I'm sitting here waiting for the dryer to finish its cycle and am flipping through photos on Facebook to pass the time. You know how Facebook works. You end up adding most of the people that you went to school with, regardless of your current relationship with them. If you were friendly to each other in school, then you're Facebook friends.

This, as you know, allows me to be nosy and look at peple's pictures and try to figure out what their life is like to an extent. That's what brings me to this post.

There are a number of people on my friends list that post pictures of their life constantly, which is fine. It doesn't bother me one way or the other because I don't have to look at them. Through these pictures, I can see the inside of their home, how they dress, places they go, who they spend time with, etc, and usually makes me happy for them or sad for them.

Today I was looking through a few albums of a girl that I know, and I always remember her as being a nice, fun, happy person, but from what I can remember, she grew up in a world of financial difficulty, and due to the neighborhood that she lived in, was probably exposed to a lot of things that a kid shouldn't have been exposed to. In the photos I saw of her, it seems like her life is no different now. She seems live in the same type of neighborhood, if not the same one that she grew up in. She seems happy, which is good, but I can't help but wonder if she ever really tried to change her life for the better.

I wonder this about people all the time. I didn't have an easy childhood. We didn't have a nice house. We didn't have a nice (or even decent), car. My mom worked really hard to support her children and we just always had troubles along the way. When I started kindergarten, I knew then that I wanted to be a teacher. I didn't know yet that it was a profession that required college, since most 5 year-old kids don't know what college is, but I remember learning later that I would have to go to college and that college cost money.

I didn't really care though. The older I got, the more I was convinced that I wanted to have a different life than what my mom had. She worked hard and did the best she could. I tell her this still and I'm grateful for that, but that doesn't mean that I want to follow in her exact footsteps. So I made it happen. And my siblings have made it happen. My older sister is graduating in May with her Bachelor's and I couldn't be more proud, especially since she got some kind of award for her hard work. She's paid her way through school while having a child. Just because her life didn't go exactly according to her plan, didn't stop her from continuing in achieving goals she set for herself.

So maybe it's because of the way that my mind works that it makes me sad for the people who never try. It's one thing to try and fail, but keep trying. It's different to try and fail never try again, or to just never try to change their life in the first place.

Oh, abbreviations.

Just now I was reading status updates and whatnot on my Facebook when I keep hearing "UTI" from the television.

I was wondering why on earth they were discussing UTIs on television and saying it over and over.

Then I realized that they were talking about the Universal Technical Institute:


not Urinary Tract Infections.

That's about as bad as my college prefacing the students' email addresses with 'std' for student, but of course everyone was like, "WHY DO THEY HAVE SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE IN MY EMAIL?!"

That's all. It made me chuckle.

A recap of my really uneventful life.

Well, today was day 3 of my new workout plan, and I am beginning to hurt all over. I tell myself that this pain is going to be my success, so I push through it, but I haven't hurt like this in a really long time.

Yesterday I focused on my arms and realized that I have no arm strength to do anything. If my life depended on me doing say...a pull up or push up correctly, let's just say that you'd be making a trip to the funeral home before too long.

After I got home yesterday, Melinda and Jill came over in the afternoon to watch Planes, Trains and Automoblies for the first time. I felt that it was necessary for me to expose them to this genius piece of 1980s nostalgia, and they both really liked it. Like normal, we'd pause mid-movie to start chatting and things, because I think it's impossible to have the three of us together and get true silence.

We were talking about workouts and gym memberships, and I found out that both of them have one, which got me thinking...why does nobody ever talk about going to the gym? Had I known that people I know actually go to the gym and it's not just something that you see in movies, I possibly would've been motivated a lot sooner to get up and do it. It makes me wonder who else is working out in secret. ;)

For dinner, I made mahi-mahi with lemon pepper, oregano, basil, garlic powder and onion powder that was cooked in the skillet with a round of EVOO. (Hello, Rachael Ray.) It was DELICIOUS. I do the same recipe with tilapia, but I think I prefer it with the mahi-mahi because the mahi-mahi is a thicker cut than the tilapia and doesn't fall apart so easily, but is equally mild in flavor.

I had invited Kim over for dinner and she came in right as I had finished cooking so we ate and then watched LOST. I won't share any spoilers in case someone isn't yet caught up, but I will say I appreciate that they're slowly bringing questions that I've had since the first seasons back to the surface and answering them. The episode was soooo good and I got mad when this came up:

Cliffhangers kill me! I hate that there are only 4 more episodes left. I am really not looking forward to having nothing to look forward to from June-February each year. Not to mention, I would like to think that Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, Claire, Sayid, Locke, Sun, Jin and the rest are all REAL people. Not Matthew Fox, Josh Hollaway, Evangeline Lilly, Jorge Garcia, Emilie De Ravin, Naveen Andrews, Terry O'quinn, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, etc.

Have I said that I'm an avid LOST watcher? In case you couldn't tell, I am.

As tired as I was yesterday evening I got a second wind RIGHT before I was about to pry myself off of the couch and head to bed. I hate when that happens. It happens far too often.

I got up this morning around 6:50, made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast and then met Kim and the gym. We worked our abs today. I'm curious to see if we worked them hard enough. For me, the true test will be if I can feel it tomorrow or not. If I can't, then that's what I'm going to re-work tomorrow. When I was doing my cardio workout, I started getting a headache (of course) and ended up cutting it a little shorter than I would like to.

Yesterday, I put all of my workout and calorie intake for the day into an app on my iTouch, and it measures how many calories you're taking in and burning. It gives you a budget of calories for the day, and I had 548 left over. It made me want to eat a few Oreos, but it was too late to eat. That part is going to be a hard habit to break: not eating when I'm up late.

That's more than plenty of text for now. :)

Workout: Day One.

Well, 7am creeped up on me this morning much sooner than I would have liked for it to. I went to bed late because I was up making my workout playlist, (a workout must, duh!) and it took me a while to fall asleep.

But that probably (and hopefully) won't be happening tonight. Hopefully I'll be exhausted and want to go to bed at like, 9, so that I can get up and start it all over again.

Kim and I met there at 8am to meet with the trainer, Rachael. We did the BMI thing, and it was actually better than I figured it would be. I just knew she was going to look at it and say, "Wow. You're so fat, that even your bones have converted to fat. You are at a 100% BMI and all 100% of that is body fat. Way to go."

I won't say my weight, but I will say that I am 41.7% body fat and my BMI was around 35-38. I can't remember that part. Clearly, I'm waaaaaay to fat, since a person my age should be at 19%.

They didn't take my body measurements, but I'm thinking that I'm capable of this on my own. I have a tape measure. And I have a camera. My intention is to have all of that written down and then every month or so, I want to re-measure, take a new picture and compare the differences.

Maybe once I'm feeling confident and have made some progress I'll post all of that information here and then it'll be out there for the whole world to see, thus keeping me encouraged to not go back to that.

To start my workout, Rachael said to do a 10-minute cardio warm-up on something that wasn't a treadmill, so I chose a bike machine. I was proud of myself for keeping a really steady speed of about 83rpm.

After that, Rachael had us do strength training on our legs for 30 minutes. She said instead of working everything at once, work your legs one day, your arms and upper chest another, your abs another, etc, so that our bodies don't get overwhelmed.

In the past, between sets I'd just sit and drink water or something, but she really enforced the idea to keep your heart rate up so that your calorie burn is higher, which makes sense to me. So this was the first time in my life that I had really worked-out non stop for about an hour. You know what I suck at? Lunges. Oh my. I have no muscles in my thighs apparently, because lifting my fat self back up after going down wasn't easy. But I did it. :)

She had me do anywhere from 10-20 reps depending on what machine I was using and then I'd do anywhere from 5-20 reps of the alternate strength training, such as lunges, pumping myself up onto my tip-toes, etc.

After that part of the work out, I did about 10 minutes, on the bicycle again, about 5 minutes on the elliptical, (My legs were waaaaaay to tired for all of that excitement) and did the treadmill for about 10 more minutes going at a quick pace with an incline. For my cool down I did about 5 minutes on the treadmill when it was flat and much slower.

I could easily go back to sleep now, but I won't. Good day. Good workout.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

I signed up for a gym today.

Why?

Because I'm sick of being fat. I mean really sick of it.

It's not that I'm the cliche fat person who sits around and eats her feelings, like the lunch table in Mean Girls, but it bothers me that I can never find clothes that fit. Or that I'm often in the company of some of my really beautiful girlfriends who are at a healthy weight and happy with themselves. I want and deserve that happiness too, and it's something I don't have.

I am thankful for my wonderful husband who always tells me he loves me regardless of what I look like, but which is hotter, really? A jiggly lady, or a fit lady? I'm thinkin' fit is waaaay hotter.

I eat when I'm bored, I have a weakness for foods that aren't good for you and I'm definitely going to have to cut back on the eating when I'm bored and not eating unhealthy foods. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to lots of fruit and vegetables, but in the last year or so, I've noticed that I really love oranges. So I'm going to incorporate oranges into my diet. Possibly for snacks and breakfast. I also love green beans, and I am determined to learn how to prepare them in a delicious and nutritious way. The challenge is finding food to cook for Travis and I both that he likes too, and he is a picky eater. But I can handle it.

The gym has endless cardio machines, weight machines, free weights, a pool, an aerobic room, a room devoted to spinning, racquetball courts, a basketball court and volleyball court. They have all sorts of classes, and I'm ready for it.

I'm excited about this. I'm actually glad to pay the money, because that means that I'll be in the gym, getting my dollar's-worth out of each monthly payment.

So maybe that'll give me an additional topic to write about. It definitely gives me something to do with my day. I'm planning on going in the mornings with my best friend, Kim, who wants to go before she goes to work each day. (She signed up, too.) I figure that's a good way to start the day and an excellent habit to get into. My intention and hope is that since I have no where to be each day, I can do standard workouts with Kim, and then do classes and such after she's gone off to work. I figure it'll have me pretty exhausted by the end of the day, but the harder I work, the faster I'll get to feeling better about myself. And that's the most important part.

Ahhh, music. How I love thee. Let me count the ways...

I am not the kind of person to say things like, "I absolutely MUST do this before I die." It's just not the way I think. Despite what I said in my previous post about being "over" concerts, I had a discussion with my friend Aaron this weekend about the ultimate must-go-to concert, and I agree that I simply must go when they tour again.

Who is this band that is worthy of my attendance? Coldplay.

I cannot seem to get enough of them. I feel that the Viva la Vida album is absolutely brilliant, as it I continue to listen to it over and over. I think it was the first full album (and one of the few) that I have bought on iTunes. When I downloaded it a few months ago, it was actually the first album that I, Jessica had bought on my own (aka not waiting for Travis to buy it and then ripping it later), in a long time. I think that the last CDs I had purchased were Imogene Heap, and the soundtracks to Juno and Little Miss Sunshine, and I believe that those purchases were while Juno was still in theaters, so I'm guessing at some point in 2008.

Here's the kind of music person I am: I don't listen to the radio. I am consistently late to hearing of bands and learning the names of songs. A recent example was when I kept seeing the preview for Valentine's Day and couldn't get the song out of my head. So I asked my friend Kim (who is always all-knowing in the latest in pop music), what the name of the song was and who sang it, and she instantly rattled off, "I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas. I never know this stuff, but I once I do find something that I like, I'm perfectly content with listening to it forever.

I was recently introduced to the music by Explosions in the Sky. It's all instrumental and it really is amazing stuff. It's the kind of 'sound' I guess I like, which would explain why I like the Viva la Vida album so much. It's all kind of similar. I have one of their songs on my phone and I've listened to it a number of times. I actually don't even remember what it's called right now.

As lame and odd as this may sound, I am moved by music. This probably really extends from my activity in the church. I feel more connected to God when I'm worshiping Him than I do at any other time, so maybe that's why I find myself so enthralled with the power of music. Today, I was in the Stone Briar Mall in Frisco, TX and there was a harpist playing. I couldn't stop watching, and I was really bummed when Travis was done wandering through the Field of Dreams store because it meant that I had to move away from what I was staring at.

I don't usually discriminate when it comes to music. Being a Texan, I am the odd one out for not OMG LOVING COUNTRY MUSIC AND REBA, OMG. But I can only handle so much. That isn't to say that I don't love line dancing to "Boot Scootin' Boogie" or screaming "I Got Friends in Low Places" as loud as I can at certain times, but I just can't take it at every restaurant/store/public location that has a sound speaker that I go to. When I was in college it was the worst. We only had country stations and tejano stations, and every now and then, 106.9 The Point would come in through the static playing an excellent song from the 1980s. That would always make my day.

I mentioned the harpist before, and I'm a total dork because I like classical music. When I was planning music for the wedding ceremony, going through and listening to different pieces trying to find the right song was fun for me, because I like it. I think that this may mean that I was really meant to live in the days of Mozart, but whatever. One of my favorite traditional classical pieces is Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Movement II. It was the song on Mr. Holland's Opus that they played after Mr. Holland found out that his son, Cole was deaf. I remember liking it when the movie came out, so when I was older and everyone had since gained internet access, I looked up the song and it really is completely magnificent.

I don't know that there is really a moral to these little stories or a point to this post, but it's not really what I intended it to be at all. But that's okay. Now you, (whoever you are that has found your way to my blog today) knows how I feel about music. I hope that you have a song that you can listen to over and over too. :)

Boredom Causing Facebook Beef?

Ugh...I'm so bored all the time lately and I feel like even having a blog is a waste of internet space since I have nothing of value to say.

Today, Travis and I are leaving for Dallas for the weekend. There's a concert that we're going to on Friday night which I'm semi-excited about. David Crowder*Band will be there, and I've not seen them in concert in a long time, so that's nice. Fee will also be there, and I'm a fan of Fee. Family Force 5 will be there, and I'm dreading it.

I'd almost rather go up to Dallas and just hang out. I think that I'm kind of "over" concerts. I don't feel like standing for hours with a bunch of people. I don't want to have to cover my ears because of bad audio balancing. Maybe it's an age thing. I notice that the older I get, the more I like things to just be low-key. Hopefully the concert will be really fantastic and I'll be like, "What was I even saying?! I love concerts!"

Pssssh, yeah right.

I feel like a bad person lately, because I've been realllllllly judgmental about crap I see on Facebook. This is probably because I spend far too much time on Facebook and I have way too much time to think.

I think that status updates should have to be funny in order to post. I only appreciate the funny updates. It doesn't have to be hilarious, but at least make me smile.

UPDATES I DON'T APPRECIATE:

"ANGIE JOHNSON IS FIXIN 2 CLEAN THE HOUSE B4 THE KIDZ GET HOME FROM SCHOOL. WHEN WILL THEY LEARN THEY GOTTA PICK UP ALL THERE TOYS B4 THEY GO PLAY WITH OTHER TOYS. TIME TO DO LAUNDRY. TTYL"

"CARL JONES GO TO POOPS-MCGEE'S FAN PAGE AND VOTE FOR MY TURD!! IT'S SHAPED JUST LIKE MY TRUCK!!!! HOPIN TO WIN FIRST PLACE!!"

"TROY ANDERSON GOT JOBS ON MY PAGE FOR MY FARM!! SEND ME A BARN AND A CHICKEN AND A HORSE AND A BALE OF HAY AND A REINDEER AND SANTA CLAUS AND A BOWL OF SPAGHETTI!!! I NEED THEM ASAP!!! THX FARMER FRIENDS!"

"JOANNE SMITH LOVES HER AUNTS/UNCLES/COUSINS/CHILDREN/HUSBAND/PARENTS/NEIGHBORS/CO-WORKERS!!!! ONLY 83% OF PEOPLE WILL REPOST THIS. WILL YOU BE A PART OF THE 17%???"

"KAREN DOBSON HATE THE GOVERNMENT!! OMG, 2012 IS NEAR BECAUSE OBAMA IS PREZIDENT!!!!!!!"

"SAM COOK LIVES IN AMERICA. I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PRESS ONE FOR ENGLISH!!"

What's sad is that all of those examples are based off of the stuff people post ALL DAY long. I get that people don't agree with things, and that's fine. But coming across as an arrongant, close-minded idiot does nothing for anyone.

I also am BEYOND tired of being invited to become a fan of something OVER AND OVER again by the SAME person. Take the hint. I don't want to be a fan of your _____ page. Probably because whatever it is that you're promoting is stupid and/or sucks. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I think that your band is wonderful when I would never actually listen to your music intentionally. This logic applies to whatever skill or craft is being promoted through the said fan page.

I also don't understand why people post unflattering photos of THEMSELVES? I don't know this person, but this is what I mean:



I've been seeing a lot of that lately, and I just don't understand it. My sister and I have actually talked about this topic and decided that it doesn't make sense.

And lastly, excessive punctuation is killing me.........................one day.....................at a time!!!!!!!!!!!

Or what about excessive punctuation combined with odd spacing ????? !!!!!!! That's a new trend I'm noticing as well.

Well, writing this lovely entry has certainly passed some time for me. Thank you to my non-existent readers. :)

Surprises & Get-togethers

My friend's (Melinda) birthday was last week, and I felt like a jerk because I never called, texted or even wrote on her Facebook wall a happy birthday wish.

A mutual friend (Jill) of Melinda and myself decided to get together and make her a Big Top Cupcake (yes, the one from tv) and drive the 45ish minutes to her apartment and surprise her.

Let me just say, Jill and I were really impressed with the Big Top Cupcake. It was easy to use, easy to clean, and the shape held really well.

Anyway, Melinda was excited about the surprise and it was good to visit with her. She's also a newlywed, and today was the second time I'd been able to see him on a day that either he wasn't getting married or where I wasn't getting married. Other than that, I'd never spoken to him.

Melinda and I decided today that our husbands will probably get along really well. They're hopefully moving to the area in the fall, in which case it'd be amazing to have another newlywed couple to hang out with. We don't have many married friends.

Which leads me to having a small dinner party soon. Yay for dinner parties.

I was in the mood to write a little more, but I just came across news that saddened me.

Eva Markvoort, the 25 year-old Canadian that was fighting Cystic Fibrosis that I had posted about a while ago died on March 27th. I haven't been on the computer much in the last few days, and missed that announcement.

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