Progress on my yearly goals

Well it has been a long time since I thought about the goals I made for myself this year.  I have accomplished quite a few things on my list, started a few of the things on my list, and abandoned a few of the things on my list.  I guess that’s why I have a lot of goals – so the odds of meeting at least one of them are increased.

With respect to labwork:

• I have been in lab at least 45 hours every week, but at least twice a month I work on the weekends, so I think I’ve been sporadically meeting my goal of working 50 hours/week.  I guess it doesn’t necessarily matter the amount of time that I’m at work but the quality of work I’m doing well I’m there
•  Submitted abstracts to 3ICSHM and BMES 2011; both accepted, one for a talk (which I already gave on our England trip!) and one for a poster, which is in October in Hartford, CT
•  Successfully defended a Master’s thesis, woo!  Now I need to actually hang the diploma somewhere
•  I wrote a research paper which I gave to Monty a week ago to get his first round of feedback (which I'm waiting for now but will hopefully arrive soon so we can get a bulk of the revisions finished before he starts teaching again); it took me longer than I wanted and I’m still waiting on data for part of a figure from my undergrad; my new revised goal is to submit by September 30

With respect to finances:

• I’ve been able to save at least 20% on our weekly groceries every week at the store with the exception of 3 weeks; however, I’ve saved more than 30% on numerous occasions, so in my mind that balances.  I’ve averaged more than 20% savings every month, so that’s good.  I don’t think we’ll be able to save a month’s rent at the grocery store, but maybe.  I’ll have to see how the stars align with stuff going on sale when I need it and that will probably determine what we save.  Right now we’re at about $500 saved with MVP and coupons (I think) so maybe we can squeeze another $300 in savings by Dec 31.
•  I've started using online coupons -- maybe this will be a way for me to find more useful coupons for things I actually buy
• I haven’t been making regular monthly contributions to my mutual funds, but I have made several large contributions that almost even out to what I would have put in otherwise.  It’s been a little slow because I opened another checking account and was moving my direct deposit so the past few months have been weird setting that up and I haven’t been able to set up an automatic withdrawal yet.  I did however buy a fair amount of shares in the mutual fund for our house last week when the market opened after the US credit downgrade so hopefully we’ll make some money on that purchase in the long run.
•  I have opened two individual mutual funds in addition to our joint one to make more use of my money than letting it sit in a money market account  

With respect to health/wellness:

• I didn’t make it to the target weight I wanted to be at before our England trip (the trip itself definitely messed with my weight loss plans haha) but I have been hovering around that target weight (130) for a few weeks now.  My ultimate goal is 125 but honestly I haven’t been trying too hard to reach it.  I need to be more serious if I want to lose the other 5-7 pounds because I still eat pretty much whatever I want, I just exercise a little more.  I do eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, but not a large variety.  For example, last week I ate an apple, a banana, cucumber, spinach, and watermelon every day.  But maybe I need to shake things up a bit and eat the foods I don’t usually eat.  But still, I’m 15 pounds down, so that’s something!
•  I’ve made about 8 new recipes this year, so I’m keeping track with that.  They’re pretty lame recipes though, so I should keep working to improve this goal.  Not that they aren’t tasty, they just aren’t really grown-up foods hah
•  I’ve given up weight training.  Once classes start again maybe I’ll try to make more use of Duke’s gym.  I do lift weights in our living room, but nothing nearly as involved was what I was doing last fall.  I also do the ab workout for P90X twice a week, so I’m trying to strengthen my core.
•  I’m doing well limiting my caffeine intake
• I go on the treadmill every day, or at least 13/14 days and going for at least 40 minutes each time (sometimes running the whole time, sometimes a combination of running and walking at a really steep incline)

Other random goals:

• I have been reading up a storm, probably 25 books this summer alone (if you count all the ones I’ve reread, like HP before the movie came out)
•  Campout is in 4 weeks (only 4????) and I’m definitely going
• Attended Jazz Fest in New Orleans (still need to get my poster framed though…)
• Put pictures from our Costa Rica and England/Wales trips in albums (still need to put the rest of our wedding pictures in an album though…)
• I won’t get to run the Turkey Trot this year because we’re having Thanksgiving with my stepdad’s parents this year, and they live out of town, so we’ll have to leave early-ish in the day.  I can still get up and run 5 miles though, so I will aim to just beat my time from last year on my own this year

All-in-all I think I'm on track to accomplishing a lot of the things I wanted to do this year, although maybe not by the deadlines I had originally set for myself; better late than never I guess :)  I'm really mainly hoping to get this paper submitted by the end of September so I can set a prelim date.  Monty won't let his students prelim until they have a first author research paper published, so I'd like to try to aim for the November - February time frame to prelim, which means I need to publish soon!  Hopefully preliming then will keep me on track to finish in 2013 (fingers crossed).  I guess there's really no HURRY to finish because at least I'm getting paid, but I'd like to finish in 5-5.5 years.  We'll see... it all depends on how successful I am at figuring out all my little problems hah

Frustration

For the past week I’ve felt very frustrated and I’m not really sure why.  I think it is because for the past 4 solid months (minus the one week hiatus while I was on vacation) I’ve been doing ridiculous amounts of work and running a lot of experiments and now that I’ve defended my Masters I’ve sort of hit a wall where I’m figuring out what needs to be done next and preparing to submit a paper for publication next month.  I think I have all the data I need to submit, based on the other papers by researchers in my area and what is included in their characterization papers, and it’s all written, I just need to extract it from my thesis and organize it into publication structure.  I think I could do this in a fairly reasonable time frame, probably before I go to Jazz Fest, but I want to meet with Monty to make sure he’s on the same page.  I feel like I know how I want my research papers to be structured but I’m not sure how to make sure they line up with his expectations other than to just ask (although that makes me a little worried about what I might hear!)  I also want to know what he expects of us before we prelim because all he has specified to date is that we have to have a first author research paper.  I already have one paper, but it’s a review paper, so by the end of the summer (fingers crossed) the paper I’m preparing will be submitted and accepted so that I’ll be able to prelim in the November/December time frame.  I’m not sure how this fits into the Monty grand scheme of things…

I’m tired of reading, but there are several things with my work that I am thinking about tweaking but each one requires a ton more background reading.  Since I’ve been doing so many experiments lately it feels weird to now spend like 80% of my time reading and only 20% on experiments, but I can’t do the experiments until I read so… sort of stuck where I am.  This perceived drop in productivity also makes me feel really guilty about going on some of my weekend trips coming up, and I feeling really weird about taking off because I feel like I should get a bunch of work done, and have a bunch of data to analyze so that when I go on the trip it’s a slight pause between the experimenting and the subsequent data analysis.  Instead I feel like I’ll be leaving my reading and coming back to more reading, not like I “earned” the weekend by getting a lot of results.

I’m not sure why I put this crazy pressure on myself -- yes I want to finish my PhD in a reasonable amount of time and if I’m here for 6 years it’s not the end of the world, but I’d like to graduate in May 2013.  When research is going smoothly I feel like this shouldn’t be an issue, but when I’m sort of mulling things over it feels like I’m going to be here forever.  I’m not really in a hurry to leave because I love the people here and Keegan has a good job in Raleigh, but it sort of feels like all the big things that come with being married and growing up (having kids, buying a house, etc) get put on hold or at least are very difficult to finagle and afford when you’re in school.

Other areas of my life are less frustrating though (yes, I have other areas of my life than school!  Sort of.)  Keegan and I have been spending a lot of time with his friends from undergrad and it’s really nice to get out and do things with people our own age that we don’t see at work.  In fact, one of his closest friends is South African and invited us to come with him next spring when he goes home to visit again!  This is very tempting since we would both love to go on a safari and spend time meeting Glen’s extended family and seeing the country from a native’s perspective, so we’ll have to see if we can plan that to fit into our schedules and most importantly, budget.  Going with a friend will save a ton of money though, when we’ve been invited to stay in his family’s house :-)  A bulk of the trip cost will be just getting there!  Maybe that will be our last hurrah before babies are in the picture.

My weight loss is also going well.  I weighed in at 133.8 this morning, so even though I’m not dropping lots of weight every week I seem to still be decreasing.  I haven’t changed anything about what I actually eat, I just changed the amounts of what I eat so I eat less of the sweet stuff and more of the green stuff.  I have been going to the gym every day for months now missing maybe one day every 3 weeks or so and although I’ve only been running (or walking at a huge incline) I think it’s making a difference.  All I did in undergrad to lose weight was run, so hopefully the difference in my 21 year old body compared to my 24 year old body isn’t tooooo much…

I'm also getting a lot of fun reading done -- you would think after spending the day reading at my desk I wouldn't want to go home and read, but I am enjoying reading things unrelated to school and it's nice to not think for awhile.

Do I look 8 pounds lighter?

I pose this as a serious question.  I have been running more and snacking less, but since I see myself in the mirror every day it's a bit hard for me to decide if I really look any different.  My clothes do fit better and the scale says it's true, but I am hard to convince.  Husbands are also not reliable because they will always tell you that you look perfect (which is wonderful to hear :-) ) but it would also be nice to know the truth!  :-P

I think perhaps in my face I've lost a little weight?  But maybe that is just the place where I add and lose weight first.  Either way, I think I should be on track to hit my next milestone weight before we go to Hilton Head for the weekend with Keegan's family in mid-April.  I began keeping track of my weight starting January 14 (144.1) and yesterday (March 22) I was at 135.6, but I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate reading.  I had been hovering around 137 (+/- 0.5 pounds) in the days leading up to our trip (February 20) and for the week after we got back also because it took awhile to get back in the swing of things.  But for the past 2 weeks I've been between 135.5 and 136.5 all the times I've weighed in.  I don't know if that's due to water weight or because my weight is actually changing a little bit every day.  But anyway, I don't have a picture from when I officially started keeping track of my weight, so Christmas is the close I can get to that date.  And then I have a picture from John's defense celebration on Friday.

Alice (and sibs) on December 25, 2010

Alice on March 18, 2011

I tried to at least get images where I have a similar pose but it's still a bit hard to tell.  I guess I'll just have to believe the scale!  I seriously doubt that much weight could be water weight (especially since I drink about 2.5L of water every day anyway) so I could at least be content knowing I've lost some actual weight in there somewhere.

In other news, I have submitted my thesis and now I'm working on preparing my presentation!  It's going slowly because although Monty said to treat it like a lab meeting, the structure of a defense is different.  Should I be presenting the work in terms of the different aims I achieved?  I don't really have a lot of aims exactly because what I've done for the MS is essentially the first 1.5-2 of the 4 aims I have for my Ph.D. and it seems stupid to break the aims down further just for the sake of presenting them.  Things are progressing but I know I'm going to have a lot of challenges ahead this summer to keep up my current pace and to (hopefully) be prepared to prelim by the end of 2011 (or at least before the end of my fourth year).  I'm actually a little scared when I think about how much I have left to do and all the problems I'm sure to face before the end of all this.  But oh well, I guess that's what grad school is about.

Keeping up with my goals

This weekend I opened not one, but two mutual funds :-) That was one of my goals for this year because I was tired of leaving a bulk of my money in a money market account that really earns nothing for me. I couldn't decide on the risk level for my investments, so I just opened two accounts, one that is high risk and one that is a little lower. I want to take some chances to potentially earn good money but at the same time I'd like to know that I can reliably earn a little bit of money so that when we need it (read: when there are babies and houses and new cars involved) it's there. I made sure to leave a few month's salary in the money market though, just in case I/we have an emergency.

With the exception of our vacation, I have been running more than 20 miles a week, but on our trip I did get a lot of exercise walking up some monster hills. I have only done full-body weight lifting 3 times this year, so obviously not keeping up with that goal but I have just been just lifting some free weights at home every few days.

Since being accepted to present in England we have starting planning our trip a little bit. We've booked flights and then we booked the hotel for the conference, but soon we'll need to start booking hotels for the vacation portion of the trip :-)

I've also read several books for pleasure and submitted all the paperwork for getting my Master's this spring! Set a date, booked a conference room and everything! I'm about 75% finished writing my thesis, which is good because it's due in 2.5 weeks, eeee.

My savings at the grocery store have also been really good; in January I averaged 25.4% savings over the month and in February I averaged 29.2% so I'm doing really well in that area. I'm not sure that I'll be able to save $900 this year but I was never sure that was totally feasible.

Anyway, those are the high points for now!

The Week of Good Things

The past week has been awesome. I wasn't feeling so good on Friday or over the weekend and we did our taxes and it turns out we owe money (grrr, why the hell do I have to get a 1099-MISC instead of a W-2???). But it seems like all of the good things that can happen to a grad student have happened for me all in the span of a week!

Good Thing #1:
Monty gave me the print edition of the journal that published my review paper so now I have that to add to my bookshelf :-)

Good Thing #2:
I reached 137 pounds on Wednesday (loss of 6 pounds since January 14) , which is the lightest I've been since essentially right after we got married (I weighed around 133-135 when we actually got married) even though it is still almost 20 pounds more than I weighed when I graduated from NCSU. I am hoping to weigh 135 before/at the end of this week so I will make my goal to reach my vacation weight. That shouldn't be hard because it is great running weather and I specifically told Keegan "NO CANDY" for Valentine's Day.

Good Thing #3:
Eating healthier. The past few days I've been making smoothies at home and bringing them for lunch. I haven't been eating after dinner and I've been running every day for the past 2 weeks (even Super Bowl Sunday!) I also like to bring cut up veggies to eat at school too, so I'm glad to be getting in that routine. Otherwise I haven't changed my eating habits much since meeting with the nutritionist over the summer except that now I'm eating less and burning 600+ calories on the treadmill/track every day.

Good Thing #4:
In November Monty submitted a grant on my research with my data that I helped to tweak and edit and we found out last week that it was funded! On the first try! Hello $275K over the next two years (presumably funding the rest of my research)!!

Good Thing #5:
I mentioned on here that I submitted an abstract to the 3rd International Conference on Self-healing Materials in January and today I was asked to be a speaker! WOOO, ENGLAND!

Good Thing #6:
I went to the dentist and I have perfect teeth with very little plaque or tartar. Money saver!

Good Thing #7:
It is absolutely gorgeous outside. And it's Valentine's Day so I can be confident that there will be roses at home when I get there :-*

Good Thing #8:
I have been listening to a new (to me) cd in my car the past week and I'm totally in love with it. It's called Brothers by The Black Keys and there's not a single song on it that I skip.

Now this week is crunch time but it's a lot easier to work knowing that I have a Masters thesis to write so I can walk in May and a trip to England to look forward to!

Yearly progress

I think I have made some good progress on the goals I wanted to accomplish in 2011 considering we're only about 3 weeks into the new year.

So far I have:

• Submitted an abstract to 3ICSHM
• Made the maximum yearly contribution to my IRA
• Run at least 20 miles every week (in fact I've run more than 25 miles every week but I've been slacking at updating my little blog tool... which I'm going to delete now because I don't use it)
• Saved more than 20% on both my trips to the grocery store (28 and 34% the past two weekends!)
• Made plans to attend the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with Caitlin (I will be going to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama! By May I will have visited 35/50 states - well on my way to my lifetime goal of visiting all the states)
• Submitted my Master's committee form (first step towards graduating with my Master's in May!)
• Made three new recipes (the third I will post about once I take the pictures off my camera)
• Lost 4 pounds (if I maintain this pace I should reach my "vacation" weight prior to our trip!)
• Worked more than 40 hours a week in lab each week (I've been working 6 days/week so far this year in preparation for my lab meeting presentation and just because there are a lot of things I am working on and the weekends are the best time to get to use all the equipment I need without being in everyone's way)
• Read 4 books for pleasure (only two of them were books I'd never read, so I only included two posts about them)

Making my 2011 goals

My goals for 2011 are about the same as my goals for 2010 except they are a bit more specific:

• Submit an abstract to 3ICSHM by January 14, 2011
• Submit an abstract to BMES 2011
• Reach vacation weight by February 10 (I know I can't reach my target weight before our trip using healthy avenues, so I have two deadlines for myself)
• Reach target weight by May 1
• Attend basketball campout
• Save $900-$1000 at the grocery store over the course of the year -- This may or may not be possible, depending on how much we spend on groceries this year. Usually we spend about $50/week on groceries, with some weeks being higher when I stock up on meats and stuff. We can reasonably expect to pay about $2800 for groceries and health and beauty stuff over the course of the year and saving $900 in a year would be pretty significant savings. We'll see what I can do...
• Save at least 20% on each trip to the store -- This is a more feasible goal based on how much we spend on groceries, but it's nice to aim high. I guess ultimately I want to save at least a month's rent ($815) on groceries but it would also be nice to save a month's rent plus utilities at the store
• Contribute the maximum to my Roth IRA -- I will be doing this Monday!
• Open an individual mutual fund
• Contribute a set amount to our joint mutual fund every month
• Contribute a set amount to my Vanguard accounts each month, dividing it as necessary between my money market (money I might need in the short term) and mutual fund
• Run at least 20 miles every week
• Weight lift twice every week using the new regimen I planned with my course instructor
• Run in the Turkey Trot race on Thanksgiving and beat my time from this year
• Plan trip to England/Wales (assuming I'm asked to present at 3ICSHM)
• Go to Jazz Fest in New Orleans with Caitlin
• Submit research paper describing my current experiments by June 15, 2011
• Get my Master's -- submitting my intent to graduate form this month!
• Try one new recipe every month
• Read a book for pleasure every month


Well this is a nice summary of most of my goals for the year; it's not all of them, but it's a good overview of what I want to do. Ambitious, but I work well when I have a checklist of all my stuff that I can go through and see definite progress.

Meeting my 2010 goals

Each year I make a list of "goals" instead of New Year's resolutions because not all of the things I want to accomplish during a year are really "resolutions", such as saving money, submitting to conferences, and making new recipes. I think "goals" are also easier to keep because I have defined end points (ex: saying I want to lose 10 pounds is a lot more descriptive than saying I want to lose weight).

Overall I'm happy with the progress I made towards those goals and I successfully completed about 80% of the stuff on my list :-) Some of those goals I was able to meet:

• Getting in shape and learning to eat healthier
• Contributing the maximum to my Roth IRA
• Contributing a set amount to our joint mutual fund and my money market account every month
• Submitting abstracts to and presenting at both the Society for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering Society conferences
• Completing my review paper by May 31 and submitting it for publication (it's now online!)
• Planning our trip to RI and ME for our one year anniversary
• Attending basketball campout
• Reading a book for pleasure every month
• Finishing coursework and TAing responsibilities

Some of the goals that didn't fare as well:

• Losing weight -- I did lose some weight, but I didn't reach my target weight. I'm not sure if that's due to the fact that I gained a fair amount of muscle or if I just didn't lose enough weight. My clothes fit better though, so maybe I'm a little smaller than I was earlier in the year...? I don't know, but since we're going to Costa Rica in a few months I have extra incentive to slim down!
• Making a new recipe every week -- For the first two months of the year I kept up with this resolution really well, but now it's the last day of the year and I've made about 30 new recipes. That's pretty good, roughly a new recipe every other week, and for 2011 I've modified that to be a new recipe every month
• Backing my computer up once a week -- I am AWFUL about this. I rarely back up my computer. But now that I have a new computer at work and actual data worth protecting, I have an external hardrive that I take with me every day to backup what I do that day. And really that's the important info on my computers anyway, work/school stuff
• Tracking our grocery spending and saving -- I did this really well for the first year we lived together, and then I began slacking off. From fall 2008 to fall 2009 we saved almost a month's rent at the grocery store! We rarely ate take-out or ate at restaurants. This year as I've become busier with work and school I've slacked off a bit and we make a lot of little trips to the grocery store that is a sure-fire way to waste money. I still shop with a list and stock up on things when they're on sale and I have coupons, but I only saved roughly $600 this year with coupons and MVP savings -- next year my goal is for between $900-$1000 in savings. I'm already off on a better foot; yesterday I bought our meat for the next few months because beef, chicken, and pork chops were on sale (I buy a lot and freeze it) as well as some healthier and new produce choices (like asparagus) and I spent $86 but saved $31. That's not the best percentage savings I've ever had, but it's still respectable. I hope next year to save at least 20% on every trip to the store!

Soon I will post about making my 2011 goals, which are really similar to my 2010 goals, only perhaps more specific and including more work-related information (since now I know much more about what I'm doing than I did this time last year). Happy New Year!

Drop sets

Gearing up for next semester and keeping up my weight training (at least to some degree), I tried out a new workout today that I planned last week. To continue getting stronger and more toned I decided to incorporate drop sets into my lifting to challenge my muscles more but without causing me to bulk up. For example, for the past 3-4 weeks I've been doing 3 sets of bicep curls, each with 15 reps, with 12-pound dumbbells in each hand. Today I still did 3 sets of bicep curls, but I did 15 reps with 10 pounds in each hand, 13 reps with 12 pounds in each hand, and 11 reps with 15 in each hand. I applied this general concept to my hamstring, triceps, shoulder, and quad exercises.

It's a little awkward because they just don't make dumbbells with certain weights, so I may need to switch to using a bar for some of my exercises. I would have preferred to do 12/10/8 reps with 12/15/18 pound weights or something, because there's no way I can do 20 pounds with bicep curls, but oh well, I guess the stars won't align for that. The idea is that you challenge your muscles the most when they are already tired, and I can definitely feel it already, especially in my poor little triceps.

I kept all of my actual exercises the same, and I just varied the weights and reps, but I have already picked my new exercises that I will probably start to incorporate in Thursday's class. I'm going to start do lat pull-downs instead of the lat rows, and there's a slightly intimidating V-machine that I'm going to use for my quads/hamstrings as opposed to the lunges, split squats, and straight leg deadlifts I'm doing now. I'm also going to try to do some rear deltoid raises and maybe throw some push ups in there too. We'll see how I feel I guess :-)

Born to run! (... sort of)

Last week I said I would run in a Turkey Trot race on Thanksgiving morning with Keegan and a few of his siblings. I signed up thinking it was a 5K only to find out on Sunday that it was actually 5 miles. Whoops...

For the past month I've really been keeping with my running, consistently going at least 5 times a week. I got off track when I went to Austin but since then I've progressively working my way back up. It took about a week for me to be able to run 1.5 miles each day, then I moved my way up to 2, and now I run 3 each day. On Sunday I ran 4 miles but that was the farthest I'd ever run at one time. On Monday and Tuesday I ran 3 miles each, then I ran 2.5 miles on Wednesday. I was a bit nervous on Thursday and I was pretty confident that I'd have to walk the last mile. There were several large-ish hills on the route we ran, and it was outside (obviously) which is something new for me because I always run on treadmills and occasionally the indoor track in Duke's gym. But I did it! My pace on the hills was quite slow, but I wanted to pace myself so I could keep running the whole way. My time was 52 minutes and 9 seconds, which was much better than I was hoping for. I usually "run" (read: jog) at speeds between 5 and 6mph, so 5 miles would have taken an hour at a 5mph pace, so I averaged my faster speed for this race. I think it will help me a lot with running now because when I'm getting tired at the 3 mile mark I can always think "Hey, you already ran 5 miles, you can stick out the rest of this!" I know 5 miles is not really that far (especially considering 5 or 6 of the kids in BME ran a half marathon a few weekends ago) but I still feel proud. :-)

Once I started the weight-lifting class I gained 6 pounds, but since that time I've lost about 9 pounds. So I'm 3 pounds lighter than I was when I started the class, but I know that I'm a lot stronger and more muscular. My clothing is also starting to fit better, so that's a plus. I'm hoping to reach my target weight before our trip to Costa Rica, which is in about 3 months. I think that is plenty of time for me to slim down a little bit, and my gym teacher is really helpful and is already helping me plan my workout schedule for next semester. I don't want to lose all of my progress!

Same ole, same ole

I haven't posted in awhile, but a lot has been going on! Classes, TAing, and labwork are keeping me really busy, but it's a good kind of busy. Unfortunately the labwork has also been going slowly because I've been waiting for some material from our new collaborator in industry. Luckily last week he contacted me with some paperwork to fill out (agreeing I'm not going to distribute their stuff, etc) so I'm hoping to have the material next week or after I get back from BMES (which has seriously sneaked up on me). I need to finish my poster today so that I can get Monty to look at it quickly so I can send it to be printed tomorrow. That way I can be sure to get it in time to leave on Wednesday! I'm pretty thrilled to be going on this trip, but so much as been occupying my time that I haven't had time to really think about it!

The gym class is also going really well -- I'm MUCH stronger than I was 4 weeks ago when the class started. The first time I lifted I was only doing 3 or 5 pound weights for my arm exercises (the ones with free weights anyway) but the past week I've been lifting 10 pounds always, but 12 pounds for one or two of my sets. It's pretty exciting to actually feel stronger and Keegan says he can already tell a difference in the way I look. I can see a difference in my legs and upper back, and although my arms feel stronger they don't have that defined look (yet). I might do more sets to increase my muscle mass there, but I haven't decided for sure. We've spent the past two weeks learning more core and ab exercises, so I'll definitely be doing those at least 4 times a week. I also get to class and run 3 miles before going to do the 45-55 minutes of weight training, so it's no easy feat. I also run 2(+) miles on my off days because I enjoy it. I'm running faster (which is really not saying much, because I just jog really) but hopefully I can work my way to consistent 8 minute miles instead of 10-11 minute miles. I'm not in it for glory (like racing) but I guess more for endurance, running for 40 minutes straight or something means more to me than running 1.5 miles at a 7mph pace. I also walk (and sometimes run the last mile) on an incline.

Last week Keegan was working in Cambridge, MA for the branch of his office up there. Although nothing is official, he is most likely going to be transferred to that office in the coming months, at least for a temporary assignment. They loved him there but his boss here is reluctant to let him go (they should get into a bidding war over him! pay him more money to stay here!) He really likes the projects they work on in that office and because there are few engineers there, his work would stand out more and he could start making (even more) of a name for himself at the company, moving up quickly and having more independence (although he does almost all of his work with minimal upper-level input anyway). So I guess I'll keep everyone updated on that too. I don't want him to be away from me, but if this will help him advance his career and make him happier at work then I definitely want him to pursue it. He also said that the Philadelphia office was looking to recruit him too -- my man is in high demand and I'm so proud of him :-D

Things that make me sad

... seeing baby undergrads wearing Duke 2012 shirts and realizing they will be gone before me. Le sigh.

That's mainly it for now. I just saw several kids wearing that shirt when I was in the gym today and it was a bit of a downer.



The gym class is going really well though! I've only had it two times obviously, but I think the instructor is going to be very helpful and I'm glad to have at least 2 days a week when I'm guaranteed to be in the gym. I've been to the gym (/on a run) every day for the past 2 weeks, so I'm keeping up with the exercise for now. I'm sure once my TA duties ramp up and my courses get more involved it'll be more of a challenge for me to get there every day, but I'll do my best.

The instructor said she was going to teach us how to make our own lifting schedules and then we'll be able to tailor them a bit more to what we each want to accomplish. She said most women are there to tone and firm their bodies, which is mostly what I'd like to do too. She told us that we'd probably gain 2-5 pounds in the class because we'll be building muscle, but that overall we'll be smaller (typically). She also said that women who had never done any sort of weight training class would see the quickest improvements in terms of strength initially with how much they're able to lift and the number of reps they're capable of. That's nice, I'd like to see some sort of results to encourage me to keep going. So far I've been going for a run before class so I've been getting my cardio in that way.

I'm not sure that I'll be able to physically see a difference other than just knowing that I'll be capable of lifting more. I guess I could measure my arms, chest, waist, hips, etc now and again in December? I'm not sure Keegan would be the best critic either, since he'll just say I look good all the time (perks of having a husband required to say nice things!). I don't want to have crazy Madonna man-arms or anything, but it'd be nice to have a little definition. Another "side effect" of the class is smaller boobs (damn! sad) but I guess that's something I'd be able to notice.

I'm really enjoying the UNC class too, it doesn't seem very difficult so far, but I'm (re)learning a lot for now. We'll see how much more challenging it gets as the semester progresses. It's a bit annoying to drive to UNC three times a week though.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL BEGINS TONIGHT!! That is all.

Daily nutritional values, round 2

Today I went back to see Duke's nutritionist for the second time; she was just as helpful as last time and patiently answered a lot of my questions about portion sizes, what constitutes a "good" meal, etc. We also went over my food log to talk about the meals that I've been eating since visiting her the first time. I think just writing down everything I ate, knowing that someone other than me was going to read it, was a motivating factor in eating better. Accountability or whatever.

Essentially what I've changed about my diet is eating a good breakfast and planning more efficiently for lunch. I always had the idea that lunch was some sort of sandwich or something, fruit, and something crunchy. But actually it doesn't matter what the individual items are as long as they have the necessary nutritional value. For example, eating a CLIF bar, then some cheese, and an apple is a perfectly balanced lunch, even if it's not really the norm for lunches. And not that I'd want to eat that all the time, but it's nice to know.

Even though I don't have another appointment with the nutritionist scheduled, I'm going to continue with writing down what I eat to see how that helps keep me in check. Things I noticed in the past two weeks:

-I eat breakfast, have a morning snack, then lunch around 1, but then nothing until dinner at 7. Keeping track helped me realize that some sort of afternoon snack would prevent me from being starving when I get home, unable to wait for Keegan to get home from work to eat dinner
-I stay longer at work and get more accomplished; when 4:30 rolls around I'm not getting ready to leave because I'm hungry and tired and just want to lay around. I leave closer to 6 most days now and I'm not dying when I get home
-Easier to stay focused in general
-No crazy binge-snacking (ie eating half a box of cereal or Cheez-its)
-I make more conscious eating decisions; for example, the weekend after my first meeting with Nancy I bought some flavored Triscuits and I still have the same box. They're really tasty but have more fiber and I eat them with cheese or craisins or something so I'm not just eating a lot of nothing.
-I sleep better
-I pay less attention to total calorie consumption and more on what individual things I'm eating at each meal/snack
-I'm not hungry for random junk after dinner

Anyway, I think today I'll weigh myself and then see how/if my weight changes between now and two weeks from now to see how my weight is influenced by these new eating habits.

Daily nutritional values

Today I had an appointment with Duke's nutritionist and it went really well! She is very nice and approachable, so that is good. She was also filled with helpful suggestions for improving my diet to help me get back on track with my eating habits and everything. I figured since sometime in the future Keegan and I would like to have some kiddos that I should get in the habit of eating well now so that when preggo time rolls around I'm not scrambling to learn how to eat better and how to raise a baby at the same time.

Anyway, her first recommendation was to start with breakfast. I never eat breakfast, generally because I'm one of those continuous snacker types that will just munch on stuff all day even if I'm not hungry. So I sort of avoid that situation by just not starting to eat until later in the day. But I'll start off tomorrow with her recommendations and move from there. I'm going to have to add a bunch of stuff I don't buy that frequently to our grocery list, but hopefully my working with this nutritionist will also help Keegan :-)

So for my breakfasts I'm going to go with different combos of cereals/milk, yogurt, fruit, nuts, and cheese. (Sidenote: is cottage cheese good? Does anyone know? Do you eat it plain or what?) Hopefully by starting out my day better I'll have more energy to exercise when I get home from work (or I can try to start going in the mornings again). Also this fall I signed up to take the weight lifting for women gym class; I will need to have lots of energy for this class I'm sure, and I'd like to be able to extend my gym time by running after the class. This will be a bit weird, for me to be at the gym in the middle of the day when I'll need to be in lab, but I will definitely be able to make up for this class time by staying later/arriving earlier. Plus since I have to take another course hour to be able to take the class at UNC that I actually will find useful, I have a legitimate reason to be at the gym.

One thing I did notice about this fall is I will have to be on campus early 4/5 days every week. MWF I will have the class at UNC at 9a.m., which involves catching a bus at Duke at 8a.m. and Tuesdays I have class at Duke at 8:30a.m. Well, whatever. I'm most productive in the morning anyway. Like today for instance, I was here at 8:15 and I was able to plan experiments, meet with the postdoc in chemistry to devise how to do the experiments, submitted my revised review paper, and had the appointment with the nutritionist. And in 30 minutes I'm going to actually start the experiments over in French. Good day all around.

BMES and P90x pause

I found out yesterday that I'll be presenting a poster at BMES in Austin in October! I was already going to go to Austin since I bought tickets to ACL, but now I get to go for free (at least the flight, most of my nights in the hotel, and most of my meals). Keegan will be there after the conference to go to ACL also, so he and I have our own room for after the conference is over. I'm a bit concerned about missing class for the conference, but I'm sure teachers will understand.

I have been trying to sign up for this class at UNC, synthesis of polymers, but in order to do that I have to have at least 3 credit hours at Duke because I can't take more hours at visiting institution than I'm taking at my home institution; the course I'm taking this fall is only 2 credit hours, so I need to find another seminar or 1 credit hour class to take so that I'll be able to take the class that I really want to take. It's a vicious cycle. I only need 3 more hours to be finished with all of my required coursework, and I really want to take this class at UNC, which essentially means I have to take 6 hours guaranteed. Oh well, at least these courses will be useful to me down the line.

I've also been keeping up with P90x pretty well (missed 2 days but at least kept the order of the workouts) but I'm going to have to probably restart the whole 90 days after Keegan and I get back from our anniversary trip. Today through Friday I'll be house/pet-sitting at my family's house in Raleigh and although I could take the DVDs with me, Keegan also needs them and I can't really take all of my weights and mat and pull up bar with me. Then Friday-Sunday we're going to a wedding at the Outer Banks, then next Saturday we leave for our trip. I will just be so messed up with the schedule that I might just want to do what I can, then really start over from the beginning. I could be hardcore and take these things on vacation with me, but I'd rather enjoy our anniversary trip and just go running in the hotel fitness centers or something :-) I think for now I'll just do the ones I don't need any equipment for, like the yoga and the plyometrics. Maybe I'll take one set of weights with me to do the arms workout while I'm at my family's house, but we'll see.

I'm super-excited to go to the Outer Banks this weekend to see Jen and Philippe get married! And on the day before our wedding anniversary! How romantic :-) I also can't wait to take an entire week to spend time with Keegan in relaxing locales! It will be wonderful to see some beaches that aren't 95 degrees (but then I will probably be cold, but oh well) and to see a part of the country I've never been to. I'm sure there's a lot of history there for me to soak up :-)

This year's confirmed new state tally:
Kentucky, Indiana, Washington, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Maine, Texas

I'll be 32/50, only 18 from my goal (assuming I don't go to any other states this year)!

Ahh, what I'm looking forward to:

Newport, RI




Bar Harbor, ME

P90X, day 6

I forgot to write about the last program I did, a kickboxing exercise video kenpo x. It was also pretty intense -- I was sweating a lot and my heart rate was around 180 by the end so I guess I was at least working myself. I've never really done any kickboxing and it was a bit difficult for me to follow their various punching and kicking patterns. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut! Baaah!!

Now I'm into my second round of the workouts and they're going pretty well. I'm going to have to take the time off this week, or try to do them at my family's house since I'll be house/pet-sitting for them Tuesday-Friday. At least they have a treadmill so I'll have somewhere to run that's not outside in 95 degrees.

P90X, day 5

Day 5 of P90X was legs and back which was not too horrible but still pretty challenging. This workout had more pull ups (just when my arms were starting to recover from day 1!) and a lot of lunges. I think the most challenging exercises were some calf raises and then these leaning lunges. There were also lunges called sneaky lunges because they were all on tiptoe, so those put a lot of stress on my calf muscles. The workout was also followed by ab ripper X; I can already tell I'm improving with the ab workouts, making a conscious effort to use my ab muscles (instead of tensing up my neck) and doing each of the exercises. The workout ends with these Mason twists and I was able to stick with them for all 50 yesterday, so that makes me feel good :-) Of course maybe because the hour long workout for the day wasn't as rough on me as I expected I had more energy to persevere through all the ab stuff. Whatever, in any event, I already feel stronger! Workout 6 is kickboxing, so we'll see how I do there.

P90X, day 4

Yoga X was pretty intense but I really enjoyed it. There were some pretty difficult maneuvers for me because my balance needs some work but I feel better this morning. Less sore from my other days of working out because I was stretching a lot, so that is nice. My back hurts a bit but I find myself sitting up straighter, trying to make a conscious effort to keep good posture. I wasn't able to hold my legs as straight or as high as they did in the DVD so I guess that's how I'll gauge my improvement.

Today is back and legs so we'll see how that goes :-)

P90X, day 3

Tonight I did the shoulders and arms workout which was not as bad as the other two I've done. This tells me that I need to use heavier weights. Some of the exercises I really had to work at (mainly the triceps), but I think next time I should switch to using my 8s for most of them. This workout was also followed by the ab workout, which was killer. I've already done the ab routine before, but this time it was even worse because I'm still sore in places I didn't even know I had. I guess I'll also have to see how I feel in the morning because it's only been a couple hours since I finished the workout -- I'll probably feel more of the pain tomorrow (let's see if I can distinguish it from the pain I already had going into the workout...)

Tomorrow's workout is yoga, which is 90 minutes long. Yeah... let's see how I deal with that one... I have enjoyed yoga when I've done it before, but I don't know if I'll be able to hold awkward positions for extended periods of time with my already overtaxed muscles.

P90X, day 2

You know in Kill Bill when Uma Thurman wakes up from her coma and tries to get out of bed? That was me this morning after plyometrics. Well, maybe I wasn't quite that bad, but it was rough, especially since I'm still really sore from the chest and back and abs workouts.

Plyometrics is essentially jump exercising so I spent an hour doing various lunges and squats integrated with jumping. It doesn't sound like it's that challenging, but I've heard it's widely recognized as the most difficult of all the workouts. I guess that should make me feel good because if I survived this one I should (theoretically) make it through the rest of them! A small victory I guess :-) My heart rate at the end of it was 170, so that's pretty good, in my aerobic zone or whatever. Even after all the cool down stretches it was still 140, so then I just collapsed on my yoga mat under our ceiling fan hah.

I think next on my rotation is shoulders and arms, but I'm not sure how well I'll fare with that since my arms are still in such pain from my first workout. Oh well, maybe it's more biceps instead of triceps and back. At least now I'm even more motivated to finish! It will be interesting to see how different I feel after the first cycle (month) of workouts. Before the first one you're supposed to record measurements around your biceps, thighs, hips, waist, and chest. I wonder if they will be any different in a month's time? Suzana says that she noticed a difference in the first month, so perhaps I will also! I'd like to keep running too because that also slims you down whereas this workout will muscle me up.

On a funny note, my thighs are not too much bigger around than my biceps! 17 inches versus 11.5 inches, but granted my measuring technique was less than precise (took a shoelace, marked the spot, and then measured that against a measuring tape since I don't have any sort of flexible measuring length like used for sewing). As long as I do it the same way every time it should be alright.