of us agreed it was truly messed up and vowed to be informed parents.  In my opinion, I think violence is worse than sex in most cases, but the Watchmen had it all, and I doubt that the parents discussed the movie with the kids afterwards.

Update:

I worked out for 17 minutes, 1.10 miles before I ran to school.

Busy day today, I’ve been working on my notes for my exam.  I’m a little nervous, but it will be okay.   I went ahead and ran 1.75 miles today, and really killed it, did it in 32 minutes, but mind you, I was doing the second half on slow (2.6-2.8) with a varying incline (3-6%).  So not too bad overall, although eating is still an issue, because I’m trying to cook tasty dishes that aren’t too big.  That’s the hardest part.  I can try to watch my portions, but making sure that there isn’t too much in the first place is always difficult.  Most recipes are made for families, so I usually have to guess whether they will be okay for just the two of us.  I’m getting better though, I am lowering the amounts and adding more vegetable sides, so Gus will feel full.  I’d hate for him to be hungry.

I tried out a pudding recipe as well, it was a surprise for Gus because he LOVES pudding, and I thought it might be healthier to make it from scratch, instead of from a box.  It was pretty easy, although I thought I messed up because it wasn’t thick and gooey like Jello pudding.  He loved it though, he said it was exactly like Indian pudding, and I added sliced strawberries, a few chocolate chips and some granola to make it extra tasty.  I even layered it so it would look nice too, haha.  I always forget to take pictures when I make a good-looking dish.  In any case, he liked it, and next time he wants to try it layered with some sliced almonds.  I think that’s a great idea.

Here I go again!

1.55 miles, 250 calories…hrm, have implemented smaller portions, so now we have merger of two good things. I hope it lasts, honorable red is being a bitch since it came to visit today. We also bought a scale to measure weight, fat, water and all that, it was a little scary but it might be a good way for us to keep track of our progress.

Here’s to good health

I really need to get back on birth control, but I worry that it will make me feel worse. I think I worry too much too, I’ve been biting my cuticles and nails to rags, I think I might go back to folding origami. It might look weird but at least my hands aren’t in pain.