Since I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week last week, I’m going to post ten words instead of five this week.  Here are this week’s words:

1. Penury: seriously impoverished condition; poverty.
2. Peregrination: a course of travel; journey.
3. Perfidy: deliberate breach of faith or trust; faithlessness; treachery.
4. Peripatetic: walking or traveling about; itinerant.
5. Pernicious: causing insidious harm or ruin; ruinous; injurious; hurtful.
6. Persiflage: light, bantering talk or writing.
7. Perspicacity: keenness of mental perception and understanding; discernment; penetration.
8. Physiognomy: the outward appearance of anything, taken as offering some insight into its character.
9. Platitude: a flat, dull, or trite remark, esp. one uttered as if it were fresh or profound.
10. Plenary: full; complete; entire; absolute; unqualified.

I was a little leery about weighing myself this morning since I had gained weight the previous two weeks.  However, my leeriness was unfounded because I lost 4.3 pounds this week! I’m ecstatic because I’m back on track.

My total weight loss is 16.8 pounds, so I’m a little less than 10 pounds away from my first major benchmark.  I’m really excited to hit it!  I’m trying to decide between all the great ideas I got in the comments of my last weight-loss post (What the Crap?) to reward myself.  I like the idea of a new outfit or a book the best.  Jewelry would be nice, but jewelry has been irritating my skin lately so I don’t think I’ll add to that discomfort right now.

I’ve been a lot better with my exercise this week.  I’m getting up and walking on my treadmill before I go to work and I love it!  Even though I’m so tired in the morning, I feel so refreshed after I get done.  I feel more awake at work too.  I definitely need to keep up with this!

Happy belated birthday, Kayla and Rachael!

As I stated in my review of Freshman for President, my friends and I invited Ally Condie to come to one of our parties.  Our party took place last Friday and it was a lot of fun!

My friends Debbie and Rachel planned the party and did a great job.  It was fun to have everything decked out in red, white, and blue.  We ate yummy baked potatoes and had ice cream (rainbow sherbet and frozen yogurt) for dessert.  (Rainbow sherbet makes a couple of appearances in the book.)

Ally was very sweet and funny.  We really enjoyed having her at our party.  We asked her a couple of questions about Freshman for President, but most of our questions dealt with the writing process and how she gets inspiration, etc.

After Ally left, we talked about other books we’ve read and gave recommendations to each other.  My “to read” list went from 731 books to 751 books!

I just finished reading Freshman for President by Ally Condie.

My friends and I decided to read this book because we met Ally when we went to the literacy symposium to meet Nancy Turner.  Ally was in one of the classes we attended and because she’s a local author, we thought it might be fun to read one of her books and have her come to one of our parties.  (It’s the first time we’re actually doing an actual book club gathering. )

Freshman for President is about a teenage boy, Milo Wright, who decides to run for President of the United States of America because he no longer wants to be the sidekick.  All his life, he’s felt overshadowed by his sister’s spunk and his best friends’ athletic ability, intelligence, and daring.  Here’s the synopsis on the back cover:

So what if Milo’s only fifteen years old, and that he’ll have to balance running a presidential election with school, his lawn mowing job, soccer practice, and trying to understand girls?  There are times in life when you just have to go for something, no matter how impossible, and this is one of those times.  Not only does he have to redefine who Milo J. Wright really is, but he also has to decide what winning and losing really mean.

I enjoyed Freshman for President a lot more than I thought I would.  I honestly thought I was going to hate it because I just wasn’t that interested in the topic.  Even though it’s not one of my favorite books, I think it’s well written, fun, original, and unique.

One of the reasons I do like the book is because it didn’t sugar coat real-life issues.  When I was younger, I read a few Jack Weyland books.  (For those of you who don’t know who Jack Weyland is, he’s an LDS author.)  The books always seemed too sappy and life’s issues were always solved in an unrealistic amount of time.  I stopped reading his stories because I was annoyed that the characters’ lives were suddenly happy with no more issues or problems.  Unfortunately, life isn’t like that.  Even in you solve a problem, it takes a long time to heal from a traumatic experience and you’ll always have more trials to deal with.

I know you’re probably asking why I love the Twilight Saga so much then.  Fantasy, science fiction, and romance books are different, in my opinion, because they don’t presume to be “real life” stories so you expect the unrealistic time frame or “happily ever after.”  Jack Weyland’s books, on the other hand, profess to be “real life” stories coupled with a moral and advice from religious principles to help you cope with life’s obstacles.  I’m not complaining about the coping methods; I’m complaining about the unrealistic time frame and the “happily ever after” once the trauma has been dealt with.

What does this have to do with Freshman for President?  Milo, his family, and his friends have to deal with a lot of “real life” experiences and problems in the midst of running this presidential campaign.  By the time the book’s over, they’re still going through some of the problems and they’re still healing from them.  There was no yeah-I-had-a-terrible-thing-happen-to-me-but-because-I-found-something-to-live-for-I’m-completely-back-to-my-normal-self-again crap.  The book gave me hope for those characters, but I knew they still had a rough time ahead and I found that a little refreshing.

If you’re looking for something refreshing and a quick read, then you should give Freshman for President a try.

My rating:

I’m so frustrated today!  Last week, I didn’t post an update about my weight loss because I actually gained weight instead of losing weight.  It was only .6 pounds, but that’s beside the point.  The fact that it was up was the frustrating part.  Because it was only .6 pounds, I got over it quickly.

Today, however, I weighed myself and I’ve gained 1.5 pounds since last Tuesday.  That’s 2.1 pounds in two weeks.  I’m back to where I was four weeks ago! I’m so frustrated.  Even though I splurged a little for my birthday, my weekly average calorie intake was only 1532.71, which is still between my 1200-1700 calorie limit.  Technically, I shouldn’t have gained any weight last week or the week before.

I know weight loss isn’t an exact science and I know your weight fluctuates.  I also know I may have gained weight because:

• I may be retaining water from eating too much sodium
• I was off my birth control pill for a week since I forgot to renew my prescription
• I’m counting calories incorrectly
• I’m losing inches rather than weight since muscle weighs more than fat
• Even though I stayed within my calorie limit, I may have eaten foods with more fat content
• Or, any number of other reasons

Ever since Daylight Saving Time started, my exercise/sleep schedule has been way off, which I know hasn’t helped. I also think I’ve kind of relaxed a bit on the goals I outlined in January (A New Plan).  I’m recommitting because I feel like I’m doing things half-assed again.  I’m also posting new goals, which are basically my old goals with a few tweaks:

1. Each morning, I’m going to get up at 6:00 am, so I can exercise before I get in the shower and go to work.  Even if I don’t feel well or I’m too tired to get up, I’m still going to do it because I always feel better when I do and have more energy throughout the day.
2. I’m going to go to bed at 9:45 pm each night so I can get close to a full eight hours of sleep.
3. I’ll be on time (8:00 am) for work each day.  This is especially important because I have to answer the phones from 8:00 am to 10:15 am.
4. I can only eat out once a week–no ifs, ands, or buts!
5. I’m going to take measurements each week and go off the measurements rather than the scale.  I’ll still weigh myself once a week, but if my measurements are good, then I’ll know I’m still doing okay.

PS–I need to come up with a reward for when I reach my first major benchmark of losing 25 pounds.  I’m not sure what to do.  Any ideas?

Happy birthday, Brittni!

I finished listening to the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban audiobook the other day.  I’m getting through each book fairly quickly and I’m very excited about it!

As I was listening to chapter 18 (“Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs”), I noticed that the chapter seemed to end rather abruptly.  In fact, once chapter 19 started, I felt like a huge piece of chapter 18 was missing.  I wasn’t completely positive, however.  I decided to get my book and check.  The audio file was missing about half the chapter! For the time being, I decided just to read the rest of the chapter and then continue on with the audiobook.

Afterward, I checked the audiobook out from the library, so I could get a complete recording of chapter 18.  It just so happens that chapter 18 starts at the end of disc 8 and ends in the same place the audio file I listened to did.  But, I figured the rest of chapter 18 would be at the beginning of disc 9. To my surprise, disc 9 starts with Chapter 19. It seems the actual audiobook was processed incorrectly. (I wonder if the tapes have the same problem.)

I know this may not be a big deal to most people and may even be overlooked.  However, if no one complains, then it will never be fixed.  Also, Azakaban is my favorite book in the series and I want to be able to listen to all of it, especially during the climax of the story.  This morning, I decided to contact the publisher to find out if they knew the audiobook was incomplete.  I hope I’ll hear back from them soon and I also hope that they’ll tell me a corrected version has already been released and where I can purchase it.

Whenever my birthday has been on a Sunday, it has always coincided with Easter.  I liked having it on Easter because it helped make my birthday feel fun or more special since I can’t really go out and do anything on the actual day.  This year, however, Easter happened to fall on the Sunday before my birthday.  Since today’s my actual birthday, Corey and I celebrated yesterday.

Corey took me to a movie of my choosing.  I decided I wanted to see Monsters vs. Aliens.  I was a little disappointed for two reasons.  The first, and biggest reason, is that the sound died and we missed the first 10 or so minutes.  The second is that the story was good, but not great.  I still enjoyed the movie, though.  I really liked that Hugh Laurie played the mad scientist cockroach because it totally fit him.  And, of course, there’s nothing better than Stephen Colbert as the President.

After the movie, Corey took me to one of my favorite restaurants.  I prepared all day by only eating a very low number of calories so I could get whatever I wanted and still stay within my calorie limit for the day.  We went to the Bombay House, which is an Indian restaurant.

Later on, we went over to our friends’ house.  James and Meagan hadn’t seen the last Futurama movie or Twilight so we were going to watch those together, but our network was running really slowly and we couldn’t get the movies from our Drobo to our AppleTV quickly enough.  Instead, we played Monopoly.  I love Monopoly, but no one will ever play with me because it’s probably one of the most detested games of all time. But, since it was my birthday, Corey, James, and Meagan all humored me.  I lost, but I still had fun.  James ended up bankrupting us all.  I think I need a rematch.

Today, I’m just taking it easy by spending time with Corey and relaxing. I went to Sacrament meeting and then came home.  (I think my normal eating habits disagreed with all the eating out in the past couple of days).  I also went to choir practice for the first time this morning and I didn’t suck as badly as I thought I would.  But, I still need a lot of practice.

Corey gave me The Hunger Games and Graceling. I didn’t get my slanket ( ), but it’s okay since it’s getting warmer.  I’ll keep bugging Corey so I can get it for Christmas or something.

Yesterday, I received a couple of cards in the mail.  My parents-in-law gave me a gift certificate to Borders and my parents gave me some money.  I’ll be going to Borders tomorrow to pick up a couple more books!  Or, maybe even the Twilight soundtrack.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes via my blog, Facebook, e-mail, phone, text, cards, in person, etc.  I really appreciate it!