lesson learned.

Today was my first Friday without my sixth hour stats class, which I dropped on Monday, and I was headed home at 11:30 AM. I went in through the backyard, greeted by Blue and Red then noticed something in the pool. At first glance, it looked like a brown dog toy, then I realized it was an animal. A bird? No. For a second I thought it was my kitten, Jasper. After a moment of inner panic, I went a bit closer. It was a rabbit. A rabbit had drowned in my pool.

Since I was a kid, I have always had a soft spot for animals. Seeing the little creature floating, frozen in place, brought me a wave of emotions I had from when I dreamed of being a veterinarian. The whole experience sounds pathetic, but this little life-and-death reality check struck me. I took a shovel and gently lifted the rabbit from the water and sat it on the ground. For the longest time, I just sat and stared at it.

The essence of life, the part that involves the whole beating heart, breathing, and so on, fascinates me. Unless you are a doctor, it isn't often that we are confronted with death. The rabbit was gone. I was staring at what was once a rabbit. It looked like a rabbit, but it wasn't a rabbit anymore. I had a similar experience last April when my friend, Thomas, died in a car accident. The service was open-casket and I had never seen a deceased person before. It was all the more powerful of an experience because I knew well the picture of Thomas in my memory. What was inside the casket was not my friend; it was the means through which my friend lived his life.

My point that I want to get at is this: here-and-now has no guarantees; we don't know when our last breath will be. Everything in life, all of it, can all come to a screeching halt in the instant of a collision under the influence, the moment of unknowingly fall into depths you cannot escape, or hopefully while lying in bed, having lived and loved, with no regrets and the knowledge of not having wasted a single moment.

Craving

I wish I could travel, see the world, explore. I've seen photos of friends and family in Europe, Asia, South America...oh, I would love to go out of the country. One day I will. I want to see the castles of Germany, the buildings of Prague, the Great Wall of China, the rainforests of South America, the pyramids of Egypt. I would love it all.

I'll keep a count of how much weight I've lost on the bottom of all my posts. Today is day one of weight loss: I'm -5.0 lbs since yesterday. Amazing, right? We'll see if it continues.

Day 1

Surprise, surprise...I'm hungry. Haha, alright so I started hCG dealio today and it wasn't as hard to control myself as I thought it would be (knock on wood). I went to the store and loaded up on fruits & veggies and my main source of protein is tilapia. Three ounces of protein is a lot less than I expected. It never occurred to me how much people actually eat in a given day. Today I had a piece of Melba toast (it's like a cracker), a handful of snap peas, a tomato, two apples, 6 oz. of tilapia, and loads of water/herbal tea. This will definitely take some getting used to. What I'm looking forward to is weighing myself in the morning... (:

Here are some photos I thought I'd throw in from the other night with my girls.

Oh, good grief.

Tonight was fantastic. I had my first "girl" night in ever. It was a legitimate girl night. Cassie, Melissa, Haley, and I went to Chase H.'s wedding ceremony and reception. To my surprise, I cried through the whole ceremony. We then proceeded to go to Los Favoritos for chimichangas and found our main source of entertainment in the 50 cent moustache machine. Haley needed paint for her room and so we went to Lowe's then headed to the wedding reception and just chilled. Well, they chilled while I snapped photos. Went to Bashas' and rented The Ugly Truth. Super funny movie; I loved it. I had a blast tonight. Here's to tonight, just a snippet of one of Haley's endless, came-home-plastered stories:

"I lose stuff all the time. You have no idea. I can't tell you how many shoes I've lost. One time, my dad came in the morning after and said, 'I found your shoe on the driveway...Do you have your other one?' 'Hee hee. Yeaaah.' '...really?' 'Pshhh. Nahhh. I don't have the other one...'"

a time for change

I started my new diet routine today. I'm actually following a clinical plan that is used by doctors. The first two days are binging days; I have to eat so much crap food so that I have fuel for my body to feed off of for the 40 harshest days of the diet. It's a really interesting plan with a year or more weight loss retentionof 60-70%. Sounds like a deal to me.

Random thing today that peeved me off. I don't get easily peeved, but this sent me in my car fuming the whole drive home from school. I pulled out of my parking spot with my MUSE blasting, windows down, sunroof back, happy to be out on this lovely Friday afternoon. I turned at the stop sign in the student parking lot and halfway down the lanes that lead to the stoplight to get onto the main road, I see this kid walking across the lanes to the other side. Naturally I slowed down to a stop so he could cross but he walks right in front of my car and sticks his hand out like a stop sign and just stares at me, holding his hand out and giving me the dirtiest look as he walked in front of me. Stupid jerk. You're in the middle of the freaking road and you came out of nowhere. Ugh.

This weekend is going to be a fast one. Tonight is my friend Chase's wedding and reception. I was invited to the actual wedding ceremony, which I've never been to before so I am excited to experience that. Tomorrow I have a church meeting at my YW leader's house at 7AM. I work at the salon from 10AM and am getting off early at 4PM because I have a choir concert in a retirement community at 5:30 PM. After that, I have to go sell raffle tickets for choir fundraiser at the mall until 9PM. Holy crap. Hopefully Sunday will be restful, right?

Dear John,

didn't happen.

Tonight, Cassie and I had advanced screening tickets to see Dear John which releases on Feb. 5. She and I were so excited; I had bought her the book for Christmas and she actually read it. So, both of us took off work and headed to the theater. Upon arriving, we saw Chels and Elaine sitting on the curb waiting for us. The first thing Chels says to me is, "Dear John is cancelled." What? ... It was some political BS that some guy had paid to rent out the theater at the same time so they had to postpone it to a later date. As more people showed up (we were over an hour early), the crowd of us were complaining to guest services. They told us that there would be compensation in the form of another ticket to a free pre-screening coming at 6 pm for the later date of D.J. We all got another ticket for the 26th and a mini-movie poster (nice touch, Harkins).

Having driven all the way out to Chandler, we decided might as well go see a movie anyways and decided on Nine. I had seen a clip of a preview of the movie and it reminded me of one of my favorite films, Chicago. Fast forward >> An hour into the movie, I was sitting wondering why I was there, what was going on, and why I felt like I was watching a movie that was definitely not PG13, nor anywhere near as good as Chicago. Never had I felt so much distaste towards a movie. In my head, I was constantly saying, "I've never walked out of a movie. Would this be the first?" I leaned over to Cass and whispered, "Are you liking this movie?" and she shook her head. I turned to Chels and informed her that Cassie and I were not enjoying the movie and we'd see her later.

Guest Services was happy to exchange our tickets for cash or another movie and so...we tried Leap Year. As it is said, third time is the charm and the LY certainly lived up to my expectations. It was very entertaining, charming, beautifully filmed in a gorgeous location, and I had lots of laughs. Cass and I finished up after the movie by filming ourselves in the Harkins game arcade on motorcycles and DDR to send to Cameron.

It was an adventure, to be sure. We had fun. Tomorrow's Friday. Hal-le-lu-jah.

maiden post

I'm having a difficult time deviating from my tumblr (former blog @ http://playalex.tumblr.com) that I had for...a couple years(?), but it seems that if I want to be interconnected with family and such that I ought to have a blogger. But I will revert right back to my tumblr if blogger falls short of my expectations. Right now, I am just giving this a shot.