Shiny cap'n!

• I started my work-study/part-time job last Friday. It's.... interesting. I was hired as an assistant programmer.... until we found out that the head programmer decided to quit. He was on medical leave for about a month, and turned in his resignation this past Monday. So this means that there is no head programmer; some of the people in my department are assuming that I'm his replacement. This couldn't be further from the truth! I was hoping that I could at least sit down with him and go over some of the more important aspects of our systems and the projects that he was working on, but apparently I'm going to be flying blind... and on that note... I may not even be able to get ACCESS to many of the systems because I'm technically work-study and not an actual educational assistant... and I can't be an educational assistant until I get my degree (which is at the end of this semester, but still!). So... we shall see how this plays out. In the meantime, I've been learning more about networking than I ever thought imaginable (I am not a networking girl by any means)


• I am utterly horrified by the lack of documentation at my job. There is no documentation for ANYTHING. Like I said with our head programmer... there's no notes about what he was working on, how things work, basic procedures... the same can be said for ANY other aspect of our systems! Our network admin is SMART... he's been at the school since the early ninties and essentially BUILT our entire network (as in: designed, laid cable/fiber, upgraded, etc) but... there's no documentation ANYWHERE. If anything were to happen to him, we'd be hosed. So badly. I'm going to have to see what I can do about getting a documentation initiative going...


• School started this past Monday. It's been busy! Unfortunately, three of my five classes are 4-hour evening classes, and one of them is on Trivia Night (so from now until December I'm going to miss out on trivia!). This has hit me kinda hard, since Trivia Night is the highlight of my week. It's also my main source of relaxation, so I'm going to have to try to find a surrogate until December... maybe this will mean more quilts being made? Hrm.... I'm taking 15 credit hours in the following:
  • Database Programming in VB.NET (includes SQL & ADO.NET)
  • Mobile Programming/Android Development (Java)
  • Java (taking only for credit/as a refresher)
  • C#
  • Systems Analysis and design


• I'm waiting to hear from Phi Theta Kappa and Alpha Beta Gamma about my honours. I'd really like to join, please. I think my 3.89 GPA speaks for itself and is plenty above your entry barrier...


• Between school and work, I'm pulling 12 hour days at least three days a week. This will be horrible come midterms/finals.


• I am almost finished with my fall quilt; I picked up batting and backing this morning, and I picked up some more brown fabric so I can rip out the part of the leaf pattern I don't like. Tonight, I expect to rip it and re-stitch, and at the very least get the backing, batting, and top pinned together.


• I need to start planning this year's Winter Quilt.


• I need to finish this year's Winter Quilt before December.


• The last few weeks of P90X are on hold! With pulling 12 hour days, I don't know if I have it in me to get up earlier and work out. I'm very sad... I'm gong to try to fit in at least yoga and some weight lifting on the weekends until I can better determine how much working out I can do without burning myself out. I am REALLY, REALLY disappointed, as I was only three weeks away from being a P90X grad! I really hope that I'll be able to integrate working out into my schedule somehow...


• With the job and school, I can already feel the pressure... I've eaten out at Subway and Wendy's already this week... I need to get on top of my diet and make healthier food and STICK TO IT. I've been doing pretty good during the day, but around 5 PM I start to get cranky and lose it and run and grab unhealthy things to eat. I need to experiment with bringing more food and/or different foods to keep me sated.


• The hurricane! We made it through just fine. We lost power for 2 days, had a little flooding in the basement. A tree limb fell in the garden and took out part of the new fence and some plants, but overall we made out okay. We kept entertained by playing scrabble and shut the box by candlelight. I actually enjoyed the experience of not having electricity and being electronically disconnected. You could see the stars at night, and you were forced to interact with those you lived with. We went and hung out with a friend and played Munchkin and watched a little bit of TV (she had power when we didn't). We had a minor scare with our fishtank, as their temperature dropped sharply the first few hours of the outage, but we brought the temp back up with warm water and bundled them under some blankets and they made it out just fine. Mr. Gecko didn't have any issues, and neither did our Betta fishie.


• Chris got a job! We are so excited! Because of the hurricane, he didn't get to start until Thursday, but it's been exciting getting his room together and getting supplies for his classroom. がんばって, baby!


• My newest project: Making a jewelery board! I need some place to hang my growing collection of necklaces that is NOT the corner of my mirror. I picked up a piece of moulding from Home Depot and I am in the process of staining it. When it's done, I'm going to add some glass tile and some brass hooks and it'll be pretty damn functional! It'll only have cost $30 total, and I'll have some supplies left over... I can either make another one, or re-purpose the supplies for other projects. (Photo after the jump)

So, not much change this past week. My weight has been all over the place. Admittedly, I've been ridiculously busy. I had an advising session, an interview, went to the local PYO orchard, started canning everything we hauled back (and oh, what a haul it was!), had trivia night, a night with a friend, set up a potential schedule for my work-study program, finished one book and read the entirety of another.. So it was busy. I probably didn't bring it as much as I should have, and I while I didn't totally blow my diet I didn't do the best I could, either. I also feel like I'm losing momentum with the program as I come to the end.. I only have three weeks left, plus a recovery week.

Part of the upside of going back to school is that I have night classes three days a week. That means three dinners of MY choosing... plus, while I am going to very much miss trivia night, I definitely WON'T miss eating out at Pizza Castle every Thursday. Their food is really gross. And since my work-study is going to be roughly 20 hours a week, my M-Th is going to be packed. As in, 9 AM - 9 PM I'm at the school... I have no idea how I'm going to fit in working out AND getting enough sleep, on top of homework (I'm the crazy person that keeps taking 4 programming languages a semester... Yeah, that makes for FUN finals...). I guess we'll see what happens, but I entirely expect to fall off the wagon.

Week 10 , Day 1 Measurements

RECOVERY WEEK! WOO! Yoga, Kenpo, Stretch X, and Core Synergistics are all on the menu for this week. I hope I do better at Core Syn this time around than last time... Week 4 was pretty brutal.

Since Chris' parents were out of town and no one came over for dinner, I didn't have any cheat days this past week. I think it really shows. I also didn't feel like I NEEDED a cheat day. The past few days I've been having a serving of pasta, but I still stay around 100g of carbs a day. I don't feel the compulsion to OMG MUST EAT CARBS RAWR anymore. I don't think I have for awhile... unless it comes down to bread. And I mean really good bread. Italian bread or homemade bread, I just can't win. I have to have a piece. Maybe two. And sometimes three, even though I KNOW that a) I don't need it, and b) it's really not that good for me. But... we can't win all the battles in our life and we have to chose which ones to lose. This one? I'm perfectly okay with losing, as long as it doesn't turn into a binge.

I still haven't seen a change in my hip measurement, which at this point is pretty disheartening. I can feel that my clothes hang differently... Clothes that one never needed a belt now do, and those that were too tight fit much better. In comparison to when I started, my waist is much more defined. But I still have this layer of fat between my stomach and  my hips that is refusing to leave. I'm short and stocky -- my waist is literally 5 inches from my underbust... and my hips are about 4.5 inches from my waist. So you don't really get any sense of my body being more defined than it was before... my boobs end at my waist (Yay DD/DDD), so it still just looks like one amorphous blob. I really need the fat at my hips to get a move on and go away.

A little over halfway done, and I've lost 8 pounds, 2.5% body fat, and 8.75 inches total... I hope the second half gives just as great results.

Week 8, Day 1 Measurements

Some pretty big changes this week! I'm excited. I was able to fit into a skirt that I haven't been able to fit into for almost two years. It's still snug, but I'm making progress! I still don't feel like I can really "see" the progress, but my measurements, and now my clothes, don't lie. It's great to have some affirmation that all this working out is actually DOING something.  I'm still struggling with pushups... I'm still doing girly pushups, and I can do like... half of a one-armed pushup. Hopefully by the time I'm done I'll be able to do two. That's my goal. :) And I've seen weight changes everywhere but in my hips... hopefully that'll change soon.

Week 6, Day 1 Measurements: