This would have been a great time to own a camera, which sadly I do not. So there are no pictures here.

This evening I spent a couple of hours at the Overman Student Center where the Korean students (and others) held a really nifty cultural show, aptly named Korean Culture Day. I admit that I originally went to watch the Taekwondo, but the entire show turned out to be fun and worth watching.

It began with a (very pretty) young woman talking about Korea with a slide show for pictures. It was quick information about their capital, a couple of their popular foods, tourist attractions, and similar info. She made a couple of jokes which got people to laugh during the presentation, and then held a quick & simple quiz at the end to give away prizes for the correct answers. I didn’t get the see one, but she described them as “simple Korean souvenirs”.

There was also a drawing where they gave away some more similar prizes. It started slow at first because the person with the number that they drew was not in the crowd. Yikes! That was rude, leaving like that hm? So they drew another number and at first it seemed like no one was going to respond again, then one of the young Korean women behind me said, “Oh!”. Not only was she really cute, but she was absolutely tickled about having her number drawn! Hah. I swear, it was similar to someone being called down on The Price Is Right – it was so cute the way she ran up there all happy, repeating “Oh!” and similar things. lol

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This has been the strangest non-painful experience that I’ve had since the beginning of this semester. The ab muscles, they like to cramp up. :-/

It’s been the oddest thing, and it’s happened two or three times. The most recent was while doing ab crunches on the exercise ball during step aerobics. It feels as though the muscle is literally turning over or otherwise going (for lack of a better description) “upside down”.

It’s not painful, it just feels really, really weird. It probably would be painful if I allowed the cramping to go on for more than a few seconds, but so far it’s been very easy to correct. I simply sit up very straight (sometimes leaning back) and that seems to straighten the muscle out and it stops trying to cramp at that point.

I wonder if this is a part of the abs growing or if it’s a reflection of my doing something wrong. It always occurs while doing crunches or very similar activities, and I’m not doing them any differently from how I have always done them.

Anyway, it’s just an odd bit of fitness info that I thought I’d share. If you have any experience with this then I’d certainly enjoy hearing from you.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: fitness, muscles, muscle cramps, exercise, exercising, work out, workout

It shows my cynicism that this surprised me, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing that makes me stop and go, “huh… wow”. When you consider everything that happens to the people over there and in addition to that all of the problems that my country has caused them one would think that they would have no reaction to this. Or even hear about it to begin with.

Then they turn around and do this. Frankly I find it quite touching.

Here is one of the best quotes that I’ve ever seen come out of Iraq:

“We denounce the shooting in Virginia Tech because it targeted students of knowledge,” said Hassan Abdul-Karim, a junior engineering major who said he has lost two friends to deadly insurgent attacks in his neighborhood of Baghdad. “Al-Qaida in Iraq does the same thing here in an effort to make ignorance prevail so its ideology can win.”

Right on.

Hm. An enlightening way to start the day.

~Steph

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Technorati Tags: iraq, VT, Virginia tech, wow

My fitness is improving, and this morning I increased the amount of weights and/or added additional weight lifting to my routine.

The leg press has progressed to 105 pounds (47.6 kilos). Since I’m too lazy to get up, swap weights, and sit back down, I decided to work the calf muscles at 90 pounds, as well. That will be my new weight setting for each.

I also now set the grip exercise to approximately 90 pounds (40.8 kilos). I forget specifically, but I’m sure that it’s around 90

I’ve also added additional arm and shoulder exercises. Most of them are simply copying what we do (to a much lesser extent) in step aerobics, and one or two others are to work the arms in other ways.

Oh! Speaking of step aerobics, I’ve began using heavier weights in that class. They’re still light compared to what I use in the weight room, but at least I can tell that I’m holding something.

As for the weights in the weight room, I use between 12 pounds and 25 pounds (5.4 kilos to 11.3 kilos) depending on the workout. Of course, the new workouts that I added today are the ones that use the 12lb weights.

Here is my routine (recalled from memory). As always, everything is in two sets of 10 (so each exercise is repeated 20 times with a 30ish second break between reps):

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As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve been using PayPerPost for some time now. It has been an interesting way to make some money, to be sure, and strangely enough my blog has not imploded because of it. Huh, imagine that!

Nor has PayPerPost despite the naysayers… which is an entirely separate post. In fact, they have recently acquired another company! They just keep chugging along at full speed, and in typical PayPerPost fashion they are keeping the details secret until later.

They seem to really enjoy creating speculation on blogs, not that I can blame them; that’s their business model after all. It’s also kind of fun for us to speculate.

So who could they have purchased? I have no idea, but I am going to take a safe bet and say that it’s an advertisement company. Yeah, that’s not sticking my neck out too far is it? Alright, so here are a few random guesses:

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I’ve managed to get sick so I didn’t do a heck of a lot today.

This evening’s step class was essentially skipped by going to the cardio room for 15 minutes before deciding that even a light “ride” on the bike machine wasn’t worth it.

Yoga was much more relaxing this evening. We all took a short walk and tonight was used as an “extra credit” class to make up for any days that we’ve missed thus far this year. Frankly I’m glad for it for a couple of reasons, one of those being that I was just too drained (from said sickness) to do anything anyway.

So.. yeah, it’s an all around “blah” evening.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: fitness, exercise, fat ass, calories

In May Be Offline For Awhile I explained a very stressful situation that I am experiencing with my living situation. I finally have an “official” word from the landlords.

Their explanation?

I didn’t mention it here (I don’t think that I did, anyway), but we began looking for another place to live long before this incident. The reason for that is that this house has become somewhat unstable. At first, cracks began to appear in the walls (some of them appeared with enough noise to cause someone to jump). Eventually an entire chunk fell off of the ceiling.

It didn’t produce a hole directly into the attic, but the boards were plainly visible and a large amount of black soot-like material rained down.

This was all reported to our landlords and they sent someone out to fix it. Their version of fixing the hole in the ceiling was to place a large white board over the opening, which was nailed directly to the ceiling. A band aid? If you wish to call it that..

So obviously this all prompted us to begin the process of looking for another place to live. It also ties into the explanation that was given to us by our landlords… the rotten bastards that they are.

Apparently, they are claiming that they can’t properly fix the house until it is empty. They need to fix the ceilings, the walls, and the black soot-like material has been impossible to get out of the carpet. So they want to address that, too.

Okay, fine. That’s all fine and dandy. So what the frick is up with slapping us with a 3 day eviction notice without any warning what so ever??? They couldn’t be bothered to give someone a warning, or to talk to them like people?

It’s bullshit, is what it is, and obviously they’re just coming up with excuses at this point. Mind you, they were never informed that we were already looking around for a place to move to.

So there you have it. Their explanation. They’re selfish, self-centered bastards who don’t give a rat’s ass about their current residents. “Let’s dump ‘em on the streets, woo, that’ll be fun!”

I’ll stop here before I start expressing how I really feel.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: rentals, renting, housing, homes, living, land lords

Observation: It’s April 13^th, a Friday, and it’s 40^o F. (4.4^o C.), and it’s hailing outside. This is some seriously farked up weather.

Well, today started on a very positive note at least. I turned in my scholarship reward forms, so that’s an extra $500 each semester this Fall. I also completed my class schedule for the Fall semester.

I’ve mentioned from time to time that I’ve wanted to restart my karate lessons. The same instructors from the local dojo also leads the karate club at my university. I’m cautiously optimistic to say that I’ve enrolled in the beginners karate class for this Fall. I am still concerned about my hip muscle, but I will continue working on that through the summer.

Other than that, my classes are going to be:

• Abnormal Psychology
Of course! This is the class that I’ve been after since I enrolled at the university.
• Drawing I
I have always wished that I could draw. This isn’t going to make me into an artist, but it could help get me started.
• Enviromental Life Science
This is one of those required general education courses. It was either this or Biology 101 or similar classes. ELS has a laboratory requirement as well, so it’s actually two classes in one. ELS is my biggest concern for Fall, especially since it weighs in at 4 credit hours.
• Lifetime Fitness Concepts
LFC is a class that covers nutrition, exercise, and other fitness topics. It’s a good primer.

So, next Fall – at least for now – appears to be set. Yayness.

Edit: oh, and I’ll still have time to take on a job… if I’m not swamped in homework

~Steph

Technorati Tags: college, university, semesters

UPDATE: Thanks to a money loan from friends and family, this MAY not be the urgent issue that it originally was. I will still be moving soon, but… hopefully.. it seems like the major catastrophe was averted.

So what happened? I’ll give the short version.

We’ve had an amicable relationship with our landlords for quite some time. They’ve always been decent folks… or seemed to be. So this was a complete punch to the face from out of no where.

When I got home today I was presented with an eviction notice. No warning what so ever. AT ALL. Just *BAM*, gtfo. I’ve not tore up the house, the yard, and rent has been late only once (around December / Jan.). So I dunno wtf their problem is. To make matters even worse they refused to talk about it. Seriously, what the fuck???

Well I’m definitely moving, but it seems like I’ll now have 30 days to do so. That’s a hell of a lot better than just two or three days from out of no where.

There are all sort of rotten things that I want to say about those people right now, but I won’t.

~Steph

I can’t get into details due to privacy reasons, but I may be off-line for awhile. This is extremely sudden and SHOULD be illegal. We’re trying to figure something out, but we don’t know how this is going to turn out.

So. Be back later with an update, if I can. – Updated.

~Steph