♥

My dear hubby must think I'm completely crazy. I was catching up on facebook, and within the span of about 30 seconds I went from "I really love how amazingly awesome people can be!" (thanks, Anya!) to "I frickin' HATE people. >:("
Honestly, posting anything on the internet means putting yourself out there for the world to see. Wouldn't you want to put your best foot forward, or make the best impression that you could? Why do people put things online that are cruel to innocent people? It boggles my mind. My husband had to remind me in the "I HATE PEOPLE" scenario that this perpetrator is only ~13 years old. Man, if people judged me based on how I was at 13, I'd probably have no job, no friends, and no husband. So I need to learn to cut people some slack. Thank you, Husband, for reigning me in. I need to learn to get off my judgmental high horse, and spend more time in the "people are awesome" camp. :)

Tomorrow morning is my meeting with the Exercise Physiologist. Coincidentally I also have plans tomorrow evening to go to a Zumba class at the Rush with some friends. I expect the class to wear me out and humiliate me all at the same time. I've got no rhythm. I'm like a breadstick. But I'll be with some really great people, and I'll actually be taking a step in the "fit" direction. Which will be a huge improvement over the "fat" direction I've been headed. Speaking of fatness, I got another "don't get fat" suggestion today. I guess I should be flattered that people care enough to say something. :p

Ok, almost time for bed. G'night, y'all!

Friends

I have had the same core group of friends for several years, but am happy to announce that in the past year I've made several new friends. Some are librarians, some are friends of friends, but all are really nice to have! It's really hard to find a balance, though, of not neglecting the good friends I've had for ages. I recently noted on my facebook status that I'd been thinking of that old girl scouts song: "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold." When I was little I found it so confusing-- are the gold friends the new ones or the old ones? I've also always kind of preferred silver to gold. As I get older I see that the old friends are supposedly the gold friends, but I challenge this assumption. My friends are all gold. Otherwise they wouldn't be my friends. Life it too short for anything less. ;)

Husband and I took a walk today. A brisk, 2 mile walk. I loved that I was exercising and spending time with him at the same time. Wish we could do that every day! This evening I hung out with some lovely ladies and watched "Billy Elliot," which I'd never seen before. It was really good! The movie was accompanied by dinner delivered from Kasumi, and a fruit tart from the Fresh Market, with homemade whipped cream. Good company, good food, good film-- what's not to love? :)

Insulting

Recently, a very very good friend of mine insulted me repeatedly regarding my appearance. She didn't mean to; in fact, she was trying to "help" me, but it really hurt my feelings. I am overly-sensitive, so I knew I might be over-reacting, but I told my dear hubby what my friend said. He just rolled his eyes, and we had a good laugh at it.
The reason that I post this is to remind myself that there might be times when I am trying to help someone, and I might accidentally insult the heck out of them. If I have ever insulted you in any way, I am sorry. I didn't mean to, or if I did mean to, then I'm doubly sorry now.
I am also trying to remind myself to have more of a sense of humor about things. The world is not out to get me. In fact, my life is pretty amazing and good. I need to not sweat the small stuff. Hmmm.

Fitness Goals

I started my new job this week, and so I'm starting to really think about what goals I have for the future. On the one hand, I'd like to just take a moment to rest. I feel exhausted and want to tell myself that I've "earned" a break. But on the other hand, I think that I ought to jump straight into working out, before I get too lazy. I will no longer be working at my evening librarian job after tomorrow night, so even if I worked out for 30-45 minutes after work on Thursday, I'd still get home about 4 hours earlier than I'm accustomed to getting home.

My new job offers a lot of great benefits. One of the ones I plan on taking advantage of is a wellness program that will help me assess how "well" I am, in many aspects of my life. I plan to use this as a jumping off point, and a way to chart my progress. So sometime in the next couple of weeks, I will get some biometrics taken. I think I'm going to post the numbers here, not so much because anyone cares, but because I want to see myself improve. I want to be accountable.

But what do I *really* want to accomplish? There are many life goals that I have, and I am proud to say that I've reached a couple of them. But right now I'm focusing on fitness goals. I adore food, and can't honestly see myself making any drastic changes to my diet, but what can I become physically?
My long term fitness goals are to run a half marathon, to be able to do a pull-up, and to get down to 135 pounds. Well that's all well and good, but what about some achievable short-term fitness goals?
Without having weighed in the past few weeks, I'd estimate that I'm about 155 pounds. So goal #1 is to get down to 145. I wonder what a good time-frame would be for that. It's "just" 10 pounds, so I am arbitrarily setting a date of August 1st. In lieu of a pull-up, I'd like to be able to do 25 good push-ups in one set. (I used to be so good at push-ups!) And I'd like to run an entire 5K without walking sometime before Christmas.

Are these goals too much or too little? It's been so long since I've set and achieved a fitness goal that I don't honestly know what I'm capable of! But I plan to blog it out. :)

Oh Happy Day...

Today I signed out at ORAU in preparation for my new job at ORNL that starts Monday. Wednesday is my last night shift at my evening librarian job. I am so glad that I'll get to stay in touch with the people at both jobs that I really like. :) I'm super stoked to start the new position, though. I feel it is going to help me to grow as a librarian and as a person. It is affording me lots of wonderful opportunities. Even good stress, however, is stress. I've been eating even worse than normal, and biting my nails quite a lot. So this weekend I am going to try to find some ways to relax and have fun that don't involve over-committing myself or eating more. :)
Tonight I just spent some time resting, and played a little poker with some friends. Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in, then go meet up with my good friend, Chrissy, then get together with my Saturday crew for some board games. I'm actually going to pick up a cool boardgame that I played last weekend, called "Things." Between that and our old standby, Shadows Over Camelot, it promises to be a fantastic day.
In other news, I'm been collaborating on a project with my oldest sister that is guaranteed to be epic. It involves me learning a new skill, and us spending some time together. What could be better? Stay tuned for more info.
Well, Star Trek calls, and I must answer. Hope any readers have a wonderful weekend!

Good Times, Good Times

This weekend has been atypical. But awesome. My dear hubby and I usually have a weekend routine, hanging out with our good buds, and it is always wonderful. But this weekend we had a couple differnt events come up, so we broke our habit. Friday night we went to dinner with my boss, Al, and his wife, Sue. We had a delicious meal at Bravo, and enjoyed getting to visit with very nice, generous people. Al has been really good to me, and I'll get to keep working with him through my new job at ORNL, as I will be the liaison to the Neutron Sciences folks. So glad I get to stay involved with the neutron community. :)
Saturday, I got together with 2 lovely lady librarian friends, Anya and Erin. We planned to watch both of the Twilight movies that are on DVD, but due to some technical issues, we only got to watch the first one. Which is fine because now we have an excuse to get together again soon. This was our second movie + delicious food date. The first was when we got together at Erin's for "Gone With the Wind", homemade BBQ, banana pudding, and other goodies. Our Twilight date was equally awesome. Anya hosted us with some delicious homemade lasagna (must get the recipe!), "werewolf kibble" (chocolate and PB chex mix- so good!), garlic bread, and veggies. Everything was awesome. Anya even had a Twilight themed beverage-- Bloody Bellas. It was a juicy punch spiked with ginger ale. I have never read any Twilight books or seen any Twilight movies. To be honest, I was expecting it to be a little lame, but was still excited because of good friends and good food. But I was pleasantly surprised. I can definitely understand how the Twilight universe could generate such fandom. :) Oh, yeah, we also all went on an outing to get gellato. Coconut gellato = the shizzle.
So after that fantastic afternoon, and a promise of reconvening for "New Moon" in the near future, I met up with my hubs and we went to a birthday party for one of his classmates. Played an awesome board game called "Things," and visited with his cohort. There are so really funny people in his school psych program. We got home fairly late, but it was a good day.
I am so thankful to have such an abundance of awesome people to hang out with.
And now I need to wrap this up, as it's time to proof read Charles's NASP proposals. He is making dinner while I proof read. Sweet deal, eh? :)