Training for a Half Marathon! Day 1

For a while now Kate has been encouraging me to train to run a marathon with her. I finally agreed to a half marathon to start.
13 miles. 13 Miles of non stop running. 13 miles, for real? Yes. While I am notorious for planning to do things and never doing them, Im thinking the more people I tell that I am doing this, and the more people asking about it the more obligated I feel to finish what I started. (Case and point with my trip to Japan!)

I started yesterday. I ran, or i tried. I lasted about 5 min before I wanted to die. Then I just walked fast. After we ran (walked) around Kate's neighborhood, we went to the gym in her building. I did the elliptical for 25 min. and then on the treadmill, I would walk for 1 minute, and run for 1 minute, alternating. Then we did all the arm machines. I really *despise* the gym, although I felt less hatred for it yesterday. Kate says once I get past my distaste for running I will crave it. After our gym adventures, Kate made us salad for dinner. The other good thing about this is im already much more motivated to not each garbage.

Here is the schedule that I am starting off with. I need to be able to run 3 miles to start using the half marathon schedule.
This is a non offensive plan for when you are starting out never really running before. I changed the order of the days a bit to work with my schedule better.  Here it is. 

                                                    Sat     Mon   Tue       Wed   Thur     Sun   Fri

I will be doing my long run days on Fridays, because I get home from class around 12:30, so I can run in the middle of the day and relax after with out anyone around. I also believe that it will help keep me in check for the weekend, eating and drinking wise. If I want to go a little bit over board, Saturday is usually the day that happens. While Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are kind of optional on this chart, I am making Saturdays manditory. Tuesday and Thursday will vary, with school work and things. Hooray! Go Me!

Breaking the bottled water habit!

Really, is it absolutely necessary for you to keep buying bottled water?
No, it is not.

You are paying waaay too much for it. Yes it may *Only be a dollar for a bottle*, but at $1 for a 16 oz. bottle that's about $8 a gallon that your spending. Most of that bottled water you're paying for is the same water that comes out of your sink. According to the SCWA if you live in suffolk you pay about $1.46 for 1,000 gallons. And you bitch about the price of gas!

That plastic bottle that is sitting on the floor of your car empty is going to sit in a landfill much much longer. How long i dont know exactly but im sure its will be around longer that you will, and probably your grandkids too.
Plus plastic leaches crap into your water, which tastes nasty. Do yourself a favor and buy a Sigg bottle, they are made of metal and your water will only taste like water. Not chemicals. Get one here: Sigg

Water is becoming like oil. We're in for a shortage. Of all the worlds water about 3% is fresh water which is drinkable. Of that 3% about 2% is tied up in frozen glaciers, and about .5% has been consumed. Leaving about .5% for now. Thats not very much, so use it wisely, don't waste, and don't continue to keep telling Corporate America that you are cool with paying $8 a gallon for water, because you may have to in the future!


Last January Matt and I bought Sigg bottles for about $24 bucks each.
We used to buy the 1.5 Liter bottles for about $2.00 each.
2 a day x 5 days a week= 10 bottles a week
10 bottles a week x 4 weeks a month= 40 bottles a month
40 bottles a month x 10 months so far= 400 bottles so far that we have kept out of the garbage. And we saved $750 so far by not buying bottled water! We have a built in water filter in our fridge, and also a Brita, both are great.


Tell your friends!

Oh, my source of inspiration for writing this and spreading the info was:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2222424/34252081

Pretty Thursday

I get to be off from school today. Its nice having extra days off. I just need days to sit around and do nothing. Although I will be doing some things today like:

• Take Grandma out for a bit
  
• Grocery Shopping at Trader Joe's
• Bake Pumpkin Ginger Muffins from simply recipes, one of my Favorite recipe sites!!
• Go to a yarn shop for a job interview. I may get to teach knitting classes there!
• Start my new urchin hat from knitty with nice green yarn I should not have bought.
• Cook fajitas for dinner in my underused cast iron skillet.
• Study for Japanese quiz tommrow.
• Look foward to the weekend!
• Do laundry
• Stop biting my nails.

These nails are gross. Ive tried to quit many times but now I really have to stop. I cannot help it sometimes. I have been trying since I was about 4. I can remember being in the car at preschool with my mom and her giving me some pennies for not biting my nails. And as soon as we were getting out of the car, i bit them. She took my pennies away. I filed them last night and put some nail hardner on them. I do it midlessly when I am driving or in class, or stressed. I bite them till they hurt and bleed. I really need to stop. Any ideas?

Thursday

    Im off today (and yesterday!) due to Jewish holidays. I kind of feel like crud though. Monday I was moving heavy boxes to find my fabric box (to make a skirt!) and I pulled my should and neck out a bit. Its not a sore today but I cant really turn my head to the left so much. And I have a really bad knot on the right side. Soo Achy. I just finished a massive powerpoint for my biotechnology class on the evils of Genetically modified foods. I was absolutly repulsed with what I learned. Matt and I are going to go as organic as possible, for our safety. 

   At least this is a quick short week. Just class on Thursday and I'm only going for a Japanese test on friday morning. Friday I am also going to a session about the JET programme!! Which I am excited to go to. The Japanese govt recruits English teachers to come to Japan and teach for a year! Its very competitive but I feel that when I graduate I will have a really good shot at it!

  The weather is gorgeous today! Im going to bake some flourless peanut butter cookies tonight! Yum!

Broke Friday

  So we are *super* broke! So broke till Matt gets paid next month. Since he was out on the road for 3 weeks there is no real paycheck. So it's Friday night and we are just hanging out in out apartment, cleaning and we are going to watch Heros. We'll probably get drunk with whatever is laying around. :) Being broke sucks, but is sort of fun. Im making a game of trying to figure out how to make meals out of the random ingredients we have hanging out in our pantry. On a lighter note I wont be going grocery shopping. I will be trying to find all the events at school this week that are offering free food for pretending to be interested in some club or presentation. 

  I was supposed to work today as one of my last days at the Shit-wreck. But I have been taken advantage of there so much this summer. That I told them I was not coming in today. It has been pouring out all day, and since this is an indoor outdoor joint it's well, dead when its crappy out. Not too many people like to hang out by the beach in the pours of rain. I'm supposed to go in tomorrow, but i'll see how I feel about that in the morning. Matt is going to be away tomorrow and Sunday on the last part of tour.

  I have this biology debate to do next week about whether or not the US government should require the labeling of Genetically modified foods. So i'll be spending the next few days working on that. We have no school on Tuesday and Wednesday, which is nice! Hoooray!

I think I may also sew a new skirt or two this weekend! Double Hooray!

Currently Obsessed

I have a tendency to go through phases of changing obsessions. Here is the current line up for the day:

Curry: I have managed to eat curry almost everyday for 3 weeks straight right now. Theoretically I could eat curry to I vomit, and then continue some more. 

Kapibara San: A fucken adorable try works cartoon character I discovered while in Japan. I 

brought home some stuffed dolls and a book. I want more now though. 2 weeks ago I finally found some new dolls online which I promptly ordered. I think they so fucking cute and wish I could 

have the cartoons ones as real pets. There are not too many english web sites where you can find Kapibara stuff, so I have been non-stop trying to translate any Japanese sites I can in an effort to find more Kappys.

Brooklyn: Brooklyn is a place that I have always wanted to live. Im on a mission right now to figure out how to make it work. Especially considering that school would be a two hour drive from there, or a two hours train ride with various connections. Boo!

Linguistics: I just added this on and am now doing a double major. It now has me tring to figure out what other languages I want to learn and how. I discovered two great programs last night that pay for you to learn another language while living in the respective country. While you cannot go and learn any language you please, you can learn any language which is considered critical to the US, in hopes that you will continue to study it in the future and possibly put it to use by working for the government. It is something that I am seriously considering for the summer. Russian, Korean, Hindu, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, and Punjabi are just some of the choices. I would want to pick something that I could continue learning when I got back though. 

                                                                                      

New School, New Life!

   Its now 3 weeks into the new school year at my new school!  Do you know how sometimes you have this overwhelming feeling that you finally made a good decision? Well, that is how I feel about my new life at Stony Brook! I have never felt so right about school before. I am glad that I took time off from school, and went to Japan and got married. Our trip to Japan was the most influencial thing in my life. It took flying half way around the world and spending an entire month in a country where I did not know anyone or how to speak the language to find what makes me happy. 

   So now I am at Stony Brook University and I am doing a double major in Asian, Asian American studies and Linguistics. I find it amazing how much I love going to school. I am taking great classes and studying Japanese. I even joined a club, something I never did in my college life ever. 

This is all going to be a lot of hard work but I will finally get to move back to Japan when it is all over. I am homesick for Japan every single day since I have been back here in the US.

Matt came home from tour last week. He was gone for three weeks, I'm glad he's home. His tour went well, and there will be several more in the future. I hope they catch something big, that would be rad!

Oh! And right now I'm working on knitting Urchin from Knitty. I've been wanting a beret, ad this cool weather that is rolling in, is not only making me smile but making me want a beret even more! :) Dear god do I love the fall! Gorgeous!!