Homework and exercise and diets, oh my!

Lately I've been trying to get myself into wedding workout mode, but it just ain't working for me. At the end of the spring semester last year I was on a huge fitness kick- running 3-5 miles every day, going to the Absolutions classes offered at NCSU, walking to and from Wolf Village many times per day by avoiding the bus... it was all fantastic for my mood as well as my health. I wanted to look nice for graduation so I could buy a cute dress and proceed to hide it under a giant blob of a gown. But I weighed 118 pounds in May, only 7 months ago, and needless to say I weigh not 118 pounds now. And I'm facing the prospect of wearing a very non-graduation style gown.

But lately I've been having a lot of trouble just sticking to a plan of eating healthier. I allowed myself some wiggle room (aka wide berth) during the holidays because I figured hey, the wedding is still 6 months away. But now it's 4.5 months away and I'm still in holiday mode. I have at least been attending the Body Tone class and Duke, and I still walk to and from my car every day, but that's not really anything aerobic. I've managed to run twice in the past week at the indoor track in the gym, but that's really not going to cut it when I celebrate this awesome fitness by eating a huge cookie from Twinnies.

So on Thursday I started a new Excel file to help me chart what I eat each day; I was also doing that last year to help me keep on track and it seemed to work really well. I'm not eating too much, but what I'm choosing to eat isn't as filling as it could be, nor as nutritious. I used to eat nothing but fresh produce as snacks- cucumbers, green grapes, peppers, bananas, apples... and now I'm eating things like granola bars and pretzels and chips, which aren't all-in-all bad for me, but they contain more calories and are less filling. And since I now live off campus and have to drive in every day, I'm missing out on that cross-campus exercise (although admittedly, the trek from Central Campus carrying textbooks and my computer should be burning a few calories).

So enough about that; I've realized I don't do much in my blog except complain or talk about me, but I'm not really that into discussing world topics via blog. I just don't know that I can logically think about things without having someone face-to-face to talk to.

In other news, Keegan and I picked our wedding bands this weekend, so that was nice :-) Now we just need to buy them and have them sized, but there's really no great rush for that. He's actually out right now with his dad, brothers, and my brother being sized for tuxes, so it'll be nice to have that taken care of too.

The school front is going well- I'm a bit frustrated with Matlab, but I've got some wonderful and patient friends who are helping me learn. I completed my first computer project today and it feels great to have that out of the way. Only 5 more to go! My transport class is interesting and I think will be very relevant to all of my research, but the professor, as nice as he is, kind of just throws stuff on the board and doesn't go in to many details. We have a homework set this week and right now I've completed about 2.5 of 4 problems, but I haven't been thinking too hard about them yet, so we'll see what I can finish when I really put my thoughts in to it.

My friend Emily was baptized today- congratulations to Emily! I'm not sure of any other big developments in the lives of my friends, but baptisms are something to be happy for :-)

I think Duke will be #1 in basketball this week after an embarassing (for the opposing team) 41 point win over Maryland; I was feeling really bad for them by the end of it. At one point it was 60 to 20 which, although is only a 40 point deficit, sounds much worse than 44 to 85, the final score. I know everyone on campus will be anticipating the game versus Wake Forest on Wednesday- I'm not sure that I'll have time to watch it, but that's alright. Maybe I'll sneak in a few minutes; the only minutes the matter are the final ones because it doesn't matter if you're winning during the other 39 minutes if you're losing at the end of the last minute. I'm not really a crazed basketball fan, but when I get into watching something, I'm going to yell and cheer and make obnoxious comments about the other team. For example, last night I watched the UConn versus Notre Dame game, and I was cheering for UConn because I don't like Notre Dame. And for no apparent reason either, I just wanted ND to lose. And Keegan can tell, I had some choice comments about some of the players on the ND team; but why should I even care? It's just infectious I guess. Same deal with the Superbowl- I guess I want the Steelers to win because some of my family is from Pennsylvania, but really I don't care. But watching the game with me you'd think I was a die-hard Steelers fan with a personal stake in the team's stock or something. It's weird.