Just Dance, Yo!

You will perhaps recall a post from a few days ago when I mentioned that I bought my second Wii game (in 10 months...I'm a cheapskate).  That's right, I'm now the proud owner of Just Dance 2 for the Wii.  And tonight I gave it a go.

My reasons for buying this game were twofold: 1) My exercise regimen has dissolved into nothing more than doing "sit-ups" to get off the couch, and 2) I played this game at my friend Jessica's house over winter break last year and it's just absolutely hilarious.  It's particularly hilarious to play with friends, and one of the reasons I put off buying it was because I was worried it wouldn't be as enjoyable to play by myself.  But I was cracking myself up within the first three minutes.  As you might remember from my dance workout DVD escapades, dancing is not my forte...I like to think that's part of my charm.  It's part of my charm that doesn't get to go out in public very often, but it's definitely a part of my charm.

For the video-game-disinclined, this game is super easy to understand...as the name would imply, all you do is turn on the game and "just dance."  You pick a song, and then follow the motions of the virtual dancer on the screen...and that's really it.  But trust me, it's a ton of fun, and it's hilarious.

Here's a dance from the game that I did tonight...with a video of some random kid in the bottom right corner doing the dance in real life.  I looked just about as cool as him, never fear...even if I wasn't wearing a jaunty trucker hat.



This is one of the easier dances, there's multiple levels and music styles throughout the game, including duet dances to do with a friend (unfortunately I don't have a second Wii controller, but that doesn't stop me from forcing my friends to play along anyway.  In all seriousness (or as much seriousness as can be given concerning a game that makes me dance around embarrassingly), I'm hoping that this game will jumpstart the exercise regimen again.  That, and I'm forbidding myself from buying Nutella at the store anymore...which is a sad, but necessary measure.

So yay for dancing!!!  Should be a fun new exercise routine :)

My Life at the Gym

Today I decided to take an independent venture to the SMU fitness center.

I've been to the gym at SMU several times this year, but I've never gone alone; I've always had some number of girlfriends with me, and it's always been at 10:00 in the morning.  But around 5:00 today, after a day of laying around all day and piling my cart with frozen dinners and chicken dinner fixin's at the grocery store, I decided I might as well go and get my fitness on for awhile.  I've been 0.7 pounds away from my current weight goal for like a week, and seem to not be able to lose it, and a fitness center excursion is more helpful to that end than laying on the couch watching TV reruns.

Getting to the gym was quite the effort.  I planned to quickly swing by Walgreens and then proceed to campus; a 15-20 minute journey, tops.  But, thanks to traffic from a broken stoplight, getting lost on a shortcut to avoid the highway, and general Dallas evening traffic, it took me a full 40 minutes to get to the campus that I live less than 3 miles away from.  Fabulous.

Happy to be at my destination, I plop myself down on an exercise bike, set the timer to 20 minutes, and start pedaling with Owl City playing through my headphones (they've been my workout music of choice lately...all peppy and upbeat).  I glance at the guy two bikes down and notice that he has a laptop strapped precariously to the front of his machine.  Trust those rich SMU kids to bring their expensive electronic devices to the gym with them.  I keep pedaling, staring at my laptop-free exercise machine, and think that I could have at least brought a book or something to look at.  The TV above my head is showing semi-intriguing news stories without captions.  No luck there.

As I'm usually at the gym with friends, I have someone to chat with while pedaling my life away.  Without a conversation partner, I suddenly realized the awkward set-up of the fitness center.  Three of the four lines of cardio equipment face the weight-lifting area and weight machines, and my recent machine of choice (the aforementioned exercise bike) is in the front of these three lines.  This means that when I'm working out on the bike, I'm staring straight at all the people lifting weights...including an abundance of young gentlemen who are far from unattractive.

Unlike the guy with the laptop, I don't have a convenient, interesting media-object to stare at unceasingly, and so my eyes naturally go to whatever movement is happening in front of me, which is all these muscular guys lifting various assortments of weights.  My scientific and well-researched observation is that big university guys are much more muscled-up (and more attractive) than small liberal arts college guys...and there I was, making awkward eye contact with practically all of them, because I have nothing else to look at.

Flirting is not my strong suit in any situation, and my flirting abilities drop approximately 10 points at the gym.  Unlike the skinny undergrad girls with their cute little jogging tanks and booty shorts, I rolled into the fitness center today in my teal French club t-shirt and brown stretchy cotton capris, with my hair pulled up into a non-elaborate ponytail.  But, if I had any modicum of flirting skills, I think I could have had some good results; maybe it was the French quote on the back of my t-shirt that made me seem all mysterious and bilingually interesting, or the fact that my straight hair generally has better double-take results with men than my curly hair, but I got my share of gym glances too.  Of course, being my non-flirting self, I generally responded to most of these by feigning sudden intrigue in the timer on my machine or the still uncaptioned TV set above my head.  Kind of counterproductive, but it's always my gut reaction when I see a cute guy looking in my direction.  Perhaps this is the root of my current singleness.

They say the gym is a good place to meet men, and perhaps it is.  There's certainly an abundance of men bopping about the various fitness machines.  But today, after completing my 20 minutes of exercise bike and 10 minutes of elliptical, I left the gym still guy-less.  Oh well.  Better luck next time, perhaps.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I'm Large.

Why is this a blog title, you ask?  Because, until today, I was EXTRA large.  At least, I was according to the world of Old Navy sizing.  But today, when I headed off to the dressing room laden with size XL tops, every single one of them was too big.  That's quite a nice change from everything being too small, I'll tell you.  Today's shopping adventure proved that I've really been losing weight in a really practical way: I've dropped a shirt size AND a pants size since January!  Guess the "Get Fit" and "Eat Healthy" goals are working out (haha, bad pun unintended)!  I left with 2 pairs of capris, 3 tops, and 2 pairs of flip flops: a nice boost to my mostly non-existent spring wardrobe.  And my friend Rachel and I had quite the laugh-filled shopping spree (particularly when she accidentally brought me a shirt covered in pictures of fish instead of artistic flowers, like the one I asked her to trade in.  It was funny if you were there, I promise).

In other news, today was a GREAT day.  Besides the extremely victorious shopping trip, I also ate tacos on a restaurant patio in the gloriously summer-like Texas weather with friends, made enormous progress on my class presentation, and ate pizza and cake balls with the girls while having a quintessential movie night (this night's picks included Grown Ups and Secretariat: both good movies in very different ways).  I also managed to get a 98% on the church history midterm I was certain I failed, thanks to my professor's lenient grading (everyone did horribly, I think they just cut us all a break).  

Yeah...everything about today was good.  Actually, except the part where I ran the dishwasher without putting soap in it.  That wasn't so good.  There was also a part of the day where I was certain that I saw my car getting a parking ticket, and spent a suspenseful 30 minutes in anxious anticipation of what I would find upon my return.  But it turns out I was just paranoid, and quite legally (if poorly) parked.  Both of those things are insignificant in comparison to the rest of the day's goodness :)

Dance It Off, Yo!

So I took a foray into the world of cheesy workout DVDs today.

I was going to just do the Wii Fit as usual (if you count my rather sporadic habits of using it recently as "usual"), but then I remembered this workout DVD that I acquired some four years ago called "Dance It Off!"  Yes.  Weight loss through dancing.  I've used this DVD a couple of times before, but I've never really had the space (or the solitude) to really be able to do the workouts without falling into a dresser or being mocked by passerby.  But, now I have a single-person apartment with a wide space in the middle of the main room, and no excuse not to get my groove on.  Maybe it's because my friends and I watched "Center Stage" last night, or maybe I  just wanted a change from the Wii Fit exercies...but I decided that dancing for exercise was the way to go.

Let's just say that I'm happy that there was no one around to witness the event.

But it WAS fun...although I'm an absolutely horrible dancer (something I was already well aware of), I am able to laugh at myself, and that happened frequently and made the general workout experience much more entertaining.  The DVD has 4 dance routines, including hip-hop, latin, jazz, and ballet.  Since hip-hop was the first one listed, that's the one I chose.  I'll let you all just rest for a second, picturing me hip-hop dancing.

Yeah.  There isn't a drop of hip-hop in my blood.

My little sister has always been oddly hip-hop, and we've never quite known where it came from.  She probably has this double life dancing in hip-hop groups on the streets.  In any case, I was generally falling all over myself.  Also, that funky bouncey-ness that you always see in hip-hop some how evades my suburban white girl persona, and I bounce more like an excited child than like someone who's dropping it like it's hot.  After the general hip-hop experience, I opted for the ballet routine, which is WAY more up my alley.  Not that I'm good at it (flexibility has never been my strong suit), but I had my fair share of pliees and feet positions back in the Color Guard high school days.  And ballet uses all these French phrases like "rond de jambe" that make me feel all important and experienced because I understand them.  I may not be the most graceful person in the world, but I made it through the ballet routine as well.  Toss in a warm-up and a cool-down (in their appropriate chronological positions), and I was WELL worn out by the time I decided that I'd had sufficient exercise for the day.  Even dancing horribly is a workout, it would seem.

So anyway, I just wanted to let you all know of my dancing adventures of the evening.  For your enjoyment, please refer to these clips from the DVD to better picture how ridiculous I looked doing these various dance moves.  If you know me at all, you will appreciate the mental image.   

Snow! And Monthly Goal Check-Up

So even though I still don't think all those people were justified in buying out all the chicken...Dallas did get hit with somewhat treacherous conditions today.  After freezing rain throughout the night, I woke up to the following sights:

(That's Ice.)

I treated my snow day in the proper way:  laying about in panda pajamas all day, watching movies, and drinking hot chocolate.  As a rule of thumb, I don't use snow days to try and get ahead on schoolwork; I'll do whatever necessary amount of work I would usually do, but treat the rest of the day as a vacation day from God.  If the weather forces me to relax, who am I to disagree? :)

In other news, it's February 1st: we are officially a twelfth of the way through 2011.  Can you believe it?  It seems like the month went by really fast.  Anyway, I've decided to take the first of every month to do a goal-check up, and see how I'm doing in accomplishing things.

As perhaps you recall (but I don't expect you to), I chose 5 big goals to focus on for January: Rejuvenate my Relationship with God, Make CCFOF Work a Priority, Create a Budget, Exercise 2x Per Week, and Read for Fun.  Well, I'm happy to report that I've made good progress on all of these things!

First: Rejuvenate Relationship with God.  This one still needs work, unfortunately (though, to an extent, it will always need work...).  Happily, I've made steps towards getting involved in a church: most importantly I've found one to attend, and second most importantly, I've gotten involved with a women's small group that meets every week.  So I'm not only GOING to church (something that I was barely doing at all last semester), but have started to make connections with people there.  Good stuff.  For this month: I need to make personal quiet times a priority...choose a specific time to read the Bible every day, and then DO it.  One of my professors has us meditating for 10 minutes every day (you get odd homework in seminary), so hopefully I can build quiet times around that.

Second: Make CCFOF Work a Priority.  This has been QUITE well achieved; my paycheck was at its maximum level this pay period, meaning that I actually worked every day (or went back and made up hours I missed).  I've started working first thing in the morning, after breakfast.  This keeps me from falling into that laziness and procrastination that comes with working from home.  For this month: Plan out weekly tasks in advance, for better productivity.  Our annual prayer campaign is coming up and that means lots of translating, and lots of organizing lots of small groups across the country and around the world.  Yeah.  Productivity in work is important right now.

www.ccfof.org.  Check it, yo.

Third: Create a Budget.  Well, budget is created.  In a few days I'm going to take my bank statement and see how well I lived up to it.  For this month: Keep track of expenses.  I created the budget mid-January, so last month I didn't really get to LIVE by the budget, I just made it up.  My first expense of the month: the soundtrack to "500 Days of Summer."  Write it down.

Fourth: Exercise 2 Times Per Week.  HECK YES!  I've actually been exercising for half an hour a day, 5-6 days per week.  I've also lost about 5 pounds since the beginning of January, and lowered my BMI a bit.  Woot!  For this month: Keep doing things like that...

Fifth: Read for Fun.  This goal is still in progress.  I was doing really well with it over winter break, but back in the world of academia, it's kind of fallen to the wayside.  I'm still reading "The Man in the Iron Mask," and quite enjoying it when I actually read it.  It's quite long, so I'll be enjoying it for quite some time :)

So I'm making good progress!  Looking back at that intense planner (which I haven't been using day to day, but where I've been listing mini-tasks to accomplish monthly goals), I've marked "Yes" on more goals than "No" in terms of their completion (I actually just realized that that's not what that column is for, but it's my planner so whatever).  And, I think there's something to be said for keeping my New Year's Resolutions up for an entire month :)

Hopefully tomorrow I'll devise the plan of attack for February.

Slump

Everyone has their little slumps on their way to goal accomplishing; I would call today a slump.

First of all, I accidentally slept until 11:00...I had two alarms set for 9:00 and don't remember turning them off, so I don't really know how that happened.  I've discovered that sleeping in late REALLY messes up my productivity groove.  It's weird, because I always consider sleeping in a luxury (and I suppose it is), but it's really not all that beneficial.  I'm finding out that it's better to stay on a regular sleep schedule as far as energy is concerned.  I'm sure someone told me that along the way...I believe them now.

The morning (time designation loosely applied) was fairly productive: I did my daily CCFOF research, and then went and sat out by the pool for a couple hours and accomplished a fair amount of class reading...unfortunately, I was being proactive and mostly reading ahead for a book review due in a few weeks, so I still have a lot to get through before Tuesday (Monday reading is happily completed).  It was a beautiful 72 degree day here in Texas, and I brought two books with me, allowing me to switch readings whenever I got too bored with one (an effective strategy, I discovered).

The other problem with sleeping late is that it throws off my meal schedule; so around 4:00 I got hungry for lunch and retreated to the room where the rest of the day was spent in a general slump.  After eating a healthy-portion-size meal I was still oddly hungry (despite significant chopping of portion sizes lately, I haven't had this problem before...and don't worry, I haven't been eating an unhealthily small amount or anything, I've just been paying attention to proper portion sizes, which are quite smaller than my past idea of a "portion").  This kind of led into a slump of junk food for the rest of the night, including at various points pizza rolls, hot chocolate, and peanut butter on a spoon.  Yeah...I'd call that a slump.  I was also feeling kind of sick this afternoon (pre-peanut butter and hot chocolate, those were attempts to use sugar to perk me up a bit)...as a result, the entirety of the evening was spent watching "I Love Lucy" episodes and "The Royal Tenenbaums" on TV (I actually liked that movie a whole lot...it's filmed in an artistic way that's really reminiscent of "Amelie," which I love).  After that, I spent countless hours on Facebook/Youtube, and eventually pulled the Wii Fit out not to exercise, but to do a body test (which I've committed to doing every other day).

Actually, the body test was a pleasant surprise: in the past 10 days or so, I've lost 5 pounds and lowered my BMI by 0.8!  I haven't even been working that hard either...just eating healthier foods in proper portions, and exercising for half an hour most days.  I'm rather proud of myself, if I do say so.  I'm sure that I won't keep losing weight this quickly...but still, this is the first time that I've set out to lose weight, and am actually accomplishing it.  It's a nice feeling :)

Bliss

This is bliss: cooking healthy and delicious tomato basil chicken and rice that makes the apartment smell like Italy, curling up on the couch with said dinner and watching "The Swan Princess," making frozen peanut butter and banana poppers, and working out with the Wii Fit.  

And this is how I spent my evening :)

If there's one thing that a week of focused goal-oriented diligence has taught me, it's that being productive in the beginning of the day sets you up to be productive throughout the day, which in turn allows you to have relaxing evenings that restore your sanity, thereby setting you up for productive mornings, and so forth...

If there's one thing that a week of focused, healthy eating has taught me, it's that the guilt-free feeling associated with eating better is one awesome feeling.

If there's one thing that a week of diligent, regular exercise has taught me, it's that exercise gives you endorphins. And endorphins make you happy.  And just as Elle Woods pointed out in Legally Blonde, "happy people just don't shoot their husbands."  They also don't wallow in fits of despair brought on by feelings of being overwhelmed and general lethargy.  They just don't.

Summary of one week back in Dallas: things are going great :)

A Semi-Dramatic Step Out of Character

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that the planner-goal thing works.  At least, I accomplished the two goals I had laid out for today.  It seems that if you break large goals into small, practical goals, they become much easier.  I'm sure some teacher told me that along the way, but I believe it more now.  Today, I had two goals: do at least two hours of CCFOF work, and buy a Wii/Wii Fit.

The first of these goals was accomplished with little moments of intrigue, and consisted entirely of translating a letter from French to English (word for word, not paraphrase, so it took awhile).  It's not really worth going into detail about, but in case you don't know what the CCFOF (my employer) is, I refer you to this website...you'd do well to take a look at it, because I'll probably mention it quite a bit throughout the year: www.ccfof.org

The second goal, that of Wii-filled glory, is much more worthy of note.  First of all, it must be said that spending significant amounts of money for non-life essentials at any one time is HIGHLY out of character for me...even more so if that non-life essential is a video gaming system.  But, it is something I have wanted for a long time, and something that I suddenly had the means to buy due to a generous gift of Christmas money on the part of grandparents.  Even so, it was kind of dramatic for my ever-frugal character.  I shall now recount to you the events which unfolded this afternoon.

Bringing my tech-savvy sister Hannah along for moral support, I drove the familiar roads to Target somewhat more apprehensively than usual.  Generally, the path to Target leads to some $10-$30 clothing purchase...rarely does it lead to a $300 purchase of video game paraphernalia.  Walking from the parking lot to the store entrance, Hannah rolled her eyes to my repeated "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh" mantra. Of course, Hannah feels quite at home in the electronics department; I myself only ever venture there for an occasional DVD (and since moving to a place with a Half Price Books less than a mile away, even that activity has become nearly obsolete).  And so there we were: standing in front of the locked glass case, staring at the Wii behind the glass.  The Wii was on sale for $20 off it's usual price (the fact that motivated me to go and buy it today at all), but was still somewhat daunting.  I began to doubt myself.  I paced about the end of the aisle, repeating over and over "maybe I shouldn't do this, maybe I shouldn't do this."  Hannah, with her arms folded, replied forcefully "Just DO it!"  "I don't know, I don't know," I said, continuing to pace to the TVs and back.  "It's CHRISTMAS money!  A GIFT!" Hannah reminded me.  At this, she had a point: if my grandparents had shipped me a Wii all wrapped in paper and such, I would have enthusiastically received it without question.  Even if I had cashed the check instead of depositing it in my account, it would have felt more gift-ish.  But, because the gift money had weaseled its way into my checking account - the account whose major purchases are things like apartment rent and furniture bills and groceries (you know, food and shelter, life-necessity things), I felt like the height of irresponsibility.

Suddenly, there he was in front of me, in all his khaki and red-polo glory: the Target Electronics Department guy, asking in the ever-friendly Target way, "Is there anything I can help you with today?"  Throwing caution to the wind, I said.  "Yes.  Can you get me a Wii Console and a Wii Fit package out of that case?"  "Sure," said the Target guy.  And so we proceeded to the cash register, and I handed over my $30 target gift card ("Little good that'll do," I muttered, much to the amusement of the sales guy.)  Add in a $17 warranty, and I swiped my card for a $290 luxury purchase.

The deed was done.

The funny thing was, once I got it home and set it on the table in close proximity to all the other Christmas gifts, it FELT like a Christmas gift.  And I was excited about it, and after resisting playing with it immediately in favor of doing that CCFOF work (bonus points for productivity!), Hannah and I spent the bulk of the evening playing with it.  And I love it :)

You see, I'm a person who, for the most part, lives entirely on federal student loans.  I have a full scholarship for my school tuition, and use my CCFOF paychecks to cover food, gas, and other incidentals.  But major things like apartment rent, textbooks, and the like are all being paid for with money that isn't mine, that I'll have to pay back one day.  For that reason, I've been super frugal lately.  The only luxury-spending I generally allow myself is eating out with friends (justifying it by the human need to eat) and an occasional $10 DVD purchase.  So frugal-Celia had a hard time accepting the luxurious gift that was given to her.  But I think maybe, from time to time, it's okay to not be totally frugal.  Not that money can buy happiness, but stressing out every time you spend money certainly doesn't lend itself to a happy demeanor.

One of my goals for this year is to create a budget.  Right now, my budget is simply "spend as little money as possible!"  But I've heard plenty of people say that there's a freedom that comes with living by a budget, and I agree with them.  The guilt factor gets removed, and you can enjoy the resources given you and rest comfortably in the fact that you're being a good steward of your money.

And anyway, the Wii Fit will help me in the "Get Fit" goal category, so it's not a completely arbitrary purchase.  Just a check mark on the way to accomplishing my goals for this year!