Spring Slump

It was the first day of Spring yesterday, as I'm sure nearly the entire world knows. I did NOT enjoy my free water ice yesterday because I get that any time I want. At least I can bring some kind of perks to the table.

The title of this post may not make any sense because I love Spring. And I love being outside. I spend all of my free time out there, so I had better.

Mister Softee on campus. Duh.

It may be because of this crazy hectic week I'm having. But I just need to air out my grievances and then I'll get back to my regularly scheduled happy self.

• By the time I finish my day, I'm ready to fall over. Well, smart one, this means that you're trying to do too much in a day. And that, my friends, is why I'm taking it incredibly easy this week. Don't get me wrong, there is a buttload of dancing involved. But this is not the week to train myself crazy and have no enthusiasm for my life during my show on Sunday.
• Class is annoying and a waste of my time. So take a day off, get over it. (Oh...look. Is it ten o'clock? Am I in psych? No. I'm a very good listener to myself.)
• I have these huge anatomy tests this week and next. Every anatomy test is huge, Amanda. Remind yourself of why you love it and study it, dummy.
• I feel gross and disgusting. See two above this one. Also, shower. Showers are nice.

Okay, that was cool. I got sick of myself halfway through and decided to stop.

I REALLY DO LOVE SPRING, I PROMISE!

After this Sunday, I am STICKING to my training schedule. No questions about that. Expect a post about my fundraising efforts for the Broad Street Run next week. And expect a lot of outdoor fun. And a post about two new additions to my family.

They aren't living. Don't panic.

HAPPY SPRING.

You make me sneeze, but maybe I'll come visit. {p}

What did you get for your free Rita's flavor?

A-Z Survey

I'm feeling a little bit stressed out with fitting everything into my life right now in terms of work/homework/dance/exercise. So what am I going to do? Fill out a survey instead. I don't know about you, but I can't work with an unclear head. So this one has been buzzing around the blog world recently, so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm a new blogger trying to get out there I guess, so now you'll get to know me! Maybe?

Thank you to Janetha at Meals and Moves for writing out the template and making my day a little bit better. :)

Read About My Life, Yay!

A is for age: Twenty-one! Wooo!! I've been told this is the best year of your life and then it goes downhill from there, but I think I can defy that logic.

B is for breakfast today: Scrambled eggs with jelly toast and water. Nothing too crazy, but it certainly hit the spot. Plus Paul cooked it for me. So you know!


C is for currently craving: I know this is supposed to be a food. But can I crave the beach? I really want to crave the beach. Take me there, please.


D is for dinner tonight: I wish I could tell. I have a really long tech rehearsal tonight with not a lot of time for dinner. So I'm trying to work out what I can eat without a) throwing up or b) passing out. 


E is for favorite type of exercise: DANCE! I love dancing. :D


F is for an irrational fear: I am so scared of bees. It's unnatural.


G is for gross food: Tomatoes. I thought I was healed. But I'm not.


H is for hometown: Schnecksville, PA! Awww yeah.


I is for something important: Sleep. I'm not one of those people that keep working into the wee hours of the night to hit a deadline. I'll give up at a certain point. I need my sleep. And you know what? Its never turned out awfully for me. So I'm going to keep doing it. 


J is for current favorite jam: Everybody Talks by the Neon Trees. It's on a commercial during all of the March Madness games and I just dance every single time I hear it. Or blackberry, if you're into that kind of question.


K is for kids: None, thank you very much. I don't have time for kids. ;)


L is for current location: Philadelphia! One of the coolest places in the world. I'm in my apartment in Center City at the moment.


M is for the most recent way you spent money: I bought dinner at work last night. A falafel pita sandwich. It was delicious and a good use of my money.


N is for something you need: A couple more hours to do my homework. Just one or two!


O is for occupation: I'm a Kinesiology/Theater student. That takes up quite a bit of time. I also work at Rita's! And I got an internship for the summer! WOOO!


P is for pet peeve: When people are ignorant. Or when they kiss when I'm talking to them. That's really annoying.


Q is for a quote: "All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent." -Marilyn Monroe. Any talent will do. I just want to be valued for my personality and the work that I do. :)


R is for random fact about you: I love Life is Beautiful and will watch it all the time. Sometimes people won't watch it because it will put them in a bad mood. But I'll watch it for the amazing ending, regardless of the insane hardships during it. I love it, I love it, I love it!

S is for favorite healthy snack: Hummus. And anything dipped in it. I'll eat it endlessly. Or fruit. I really love all sorts of fruit.

T is for favorite treat: Cookies!


U is for something that makes you unique: I don't really know about this one. Obviously my personality makes me unique. But I feel like that's a boring answer. Lame.

V is for favorite vegetable: I really like Red Peppers!

W is for today’s workout: Hours of dancing. I know I really shouldn't run four miles before that. But I really want to. So I don't know what I'm going to do about that.

X is for X-rays you’ve had: I've had an x-ray of my arm, I know that. And my stomach I believe. I dunno. Random ones. Lots of teeth ones. Blah.
 
Y is for yesterday’s highlight: My tip money. Haha. No but I had breakfast with Casey because she was in town and it was really lovely!

Z is for your time zone: East Coast hooray!

Let me know if you fill it out for yourself and I'll learn about you too! :)

Burning Out

Today I'm going to whine about rant/muse/discuss burning out. It's a topic I am all too familiar with, to be perfectly honest. I know that's an awful relationship to have with the concept but it's true.

Eventually they'll burn out. I like to think this is my candle style.

So far, school has been pretty awesome. Some of my classes are tough or have a lot of work, but I'm totally managing them this far. Which is pretty impressive, as far as I'm concerned. I think it's because I've finally found the perfect balance of enjoyment and what I'm going to do. I love it. I'm a nerd. Get over it.

Finally went through! IT FINALLY WENT THROUGH! :D

Speaking of balancing those things that I love to do, dance is NOT out of the picture. FINALLY. No more whining about how I'm never dancing on this blog. I'm dancing with InMotion (obviously) and I'm in an admin position. So that sucks up a lot of my thinking time. And eating time. And time. BUT I LOVE IT. And there's a show in the works for that and some performances coming up, so AWESOME.

My lovely captain and friend Laura is also being an AMAZING person and directing a dance show for undergrad theater students. Which is awesome because there aren't really that many opportunities for dancing in the department. At least not the kind of dancing that we're looking for. But I digress. I'm dancing/choreographing/involved in what feels like 32059732057 pieces. Again, AWESOME. But that means a lot of dance rehearsal. (Not that I'm complaining.)

This is related, I swear. We were dancing on Liacouras.

But wait! There's more! I got a job! They want me to work eighteen hours a weekend. At first I was like "AW YEAH, MONEY! I guess I'll try to have no life and at least pay my rent!" But now I'm realizing that I'll have to drop a day. It won't be nearly as much money, but I'll hopefully stay on staff for the summer time when I can work lots of hours. And hopefully get lots of tips because, let me tell you, the pay is NOT great.

The more I think about how great this stuff is, the happier I am.

That's pretty hectic as is. But naturally, I think it's perfectly acceptable to do some more!

Training for this little number, for instance.

BROAD STREET RUN, YEAH! First off, this takes up a lot of my worry time because I don't think I could run ten miles if somebody had a gun pointed to my head (And Lord knows Philly is the place to find that. ;) Love you, Philly). But I really want to do it, and I know I'll kick my butt if I don't. Plus a lot of my friends want to do it as well. So I think it's going to be really, really fun. So yeah. Training for that comes in soon.

Plus I really like taking classes and keeping up with my exercise in general.

Throw in commuting, maintaining my friendships (Well, that's a given. Otherwise I would whine and complain about my life more), cooking, eating, sleeping (Yes. I sleep. Not sleeping will NOT solve this problem), and random other stuff that pops up. That does not equate to a lot of time. Even that one guy I live with and I don't see each other for twenty-four hours sometimes. NUTS!

So I guess my point is. I was supposed to go running this morning but I was dead and felt like throwing up when I woke up. So I slept in. And I'm being lazy until class at 12:30 because otherwise I'm going to get sick. I'm trying so hard to keep a balance. BUT IT IS SO HARD. But I'm going to continue doing it anyway. Because I'm like that.

I look just like that too.

What do you have to balance in your life before your candle reaches it's end? How do you do it??

*Most pictures are from Pinterest, except for the one with my face in it or the one with my name in it. But I thought those were pretty clearly mine. :)

Tilt, Tuck, Tighten

I was reminded of that quite a few times today when I was trying out Hip Hop Abs with Shaun T. Thanks to my fellow Princess Abby I got to try it out.

Thanks, Amazon.

Last night I was absolutely pumped to try it, but I figured I'd try to sleep first. So first thing this morning I decided to try the Fat Burning Cardio section and, at the suggestion of Abby, watched the Secrets to Flat Abs first. That's where I was introduced to the Tilt, Tuck, Tighten concept. As a dancer, I was generally familiar with keeping your abs engaged during any sort of hip hop move, but it was nice to get a reminder.

Also, constant reminders while I was working out. :)

I liked it as far as my first impressions go. I didn't get as sweaty as he did, but perhaps that's through no fault of my own. It was fun and for somebody who hasn't danced in a century, it was great to get back into the instruction. Because I know when I get back to school, my butt will be kicked. I'll be trying the rest before I go back to school because I'm trying to make a decision about what exactly my Beachbody purchase will consist of.

Paul and I are both pretty set on this sucker. (Photo: Amazon)

As soon as we move in (that's another blog post), we'll be making a purchase. And I'm pumped.

Other things I need to do today: go to the Verizon store, hit up Wal-Mart, run, and do a lot (times seventy) of packing.

Oh. How I love to pack.

Or not. 

But I'll have this on my soundtrack all day. What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction. My sister shouts British Invasion. It's a happy song and you should give it a listen.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane!

So, I know I promised a blog post. My computer has other plans and decided to start it's crashing on me. Now, there's no Apple Store I can take it to, so I'm going to have to hang on a very long four days. It is sad how much I depend on that thing. Thankfully it waited until all of my papers were turned in. It's the little things, really.

POINT IS. All of the Dublin pictures are on there. So that's not going to happen right now. But I do have some mighty fine pictures of skydiving that I'm going to struggle with on a PC so I can entertain you. Note: All of the spacing is really insane and I blame it on a PC. Sorry if that makes me an elitist.

So. Leann and I had devised this plan about a month, maybe a month and a half, ago. We managed not to tell anybody at home and we also gained another companion on this trip.

There he is. Think he's nervous?

I should also mention that these pictures were taken by Jules. Obviously, the three of us were battling with the concept of falling through the sky and were too occupied to take pictures. So thank you a million times over to her.

So to get to The Zoo, we had to take a metro to Termini and a train to Terni and then a nice man named Crocodile drove us the rest of the way to the small little complex they had set up.

It was a stressful train ride.

We were lucky enough when we got there to see a million things fall out of the sky. We were going to be doing that so soon. But first, it was time for a short lesson and to suit up. (HIMYM, yes, I am referencing you.)

Signing our lives away.

I'm a very good learner when it comes to falling out of planes.

He is also learning how to fall out of a plane.

They gave me the small suit. Cold ankles.

Don't you feel safe with that face?

Once we were all prepped to go, we boogied to some music. (Yeah, I don't know). And in what seemed like four seconds we were heading off to cram into a tiny airplane.

Our last words or something like that. :)

There I go, orange butt and all.

They were probably speaking Spanish at this point.

And away he goes!

Now, here's where documentation is lost and you have to rely on my words. Sorry. So we all cram into this tiny plane, and let me tell you it feels like there are four hundred people in there. We were the only three flying tandem, so the rest of them were crazy insane and awesome. We took off and starting going up and up.

And up.

And up, until we were above the clouds at fourteen thousand feet. FOURTEEN THOUSAND FEET. WHO DOES THAT? We do that. Apparently. It was a really long ride, it seemed like, giving you a lot of time to contemplate what you're doing. Also, the fact that Italian was flying around the plane (Ha. It's a pun..) like crazy made it all the more intense. Oh yeah, did I mention that the guy I was flying with didn't speak English? Yeah.

Once we were up and the rickety door was open, people literally just started pouring out of the plane and jumping to the ground below. Honestly, it went so fast and you had no time to think and all of a sudden you were flying THROUGH A CLOUD making faces at your camera guy, hoping your pictures turned out alright. Also. It snowed on the plane. And it made me really happy.

I believe you've seen this picture before.

It was incredible. And I know you want me to describe it for you. But I really, really can't. Words put me at a loss here, because they aren't talented enough to paint you a picture of what happens. OHMYGOD. I said that about four hundred times, and my guy just kept laughing at me. Such an American thing to say. BUT WOW.

Coming in for a landing! Apparently, we missed the rain while we were in the air!

Victorious!

That's a look of pure happiness. Don't be mistaken.

That's right. We jumped with a rainbow.

WE JUST JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE.

All of us just chillin. No big deal.

My boyfriend jumps out of planes with me. Beat that. :D

CROCODILE. Aw yeah. And my amazing hair.

I can't explain to you the feelings. I really can't. That feeling when you just jumped out of a plane in Italy instead of studying for finals. I highly suggest it.

Our message to you.

50 Little Things (Part II)

As always, I write in parts. Here's Part One of things that make me super happy.


This is coming at a perfect time in my life. First of all, my brain is starting to go on overdrive and obsess about all things Christmas. I'm one thousand percent positive that I would be able to make a 50 Little Things list dedicated to Christmas. At the same time, I really don't want Thanksgiving to slip away from me. Whipping me back into shape.

• Hocus Pocus. Really, Halloween movies in general get me really excited. Because I love celebrating. And movies.

:)

• Getting let out of class early. When your teacher can't figure out how to connect his computer to the projector and the computer guy isn't there. Something might be wrong with your program. But at least you get out of class!
• Going on a run in the morning. I love it. But I guess that's why it's on my list.
• Bike riding. You know I also love it.

We look really good on bikes, don't you think? This is NOT a shameless plug.

• Almonds. Thank you Leann's family.

I want a million of these guys.

• Snuggling in a Snuggie. Again. Thank you, Leann.

Snuggie Love blast from the past.

• Chocolate. Thank you Mom, for the wonderful Snickers. :D
• Old pictures of friends. Watching them on my screensaver in class is a great way to spend my day.
• Justin Bieber. I have no shame.

Mad I missed the video shoot for this.

• Running/fitness helping. It makes me feel good inside that I know what I want to do. :)
• Love. Of any sort or any shape or any size or any color.
• Making wishes. On any single thing. 11:11 11/11/11. Fountains. SHOOTING STARS.

After our first shooting star sighting.

• The sun. I just like it, okay?
• Winning Fantasy Football. Being in a league with five very competitive males that are some of your best friends can be stressful. I really like winning. :D
• Zoning out in class and not realizing that you're being tortured. Especially if your professor is dumb and frustrating.
• Snuggling whilst watching TV when you're sick. The Biggest Loser is my newest TV escapade. Because I have no more HIMYM to watch. Until Tuesday mornings.

Dolvett's my fave. I also love Bob.

• Breakfast in bed. Thanks, boyfriend. :)
• Hitchin' a ride. Free things in general are really, really great.
• Bagels. I believe you've recently come to understand my love for B-A-G-E-L-S BAGELS. The sad thing is I ACTUALLY chant that quite frequently.

Cinnamon raisin. I can dig.

• Theater. I love watching people do amazing things with their talents. I love it.
• Countdowns. I've got a really specific countdown going on right now that I'm getting super excited about (seventeen days), but countdowns make everything more fun.
• Tea Tea. Did you know that Chai means tea? So saying Chai tea means tea tea? And Chai Chai tea tea means tea tea tea tea? I miss my big brother. :(
• Finally being healthy. GO AWAY SICKNESS.
• New friends mixed with potlucks. Thanksgiving is still happening. Don't worry.
• My daddy. Now for a lot of people I know, today is Thanksgiving. I am celebrating in Dublin, currently, but it's really important for me to mention that it's my dad's birthday today. I haven't seen my family in quite a bit now, and I just hope he knows that I miss him very much and I can't wait to see him when my aforementioned countdown expires. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!

We're related, that's for sure.

Even though we fight, we still wear Disney hats to solve problems.

AND he likes to go to Phillies games with me. WHAT A GUY!

SO! Happy Thanksgiving and I hope you have a lot of little things to be thankful for. Draw some hand turkeys! Eat some turkey for me! And cracker filling, but I guess most people don't know what that is. AND PIE!!! Lots and lots of pie.

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!!!!

Checking In

So I wish I could blog more during the week, but that just doesn't happen. Way too busy for that nonsense right there. Last week was full of salsa nights, going out nights, and Paul's mom time. I can dig it. :)

Love that salsa.

Tuesday Temple Rome had a salsa night where Italians came in and taught us some basic steps. Dance. If you haven't figured that out yet. It was a lot a lot a lot of fun! It was a little easier than the stuff I'm used to doing, just because it was super basic, but I still loved it. Afterwards, they put on some music and the instructors went to town. Salsa dance is amazing and I think it would be so fun to learn more of!

Also, the Italian boys/men I got partnered with said I was picking it up well. Regardless of my experience, I still felt pretty cool.

I got my room clean, art history paper done, stuff like that. I have clean underwear now, which is also an accomplishment.

On Thursday I spent the day with Paul and his mom. I actually spent a lot of time with her, and it was really lovely to have a visit from her. Lots of dinner and walking around, it was wonderful!

In fact. She finally got me to the Colosseum. Study Abroad student A+!

The Arch of Constantine. You know.

Oh hey, large thing behind us.

IT WAS SO AMAZING!

And a lot bit sunny.

I have about seventy-four million pictures.

This child has a giraffe backpack. I'm jealous.

CRAZY.

The view from the second level.

The detailed work of those ancient Romans.

Down on the ground level.

I have so many pictures it is out of control. Also, Mrs. Hyer is going to send me a bunch. So if I see fit, I'll add some more. Share the photography credit on here. :)

Then on Friday, we went on a Naples and Capri tour. So I'll put that in a different post. Perhaps tomorrow! Just because I have a bunch of pictures from there too.

But for now. The cooking something new adventure of the week.

I'll never be a food photographer.

It's macaroni and cheese.

WITH.

PUMPKIN.

Yes, that's right. I was half on Twitter and half doing my work earlier when I saw this. It made me want to eat it right then and I wouldn't take no as an answer for dinner. It's on Eat, Live, Run (well, that's the PBS recipe link anyway) and I am SO glad I forced my cooking partner to make it with me.

We cut the recipe in half and it still made this much. We ate about half of it and were totally satisfied. It was great! The pumpkin isn't super overwhelming, but it makes the cheese taste four hundred times better. Oh my gosh. It was great.

AND THE OVEN DIDN'T DESTROY IT. YESSSS.

We might have broken our oven door more. But that's besides the point.

EAT IT. LOVE IT.

Ciao for now! :)