Better than 3

This "going to sleep earlier" thing is a process.

I didn't mean to turn this blog into an update on my "resolutions" or an accountability report, but hopefully it will work to keep me on the right path. One can hope, right?

Last night, I didn't manage to sleep by 1, or 1:30 (like the next night), but at least I went to bed by 2:30. 2:30 is better than 3! Baby steps...

The later sleep time does make sense though when you consider that we didn't finish dinner until close to 11 pm, got home and then watched the 2 hour Chuck finale (#goodbyechuck and #nerdherdforlife), and then I finally installed the Time Warner Cable app to my iPad and watched some tv.

Surprisingly (or not, considering how often I fall asleep on the couch with the tv on), the tv on my iPad is what helped me go to sleep. Dozing off while watching old eps of Dancing with the Stars works for me...

I didn't get 8 hours of sleep but that's OK. Every extra minute counts!

A Little Earlier

Another ongoing project (in addition to trying to exercise, trying to do c25k, trying to blog more, trying to eat right, etc - this is why I didn't make a list of new years resolutions...) is attempting to go to sleep at a "normal" time.

 

I've been sleeping at 3 (with a few earlier exceptions) for the past few weeks, for absolutely no good reason.  Maybe I'm watching tv, maybe I'm researching things online, maybe I'm uploading photos, maybe I'm just anxious.  But whatever it is, it's got to stop.  I can't wake up in the morning, I feel like I waste the day away, and I'm so tired that my head feels like a 100 lb weight by 4 pm.  Not OK.  Last night I forced myself to go to bed by 1 (which I realize is not "early" but it's better than 3).  Based on my fitbit readings, it wasn't the most restful sleep but at least it was earlier.

 

Baby steps.... (Should I end every post that way?)

 

But one thing I would like not to take baby steps is the weather.  Please please please bad weather at our vacation destination - after you get there next week, please go away quickly!  You don't understand just how badly I need sunlight!

Baby Steps to Change

It is really hard to make new good habits stick!

The water resolution is going pretty well, thanks to my Nalgene at work and the increased level of hydration to which my body has become accustomed. A minimum of 4 cups of water a day is still not a tremendous amount, but change comes in baby steps.

I've been trying to get a new habit to stick: vitamins. Other than gummy vitamins which taste like candy, I am awful at this one. I have a seven day pill case and am supposed to take them over lunch, but I've forgotten two days in a row and I only started this one on Monday. Yesterday I didn't remember to take them until it was time to sleep and they need to be taken with meals. Why is this so difficult?

I would also like to blog at least once per week here with a new installment of our honeymoon recaps. At the rate we're going, it will be one year after the trip and we will still be recapping Geneva (and we spent less than one day there!). I really don't want to forget any more memories than I already have, so must recap! I also want to blog more as a general matter about our lives, but for a resolution, I will just say honeymoon recaps so I can try to hold myself to it.

Will keep repeating my mantra... Baby steps...

Old Memories

I was about to go to sleep around 2:20 am (yes, it's late, but I passed out for a bit during my usual 4-6 pm window; what is my problem?) when I had this sudden compulsion to check my very old xanga site. I don't even remember my login information so any private posts are probably lost but it occurred to me that I didn't know if xanga still existed or if my old blog was gone forever.

Luckily it is still there, so I should probably save it soon before it's gone like the year of missing tweets. But since I went to the site I of course got sucked into reading my old posts for about 20 minutes before I forced myself to stop. It was like reading a mix of quiz results, law school to do lists and progress trackers that I used to try to keep myself accountable, yelp-like dining reviews (no photos), and what would have been tweets if twitter existed back in 2003. So interesting to realize that, except for all the times when blogging has been light due to busyness, losing my blogging voice (still not convinced I've gotten it back), or just having nothing to say because I'm boring, I've been blogging (or microblogging, in the case of my "less blogging because of twitter" stage, which sadly overlaps with the year of missing, or more accurately, unsaved, tweets) since I started law school back in 2002. I didn't say much back then as I (at that point sporadically) kept a paper journal for my more personal thoughts but it was really interesting to go back and read my first blog post ever. I almost forgot how alone I felt starting out on my new journey in Chicago, only knowing A and having no idea what the future would bring. It's been a long road and I'm glad to have my old site to bring back some buried memories that I thought were gone forever.

Reading those old posts reminds me of why I like blogging. I love looking back on the archives and remembering where I've been and all the things that made me into the person I am today. It also reminds me that I should be doing it more. I now have timehop to remind me of my checkins and tweets from one year ago, but I don't have my longer thoughts and my history if I don't write. Something nagging in my subconscious must have wanted me to write more and to not forget my life and sent up that thought to check on xanga. I'm glad I listened instead of going straight to bed, even if I wish tomorrow that I had that extra half hour of sleep. It's a wake up call I feel like I needed.

Google Searches

How does Google's search function work?

If you read our food blog (not sure anyone does regularly), you might have noticed that we changed the name from berry berry delicious to panda bytes. The old name just wasn't fitting us and we are much happier with the new name. However, we are quite puzzled as to why all the posts don't show up in Google searches. Most of the old traffic came from people looking for particular things (mostly related to Amsterdam) and, until this morning, none of those individual posts could be found by searching.

I have been testing it by searching different words and limiting the search to the address of our blog. By doing that, I determined that, through last night, the only individual posts that came up were published between midday on November 21, 2011 and the time we changed the name of the blog. Anything posted after we changed the name didn't come up yet but I don't know how long it takes for things to be picked up by a search engine. Any links to old posts that were included in that timeframe also came up. (That took some time to figure out. I was wondering why some random posts from the spring worked but nothing else did.) Anything before midday on November 21 (or maybe just end of the day November 20 Pacific time) only came up with the page for the entire month. Seemed like a strange cut-off as we didn't change the name of the blog on the 20th/21st of the month.

This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see that more individual posts are now searchable. I haven't been able to figure out how those particular posts came up, as there are non-linked posts from August that are up but others from October are not. It's a bit strange. Maybe it depends which ones have been viewed recently? Maybe it will just take time until they are all accessible again. Does anyone know? I use this to remember what I've written about, so it's a useful tool I'd like to have back.

And does anyone know how long it takes for our old blog to start appearing? Going to the link says it's been removed but it's still high up in the search results for a couple of topics. I wish I knew more about how this works!

Water is Good

I've been doing better with my water resolution.  I finally got around to washing out the Nalgene that sat opened on my desk at work for months collecting dust and it's the only thing that seems to work for me.  I tried before with cups of water and keeping track, and I guess I just got lazy and getting to 4 cups was so difficult.  But with the Nalgene, as long as I drink, at a minimum, the whole bottle, then I'm good for the day and I've met my goal.  Must keep doing it!

 

What is crazy to me though is how quickly my body seems to have adapted to the increase in water.  Now, when I'm not constantly sipping water, I feel dehydrated.  Either that or I'm eating foods higher in sodium during the day.  But before, I would go some days where I didn't drink anything during the entire work day.  I know that's awful but it's true.  Somehow in less than 10 days (and on some days not even reaching my 4 cups) my body has adjusted to a more hydrated state.  Interesting.  I know 4 cups isn't how much water you're supposed to drink each day, but ... baby steps.  21 days to a habit.  Once it's a habit, then I can try to drink more water.

 

I don't know if the hydration is helping health-wise, but I can say that there's one benefit.  More water means more trips to the bathroom which means higher step count which means better health.  So whether or not the other benefits of increased water consumption are working, at least I know there's one thing going right!

Resolutions Fail

I didn't intend to check in every day about my two little resolutions, but here I am again. Not only did we sleep at 3 am again (not a resolution, but still dumb) even though we intended to sleep earlier, but I forgot to do Crest rinse last night and barely drank 4 cups of water/iced tea (yes, I count iced tea towards the resolution). Why are good habits so hard and bad habits so easy to keep?

I don't even know what we were doing until 3 am. We watched The Layover (miss Amsterdam!) but that was over before 1:30. I can't imagine that we were watching youtube videos for 1.5 hours... but what else did we do?

Time to attack the resolutions today. I think I'll do Crest rinse this morning to make sure that's fulfilled. The water thing will be a little more difficult but I guess it's finally time to clean out that Nalgene bottle on my desk at work. Sigh, so behind on everything!

Resolutions Check-in

Day 1 of my new resolutions and so far, so good. It really shouldn't be that difficult to drink 4 cups of water a day and use Crest rinse at least once a day, but the fact that I did it and am trying to change how my brain operates is a good step.

Bad habits are really hard to break, as evidenced by the fact that I'm posting this after 3 am. We were hoping to get up early tomorrow to start a new routine and take full advantage of the holiday, but we stayed up looking at/uploading photos and watching Star Wars. It's like the electricity needs to go out at 12:30 am every day to force us to sleep. Here's hoping we can make some progress on that tomorrow!

Resolutions 2012

I don't have a very good track record at keeping my resolutions. It's a lot to keep track of, especially considering how many parts of life there are to make resolutions about. I thought about it again this year but I came up with more than 10 rather quickly, which was overwhelming. So this year I'm going to try to do it differently. They say it takes 21 days to make something a habit, but I think what I'm going to try to do (and maybe this will change by Chinese new year) is start a new "habit" or "practice" (or 2) every week (or longer, if they have a hard time sticking). Hopefully by doing it slowly it will work. Like a constant Project Life Improvement.

So this week, my resolutions are to drink at least 4 cups of water a day (I did this in the spring and thought it stuck but it didn't) and to use my Crest rinse at least every night. Water and Crest rinse. Shouldn't be too hard, right? We'll see.

I do have one goal for the year though, and that is to finish the couch-to-5K program and run my first 5K. It means I need to do constant exercise and training, which is just an overall resolution. So that's outside of Project Life Improvement and just my big goal for the year.

Hopefully this will work!