The Friday Effect

Although I’m prepared for a pretty long day today, I’m definitely glad it’s Friday.

I’m finally coming out of the funk I’ve been in this week. I’m not sure if this is because I’m really over what’s been bothering me or if it’s just the Friday effect. Either way, I’m definitely going to see about myself because I can’t handle all these emotional ups and downs. Surely my doctor can give me some additional options that won’t wreak havoc on my moods.

***

So yeah, back to weight loss.

My update is about three days late and, needless to say, there isn’t much to mention. Thankfully I haven’t fallen back into over-eating, but I certainly haven’t been sticking to my plan. And exercise? HA! My workout schedule for this week that I posted on my sidebar might as well serve as another decoration because I haven’t worked out once so far.

But you know what? That’s okay. I’ve had a pretty rough week, and I’m not going to beat myself up over this. The important thing is picking myself up, dusting off and getting back on the wagon. And that starts today.

I’ve got a healthy lunch planned: fish fillets, brown rice, green salad and mixed veggies

However, tapas for dinner will be my challenge for the day. But I’m claiming victory. I am keeping my goals in mind and will stay within my limits.

As a side note, we ordered pizza last night for dinner. As we stood in the pizzeria waiting to pick it up, I noticed my reflection in the glass door of one of the refrigerators. To say that I was not happy with what I saw is a huge understatement. I’ve really let my appearance go over the years, and I’m so anxious to get that confidence back. This was definitely an additional push I needed to put me back on track.

Thanks..

... for the words of encouragement.

I'm glad to say that I feel much better today as compared to yesterday. My boss actually gave me the rest of the afternoon off after seeing how burned out I must've looked. I certainly wasn't expecting that, but it was sooo what I needed. A huge blessing. Talk about the Lord coming through right on time! I went home, took a two-hour nap and then my MIL visited with me for a while, which was also a welcomed surprise. We chatted for almost three hours and before she left we agreed to meet up this Friday again for tapas and then to get the whole family together for lunch at Abuela's (her mom) on Saturday. So, in addition to relaxing this weekend, I'm looking forward to getting together with everyone too.

I'm thinking that these mood swings I've been having are primarily due to the birth control pills I'm on. The strange thing is that these pills have a low concentration of estrogen which, in theory, should curb all the hormonal, mood-swingy issues. So I don't know. I've thought about changing the bc method, but then I figure that since I'll be injecting myself with hormones regardless of the method I choose, what's the point of changing it up? I'm good with taking my pills and some of the other methods out there are either too extreme for my taste or just not practical. Perhaps the mood swings are just a part of family planning that I'll have to grin and bear.

What do you guys think?

Um, help?

I feel like crap today. Why that’s been such a normal occurrence as of late is far beyond me. I am tired. I am irritable. My level of patience is -10. I have this weird sensation in my abdomen. Oh and the last place I want to be right now is exactly where I’m sitting- in an office around a group of people that I don’t like, in a job that I am grateful for but I’m growing to loathe.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I depressed? Am I having a nervous breakdown? Am I pregnant?

All I do know is that I need a break. I want to be carelessly relaxing in my bed right now, with the windows open and the cool breeze coming in. I need, like, a week of this. In the meantime I guess I’ll be plucking away at my desk, monitoring these last four hours tick slowly by.

Wish I were barbecuing today.. on my own private island

I'm not entirely sure what is up with my mood today. I thought my afternoon break would give me a chance to unwind, but it was quite the contrary. Between running to the grocery store to do our shopping for the week, running back home, cooking lunch, cleaning up the kitchen afterward and scrambling out the door to be back to work on time I barely had the chance to catch my breath. Sigh. My irritability today can't be PMS because I just got over that. Maybe I'm just tired and slightly burned out. I think that's what it is. All I know is that I'm ready for 8PM to roll around so that I can go home and Turbo Jam my mood away. I think shortly thereafter I'll be calling it a night too.

Back to work

It’s 9:36 on this overcast Monday morning and I’m already looking forward to this coming weekend. For the first time during the entire month of May, Chechu and I will finally have a Saturday and Sunday to ourselves—we’ve already got some ideas going about what to do, and I’m sure the beach will be involved.

As for last week’s exercise challenge, I managed to work out during three of the five scheduled days. Not the perfect end to the week that I was hoping for, but not an entire flop either. This week, my exercise goals are as follows:

Monday- TJ cardio after work (8:30-9:30P)
Tuesday- TJ cardio after work (8:30-9:30P)
Wednesday- TJ cardio before work (7:00 – 8:00P)
Thursday- break
Friday- TJ cardio before work (7:00-8:00P)
Saturday- TJ cardio AM
Sunday- TJ cardio AM

So it’s all cardio this week, and I’m increasing my workout days to six. Yeah, it’s time to turn it up a notch over these next seven days.

This past weekend was good:

1). On Friday night after work I met up with my husband and MIL to go out for tapas. We had a great time, and I ended up having not one but three. Oh and afterward we went out for ice cream too. I think we’re going to meet up again this coming Friday, and knowing how I am I’ll save up my cheat points until then.

2). On Saturday I didn’t leave my house. And it felt good. I got up early and worked out extra hard for an hour. Then I cleaned the apartment and did laundry. I worked for an hour, made lunch and talked on the phone with my sister for the remainder of the afternoon. That evening some of the young adults from church came over to our house and we had a game night together, which was a lot of fun. There were some light snacks involved, but I behaved myself.

3). Sunday was a busy day. We got up early to help load and unload the sound equipment for church service that morning at the hotel. Afterward we came back home for lunch, rested for a little bit and then headed back out to Granada for evening service. Yesterday also marked the last Sunday that my two other American friends would be attending church since they’re both on their way back to the States this week. Both of them have been such a huge blessing to me in so many ways, and I’m definitely going to miss them. Nevertheless I know that God has amazing things in store for both of them, and I’m excited to see His plans unfold in their lives. Having to say goodbye still sucks though.
However, experiencing those feelings yesterday also made me glad that I’m no longer living the nomadic life of a student. Nearly ten years have passed since I started and finished both undergrad and graduate school (wow), and during most of that time I grew accustomed to the transient lifestyle that students almost always have to take on, moving back and forth every nine months or so. Tomorrow marks one year that I’ve been living in Spain, and I must say that it feels really good to finally be settled down.

I’m in kind of a weird mood this morning. I’ve got Gloria Estefan’s “It Cuts Both Ways” stuck in my head for some strange reason, and even though I can’t relate to this song at all, it’s not making me feel any more chipper. Gah. I need to tune into some praise and worship music to get out of this!

Happy Memorial Day!

TGIF

It’s Friday, thank goodness. This week has gone by smoothly, things are going well at work on all fronts and overall, I feel good.

My exercise challenge hasn’t been exactly perfect this week. I missed out on my workout yesterday because I didn’t get up in the morning to do it and I had no other spare time during the day to squeeze it in. We went to a birthday party last night and didn’t get home until after 1am. Seeing how late it was, I knew that a 7am wake-up call was going to be a stretch for this morning. I assumed correctly. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something in today, in spite of my equally crazy schedule.

Tonight after work we’ll be going out for tapas with Charo, and I’m looking forward to hanging out with her. Tapas is an interesting Spanish tradition where you go to any bar or pub, order a drink and you get a small plate of food of your choice to go with it for free. When my family came over for the wedding, everyone was super intrigued by this, my brother in particular. The portion sizes are quite small, so usually people order two or three tapas when they go out. In my case this evening I will stick to just one!

I’ll be happy with whatever exercise I can get in today, but at least tomorrow morning I’ll be able to make up for it.

It's Wednesday already?

It’s crazy how the pace of a week can change so drastically from one to the next. By this time last Wednesday I was dragging myself to work with 0 energy. I was expecting my period then too so that probably had a lot to do with the fatigue, but man. I’m still talking about how brutal those five days were.

As per my friend’s advice, this morning I started on a multi-vitamin supplement and I’m already feeling the difference. I have much more energy and, overall, I’ve got a much more positive attitude. Again, I’m comparing this difference to my hellish PMS week which doesn’t really count, but I have read where multivitamins do increase your energy levels and help to balance out your moods, in addition to filling all your daily vitamin/mineral needs. When my sister got on her nutrition kick a couple years ago she was all about buying her multivitamins and fish oil supplements. I lackadaisically popped a few from time to time but never really got into the whole thing because it seemed too die-hard “fitnessy” for me. Plus I was in grad school then, and since I struggled enough with remembering my own name at times, I wasn’t that interested in piling yet another task onto my mountainous to-do list. But now that I’m putting my health as a priority, it’s important to me to get in all the vitamins and minerals that may be lacking in my diet. It’s nice that one pill can do that for me.

In other news, I did complete day one of my exercise challenge last night. I was so not in the mood by the time I got home last night, but I sucked it up and did the entire Turbo Jam workout. About halfway through I got completely winded and had to hit the pause button. Normally when I get tired enough to stop a workout I stop all together, but this time I waited long enough to catch my breath and kept going. As usual, I ended up really enjoying the workout and had a fabulous shower afterwards. My bed kept me in its clutches this morning so I didn’t get up early to work out (shocker). I will however go home to exercise tonight after work and then head back out to Bible study.

I’m looking forward to this weekend. Hopefully the weather will be warm enough to swim- I’m anxious to try out the pool at our apartment complex!

Challenge results and observations

1). As per the scale this morning I’ve come down exactly one pound since last week, weighing in at 217.4. Between PMS last week and my period this week I am thrilled with the loss, because in other such instances the numbers have spiralled out of control in the other direction.

2). All things considered, my challenge went well this weekend. I didn’t restrict myself food-wise, and I think that worked to my advantage because I was conscious about everything I was allowing myself to eat. Specifically there was some snacking on Saturday, including pistachio pudding and a couple chocolate chip cookies, but I managed to keep control instead of going into my vacation free-for-all mindset. So I’m proud about that. On Sunday we celebrated another friend’s birthday and of course that included more chocolate and a decadent mocha/white chocolate birthday cake complete with rich, cream-flavored icing. Yes, I had a generous slice of that and no, not one ounce of guilt to go along with it.

3). My friend that I went to stay with is a professional volleyball player. She’s been in sports her entire life, and obviously knows tons about nutrition. We talked some about the struggles we’ve both had with weight and body image, and she shared with me some tips that have helped her along the way. I was also surprised to learn that there are some good health-food products that I can actually buy here in Spain (i.e. egg whites, tofu, soy products, etc.) I never thought to even look for them at the grocery stores where I shop because I was convinced they didn’t exist here. So I’m excited about some “new” dieting options that I now have.

I like the idea of making mini challenges for myself. They give me a more concentrated focus instead of just reinforcing a general goal to lose weight. Last weekend’s 3-day challenge was to keep me on my toes about not losing control on Saturday and Sunday. This week I’m upping my challenge to five days and my focus is exercise:

• Work out for 45 minutes (cardio) every day between now and Saturday
• Make the effort to wake up early in the mornings to exercise from 7-7:45 (except for today when I’ll have to exercise after work)
  Keep a running tab of the minutes I’ve worked out on my sidebar
  Diet focus: getting in more protein and less complex carbs, start taking vitamins
  
  Hope everyone is having a productive Tuesday!

3-day Challenge

I love the challenges that I've been seeing lately. It's great to see people commit to a goal and stick to it, in spite of the struggles and I-don't-feel-like-it days that undoubtedly come up in the process.

I'm going to be out of town for the rest of the weekend, so I'm giving myself a 3-day challenge of my own. I'm starting with 3 days because it's a short amount of time, and knowing how I tend to fall off the wagon I figure it's best to start out small.

Weekends are hard for me to stay on plan. Weekends away from home are ten times more challenging, just because I know that eating out will most likely be involved. So my challenge, in a nutshell, will mainly involve making healthy food choices, drinking TONS of water and trying to get some exercise in where I can. I've included this coming Monday in my challenge as well, just because it's the day before weigh-in and I want to keep myself going on the plan.

Looking forward to sharing the results!

Oh hiii, PMS. Totally forgot about your visit this week. No wonder I’ve been tired and overly sensitive as of late.

We’ve finally come to the end of what has been an extremely long week. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this exhausted after five days of work. In all honestly I would love to turn myself off from the rest of the world this weekend, catching up on sleep and just enjoying some quiet time to myself. If it weren’t for my friend’s concert in Granada tomorrow, this would undoubtedly be my plan.

It’s 10:45am and all I can think about is the 8 o’clock hour finally rolling around. Will it ever get here?

An explosive day

Update on the explosion this morning: the house where the gas tank blew up isn’t a house anymore. This afternoon my husband and I drove past the site on the way to drop me off at work and I was absolutely flabbergasted to see nothing but rubble where the house used to stand. Originally I thought the explosion occurred outside, but apparently the faulty tank was inside the home when it blew up. Miraculously neither of the townhouses on either side went down with it, but they obviously suffered exterior damage along with those located directly across the street.

I’ve never seen anything like that before.

The fireworks that kept coming at work this morning have finally died down too, thank goodness. It’s been one of those weeks I guess, and I can’t wait for Friday to get here to finally get off this emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on and have a much needed break.

Tomorrow evening Chechu’s off to Granada for the teen retreat. Even though I’ll miss his company, I am definitely looking forward to a quiet, relaxing Friday night at home with me, myself and I. On Saturday afternoon I’ll be heading up to Granada with another friend from church to spend the rest of the weekend there. My friend Courtney is going to be giving a concert at one of the local cafes there (how cool is that?!) and we both wanted to go up and support her. Knowing how talented this girl is, it’ll definitely be amazing.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. This week has been so long it feels like Friday already. :P Just two more hours left at the office and I'm home free.

After a jam-packed day yesterday, finally getting to sleep after 1am, I was pretty tired rolling out of bed at 8am this morning. While my husband was making coffee I went to sit on the couch to check email. Just as he was coming back into the living room to ask me about some late-night snack evidence I had unknowingly left behind at 3am (more on that later) we heard this earth-shattering B O O M that shook our entire apartment complex. The explosion came from right across the street and my husband’s first thought was that someone had planted a bomb near one of the townhouses. That was a horrifying thought, considering that just this past Tuesday there was a terrorist attack in northern Spain carried out by ETA (Basque-nationalist terrorist group) where one person died and several others were injured. Initially it would seem a bit unreasonable to plant a bomb in a quiet residential district where we live but then again, when is terrorism ever logical?

So after the explosion my husband grabs the video camera and goes out on the patio to record the scene. Smoke was everywhere. In spite of that, people were pouring out of their homes into the street to see what had happened. This really concerned me because given the fact that no one knew exactly what caused the explosion, people were placing themselves directly in harm’s way given the instability of the area. My common sense radar says to run from danger, not to it.

After getting the facts from some of the neighbors who had been to the site, the explosion was apparently triggered by a faulty butane gas tank. Crazy. Thankfully I don’t think anyone was hurt in the incident but my goodness, what a scary way to start the morning.

However, it seems as if the drama has followed me to work this morning. Tension is pretty thick ‘round these parts.

Is it Friday yet?

Diet-wise, I was up a little bit on the scale this morning. I’m sure I can attribute that to eating really late last night before bed and a 3am run-in with cake. I’ve really been doing well about not getting up in the middle of the night to snack, but the past two days have been brutal. Does anyone else have issues with this? It’s really weird, like a force greater than myself propels me to the kitchen cabinets to grab whatever sugar-laden foods I can get my hands on.

Today’s plan is to fill up on water, fruits and vegetables and lay low on the salt and sugar. I have another full day today, so a workout may not be possible. We’ll see.

Tuesday update

I don’t have a clear perspective for this morning’s post, so I’m reverting back to my numbered paragraphs to give some type of structure to my ideas.

1. I’m feeling kind of down this morning. I hate these mood swings that wash over me from time to time, especially the fact that they all tend to revolve around my job. Some things were said yesterday here in the office that really bothered me. The comments weren’t directed to me, but the attitude behind them definitely got me thinking about my position here in this company. For a while now I’ve been walking the fence between finding contentment where I am and seriously beginning to pursue other employment opportunities. I question, however, whether a new job would provide me with the contentment I seek since the office politics/work mentality is pretty much the same everywhere. Obviously a lot of my issues stem from the business culture differences between here and what I’m used to in the States. So many things have gone on here that I find just wrong on a kazillion levels, but to everyone else it’s just a part of working in Spain. Spain is different, as the natives to say here. They couldn’t be more accurate as far as I’m concerned.

Alli asked me about how the siestas work here, so I’ll gladly explain since it all ties in.

The work mentality here generally is as follows:

productivity = the max number of hours you can spend at work in one day

Most businesses here, including mine, operate under a “split schedule.” I work from 9am-2pm, break for three hours for lunch and then come back to the office from 5-8pm. Initially I was intrigued by the 3-hour lunch break, but it’s definitely not as glamorous as it sounds. The worst part of it all is that all split-schedule businesses (supermarkets included) operate during the same hours. So if you need to do some grocery shopping, go to the bank, or run errands in general, you’re s-o-l because everything is closed during siesta time. Only recently have large-scale supermarket chains a la WalMart and mall stores changed their schedules to remain open during siesta hours.
“Intensive” work schedules (8am-3pm) are luxuries only available to government workers, banks or employees with seniority.

2. On a more positive note, I’m down another 1.4 pounds this week. Yay! Slowly but surely the numbers are decreasing. Even though I haven’t been faithfully updating my sidebar, I got in a lot of exercise hours last week- a big improvement on my part. I’m looking to continue this trend over the next seven days and see where this gets me next Tuesday. I’m trying to focus less on the actual numbers and more on the goals that I can control. Nevertheless, I do want to see 215 on that scale of mine by the end of the month. I mean it’s only 3.4 pounds from where I am. Shouldn’t I be able to pull that off? I think so..

3. I’ll be having a Chechu-less weekend, which kind of sucks. Since he’s one of the teen leaders he’ll be off to the teen retreat our church is holding this weekend in some other remote location in Granada. The kids are all really looking forward to it, so I’m hoping they’ll have a great time and learn a lot. Depending on whether or not I have to work this weekend, I plan to go up to Granada myself to hang out with some friends. Girl time is definitely in order.

4. Tons of non-work stuff to do today. I doubt I’ll be able to work out during my break. Hopefully we’ll leave here on time tonight and I can squeeze in a workout before finishing some other stuff I have pending.

weekend recap

I’ve had a great, non-stop weekend! For once in what seems like forever I feel like I was really able to enjoy my Saturday and Sunday to the fullest. This morning, rather than having the sensation that the hours just flew by without my realizing it, I feel satisfied with everything that I was able to accomplish during those two days.

It all started on Friday during my lunch break. My husband and I decided to stray a bit from the diet path and order take-out (pizza) for lunch. After being good for an entire week, we deserved the break. We changed into our house clothes, went to pick up the pizza and on the way back we decided to have an in-house picnic. With our huge patio doors open, allowing the warm Andalusian breeze to blow in, we sat on our couch lazily watching the afternoon news, laughing and enjoying ourselves as if neither of us had to be back at work within the next couple hours. After taking a glorious siesta, I returned to the office feeling fully refreshed and ready to get through my last three hours of work. That evening, I left on time, cleaned my entire apartment when I got back home and enjoyed spending time with my husband. Couldn’t have asked for a better Friday.

On Saturday Chechu and I walked over what seemed to be all of creation. We spent the entire day in Almería, walking through the city and doing some shopping. We caught the bus into the city since our car was in the shop all day, and after Chechu’s tutoring session with David we walked across town to try out this new Chinese buffet that everyone’s been raving about. It was definitely worth the walk- the food was amazing. I somewhat behaved myself, filling up on water and only taking one reasonably-sized plate of food. I did have a couple scoops of ice cream afterward too.

After the buffet we walked to the mall, spending a few hours walking around looking at the different stores. This is so rare for me, because I really don’t like shopping, least of all window-shopping. My husband on the other hand loves walking through the different stores and checking everything out. We ended up getting a new iron and I got some new bras and underwear. Not a bad deal. Exhausted, we finally made it home around 9pm.

On Sunday our church celebrated Pentecost in La Herradura, a beach town just outside of Almuñécar. Chechu left early that morning because there were several meetings he had to attend while I stayed behind, doing some work and getting myself ready to meet up with the rest of the hermanos who would be catching the bus down to La Herradura. We all met up around 2:15 and left shortly thereafter.

Service was great. We held the celebration at the local Civic Center, filling up the entire auditorium. It’s amazing to see how much the church has grown since I started attending almost four years ago. We all had a wonderful time.

I’m definitely tired and in need of caffeine this morning, but I feel really good otherwise. The scale gave a very promising reading yesterday morning, and I’m hoping it will go down just a bit more before WI tomorrow.

Robitussin is not a good start to my morning. This has got to be the worst-tasting cold medicine ever invented. When my sister and I were little, getting us to take this medicine often turned into an agonizing, tearful hour-long ordeal. Now that I'm an adult I willingly subject myself to this torture. Even at 27, I still can't just down a couple tablespoon-fulls of this stuff without having mentally prepared myself first. Then I pinch my nose before taking the medicine, so as not to get the full effect of how bad it tastes, and finally I have to chase it with either water or juice, which never usually gets rid of the bitter after-taste anyway.

So yeah, I'm a bit under the weather today. Aside from the cold symptoms I'm feeling a little nauseuous as well which kind of sucks. It's dark, rainy and gross outside and I would so love to be firmly planted on my couch right now with a warm cup of tea and a good book.

This weekend actually looks to be somewhat low-key, which will be quite a welcomed change. The car will be in the shop all weekend, thus curtailing any spontaneous travel plans, so we'll have even more motives to just hang out and relax. Sounds good to me.

In other news, I'm starting to experiment more with this diet plan that we've been following, mostly because I'm getting tired of eating the same food every week. Lunch is the big meal of the day here, and I've started to go back to my recipe books to find meals that I can incorporate into our diet plan. It's all about making a lifestyle change, and since I don't see us eating the same four things forever, our approach has to be more practical.

I actually got in a good half-hour of walking yesterday during lunch. My legs are feeling a lot stronger now that I'm getting more and more consistent with exercise. For today I'll have to work out during my lunch hour, since that's really the only time I'll have free.

Happy Thursday!

Checking in

1. Roasted garlic tomato soup. I'm totally missing Trader Joe's this morning. My sister and I were introduced to this grocery store chain when we lived in Monterey, CA. Thankfully they recently opened up a store in Pittsburgh, so whenever we make our trip back I will be packing a suitcase full of this stuff. Their butternut squash soup is equally amazing.

2. Wednesdays are soooooo long for me. Tomorrow looks to be about the same. Boo. Why can't everyone have a three-month vacation during the summer?

3. I felt really good after my workout last night. Second day in a row.
I really hope to keep this up throughout the rest of the week. Today is going to be kind of complicated to squeeze in a workout, but hopefully tonight after Bible study I'll be able to do something for at least a half hour. Otherwise I'll just count today as a rest day and plan to exercise every day for the rest of the week.

4. There's really not much else going on this morning. It's already May 7th as hard as that is to believe. I really want to see some ground-breaking results this month.

Time and space

The past few days have been really hectic, and it looks as though that trend will be continuing throughout the rest of the week. I've got a few non-work related projects that I have to finish by Friday, namely designing a program for my aunt's memorial service (well, Chechu will actually be doing the designing- I'll just be adding my input) and finishing a few translations that one of the pastors had asked me to do a while back. I'm also waiting for more contract work from my second job to be posted so that I can get started on that as well. Work, work, work. Nothing like impending student loan payments to get that mojo flowin'.

This past weekend with Courtney was a lot of fun. My other friend was unable to make the trip down, so it ended up just being the three of us hanging out. We had quite a full three days and I think she really enjoyed herself. Pictures to come. She said she'd like to come back down during the last weekend of the month, since that will be her last weekend in Spain. It's hard to believe how fast a semester flies by. Time in general tends to do that.

I was really tired after getting home from work last night. I laid down for about a half hour, but knowing that I had a lot of things to do around the house kept me from resting fully. So I got up and worked out for about 45 minutes. As usual, I felt 100% better afterwards, with renewed energy to get through the evening. My goal for this week is to get five 45-minute workouts under my belt. The only day that I'll pretty much have to get up early to exercise will be tomorrow, since I have activities going on throughout the day. I really enjoyed exercising yesterday. Hopefully remembering that after-workout feeling will keep me moving through the rest of the week.

I've come down 2.2 pounds since my last weigh in. I had seen an even lower number earlier last week, but after the weekend I've had I'll definitely take the loss. I'm anxious to see numbers that I haven't seen in a while. Hopefully this will be my week to continue breaking barriers.

The Office

So this weekend has taken on some new twists thus far.

To start with, more work issues. I'm at the office today, which obviously wasn't a part of the original plan for this weekend. On Wednesday at the last minute, Avelino decided that we'd all have to come in to the office from 9-2pm today since there were some things left over from that afternoon that didn't get done. Needless to say, I'm not exactly thrilled about having lost half a vacation day, especially since we had already established the week before that we'd have a four-day weekend. I had made plans accordingly, and since then I've had to restructure everything for today, which I find pretty unfair.

After what seems to have taken an eternity, my employment contract is finally completed. This means that I'm officially on the payroll and eligible to receive all worker benefits. As thrilled as I am about that, I'm praying that my net income won't go down. Since I'm no longer working "under the table," as an employee more money has to go out from the boss's pocket to cover me. So I'm just praying that I won't take the hit. Payday will be this coming Monday, so I'll certainly find out then.

We've also been having some car trouble over the past couple days, which will hopefully be resolved by this afternoon. Nevertheless, we're facing the reality of having to purchase a new car. Ideally it'd be great if we could hold off until next year to do so, especially since my plan is to have my license by then. We'll see what happens..

Diet-wise, things are going about the same. I'm moving forward, focusing primarily on my exercise goals for this month. I got in a really nice walk yesterday which was quite a welcomed change. This weekend I'll be doing my best to get in some additional workouts as well. According to the scale I'm practically back down to Monday's "breakthrough" weight, but I refuse to allow myself to get too excited about it. Even though I'm anxious to see the numbers consistently go down, I'm fully concentrating on the things that I can control- staying on my plan, getting my water in and working my butt off. I know the numbers will catch up.