My biggest challenge

I am only 24 years old, and up to this point, I guess you can say I have had my share of ups and catastrophic downs. I feel that over the past 5 years, I have grown and changed as a person (since I have been on my own, not by choice though). I had to change schools in order to get my bachelors degree, had to disengage from certain family members in order to stay sane, decided on stalling going to work in order to get more education and so forth. But I think the biggest change I have had to deal with is facing the issues I have with my weight and my health. For the most part, I have been blessed not be affected with any serious health ailments. But I worry everyday about having too high cholesterol and somehow an early onset of cardiovascular diseases and hypertension. This is mainly because those 2 diseases are prevalent on my mother’s side of the family. And by me not knowing anything about the side of the family of the sperm that created me, makes me worry at times even more what other health conditions I could be more inclined to getting. That’s why, after I had spent a summer in Purdue for this research program, to change the way I eat. And even though I have not reached all the health goals I am aiming for, I feel that I have at least started down the right path. I have been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables in my diet everyday, cut down on fast food, and cut down on other foods high in sugar and fat. I do admit that a weakness I still have is eating burritos, particularly from Chipotle, but I am working on it (as my budget tells me so). I have for the most part stopped eating pork, cut down on the amount of red meat I eat, make most of my dinners from this healthy living cookbook I bought, and eat more turkey (turkey lunchmeat, turkey bacon, turkey burgers etc). And I have been trying to feverishly and passionately cut down on the foods that contain high fructose corn syrup (that stuff is the devil, even if there isn’t anything substantive that validates my claims of the pure evilness of this stuff) I do think at times I may eat too much at a meal setting and when I do run out of the healthy food, either because of lack of funds or time at the moment, end up resorting to eating food in the food court or Chipotle like foods to get by until I do get back to the grocery store. (At least at my last 2 grocery runs, I have not bought or ended up buying 1 thing at the most that HFCS in it, yay me!) But the one thing I have not been able to incorporate on a consistent basis is exercising. I feel that for me to have productive workouts I have to workout 2 hours everyday at a rec center, walking a mile on an inclined treadmill, doing the elliptical, arc trainers and sometimes bike, while doing many reps of triceps press, biceps, pull down, shoulder and chest press. To me, this is the kind of workout I could, even though I have to admit I don’t know how to exactly keep the intensity up after my body becomes adjusted to the workouts that I create. But that is beside the point, my biggest issue since I have been in grad school is overcoming the mentality I get when I get to working out like I do. I feel when I workout like I do intensely, I feel that I am not putting enough time into studying, because I seem to clock out early at night than I would usually do. So when I have this workout regime, by time the middle of the semester hits, I already feel behind in my class work or the workload has increased ridiculously that I feel I have to sacrifice working out, taking breaks during the day, or even reading the news in order to feel as if I am being productive doing my homework. And when I let this mentality set in, I end up ceasing to workout for weeks at a time, until something forces me to go back to the gym until the next round of my schoolwork mentality kicks in (usually finals or conclusion of major projects). So what is going to force me back to the gym this week, even though I have a ton of work to do? Stepping on my digital scale today, I somehow gained 8 or 9 pounds from the last time I was on there. And I have no idea how that happened, and its pretty startling just because the amount I weight now, I would be labeled by some as very overweight. But then I have this particularly linebacker type built body since I was a kid, and I don’t know. The only part of my body I feel insecure about is from my stomach on up, because I stopped doing sit-ups and now my gut just pushed out and I have the flabbiest arms ever. I do know that once for all, I want to feel better with the way I look, and at least be heart and cholesterol healthy if I can’t just drop the pants and shirt sizes. I said all that to say-um-well…other than I am actually pretty insecure about my body, which is totally the opposite of how I usually act (which is usually without a care in a world) and that once and for all I want my upper body to be muscular and not flabby like my lower body is. I know it won’t happen overnight, and I have to fight the urges of wanting to spend money on fast food and/or eating out, and for me and most importantly, exercising everyday, even if I can’t get to a rec center to workout. I am thinking that for the summer coming up while I am my internship, I am going to be on a salad diet, like all summer and see what happens. Well, my journey continues in trying to revolutionize how I eat and how I exercise. Stay tuned and wish me luck.

April Showers, Fools and I.D. Card part 2...

Picking up from part 1, so I am at the library, all the way on the top freaking floor going on a book safari for these books I needed for my research paper. I had a few of those back and forward moments looking for all the books because I didn't realize that the different call numbers on these books were all located on the same floor. So after obtaining all the books I needed, I proceeded to hop on back to the elevator, with books in one hand, backpack on thy shoulders and my student I.D. card in my other hand, ready to head to the circulation desk to checkout my latest books I found. While I was on the elevator heading down, I realized that the ride down was smooth (no one got on or off, no random elevator noises). So because of this smoothness, I started singing in the elevator (mind you it was just me), I believe I was singing “Here with Me” by Dido because that is one of my favorite songs to listen and sing to. So as the elevator stops on the 1st floor, I collect myself, and proceeded to get off the elevator. Some reason, I had to look out the elevator with caution, and as soon as I felt that all systems were a-go, I started to walk out of the elevator. But apparently the elevator either thought I was being too cautious getting off of it or it was in a bad mood or that the elevator doors just felt like hitting me. So yeah, the elevator door hits my left hand, which happen to hold my i.d. card, and next thing I knew, my i.d. card was out of my hands, apparently when the card fell, it fell in the gap in which the elevator door opens and closes along, and I could hear my i.d. card as it went down, echoing down the elevator shaft, singing to me (and I kid you not) "Bye, Bye, Bye" by N-Sync. I had this utter look of surprise, what the fuck and shitting bricks occurring all simultaneously. I could not believe what just happened with the elevator and what did to me and my student i.d. card. Realizing now that Houston we may have a problem, I had to go up to the circulation desk (Because that was the only way I was going to be able to check out these books)and ask for help. So I told the lady at the circulation desk what happened and she grabbed some keys and went to head to the basement to see if she could my i.d. card. So as she was gone, my mind was temporarily blank, to put it nicely. When she came back, she told me that the card probably ended up on the sub-sub-sub basement in the building and that they had no way of getting to it. (I was like shit). So she told me I am probably going to need to get an I.D. card, but that I could check out the library books by just showing another picture i.d. Well, because of my paranoia of losing my license/wallet really, I didn't have it on me, so I had to trek 2 buses back to my apartment to get my driver's license and trek another buses back to the library. I was able to get my library books, but in the midst of me getting back and forward, I realized that the building where my office is at automatically after 7pm (and it was already past 7pm) and that I needed card access to get to the floor my office is on. So I was like dammit, so first I had to trek back to my apartment and eat because my body was telling me that you might want to eat again, it’s been 12 hours already. After I ate, I was debating whether to take a chance to trek to my office, pray that the security guard was actually on duty, and use my infectious smile in hopes they would let me in. But in the long run, I decided to stay at the crib, read the books I had checked out for my research and jot some notes. But unfortunately, about 20 minutes later, I was knocked out on the couch, asleep. I had to go on ahead and call it a night at 10:30pm last night. But at least I woke up at 6am this morning to get the day going by getting my i.d. card replaced. (which is another side funny story in itself that I will save for a little later)

April Showers, Fools, and blasted I.D. Card-part 1

I had one of those "Ain't that a b^&%*" moments yesterday afternoon and through the evening. So the day got kicked off by me debating should I goto the weekly seminar series hosted by my department or go meet with the fellowship representative who happen to be on campus on yesterday over at the graduate center. Even though I actually wanted to go see this particular environmental law professor speak, I knew I had to go meet the representative from my fellowship consortium, cause you know, they are paying my way to be here (i.e. THEY ARE THE ONLY REASON WHY I EVEN HAVE FUNDING FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL!). SO I went, and she was there, along with the diversity coordinator for the graduate school and the student affairs rep. So essentially, the conversation was initially about protocol, paperwork, tuition and stipend being paid and so forth. And for some reason, I felt I had to give the people there a "Let me tell how I really feel" dialogue. I don't know what possessed me, but it seemed as if something in my mind was telling me its time to open up and express how I have felt thus far at this institution during my first year of grad school. And I tell you, I didn't realize how easy it would be for me to open up about my frustrations and growing sense (at times) of apathy for the institution, the department, and my program in general. Everyone seem to have this look upon their faces of wow, I did not know that was how you really felt. Now the diversity coordinator, I had talked to him on several occasions of certain incidents that occurred and he offered me advice. I hadn't told him of all the "wonderful" events that happened to me this semester. Needless to say, they were telling me that I should not feel apathetic, I should be receiving better mentoring from my adviser, that I should probably have some kind of definitive research topic by now and other things I brought up. Long story short, I have felt so much better, so much opened, so much, like my old me, that I had repressed in some way since I have been here.

It felt gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood!!!! Anyway, so after that meeting, I headed to my research lab, and proceeded to get to work on this research paper for one of my classes that I got to get done. Then when it got closer to 5pm, I headed off to the soccer fields because I had an intramural softball game. Of course for a second Wednesday in a roll, the weather was just downright dreary and wicked with light sprinkles of raindrops. I was not totally a happy camper because I just washed my hair the night before and usually am not a big fan of getting wet because normally I get sick afterward. So I get to the softball fields, started throwing around with one of my teammates, ready to play,when we found out that we didn't have a game because one of the teams had been consistently forfeiting. So we ended up scrimmaging with each other, and I had a great time because I was catching pop-ups, and fielding good and throwing even relatively well. I miss playing softball, a lot. So after the scrimmaging and someone helping me get my softball back after it was hit into the construction site next to the fields, I proceeded to head to the main library on campus to check out books for my research paper. And let the adventure begin...

Wednesday Diatribes of Randomness, 3.0:

Who knew socks could leave such indentations in your skin? Perhaps I need to investigate these socks for post-skin traumatic syndrome because of the markings and patterns embedded in my leg is ridiculous. What kind of socks are these you ask? I don’t know, I happen to find them in my miscellaneous clothing pile that I haven’t exactly went through to see if I still desired after I graduated last May, said f* off to friends and family and hightailed it to North Carolina mightily quickly (with the haste, with the haste). Plus, I ran out of socks today, and because I also was running out of cleans bras (it’s hard when you have limited bras but big boobs), I forced myself to wake up at 7:00am to go wash at the dorm laundry room. I have to admit, it was mighty quiet and there were actually washers and dryers available. Go figure! On another side note, I ran out of water in my 1 liter water I had been chugging on lately and decided to break down and return to drinking the water from the school fountain. Now normally I have no problems with this, but earlier this month, they sent out a notice to the school e-mail basically saying that the local drinking treatment plant in the town was switching the disinfection processes used (with chloramines I believe) to using straight up chlorine for reasons about meeting certain drinking water standards and stuff.. and believe me, since this is the first time for me to use the drinking fountain since the switch, you can taste that wonderful chlorine after-taste (tastes like vodka, not really, disregard the taste like vodka, I might be drinking vodka when I go home to disinfect the chlorine taste in my mouth though). But hey, water is water (until I come down with something but I digress) and cannot complain because for the most part the water is relatively ok to drink. Besides, I am trying to cut down on the real money guzzler habit of buying water bottles. Now that’s a waste of money if there ever was one. At least I try to buy cheap store brand water every time to get by.
There is a fridge in my research lab office that I believe the lab manager turned off or it stopped working or something last semester. Now I haven’t opened it this semester, but the last time I opened it, I think rainbow colored mold and bacteria had began to manifest itself because of certain leftovers and leaked water still present. Of course if I want to do a random experiment before May to test to see what random spontaneous combustible situations could occur between the opened and at this point repugnant refrigerator and common chemicals and gases that are always present in the lab. Now that’s research I could get behind 110%. Hey at least that would be more research I would have conducted in that 1 hour experiment than what I have done since I have been here (and that has been last August, and yet I am due to be out here next May with intentions of defending next semester-go figure).
Today, one of my classmate’s in one of my classes made a continuing effort to talk to me and get a feel about how I really feel about being at this school. And I have to say, she has been the first student (in the actual classes that I take) who has made the effort to try to get to know me since I have been here. Wow, amazing (Note: I have met people and gotten to know people a lot more this semester than what I did last semester. The only thing is they are not in my department let alone in the school that my department is apart of). Man I miss the concept of being at a school that is hardcore engineering. I never thought I would miss it so. I guess the old adage you never know what you got until it’s gone is in some sense reversibly so true. Go figure.
I am on another news (in all its forms) strike this week. After Sunday into Monday, I really wasn’t looking forward to attempt number (I start to lose count here) of proposals by treasurer secretaries/economic “supposed” gurus about trying to dissolve toxic assets. I also was not looking forward to lack of journalism/real news reporting on the so called network news channels that claim to give you accurate or fair or balanced or whatever euphemisms they call it for highly opinionated shitty ass lack of research/depth that they try to pass as journalism nowadays. Damn, perhaps I should have been a journalist after all. I actually like to do research and go into the field. Must be weird as a 24 year old to itch for research as I do (but I wander off this paved rant that I am on).
For some reason, even though T-mobile has made its present felt finally in North Carolina, ( I moved out here when there was no such thing as T-mobile and dropped calls was the norm all summer) but apparently North Carolina is still allergic to T-mobile. ( I say this as I am trying to send a text to my favorite homegirl and even though I have 6 bars (highest number of bars on my phone) I can’t get even get the phone to send back out a text message.) Now I have been patient while T-mobile tries to set up shop here but I figured after at least 8 months that the signaling might be a wee bit better. Apparently not-this month I have to deal with more than usual dropped calls, no bars in the middle of conversation and the subsequent 5 minute hello, hello, hello, chants, and issues sending off text messages. (Note: text messages are my clutch, my go to, my bench player that I need to give me some instant offense since I have limited amount of minutes for the remaining of my cycle due to circumstances that was half-heartedly out of my control so that way I am still able to communicate with people). But I am off my wagon again-dangit. Ok so yeah and of course one may ask me why I am still with T-mobile. Well at the time I signed the renewal contract it was about 2 months before graduation, before I really knew what I would be doing or even where I might be going to grad school at, so now I am in an unfortunate committed relationship and I am stuck in it for another year. (Please let this year go by, fast, but productively fast though).
Well that’s enough for Wednesday diatribes for today. Break time is over me, and I am going back to barbecuing my soul, I mean studying for a midterm I have tomorrow that I really don’t know if I could be ready for. Awww, good times I tell ya, good times!
P.S. I have realized since I have given my creative and artsy side of randomness to all things technical for the last 5 years or so, my ability to write with basic verb-agreement has went out the window. Hopefully by me getting retrained in the art of writing for flow and creativity instead of prospectus reports, I will regain and relearn the subtle and intricate delicacies of the written word-Word.

The Coming out of Left Field Story for Today:

So for today I got some disturbing news, one of my relatives was getting divorced. Why significant? Because ever since I had been living on my own, meeking out an existence, I used to spend my holidays by myself on campus a lot. I told my relative, she couldn’t believe it that I had been doing it for that long, and insisted I come to stay with them for the holidays. This was around 2006 I think, give or take. But anyways, it took me a while to adjust their abode because they were like a family, you know, with the kids and 2 parents with careers that were actually together. See when I was growing up, on my mom’s side of the family (which raised me more or less), most of my aunts and uncles had already divorced at least once, with usually my cousins paying the prices for their sometimes irresponsible decisions (that they still pay for till this day). So when I would spend time my relatives that was married, it was like wow, you don’t’ see that happening everyday. And little by little, as I spent my holiday breaks and summer breaks and interludes between school at their house, I felt myself become attached, as if they were in a way, the parents I never had. Even though there were certain things I couldn’t’ feel myself belonging to in their family, overall I was relatively happy. Now of course I was not naïve and I knew they had their fair share of arguments and disagreements and what have you, but you know I figure hey that’s all apart of being married. Then there was this news today. When I was told this morning, I felt a bit of wind sail from me because last time my relative called last semester near my finals, he was telling me news that one of my cousins had been killed. So needless to say, I did not see this coming. I felt a bit sad (thanks to the wonderfully dreary weather of dark clouds and coldness that had been prevalent around here all day today) about it, as if they were my parents getting divorced and this was affecting me personally. I just wonder how their kids are going to handle it. Well they were reassuring me that I could still come home and stay but I don’t know, it just didn’t feel the same right off the bat, and I wasn’t going to go “home” till middle of May after my finals to get a touch up of good ole Houston.
But it made me realize, I think they were the last of maternal relatives that I knew of that had been a relatively stable marriage that was over 40. Well so much for that. And its amazing that out of my childhood friends I had, I never knew who my father was and he was deceased, a sister and brother father was deceased, one of the half-brothers father really didn’t come around to see his son and the other brother father was in the prison. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was considered the norm in the neighborhood, and the fact that we were being raised still relatively and recently good was a rarity.
Lately I had been questioning whether I would ever get married, given my current track rate of how my “dating” life and “relationship” life had been going. I sort of always had a bit of an apprehension of marriage, but it certainly did not mean I advocate shacking up with an implied common-law marriage. But regardless, its just one of those things to chalk up that marriage might be overrated, overstated or even understated in today’s world. At least I am friends with one young married couple I went to middle school with that’s starting out and they seem to be going really well. For the older crowd per se, I guess I have to lean on my close homegirls and homeboy whose folks I have met, almost met, and personally know to lean on to understand and witness what a good marriage still means in today’s world.

status messages

But on a lesser note today, since I refuse to get into this whole twitter phenomena, I still use Facebook statuses as my way (when I do create status messages) to relay how I am feeling at the moment. For a while now, I have realized the evils of posting all personal content about yourself on Facebook (and others too, i.e. Myspace), especially since companies were starting to use Facebook as a “pimping tool”, I mean a screening tool to take a look at potential candidates that they were really considering hiring. So for the most part, I took down the truthful stuff about myself and kept the basics. If you can’t get a 1% idea of who I am from my quotations, political views and religious views then perhaps one is the wrong business of trying to figure out the psyche and character of people. Not too long ago, I decided to do an update status which when a little something like this:

{redacted} is redefining her short, mid and long term goals as a result from events over the last couple of months...I will get to where I want to go...

When I wrote this, I was taking a mini-break from working on my current assignment to look into doctoral programs and what I wrote in my doctoral program and what research I want to engaged in. in a sense I was redefining what I wanted to do academically because I certainly have not felt (can you tell my the posts I have done?) I was getting mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically what I had so worked hard for (just to be able to get into graduate school in the first place). I have refrained (quite amazingly too) from expressing how I really feel because the choice of language may prove too colorful to some. I said what I wrote in my status message because one of the main things I have learned since the middle of my freshman year of college is that shit happens, life happens and how you bounce back from that depends on how you are able to adapt and pick yourself off the ground after being knocked down in the 12th round of a boxing match. I admit I used to be a very stubborn woman (I think it runs deeply in my family, at least on my mother’s side that I know of) who did not like to change too much. Some of it had to do with the fact that my life was changing so quickly and grief and shock and sadness was just coming from all angles all over the place and that is a pretty scary thing to deal with at the age of 19. So as I have gotten a little older and a little wiser, I have learned that I have to be able to be more fluid than ever, especially given the instability and unpredictability of what’s going on in the world today. So as I say this, I have always been pretty good setting and meeting short and mid-range goals. I believe I have taken steps up to this point to get myself in place to meet all of my long term goals. I am not quite there yet but I have learned that as I grow my goals and life and accomplishments that I set out to do will change as I live day to day. But I refuse to have any of my goals compromised as a result of what others tend to impose upon me; I just do NOT get down like that. So even though I have vented, vocalized, and expressed some pretty vicious statements of my current state as a graduate student, please realize that it was not a sign that I was giving up anytime soon. As a matter of fact I am more resolved than ever, I am just using this blog as one means to release outwardly how I feel inwardly that I work hard not to express too vocally around here. (I still need recommendations from certain folks here, ya know?)

One less radio commentary for me to depend upon:

Note: sorry if the grammar here and there sounds a bit more choppy than usual but I am going off of raw emotion and a can of wild cherry Pepsi.

I have been paying more attention to blogs more and more right around last summer when I was at my internship North Carolina because where I was working at for the summer; it just was not that popping at all. So for me to waste away the days and weekends, I started surfing the internet more than usual. As I did so, I had to find different ways at work to deal with the bit of the repetitive programming and planning I was engaged with day in and day out on the computer. One of the ways I began to deal with this was starting to listen to NPR more than usual, particularly this one program called News & Notes. News & Notes is a sub program on the big NPR scale that dealt with issues and perspectives from the black perspective. Issues they discussed since I have been listening to the show ranged in all kinds of issues from sports, entertainment, military, politics, musicians (the ones that you wouldn’t hear a lot on mainstream radio), health, etc. I found the show very informative and very soothing, particularly since I started in graduate school. Of course for as long as I remember, I have taken advantage of always listening to NPR because it was public radio and it was something different to listen to other than the usual so called network news. Well I said all that to say that News and Notes broadcasted its last show on Friday. I didn’t listen to News & Notes a lot this week because I was just busy all week. Today, as I work on this assignment I have been pretty much catching up with all the past shows up until its last week. When I first read on the NPR site that they were getting rid of the show due to budget constraints, all I could think of was “No surprise to get rid of certain kind of shows when there is always some kind of budget constraints”. The fact that there is no such program on broadcast radio available that offers different and cultural viewpoints than the status quo is quite disturbing in itself. And for those people who are using the line of the need of such programs because we live in a “post-racial era” needs to get real and take the sunshine glasses off their eyes and realize the kind of world that we live in. Just because of November 4, 2008 occurred did not mean that racism and prejudice was killed off in all of its forms, both subtle and glaringly as a lot of people would like to believe. If you believe that we do live in a "post-racial era", then I have beachfront property to sell you in Oklahoma. I mentioned in a previous post of how sad the state of listening to the news is becoming day in and day out. When you watch these so called network news channels you can’t tell anymore what is real news, people’s opinions, and generalizations based upon the commentary of everyone and their mama who is a blogger and somehow a self-proclaimed expert in all affairs that are news and political worthy. And I just heard the other day of more and more newspapers across American cities shutting down their printing presses because of their abysmal sales. Some are either shutting down their printing presses forever, are being forced to pimp themselves out to larger conglomerates, or forced to enter onto an online media of “printing and publishing” news which in my opinion is a horrible substitute of actual printed newspapers. I don’t when people begin to think that it was a bad idea to pay 50 cents to pick up a newspaper and read (and I mean READ) what was going on in their neighborhood, city, state, national and international fronts. Are citizens becoming such drones that they are turning over their mind to everyone else who sometimes does not have their best interests at heart? Such entities that are only concerned about getting all the dollars they can by spreading their non-stop bombardment of subliminal messages? Why-because as the O’Jays sing it, everything is done for the love of money. So don’t be surprised that as one’s soul is being sold down the river, question the way of life one is accustomed to going down the toilet. Choices one makes for not being informed and unwillingness in going to multiple sources to verify the so called “news” being fed day in and day out. Note: This is why I am checking out as of today watching any kind of news. I will tune in next week to only be recapped on what was mentioned the week I tuned out for. Go figure…