One more day until Thanksgiving break!

Not that it's really going to be much of a break for me anyway. I get to spend my time cooking, studying, doing homework, getting Christmas decorations set up...all that fun. I did scale back the Thanksgiving menu since it's just the three of us and John doesn't eat anything really except turkey and bread. So making dressing, potato salad, and the whole shebang is really pointless unless I want my ass to expand even more than it already has. I'm going to make turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, sweet potatoes, and whatever veg Chance picks out of the freezer. Then I will throw a Sara Lee pumpkin pie in the oven, and thaw out a chocolate pie for John and call it a day.

Friday John is going to attempt the Black Friday shopping. Apparently he had a really good time with me last year doing it and he wanted to do it again this year. I'm gonna stay home with the kiddo while he has all of the shopping fun. I may go later in the day to see if I can find what I want to get him if I can't find it online at a good price but we'll see.

I have one more full week of classes until finals. Can't even begin to tell you how happy this makes me. But I will also be having a math exam on Tuesday, probably a history quiz, and a sociology exam sometime next week as well so it's going to be a loooong week. The week after, I'll have a comprehensive final in math (yuck) and a non comprehensive final in history. No final in English, just show up and watch a movie, and no final in sociology unless I really bomb my next exam and want to take one to bring my grade up.

Amazingly, I actually managed to read a book the other day! It's been awhile so it was nice to finally pick something up and finish it for once, rather than read a page, put it down....read a page, put it down. It was a decent book. Ended pretty abruptly so it's one of those where you have to go get the next in the series if you are that desperate to know what happened. Luckily I'm too busy to be "that desperate" at the moment, so I can hold off for a little bit.

I think after Thanksgiving, I will start my food log again. I'm slowly trying to get back into the workout habit. I'd like to get back in the shape I was in when John came home from the last deployment. Or even better, I'd love to wear the size 6 jeans I was able to wear during deployment #2. It's funny though.....I spent so much time in the gym in 2008, and at the time really didn't see much of a difference and now I'm like "well damn, I guess I really was in shape". Now that's just a distant memory. Everything I lost came back and with interest. So I've started walking. Friday I did five miles. Maybe .25 of that was a jog. Didn't have any water with me so I figured I would save myself the embarrassment of either throwing up or passing out, so I had to ixnay on the running-hey. Sunday we did two miles, or maybe it was three? John had to work so I had to wait on him to get home before I could go and it gets dark sooooo early here, so we did what we could before the sun started to dip behind the mountains. Then today I did three miles but I also started using the Running Mate program. I happened to come across it the other day when looking for podcasts to load on my Zune that would help me pass the time at school between classes (on the rare days I actually get any time between classes). Basically it's a program for people probably much like myself who can hardly run if their life depended on it, to gradually work up to being able to run a 5k. Best part about it, it's free. Week 1 is a 27 minute program of warming up, 2 minute intervals of jogging, 3 minutes walking, repeating the process a few times, then a cool down. It's nice having a "coach" there even when I am by myself. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to keep resisting the urge to weigh myself and just go off how my clothes are fitting. We'll see how long that lasts. is the link to the program if anyone is interested.

The vitamins are helping. I got a decent amount of sleep but was yawning all day long. It wasn't until my 3rd class that I realized I forgot to take my vitamins. Lesson learned. Won't make the same mistake tomorrow. Have to go in at 10am to catch my math teacher to pick up my graded homework so I can study it for the exam next week. There's also a few things I wanted to go over with her to make sure I understand it for the exam. Then have Sociology at 11am. I hope the nice newspaper fairy leaves me another present tomorrow! The last two times I've been in Soc, there's been a newspaper on my desk when I go in. Love it! Since I only have the one class on MWF, and it's so late in the morning, I never manage to get a paper on those days. I actually enjoy reading the newspaper here in El Paso. Much MUCH more interesting than the paper back in Hinesville lol.

Will be so glad to be out of that math class. My teacher is the best, I just can't stand some of the students. Knowing my luck I'll be stuck in the next math class with them, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of them failed anyway. A couple of them dropped I think. Hmm, wonder why? Then there's one who wouldn't buy a damn book so she is always borrowing from someone to make copies of the pages. She was absent all last week so I thought she dropped (more like HOPED she dropped since she's one of the loud mouths who won't shut up during class). But I guess she didn't do any of the homework since she didn't have a book. She told the teacher she would borrow one and get caught up, but I don't think she should even accept the work since it says in the syllabus, late work isn't accepted since that's how she records our attendance. Anyways, I need to quit while I'm ahead with that rant.


Alright, time to get some sleep. Busy busy days ahead.