Sunday, November 22, 2009

friday was a good day

For the past few weeks I've been scared of November 20th so the boy decided to do everything in his power to make it enjoyable. On Friday I...

1) Saw "New Moon". I thought I was being clever by going in the morning and would only have to share the theater with 20 or so people. I was so wrong - it was packed full of college kids and moms. Fortunately there wasn't any screaming (except when Jacob took off his shirt because, let's be honest, how could you not). But I liked it more than "Twilight" and cannot wait to see "Eclipse".

2) Took my first SF cable car ride. I've lived in the Bay area for 8 years and never took one because the boy refused to be a tourist. But in the spirit of planning a day that that would keep me happy and distracted, we went. It was super cheesy and super fun.

3) Went to Musee Mecanique, an arcade with antique games, photo booths, and fortune tellers. Hoping to determine my fate, we definitely hit up all of the fortune tellers (including Zoltar). We followed that up with a trip to the "Ripley's Believe It or Not" museum which was more random artifacts than weird stuff, but still entertaining.

4) Pretended to be 10 years old by going to dinner at the Rainforest Cafe and laughing for 5 minutes straight during the "thunderstorm".

and finally...

5) At 6:20 p.m. I found out that I PASSED THE BAR EXAM!!!

I've been on Cloud 9 all weekend and could not be more excited. Thanks to all of you who have sat through my law school rantings about studying/stress/ridiculousness - it's over!!!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

getting rid of your oldies but goodies

For the past week or so I've been doing a major sweep of my house. A little background:

The boy and I moved in together right after college graduation. Our first home was a little apartment which we loved, but it wasn't vary spacious and we knew that we wouldn't stay there for more than a year and didn't feel the need to unpack things we didn't need. Because our college makes seniors move out of the campus apartments the day after graduation (mean, I know), we didn't have a chance to do a thorough investigation of what we were taking and leaving and a lot of stuff followed us to the apartment. A year after living in the apartment I got into law school and had to move to be closer to my campus. After discussing our options, we decided to buy a house which was an exciting but daunting task and we found a home we loved and were ecstatic that it was ours. Unfortunately, we couldn't move in until the week before first year orientation which left enough time to unpack all of the essentials. The remainder of boxes/bags/suitcases full of random junk went into the basement or one of the spare rooms and we promised that we would go through it a weekend at a time until we either unpacked or gave away what we didn't want.

That was 3 years ago.

Now that I sit around the house all day and have spent the last week and a half watching the first 5 seasons of "The Office" (which, I'm sorry I ever said that show was bad. It's genius), I finally decided that the time has come to go through everything. I thought it would be easy because I would want to get rid of everything. Here I am sitting in our office, surrounded by stuff, and I don't want to let go of anything.

A few examples:

1) I really started to love clothes when I was 15. Ok, I've loved them for my entire life, but I got my first job when I was 15 and could actually buy my own stuff. In the boxes I found a bunch of slip dresses that I bought from Contempo Casuals (and had to hide from my mom) as well as some cute dresses that my grandma who I only see once a year gave me. I stopped wearing them in college because of my love of Mother's Frosted Animal Cookies and other late night snacks, but due to my recent weight loss, they fit me again. I know that chances are slim that I'll ever wear these again, but I have so many memories attached to them that it kills me to put them in a box to give away. I feel really selfish about this.

2) As a political science and sociology major, I was always really proud of the notes and outlines that I made for every test or paper. Apparently I had so much pride that I didn't feel the need to throw them away when the class was over. I think I convinced myself that some day I would need them. I have no idea when that day will come. I spent time going through those notebooks and laughing at things I wrote in the margins (example from undergrad ethics: wow, that girl really answered her phone in the middle of class and left the room. She thinks she's the shit. I really don't like her...) I managed to part with these notebooks as well as the insane number of handouts/cases from law school, but I couldn't get rid of the outlines. Yes, I have them on my computer but I scribbled in the margins in marker while I studied and somehow I think they're important. I did put them in binders though, so I guess that's an accomplishment.

3) I love girlie magazines (Glamour, Elle, Allure, etc) and one of the best ways for me to relax is to chill in bed reading them and marking the pages of outfits that I love but can't afford but will find a way to recreate. This is all well and good, but then I save them in case I want to reference them later on. Does this happen? Of course not. I know they need to go because they take up a ridiculous amount of space, but I wonder if I should rip out those pages I marked. Will I really look at them? I have no idea. I guess if I'm questioning it, the answer is no.

4) I've gone to a ridiculous number of concerts and back in high school and early college, a large portion of my wardrobe consisted of band tshirts. When seeing a band that I really loved, I always bought a shirt. I have 6 Blink 182 shirts...and that's just the beginning. I decided that I can't part with these. When I was younger I loved looking at my dad's band merch and I'm hoping the some day my kids will do the same. Or think I'm silly. Either way I'm ok with it.

5) Being in a sorority = more tshirts/pins/pictures/pens than I could ever need. They're all in a box on a shelf in my closet next to the band shirts. Don't think I can part with them either.

6) We've managed to acquire a lot of random trinkets in the past 8 years from various holidays or just because. I definitely have memories associated with 80% of them, but I'll never use/look at them, but I feel guilty giving them away.

Am I the only one with this problem? I've actually parted with a lot of stuff, but I know I can get rid of a lot more. What to do, what to do...

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

let's get physical

After Halloween and the many mini-snickers/milky way/kit-kat bars that come with it, I've decided that I really need to get back on my "healthy" kick. It's not so much the eating well that's hard for me. Once I clean house and get unhealthy things out of my kitchen, I find that I enjoy the fruit and granola that replace the mint milanos (which are dangerous - I could definitely eat an entire bag by myself. Bad, bad, bad) What I really hate is going to the gym. Though I occasionally enjoy jamming to my ipod while on the elliptical, I'm usually over it in 20 minutes.

Though I get that I need to suck it up and go to the gym, I'd also like to come up with different means of exercise:

1) While figuring out what I want to do with my life, I've decided to do a major overhaul on the house. The boy and I have so many boxes that we moved over here after college that haven't been opened since we graduated in 2005. I've spent so many hours lifting boxes, going through them, moving some things into different rooms while throwing others away, etc. Since I'm a girl who doesn't like to sit in silence, I've been playing old dance music from the 90's that has me dancing around in between running up and down the stairs with boxes. Does that count as exercise? And do I get bonus points for singing and dancing while running around? I think so.

2) I used to be a dancer (jazz, modern, ballet, and tap) from when I was 3-16 years old. When some of these 90's gems come on, I remember certain routines that I did in past recitals and for some reason I can remember entire routines, which is pretty rad. I'm thinking of enrolling in a weekly dance class because 1) I miss it a ton and 2) I was never in better shape than when I was taking those classes.

3) Even though the doctor doesn't like it, this week the weather has been amazing in SF so I've taken Brodie on a few runs around the neighborhood. Though my back problems may get worse if I make this a habit, I've really enjoyed the time outside. I wonder if there are any other good outside activities that could be considered exercise.

4) There was a 1 month period during the bar exam that I was really into "Wii Active" and though it had a tendency to get boring, I actually think some of the exercises worked. Maybe I should use it again?

5) Anyone remember Eric Nies from the first season of "The Real World"? Anyone remember that he used to host "The Grind"? If you've made it this far, maybe you know they had "The Grind" workout videos...which I'm sad to say, I purchased when I was 12 and felt compelled to workout (silly Bianca...you barely had any fat on you back then). Upon telling my mom about how I need to put some excitement into my workout, she offered to send these back to me. While I have no desire to do these tapes again, I know that a lot of people are into the Jillian Michaels' "30 Day Shred". Does it work?

Alright my healthy friends, send suggestions this way!