Completely unrelated thoughts from my head

Nickname envy
I have a friend whose nickname in early adulthood was Sparky, because she's pretty determined to get what she wants. I think Sparky is the cutest nickname. Well we were talking, and I was telling her that I think she needs to stop thinking of herself as small and not very strong. She IS small (5'2", about 95 pounds), but she's anything but weak. So I told her I was going to think of her as TNT -- tiny and tough. But then I thought, no fair! I have no nickname, and she has TWO fanstatic ones!

Every Halloween...
... I have to watch Scream. It's the best horror movie of all time, in my opinion. It's funny and scary and campy and great. But I always have trouble finding it to rent, so this year I bought it off half.com. So I'll be getting my Scream fix (and making Tim watch with me -- it's not really his thing, but he's a good guy, as you well know!) soon.

SST yesterday
Two things stood out from yesterday's workout. One is these stupid squats (I think they're called Prisoner Squats when done with your hands on your head) where you hold a piece of PVC pipe over your head. The purpose is to keep your shoulders retracted and your chest up. So hold the pipe, then lower into a squat, pushing your butt back, but keeping your chest up. Hold for about 3 seconds, and come up. Repeat 15 times, and do 3 sets.

The main body of the workout was 400 meter hill runs alternated with 15 ball slams. Four repeats of each. Hard. Effective. And as we know from Wife Swap, HARD WORK PAYS OFF!!!

New antidepressant
Lest I fail to paint a complete picture, and only focus on what's good, the truth is that I still take an antidepressant to deal with my screwy brain chemistry. And this week I'm changing my medication. What I was on was working with one major side-effect -- my short-term memory was SHOT! And that's not going to work as I try to get certified and start my own business. So I changed as of Monday. So far, so good. I feel a little "off" at times, but that's to be expected when you switch something you've been on for five years. But my memory does feel sharper, so that's good. However...

...studying is HARD!
I'm up to my eyeballs in notecards and highlighted text and trying to memorize acute variables (reps, sets, intensity) for the seven different phases of the OPT model (Optimum Performance Training, as per NASM). I graduated from high school in 1979, and from college 5 years after that (I was on the work hard, pary hard plan), so it's been a while since I did actual studying. I like it, but I find that it's hard to stay focused. Yesterday I put in about 2-1/2 hours, but it seemed like every 10 minutes I could find SOMETHING that needed doing (dogs need water! I could put in some laundry! That counter needs wiping!), so the time was definitely broken up. But it still counts!

Beauty Juice
I got my labels. They're cute but they're not quite right somehow. I think I may try making my own, so I can completely control the font and the point size, etc. So if anyone would like a few beauty juice labels to encourage their own personal water drinking, email me your address (I'm at lgandy "at" starstream "dot" net), and I'll send you some. You can check out what they look like on my Flickr account -- I'll post a picture later today.