It's official...

I am an MFA grad student........ WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Michael Sowa

These pictures by Michael Sowa are so strange they're fun.

WOOOO!

Me and my fellow filmmakers won an honorable mention at the ODU On Film festival for our "to Catch an Addict" submission!! We got sweet certificates and $100 (to divide between three people) to see our other works go to our Youtube channel VIVA LA CLOSED PIN!!!

My mom will be excited

Hell effing yes

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/wherethewildthingsare/

GO TO YOUR FARMER'S MARKET

For those of us who are not lucky enough to have our moms buy all of our groceries for us it's common knowledge that food costs a shite-load of money. I myself have spent entire paychecks on groceries for Brian and I (that's it) so you can understand how happy I was to find the 5 Points Farmer's Market the other week. I didn't have time to visit it until today and I'm so glad I did. It wasn't just veggies and fruit, but meat products, baked goods and lots of other things (plant seeds, a restaurant, canned and jarred foods). Most of the vendors are Virginia farmers and the produce is very local, some of it organic at half the price of organic produce from other places (I'm looking at you Harris Teeter...). There is a farmer's market in Virginia Beach, but it had gone downhill since I was a kid when we'd go every weekend to get our fruits and vegetables, but it's going through a sort of revival because of all these organic hippie people wanting more and more local produce. I love it because it's cheap. I got valencia orange for $0.26 A PIECE. I had to stop by my chain grocery store to get cereal and they were over a dollar a piece. I got a giant tub of homemade granola for $2 whilst the chain store sold Kashi granola (which is still processed despite the logo being green) for $4-$5 for a box that was smaller than what I got.

I don't really understand the high price of food. I understand organic food being more costly because I'm sure they lose some of it to animals eating it, but places like Trader Joe's (my spot) sells organic produce for what you'd pay for non-organic. They also sell cereals for $2 to maybe $3 whereas in BIG chains my favorite cereals are sometimes $5 a box. They're frozen fish is also half the price that these chain stores sell them. I just don't understand how a small, almost specialty store, can price their products so reasonably, while they're "competition" jacks the prices through the roof. The point is, take advantage of the local sellers around yu because since they are competing with big grocery stores, they're willing to give you a good deal on something that hasn't been shipped from Argentina or Saipan. I'm sure the selection at my farmers market will get even better once the weather warms up, but I'll be trying to buy the bulk of my groceries from there now on.

AHHHH!!

SOY SAUCE WASABI ALMONDS ARE AWESOME!!!!

It's like $4 Ramen....

My soup and my Maneki Neko (beckoning cat!)

Today I was al Walgreens picking up a gallon of milk on the way home from class. I can never go into Walgreens without looking at something that interests me and since it was 12:30, food is what interested me the most. I usually look past the ramen noodles; even scoff. But I got to thinking about it more and more and i bought myself a 6-pack for $1. I love noodles, why not buy a whole bunch FOR A DOLLAR and just make it "my own". I decided that since ramen isn't a nutritionally fulfilling food by itself, it could be awesome if you just added stuff to it. Today I just cut up some baby bella mushrooms and some yellow onion and it was awesome. Here's what I did:

1 packet of chicken flavor ramen noodles
1 1/2 cups of water
2 baby bella mushroom caps, sliced
1/4 of a small onion, diced
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp dried cilantro
1 tsp basil (mine was from Dorot in a frozen ice-tray thingy)
1/4 lime

I brought the water to a boil. The packet says 2 cups but I don't like things to be too brothy if I want bunches of veggies mixed in. I added the veggies and the flavor packet before the water came to a boil. Once it was boiling i added the noodles, soy sauce, cilantro and basil. I let it cook and in 3 minutes I was done. I squeezed the quarter lime over top of the hot soup and started to chow down.

Now this recipe can obviously be modified however you would like. If I had had shitakke mushrooms and scallions I would've used those instead, but it was really good either way. If you're vegetarian or vegan, replace the flavor packet (which is dehydrated chicken granules) and use a vegetable bullion instead. It was a good lunch and I reccommend that people start using mushrooms more and more! I read in a Women's Health magazine that dishes made with mushrooms were just as filling and satisfying as those with beef plus WAY more vitamins and stuff. Well that was my ramen renaissance and I hope you try it one day!

YogaToes

I love these things. Yeah they were stupid expensive ($49, but look for the coupon code at the end), but they make my feet feel awesome. they are called YogaToes and can be purchased at YogaPro.com . I guess they are called "YogaToes" because the are meant to stretched out toes that have been crumpled in ill-fitting shoes all day ( like high heels) to relieve cramping and hammertoes. I have crappy feet so i thought it wouldn't hurt to save up and do something nice for my feet. I really wanted them to try and help my now deformed toe that has lost some mobility since I broke it twice in less than a year. I'm probably on my feet for about 6 hours a day so it's nice to beable to sit back and relax for a bit with these on. That's my only con is that you HAVE to sit backa nd relax because it is impossible to walk in them. Addmittedly the first time I used them they hurt because of the extreme toe stretching, but it hurts to try and touch your toes if you've never done it before so it's an understandable amount of uncomfortableness. I usually put these on and sit on the couch and do my reading for school. The directions say to start with 15 minutes and to work up to an hour after a few weeks. You can also heat them up under warm water (NOT IN THE MICROWAVE YOU IDIOTS) or put them in the freezer if you want a soothing, spa-like experience. I haven't tried either because I'm lazy. It's made of a squishy gel and feels really good. I got mine with a coupon code I found on a YouTube review for $15 off. The code is JADE if you're really interested. That's all for now. I'll probably do another workout video review later since I have no life.


PS- we got a sweet new tv and set-up. brian is very happy about it.

Brian found this on reddit and I like it until that cats are made of wood and destroy the earth :(

Baby we were born to ruuuuuuunn!

Ok that was totally stupid, but it was the only thing I could think of that had a resemblance to my day yesterday. yesterday I ran my first race ever, something I thought I would never ever do. When I was younger I was always an average weight, never fat and on occasions I was even thin, but I never really did any sort of physical activity after dance and gymnastics weren't cool anymore after sixth grade. I liked being outside and trying new things, but the people I used to hang out with were not as enthusiastic about wanting to go out and do stuff. I NEVER attempted to run the mile at school accept once and I passed in 12 minutes ( I thought I was the shit) when most kids were passing it in 8. I mostly just walked and talked to my friends and never gave a crap about it. Years later and I am in college and I'm kicking myself for not being active in anything when I was younger. I wanted to run. I joined the crew club at school, but it ultimately took too much time away from my schedule once I started working part time so I stopped running...and got fat :( Then one day I decided to go to my local running store to get fitted for some shoes so I could start again and going on my first run in a year felt really good; I got pretty far. But the runs tapered off after that, but last year I wanted to try again after two years of schlepping it on the bike in the gym.
My boyfriend likes to run so I thought it would be a fun thing to do together, but let me describ this man to you: 6'3, slender with legs at least a foot longer than mine. I do not possess a runners body. I'm not sure my body was made to do anything efficiently, I can't even sit for a long time without and arm or a foot falling asleep, so when I wanted to start running again it took a lot of hard work. When I told people what I was doing they treated me like a kid selling candybars to raise money for a busch gardens trip "oh that's nice" when secretly they were thinking "she'll make it a mile a die of a heart attack" which could have happened a couple of times. It was like one of the come-uppance sports movies ( I hate to mention Rudy, but it's one of the 3 sports movies I've seen in my entire life) with the Jersey accented coach saying "Yah no good kid, you ain't a runnah! Now git outta hee-yah!" <-- Jersey people, this is a bad over-exaggeration of your accent. My legs are useless stumps,. I might as well be running on knees with feet glued to them. My body is 3 times longer than it should be and my big fat ass creates an awful pounding sensation on my lower body if I only wear running shorts. It's not a pretty sight or a wonderful experience, but I've learned to block everything out and just run. But I went out one afternoon and ran one minute and walked a minute and did that for twenty minutes. Eventually I was making a whole mile by myself. The boyfriend would come with me on some occasions and would be waaaay ahead of me, only to turn back around and run with me, which bothered me more than helped me. I hate people having to come back for me, it made me feel like a handicapped person so I ran solo from them on. Just me and my ipod. One day while reading a magazine I saw an ad for the Shamrock marathon in virginia beach about a7 months away and I had a crazy thought "How about I do that?" then I quickly saw that was ridiculous and saw the 8k ad and decided that was my goal, 4.97 miles in less than an hour I said, and then I started school and went on vacation...Once I got back it was cold, colder than it was the previous year, but an act of God opened the new school gym with an INDOOR RUNNING TRACK and I had no excuse not to run. Yesterday I finished the Shamrock 8k in under an hour. I thought at one point I would die, so I stopped and walked for less than a minute, but my boyfriend ran with me the entire time and made me keep up (though he shortened his stride a lot "I barely broke a sweat" shut up!). I got my medal and it's on my desk now. Thirty five pounds ago this would have been impossible, but now I'm ready for half marathons and all the running there is to come.

Wowzers

It's been a while, but blogger was being an a-hole and not letting me see any of the icons at the top of my post box thingy. Shame on you blogger! Anywho, I was on spring break for the past two weeks, one from work, one from school. I spent most of that time working out and making food. My two most notable dishes were pancit and curried lentil soup mainly because I made like 2 gallons each:

Pancit! Curried Lentil soup!







I've actually lost like 3 lbs. since my diet and workout streak and Saturday I'm running the Shamrock 8k at the beach at 8 AM! What the hell! If you're going to make me run for 5 miles at least let me sleep in. Other than that I have really bad senioritis. I have no motivation to do anything; it's awful. Only 1 1/2 months until I graduate AND I have to wait to see if I get into grad school which is just enough to not sleep well at night. At lest one of my Closed Pin Pro. films made it to the film festival. Well I hate to cut it short but I need to go my asian history class (ugh< to the people in the class, not the subject matter).


PS- Will Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski just get married for real? I mean it's about damn time.

Workout DVD Reviews..

Sooo yeah. I have about a thousand workout DVDs and people always ask me what they entail. So instead of standing around for 7+ minutes explaining to people whats on these DVDs I'm just going to make some workout dvd posts to clear up any confusion. In the spirit of writing workout dvd reviews I'll do one now that I've been doing frequently for the past 3 weeks.

Title: Jillians Michaels Banish Fat Boost Metabolism
Catagory: Aerobic/cardio/light strength trainning.
Running Time: 50 mins.

If you are looking to burn some major calories I would definitly invest in this dvd. The host, Jillian Michael's claim to fame is literally abusing the fat off of morbidly obese people on NBC's "The Biggest Loser". She is a total bitch, but in a good, heart healthy way. This is one of her two new workout dvds and is focused more on burning calories and helping your cardiovascular system. The DVD is broken up into sections, it's basically a circuit workout. You begin with a five minute warm up and then onto a 40 minute circuit broken up into 7, six minute circuits that include elements of kickboxing and regular old calisthenics. There is also some floorwork for your abdominals too. There is a min cool down/stretch at the end and is great when you have an hour to devote to hyperventilating. This video is tough. If your body has almost physically grown into the counch before you try this worout you might die trying it. I consider myself an intermediate exerciser and this nearly made me barf all over the place the first time I did it. I was also sweating like crazy after doing this one. It definitely gets your heart rate up and will eventually, and litterally, work your ass off. Now, the DVD claims on the cover that you will lose 5lbs. in a week. I have done this video consistently for 6 days in a week and I didn't lose much at all (0.5-1lbs) but I've been stuck at a plateau for months. If you really take control of your diet it may be possible to lose 5 lbs. but I would stick with a more realistic number like 2-3 (it's better to lose weight slowly anyways so you dont get floppy skin, or as my little English cousin lovingly calls it "bingo wings"). This dvd can be purchased for around $10 on amazon.com and I think it's a good investment for someone who doesn't have a lot of equipment (this video only requires a working body) or hates going to the gym (like moi). Jillian Michaels doesn't really care that you are about to faint whilst performing standing mountain-climbers, but it makes you push harder than you thought you would. Watching her take breaks makes me want to try even harder because, in a sense, I'm working harder than she is, lazy lump.

More reviews to come. I will also review the counterpart to this dvd the "Jillians Michaels: No More Trouble Zones" whenever I get a chance. Happy exercising all!