A number of things

So I am starting to write down what I eat in a "food diary". I don't know how long it will be until I get bored of it. For one, I'm doing on the computer, so it won't be nearby for me to write in right after I eat, but it's just a way to make more of my bad days good day in the weight loss game.

Now if I was really nice I would be giving reviews of Shutter Island and Alice in Wonderland, but I don't feel like it. This post seems too important to put in things like that in it. I'm not sure why I think it's important but it is. I just know. In less than one week I will have continued this blog through thick and thin for an entire year. I deserve a cookie, but then I would have to log it in my food diary.

What I would like more than a cookie would be to play all of those awesome videos that keep coming out. I feel very sorry for myself for not getting to play them. And did you know their aren't any emulators for GameCube? Okay I did find some but I couldn't find any games for them, not that I tried very hard. (If you don't know what I talking about it's probably a good thing. Think Napster for video games). Several weeks ago I was walking through the video game section of Walmart and I felt like I was walking up to a drug dealer and asking "Can I just see what you have?". I have a problem. I can switch it on and off, unlike many people who have been known to ruin their lives with gaming.

Now I should be off to do all of the thing I should be doing. How was that for a one hundredth post?
-X

I shouldn't be wasting time right now

I really shouldn't be wasting time right now.

I just paid a bill. I don't have many of those, but it did make me look at my finances. I really haven't been thinking about any of this crap for a while. Just kind of living the dream, writing a novel, reading, watching movies.

But this week the weather has been all nice, like winter is over or something. That means that all the fucking crap I had to do last year I'll have to do again. Yeah, I'm talking about yard work. I'm not a fan, particularly when people don't ask me nicely. So I have to get out of this house this summer.

I remembered something on my loan deferment about March. For some reason the six month deferment ends in March. I'm going to call them and make sure what date I have to list on it to extend it. Anyway it says that I have to make at least six attempts to find full-time employment (that's important, unemployment deferment for student loans is based on lack of full-time employment. My mother pointed out that she doesn't work full-time by their definition.) and that I can count only four, and one of them could be construed as a college application, not employment.

So off to my job boards I go.

Now this is sad, I looked at a job that requires twenty hours a week and will only pay $150 plus housing and I'm going to apply for it. I'm getting pretty desperate. I know, you are thinking "about time" aren't you? Need I point out that you cannot live on that much a week? I think they feed me some, but I worked at a place that paid some people that much and did not feed them.

So I already am committed to three more applications to send out, and wait there is more! I need to finish my novel by the end of the month and prepare for Script Frenzy. I haven't even written today yet, which is why I shouldn't be writing this.

If I do find some time, or just want to procrastinate, I'll write a review of Shutter Island. If I don't, just go see it.
-X

Writing and Exercises

I haven't been posting in week or so because I've suddenly been back logged. It's really weird how it happens, but it seems like time just escapes from your grasp.

I suddenly realized that the first deadline for applications was coming up on Monday and I needed to get the recommendation letters for it and once I had confirmation of them I needed to send in the application itself. That was fun.

As I mentioned before I started to do the two hundred sit ups again and I'm keeping up by giving myself two days of rest instead of one for the first week. Tonight more exercising. I also started playing with free weights. I used one of my physical therapy exercises as an excuse to buy a 5 lb free weight and I started using it to rebuild my arm muscles. I do the same exercises with my left arm as a sort of constant, and my right arm is just really bad and I hope to have improvement when I do it today.

I hope that it is because of that that I haven't reached my goal of 200 lb by the end of February. I started to make some progress, then fell back. I was overeating again too. I do consider maintaining weight a positive note during this. How bad would I be if I wasn't paying attention? Anyway, I have notice a shift in my fat, the muscle aches are lessening, and my pants are fitting better.

Lastly my writing has been going great. I'm still behind, but I have a plan to catch up and have been having great story ideas. Reading Percy Jackson and the Dresden Files most likely helped.

Just a short update because I haven't been around.
-X

Perseus is a really cool name

I saw Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lighting Thief yesterday, but before I write about that I need to give bonus points to the movie theatre.

I always go to Regal Cinemas. I have their loyalty card so for every $100 I spend on movies and concessions I get a free movie ticket. This isn't the only reason. They are also always clean and the staff is always courteous and helpful. I have been to a couple non-chain movie theaters that were great, but if you are heading to a chain, Regal is in my opinion the best.

I actually saw Percy Jackson for a couple reasons:

1. I thought the previews looked cool.
2. I finally found a copy of the book in mass-market paperback (and therefore cheaper) and enjoyed it immensely
3. I had a loyalty ticket and I needed a movie that allowed the use of free passes (the first week or so of a new movie),

So I get to the theater not as early as usual, get free popcorn (because of my loyalty card again), and proceed to sit in an empty theatre, because it's a children's movie and I'm there at the 1:50 pm showing. I end up not being the only one there. Just before 1:50 a family with a really little kid came in and an older man that I assume was there to pre-watch it for his own kids or grandkids. As soon as 1:50 rolls around the manager comes in and informs us that there is a problem with the projectors and that the movie will start a few minutes late.

Isn't that nice? They actually told us right off the bat that something was wrong, instead of letting us think that they just forgot to turn the movie on. Several minutes go by, the manager had estimated "two or three minute" delay and that was clearly wrong. So the manager returns and give us all passes to another movie to use whenever we like. Suddenly none of us mind waiting the half-hour to forty-five minutes it took for them to fix the problem. What really sucks is that it sounded like it was a really stupid problem that you would not think would take that long to fix, but anyway I got to see a movie for free and got another free movie ticket.

Now back to the movie itself.

I really liked the book, when I ignored the whole ten-year-old-can-do-shit-grown-men-can't-do crap. They got around this by shifting him up a couple years and making him a teenager. That helped a lot because if you go back and watch the first Harry Potter movie you really see how ridiculous it is to have a child that hasn't even hit puberty yet. Of course, I'm not sure how old Logan Lerman, who plays Percy, was at the time of filming but I think he's one of those people who is destined to play teenagers forever. He looks really short, then again 5' 8" is shorter than me, therefore he is.

Now, I said I liked the book. You know what is coming next. I will say this in the most diplomatic way: in relationship to the books I absolutely hated the movie, in respect to the movie itself, I didn't mind it. The major problems with the movie is that it simplified the story and whereas the book avoided many pitfalls that you might come across when writing stories like this, the movie jumps into them. They switch villains to make the story work for only one movie better, they make that gods more dickish and over obsessed over Greek culture (in the book none of the gods are dressed in traditional clothing, Poseidon is dressed more like Charlie Harper from Two and a Half Men) and just to be nit picky, the walls on Olympus were not painted and there is proof that they should be.

What is really annoying is that they fell into the Hades is evil hole. Hades liked his job for the most part and in the book doesn't want war anymore than anyone else. In fact the entire point of Poseidon not being in Percy's life was because he, Zeus and Hades were all forbidden from having children after World War II (Zeus, of course, was the first to f that up).

So see the movie, but don't expect it to be anywhere nearly as awesome as the book. Oh and Perseus is an awesome name and sounds much more masculine than Percy, don't you agree?
-X

Exercise always hurts

I finally lay back down and did some sit-ups again. This was the first time since, September, I think. I wasn't posting about that much here so I don't know when it was.

Bring you all up to speed: I was trying to take the One Hundred Push Ups Challenge, along with the Two Hundred Sit ups, and Two Hundred Squats because if you can do that, you mus be healthy. I actually did fairly well for awhile. I was doing more push ups than ever and I started off with a shocking number of squats (almost too many for the first third of the challenge). I was having trouble staying on schedule since I don't tell any one what I'm trying to do but I was making progress. Slower than I was suppose to, but progress. I got to the two week mark at which point you're suppose to see how many you can do in a row without stopping to chose the difficultly level for the next two weeks. I had already been having new problems with my wrist which finally failed and couldn't hold my weight. So I stopped all three challenges for some reason.

Anyway, today I decided to start the sit ups again since I have been prepping my abs with isometric exercises and I don't think it's helping anymore. Now as far as I can tell, I didn't even post about my first time on here so here that goes.

I hadn't done any exercise in ages not counting the week before when I started the push ups. So I was not expecting to do very well on the start up test. Difficulty two, I wasn't doing "sit ups", I was going to be doing "curl ups", because sit ups can mess up your back. So I start to do these things after looking all over the internet trying to figure how a curl up is done. Basically, you start doing a sit up, but stop just as you get your back off the ground (35 degrees). In other words, you need to do the hard part, if the up starts getting easy you went too far. Now, me being use to doing full sit ups has trouble with this. It doesn't seem that hard, so I start doing a bunch trying to make sure that I was doing it right. Problem - I've now done a bunch right, a bunch too far, and a bunch not far enough, but they all add up. I fall back and every single muscle in my torso - my abdominal muscles all the way to my groin (you forgot they go down that far didn't you?), my pectoral muscles - all froze up. I've had some terrible charley horses in my legs before, I've accidentally allowed all of the blood to drain from my right arm, but this hurt worst. When it happens to a leg you straighten it out to the resting position, the resting position for your chest and abs it standing up and I couldn't use my abs to stand up. Oh, and your lungs move your chest when you breath. I did get up, using a secret technique taught in acting classes.

As you can guess, I survived. Today I did twenty-six sit ups before I decided I was done. I actually was able to pull my laptop over before my body decided, once again, that I over did it. Not anywhere as bad as last time, but they are still clenching a bit with me lying down right now, a good four hours later. I think it's more focused on my obliques this time, which would make sense with the isometric exercises. I was able to a practice round. The challenge trains you by having you do a set, then waiting a minute or so, then doing another set. I actually did enough that it wants me to do fifteen sit ups, rest then do another 10-15 five more times, and I thought it was crazy but I was able to do it.

So I'm at it again! And this time I have it on my calender.
-X