Working Out

A lot has happened lately so let me fill you in on as much as I remember.

First off I got a gym membership almost a month ago. I've been going 3 or 4 times a week. I am starting to lose weight finally and I am happy about this. I go to Gold's Gym and I always have an awesome time there.When I go I usually do a little bit of everything, though lately I've just been doing a lot of cardio. I felt after a few weeks there I should focus on cardio, because that has been one of my weak spots for most of my life. I am going to get back into the weight machines and stuff soon, probably tomorrow. They have so many weight machines in the one I go to it's so cool! One of my other weak spots is my arms, I have weak arms and I need to fix that. One thing I love to do when I am at the gym is listen to music or books while I am working out, it makes me so much more enjoyable. I also watch cartoons on the TVs a lot when I am there. Stuff like this helps me concentrate and keep my motivation up a lot.

Two of my favorite things at the gym are the classesa nd the pool. There are all kinds of classes at Gold's gym. I haven't been doing them lately, but they have classes like Yoga, Pilates, Cycling, swimming, etc. I am planning on getting to a lot of their classes more often. The other thing I love is the pool, it's kind of small and only has three lanes, but it works out just fine. I love water fitness so i try to get at least 20 or 30 minutes in when I go. If the pool weren't cool enough there is also a hot tub, a sauna, and a steam room. I am quite fond of the whole area all around, it is pretty neat. One thing I've had to do however is when I swim I try and keep my ears above water. I need to get earplugs because my left ear really hates water and I usually have problems if I get too much water in it.

I am planning on buying some workout clothes soon, I've had to be a little creative this past month with workout clothes. I have shorts, but i don't think they are the right ones, I need better ones. When I bought my shorts this month I thought they would work out better, but my legs rub together a lot when I am on the treadmill and it get's uncomfortable after a while. I think I might need something a bit longer. So far as shirts go I just use whatever I have in my closet that works good for working out. I don't have very many workout shirts, probably 1 or 2 at best. Most of my clothes aren't suited for the gym. I think I might get another pair of shoes as well, I'm sure it couldn't hurt for the treadmill or something like that. I definitely need mores ports bras though, that is a big priority for me now that I am working out a lot more.

I am slowly losing weight, I am excited to get further in my progress. i don't really care how long it takes to reach my goal weight as long as I get there eventually. My goal weight is 121 lbs. I am just feeling super good in general now that I am becoming more in shape, I have a long way to go, but I know if I keep working at it I will progress and get better at a lot of things and stronger. Right now I can only lift 10 pound weights. I'm not aiming to be a muscle woman or anything like that but I do want my arms to not be weak haha.

I burned my first 1000 calories this month as well at the gym. I've never burned more than 500 calories before. I do that all the time now, but the first time it felt so great. I always use MyFitnessPal as well when I work out so I can keep track of the calories I eat and burn. I have to be careful that I don't eat too little when I burn this much.

One of my goals is to get to a point where I can run. Right now I just kind of walk fast, but when i get to 150 lbs I can run. It's bad for my joints to run at the weight I am now, so I just walk, but once i get down to that amount of weight I am going to start training for a 5k right away. I kind of figure that is a good place to start.

Anyway usually I walk through the mall a bit before  and / or after i go to the gym. I love going to See's Candies and getting a sample after I am done working out. There are a couple of food places in the food court I get samples from as well. Sometimes i go through the clothing and shoe stores or the other stores to see if there is anything I need. I try not to go window shopping too often because then I start really wanting stuff. haha.

I've been sticking close to the mall this past month. I did go to the Farrs ice cream shop, but other than that I haven't been to any other places besides the Gym and the mall because I've been pretty tired after I work out and I spend so much time over at the gym currently it takes up a lot of my time. I am planning on getting out more to other places soon though. I need to renew my Barnes and Noble Membership in May so I expect I'll go and make a trip there soon.

My niece had a birthday this month, we went out to eat on one day and on another day when we were all together we had cupcakes and stuff at my brothers house. We usually have two seperate days for birthdays because we are always so busy.

The post before my last post I mentioned that I ordered some stress / fidget toys. I was going to update right when I got them in the mail, but I fell off of the blogosphere again and quit writing. I got my stress toys a couple of days after i wrote that post. I love them to death, they are so relaxing and take away a lot of my sensory overload. Here is a picture and a video. :)

If you notice I uploaded it a couple of days ago that is because I moved to a different Youtube channel and a different email so I am uploading everything again. I didn't want to be stuck with two different youtube channels so i got rid of my old one and moved over to the new one. I am using a universal username for pretty much everything now, mostly gaming stuff. My new email is midnistarz@gmail.com and my work and professional email is liahna@ymail.com. This wouldn't be the first time I have switched to a different email and stuff. I have done it once more in the past and that worked out pretty well so I'm sure this will as well. I still have to change the email addresses of a few sites I am a member of, but I'm in no hurry to do that. If i got on a website I am a member of I'll change it right away. I already took care of the important ones like facebook and twitter and stuff like that.

 I did this artwork not to long after my last post. It was mostly a product of boredom. It has a lot of different names. Every time I post it somewhere I forget the previous name I gave it, it's really rather funny. Let's just call it Balanced Elements for today haha. I could go check on the photo site i originally posted it on, but i don't feel like it.

Anyway earlier this month we had General Conference. For those of you that are reading this but aren't Mormon / LDS, that is a church thing we have every six months. There are 5 sessions that last 2 hours each and there are various people that are mostly church leaders that give spiritual talks. One of the meetings is only for men, the women have theirs a week earlier. Anyway I can't remember what the talks were about, i will have to probably read them again. The talks are on a very wide spectrum of church topics though. The choir sings and the beginning, middle, and end of the sessions. Usually there is a musical number before and after the prayer at the beginning and sometimes in certain sessions there is a guest choir. There is no church the weekend General Conference happens. General Conference more than makes up for it though.

My parents didn't have time to prepare very much for Easter dinner this year because they were doing the big Messiah concert the whole week previous. My parents were too exhausted and didn't have enough preparation to do anything very big this year so we had a small dinner with deviled eggs and salad and we had out real dinner this past weekend. Some of my family members went to the messiah concert which was over 2 and a half hours long, i didn't go though. I stayed at home and chilled out. One thing we did get done all the way this Easter was the Easter egg hunt. My sister and I made sure we didn't hide the real eggs if any difficult spaces. There were 40 real eggs and we only missed one according to my sister and my mom. Personally I think we didn't miss any though because i remember there only being 40 real eggs.

The fake ones were a different story entirely. My sister and dad were the ones that hid the fake ones that had the candy and nuts in them. Some of them were hidden inside, but most of them were hidden very skillfully outside. I didn't help much with the fake ones because I didn't know where they were. I mostly took care of the real ones. At the end of the Easter egg hunt we were missing 25 out of 144 fake eggs. I somehow think we will never find them. I think they might have been hidden a bit too well. I'm sure the ants had a field day with the missing eggs.

Anyway Nothing much has happened this week and as for today i am going to write a separate post for that after this. If i forgot anything you will hear about it in in the future, and probably in more detail than if I were to put it here. This post is already super long haha. :)

Senses

I have quite a few games on my iphone. To be perfectly honest I don't really play all of them that much. On occasion I'll go through all of them and play for a bit when I am really bored, but that is about it. There are actually just a handful of games on my phone that I bother playing often. Some of these are Tetris, Unblock me, Asphalt 7 and 8, and Puzzle & Dragons. There are probably a couple others I am blanking out right now. Puzzle & Dragons seems to be my obsession as of late, I can't remember if I mentioned it in one of my last couple of entries or probably both, but I've been playing it a ton. It's kind of like a cross between Bejeweled and Pokemon. Basically there are hundreds of monsters you can collect and you use them to get through various dungeons. You use a match 3 mechanic like Bejeweled to give the monsters power. The difference between this game an bejeweled though is that you can manipulate the elements around so you can get combos. Instead of further confusing you just look at this.

Anyway I had woken up pretty early when I started playing and so no surprise to me I fell asleep again and slept another 3 hours around 9am. I managed to get a little breakfast before I fell back asleep, nothing super spectacular though. There is this drink called Zevia I am quite fond of. It's pretty much soda, only instead of being sweetened with sugar it's sweetened with stevia. It's great and it comes in all kinds of flavors.

Not very many people know but not only am I am introvert, but I am a highly sensitive introvert or a highly sensitive person (HSP). HSP get overwhelmed by all the sensory info (stimuli) around them. I get pretty overloaded and overwhelmed by a lot of things around me. HSP process all of the external information around them so well that our brains can get overwhelmed and burned out. I'm aware of a lot more than it seems because of this, I notice a lot more because my brain takes in everything so excellently. A good example of this is if I am around neon colors, flashing lights, and / or loud noises like a lot of talking people or something. When I am overexposed to things like this I might get anxious, stressed, tired, and in some cases my brain tries to respond by spacing out a LOT (it tries to shut off my awareness partially). Sometimes I get super restless and jumpy, the effects vary, and come in different combinations. I listed only a few of the things that happen to me.

Anyway, even though I an an introvert and prefer to be by myself most of the time and I'm an HSP I try and get a healthy amount of social interaction. I try not to shut myself in to much, I start getting agoraphobia if I do that. The way I cope with all of the sensory information around me is I use my sense of touch. My sense of touch never overwhelms me. I get jumpy and fidgety when I am becoming overloaded and playing with something with my hands helps a lot with coping with everything. I find it very relaxing to take full advantage of my sense of touch, I tend to last a lot longer when I do this.

The kind of things I love to play with are pretty simple. Things like Slinky, tangles, Rubik's cubes, stress balls, clay, putty, etc. There are so many things that fit under the category of fidget toys and / or stress toys. They are fairly simple to find because autistic kids also love these kind of things. I am obviously not the only person that uses this method to cope with all of the overwhelming sensory info around me.

I use officeplayground.com to shop for my fidget toys and stress toys. It has a whole lot of stuff and the site is really organized. Amazon is a great site too, but it takes a lot more searching and stuff to find what I want when it comes to stuff like this. If i can't find what i want on officeplayground.com I always go and find it on Amazon. I made a pretty big order at officeplayground.com today, 20 items in total and it cost me a fair amount of money, not too much though. I won't spoil the surprise and tell you what i got, my package arrives in 3 days or so UPS says. UPS is pretty spot on usually when I order something though so I'm not worried. I love the excitement of waiting for a package. I will make sure to get pictures or video or something like that when it arrives.

Anyway, after I did my order nothing sectacular happened for a few hours, I just had pasta and chicken for lunch, listen to Harry Potter, watched anime, and played Puzzle & Dragons. I was pretty laid back today. The ward had family home evening tonight, we had pizze and rootbeet, and a spiritual message. I don't remember what the spiritual message was sadly, but I loved the company and the pizza and root beer. Everyone introduced themself before we ate, they told their names and something about themselves, it was pretty cool. I think I might have slurred my speech a little because when I mentioned I have an obsession with stars everyone heard it as I have a room full of stars. I didn't even bother to correct them, the whole introduction didn't come out quite as planned. I told them I love to read, how many brothers and sisters I have, that i am probably the quietest person in the ward, and that my dream is to become a clinical psychologist. Somewhere in there I mentioned the thing about stars, I could have left that out though. Stuff like that always happens when I intend to make myself sound even a little cool.

I won't lie, I like to talk about myself. I'm nowhere near being a narcissist though. I am pretty open with people when I don't feel nervous or pressured. I know I can seem a bit cold and aloof sometimes, but I'm a pretty nice person and i try my best to always have good intentions and get along with everyone.

Anyway after the pizza and stuff I just went home and crashed. I didn't do anything particularly spectacular, just more of the same stuff I was doing before.

I've probably written enough to today, sorry it was so long, I get carried away sometimes. haha. :)

Shopping madness

My weekend was pretty nice I did a lot of stuff. I am still not finished with the stuff I am writing but I will be soon. I can't wait to post it here so you guys can see. I will just write about Saturday in this post, I'll write about Sunday right after I post this in a different entry.

Anyway, so my weekend was pretty fun, I went to a lot of places.  Saturday started off fairly normal. I logged onto Destiny Online, and chekced facebook, then I started watching anime. Things were pretty normal until about 11:30pm when my sister and my dad said we were going shopping for kayla's birthday (my niece). Kayla's birthday was on Sunday.

I got dressed and grabbed my bag and my phone.  I went upstairs and ate some yogurt for breakfast and then went out the door. It was pretty cold and it was lightly snowing, nothing serious though.  The first thing Kayla wanted was a new blanket. We got my sister a really fluffy blanket for christmas, kayla wanted one just like it. We were talking about the store we thought we bought it in. I remembered we didn't buy it at Maycey's, and we didn't buy it at Bed Bath and Beyond, we ended up looking their anyway since they have pretty good stuff though. We looked around the store for a while, I looked at the bed sets, and the scales, and a few other things. We found this really soft red blanket that was just her size.

I decided to get one of the scales, I needed a new one anyway so I just bought it. I also got a cookie's and Cream candy bar so I wouldn't get carsick (I get carsick on an empty stomach). My sister bought the red blanket and then we left the store.

We went to Walmart after this. Kayla wanted some kind of Butterfly Fairy toy. I let my sister and my dad just go off and try to find it, I wanted to look at the clothes in the front of the store. I found a few shirts I liked, one of them was yellow, then i chose another one like it that was green. I looked at some other racks and there was some i liked that were pink, black, blue, and purple. I grabbed one of each color and headed to the dressing room.  I wasn't really supposed to do this because we were only supposed to be in the store about ten minutes because my brother was running pretty soon. I just thought I would hurry.

I ended up liking the shirts, my dad called me while I was in the dressing room, he sounded pretty irritated and told me that I didn't have time to buy the shirts because we would miss my brother's race at UVU.  I was feeling a little frustrated, but I gave the shirts to the lady that was managing the dressing rooms and told her to hold them for me for about an hour until we got back. My sister didn't find the toy we were looking for, we ended up leaving the store without anything and headed off to my brother's race at UVU. It wasn't snowing at this time but it was pretty cold.

The track he ran at is fairly new it has only been there for about a month now. We went and stood in front of the bleachers and watched some of the girls races, and a few hurtle races as well. We were standing out in the cold for about a half an hour before my brother did the 3000 meter race. He did pretty well, he is one of the best people on the team. The race was 7 laps, he lost track of how many laps he ran and slowed down near the end, he thought he had one lap left. He ended up getting second, but it was only because it was freezing cold and that kind of made him slow down a bit, on top of the fact that he forgot there wasn't another lap left in the race.  He could have won that race easy, he is really great. 

I was freezing cold by the end of the race, we talked to my brother for a little bit and then we headed off to Walmart to go pick up my shirts.

I grabbed my shirts, and a new umbrella I wanted and went through the checkout stand.

My sister decided we would go to Toys R Us next, so we headed over there to try and find the butterfly fairy toy my niece wanted.  When we went there we looked through various sections. We went through the Hello Kitty section, the disney princess section, and the barbie section. We finally found her some butterfly fairy toy in the barbie section after looking for a while.  I started walking around the store a little and found the Toy Story Section. I have been looking or a really good Sheriff Woody Doll for a very long time now. They didn't have it at Toys R Us either. I had previously looked for it at the Disney Store in the mall but they were sold out.  I think I might have to buy one on amazon.  They had a Buzz Lightyear, and some of the other characters but no Woody. I went back to searching for presents for Kayla after this.

We got her this sparkley pegasus, I got her some coloring books and crayons. We also got her "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the third Narnia movie. I don't remember what else we got but we were there for quite a while. We looked at Hello kitty stuff, dragons, horses, stuffed animals, pillow pets, tinker toys, etc. I almost got her some tinker Toys but they were a little expensive. It was over all a really fun trip.

We went to another grocery store after this and we bought some groceries for the dinner on Sunday, I found a rack with bandanas and bought a bunch. I usually wear bandanas sometimes when my bangs get annoying, it's nice to get my hair out of the way. I bought one of each color. I also went down the Easter isle and bought a really cute duck stuffed animal, and a little cute duck beanie baby.  I went down the toothbrush / toothpaste isle and looked at the electric toothbrushes. I bought this really nice toothbrush that was $30, totally worth it though. It came with a re-charger and stuff, so nice.

After we were done with all our shopping we went back home and brought all the stuff inside. I cleaned my room up, and hung my new clothes up. I took a nap after this for a couple of hours and just spent the rest of the day writing, playing games, and watching anime.

Anyway, so that was Saturday, it was pretty awesome. I will stop here and make Sunday a whole different post. I don't feel like putting both into one post.

Squishables

Have you ever heard of Squishables? Squishables are big, fat round stuffed animals that are really cute. I bought one around the beginning of December, totally worth the $45 in my opinion. Squishables are made for hugging. Squishables also make good pillows but I prefer not to use mine that way.

I have a Squishable Duck, I named him Luke. Some people would think it's weird I still love this kind of thing when I'm in my 20s, I don't though. It's not a crime to love cute stuff.

http://www.squishable.com

The first picture was taken right after I opened him. He came in a box and was shipped by FedEx.

I had to figure out where to put him, when I took this picture I had decided that for then I would just leave him on my bed. He has his own place to sit now.

This is something a lot of people with Squishables do, they dress them up and / or make them look like they are actually doing something and take pictures. :)

This was taken before Christmas, the lighting made him look all red. :)

http://www.squishable.com

Knick Knacks

I just love keeping little things around my room. Things that usually are just for show. i've always kept a lot of nick knacks around my room. sometimes I keep bouncy balls, or slinkeys, or dolls, china sets, etc. I've sort of made a hobby out of collecting these little things and just keeping them around. 

I have random bottles of colored and glittered sand just sitting around on my bookshelf for show, it is really pretty. I've always loved marbles I keep those around too. Old pokemon cards, old greeting cards, etc. I've always had fun just collecting these. I'm always careful not to hoard though, my stuff never piles up. I give different things to various people when i get tired of them. I really hate throwing stuff away if it can be used, even if I don't see any use for it at the time. 

I started when i was very little, I just started keeping dolls, and various toys, I would set them up to look nice, organize them so they looked like they belonged there. Its really quite fun.

When stuff do you just keep around your room?