Acclimating

Well, I'm finally getting used to being by myself. I have so much time to be lazy and the apartment stays clean! This week I've taken running back up since I've almost exhausted my bank account from last week's shopping frenzy. I hadn't weighed in on Wii Fit for a couple of months and it turns out that I lost 4.6lbs and am back down to 99lbs! Woo Hoo! I've met my goal and now I just have to stay here. I've started to do some light weight lifting again (5lbs) so I'm thinking that I'll start gaining some muscle weight soon, which is fine as long as my fat percentage stays down. I've already noticed a significant difference in my legs from hauling up the hills in Troy and sprinting in 100 meter increments on the track. It's great. My work out only takes about 45 minutes and the best part is that it's free! No gym membership for me!

I've never been a runner because my lungs always feel like they're going to implode, but I dislike biking so much that I'd rather run than bike. Biking is a great form of exercise, but I just can't handle it. It's getting too hot in the house to do those exercise videos so outdoors it is. When I get home I might pull them back out since we have air conditioning. I think what has also helped my get my weight under control is my inability and lack of interest in cooking for one. I don't get nearly as much pleasure out of cooking just for me. Sometimes I cook or bake just to bring something into the office. (I don't want to lose everything I've learned.) So now I've been eating a salad without dressing as a starter for dinner and then moving on to whatever I have in the fridge a little while later. Surprisingly lettuce, a whole tomato, and olives fill me up! As long as I have tomatoes and olives I can eat my salad sans dressing. I've even started putting fresh basil from my garden into the salad too, which gives it a little kick. I think this has helped me cut down on my heavy portions of food. If I wait about half an hour after I eat the salad, I don't eat as much for dinner. I guess eating slowly really does work, but man, it takes forever. Every once in a while I'll snack late in the evening, but I try not to. The other night I had black licorice, but I try to stick to carrots and milk. It is much easier to eat lighter during the summer as well. It's getting pretty hot and sticky out here so salads are the only thing that I really want. I'm excited to go home since I'll actually have someone to cook for. I'll just need to keep off those pounds! I've been working my rump off (in more ways than one). My mom likes to buy those big sticks of salami from Costco. They're so fatty and delicious that I can't help myself when I'm home. I think I'll be needing to get myself some new running shoes if I want to keep the weight down. Hah!

Last night I got some boxes from Neil and started packing away my books. I only emptied about 1/3rd of my bookshelf, but it made me really sad. Even with all of the complaining I did about living in Troy, I guess I have a little bit of attachment to it. It was the same with Riverside, but I complained far less about the desert than the blizzards. So my plan of action is to pack a couple of things every night so that it isn't so hard to do when I do move. Plus, by then I'll probably be desensitized to packing and moving. I'm definitely not looking forward to the drive back. Does anyone want to come out here and go on a cross country road trip? I'll be driving one car and my dad will be in the other. We'd love the company!

Cupcake pictures

Here are the cupcake pictures that I said I was going to try to remember to post.

Thank you Auntie Mary!

Auntie Mary sent me a little Coach coin purse to cheer me up. I love it!


This weekend was pretty laid back again. It's been raining quite a bit here. On Thursday I made cupcakes, which I'll try to remember to post pictures of later, and brought them in to the office. Dave scarfed them down like he hadn't eaten in months. I used my mom's cinnamon bundt cake recipe but put them into cupcake molds instead for easier eating. I also decorated them with creamcheese frosting, which is always a winner. The office loved them. Saturday, I went to the River Street festival and purchased some greeting cards that Neil made with his photography. That was pretty cool. I had never been to the festival before. It was your normal street fair, but kind of neat since it was on the street that I work on. Then I watched Gran Torino with a friend and was lazy bum. The weather definitely takes a toll on my mood. It has been pretty lackadaisical to say the least. I thought the movie was awesome. Clint Eastwood is just plain amazing. I don't think I've ever heard so many derogatory words in one movie, but awesome nonetheless.

I did get a new phone this weekend. Since Christopher broke his and needed a new one, I figured I may as well get one too since my mom was going to renew the contract. This was a good time for me to get one without having to extend the contract again later on down the road. We tried to convince her to go with Verizon, but she wouldn't budge. Christopher and I got the LG Xenon. I'm pretty happy with it.

Unfortunately, backyard weed demolition is off due to weather. Oh well. I wasn't looking forward to dealing with insects and Emmy's poop anyway.

Home alone means lots of shopping

I have been doing so much shopping lately it's ridiculous, but it gets me out of the house. I will need to figure something out for next week since I can't really keep going on this way. Last week I ran, this week I shopped. I did run yesterday though, so I guess I've been running this week as well. The majority of my exercise has been walking through the mall. I will probably crack down on my reading and writing. I've made some progress on that personal essay I mentioned in the last post, but when I look at it, I get a little intimidated by all of the sections that I have planned for myself. These are the section titles:

On Forgetting
On Being Alone (and subsequently, on loneliness)
On Disappointment and Disappointing
On Failure
On Talking Too Much
On Self-Image
On Power
On Self-Doubt
On Following
On Thinking For Yourself
On Being Selfish

This order is subject to change as each topic came to me while writing On Forgetting. I won't be surprised of some of the information begins to overlap. I've completed the first draft of On Forgetting and have a pieces done for On Being Alone, On Disappointment and Disappointing, On Failure, On Following, and On Thinking For Yourself. I'd have say that this is quite ambitious as I have set my goal to finish before a friend of mine comes to help me tear out the weeds in the backyard on Saturday. I've been working on it a little at work, but haven't really felt like doing it while I'm home. Since it's raining today I might just stay in and write. I will attach a small clip from the On Forgetting section at the bottom of the post. Note that it is a first draft.

I also got my hair done yesterday. It's awesome. I had the gal put in more purple this time. So I have natural brown highlights mixed with purple. She basically did a dual highlight job with brown and purple. I'm quite excited. She let it sit in for much longer than last time so the purple is very dark at the moment. I won't take pictures until you can actually see it. In the sun you can tell that it's purple, but indoors my hair just looks very dark, almost black. I think it looks so much better than it did because the toning that she did last time was fading and I looked like I was trying to be blond. Hah! A Chinese blond girl. Yeah right. So I'm very happy with the job she did. The purple is still coming off on my fingers, which makes me look like I belong in a mechanics shop that uses purple grease. I've noticed that this tends to happen with unnatural colored hair dye. It happened to me when I had done my hair pink also. Since the color wore out pretty quickly from the last dye job she gave me, I spent the money on getting a good shampoo and conditioner for color treated hair. Apparently Revlon isn't as great as I thought at color retention. So I spent a fair penny on my hair yesterday. I just hope that it all stays in this time. I will have to go back before I leave to move home since I don't know when I'll be able to find a good stylist who isn't afraid to make me look like an Easter egg.

Excerpt from On Forgetting

...Tonight I found myself in the self-help aisle of my local Barnes and Noble staring at shelves upon shelves of guidance books. There were books on how to overcome a stroke, how to move on from eating disorders, how to make oodles of money, how to appreciate a privileged lifestyle. My eyes began to blur before I could find anything on forgetting. Everything seemed to be focused on how to remember and celebrate major turning points in life. What about the small stuff? I didn’t see any books on how to remember things that had been forgotten. Once you get on the path of forgetting, it seems like you begin to forget everything. I am in a perpetual state of forgetting. I fear that pretty soon I’ll forget how to tie my own shoes and what it means to love...

Self Evalutation

Because of recent events I've started to reevaluate my life. Last night I was trying to write fiction and couldn't get past a paragraph of writing that had no substance to it. There is no story forming here and I don't know what to do. For now it's just save as a clip on my computer.

In the middle of the pouring rain, he stood with his arms limp at his side. With one eye closed, he leaned his head back and pulled the red scarf off his alabaster neck with spidery fingers. The heavy drops of rain stung the soft skin and he let out a soft whimper. Gutter water pooled around his feet, soaking into his heavy wool socks. His donkey brayed behind him.

By the end of the night I started to write a personal essay, which I was avoiding because I don't want to move into the non-fiction realm. I was successful on writing a good portion and setting up sections to write. The working title is "Thoughts In My Head". Hopefully writing this will be a way for me to figure out what is going on in my own head and will allow me to start writing fiction again.

I spent a good portion of time in the local Barnes and Noble looking at books last night. As I walked in the smell of books was refreshing (I think I may go back tonight just to sit in there). Anyway, my intentions were to look in the philosophy section because I realized, with the help of my coworker, that I just don't know what's going on in my head. I thought that maybe some Kant would help me out. When I picked up one of his books it was interesting, but I didn't see myself actually getting through a whole book of philosophy. I figured I'd just read some Foucault to get the philosophy bug out of me since I already have some of him. I'm thinking that if I do go back tonight that I will just get Kant. I wonder if this is how people who go through a mid-life crisis feel. After I checked out the philosophy section, I meandered over to the self help section. My goodness there are a lot of self help books. There were so many that I lost patience trying to find one on self-doubt. I left that section. In the end I bought Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, and Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior. I'm particularly excited for the Didion. The book is a drama/memior that she wrote about the death of her husband and her daughter's failing health. I've read some of Didon's work before and enjoy her style. Hopefully Didion will help me figure things out. I have to keep reminding myself that there are much worse things in life than what I'm going through. I had said to a friend "There are mothers who birth stillborns everyday, I'll live." He had said that it was one of the weirdest, most random things he had heard in a while. It's true! There is much more out there than my measly problems. War, famine, drugs etc. are all so much bigger than my identity crisis and issues of the heart.

I'm in the camp that believes that to write one needs to read. I've been reading Red Sorghum by Mo Yan the last couple of weeks. It was recommended by a friend of mine and I want to finish it, but it has been frustrating me. It is in the first person point of view, which I've been opposed of for the last few months, and the tense changes all of the time. I realized last night while trying to write that I'm bitter about the first person because whatever I write is in the first and it all stinks. Jealousy makes me not want to read the first person, though common sense says that I should read as much as I can to better my own writing technique. Hah! I'm determined to finish it, but it's taking me a lot more time than it should.

Other than that, I've just been doing some heavy thinking. I'm not sure where it will lead me sometimes. We'll see how it goes.