Dos

I'm down two pant sizes.
This means... I have a lot of jeans I can't wear anymore. I guess that's alright. I never liked them anyway. I'll just try and sell them on ebay.

:D

According to the scale this morning (I don't know if I can trust it.. but what the hell, I'll take it)...
I am 20 lbs lighter than my heaviest weight over the summer/senior year.

Hooray!

That's also about 10 lbs since fall break alone.

Why I Miss My College Friends

maura says:
so you wanna hear something disgusting
maura says:
i mean... nauseating
Ashley says:
hahaha
Ashley says:
sure
maura says:
my older brother has recently gotten into country music
maura says:
hard core
maura says:
he keeps... he keeps playing it
maura says:
and my stomach just churns
Ashley says:
EWWWW
maura says:
and he knows nobody else in the house likes it
Ashley says:
i shudder to think of the torture you must be going through
maura says:
:'( yet he keeps PLAYING IT
maura says:
HE PLAYS IT SO LOOUD
Ashley says:
that's gross
Ashley says:
you should ask for those really cool sound cancelling headphones for christmas
maura says:
this morning he was blasting it while he was getting ready for work and it WOKE ME UP
maura says:
i am asking for a hitman for christmas
maura says:
or maybe a presidential pardon for murder
Ashley says:
hahaha
Ashley says:
sounds good

Soooo

Yeah. I weighed myself at the gym immediately after eating dinner. I'm 5 lbs lighter than the last time I weighed there. That puts me at about where I started. Now it's time to go down from that.

kouyou

the sad thing is...
that these leaves fall to the ground at their most beautiful colors

and then they're gone for a good amount of time
i miss the gorgeous view outside of my dorm.

the trees are growing more and more bare each day

1 Week

Today marks one week since I cut the majority of refined sugar out of my diet
I think the only time I had it was when we went to Yopo on Friday and I got frozen yogurt after qdoba (which wasn't entirely healthy in and of itself, but I hadn't eaten much else that day). It's a fairly innocent slip-up. I also had a nonfat mocha latte, which does have SOME sugar in it. That was on Saturday.

I don't know if i've lost weight, because I haven't weighed myself since i used the old scale at Ram's the week after fall break. I won't weigh myself until I get home for thanksgiving break. Any difference in the number from the last two times i've weighed will count as progress to me.

i feel great, but i should probably cut down on my fruit consumption
is 4 or 5 bananas a day normal? maybe not. i think i might have had 4 or 5 apples too.

Nature is Win

There's nothing better than Chapel Hill in the fall.
Take a look at my nature trot pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=83638&l=f07c2&id=504755070

i feel like i've been punched in the eye

really. literally.
not figuratively.
i can feel it bruising.

this week

can suck a nut!
i have a cold. i can't work out until maybe thursday.
i had a major test today and i have another tomorrow. i have a massive lab report due thursday night.
on the plus side, i've made the personal decision to cut the majority of refined sugars out of my life. apparently after a few weeks of torture, you don't even miss it.
the past few days i've kept to a salad/veggies/fruit/soup ONLY diet... but then i grab a cookie or banana pudding afterwords.
my suitemates joanna and kelsey are on the same bandwagon, so i think i'll be able to do this.

Where's Maura?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj2fXvbM61o&feature=related

where i was halloween night

what i was halloween night


i got stopped by a few guys
"i've been searching for you my entire life, you have no idea"

No other words

For the record, I did have an unpleasant run-in over homecoming. Oh well, life goes on.
I've recently become engrossed in the quotes of Kurt Vonnegut. He was an amazing man. So far I've read Slapstick, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five, and Cat's Cradle. I'm about 1/3 done with a short story collection: Bagombo Snuffbox.
Here are some of the quotes I'm talking about:

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything. (from Cat's Cradle)

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center. (from Slaughterhouse Five)

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. (from Slaughterhouse Five)

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. (from Slaughterhouse Five)

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

So it goes. (from Slaughterhouse Five)

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. I can have oodles of charm when I want to. (from Breakfast of Champions)

Teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them. (from Breakfast of Champions)

Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science. (from Breakfast of Champions)

Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery. (from Breakfast of Champions)

If you can do no good, at least do no harm. (from Slapstick)

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say. (from Cat's Cradle)

As Bokonon Tells Us,

"It is never a mistake to say good-bye."

I agree, Mr. Vonnegut.

I'm going to homecoming tonight. I hope I don't have any awkward run-ins.

ritz

i do love you ritz crackers
yum

crunch.

:)

Discussion

I love my friends.
Even here at Chapel Hill, I've managed to meet great people that I see on a daily or weekly basis.
Some of them are amazing. They're intelligent, poetic, and hilarious-- and they care.
As for some of the others, I have one qualm. Is it so much to ask for a little depth? If I keep up with you, I like you. You are my friend. Why is it that everything you say is, in some way, a complaint? Can our discussion at lunch and/or dinner revolve around something other than your disappointment in the dining hall's choice of food for the day? Do you think putting your complaints into prose makes them any more valid or interesting to hear?
I don't understand people who make an overwhelming effort to be indie. They'll go out of their way to make everything they say sound poetic, when they aren't really saying anything at all.
Thank you for taking 5 minutes to explain common sense to me. Yah, I really appreciate it. I love to hear it. Girl, just relax and be yourself and stop worrying about having something to say about everything.
So again, I ask for depth. I know it's there. I don't ask for much. I just want to keep up a conversation without referring to the weather, the food, or how tired you are.
Welcome to college. Welcome to North Carolina.


Shut up.
:)


Sometimes I really miss my friends in Japan and Richlands... but I like it here.

Interesting Fact

I used to be Asian
Yo, check it:

Blackbird Fly

So, I finally got up the guts it took to ignore you.
I'm happier without you in my life.
good times?
nah
here's your closure
bye

Boxes

This is my first blog.
In three days, I'm moving from home to my dorm at UNC.
Disheartening? Yah. You could say that.
I made this blogspot because I want to start writing more. To have something to look back at and laugh at. Isn't that what xanga was all about? I actually wrote a long elaborate blog on myspace only to accidentally delete it using some strange hotkey combination (damn you firefox tab system). Needless to say, it's gone now. I'm rewriting it and making it better. Myspace is for tools anyway right (I keep telling myself I'm an exception but I probably won't delete it for some time).

The filtering of my possessions is something that is done every time I move. Despite this fact, I still end up shuffling through enough things to get distracted by a wave of nostalgia.
I don't know how I got so much stuff. I say stuff in the most loving sense. I wouldn't go as far as to call it junk. What a negative word for such a friendly accumulation of completely unnecessary things! Stuff. My stuff.

I couldn't bring myself to throw anything away. I need to throw so much away. I need to move on, but I don't want to. I'm afraid that letting go of some of these things would be letting go of myself. Who I was before I moved here and who I am now. I have already forgotten so much. In 9th grade, I went through a falling out with some of my closest friends. I deleted most of our pictures out of anger. Now, we've been friends again for quite some time and they bring up memories from before. What's sad is the number of things I can't remember because I let go of so much in my fit. I can't do that again. It means too much to me.

So what do I do? With this stuff...

• the clothes that don't fit (they're cute.. and if i just run some more...)
• the awful gifts (it's the thought that counts)
• the souvenirs
• the souvenir shirts (aka pajamas?)
• the broken camera with immovable pictures from fujikyu
• the necklace from that boy you liked (what if?)
• the letters and passed notes
• the stacks and stacks of papers from years of school (i keep telling myself i might need them)
• the not-so-college-friendly items (i can appreciate my first doll, but can my roommates?)
• the posters and mementos on the wall that i will not bring to my dorm (but i dont love superman any less)
• that jewely you... kinda MIGHT wear
• that makeup your friends never told you looked atrocious (thanks guys. electric blue??)
• the prom invitations (what are you supposed to do with these things anyway?)
• the booklight with a dead bulb (but if you bought another bulb....)
• the countless necklaces from hawaii (they have their time and place of appropriateness)
• the old straightener (backup?)
• the sketchbooks (wow i sucked) (wow i was good) (wow wtf?)
• the christmas stocking (now, how did that get into your room anyway?)
• the thousands of bobby pins you've found (you never know)
• old ceramic projects (they just occupy space in a drawer now)
• the unfinished paintings (it's a great start, but superman would want his phonebooth painted)
• the books you've already read but have connection with (i hated you at the time 1984 but that doesn't mean i'm going to throw you away. get real)
• etc. etc.
  

The list goes on. I ran out of ideas. The point is that I am eventually going to need to throw some of this stuff away. When? What? Why? I don't know. And I don't know how.

And oh yah, I'm a sap.