Getting Some Motivation

If you remember, a little over a month ago I decided to get serious about losing weight. I was doing a little better and lost a few pounds in a month. However, two weeks ago I found some major help in my quest to let the skinny person who is trapped inside of me free.

The night of the No Doubt concert my best friend told me about a free website that she had joined. It's called My Fitness Pal. It helps you by having software to log what you eat and how much you exercise. I signed up for it the day after she told me about it because it sounded like it might be a really helpful tool.

I have now been using it for 2 weeks and have already lost 5 pounds! I love the website. It is the most helpful thing I have ever found to help me lose weight. It really helps to see what you are eating every day because then you are more conscious of what you are putting in your mouth.

The exercise tool is also wonderful because it helps you to be more motivated to exercise. I love seeing how many calories I have burned by doing a certain type of exercise. It is also great because exercising gives you more calories that you can eat for the day. This helps to stop the feeling that comes with most dieting that you are starving yourself.

Another thing that really motivates you is that after you are done logging your calories for the day it tells you how much you will weigh in 5 weeks if you eat like that day every day. If you have a great day it encourages you to continue eating well and exercising. If you have a bad day it helps you realize that you need to do better tomorrow.

I'm sorry if I sound like an infomercial. I'm just really excited about how much it has already helped me and the prospect of losing some major weight. I'm not thinking of this as a diet, but as a lifestyle change. Watch my weight loss ticker keep counting all the pounds I have shed! I'm already looking forward to fitting back into my cute skinny clothes.

No Doubt

I got the best birthday present ever! I have loved the band No Doubt for the longest time and they were part of the music I listened to through High School and College. My hubby bought me concert tickets for my birthday and the concert was this last Friday.

Since my hubby hates the band he had been trying to convince me for the last two months that I should take my best friend instead of making him go. For quite a while I told him he had to go since it was my birthday present and my first concert that I was ever going to. In the end I decided to be merciful (and also I knew I would have a lot more fun with someone that actually wanted to be there) and asked my best friend Megan.

We had a blast! There were only about two songs that I didn't know well enough to sing along with Gwen word for word. Megan told me it was the best concert she had ever been to and I agreed that it was the best one I had ever been to also ;).

This was by far the best birthday present I have ever recieved. I had to come home and wake Soren up a little to thank him. It was about 2 in the morning so I don't think he was very aware of me talking to him. I told him thank you again the next morning.

I would go to another one of their concerts again in a heartbeat. In fact I think I might just become a concert addict in general. Soren told me Green Day is coming to town in the next few months and that it was the best concert he had ever been to. We shall see how it stacks up.

I forgot my camera and so I had to take some pictures with my cell phone. Once I figure out how to transfer them here I will post them.

Let the Weight Loss Begin

For a while now I have been needing to get into an exercise routine. I have been exercising, but not very regularly. I was having a hard time finding something that I felt confident enough doing that I would stick with it. I was doing a dance workout video and it was pretty fun, but I suck at dancing so much that I was having a hard time with the routines.

This week I found an exercise video that I totally love. It is a mix between yoga and pilates. My ab muscles are so sore from doing it yesterday (It hurt to roll over in bed this morning), but it is a very good sore.

I'm so excited to get into better shape and have more energy from being better to my body. My goal is to go down one or two sizes by the end of summer. Wish me luck!

My Equivalent to Windex (Almost)

If you have ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding you will remember that the dad uses windex for everything. Have an arthritic elbow, soak it in some windex. Nasty pimple, put windex on it. Anyway, I have found a product I love almost as much as he loves Windex.

I LOVE Soft Scrub. While I don't reccomend using it to solve every problem, it is an amazing cleaner. We have been living with my dad for the last six months and it was pretty gross when we moved in (I don't think he ever cleans anything). Needless to say we have been really been cleaning up the place since we moved in. Months ago Soft Scrub helped me get our shower sparkling. Today I used it on the kitchen sink and it removed what I thought were permanent scratches. I clean it regularly and no other cleaner has even come close to removing the scratches. It is amazing!

I wish I had taken before and after pictures. The sink doesn't look brand new or anything, but at least it is bright white and clean. I might just use it as my all purpose cleaner.

Stupid Neighbor!

One of our neighbors lives on the corner and his property backs up to the side of our house. I don't know what it is with this guy, but he is addicted to watering his back yard. He always waters way too long and since our property is lower than his water floods into the side of our yard.

This didn't used to be such a problem, but somehow the drainage on the side of our house has gotten messed up and so the water turns the side of our house into a pond. It has been flooding our garage regularly for the last few weeks. I am constantly having to go over there and ask him to turn off his water because my garage is once again flood.

And what's his response to this? It's not, "I'm sorry. I'll go turn it off and stop watering so frickin' much," like any decent human being would respond. Instead, he always claims he has only been watering for 10-15 minutes. I'm sorry, but if I turned on a hose by the side of my house and let in run directly into my garage it wouldn't get that flooded after 10-15 minutes. Some of the water should actually absorb into his stupid lawn if he needed to water.

What makes it worse is that we want to fix the drainage, but we can't because he waters so much that the ground never has a chance to dry enough for us to dig down and fix the drainage pipe. I am so freaking annoyed by this whole situation. I'm seriously considering reporting him for wasting water. I haven't done it yet because I'm not the kind of person that tells on people. I generally believe that you can go to the person and work it out. However, I have tried that and it doesn't seem to get through this guy's thick skull. Next time I think I'll just turn off his water main instead of knocking on his door for 10 minutes (while my garage floods more and more) trying to talk to him.