Ardentli.Net

So, as of this week I have officially completed my undergraduate education! I will be walking for my graduation ceremony in May. Till then I am staying in upstate New York, but I basically have a 3 month vacation.

I’m planning on working out extensively during my three months due to lack of other obligations. I want to be hitting the gym 5 to 6 times a week and working hard on my cardio fitness. As a few of you might know I’ve been a poor runner most of my life, but last summer while I was in Boston I worked on outdoor running and finally was able to complete a 5k run without stopping. For me that was quite an achievement and I really, really, really want to get that up to a 10k by summer.

My other goals are going to be to try to lose 5lbs by the end of May. Modest goal, but I figure goals of any variety are good ones to have.

My proposed exercise schedule:

Day 1: Cardio workout

• 45 minutes elliptical
• 15 minutes bike cycling

Day 2: Jogging/Weights

• 5 minute pre-stretch
• 5 min run, 3 min walk, 10 min run, 3 min walk, 5 min run, 3 min walk
• Abdominals, back, shoulders

Day 3: Cardio workout round 2

• 45 mins elliptical
• 15 minutes bike cycling

Day 4: More jogging/weights

• 5 minute pre-stretch
• 5 min run, 3 min walk, 10 min run, 3 min walk, 5 min run, 3 min walk
• Arms, legs, glutes

Day 5: Random cardio day

• Probably will vary this day up, but I’m thinking a longer jog (20 minutes) and more elliptical workouts
• Any area I find deficient

I think I’ll be making a 1234342th attempt to keep this public blog updated with my health/workout information. I’m having such a huge problem with committing to a theme to this blog. My apologies!

It has been said that being an atheist in the United States today is akin to being homosexual fifty years ago in terms of prejudice and hatred toward our life-choice. Now, I’m not entirely sure I believe that wholeheartedly as I don’t know A) what it was like to be a homosexual back then, let alone today and B) I’ve never personally felt as though I’ve been under any sort of serious scrutiny because of my beliefs.

For those of you who don’t know, I am a de facto atheist which means I do not believe there is a god, but I do not declare to know without a shadow of a doubt that there is no god. Perhaps there is, perhaps there isn’t, but I strongly lean toward the later and quite honestly I don’t really care either way!

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I’m notoriously terra-bad at keeping any sort a dedicated schedule to my public blog updates. Needless to say I am currently back home visiting family down near DC where they apparently had about two feet of snow last week. Yes, two freakin’ feet in the tri-state area. Insanity! Either way I’ll be spending the holidays getting my butt in gear and working on some projects of mine in the online world, so hopefully there will be something a little more substantial here soon.

Merry holidays, everyone.

I always feel like a jerk running into people who clearly recognize me from somewhere yet I can’t for the life of me remember who they are. This happens to me quite frequently and is always a source of incredible embarrassment. For those of you who don’t know (which I doubt many of you would unless you know me in real life), I suffer from a medium form of facial blindness or prosopagnosia. Basically this means I have a very great deal of difficulty remembering peoples’ faces.

I feel like this guy

I’ve had this disorder for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t really know it was actually a named disorder till a  year or two ago. I always just thought I wasn’t studying people enough to remember them or wasn’t very mindful of details. It bothers me greatly since I have problems remembering new people I’ve just met. I can remember all other details of a person such as their voice, the way they walk, their clothing, choice of perfume, etc., but for some reason I can’t remember things as simple as their hair color, facial features, or eye color. Even if I consciously sit there and tell myself, “I am going to remember what this person looks like!” I usually can’t recall their faces mere seconds after I’ve finished looking at them! I’ve sat around in restaurants “practicing” my visual memory on people only to find, frustratingly, that I can’t remember them no mater how hard I try to force my disfunctional brain to.

This isn’t to say that I don’t remember people I’ve met multiple times. I can clearly remember my parents’ faces, close friends, and teachers I’ve had all quarter. It just takes me an incredible amount of time to commit them to memory. My boyfriend and I joke about how when I met him I described him as “blonde and green-eyed” to a mutual friend when in fact he was a brunette with blue eyes. I have to spend a great deal of time with a person to remember them, but the  memories do eventually form unlike the severe forms of this disorder where a person can NEVER remember the faces of others; even their family! I remember watching a documentary on people with facial blindness and this one poor woman was so bad that she couldn’t recognize people at a skating rink she had worked with in the same office for 20+ years. Sad.

It’s not that I’m rude when I encounter people I met in class once, or at a get-together the night before. I always just joke I have tunnel vision and a bad memory, but it’s not necessarily that my memory is shot; it’s just you look like a stranger to me! This is incredibly embarrassing with things like interviewing. I interviewed a few weeks ago and I remember sitting for a whole HOUR with one interviewer and then 5 minutes later having trouble picking that person out of a crowd of people. I have trouble remembering HR hiring managers (veryyyyy bad when they say hello to you later and you go, “UhhhhH!?!”). It makes you seem air-headed and disinterested which is absolutely not the case.

It’s so freaking frustrating!

I just felt like sharing this since I’m sure you probably know someone who’s bad at remembering faces. Perhaps they have facial blindness like yours truly!

I’ve been reading a decent amount in the past few months and I just thought I’d share some of my recent favorites:

• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I think Katy mentioned this book in one of her posts a few months back and I saw it at the bookstore and decided to pick it up. It’s wonderful! The story takes place over many, many years following the life of a family in the 12th century in England. The story starts following Tom Builder, an architect who has a passion for designing and building cathedrals, and his family. The story continues with Tom’s adoptive son, Jack, and his love interest. The storyline continues with many great characters whose stories are all intertwined. The best part about this book is that it follows the lives of normal, everyday people rather than kings or queens and nobility. It really makes you feel for the characters and their struggles to survive and just how outright crappy life was back then. It’s a really long read, but I really couldn’t put the book down.
• World Without End by Ken Follett. After reading the previous book I had to pick this one up. This book is a sequel to Pillars of the Earth and takes place two centuries later. Many of the characters are related to people you read about in the first book. The story centers around Caris, a descendant of Jack Builder from the first book, and her love interest Merthin. Like Tom, Merthin is also interested in architecture; specifically cathedrals. The second half of the book also deals with the Black Death that plagued Europe. I don’t think this book was as epic as the first, but it’s still certainly good and it’s fun reading about what became of the descendants of the people you read about in the first book.
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I won’t lie when I tell you that the first couple of chapters are really, really boring. I had trouble getting through them since the beginning of the story tends to drag, but once it gets going it’s a pretty good book. The story starts in the years after WW2 in Scotland. Claire is a nurse who worked for the British Army and is married to a man who’s incredibly interested in genealogy. One day she is transported back in time 200 years and encounters her husband’s predecessor; a ruthless man named “Black Jack” Randall. She escapes from Randall by being captured by a clan of Scottsmen and eventually falls in love and is forced to marry one of the clan, Jamie. I haven’t completely finished the book yet, but I am aware that this book became a 7 book series though the first book can stand alone as a work on in on itself.
• The White Queen by Philippa Gregory. I’ve read a great deal of her books since falling in love with The Other Boleyn Girl a year or two ago. This book isn’t one of her bests, but I did enjoy it regardless. The story takes place before The Other Boleyn Girl and deals with a woman who fell in love with the then rising King of England, Edward. The story goes through their love, marriage, and fight to keep the crown in spite of the rising Tudors (who eventually DO take over England as we do know). The story is quite nice because of the love between the two characters, but lacks a lot of details and ends at a really bad spot. I know that Gregory intends to write a second book about what happens after, but still, meh. It’s still enjoyable if you like historic fiction about the royal family of England!