summer

hello hello!

finally home for the summer. trying out a new diet plan. i'm seeing how well that 5-6 small meals a day thing works. it's only going to last a couple weeks b/c once i start work we have specific times for eating meals, so that kills that. calculating the time and amount of food to eat during each small meal is kind of challenging. i think america lives for the 3 meals, and the biggest always being dinner. which is too heavy. but here are some of the meal options i've thought of so far:

• 2 eggs scrambled with an assortment of veggies
• plain yogurt with a fruit
• some sort of korean food that i'll try to calculate the calories for
• walnuts/almonds and cheese
• fruit & cheese
• banana and peanut butter
• tuna and salad
  

i'll add some more as i try this out. today is my official first day of trying out small meals. i think it would be impossible to do that with a real job b/c u r only technically given a lunch break. plus, it would take a lot of energy to plan all the meals for the day and carry them around.

trying a modified south beach diet.
plus, i'm working out everyday, bought a bike at walmart for $65. we'll see how long it lasts.

pride & prejudice

i've come to the conclusion that the clothing from the pride & prejudice movies should come back into fashion. imagine, empire waist (boost the chest) and a loose fitting skirt (hide the tummy). it's comfortable and attractive.

The one on the left and right are from Becoming Jane (2007) and the middle is Pride & Prejudice (2005). Something about blue just seemed to make both costume designers very happy.











I would also not be impartial to a return in the men's fashion. Check out James McAvoy in Becoming Jane. or mebbe they should just host more period themed dances




If you need more pictures to look at, just google search images, some pretty nice white dresses from the dances (there's a trend to these colors) o, and these images were found through google, can i get sued for this? well, just in case, i do not own these pictures and thank kindly the websites connected through google search that do own them:)

this so called training...

mapmyrun.com is an awesome website. u can track how much you ran or you can type in a city/zip code and they will give you runs and how far you went. according to the website, from umcp to cherry hill rd along the paint branch trail it is 5.83 miles, the run to lake artemisia (i couldn't find one that was exactly wat i run) is about 3.75 miles.

so in my quest to finally train for my may 4th marathon, i decided to run to ikea, then around the lake then back to ikea (fyi, i thought i was going to die) which came out to a nice 15 mile run...so i'm a little more than halfway there (minus the killer hills that frederick will apparently hand out) gag and die

i'm 21!

The beautiful decorations done by my 4th oldest sister. cool chain link construction paper!!!!












Dark chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing. compliments of the 4th. yum yum.

















pretty pretty decorations!!!!

JFK airport

so, no desire to write about my last day in london (which i enjoyed very much and had fish & chips for the 4th time!) b/c i am too distracted by homeland security and the outrageousness of their security checks. arriving into jfk (we departed an hour late) and my friend's cousin (she's a U.S. citizen) got picked as a "random selection" for extra security.

random my ass...

so i sat w/ her for 2 hrs in the security check area....guess what everyone else that got randomly selected looked like...

then i looked at the U.S. passport and it says, "The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection."

makes me wonder what really "without delay" is taken to mean. i'm guesing it's not the same as "right to a speedy trial."

makes me so mad. the guy next to me had been sitting waiting to get asked questions since 4 in the afternoon (by this time it's 8pm) insanity is america.

British all the way

probably one of the highlights of my trip was the British Library. (it's the building with the read sign on it) haha. how dorky does that make me what makes it so awesome is their special collections exhibit. they have the Magna Carta!!! plus, a journal of Leonardo DaVinci, writings by Galileo, Lewis Carroll (who i found out today was actually a Reverend, and his name was nothing like "Lewis Carroll," i just can't remember what it actually was), Mozart, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, old atlases, plus lots old religious texts (Buddhist, Zorastriast, Christian, Islamic, etc.) pretty amazing. plus, they this cool computer program. they downloaded lots of their old texts (e.g. Leonardo's journal) and you can turn the pages of the journal by sliding your finger from one page to another (so much fun!!!). it was so amazing being able to look at each document and think to myself, "they wrote that a gazillion years ago (they had the oldest known writing of beowulf) and i'm standing inches away from it" i got chills. so amazing
also, they had headphones set up where you could listen to readings of different stuff (e.g. Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility), or listen to musical compositions that they had in the composer's hand, or stuff like The Beatles. really really cool. the building was all architectural and had the Royal Library built in the middle up the whole building.
so this is an up close zoom in of the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum (which is right around the corner from mimi's flat). now if i only could read all the other languages on the slab i could translate hierglyphics...darn.
isn't this picture amazing! i took it in the Court Yard of the British Museum. i think the brochure said something about the court yard being the largest enclosed open space in London or something cool like that. the lion weighs 7tons and sat atop a temple of some sort in Turkey. the British Museum was insanely huge. it was overwhelming to look at it all, so i gave up after a while. but really cool stuff.

but yea, British Library, one of the coolest places in the world! i love it, so i recommend it for any dorky person!

Museums, Westminster, Canary Wharf

yesterday was freezinggg....winter jacket, hat and gloves definitely would have been useful. crazy english weather. my shoes are worn through, but i've probably walked around london more than i've walked in the past two years at school. so sad. o yea more likes:

6. fish and chips with tartar sauce. i think cod fish tastes the best of the three i've tried (i also tried plaice and mimi's, but i can't remember what kind she got)
7. the walkability of this city (even if i can't feel my feet anymore)

anyway, onto wednesday's travels.
i walked south west to Trafalgar Square to first go to the National Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery. the national gallery had that seurat guy with the pointilism and there was a person there sketching the picture! it's more fun to go to the gallery to watch other people draw the paintings. anyway, weekdays for museums are chaos b/c there's thousands of little kids in uniform wearing bright neon vests running throughout. i also got to see the renaissance painting where in the foreground there's that skull all out of perspective, but if u look at the picture from the right it's normal. so cool.
National Portrait was also cool. didn't go inside the vanity fair special exhibit (gah, on 10 pound entrance fee for special exhibits) then i got uber hungry and wala! a pret across the street from the portrait gallery. i got the brie, tomato and basil sandwich. simple and good.

then i headed further south to Westminter. Westminster Abbey, isn't it pretty? on the right is Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament from the Westminster Bridge. Once i got onto bankside i walked along the Thames. so pretty, but really really cold. i stopped by the Oxo building again and went inside their gallery on the first floor. they had a really cool exhibit by landscape photographer David Noton. i really wanted a picture of his, but they were uber expensive. then i went to Tate Modern which is inside an old factory. don't understand modern art, but it was funny b/c i ran into 2 girls from cp. wat a small world.

anyway, took the DLR again to have dinner with mimi and 2 of her flatmates. the food was ok, and we took funny pictures (canary wharf is full of business people and corporate stuff, so i looked very out of place). then mimi and i met up with anna and went to a cute pub in covent garden. i was so sleepy, i think i slept about 9 hours...only 2 more full days!