Category Archives: Fun Stuff

My First Meal In My Instant Pot (or I’m Loving This!)

Posted on May 24, 2018 | Comments Off on My First Meal In My Instant Pot (or I’m Loving This!)

I wrote recently about how I got an Instant Pot. I had seen so many posts about why it is a miracle cooking device and have had friends rave about it. But I really wondered if it was for me since I’m a pretty lazy cook. But right before I got sick I decided to get one and see if it lived up to the hype.

Because I ordered it right before being sick, it spent about a week living in the box it came in and then about another week out of the box stored in my kitchen. But I set a goal that I wanted to try to use it at least once this week. I’m not always good about using new tools and appliances as soon as I get them and I wasn’t going to allow myself to do that this time.

While it did come with a little recipe book, I also know that there are hundreds of cookbooks that are specifically for the Instant Pot. I get cookbooks from the library so I can look at them for free and then scan the recipes that I love. But I was looking at cookbooks late at night and realized that I could get the e-books and make things even easier for me. I got the e-books and instead of loading them on my Kindle I put them on my iPad. Then I could read the cookbooks and take screenshots of any recipes I liked! I don’t know how exactly I will be organizing them or if I will be printing them out, but at least they are available to me now and they look much cleaner as a screenshot than they do when I scan them.

There were a bunch of recipes that I saved and some of them look amazing. But for my first meal in my Instant Pot I wanted something that seemed simple and didn’t have a ton of ingredients. I was a bit nervous about using it and I didn’t need a weird recipe to add to the stress. But in my saved ones I found a recipe for sausage and peppers that didn’t have a ton of things in it. And it pretty much was a recipe that said to put everything in and turn it on. I know you can brown food in the Instant Pot, but I didn’t need to do that so it seemed easy enough to me. So I got all the ingredients and made it the other day.

I knew that the time on the recipes wasn’t always accurate since it didn’t take into account the time it takes to get to pressure and whatever time it took to release the pressure, so I started making it a bit earlier than I thought I might need to. But it was still awesome to start making dinner at 5:30 and know it would totally be done by 6:30 (unlike my slow cooker which I need to start in the morning to have food at dinner time).

All I had to do to for the recipe was to dump a few cans of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce into the pot along with some water and spices. Then I put the Italian sausage on top and sliced a bunch of peppers and put that on the very top. It looked really pretty before I was put the lid on.

I was a bit nervous putting the lid on because I wasn’t totally sure I was doing everything right. And even though I knew it could take a lot of time to come to pressure I was worried that I did something wrong because it wasn’t switching over to the timer (which is what happens when there is enough pressure to start cooking). But after about 15 minutes it did switch to the timer and I started to relax a bit more.

This had to cook for 25 minutes and while I didn’t watch it the entire time I kept glancing over to it to make sure nothing crazy was happening. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but because there are so many different warnings I figured I should keep a bit of a watchful eye on it. But everything was fine and when the timer was up I was ready to release the steam.

So many of the warnings in the instruction booklet were about steam burns. I had asked a friend about releasing the steam and she said she protected her hand with a towel and used a spatula to turn the dial to release the steam. I did just that and while I jumped at first because the noise scared me, I was fine and everything was working just the way it should.

I was so excited about everything working that I totally forgot to take an after picture. But it looked amazing and like I had it cooking for hours instead of 25 minutes. The only thing I will do differently next time I make it will be to brown the sausages before cooking it. They weren’t bad, but they just didn’t look pretty and they could have used a bit more of a snap to them. But considering this is the first time making this recipe and the first time I used the Instant Pot, I think I did pretty great!

And this was pretty easy to clean too. It is nice with my slow cooker that I can use the liners so there is almost no clean up. I just have to clean the lid. But this has the insert that was really the only thing that needed to be cleaned and it wasn’t that tough to do it. I also wiped down the inside of the lid, but I didn’t scrub it (it doesn’t seem like people do that, unless I’m wrong). There are ways to use silicone liners inside an Instant Pot, but I don’t think I’ll be getting them because it wasn’t that bad.

I’m so glad I got my Instant Pot and I used it pretty soon after getting it. I know that I’ll be using this on a somewhat regular basis and it will totally help me with cooking. I know I’ve said that several times, but I think the convenience factor of not having to start cooking until almost time to eat will help me a lot too. With my slow cooker, if I think about it once I’ve already started work it’s too late to do it. Now, I can go to the store after work to get ingredients and still have time to make it and eat at a decent hour!

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Default ThumbnailI’m A Lazy Cook (or I’m a Fake Vegetarian) Default ThumbnailStill Cooking (or It’s Almost A Habit) Default ThumbnailVegan Fudge (or Another Super Easy Recipe) Default ThumbnailStock The Crock (or I Hope This Gets Me Back On Track With Cooking) Default ThumbnailCooking Routine (or Adding Flavor) Default ThumbnailThanksgiving Meal Prep (or Hopefully Everything Tastes Great)

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Continuing To Get Back To Me (I Needed My Hair Done!)

Posted on May 23, 2018 | 1 comment

It had been a very long time since I had my hair done. I’m not always the best about remembering to get it done as often as I’d like, but I’m usually pretty good about going at least every 3 months (in an idea world, it would be done every 4-6 weeks). But somehow I let over 5 months go by without getting my hair cut and colored and I knew I needed to fix that.

I also knew that I wanted to work on feeling more like myself after being sick. I still wasn’t totally better, but I know making myself look more like me at my best does help me feel better. There’s also something about feeling like you are pampering yourself a bit to help make you feel a bit less sick. I had gotten my eyebrows done earlier in the week and getting my hair done was just completing my transformation from being super sick to being me.

I’m lucky that my hairstylist is a good friend of mine. While she started first as my hairstylist, I now look at her as friend first and stylist second. But that also means that when I see her to have her do my hair it ends up being a lot of gossip and catch up time. I like that and I’m always at her house (where she does my hair) for several hours since we just end up spending a lot of time hanging out after she’s done with my hair.

I went into getting my hair done not really looking my best. I had washed my hair after my workout, but I didn’t put any product in it and didn’t bother to dry it. I just threw it up in a clip to let it air dry while I worked. There was no need to do anything to it since it was going to get done (but it needed to be clean). My before pictures are always with super frizzy hair looking a bit crazy, but you can also see how long it had gotten!

The ends were getting very scraggily and it needed to be cut and refreshed. But more importantly it needed to be colored! My hair has been going gray since I was about 20, but it used to just be a few gray hairs here and there. Now, it’s probably over 10% gray. And in my dark hair, it totally shows! I do have a product I can use to help cover the gray hair between getting it done, but I forget to use it from time to time and I hate how much my gray hair sticks out! The process of going gray has been getting quicker and quicker and I’m hoping it slows down soon. But I know in reality that it’s probably just going to keep getting more gray at a more rapid pace.

While I was having my hair done, we caught up on so many different parts of our lives. Because I post about online dating on here a lot, most of my friends are pretty caught up but they still love hearing the stories in person. And I have to admit that the stories I have are so crazy and interesting. If someone else had my life I’d want to know all about what’s going on! We also talked about her upcoming summer plans since her kids are almost done with school for the year. We’ve always tried to meet up in Tahoe during the summer, but unfortunately I won’t be in Tahoe at the same time as her family. But I have hope that one day our schedules will coordinate.

And while I was getting my hair done I also got to catch up with her kids. I hadn’t seen them in forever either and it’s crazy how much they’ve grown! And both of them were excited to tell me about the things they have been learning in school and how happy they were that school is almost done for the summer. I joked to them that weekends and summers don’t exist for adults and they thought it was funny that my schedule for my job doesn’t change just because it is summer.

Once my hair was done, it looked so amazing!

I had about 3 inches cut off, but it’s still pretty long. My hair grows quickly so I don’t think I cut off more than what grew in the past 5 months. But it feels so much healthier now that the ends are gone and it’s freshly dyed. Since I dye my hair a darker shade, it seems to coat my hair and make it feel a bit thicker (which is good since my hair is so much thinner now compared to how it was when I was younger).

But most importantly is that having my hair done just made me feel better about myself both mentally and physically. Things haven’t been that great for me lately and I needed this silly ego boost. I feel pretty again and not someone who was just sick and dealing with a guy who wasn’t treating me the way I deserve to be treated. While I’m still dealing with both being sick and feeling sad about the guy, at least I look pretty while dealing with it.

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Default ThumbnailTime For A Bit Of A Change (or Getting Chopped) Default ThumbnailGetting A New Look (or Two Attempts To Dye My Hair) Default ThumbnailAt Home Hair (or I Haven’t Done This Since I Was A Teenager) Default ThumbnailCoconut Oil Hair Mask (or Trying A Simple DIY Beauty Trick) Default ThumbnailGetting Pushed Into Changing (or A Story About My Hair) Default ThumbnailAlmost Deja Vu (or Not My Usual Hair Appointment)

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A Night Of Lena Hall (or Art Of The Audition)

Posted on May 22, 2018 | Comments Off on A Night Of Lena Hall (or Art Of The Audition)

I’m pretty open about the fact that I love musicals. I’m so lucky that I have a group of friends who love them too and they have become a regular part of my life. Musicals just make me so happy so I always love when I can have a night out enjoying a musical or seeing an incredible Broadway performer live!

And last week, I had the opportunity to see Lena Hall! I’ve actually seen Lena Hall perform live twice. She played both main roles in Hedwig during the run in LA and my friend Michelle and I went to see her play both (one way was in our season tickets and the other was something we bought on our own). So when I saw that Lena Hall was performing in LA, I immediately texted Michelle and we rushed to get tickets! Because we were purchasing them so early, we were able to do the cheap seats plus there was a discount code. So it ended up being a pretty affordable show for being such an amazing thing!

We knew going into the show that we were required to get at least dinner at the venue. I appreciated that they had the option to order dinner instead of having a drink minimum since I don’t really drink. Michelle and I got there early so we could eat and get our seats. We were seated at a high top table that was off to the side, but we were still pretty close to the stage. But we did realize that we were sitting right next to the dressing room so we knew Lena Hall would at least briefly be near us. We tried to order quickly so we wouldn’t be eating during the show and we both got their goat cheese pesto burger.

Michelle had read some not-so-good reviews about the food, but this burger was awesome! There was so much flavor and it was perfect! The fries weren’t as good (they were supposed to be garlic parmesan fries but neither of us tasted any garlic or parmesan), but it was still a pretty good meal. And we decided to splurge and got some dessert too. We couldn’t decide between the apple tart and the cheesecake, so we got both and we each took half.

After that, we were both so full but ready for the show to start! There was an opening act that played a couple of songs before Lena Hall came out. This was kind of like a one-woman show and it was called “Art of the Audition: From Falling Apart to Nailing the Part”. She told stories about various times that she auditioned starting when she was a child and sang the songs that she sang at those auditions. For example, when she was a teen and auditioned for Cats she sang “Dance 10, Looks 3” from A Chorus Line (which is a pretty hilarious choice).

Most of the songs that she sang as examples of what she auditioned with were songs that I was familiar with. And the stories she had were really funny. Many of them were similar to things I’ve experienced at auditions and were really relatable. She never tried to put on an act that she knew what she was doing or was better than others. She was just honest about how terrifying it can be to audition, especially when the part is one you really want.

She also discussed about how she struggled with trying to figure out what stereotype she could fit into since that is something that can be important to understand as an actor. She tried to fit different things and they never were right for her (which I totally get). But once she just was herself, she found the parts that were right for her or fit her type even if it didn’t seem that way on the page.

My favorite story of hers was when she discussed her audition for the Broadway company of Hedwig. She was at the final audition and was told to prepare a joke or a story in character. And she decided to create an entire backstory to her character to explain why she was at the audition and created a world where the character was there to get funding for a crowdfunding campaign. It was such a great story and a really good example of how you sometimes just have to go for it in the audition room. She had no idea if she made the right choice or not, but she made a choice and was memorable. And fortunately she booked the job too!

The show covered stories from when she was a child until recently and it was a pretty varied collection of stories (and the songs that went with the stories were pretty varied too). All of the stories were so funny and if there was no singing I would have still enjoyed the show.

But getting to hear Lena Hall sing was just wonderful. She is such a talented performer and I feel so lucky that I got to see this show since it only was happening for 1 night in LA. I would have loved to see it again but I guess I’ll just have to be on the lookout to see if she returns to LA again.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Night At Pantages (or Hedwig Take 2) Default ThumbnailAudition Horror Stories (or Sometimes I Like Things To Be Boring) Default ThumbnailMaking My Acting Bold (or Feeling Great From An Audition) Default ThumbnailAnother Day Another Audition (or This Is The Life I Love) Default ThumbnailAudition Friends (or The Kindness Of My Competition) Default ThumbnailAudition Fairy (or The Tale Of Two Auditions)

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Getting Back To My Workouts (or Dealing With Not Being 100%)

Posted on May 21, 2018 | Comments Off on Getting Back To My Workouts (or Dealing With Not Being 100%)

After having half a week of workouts off last week due to being sick, I was so ready to get back to Orangetheory! I knew at the beginning of the week that I was  probably a bit weak from taking time off, but I just needed to get back to my normal routine.

On Monday I was still feeling a bit sick and knew my workout was going to have to be a light one with much less intensity than I’m used to. It was a 3 group strength workout, but to be honest my focus on the workout was just to get through it.

I used the bike instead of the treadmill and I really didn’t focus at all at what we were supposed to be doing as far as incline/resistance. I kept my bike at what it usually my base pace resistance and never moved it from that during the 15 minutes I was on it. I had to take breaks to catch my breath or to cough probably every 2-3 minutes, but even doing the bike for 2 minutes was exhausting me. It was shocking how out of shape I felt, but I had to keep telling myself that it wasn’t necessarily being out of shape but still dealing with being sick.

Next I was on the rower where we had rowing and shoulder exercises. We started with a 500 meter row and did decreasing rows for the first half and then for the second half started at 100 meter rows that increased. Between each row, we used the mini-bands on our wrists to strengthen our shoulders. Just like on the bike, I had to take breaks during the rows. I would have loved to have done each row without a break, but I knew that was not going to happen. But I just tried to focus on the fact that I was there instead of what I wasn’t able to do.

And for the last part of class I was on the floor where we had 2 blocks. The first block was squats with weights, hip bridges, deadlifts, and side plank leg lifts. I used lighter weights than normal for my squats and deadlifts and they still felt heavy for me. The hip bridges were a bit tough because of my nose being stuffed up, but I still was able to do them and used a weight during them as well. And in the second block we had the mini-bands on our legs to do suitcase squats with a weight and squat walks. While these were a bit easier for me to breathe during, they were still tough for me to do and I had to take several breaks. This workout was far from being one of my great ones, but it felt great to be back and to be getting back to my normal life.

I was still feeling a bit congested on Wednesday, but I was definitely on my way to getting better. But I still needed to work on my endurance and getting back to normal so I stuck with the bike. This workout was a mix of endurance and power but for my time on the bike I didn’t really focus on that. I again just stuck with the resistance I use as my base resistance on the bike normally and tried to go as long as I could without taking a break. I still needed breaks every few minutes, but it wasn’t as often as I needed them on Monday. Technically we had 5 blocks, 3 as power blocks and 2 as endurance blocks, but I didn’t worry about that since I just wanted to work on my cardio and getting myself to where I was before I was sick.

On the floor, during the 3 blocks that were power based we had rowing blocks. The first 2 blocks were 150 meter rows with squats between each row and the last row was 30 seconds of a push row and 30 seconds of an all out row. For the 150 meter rows, I just worked on not needing a break and fortunately I was able to do that. And for the push and all out row, I just rowed. For the endurance blocks on the floor, the first block was chest presses while laying on the Bosu, sit-ups on the Bosu, and Y-raises using the straps. And the second block was lunges while holding a weight and triceps using a weight. I was so happy to be back to using a weight that I would normally use. I did have to take some breaks to catch my breath or to cough to clear my lungs (I knew I sounded gross but I warned people near me about that), but it was much closer to normal for me than I was expecting.

I was still working on getting better on Friday, plus I saw that the workout was going to be strength based, so I was on the bike again. But even though I go a bit easier on the bike, I did take it up a step compared to the past 2 workouts. I did increase my resistance for push pace, all out pace, and incline times. But I didn’t do a ton of variation with the resistance. I used the same resistance for my push pace resistance and all inclines. I didn’t want to push things too much. But I did increase it more than that for the all out resistance. It’s baby steps towards being back to my normal self. And while it is slower than I would like or expected, at least I am seeing some progress.

On the floor, we had 3 blocks. The first block was mini-band work. We had squats with single leg lifts and lateral squat walks. I was happy that I was able to do both with less difficulty than expected. The single leg lifts aren’t easy and with being congested I was worried I’d have very little balance, but that wasn’t the case. I did have to take more breaks than I would have liked during the block, but I’ve learned that will just be the case while I work on getting better. The second block was bicycle chest presses, lateral raises, and lunges. I was using slightly lighter weights than normal and I struggled with the bicycle presses since I was on my back and it was a little bit more difficult to breathe. But again, I pushed through and did better than expected. We ended with a 4 minute core blast which was definitely not one of my best core blasts. I was tired and starting to realize that I might have overdone it a bit earlier in the workout. But I did what I could and still felt impressed and happy when the workout was done.

On Saturday, I was feeling a little bit better but also was a bit sore from going hard at Friday’s workout. So even though this workout was a power based one that was a run/row and it would be ideal to test myself on the treadmill, I stuck with the bike. It was tough to not do the treadmill when I was feeling like seeing what would happen, but I just kept reminding myself that by doing the bike I was going to be able to be back to the treadmill sooner instead of getting sick again.

The run/row for me started with 3 rounds of .4 miles on the bike. After the first round I had a 300 meter row, the second round had a 200 meter row, and the last round had a 100 meter row. The second block had the same row pattern but the bike distance was .6 miles. I was using similar resistance levels to what I was using on Friday but I was able to pedal faster which helped me work harder. And when I had the rowing everything was under the time goal. I even managed to get within 1 second of my 100 meter row PR! I was not expecting that at all.

When I got to the floor we had 2 blocks. The first block was low rows on the straps, crunches, and plank punches. But between each of the exercises we had a round of lunges. And the second block was tricep work on the straps, toe reaches,  and mountain climbers with speed skaters between each exercise. I started the first block going pretty fast through everything. I even was using a weight on my chest during the crunches which was something extra. But when I got to the second block, my breathing issues kicked in. I had to take a ton of breaks to cough and catch my breath. I still got through everything, but I struggled. But in the end, I still did better than I had done in the previous workout. And that’s all I can hope for right now.

I honestly think I may end up being on the bike for a longer time than I thought. I’m still dealing with congestion and being short of breath. If this doesn’t go away in a few more weeks I’ll go to the doctor, but I know that with a cold it can take a few weeks to have all symptoms go away. But until I feel better, the bike is the safer option for me and I’m able to be a little bit easier on myself. But at least I’m back at my workouts and I am seeing progress and improvement. I’m just ready to be back to my normal self already!

 

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Default ThumbnailIt’s Mayhem Time (or Working My Way Through Some Tough Workouts) Default ThumbnailWorking Through Physical Challenges (or Not Letting Feeling Bad Ruin My Workouts) Default ThumbnailA Week Of Tough Workouts (or Frustration As Motivation) Default ThumbnailHoliday Workouts (or Making Myself Enjoy The Bike) Default ThumbnailHaving Some Realizations About My Workouts (or Still Adjusting My Thinking) Default ThumbnailWorkouts With Modifications (or Dealing With A New Injury)

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Feeling Like A Fresh Start (or Spring Cleaning and New Toys)

Posted on May 18, 2018 | 1 comment

After being sick for what felt like forever (but in reality about a week and a half), I was ready to feel normal again. I have a feeling it will be a little bit longer before I’m totally better, but I’m about 95% there. I’ve only got some congestion left and it’s so minor that I’m not even taking cold medication for it anymore.

But while physically I was feeling better, mentally I wasn’t in the best place. I had the issues I mentioned yesterday on here that basically gave me a day of just being in a low place. But what was putting me in a worse mood was my house being so messy! While I was sick I didn’t really do any cleaning and in my tiny house it really shows when I’m not doing a little bit of cleaning every day. So I spent an entire afternoon doing a major cleaning of my house.

Mostly I was doing the normal cleaning stuff like dusting, vacuuming, and wiping down the various surfaces in my house. I needed to do this for sure because my place was dirty but I also wanted to rid my house of any germs. Even though I don’t think there were that many germs left since they can’t live on surfaces that long, it was just the feeling that my house was germy that I wanted to get rid of. The cleaning that I did was a serious workout (maybe that was because I’m still a bit sick), but when I was done I just felt a huge sense of relief and normalcy in my life again.

But besides the normal cleaning stuff (which was more like a deep clean), I had so much random organization work to do. I’ve been slacking off on some of that stuff. For example I did a reddit gift exchange last month and I hadn’t put away the books I had gotten. But since I was cleaning my cabinet where I keep my coffee table books, I put the books away. I also had about a week’s worth of mail to go through (and bills to pay) and it felt good to get rid of all the junk mail that was sitting on my table while I was sick.

But the best organization I had to do was something that I was pretty excited about. Before I was sick, I did an order on Amazon for something that I’ve been wanting for a while and it’s just been sitting in a big box near my front door for over a week.

I got an Instant Pot! I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while and I just decided to go for it! While I love my slow cooker, it’s not always the most convenient thing to use. If I don’t think about cooking dinner until I’m done with work, it’s too late to use the slow cooker. But with this, I can cook things so much quicker!

I’ve got a few friends who have one (most have the same model that I do) and they have all raved about it. And I can’t wait to start testing out new recipes in it! I’ve only accomplished getting it unpacked and reading the instruction manual. And I won’t get a chance to cook in it for a few more days because of some meals out I have planned. But that gives me the time to do research online for some good recipes that I want to try.

Having a new way to cook more often feels similar to having my house nice and clean. It’s a fresh start in a way and the start hopefully of a new awesome way to eat healthier and cheaper at home. While I was sick I depended on cans of soup and microwave dinners. I’m craving cooking something again and I love that I have something new and fun to try out. I’m a little worried that I won’t be using my slow cooker anymore again, but I’m sure that even though there is a slow cooker option on my Instant Pot I’ll find some times that I want to use my regular slow cooker.

Even if I’m not totally better from being sick, I just feel so refreshed and ready for whatever comes next for me. It’s just such a good feeling to be moving on from a bad week and a half (that was bad in more ways than one) and feeling like I can take on the world. Who knew that having a clean house and a new cooking gadget could do that to a person?

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Default ThumbnailMy First Meal In My Instant Pot (or I’m Loving This!) Default ThumbnailSpring Cleaning (or Feeling Pampered) Default ThumbnailDoing A Lot Of Spring Cleaning (or Trying To Fill My Day) Default ThumbnailSpring Cleaning (or Needing To Declutter Again) Default ThumbnailIs It Too Early To Be Spring Cleaning? (or Out With The Unused) Default ThumbnailSlowly Spring Cleaning (or Tidying Up My Way)

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Another Union Working Meeting (or Rolling With The Technical Difficulties)

Posted on May 10, 2018 | Comments Off on Another Union Working Meeting (or Rolling With The Technical Difficulties)

I had another Union Working meeting this week. These meetings are about every other month and I really do look forward to them each time I realize there is another meeting coming up. I’m learning a ton about the union by being at these meetings. They are able to go into detail about things that I didn’t understand before or that the union really can’t discuss. But that’s the benefit to being a group that isn’t union official. We have a ton of people who are board members and on committees so we are getting accurate information. We just don’t have the formalities of being an official union event.

For the past few meetings, I’ve been in charge of running the Facebook Live for the portion of the meeting we can share (there are some things discussed that are only for union members so we don’t make it available online to the public). It’s a pretty easy job for me to do so I’m happy that I can help out and allow the people who run the meeting to focus on much more important things. And I’ve got a pretty decent setup with my iPad, tripod, and tablet holder for my tripod. But as it seems like a lot of things have been for me lately, things just didn’t go as planned this time.

There is no wi-fi for us to use where we hold the meetings, so I have to use a hotspot from my phone. It’s not that difficult to set up usually but I still get to the meetings early to set up everything so I’m ready to start the live video once the meeting begins. But this time, I just couldn’t get my iPad to connect to my phone. I restarted both devices multiple times and it just didn’t want to work. Since the meeting was about to start, I decided I needed to run the video off of my phone. The holder I have on my tripod doesn’t quite fit my phone, but I managed to make it work.

I’ll admit that I was a bit distracted during the meeting because of the technical issues. I was checking my phone to make sure the video was still going and I had to look harder at it to read the comments that people watching were making since it’s a much smaller screen than I’m used to. But I tried to make sure that even though I was distracted more than normal that I was still paying attention so I could get some great information out of the meeting.

The meetings are usually pretty structured evenings. There is an agenda to go over and because there is so much information and so little time they are pretty on top of making sure that we stay on track. I don’t know if this meeting didn’t have as much of an agenda or what but it seemed like a much more casual and conversational meeting. We did cover a lot of information, but there was so much more back and forth conversation between everyone in the room than I’m used to. But it was pretty awesome to watch that happen because you could see the moments when others in the room understood something for the first time.

A lot of the discussion was related to the election that will be happening in a little over a year and how things have happened in the past and how things should possibly change for the future. I don’t have a strong opinion on a lot of election related things that were discussed because they were mainly things that were about board members and what is currently being done. But I was glad I could hear both sides of the debate so I could know what is the current situation and what others think is wrong and what it should possibly look like in the future.

And as always with these meetings, we discussed the current commercial contract and the upcoming negotiations. Commercials are changing so much and we want to make sure that our contracts reflect that. Online commercials aren’t super new, but they are new enough that there are so many things in those contracts that weren’t figured out in the past. So to know what situations other actors are encountering at auditions or on set can help us know what we want to negotiate for. It also makes me more aware of some things that I want to look out for when I’m working.

Even though there wasn’t a big agenda for the meeting, the 2 hours that we were there covered a lot of information and discussion. Several people mentioned how conversational everything seemed and that it was a nice change from when it is more of a lecture type meeting. There clearly are times where the discussion needs to be a bit more formal and structured, but it was nice to have something that was a bit more freeform when it can happen.

Our next meeting will be most likely toward the end of June and I’ll try to post on social media about it. While we have had some meetings that are only for union members, most of the time they are open to everyone!

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School Of Rock (or Just A Good Fun Musical)

Posted on May 8, 2018 | 2 comments

I’ve noticed that the musicals on my calendar are much closer together now (in the next year and a half, I’ve got 15 more musicals scheduled!). So even though it seems like I was just at the Pantages for my last musical, I was there again this weekend for another show! And this time, we were seeing “School of Rock”!

The musical is based on the movie and I’ve seen the movie a bunch of times. I was pretty excited to see how the musical adaptation would be since I was so familiar with the movie. And 2 of the other women in my group were in the same boat as me (1 member of the group has never seen the movie).

We had a quick dinner at Greenleaf before the show (we’ve done Shake Shack a lot lately and wanted to switch it up). I meant to take a photo of my dinner because it was really good but it totally just slipped my mind. But I highly recommend the turkey melt there because it was delicious. And yes, I ordered a turkey melt at a place that is known for salads. But it’s good to know that everything there is good!

We’ve gotten into such a routine with our musicals which I love. We all know what seats we sit in (we always have the same seats) and it just seems so normal and orderly to me. Even though we have season tickets and our shows are always the same time in a run of a show, it seems like we always have different people sitting around us. I thought maybe we’d be seeing the same people each show, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think the couple sitting next to me has been there in the past, but because there isn’t really consistency with who sits there I could be wrong.

If you aren’t familiar with School of Rock, it’s about a guy who is kicked out of his band and pretends to be a substitute teacher at a fancy private school. He discovers the students in his class have musical talents and he creates a band to try to win a battle of the bands against the band that kicked him out. It’s not a complicated plot and that’s fine with me. I was saying to the group that we have had a lot of serious and heavy musicals and I really wanted something that was just fun and entertaining. And this fit that perfectly!

There were a lot of really great songs (some of which were stuck in our heads after the show) and the performers were great. But the most incredible performers were the kids in the show. There were amazing singers and the band members played their instruments live in the show. To play in front of a big crowd is tough for an adult, and these kids were just amazing! And watching them be so into playing and having fun with the songs was very entertaining! Since I can’t play a musical instrument, I’m always impressed with people who can. And these kids were more talented than most adults I know. I was just in awe watching.

The show is very similar to the movie and the songs from the movie are in the show (but the musical adds so many more songs). I was worried about the friend who hadn’t seen the movie because I didn’t know if I was enjoying the show so much because I love the movie. But she really enjoyed the show too which is a sign of a great show! If you can make people who are familiar with the original material and people who don’t know anything about the show both happy and enjoy it, that’s pretty special.

This was such a nice break from the serious shows we’ve had lately. And our next show will be another serious one. But to have a fun night out with my friends was exactly what I needed after feeling a bit low lately. I needed some laughing, fun, and entertainment to take my mind off of things that are bugging me. And even after leaving the show I continued to be in a better mood. I know I need to keep adding fun things in my life when I have low moments like I was having, and I’m just glad that I had this scheduled during a rough patch of my life.

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Mileage And Motivation (or Another New Challenge)

Posted on May 1, 2018 | 1 comment

Yet again, the beginning of a month bring the end of one monthly challenge and the beginning of another. I have struggled in the past with coming up with some ideas for these challenges, but fortunately I found a good list online that I’ve been using for some inspiration, So hopefully my challenges keep being interesting (at least to me).

In April, my monthly challenge was doing a version of what Orangetheory was doing as a challenge. Orangetheory was doing a marathon challenge where they had different distances for what you should strive for based on if you are a power walker, running, biker, or strider. I knew I couldn’t really do the challenge officially since I would be using both the treadmill and bike, but I decided to track my mileage on my own.

For some classes, it was super easy to track. If we were on the treadmill (or bike) for half the class and then switched, I could just take one photo at the end of the cardio time and when I got home I put it in my planner. But if we were bouncing around a lot of had a run/row, things were a bit more complicated. There were plenty of times that I would come home and have 7 or 8 photos of distances that I would need to add up to figure out how much I did. I was worried that there may be times I would forget to take a photo, but that never happened. It was probably because I was too terrified to forget so every time I went to a workout I kept saying to myself over and over again “don’t forget to track the mileage”.

I felt pretty confident that even with having to switch between the treadmill and the bike that I could do the half marathon challenge on the treadmill. Over the month, I ended up doing 15.929 miles in the workouts I had using the treadmill. I was happy that I went beyond the half marathon and didn’t really have a goal to hit once I got past that. And on the bike, I did 30.1 miles. The bike challenge was to do 105 miles, but that was based on the idea of only using the bike during the month. Out of the 17 workouts I did last month, I did 4.5 workouts on the bike (the half one was when I did a warmup and the start of one block on the treadmill before switching to the bike for the rest of the workout). Considering how few workouts were on the bike, I was pretty happy with the distance I did!

Overall in April, I did 46.029 miles in my workouts. Since this was the first time I tracked mileage in workouts, I don’t have anything to judge this against. But I am thinking about maybe making this a regular thing so I can see how one month compares to another. I’m not totally sure that I’ll keep this up, but it’s an idea I’ve been playing with and I’m going to see how things work out for me.

After a good physical monthly challenge, I wanted to do another mental one for May. While I’m not very new-agey with many things, I do have affirmations I read every day. I mainly use an affirmation app that gives me a new affirmation each day and I like having that as a focus for the day. It’s good motivation for me especially when it’s exactly what I need to hear that day. I’ve been using this app for years and it works for me, but I want to take things a bit further this month.

I’m not sure if I’m considering these more affirmations or maybe they are intentions for the day, but my challenge is to write down what I want to focus on each morning. I want it to be my motivation for what I want to do and what I want my attitude to be about. It may be that I write down that I want to focus more, or to organize my space, or just to relax. I’m a bit open-ended with how this will be because I’m not exactly sure what will resonant the most with me. But I want to do this each morning to set some sort of focus before I get too distracted with the craziness of the day.

I’m planning on using the weekly pages in my planner to write these in. I currently use the evening section of the weekly page to write my gratitude list each evening, so I feel like it will be nice bookends for my day to write my intention/affirmation in the morning section and my gratitude list in the evening section.

I’m excited to have another challenge that should help me focus and remain positive. I’ve had a few things challenge me lately that have brought down my mood. And while I’m not expecting to be positive all the time, it will be nice to have something that at least puts a little bit of my focus on something positive in the morning while I get ready for my day.

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Working Through Physical Challenges (or Not Letting Feeling Bad Ruin My Workouts)

Posted on April 30, 2018 | Comments Off on Working Through Physical Challenges (or Not Letting Feeling Bad Ruin My Workouts)

This past week of workouts weren’t the best for me. I was so hopeful with feeling ok when I thought I wouldn’t, but that decided to come at me this past week. It’s not easy working out when you don’t feel great, but if I let that stop me I would only be working out half of the month. And I just can’t do that to myself. It’s not fun when I don’t feel 100%, but I think I made the most of it this past week.

Monday’s workout I went into feeling pretty confident. I hadn’t been dealing with the nausea I was expecting the week before and I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with any nausea this month. Of course, being that confident about things meant that they were going to get crazy. The workout was an endurance workout and we had 3 groups, so I knew I’d only be on the treadmill for about 15 minutes. But I only lasted on there for the warm up and then maybe 4 more minutes.

The treadmill workout was based on doing 2 minute push paces and then base paces in-between. And during the first 2 minute push pace, my nausea came at me with full force. I left the workout to take my anti-nausea medication, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay on the treadmill and do much. So I grabbed my things and went over to the bike to finish the cardio part of the workout. I honestly wasn’t focused too much on when we had a push pace versus a base pace. I was just trying to get through the workout and hope that my medication would kick in soon. For my mileage challenge this was easily the worst workout I have had, but I also knew that there would be at least a few workouts that would be like this when I felt horrible. So I just had to push through and try to keep pedaling when I could.

Next I was on the rower where we had 2 different attempts at a 500 meter row. My medications were finally starting to kick in, but I was still feeling off so my first attempt was pretty slow. By the time I had the second attempt I was doing a little better and was able to do my row about 20 seconds faster. We also had pull challenges where we tried to see how far we could get in 20 pulls on the rower. Feeling off worked to my advantage since I was super slow and I got much further in 20 pulls than I expected I could do. And on the floor, we started with mini-band work with suitcase squats with weights, lateral walks, and upright rows with weights. I finally found a good spot to put the mini-band so it wasn’t twisting up my leg and I went heavy with the weights to make up for my lack of cardio work. We were supposed to do plank work, but I knew that if I did plank work that I would feel every more nauseous, so my coach had me use the straps to do tricep work to work the same muscle groups. I left the workout feeling a little disappointed because I know I wanted to do better, but I also know that my struggles were due to things out of my control which does help a bit.

I was worried about how I’d feel on Wednesday for the workout, but I was doing a bit better. And because the workout was a power day with lots of switches, I decided to go for the treadmill instead of using the bike. I also may have been a bit stubborn because I wanted to get the mileage for my challenge. The workout was kind of a run/row format, but it was pretty unique with the blocks being 3 or 4 minutes long.

I started on the treadmill where the first block was a run/row with a .1 mile power walk and then a 200 meter row. I was doing my normal speed and incline even though I wasn’t feeling totally great. It was a bit tough, but I managed to do it. After that block, we went to the rowers where we had rounds of 100 meter rows and squats. Then it was back to the treadmill for another run/row that was .08 mile power walks and a 150 meter row. Then back to the rower for rounds of 100 meter rows and squats. And the last block was a run/row of .05 mile power walks and 100 meter rows. Then it was time to switch to the floor.

But even though I was on the floor, we still had treadmill blocks. First we had a block that was all timed exercises. The exercises were supposed to be pop jacks, pull ups on the straps, sit-ups with rotation, and burpees to step ups. But because of how I was feeling, I couldn’t do a lot of the exercises. Instead of pop jacks I did squats, I did crunches instead of sit-ups, and instead of the burpees to step ups I did lunges. It still wasn’t easy with no breaks between things. After the exercises, we had a 3 minute block on the treadmill. Then 2 more rounds of exercises with a block on the treadmill in-between. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to get it done and be on the treadmill when in the recent past I would have been on the bike.

After feeling better on Wednesday, I was hoping that trend would continue and I’d be ok on Friday. But that wasn’t the case and I went to my workout with horrendous nausea. I really wanted to use the treadmill, but there was no way for me to do that without feeling sick so I used the bike. The workout format was similar to Wednesday with it being unique and different. While it was a run/row day, it wasn’t the normal run/row format.

I started on the bike to warm-up and normally if it’s a run/row day that means I do the run/row work first. But this time, we had a 1 minute all out pace and then headed to the floor while the people who warmed up on the rower did their row and then went to the treadmill. All 3 blocks I had where I started on the treadmill/bike side started that way with the 1 minute all out pace and then going to the floor. When we were on the floor it was mainly work using the Bosu. We had kneeling tricep extensions, crunches, hip bridges, and pullovers with weights. There was also some work that we had in plank positions that I knew I couldn’t do because of how I was feeling so I did squats or extra core work in place of the things I couldn’t do.

When we switched, I had the run/row (although I guess technically it was row/bike for me). Each block started with a longish row. The first block was 500 meters, the second was 600 meters, and the last was 700 meters. The 500 meter row was tough for me and I took longer than I should have. But for the 600 and 700 meter row I was within the goal times we had for the rows. And after each of the rows, there was a run for distance which was a bike for distance in my case. I tried to just keep pedaling until the block ended but there were a few times where the nausea got really bad and I just had to take a quick break on the bike before continuing. Even with how badly I was feeling, the workout seemed to go by pretty quickly which helped.

Saturday’s workout was another one where I thought I was feeling ok at first but before getting to the workout I knew I wasn’t going to be able to use the treadmill. I ended up using the bike again, but that was a good thing because one of my friends from the Brentwood studio was in that class and on the bike next to me! We tried not to turn the cardio time into social hour, but we did spend a bit of time catching up. That helped to pass the time and to distract me from feeling as queasy as I was feeling.

The cardio blocks all had the same format with the people on the treadmill starting with doing .1 miles on a high incline and then we had regular push pace intervals. For the bike, I did .4 miles with a very high resistance and then did the resistance I usually do to replicate my push and all out paces. I did have moments where I needed to stop pedaling because the nausea took over and I needed to let it pass, but they were much less frequent than they had been earlier in the week. That was good and I felt much better about my cardio on the bike than I had in the other workouts.

On the floor we also had 3 blocks. The first block started with ab dolly rollouts. I knew I must be feeling better because when I’m really feeling nauseous I can’t do anything in a plank position. But I was able to do these with very minimal nausea so that felt like a victory to me. In that first block was also had squats with leg lifts using the bands which normally would be tough on my hip but I was able to do. So that was another victory. In the other blocks we had sprint rows, lunges with shoulder presses, pull-ups on the straps, hip bridges, and knee tucks. While I still had some nausea from time to time, it was decreasing as the workout went on so I was just so happy about that.

I’m really hopeful that this week of workouts the nausea will either be super limited or gone. I know the timing of my body and it should be over in a few more days. Then I have 2 weeks of freedom before I feel it again. So many people tell me that they couldn’t do a workout when they felt the way I feel, but for me it’s becoming a normal part of life. And each month that I have to go through this I keep proving to myself that I don’t let feeling nauseous stop me from trying my best during a workout. And while my best during these weeks isn’t usually close to my normal best, I’m really trying hard and hopefully I will start judging my nauseous workouts against the other nauseous ones and not against the ones that happen when I feel fine.

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A Quick Happy Hour (or Making Myself Be Social)

Posted on April 26, 2018 | Comments Off on A Quick Happy Hour (or Making Myself Be Social)

I know there are times that I write about how I wish I had more fun stuff in my life or how I need to work on doing more when I’m not working. And I’ve gotten pretty good at scheduling stuff and finding things that I like to go to do. But then there are times where I just want to sit on my couch and watch tv. But I know if I just do that, I’ll feel like I’m missing out on something and I’ll regret it later.

This week I RSVPed to go to a happy hour that was hosted by the NextGen Performers committee of SAG-AFTRA. These happy hours are really just a good excuse to get together with awesome, like-minded people and to have fun. There is no agenda for the event, nothing is really scheduled, and everyone is usually in a great mood because there is free food (the key to making lots of actors happy). And I was excited to go because I knew I’d have some friends there and since it can be tough to find time to see them, these events are sometimes they only time we get together.

When I RSVPed for it, I assumed I’d be looking forward to the event. And I was until the day of. It had nothing to do with the event, I just was not feeling up for going out. I was dealing with nausea, I was tired, and I just didn’t feel like getting myself together and being social. But I thought about it and realized that I would regret it if I didn’t go. So I took my time getting dressed and ready and headed over to happy hour.

It helped that it was held at Rush St. which is super close to my house. I would have walked, but I don’t like to walk home in the dark alone so I drove there. But it still was very nice to have it be minutes away so I didn’t really have any excuse not to go and make an appearance. And I was hoping that once I got there, my mood would improve and I would feel better and I would spend a good amount of time there.

Unfortunately for me, my nausea wasn’t going away while I was there. I didn’t have any food because I didn’t know how my body would react to it, but things just weren’t getting better for me. I tried to focus on talking to a few of my friends who were at the event which was fun. We all always have lots of random updates on our lives to share. And many of the people at the happy hour were attending their very first union event so it was fun to talk to them about what other opportunities are out there for them to participate in. I always want to help union members (whether they are new or not) to get more involved if they want to do so. There are a lot of opportunities for members even if they don’t want to be involved in the politics of the union. And some people do want to get involved in the politics and I’m glad I can share my experiences with them so they know what to expect and what they need to do to run for an office.

Even though I was having fun talking with people, while I was there I just kept thinking how I really didn’t feel up for being social. It had nothing to do with the people I was talking to. I think almost anyone can relate to just wanting to be home and by yourself when you don’t feel good. I can’t let this be an excuse for me since I seem to feel nauseous 2 weeks out of each month, but I also don’t want to push my body too hard and then make things worse for me. So after being at happy hour for about an hour, I made my rounds of saying goodbye to my friends and headed back to my car to go home.

I wish I had been able to stay longer because I was having a good time there, but it just wasn’t meant to be. And I was also a bit worried that some of the new people I was meeting might think I was being annoyed by talking to them or something because I know I was a bit distracted. Again, it had nothing to do with who I was talking to. My body was just distracting me. But I think making myself go out to happy hour was the right choice because I did get to have some fun and I never have regrets about going out and having fun.

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