Virtual Coffee/Tea on Tuesday

Amy at Lucky Number 13 was gracious enough to extend an open invitation for coffee every Tuesday, so I'm doing Virtual Coffee again today.

And also last week Christi from Grey Umbrella invited me to her blog carnival, Tea on Tuesday. So I'm following up my coffee with a mug of peppermint tea because I felt like otherwise I'd be lying about drinking both of those blogging-related beverages.

It's a perfect day for me to be participating in both of these carnivals, because I have a lot of dumb little announcements to make.

First of all, I have been cast as the Evil Queen in the community theater show of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Well, I'm playing the Evil Queen in two out of the four shows. There were so many people who tried out that there are two separate casts, a Red Cast and a Blue Cast. So accommodating, community theater is. Anyway, I'm in the Blue Cast, which I like because the whole thing makes me think of Red State vs. Blue State, and I'm a Blue State kind of person. Anyway, I am excited to play the bad guy. I think it will allow me to get out a lot of my frustrations. Plus I think I'll get to wear a fun costume. For reference, here's a photo of the queen from the Disney version of Snow White:

Source: disney.families.com. Oh God, please don't come after me for using your photo, Disney. I love Disney! Really!

I think I'll bring in this photo for reference at my eyebrow wax before the show. The cheapy nail place where I sometimes get my eyebrows waxed has a strange poster of different eyebrow styles, and they all have names like "Serenity" or "Prosperity" (suspect something sort of got lost in translation there). I'll be like, "I'll take the 'Evil Queen,' please."

So that's fun. Rehearsals are Friday nights and Saturday mornings for the next two months, so I can never complain about not having something to do on Friday nights again. Actually, I haven't complained about that in a long, long time. I recall the days in high school where I felt like a loser staying home and watching movies on a Friday night. Now, on the rare occasion when I do have something to do on a Friday night, I'm like, "This is really cutting into my DVD-watching time."

In other news, the training for the outdoor triathlon is ON! I was talking to my stepdad, who said that he and my mom were discussing the fact that if they were to make a list of all the people they knew who would train for a triathlon, I would be very far down on it. And that just makes me even more stubborn about doing it. Nothing motivates me more than wanting to prove somebody else wrong. To be fair, they were not saying that they thought I couldn't do it. They were just saying it seemed a little out-of-character for me. And, since they know me well, they were probably just telling me that because they knew it would motivate me to do the triathlon and prove them wrong. So it's on, bitches. (That was not me calling two out of my four parents bitches, I swear. That was just me adding a bad word for emphasis.)

Oh, and my trainer from the gym said that if I do end up doing an outdoor triathlon, she would come downtown and cheer for me. Isn't she the sweetest?

So, speaking of the gym, it's March 1, which means it's the first day of the Group Fitness Challenge at the gym. To recap, this is where you can do 20 group fitness classes (as recorded on a sticker chart) to earn a t-shirt. As I've said, it's not about the t-shirt, it's about creating goals and personal challenges, and mixing up my workouts because I am so dang sick of the treadmill.

Anyway, fitting in five classes a week means I'm gonna have to double up some days. Some days there are two classes I want to take and some days there are zero. Let me make this clear: I am very bad at doubling up. Number One, working out twice a day is exhausting. Number Two, it's really a big fat drag to go to the gym twice a day. Twice a day in the stupid gym parking lot, twice a day of dragging Nathan, twice a day of showering/changing afterward, twice a day of that stupid locker room. But I must get the t-shirt. I MUST! So this morning I lifted weights, and this evening I'm going back for Steppin' Up. (I actually really like Step, even though it's totally 80's. The teacher herself told us she was trained in Reebok Step Fitness or something like that. Reebok. Remember when that was a cool brand of shoes?)

And really I'm only typing up the minute details of my workouts because I figure I'll be more accountable if I put it on the Internet. Fun story, I typed out a Word doc of my workout plan for the week, and as I end up skipping various things, I just delete them from the document. So by the end of the week, I will have been 100% successful at achieving everything on that document.

Speaking of goals, do you remember how I said on Sunday that my plan for the week is to do two "feel good" things each day? For those who are just joining us, I am defining feel-good things as being from one of the following four categories: (1) Acts of kindness and/or charity, (2) Fun activities outside the home, (3) Legitimate, professional-type things, such as applying for jobs or writing a post on Technorati, and (4) Activities that allow me to connect with friends or family.

Well, I think I'm averaging out to two things per day. Sunday I took Nathan to indoor family swim at the pool and then went over to Katie's to watch the Oscars. I think those count as categories (2) and (4), respectively. Yesterday I went with my friend Sarah and her kids to McDonald's playland for a special birthday lunch for Nathan, and I counted that as both (2) and (4), which was probably cheating because I doubled up. And lest you think I'm ignoring charities, I did buy some stuff for Nathan's preschool class collection of supplies for Ronald McDonald House, and some bleach and cat food for the Humane Society. Plus I finally updated my email address for the volunteer list at the local Cancer Support Center, so I am putting other volunteer opportunities in the pipeline, too. So if nothing else, I'm glad that this week's goal is getting me to do more for charities. Oh, but I'm sort of falling behind in the "professional" activities category.

Again, I'm just typing this stuff up because I want to have an accurate record. (Why I want to have an accurate record of the minutiae of my everyday life, I don't know.) Also to encourage anybody else who's sort of bored or down in the dumps to come up with a goal for feel-good activities of his/her own.

So, overall, I feel energized, overwhelmed, tired, and excited. (I know it seems weird to be energized and tired at the same time, but such is life.) And I'm excited about the sun. And so is Leia:

Leia herself was once a humble Humane Society pet. If you're interested in a pet, please think adoption first!