Tag: life

Happy New Year!!!!!/Monday motivation!

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, school/studying

 


Today is day 1, make this the year of you, the year you have always wanted to have, lose the weight, pay off debt, let the walls down, deal with your depression or other illness, travel, do whatever you want. With the right attitude you can do it! I promise anything is possible, if you want it bad enough you will find a way and the universe will bring it to you. I mean I just came back from 18 days in Europe a few months ago, I am going to school to be a nurse, I am spending my life with the man I love, I live paycheck to paycheck currently and also managed to pay off a credit card last year!!!!! Yes it was my smallest one but every thing counts!!! If you want to make a change, take charge and do it.

I hope you have a great day and realize all the amazing things this next year holds for you.

Week 2 marathon training:

 

Not gonna lie, nothing happened this week. I took full advantage of using the holiday as an excuse and sat on my butt. My roommates were out of town so I enjoyed the empty house and binged on TV. I also rationalized that school is starting soon and workouts are going to get longer to enjoy this week of total laziness.

My 2018 goals (resolutions seems like a word that means you aren’t really going to stick with them so these are goals!!! AND I will achieve my goals!)

  1. Blog at least 3 times a week
  2. PROPERLY train for and run a half, full and ultra marathon
  3. revamp my diet and STICK TO IT!!!! (I am going to do a post about this soon)
  4. Get A’s in all my classes this year.
  5. Drop two clothing sizes, go from a 10 to a 6.
  6. Stop overspending!!!! I am terrible about sticking to my budget, I have stopped over drafting and am paying off debt but I could be in such a better place if I didn’t spend so frivolously.
  7. Take a few minutes everyday to sit in quiet reflection, meditate, do something spiritual.
  8. Continue to work on and grow my relationship with Brandon
  9. To read 1 non-school book a month. I had originally wanted to do 1 a week then thought about it and changed it to every other week but now I think it will be 1 a month to be safe. I have a 40 hour work week, 6 hours of classes a week, another probably 4-6 hours of school work a week, in a few months I will have a 2 hour/day commute, training for my runs and house work.

In a few days I will post about breaking these down in to manageable goals which will help them be more attainable.

New Years Eve!!!!

by Ariana Peters, posted in food, healthy lifestyle

Be safe, have fun, spend the night the way you want to spend it! Live it up and let the stress, drama and crap of the last 365 days go away, tomorrow you start fresh. Enjoy!!!

 

I will probably be watching the ball drop on the east coast at 9pm my time on the internet lol. I have to be up tomorrow morning at 5:40am to get to work by 7am. The boyfriend is going to keep me company. This will probably be the first year, since I can remember, that I will not stay up until midnight and ring in the new year…….I guess I am getting old, or maybe just responsible. Who wants to work on 5 hours sleep?

2 weeks until school starts

by Ariana Peters, posted in books, school/studying, Uncategorized

ARG!!! So frustrating! I am only take the 1 class this quarter, its $467 and some change and I can’t enroll in a payment plan!!!!! I set aside some money so yes I can pay for it in one chunk but I didn’t anticipate the book, lab manual and access code I need together all costing almost as much as the class! I need to find another $305.

The most frustrating thing about school is the cost and no I do not qualify for any financial aid since I already have a bachelors degree. Once I am accepted into a Nursing program it is a different story but currently I can get nothing. I hate feeling like I am getting penalized for not knowing what I wanted to do at 19 years old after my dad died and my whole life and life plan was turned upside down (we wanted to open a bakery and café together). I kept going forward on the plan I had set with him because at the time if you were over 18 and wanted to keep your parents insurance you had to be enrolled in college full time so I kept going and got my degree. I now know what I want to do in life and it feels like it is 10x harder to achieve it. I am starting back at the bottom except that now I have more bills, more debt and more responsibilities on top of school. I don’t want to complain, there are people out there who have it much worse and much harder than I do, it is just frustrating. Ok rant over.

Now I need to figure out where to get that extra $300 from.

I’ll check back in next week and hopefully let you know my book and class have been paid for and that I am all set to start the quarter.

No House News but a Great Date Weekend

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, House/dating/life

Hopefully next week I will have a house update for you.

This weekend Brandon and I used a Groupon that I had bought a few months ago to do an escape room. 

Basically they lock you in a room for an hour and you have to try to solve all these puzzles to unlock the door (you are on camera the whole time in case you freak out or something). I wasn’t sure how it was going to go but I LOVED it!!!! It was so much fun! But I love doing puzzles so that is probably why I enjoyed it so much. It was a pricier date at 30 bucks a pop but we both had fun and I think another one will be in our future at some point. Since I had bought this a few months ago we didn’t spend any money today which was nice.

I was starving after words and hadn’t had sushi in months so we went to a sushi place with those tracks where you can just pull things off the conveyer belt. These work great for me when I am starving because you can eat as soon as you sit down, they don’t work great when your boyfriend doesn’t really like sushi and is asking what everything is and you only know some of it.

The 2nd day of our weekend my boyfriend woke up before me (which almost never happens but I got up at 3am to take friend to the airport then came back home and passed out) he went to the store and got everything to make us French Toast! Awesome morning. Then he proceeded to do all the dishes in the kitchen while I laid on the couch and watched Criminal Minds.

Then he was a great sport and took me to see Pitch Perfect 3!!!! Yay!!!!! I love these movies, they are so fun! This one didn’t disappoint and I loved the way that it ended. After the movie we headed home for a quite night of dinner and we watched ‘The Santa Clause.’ It was a great weekend but definitely a more expensive one that we normally have.

Best Boyfriend ever or what?

Week 1 marathon training.

by Ariana Peters, posted in food, healthy lifestyle, training

Monday- 4 miles and an attack dog when I got home. She attacks with kisses.

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Delicious chicken tacos for dinner.

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Tuesday- Some mild strength training in the house. Dinner was the last of my chicken tacos. 3 sets of 10 of the following (using 3lbs weights cause that’s all I had at home):

Single leg deadlifts, bicep curls, shoulder presses, chest flys, and walking lunges.

Wednesday- I am actually sore from that tiny little workout yesterday! 5 miles at the gym. 3 regular miles and 2 miles of sprints. .25 miles sprinting, .15 miles recovery. I wanted to die a little bit.

Thursday- walk with the dog and relax. I needed rest.

Friday- 3 miles with core work. I had sushi for lunch, which I love and is delicious but I tend to overeat so I was still bloated 4 hours later when we went to the gym. It took a little while to get these 3 miles done.

Saturday- Rest day

Sunday- Rest day

Total miles this week: 12! Nice improvement over last week, slowly inching those miles up!

 

 

3 weeks until school starts!!

by Ariana Peters, posted in school/studying

Ok now it is really getting close. 5 weeks was like, no big deal I got this, now I am starting to freak out a bit hahaha. Being as how I do not have a definite future address I think I will be taking the class at the community college near my current/old house which is also the closer of the 2 community colleges to my job. My thought process right now (if I can work it out with roommates then Brandon) is just to go straight to school at work so I have extra study time (maybe fit a run in as I get the study schedule down).

I am definitely nervous about the course load of anatomy & physiology, I have been reviewing my medical terminology a little bit and doing some Quizlet studying. I think I will feel better once I get into the class and see the syllabus and the actual workload. Not knowing is the nerve-wracking part. BUT I GOT THIS!!! I just keep telling myself that hahaha, and thankfully so is everyone else. Next week I will probably commit to the class and buy the book. The unfortunate thing is the college seem to use the same anatomy book for all 3 classes…..but of course each college uses a different book. So if I take anatomy 1 near Portland and anatomy 2 and 3 in Salem I will have had to buy 2 different books. Knowledge wise that is awesome, cost wise not so much.

Check in with you next week!!!

House Hunting: A Possible Ray of Light

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, travel

There might be a house in our future, the details are all being looked at and calculated. We are weighing our options. Nothing is for sure at this point but I should know more details in the next few weeks, so fingers crossed!!!!!

On a fun relationship note my end of year bonus came at work which will allow me to buy plane tickets for myself AND the bf to fly down to Southern California for my friends wedding in April…..meaning he will meet all my family that is down there AND my friends, Yikes he is going to have a fun 4 day weekend in April hahahahaha. I’ll tell you all about it then. Wish him luck!

See the source image

4 weeks until school starts.

by Ariana Peters, posted in school/studying

bookThat book costs how much???

And the time has come to start pricing books and looking for less expensive options. Hopefully amazon has it listed for much less expensive than it says here.

Ok I just looked and the same book is used for all 3 anatomy classes I have to take (at least at this school) remember how I am enrolled in both community colleges since I am not sure where I am going to end up. Lets see what the other school says, The other school is about $50 cheaper in their bookstore and of course it is a different book.

Let’s hope in the next 2-3 weeks it becomes a little more clear where I will be taking the class. It is highway robbery about much textbooks (and everything to do with school for that matter) costs.

That is where I am at for now. Time is ticking down quickly!!

 

On the market less than 12 hours

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle

The house hunting “fun” continues.

We are using the Redfin app to look for houses and keep up with new houses. Redfin lets you share a list together so you can favorite a house and your partner can see it, and you can leave comments for each other. Redfin also tells you how many new homes have been listed since you last logged on and emails you suggestions (so far only about 1/3 of their suggestions have been close to what we are looking for but that is still good).

So I get a notice yesterday morning, I think I was already at work, that a new house is on the market, I pulled it up, looked at it and favorite it. I got home after work, took Artemis for a walk and as I am walking out the door I get a notification that the same house is now pending!!!! This house was on that market for all of 9 hours!!!!!!

We have plans to look at 2-3 houses this weekend so I will update you soon!

 

Well one of the houses we wanted to look at has an offer in so we are readjusting and looking at others. It is so frustrating! Houses are literally disappearing before my eyes.

Update from the weekend: We ended up only looking at 2 houses and by looking at I mean driving by.

1 of the houses we were going to look at was a manufactured home on a nice almost .4 acres, but we got the ever so polite correct ummm you might want to consider a different one. Apparently manufactured homes only have a “shelf life” so to speak of about 30 years and this one was over that (even though it was so beautiful inside) also I guess housing requirements are in the process of being updated and in a few years this would not meet requirements for us to resell it. So on to the next one.

Image result for house hunting meme (image from bing search)

House 2 had an offer previously but it fell through so we wanted to see it because he had liked it before. Turns out the realtor wasn’t showing it again until Monday. Oy. So we decided to just drive by it and see the neighborhood and the lot, wow was the commute so much worse than we thought it would be so that was out. I would spend no time at home, it would all be work, school, commute, sleep and start all over. So no.

House 3 is something a friend told us about, it isn’t actually listed yet but a family friend is considering selling it so we drove by to check it out. It had a good size lot and was in a decent neighborhood and is 2 streets away from the freeway to get me to work and 10 minutes from Brandon’s  work so it is situated in a good area for us.

For now that is where we are at. Things are hopping off and on the market and we are getting our earnest money and down payment and closing costs together so we are ready to jump when the time comes. I will keep you posted.

5 weeks until school starts

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, school/studying

And it begins, the countdown to winter quarter starts now. 5 weeks to go.

5 weeks until I start the joyous, interesting, horror that is anatomy and physiology.

Image result for anatomy class memes (image from pinterest)

Currently I am registered the community college I have been going to; near where I live just outside Portland as well as on the waitlist for the class at the community college in Salem. It all depends on what happens over the next 5 weeks. If we are in escrow in the Salem area when school starts (and I get off the waitlist) I will go there but if not or if I don’t get off the waitlist I will take it by my old house and just head there after work and study for a few hours. Maybe get a run in as the weather warms up a bit, we shall see.

Image result for anatomy class memes (image from google)

Everything is up in the air now, which is a little stressful but I am trying to just go with it. I also need to try and put a few dollars into savings to cushion the blow of tuition and books. Anatomy is not cheap, it is 4 credits and has lab fees along with needing supplies.

Be prepared to start hearing a lot about anatomy. I am already using Quizlet to study a bit beforehand.