Candidate Journals

Busy day today! Amazon came by to finish setting all my stuff up, the Spectrum dude came by to try to fix my internet issues (he's here now), and after that, I have to go shopping. I'm going to see a life long bucket list item, Andrea Bocelli!! I cannot believe that's happening. While waiting for all these guys to show up, I was able to get some requirements in. I ran outside, that really hurt my lungs because the air is cold. I have a feeling my run time is going to be slower than my pretest because of that. It felt like I couldn't get any air. 1 way to find out I guess, here's hoping for a warmer day on physical test day!

Busy day today at work, I have a process to write for a huge amount of data and implement it by the end of this week. *whew* Thankfully I have 2 monitors and big scissors to cut through that red tape. Wish me luck! Sparring class was good last night. I am excited that we are going to start practicing 2 on 1 sparring soon. I had a new student start my classes yesterday so that's pretty exciting too! Not much else going on, short entry today! I think I have 5 more of these left. WOOHOO!

Today is the first day in a really long time that I have gotten back on a normal rhythm. Wake up, go to the gym, come home and drive into the office, teach TKD, then go take a TKD class. If feels good getting back to a regular schedule. I managed to weasel a docking station for my work computer out of a guy at work so I can finish setting up my office at home and have 2 monitors again (YAY!). I am pretty tired today, but I think that's from all the stress I've been holding onto for the past month or so is finally coming to an end. I have slept through the night for the past 3 or 4 nights so that is getting better. Hopefully I can get really caught up on sleep on Saturday. 

Let's get this party started! Here we go, last full month of the cycle and I am ready to take it on. Feels like I've been on the cycle forever but it's only been a month and a half. This morning I didn't make it to the gym so running with the dogs in the neighborhood is on tap. I have seemed to misplaced my blackbelt book but im sure i'll find it soon enough. I am happy to report that I have lost 10lbs since I've been doing this. Not as much as I'd hoped but I plan on kicking it up a notch this month, especially with the running so I expect to see better results. Im not 1 to check the scale every day or every week. I usually hop on once every 3 weeks or so. Let's do this!

Busy past few days! Getting the rest of the trades in, security and cable/internet installed, and the rest of my furniture came today! My house has everything, just have to put it all together. These next few days is going to be a whirlwind! I am very tired, but I'm still keeping up with my requirements amazingly enough! I'm not going super hard core but I'm getting enough done per day. Sparring later tonight and I'm excited. 1 of my students is coming! Should be a good class. 

It's a good thing I am good at Project Management! I had so much going on today with my trades, moving, and budgets. Tomorrow is the big day, the official move! We have most of the apartment ready to go, just have to clean up lose ends to get things out of the way. We are all more than ready to get moved in. I wasn't able to get all of my requirements in, but I still have a sparring class to go to tonight and I teach my students in about an hour so Im sure I can get the rest of them hammered out. In February I plan on going back and concentrating on my time for running. Since I've been having to deal with moving and everything, I've just been running just to run, not really trying to get faster. In Feb, that changes and hopefully I can...

Today was day #3 of moving stuff into the new house while avoiding getting in the way of the paint crew. I think we are at the point now that we can't move anything without the help of the movers. The painting process has come along really well. I chose colors that I was nervous about but they came out really nice! I changed the mater bathroom color though, but I think it'll work out. Hopefully the painting will be done tomorrow, im ready to start putting things up on the walls and getting a head start on that. I still need to buy fans....My pavers guys start tomorrow, I am very excited to see how that looks! During all this craziness this week, I was still able to stay on top of my requirements! Not bad!

Happy days are back again! I closed on my new house and the painting has begun! I have already started scoping out running routes around the construction in my neighborhood so we can still get Taylor's miles in. I learned a valuable lesson this afternoon, don't run in the rain with 2 Beagles, an umbrella, and 2 bags full of doggie #2. It won't work out for you, don't try it. Needless to say, my run today was difficult. Sparring was a great class last night and I am looking forward to BBC today!

Oh look another day of stress! I really hope this is the end of the drama about my house. My arms are really tired from doing extra push-ups and burpies so I don't go insane. On the bright side, it's getting me through my requirements faster so I can't complain there. The run was tough this morning, my body doesn't like it when I try to run and it's cold outside. Doesn't matter if im in a warm gym, it still knows. We are getting closer to the end of this journey! Guess I need to figure out a new skill, so does Taylor. Hmmm...

Today was a really cold day which means no running outside. That's ok, Taylor and I were able to get a run in anyway. With it being cold makes it hard to keep things from getting stiff. Lots of stretching through the day. Even though the schools were closed, I was able to get a mentee session in! Today Taylor is doing her empathy challenge, it has been glorious. She chose mute and it has been so hard for her to not talk...LOL. I look forward with helping her with her essay. 

Today is not a good day. I am stressing and panicking really bad right now. Things going on with my new house, just overall not good. When I stress this bad, I tend to go down a stress eating binge. Instead of stressing, I have been doing extra requirements. Extra push ups, sit ups, poomsaes just to get my mind right and not completely let the stress and anxiety take me over. So far it's working, but as the day goes on, I am getting even more worried and stressed out. I'll tell you 1 thing, I will be 1 sore puppy when it's over. Other than my life crisis right now, I have gotten a few more essays done and I have kept up with all my classes and stuff. I feel more panicking coming on as I type this out, so more push-ups for me right now. 

Nasty day today, I wasn't able to catch the gym this morning so I will go later in the evening. I am going to be 1 tired person! I finished my White Belt Challenge essay last night, starting on another one today. I look forward to teaching tonight and then going to Master Evins' school for Black Belt class. I slept better last night than I have in a few weeks so hopefully I am getting back on track with my sleep schedule. Not much else going on, back to work!

Short journal today, I am pretty tired today. I haven't been sleeping very well, even after taking an over the counter sleep aid. I may have to get the heavier stuff to get my sleep patterns back on track. This happens sometimes when I am very stressed. The lack of sleep is making getting my requirements difficult to get through, which is driving me nuts because at this point, it should be getting much easier. This morning's run wasn't too bad, I took my time today so my running time was long. I wasn't going for time today, just the miles. Still working on my pull-ups, I realized from the pre-test I needed more strength training, so here I go! Ok, time to watch the Tiger bowl! 

Today was a light day, I didn't hit all my goals for my requirements but I got some in. My lower back was really hurting me late yesterday and into today so I didn't want to overdo it and further irritate my back. I was very proud of Taylor and myself. We ran our fastest mile since the beginning of this adventure back in December! Taylor ran a 12 minute mile (was over 27 seconds) and I ran a 13:53 mile! That's faster than last week! Guess this gym membership is paying off. I have started working on my essays, I hope to have about 4 of them completed by the end of this week. Tomorrow starts the beginning of the end of my long wait for my house to be mine and I can start the moving process! 

Yesterday was a tough day for me. I had a really hard time running and it felt like I was dragging a ton of bricks behind me in all my workouts. I even had issues working on my lats to get them to where I can do pull ups better without looking like im about to explode trying to do 1. I was talking to a few of my friends who love to run and we figured out that my problem is probably because I might have been dehydrated (I woke up extremely thirsty), and I haven't been getting enough sleep....let alone quality sleep. I am going to go buy a new pillow today because I woke up even more tired than I went to sleep last night. I am going to take it easy today and spread out the workouts across the day instead of doing it all in the morning. I am still coughing like I smoked a pack of cigarettes from my run yesterday so I am going to chew on a few cough drops throughout the day to see if that helps. Im also going to do the Vics on the feet at night trick tonight to see if that helps. Bring on sparring class tonight! Lesson of this story, drink lots of water and get good sleep! Oh yeah, I finished my white belt challenge last night and I ordered Taylor and myself books for our essays!

Even though yesterday was my full day back to work from the holidays, today is the first full day back to work in the office. I have to say, it was good to get back into the office until I found out my friend up and quit out of the blue, the guy behind me is sick and won't go home, and they ran out of Pepsi Zero. Back to work it is! Haha. I get to see my students though, so I am super excited about that. I really missed teaching them and working out with them. I've been told Im getting about 4 new students so that's pretty awesome! It will be good to have a mixed class of belt ranks again. I will have white belts and high yellow belts now. I've started grooming my higher belts to be future instructors and having lower belts in class makes...

I broke down and signed up for a gym membership. I HATE gyms with a passion but it was a good deal and I know I am going to need one when I move out of my apartment later this month. The current gym is lacking and so I can only do so much in there, not to mention now that it's the turn of the year, a lot of people are using the treadmills (there are only 2) and weights. At least at the gym, I can grab a treadmill without waiting hours. I am proud of myself though. I started the precycle with a 1.25 mile run that lasted 19:37 minutes and I have gotten it down to 17:40 minutes with only 2 stops to a brisk walk! That is amazing to me, no matter how slow it is. I am not a runner but I am getting better. 

This site is frustrating. I hope we can go back and edit our past entries because I kept forgetting to put in my sparring and weekday BB classes. Taylor and I sat down and calculated out when she goes to PE that week, it will count for .46 miles for running around the basketball court 3 times. She wishes she had PE every day to make the running easier. Next week we will be doing our white belt challenge. Better to get it out of the way now and essays done. I've been trolling Amazon to get our books ordered so we can knock those out too. Time for some football!

I had a really good morning today. Started off with some of my requirements and then I went to Black Belt class with my daughter at our school. I identified that I really need to work on Sa Jang and Oh Jang. I have been mixing the 2 and I feel like I have to relearn them. I went to the Concord Mills mall today and as I was walking to the door, I noticed a small rainbow in front of me. It made me smile and I looked around to see if anybody else near me noticed. To my disappointment, they did not. People were either looking at their phones or looking down at the ground in general. I kind of stood there looking at the rainbow and then looking at people and nobody noticed it but me. I go into the mall and I really pay attention to folks...

Today was pretty uneventful since it was raining all day and I had to do some work. I've been stressing lately due to my house coming close to being completed and getting all the utilities, moving company, and Best Buy scheduled to fall in place. I am really trying to have everything closed, painted, built, and moved in to where I can throw a Super Bowl/House Warming party on Feb 2nd. A lot of moving parts and lawyers being a pain so we will see what happens. Either way, I am really close to getting my house closed on and getting the keys to get things moving a long. We've been collecting boxes as of late and so my apartment is cluttered with boxes all over the place. I am twitching because I like things neat and tidy and this is a clustered mess! I can't wait for this to be...

Happy Birthday Casey! Today is my husband's birthday and it not only is a time to celebrate his birth, I get to celebrate the end of crappy eating and more energy. I started my morning off with banging out some requirements and somewhat of a run in the rain with the dogs at lunch. I rested for a bit and did some work while waiting on butter to get to room temperature for about 2 hours and then started on making Casey's cake. He always requests a homemade cake and this year he decided to throw me a hard 1 (well he thought it was going to be hard), a Boston Cream Pie. *ugh* I am not a fan of this cake, it's too sweet for me. This is an involved cake, lots of steps and chilling. Oh well, at least it isn't a cake that I have to decorate all...

Happy New Year! The gym is full with the "resolutioners" so finding room on the treadmill has become challenging. Good thing it's been nice outside to where it doesn't hurt to breathe while running as of late. Guess I can keep doing that until the resolutions get broken in a few weeks.  Slow go today, didn't get my requirements in for the day. Needed to spend the day recovering. I enjoyed the day doing nothing, watching the dog show, and getting some bowl games in. I ended the day with making a traditional New Year dinner with pork chops, pinto beans (couldn't find black eyed peas), rice, and corn bread. No greens, Taylor and I don't eat them. I am ready for a food coma with all those carbs! Im actually glad the holidays are finally over, my diet needs to get back on track with 2 protein shakes and a...

Here we are, at the end of another year. The crazy thing about this 1 is that if you're like me born in the late 70's or early 80's, you've been through at least 2 centuries, 3 decades and you're under 40! As I get older, I think back on what I've accomplished in the year and things I need to work on in the next year. This time I get to remember where I was 10 years ago! Here we go: I had gotten married not too long before the turn of the decade, Taylor was 8 months old, I had a solid "big girl job" and was going strong, I was on the road to becoming the heaviest I've ever been in my life, and life was not too bad. Fast forward through the decade: Taylor grew up, my weight ballooned to 367lbs, I lost my mom in 2014,...

Today was a really nice day outside! So much so, Taylor and I took the dogs and for a run and we only stopped a few times for the sniffers to get their fix in. A friend of ours came with us so that was nice to have somebody running along with us. Last night I got to see my brother and we exchanged gifts with him at dinner. 

I have 2 Beagles (aka noses with 4 legs) and I love them so much...but not when I am trying to do sit ups and push-ups. Cold wet noses in my face and doggie breath are not fun. Taylor is more tolerant that I am, but she did say something that was very mature about it. She said they're telling us that they're proud of us for doing this and to keep it going. Some days, you need the wisdom of kids and dogs to remind you that you're doing great and you have the support of your family behind you. Bring it on dog breath, let's do this!

Day # 7! I wasn't able to blog when the cycle started but here I am. The family had a great Christmas, we were able to work out while on vacation so that was a plus! My diet went through the window, I'm pretty sure I ran it over for this week. Thankfully diets are easy to restart (well for me anyway). The down side to Christmas is I ended up getting what I think is a head cold, AGAIN! I am drowning myself in water to keep it from moving to my chest. At least it isn't like the 1 I got over Thanksgiving, I am still able to do things and be active. I am surprisingly sore from riding a horse for an hour, not sure how that happened. Hope everybody had a great Christmas!