One goal down!

I know that many of you who read this are on Facebook and saw my post a few days ago about Matthew and I moving to Omaha.  We were hoping it would happen quickly, and we found out last week that he had gotten a job offer from Gallup.  We are ECSTATIC to be moving.  We'll definitely miss many things about Peoria, but the opportunities that Omaha provides are far bigger and better than just about anything Peoria can offer.  Matt starts his new job on the 6th of February and I will hopefully be moving there soon after.  I'm not 100% sure when because the transfer with my job is going to be a bit more complicated than we had hoped.  Regardless, it's great to know that I will be in Omaha soon!

Now I just have two goals to accomplish in the next year.  Both the German and the weight loss are coming, but I think slower than I would like on both counts.  I need to be better about working out for sure.  I'm losing weight because I've limited calories, but if I do my workout every day, I get quicker results and that's what I'd like.  At this point, I can actually see a difference between myself now and myself two months ago, but I still have a ways to go.  I just have to keep chugging along. :)

I'm also miles ahead of where I was two months ago on the German front, but I'm still a long way from where I'd like to be.  I have days where everything is easy and it all makes sense and I'm very excited, and then I have days where I go to read something in German and my brain is about to explode from all of the material I don't know or understand.  Ultimately, I just need to keep expanding my vocabulary.  I've got a decent handle on the grammar (I know and understand how to use all four cases) and I am definitely capable of basic conversation - I just need more people to speak with.  (Any takers?)

So it's a brief update of how everything is going - I know it's been awhile.  I'm on vacation for the next five days, so I'm planning a multi-part entry (although if I get bored, I'll probably write it all in one go) about nutrition.  Get excited! :)

Till then...

Tschüss!

Happy people just don't shoot their husbands.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Legally Blonde (I can quote the entire movie from beginning to end) and the quote referenced in the title has always been one of my favorites.  The whole quote is, "Exercise gives you endorphins.  Endorphins make you happy.  And happy people just don't shoot their husbands.  They just don't."

Now, before I started working out I didn't feel like I wanted to shoot Matt all the time (or ever, really), but it's amazing how exercise can take you from a bad mood or a so-so mood and just make you feel better.  I just finished my workout for today and no part of my body is happy; in fact, I'm pretty sure that my leg muscles are getting ready to go on strike against me.  In spite of this, I feel happy - really, really happy - for no apparent reason.  It's easy, when you don't work out for a day or two, to lose motivation and feel like it's a chore but as soon as  you work out again, you just want to keep going because it makes you feel so good.

Lately I've been ridiculously motivated because I fit into a pair of pants that I haven't fit into for about two years. (I was just keeping them around because I hoped to fit into them again.)  I still have a long way to go, but it's amazing how much more motivated I became after that.  And then I take that motivation, work out, and I just feel absolutely incredible.  I feel like I'm becoming a happier person in general.  For the most part all the little stressors that would normally give me a minor panic attack are just irrelevant now.

Hopefully this will keep up and I'll just keep chugging along and do better and longer workouts until I've achieved all my goals in the weight-loss arena!

Tschüss!

German-learning Resources

I haven't talked about much related to German lately, but I came across an excellent website a few days ago so I decided to talk a bit about the resources I have and use.  I'm sure that I've mentioned most of my resources at some point, but I want to go over them for anyone who's trying to learn a language.  I'm pretty sure that almost everything I use is available for other languages as well, so it's relevant.

The biggest resource that I use right now is Rosetta Stone

Spiffy picture, no?

Everything else I use is in conjunction with the Rosetta Stone.  I absolutely do not recommend using this software by itself because it doesn't teach you grammar.  It expects you to automatically be able to figure it out on your own.  If I hadn't already studied German, I would be hopelessly lost and confused.  Here are the rest of my resources:

Wie Geht's was my textbook for German at Truman and it is amazing and I love it.  It is only limited by vocabulary, not grammar.  It covers just about everything, as far as I can tell.  I think I paid $4 for it used because it was a past edition too.  If you're not studying German, I recommend finding a prior edition for a textbook that has good reviews to go along with your language of choice.

This book has been more amazing than I thought it would be.  It comes in several different languages and if you are trying to learn a new language, buy it. It covers everything first in English and then in German, which is huge because you cannot fully understand the grammar of a second language if you don't completely understand the concept in English.  It has made all of the difference in my understanding German grammar (which is a hot mess and can be completely overwhelming).

I purchased all three German SparkCharts (Verbs, Vocabulary, and Grammar) before I went to Austria the first time as a sort of crash course.  I use the Verbs one most, because it lists all of the regular and irregular verb forms and conjugations, plus explains a bit of the grammar.  I also really like the grammar one because it explains word order (to some extent).  The vocabulary one covers a ton of random material, but I don't see the logic in some of the things they picked to include or leave out.  They're $5 each, and worth it I think (at least for the Verbs/Grammar).

And last, but definitely not least, links!

I do have a German-English dictionary but I almost never use it because I have two amazing websites that I use instead:

dict.leo.org

dict.cc

These websites are amazing wonderful fantastic helpful etc., etc.  Leo is the one all of my German-speaking friends use and I'm pretty sure most students of German know it.  It's like a dictionary on steroids and I can't recommend it enough.  The only thing I dislike about it is that if the word you're looking up is declined, Leo won't recognize it.

Fortunately, dict.cc will pull up declined words.  It's not quite as good as Leo in general translation, but it does have a native speaker recording of almost every word and phrase which is incredibly helpful for pronunciation.  Usually if I just need a basic translation I'll go to Leo, but if I want a better idea of pronunciation or can't pull something up on Leo, I switch over to this page.

I also use Google translate occasionally if I have a long sentence I need to translate.  I dislike using the online translators cause they're never 100% accurate, but I've tried most of them and Google's is definitely the best.  Just never put something in English in and expect to get logical German out on the other side.

The last resource I use is for German word order.  Even for all the books that I have and all of the reading that I did, trying to figure out what goes where in German is not easy.  Fortunately, I came across this page and it is everything I was looking for and then some.  It does an absolutely fantastic job of answering pretty much every question you can think of regarding word order.

I hope that this entry helps someone's language-learning process a little!  And if you have any suggestions for me, I'll gladly take them! :)

Tschüss!

New year, new post

Ahhh, first post of 2012!  I hope everyone's New Years celebrations went well and that the year has started out well.  I've heard a lot of people say that 2011 wasn't a great year for them (and I would tend to agree) so hopefully this year is better for everyone!

My year started out relatively boringly, which I'm definitely not complaining about.  Mr. Leick and myself stayed in, watched football, and generally did nothing until midnight, at which point we had our midnight kiss, drank some sparkling juice (because we are old) and then went to bed.  I worked all day on the first but had today off which was nice.

But now onto the actual point of this post!  Since work really kicked into gear for the Christmas season, I completely slacked on my diet.  Not so much on the learning German part, but definitely on the diet.  I didn't really work out (although I was on my feet for at least a full eight and a half hours a day, usually running around like a chicken with my head cut off which counts for something) and I ate out more frequently and introduced more processed food and a lot of less healthy drink options (not soda though!) back into my diet.  The whole time, I said that once the Christmas season ended and I wasn't stressed out with work, I'd go back to it.  I'm incredibly proud of myself for making good on that statement.  I didn't GAIN any of the weight I'd lost back, but I certainly didn't lose anymore and I really, really want to get back down to a weight I haven't seen since high school, which is about 20-30 pounds away.  I put on an absolutely ridiculous amount of weight between college and getting married and I would love for it to all go away, and then some.

Since I knew that I would need the motivation to get back to it, I asked a couple of people for weight loss-related things for Christmas.  My mom got me these awesome resistance bands:

Three different resistances in super fun colors!

Plus Kate, one of my best friends, got me these:

(Cue the Freshman year P.E. flashback)

This video is AMAZING.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE Bob.  SO MUCH.

(More on him in a moment.)

And then today while grocery shopping at Aldi I happened upon one of the best deals I've ever found: a PINK(!) exercise ball for $6.99!  I didn't even think twice about throwing it in my cart.

Blowing up the ball

Looking like a deflated balloon. xD

All blown up!  

(I'm not entirely sure why I took these pictures, but I did so I'm posting them.)

I actually started working out again on New Year's Eve.  I had nothing better to do so I figured I'd work out, and it felt really, really good to be back at it.  If I hadn't started feeling like I was going to puke (from my meal three hours earlier) I'm sure I would have made it through the 30 Day Shred.  Of course, the next day on the first, I felt like my abs were going to eat me alive but I didn't mind.  It felt so good to know that I was being healthy again that I was excited about it.  Then today I did the Biggest Loser cardio workout and I discovered Trainer Bob.  

I've never seen The Biggest Loser, but having done a workout video with Bob and one with Jillian, I would do SO much better on Bob's team.  Matt was even watching my workout and he said he felt motivated to join me after watching the first few minutes and hearing the way Bob approached his audience/the people from the Biggest Loser who were doing the workout.  I'm not going to completely sideline the 30 Day Shred, but I think that I'm going to be doing the cardio workout tape much more frequently now.  I need a video that keeps me motivated and the negative motivation I get from doing Jillian's workout (I WILL FINISH THIS AND BEAT YOU, YOU BITCH) is far more emotionally draining than the positive motivation I got from doing Bob's today.  I didn't feel like I was being mocked for needing to modify certain exercises because I'm just not there physically yet.

In addition to being awesome in the video, Matthew discovered his website.  It has all things weightloss related and I am really excited to get to explore it more.  He has a few videos about healthy food recipes he likes including one for oatmeal with fresh apples, chopped almonds, and cinnamon.  He even lists a few very interesting facts about cinnamon that I never would have known.  I feel a little like I'm gushing about a new crush, but I am really excited about the new video and the website.

PLUS! My workout pants kept almost falling down today, and let's not even talk about every pair of other pants I own, and a few skirts from work.  To know that my clothes are all getting too big is incredibly exciting because it hasn't really happened for me, well...ever.

And because I want to include a touch of my learning German in this post...

I've been making a lot of progress there, too!  I spent a few hours over a couple of days pouring over every material I have that discusses German grammar and I finally feel like I really, really understand how it works.  I understand the seven different verb cases and at least the idea behind each one and my vocabulary is growing (although I really need to make more flashcards) and I feel like I'm making some big strides.  I'm going to work on it a bit more after I finish this post and it's getting kind of late, so I think I'll just end this here.

Hopefully I'll have another update soon and it won't be another two weeks before I get another post out. :)

Tschüss!