Four Things

Michelle tagged me to try this meme out, and it looked fun so here goes:

4 jobs I've had in my life
Secretary - This was a really neat job. I was in a cubicle setting near the exectuive offices of an insurance company and I was the only secretary there who knew MS Word. So I did a lot of the other girls' work as well!

Electronics Boutique salesperson - What more could a geek want than selling games at EB?! Not only did I get to play games for free and bring them home, but I got the first pick of new games when they came in. Sadly, I wasn't much of a console game player back then, so I didn't appreciate all the fun stuff out.

Nuclear Power Plant intern - Like Homer Simpson, I got to go around the nuclear plant and help the computer people with radiation monitoring equipment.A lot of times I was in a nice office and working on entering stuff in a database. The best parts were getting to go around in the radiation zones and see stuff like the glowing blue rods underwater. Yeah, don't stand too close to those.

Day Care center custodian - I did yardwork and groundskeeping with a high school friend at a day care center. It was crazy fun and the boss was a bit of a tightwad though. For some reason we had to go in and clean HIS house every Saturday. I was only 16 and didn't know that it was probably against the law. I felt like an indentured servant :P

4 places I've lived
Sterling, Illinois - Where I was born!
Phoenix, Arizona - Where I lived much of my life when I was younger
Fort Meade, Maryland - Where I trained in the Army as a Public Affairs person for several months
Indiana - Where I live now!

4 favorite foods
Anything Mexican
Scallops
Asparagus
Anything Italian

4 places I'd rather be
Pittsburgh, PA ^_^
Rome, Italy - I've always wanted to visit there!
England/Ireland - Another place I want to visit sometime
Germany - I love this country. The people are so friendly.

4 movies I can watch over and over
Aliens - I have it almost all memorized
Lord of the Rings trilogy - I never grow tired of this one!
The Princess Bride - probably my favorite movie of all time
Kill Bill series - Brilliant and action packed.

4 TV shows I like to watch
Top Chef
Survivor - my favorite show when it's on
Lost - another favorite
Law & Order SVU

4 websites I view daily
CNN
Yahoo
My work's website
WoWWiki - All the World of Warcraft info you'll ever need!

4 computers I have owned
I'm dating myself here like Michelle:
Atari 800
Commodore 64 - THE BEST
Xenith X86 Portable computer - Portable my butt!
My Homemade 2.6 GHz Colleeny Special

4 people to tag
I won't tag anyone, but if you like the meme...go for it!

Guitar Hero and Dieting

Saturday evening, I went to a neat party for a friend at work's husband. It was a rather large gathering and many of them are gamers like myself. It was quite a good time, and they had a nice BBQ grill and lots of food and snacks....which I happily resisted! I limited myself to a bottle of hard cider and a burger and hotdog. Not too bad.

So later on, they break out the Guitar Hero on their entertainment system. I'd always seen the game, but hadn't had the opportunity to play it. Many of them were drunk and having quite a blast on it and I tried it too and it was super fun! So Sunday, I went out and got the game with a guitar controller and was playing some of the day. I now have another horribly nerdy hobby! Oh no!

As for my dieting, I've been running a lot the past few days. I've been running a full mile, follower by ten minutes of cooldown walking on an incline. I checked our scales at work today and I'm down 5 pounds! And that's just one week! I'm so excited about losing weight and eating right. This is going to be the best few months ever and I'll finally get rid of this excess baggage!

Inspired!

The diet is going great so far! And not only the diet, but also the exercise. I seem to have a lot of energy during the day again, even though it is hard to get up in the mornings.

I've been keeping myself to about 1000 calories a day, and not only that, I've been cutting out the bread. So far, the yumminess is helped by being able to eat large helpings of fish and asparagus every night. Oh my it is so good!

And the exercise has been helping a lot too. I have been doing 30-60 crunches a day and running for 15-20 minutes on the treadmill. Hopefully the pound swill soon melt away!

The best part though, is that my attitude and willpower are getting better. I feel more focussed and happy on getting back into shape and getting on with transition. I'v ebeen contacting FFS doctors left and right asking for consultations and all that good stuff.

Diet Time

So this weekend I went out and went grocery shopping in preparation for diet time. I bought a metric ton of asparagus and tilapia fillets and also salmon fillets and chicken breasts. I have found that I am now a huge fan of asparagus. I could likely eat the stuff as candy, because it tastes so darn good when it's grilled.

Since it's worked for Michelle in the past, I'm giving the South Beach Diet a try this time around. I think this should be pretty easy to follow since all I really have to do is cut out all bread, rice and starchy stuff for a few weeks. I also have all the dinners planned out for the next two weeks.

I also have been looking into getting FFS done and I know this is something I finally want to get over with. I'm looking at either Dr. Zukowski or Dr. Suporn over in Thailand. The only problem right now is how to finance it.

I Lost Myself

Lately, through too much online game playing and the realization of wonderful friends in my life, I've realized I've lost my way in transition.

Among things, I've slowed down my regimen of medication in a holding pattern. I also really stopped caring about my weight. I also stopped really pursuing the things I need to do in order to make my life the one I want to live...instead...I settled into monotony and habit, rather than change.

I realize now how it happens....it happens one small step at a time. It's never a big change. Tiny bits of apathy pile up until you get off the side of the road or on another path and look over at where you are supposed to be and say, "What the hell am I doing over here?"

When I look in the mirror, I don't see that woman I saw just months ago or even a year or two ago who was going through transition. I see the old me from many years back and it's scary. I have a lot of work to do to get back on track and I'm going to have to make some changes that are really going to suck.

Breeding Stock

I've watched a few movies lately that touch on something very close to me and something that has always riled me up--the male portrayal of women as mere wombs for breeding.

The first movie I saw recently that dealt with that was Pan's Labrynth. In that particular movie, the mother was being kept alive throughout much of the movie for the sole reason of providing a child for the the Captain. He didn't care at all about her, but it was the child that mattered...having the offspring was what mattered and keeping his legacy.

Over the weekend I saw The Hills Have Eyes 2, which opened with a horrific scene of a poor woman who had been captured by mutants and strapped down for 9 months to a nasty bed to provide a baby for the mutants. After she's done giving birth, the mutant kills her. It was just horrible imagining such an experience.

And while most treatment isn't as bad in Western Society, in the Middle East and India and many countries around the world, women still are are seen as breeding stock. Honor killings are rampant in order to preserve male reputations and women are nothing but mere property to be won.

Then you only have to look to American culture and shows like The Pickup Artist on VH1 to see that women are still viewed as nothing more than prized to be won. Commercials show us all the pretty girls that men can aspire to achieve if they use their various products. So case in point....women are a commodity...not people.

I now see how much work feminism has ahead of it in securing equal rights for women. It may never happen with a securely entrenched patriarchy...at least in America.

Crazy week

This poison ivy won't go away! It's just plain evil. Needless to say I will never be working in the yard ever again...except maybe in the winter!

Things were going fine much of last week and the pill regimen was working. The bad thing, though was that it was only a 6 day regimen and on Friday, I took my last pill. Saturday night, the rashes began to appear again, but this timein huge 5-10 inch hives all over where the poison ivy had been. And they itched even worse this time!! So basically, I had a relapse. The worst part though was that it was very hard to breathe....something with the hives was heightening my asthma really bad.

Monday, I went back in to the doctors and they gave me a shot and got me back on a heavy regimen of prednisone. Sadly, they gave me too much! My regimen made my body feel on fire as my metabolism went crazy. Then, my heartbeat went crazy! So all Monday and through the night I was all hyped up and couldn't sleep at all. My body was on fire and just wouldn't go to sleep.

On Tuesday I went to the hospital where they lowered my dose and ran some checks on my heart to make sure everythign was ok. Whew! What an ordeal. I have come to conclude that poison ivy is the most evil thing on earth.

On a good note, I was able to somehow finish my first chapter of my book! I am so excited and am going to start working onthe second chapter this week. I feel very inspired to write now, and I think that's a great thing. I am hoping to get a lot of good headway in the book and eventually get this done!