Goals

So Miss Kimberley totally inspired me with her Spring Cleaning post, though, I'm the most lazy person ever so I don't know how far I'll get. I've decied to do a physical to do sorta list, just because I have a feeling I'll actually do this stuff--god knows I seriously need to--if it's writen down. So here goes: 

• Stretch - ten seconds per stretch x2 before and after "workout"
• 100 two ball juggling in each hand
• 10 minutes (total) of four ball juggling
• Jump rope 200 times
• 25 push ups - I'm thinkg I'll increase it by maybe 5 every week
• 2 sets of 50 sit ups, well maybe 30 depending on how hard it is
• 2 pull ups, 2 chin ups, 2 neuteral grip, and 2 wide grip (more likely only one of these)
  
• 5 dips

I think that's a good start for now. I have this book on abs that I think I'll whip out starting this summer, but right now with school and such the workouts are too intense. Along the same lines, I really need to change my diet. Seriously. NO MORE FAST FOOD. Good lord! Sadly I don't think this is very possible,  but at the very least I need to cut back. How about we say no more mcdonalds? Granted Wendy's isn't that much better, but it is a bit better.. a little..? This might be easier to accomplish because of my lack of money now. I need to start eating only here or at least the majority of time here at home. I also would like to play more DDR and Wii Fit, but that's really dependant on me going over to Kimberley's. This summer though, totally gotta play at least 3 times a week.  I'm going to add some other goals here at some point, but for now I think this will work! Oh and I forgot to mention, I NEED TO CUT BACK ON COFFEE. Since I'm so addicted maybe I'll go with once a week--while Kimberley is in chem lab maybe? Or even better--:(--Once every other week. Sigh.. I like it so much.. but I just don't have the money for it right now :(

Well here's some others I thought of: 

• Watch a movie every week
• Watch less T.V.
• Ride my bike to work whenever possible
• Study earlier and more often
• Try and go to sleep before midnight (we can do this Kimberley)
• Keep my room cleaner 

Spring Cleaning

Well, seeing as this coming Friday, March 20th is the glorious First Day of Spring, it seems fitting that we stick with "tradition" and try to declutter and reorganize our lives for the start of the new season. I've been feeling mysteriously motivated lately -- perhaps because this is the one week all semester where I don't actually have pressing deadlines -- and decided some of the motivation could be put to good use in the form of a blog posting. Besides, Ryan keeps giving me crap for slacking while he's making all sorts of new posts on his blog and on our blog... and I don't want him to be justified in his crap-giving anymore :)

First things first: I love cleaning. It's true that I rarely ever clean, and when I do, I usually end up distracted and will give up before I really have the chance to get started. But sometimes I just get into it and don't want to stop! This weekend, thanks in large part to my crazy-ambitious workaholic father, was one of those times. Saturday morning we decided it would be an awesome idea to clean the carpets... Like rent-a-Rug-Doctor-and-really-really-clean-the-carpets cleaning. It was insane and, to be truthful, I hated it at the time, mostly because my dad always has to go all-out and we ended up moving all of our furniture out of our rooms so we could "adequately" clean. (Seriously, my parents' mattress was on our back porch all of Saturday while the carpet was drying!) We worked until midnight and then on Sunday, we reversed it all and moved all of our kitchen furniture so we could mop the tile floors. Extravagant. Spring cleaning to an extreme. But, looking back on it, I'm really glad we did it. Everything just feels better and I'm way more motivated to clean everything else because of it. In fact, I'm hoping Ryan and I can get his vacuum fixed so we can extreme-clean his place too! Well... if he lets me!

I guess, though, it doesn't just stop there. Yes, I want to clean the rest of my room -- I want to make my desk the OCD-organized place it normally is and I want to find a way to organize my mini-Bath & Body Works collection so I actually can see my countertops in my bathroom. But I want to do more than that. I want to do some "spring cleaning" on myself! Like... I would love to feel completely caught up in school for once. (Don't judge -- I do understand that writing this blog is a major hindrance to my being caught up and a major contradiction to everything I'm saying.) And I would love to feel like I'm making progress towards things that aren't school related. So, I guess I really just want to rediscover my motivation for life... and I'm dying to find a way to make it last, for once. Maybe this "spring cleaning," plus a little bit of Ryan's help, will finally get me there.

So here's my to-do list... with a timeframe from now until the beginning of the summer. I guess it's not even so much of a to-do list, but rather just goals or desires that I'm holding for myself. My hope is that, if I write all of this out, I will feel more inclined and motivated to stick to it... or, if nothing else, I will have a special someone reminding me of what I said ;)

I want to play Wii Fit and/or DDR at least three times per week. And maybe I'll actually lose a couple pounds to go along with that :)

I want to do 100 crunches per night. Every night.

I want to watch one movie every week. It's almost as if I strive to make my life as high-stress as possible... and I think taking the time to watch a movie every week (off our list!) will help combat that.

I want to read my honors books every week from now until the end of the semester. No more half-assed almost finishing the books... I want to f-i-n-i-s-h them.

I want to be in bed by midnight every school night. Earlier, if possible, but no later than midnight. My poor body has had enough of a struggle as it is... I should at least let it sleep!

I want to finish my chem lab homework stuff on the weekends, so I have my Monday nights to watch Dancing With the Stars with my mommy :)

I could probably keep going, but I think this is enough for now. Besides, it's about time I do some homework (or at least some reading!) so I can actually feel like I'm making progress. Plus, Ryan gets off work in t-minus 3 minutes, and I want to be able to talk to him... well, after he rides his bike ALL the way from Borders back to his house!

Ta ta for now.

Rediscovered Passion

So recently I have rediscovered a long lost passion of mine, well maybe passion is a bit too strong, in any case something I really enjoy. That something, though lame I know, is paper airplanes. Recently Kimberley had a badass assignment for her Technical Writing class, I don't know the wording exactly, but essentially what she had to do was dictate how to make a paper airplane without actually showing the person how to do it. Indeed this is a rather neat skill to have, but I was interested in the paper airplane part! I don't know why exactly, but making airplanes was always one of my favorite things to do as a kid. Granted I never really made super elaborate airplanes, but I was pretty damn good if I do say so myself!

I'm not positive as to where I learned how to make airplanes, I have a feeling it was one of my cousins, probably David, who showed me my first one. Although it could have very well been another kid I knew when I was growing up who knows for sure. Either way, back in the day I knew how to make several kinds of airplanes, though the two main ones were a glider and a speed/distance airplane. I can't remember too well, but I'm pretty sure that my friends and I used to have competitions on various aspects of the flight. I think they actually got pretty complicated, as complicated as 4^th graders can make things anyway. We judged on appearance—was it colored or decorated—complexity—how hard was the airplane to make—distance traveled, aerial tricks—flips, turns, spins, etc.—and grace—did it float through the air and such. There was also more specified competitions such as speed, safety—we actually made little paper men or wood men (really just sticks)—which were a whole hell of a lot of fun too. I also learned or thought I learned a lot about the 'art' of paper airplanes and became somewhat of an "expert". I knew things like what the best paper to use, how much to color the plane—see too much crayon or marker makes the plane too heavy, or if you put marker on the wings it makes them flimsier and less able to fly; I also knew different wing folds that maximized or minimized different types of tricks. Alas I certainly don't know much now, perhaps it'll come back to me as I make more of them now, but thinking about it logically I think a lot of it was a load of shit haha. Certain things maybe were true-ish, I mean if you fold up part of the right wing it'll turn right, but I'm not so sure. I'll have to experiment and see if it comes back to me again.

I don't know why I enjoyed making them so much I have always had a fascination with flying, but not flying as in mechanized plane flying. Gliding, the way birds do is what fascinates me even to this day. Don't get me wrong, I think the advances in technical flying are pretty cool, but it's not free ya know? For example, one of the reasons I was so obsessed with the anime Dragon Ball Z is because of their ability to fly. I mean I actually trained, well "trained", while I watched the show.. I freaking loved the way they flew. One of my favorite Goosebumps books was How I Learned to Fly, hell I even tried to do the same thing the kid did in the book! Flying is just so.. cool! I've also always wanted to sky dive and learn to hang glide, but I have a little fear of heights so I don't know if it'll ever be possible for me to do either. Maybe not fear heights so much as fear of pain, I mean, shit you screw up in either of those activities and its bye bye world!

In any case, I've resolved to start making more paper airplanes and as such fly them! I also really need to teach Kimberley how to make good ones cause she's an uber n00b! Like whoa. Oh and I just now remembered that another one of my favorite activities kinda related to flying is Frisbees! Oh man those are so so fun! Kimberley and I are gonna have to go out and fly planes and throw around a Frisbee, it'll be old school fun! We've also decided that because we're 20 years old it's horribly sad that we don't know how to fly a kite, so we're gonna learn that together too! :)

Movies

Well... here we go. My very first solo blog post that wasn't required for a class. I'm steppin' up in the world! Ha, if only!

Anyways, like Ryan mentioned in his last blog post, we decided it would be a good/fun idea to keep a continuously growing list of movies we want to watch together (*cough* I suggested it, he just agreed ;) *cough*). So I guess here's my half of the list, and I'm just going to make the list as it comes to my mind, without looking at what he did or didn't add to his list. Fair enough?

Movies I Haven't Seen/Don't Remember Watching:

• Alpha Dog
• Chocolat
• The Dark Knight
• Memento
• Garden State
• Wall-E
• Hotel Rwanda
• PS I Love You
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• The Princess Bride
• No Country for Old Men
• Wedding Crashers
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding
• Y Tu Mama Tambien
• 13 Going On 30
• The Lake House
• Burn After Reading
• Transformers
• Children of Men
• Zodiac
• Phantom of the Opera
• The Incredibles
• Cars
• Bambi
• The Little Mermaid
  

Movies I Have Seen & Are Worth Watching Again:

• Titanic
  
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Motorcycle Diaries
• The Notebook
• Requiem for a Dream
• A Clockwork Orange
• Bring It On
• Shrek
• Sex and the City
• Harry Potter
• Cube
  

Well, there we go I guess. That's all I can think of for right now. I know there are more that have crossed my mind in the past few days, but my brain has pretty much shut off for the night. I guess I'm not complaining -- as long as the brain is off in its own world, the stress level is down! :)

Hopefully we can actually get through a fair number of these films within the next year or so -- I really feel like I need to expand my movie watching! Granted, it would probably be a more intellectually stimulating idea for me to expand my book reading, but I'm cool with this for now!

Maybe I'll actually write a "real" post soon. Don't get your hopes up, though ;)

Movies, Movies, Movies!

So Kimberley and I had this idea the other night, basically we decided that we need to watch more movies together, since there are some she hasn't seen that I have, and some she's seen that I haven't or that neither of us have seen. We thought it would be a good idea to start up a list, or two lists in this case--one for her one for me--that we'll add to and modify and such so that we can watch movies accordingly. Maybe even do something like a movie night ever week over the summer, gah how amazing would that be?! So seeing that she's in class right now for another little while I figured I would start mine up! I'll split it up into two categories 1.) Movies I've seen that I think she should see and 2.) Movies I'd like to see with her that I/we haven't seen before

My Picks (in no particular order):

• Fight Club
• Star Wars Trilogy (original)
• Indiana Jones Trilogy
• The Goonies
  
• The Sandlot
  
• Various Disney movies she missed
  
• Men in Black
• 300
• Love Actually
  
• Starship Troopers
• The Terminator I and II
  
• Childs Play
  
• The Matrix Trilogy
• E.T.
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
• It's a Wonderful Life
• A Christmas Story
  
• Close Encounters with the Third Kind
• Back to the Future
• Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
• Rush Hour 1-2
• Chronicles of Riddick
• Pitch Black
• The Mummy (all three)
• Edward Scissorhands
  
• Contact
  
• Interview with a Vampire

She's seen/neither of us

• Donnie Darko
  
• Titanic (we've both seen it but I wanna see it with her!)
  
• Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
• Wall-E
• Mamma Mia
• Choke
• Twilight
• Sex and the City
• The Spirit
  
• Sweeney Todd
  
• Donnie Darko
• Brokback Mountain

That's a pretty good list so far I think, even if we had all the time in the world there's no way we'd be able to do all of these, but it's a start neh? I'm hoping she'll post her list as well, and then from there we can make a plan! Naturally this list will expand, and decrease when and if we see things. That's all I can think of right now though.

Travel

I seem to forgot to mention in our little introduction that travel is another one of my absolute passions along with reading. Although I'm only 20 I feel like I have a lot of experience with travel, I know several people that have more naturally, but yeah, I'd like to share with everyone.

All my life growing up, at least til I was maybe 15 or 16 my mom and I went to California almost every summer. Our usual destination is a little town on the coast called Laguna Beach, and indeed I remember the first time I saw the ocean. As you drive along the highway you reach this set of mountains, I have no idea what they're called, but on the other side of them is Laguna Beach. So you're going through these mountains, can't see anything but trees and the winding road, before suddenly around a bend BAM it opens up and there she is. I don't really know how to describe it to be honest, I don't have the vocabulary that's for sure, but it's beautiful. Of course from there we'd make trips up to Disney Land or down to San Diego. It was a really good time, and I really hope to offer that to my kids. I've also been to Seattle--actually that was the first time I flew by myself (my mom had flown up on an earlier flight)--New York, and Orlando, and recently Boston and San Francisco. So it's like I've been to the four corners of the US but not so much the middle. Well, Las Vegas, and some places in Colorado, but no where else in the US save airports. Now that I'm a little older though I would really like to see more of the United States, especially with Kimberley. More on that later though. 

I had my first international trip the summer before junior year of high school. Somehow I got accepted into a program called People to People Ambassador Program. We went from Rome, up through Italy into Austria, followed by Switzerland, and lastly Paris. It was supper fast, three weeks for all those places, but all in all a great introduction to the world. It was also how eventually Kim and I met, so that was seriously one of the best outcomes of it. Next on my international hot list, har har, was Puerto Vallarta, Mexico my senior year. It wasn't Europe that's for sure, but it was fun I suppose. First "tropical" place I had ever been, and stuff over there is damn cheap, and the other plus was seeing my family. No, I'm not Mexican you damn racists, my uncle was down there teaching ESL at one of the colleges. At that point I hadn't seen him in years so it was really nice, even though today I realize things about him that are less than favorable. Oi vay family haha. 

Now most recently, I guess you would call it my senior trip, I went around the world. Gosh talk about a dream for someone with such an abnormally high degree of wander lust. Overall it lasted 6 weeks--a week or so in each of the 6 countries I went to--still sorta short, but by the end I was lonely and tired! So the trip went like this:

Boston, Mass. --> Reykjavik, Iceland --> Paris, France --> Rome, Italy (with a day trip down to Naples) --> Bangkok, Thailand --> Singapore, Singapore --> Hong Kong, Hong Kong --> San Francisco, Cali.

I had one hell of a time I must say. Granted I was freaked out in Asia, but I learned a lot and I really want to travel more in Asia in the future, but I definitely need someone with me... coughKimcough. I could go on and on about my trip/trips and maybe sometime in the future I'll share some stories and pictures from it.  I know Kimberley will share one in particular from Italy gah. And there are a few I want to share too, but I have other things I wanna say here. 

As I alluded to earlier I really want to travel with Kimberley more and seeing that this is our blog I think this is a perfect place to kinda plan or at least put things in motion. Sure we're going to have to start small, we both need to see New Mexico more anyway--we really wanna go down to Carlsbad Caverns for example--but that's a start anyway. Maybe we could even hit up White Sands and Roswell, as of yet I don't think she knows of my obsession with UFOs and Aliens hehe surprise :). Maybe even to Colorado or Phoenix which is pretty cheap. I'm thinking road trips are the way to go at first, besides I've never really been on one and with her it would be epic! Then maybe we could expand outward from there, California, Vegas--seeing as we're almost 21--maybe even Mexico! 

When we finally expand to the "world" there are a few places for sure I want to go with her; first and foremost Italy and France. Italy because it's honestly one of my favorite countries, I love the food, I love the people, and I love the language. Since I've been there a couple times it would be a perfect place to start out international travel. France because, although it sucks on your own and the people are awful, it is the country of lovee.. especially Paris! I really did like Paris, overall, but it really is somewhere you need to go with someone. While we're in the neighborhood I think we should probably hit up London just because I've never been there and she's been there twice! Psh mr. traveller over here and I haven't even been to London! From there I dunno, I loved Iceland, so maybe there, and to be honest I've always wanted to go to Poland--which is my ancestral home so to speak--maybe a couple other eastern European countries after we've romped around southern Europe.  I specifically didn't mention Spain because more than likely we will be going for a semester or two in a year! More on that later though. 

Asia is probably far in the future, but lets just throw some places out there shall we? Definitely India after the epic movie Slumdog Millionaire. And for sure Singapore, since that was by far my favorite Asian country that I visited, and maybe even Bangkok when we're more comfortable in Asia. Ah and quite honestly I have always wanted to go to Japan, another obsession I'm not sure she knows about, Tokyo, Kyoto, Okinawa and the works. For sure Australia and New Zealand! Hmm I think China would be really neat too, I mean I've been to Hong Kong, but inner China, man what an experience that would be!

Others not super high on the list: 

Greece, Turkey, Cuba, South American countries, Egypt, Morocco, maybe even some places in the Middle East! 

Also I feel like this post has been all over the place, usually I'm more.. concise.. but this is just kinda getting things out there ya know? I know for sure we'll post more detailed plans here. Perhaps I'll even make some detailed posts on countries/continents. 

An Introduction...

Bonjour!

I guess, since this is our very first blog post, we need to sort of introduce ourselves... and our blog. Chances are you already know us, but I'd venture to say you don't know what atychiphobia is. We didn't either, but now we do (kinda like Bill Nye the Science Guy!) Um, yeah... Atychiphobia is the fear of failure. We kind of decided upon it for two reasons. One, we both are somewhat atychiphobic and two, we thought it was a damn cool word. So there you go.

Together, we are an interesting boyfriend-girlfriend type "couple" who have completely opposite opinions on everything. It's likely that this will just be a series of alternating e-arguments with each other, but I guess that's part of the fun. This is Ryan and really we aren't complete opposites.. I mean a little bit but yeahhh. So you'll easily be able to tell that we're different, seeings as she's uber formal and I'm well... not... but hell, opposites attract.

As individuals, we are Kimberley and Ryan.

I'm Kimberley, a twenty-year-old student at UNM. I have ridiculously high aspirations... a double major in biology and Spanish, a possible "double minor" in chemistry and psychology... all with hopes of getting into medical school in a few years. Plus, I want to learn at least five foreign languages... for fun. And yes, I actually find that fun. Anyways, once I'm a med student, I hope to specialize in pediatric oncology for some very specific reasons. I guess the main reason is that I don't want to see little kids suffer from something out of their control.

Enough with the "serious" stuff... Everything else there is to know about me is pretty boring. My favorite colours are green and purple, I like to play tennis, I stress about anything and everything you can imagine, I'm semi-phobic of spiders, crawly insects, flying insects, and public speaking, and on most days, I love life. It just gets masked by my super high stress levels a lot of the time. She also forgot to mention how much of a perfectionist she is; it's cool, but hard on such a slacker like me.. seeing as I can't spell.. speak.. or, well, do anything really. Should be entertaining for you guys though that's for sure.

I really have no specific reason for wanting to have a blog with Ryan except for the fact that it might be another good way to help me procrastinate on homework. And because I think he'll be nicer on a blog he shares with me ;) I guess it's time to find out...

So yeah, this is Ryan now. This will be our only "together" post, but since it's an intro it works out better this way. I'm also a student at UNM, older than Kimberley :), but she's totally more mature than I am. So the reason we started a blog was for shits and giggles, but it will enhance our "relationship" maybe.. or it'll completely destroy it. We'll see! I also plan on going to med school, although I won't be making it for years and years and years--if ever--but I'm gonna major in Psychology, possibly double major in Psych and Bio if I don't slack off too much. Then go to med school for Psychiatry, I love the crazies what can I say? My fav colors are blue and green, I love music, and Miss Kimberley was the one who introduced me to the pure joy of indie :) anddd oh I'm a huge bookworm.. really a bookanaconda or bookwhale--I'm not a fattie though. I tend to rant and rave and be racist and such.. but Kim won't let me do that here so it'll be really tame I hope.. well not on your standards, but on mine. Kimberley has learned to "deal with it"--not really but she tries--and I hope you will too.

Well that's our introduction and we'll be posting more hopefully.. though school sucks.. so maybe not soon. Be expecting a post from Ryan first :)