Currently Listening You Can Tell Georgia make it up to you see related

Have you heard about the dangers of using NuvaRing?

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Currently Listening Give Up By The Postal Service Nothing Better see related

What is the weirdest food combination that you enjoy?

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Currently Watching Save the Last Dance By Terry Kinney, Julia Stiles, Garland Whitt, Fredro Starr, Sean Patrick Thomas see related

instead of writing my paper...

I finally got around to creating the soundtrack to my life...much fun!!

Opening Credits- Jacksonville, Sufjan Stevens

Childhood- The Boy in the Bubble, Paul Simon

Waking Up- Joy- George Winston

Growing Up- Childhood’s a Road- Kelly Pease

Christmas time- Somewhere in my Memory, Home Alone

Sitting in the window, looking at the garden- Everywhere, Michelle Branch

Contemplating the beauty in life- These Days- Kelly Pease

Swinging under the stars- Stay the Same, Seven Places

Confession- Worlds Apart, Jars of Clay

Going to the beach- Float On, Modest Mouse

Everything I want- Magnificent Obsession, Steven Curtis Chapman

Silly boys- Someday You Will be Loved, Death Cab for Cutie

Driving- I Love the Rain the Most, Joe Purdy

Hope- I Will Rest in You, Jackie Velasquez

Retreatin’- Free Falling, Tom Petty

Kids, say no to sex, drugs and rock & roll- Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Tyler

Visiting the Grand Canyon- More, Matthew West

Good Friday- Why, Nicole Nordemon

Running, Canticle of Zechariah, Matt Maher

Broken heart- Good Life, Francis Dunnery

Cross country road trip- One of These First Things, Nick Drake

Writing a paper at 3 am- Evil, Interpol

Marathon, You Shook me all Night Long, AC/DC

Wonder and Awe- Your Hand in Mine, Explosions in the Sky

Studying- Liz on Top of the World, Pride and Prejudice

Jesus! Tantum Ergo, Aquinas

Longing- Transatlanticism, Death Cab

Triumph- Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity, Holst

Love- The Scientist, Coldplay

Vocation- Place in this World, Michael W. Smith

December- The Hat, Ingrid Michaelson

<3- Here in Your Arms, Hellogoodbye

Dating- Comfortable, John Mayer

Falling in love- Looking Back on Today, The Ataris

Getting married- Set me as a Seal, Matt Maher

Dancing- The Way You Look Tonight, Frank Sinatra

Home- To Build a Home, The Cinematic Orchestra

Having a baby- All the Words, Kutless

Rainy day – Paperweight, Schuyler Fisk and Joshua Radin

Happiness- Simple Life, The Weepies

Lullaby- Everything’ll be Alright, Joshua Radin

Looking back- The Luckiest, Ben Folds

Fame- Legacy, Nicole Nordemon

Dying- Love Song for A Savior, Jars of Clay

Closing Credits- Waiting for my Real Life to Begin- Colin Hay

Currently Listening Illinois By Sufjan Stevens Jacksonville see related

Do you think about your health? What steps do you take to make sure you stay healthy?

I would really love to be that person that is in bed before ten and awake before six, drinks eight glasses of water and three glasses of milk a day, prays an hour daily, exercises every day, doesn't procrastinate on work and avoids sloth, eats enough fruits/veggies, avoids sugar, remembers to floss and take vitamins, reads the paper every morning, cultivates virtue etc. but needless to say, most days I fall so short. 

I've never been able to get the eight hours of sleep down, mostly because in high school my gpa was my number one priority and pulling all-nighters to finish papers or study was necessary and I can't say I regret it (i.e. the paper I wrote the night before the deadline that ended up getting me a full scholarship...) I'm sure in the long run when I'm old and have alzheimers (my boss claims that Ronald Reagan suffered from it because he worked too much and didn't rest) I will. Obviously, if I spent less time procrastinating and started working ahead of time, this goal would be achievable, but for some reason, it's so hard for me to get anything done when the Sun is up and then again, I've come to the point where I just procastinate more and more...case in point, I got an extension for a paper due Monday that I really need to turn in tomorrow and I've been sitting on my computer for the past two hours reading fanfic (lame, yes, but totally my guilty pleasure) and sitting on facebook...until I work on my self-discipline and will power, this is sadly not going to happen.

8 glasses of water/3 glasses of milk... 43things has definitely made this easier. If I can throw myself head on into one goal, then I'm fantastic. I can't say that the extra water has seemed to make a huge difference (besides the fact that I have to pee all the time); I'm not a  huge soda drinker and I'm sure it's probably doing wonderful things for my body, but my face is still being stupid and I feel pretty much the same; the knowledge that I'm doing something good for my body does make me feel better though. I just started adding the three glasses of milk yesterday and now I need to go buy some more. yay for healthy bones.

Prayer...I heard this really wonderful allocutio about the importance of praying for an hour a day and I was so resolute, but that lasted for about a day...I'm such an awful person, in the morning, if I wake up early, I convince myself that in those thirty minutes I could do morning prayer/a rosary or whatever, I could get some more studying done and that it would be more beneficial and yet, I still spend like an hour straightening my hair or browsing facebook...when I go to bed, I'm usually "too tired" and I fully know that I'm being lame, and that I can easily spend three hours wasting my time on useless stuff, but can't spend an hour working on my relationship with God...it's so silly because every single time I go to confession this is usually my number one problem and yet if I truly felt penitent, I would do something about it...?

Exercise...clearly, this too comes down on where my priorities lie- I love running. It gives me such a sense of control and is such a good outlet for my head. I loved training for my marathon because I couldn't come up with excuses for myself and I was out there at least four times a week. Most days now though, I put "school" over it and really if I spent less time procrastinating on other stuff, this would happen.

Eating healthy...ugh. I really suck at self-control in general; sometimes I feel so proud of myself for being so wise when it comes to guys and relationships, but honestly, I really think God doesn't put me in those situations because usually I just screw myself over. so yea, I'm such a sugar addict. During Lent, I tried offering it up for my friend who said that teenagers are going to have sex no matter what you tell them, when I attempted to not eat sugar and I was ridiculously bad at it...and yet in theory, I know this, and I know that what true freedom is and all of that good stuff...so yea, the spirit is definitely willing, but the flesh is oh so weak...
 

Dental hygiene/taking out my contacts/vitamins...ha in the grand scheme of things, I could care less. I floss occasionally and if I'm sure this wouldn't be a huge step if I remembered. I swear, I'm going blind, without my contacts, I can't see anything at all...they really do need to come out every night. I've been pretty good about the vitamins.

Reading the paper...once I get my hour of prayer in, I'll work on this one. I stay up on the news online almost every day, but usually just the interesting stories...I love the idea of waking up at five, running and then drinking my tea and reading the paper...sometimes I think that once I'm married or once it's summer or whatever, this will happen, but who am I kidding...if I don't make it a habit, it probably won't ever happen.

Virtue...I think in some aspects, I'm not a complete failure, but I think that hour of prayer would really make a difference.

It's a good day to be alive! time to go work on silly Chaucer... by the way, I love Chesterton.

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Currently Listening A Rush of Blood to the Head By Coldplay The Scientist (acoustic) see related

growing up in this brave new world...

I was reading through old Xanga entries and it is a bit embarrassing to see how much I sounded like an annoying teenage girl...wow.

Yesterday I brought my brothers lunch at their school and it was so strange. I really wonder how they are going to survive growing up and what kind of guys they will turn out to be. They are both so sweet and so good and I worry a lot for them, especially John. I think Raymond will be okay; I could definitely see him with the cool kids. John has the biggest heart out of everyone I know and I just want to protect him from everything that comes with junior high and high school. I was such a dork in elementary and junior high and sometimes I still feel like one, but for the most part, I really have such good memories of school. They are both great kids and I want them to be okay.

There's this girl that I used to know from youth group that updates her myspace with these statuses that make me so incredibly sad and I just don't get it. She's so beautiful and yet it breaks my heart to see her and so many other girls miserable from putting up with guys that treat them like crap.

I found this on someone's xanga taken from Post Secret and it really sums up my problem with throwing contraception at twelve year olds. I got into this really big debate with this guy I know about teenagers and premarital sex and basically he said, no matter how much you tell teenagers not to have sex they are going to do it and the benefits of birth control outweigh all of the unwanted, neglected children that come from sex. Okay, yes, I do admit that there are a lot of people, maybe even a majority that think that there is nothing wrong with premarital sex. However, we can easily get rid of unwanted children through contraception and abortion and one day STDs will not be an issue (yes, I want to be one less, one less!)...the problem I have with condoms and Gardasil has little to do with babies or HPV. No matter how much we try to tell ourselves that we are "protected" from all of the unwanted consequences that come from having casual sex, the fact remains that when men and women stop treating each other as human beings that have inherent dignity and start reducing each other to mere instruments for their own selfish pleasure, only temporal gratification and lasting suffering result. It is only too easy to see this 'Brave New World' that we are living in.

 "'Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat.' Bernard ground his teeth. 'Have her here, have her there.' Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton." -Aldous Huxley

So I was thinking the other day about my perfect job and I would love to teach sex-ed...not scare kids with pictures of gonorrhea, but really make them read Brave New World and the Theology of the Body and show clips from "Sex and the City" or the latest "Desperate Housewives" and really analyze movies like Shop Girl or The Last Kiss and cut out clips from Cosmo and have speakers come in...it would be so great!

 We are definitely going to have to get Wendy Shalit to speak at UST!!

It's way past my bedtime. So much for finishing Crime and Punishment.