Summer of self-improvement (and hopefully, a return to blogging)!

Hello!  I'm back!  Did you miss me?  Please don't answer that if the answer is "no." :)  Anyways, as I'm sure you realized, between my dissertation proposal and some trips and other craziness, I have fallen away from the blogging thing.  I've kept up somewhat with the cooking thing, though that has also varied.  But, now Mu and I are in SF for the next 2.5 months (minus 2 trips on my part), and we have goals for the summer!  Those feel sufficiently like projects that I think I can safely blog about them here.  Plus, I will hopefully be cooking again.

So, to get started, I'll tell you what our goals are.  They fall mostly into the "get in better shape" category, with a few random other things.  Mu's goals are: to learn Russian, to lose 20 lbs, and to learn ballroom dance.  Mine are: to learn Italian, to take trapeze, to improve my core strength (through maybe pilates, and also through aerial conditioning classes), and to cook at least several times a week (which will be more possible once my parents put in a small stovetop in their in-law unit, where we're staying).  Oh, and I also want to finish all the paperwork needed to get my dissertation running in the fall, as well as submit my master's data for publication.  Our mutual goals are: to run a 5K, to regularize our sleep schedules (trying for a midnight-8 approach, we'll see how it goes), and to eat more regularly and with fewer snacks (the French way).  I would theoretically also like to lose weight, but I don't do well with that as a specific goal -- I just get annoyed and give up.  I'm hoping that having more fitness-oriented goals will work better for me.  It seems likely that some of the goals won't be met by summer's end (learning languages, say, or running a full 5K), but I think we can make significant progress.

Yesterday, our first full day in SF, we started working on those goals.  We're doing a couck-to-5K (C25K) training program that's designed to take 12 weeks (nice and easy buildup, hopefully), and we started it yesterday. The program is designed for 3 workouts/week, 30 minutes each, with a mixture of running and walking.  The first week actually starts at just walking, which we are fine with, so we skipped to the 2nd week and modified it slightly based on what we felt we could manage.  We ended up alternating 5 minutes of walking with 1 minute of running for 30 minutes.  This was manageable (though next time, we need to go to a less hilly area -- we're not in good enough shape to run up hills!), so that's what we'll do for the next 2 training days and go from there.

The other thing we've started working on is sleep and meals.  Yesterday, we both did the 3 meals and no snacks thing, and it felt fine, but I'm not sure how it'll go for me specifically when I'm traveling next week.  I guess we'll see.  Last night, we also went to bed at midnight and woke up at 8 this morning.  This should've been enough sleep, but...wasn't.  But we're up and about, so hopefully we can manage.

So, that's the overview.  I think I'll try to write frequent summaries, and I'll only go into detail when the details are interesting (since bed and wake times really aren't).  I may also bring back some of the other features, like links and/or art. :)