Friday, November 19, 2010

A Tale of Two Nerds

No time to post lately, but I would like to direct your attention to this blog post my friend Chloƫ wrote about how often we dork out about Harry Potter. Timely!

Have a good weekend, everyone! Gryffindor!

Friday, November 5, 2010

Procrastination Makes It Happen

It is approximately 8 pm on a Friday night. I just woke up from a little thing I like to call a procrastination nap. Tomorrow morning, ridiculously early, I have to be on a train. Before that happens, I have to do about five loads of laundry, pack, take a shower, and attempt to clean up my disgusting home. I am thinking about making some cookies.

So, obviously, it is time to sit down and write a blog post.

This week a long-distance friend of mine [okay, cookies are in the oven. Some cravings just can't be ignored] posted a link to a Salon article suggesting that instead of writing for NaNoWriMo, people make an effort to read more. The idea is that you read 10 books from 10 different categories in the space of 10 months (totalling 100 books—10 from each category). Now, as a person with a full-time job, this is impossible. But we decided that reading 1 book from each of the 10 categories was a respectable challenge. So now we are in the process of choosing the categories. It's looking like popular history and popular science will make it in, as well as short stories and contemporary bestsellers. I'm excited to broaden my reading scope a bit, and I'm looking at this as both an excuse to buy new books and motivation to read some that have been sitting on the shelf for a while. All in all, good reading project. I'll probably blog as I go (somehow using blog as a verb still sounds pretentious, but whatever), if you're interested. And even if you're not.

Have a good weekend, everyone! Procrastination time is probably over. For now.

[cookie update: kind of cakey, since I accidentally added baking powder. dough is always the best part anyway.]

Monday, November 1, 2010

On Exercising


Unsolicited fitness update: I am extremely out of shape.

I say this a lot, but that's because it is usually true. I would like to say my relationship with exercise is complicated, but it's actually very simple: I don't really like it. I like the results, and so sometimes I can fool myself into thinking I like it. When I am in shape I am happier, I know that much. And so exercising is worth it. But I get bored. I get distracted. Most of all, I get sore muscles and want to quit.

October is a particularly bad month. My old roommate from university and I used to call it Fat Month (full disclosure: we still do) because of all the Halloween candy we used to (still) eat. This October was no exception, and now I find myself afraid to get on a scale and more than a bit uncertain about how to stop all of these bad habits. What to do?

Enter Vicki Essex! A soon-to-be-published romance novelist and friend of mine, she has decided that instead of doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, as she is already a very disciplined writer, she is doing NaNoExMo. (I am still not quite sure what the "No" means, but the "Ex" is exercise.) The gist is that she's vowed to work out for thirty minutes three times a week throughout the month of November. And because it's such a good idea, I've decided I'm going to join her. She didn't ask or anything, but too bad! I'm going to plague her with calories burned and lunges lunged all month long anyway. Hopefully this will create some good habits to replace the bad, and at the end of it all I hope to have more energy and motivation for this blog as well as other projects.

Wish me luck! I promise not to do too many boring exercise posts.

P.S. Regarding the photo: this is a picture of my family's cat, the Hulk. He is adorable but, let's face it, a little on the chubby side. So I figured it was an appropriate picture for this post.