Life is just a dream…

Okay, not really. Although it should be noted that dreams often represent parts of our reality or inner psyche.

In this dream I was with a bunch of people, many of them family. There were a couple of babies there too and I kept holding a little baby girl named Bryn whom I decided to take care of for her mother Bethenny. If you actually know who I’m talking about then you get a few cool points from me. Bethenny Frankel is pretty famous (creator of the skinnygirl franchise, reality TV star, natural foods chef, celebrity chef, etc) and I find it comical that I was watching her baby. I dream a lot of babies nowadays probably because I’ve wanted to be a mother all my life and the past few years my biological clock has REALLY been ticking.

Apparently in the past in my dream I had been in a reality show of some kind, not sure what it was. But someone made a video that essentially made fun of me. Someone I knew had found the video (I didn’t even know it existed) and posted it up somewhere and then they were talking to a mutual friend of ours about whether or not they should have posted the link for all to see. I became upset because I felt this person should have came to me and let me know about the video rather than just linking the video somewhere for people to see. This person didn’t know that I knew they posted it somewhere and also didn’t realize I could see what they were saying to our mutual friend, and I think I posted a message to the person basically calling them out. Later on I ran into this person at a park and when they confronted me I told them I wasn’t going to speak of it now because I was with family. Plus I was still holding baby Bryn, whom I literally held for just about the ENTIRE dream.

This dream was interesting and made me think about the particular person discussed here. The part of the dream with them was relatively minor, but it still made me think anyhow. It was someone I had tried in the past to be friends with but something had always happened. Its not that this person is currently disliked by me, but I’m done with trying to be ‘close’ to this person. I don’t believe that they’re ever fully truthful or open when communicating with me about their issues or problems with me. And at this point, there’s little I can do about that. Except accept that we’re probably never going to be as close of friends as I had originally hoped long back. This person’s strategy is often to say nothing instead of what their concerns are, which just makes things worse even if they are right. In the past I’ve been hurt trying to figure out what I did to make this person take a step back, and that’s just nothing something I care to do anymore. And it makes me less likely to want to reach out to this person even if I think I do know what’s wrong, because I feel that this cycle of being closer and then them backing up is inevitably going to always happen.

Also, I hate posting this line, but I know some people freak out and wonder if a post is about them or not. If you’re reading this, then its probably not you. I don’t believe this person has ever read this journal.

Feel the burn

So I have officially lost all the weight I regained last month.Well, I should back up and tell you the WHOLE story in case you don’t know.

A year and a half ago, my weight was really up. I don’t mean like 50 lbs up, and I’ll probably make a bunch of females out there want to strangle me, but I was up to 140 lbs. I’ve never been that heavy in my life, even when I went through puberty and weighed a lot more (my highest was around 135). This was really distressing to me. When I was 18 I weighed around 117. You can probably argue that I was still growing even at 18, or my body was still adjusting, or I gained muscle, etc. I don’t really need to get back to 117 but I always prefer to be in the 120s somewhere.

I nearly cried when I saw the scale reach 139 and 140. At first I tried to accept it: this was my new body, maybe I needed to be here. But it kept bothering me. I hated the way I looked and I felt disgusting. So I kicked it into high gear and went into diet mode and exercise.

Like every other person in the world, I hate dieting and exercising. I found solace however in the use of wii fitness games like Wii Fit Plus, Golds Gym Cardio Workout, and later, Your Shape. It took me a few months but I managed to lose 10 lbs and later 4 more. I was down to 126 and ecstatic.

Fast forward several months, and I was back up to around 130. I slipped a bit and slowed down exercising because of some very personal and serious things going on in my life and family. I’m content around 130 for the most part so I didn’t sweat it. About a month ago however, somehow I made up to 135 again. Panic mode set in.

I found a free workout program from Exercisetv that’s available through my FIOS on demand. It’s called the 10 lb slimdown, and its intended to help you lose 10 lbs in a month. I actually lost 4 lbs the very first week, but I’m only officially telling people now during week 2 because I wanted to make sure they stayed off. I’m still 131 during week 2, but I’m very happy with this. The very first week I started feeling amazing. The biggest indicator to me of my fitness is how I feel. Because I’m pear shaped, and because I’m prone to pot bellies instead of my hips actually expanding, I can hide extra weight easily, so visual isn’t a good indicator for me. Within just a few workouts my legs felt normal. I know that sounds ridiculous. What do you mean they feel normal? Don’t they always feel normal? What I mean by normal is they didn’t feel jiggly or huge. My legs just felt… like my legs. Nothing extra there. And my waist already feels a bit smaller too.

The way the program works is there is a different workout each day. Some days are just one workout of 20 min, others are two workouts making it about 40 min. The second workout is always a core workout, which is great for me because that’s the area I need help with the most. You workout five days a week for the first couple of weeks, and 6 for the rest of the month, but I’ve found that I just workout as often as I want to. If I need a day off before I’m supposed to have one, I take it. You have to just go by your own body. Each workout also incorporates the use of handweights, although you can choose to not use them or use only one if you need to modify. Each workout is a warmup, three circuits that you repeat twice followed by a cool down. They’re perfect for stand alone exercises or if you want to mix and match them and ignore the exercise program. According to the trainer, Chris Freytag, your body supposedly never gets use to these exercises, and I hope that’s true.

The trainer is so bubbly, too. I never get mad at her, even when I’m having to do crappy lunges. I’m still trying to get used to the lower body workout, but I’ve already seen dramatic improvement in my ability to do exercises on all workouts and its only week 2. I’m also not getting sore anymore after workouts.

If you’re interested in learning more about this workout, you can find more information over at http://www.exercisetv.tv/slimdown/

Can I get pie instead of cake?

WordPress suggested to me yesterday that I should focus my blog on a specific idea or theme. Can’t my theme be randomness?

So this week I finished Portal 1. Yeah, I’m a little behind. I’ve seen four million people play it through, but I had never been interested in actually playing it before, or at least not enough to go out and buy it. With the release of Portal 2, I became intrigued and actually got the first Portal on Steam. What a quick (but great!) game. Something I found advantageous to Portal besides the amazing dialogue was that its a game  you can replay. I found that it didn’t matter that I had already done the puzzles. I still enjoyed playing it again, and in some levels I actually forgot how I solved everything. Other levels I took another approach. Plus turning on the developer commentary is an added bonus to playing again.

Of course now I really want to play Portal 2. Will I be making the plunge, however? Eventually. But not now. The simple truth is that the game is 50 bucks, and right now I can’t justify paying that kind of money for a game that I’m not going to put 100 hours into. A huge rpg or adventure game that takes a good chunk of hours to play might warrant such a plunge, but not Portal 2. And used copies are already coming up on ebay for about twenty bucks cheaper than retail. Does it really matter that someone else already played that copy? Especially since they probably played it for only a couple of days, finished it, and put it up online for sale.

Nevertheless, my curiosity got the better of me and I started watching a playthrough of Portal 2. Originally I was going to wait for someone like Samm (ssskinner) to stream it, but I ended up really getting intrigued after finishing the first one. I’m only a couple of videos in, but I’m already a little put off. It just looks…. weird. And so different. But again, I’m not that far into watching it, and everyone seems to love it, so I’m just going to hang in there and give it a full chance. I’m sure watching it is much different than playing it as well.

In other gaming news, I was very much looking forward to Dracula Origin 2, until I read that they decided to make it a stupid casual game. What is up with that? As good as Dracula Origin was, they decided to butcher our hopes and dreams for the sequel by making it casual. We’ve been waiting years for this sequel and this is what they give us. Very disappointing.

Here’s a trailer for the original Dracula Origin game if you’re interested, although the trailer doesn’t really do it justice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZxYH4az0OQ

Originally I had hoped to LP Dracula Origin but I abandoned the project because I didn’t think the game had enough action sequences for viewers.

I have a little bit of a thing for Dracula (note: debonair and handsome Dracula, not Nosferatu Dracula). He was definitely pretty hot in this game, although he wasn’t in it far enough. You play the entire game as Van Helsing, and there’s only a few scenes where you see Dracula, and just one where you actually face him. I would’ve liked a few more run ins with him.

Enter the Tiger…

So hi there. You. Whoever you are out there. Out in cyberspace land.

I go by a lot of names. KagomeYuy, Kaggles, Agent K, enigmaticdreamer, Amanda, hey you there, others. So where does Tiger fit? I’ll get to that later.

Basically I’m starting this… site thingy because I wanted a place to collect my thoughts and/or post random things that was accessible to everyone. I currently have an online journal already but its private and its not really a place I want to share with the world right now. And so I created this. So welcome to my humble abode. Please make sure to remove your shoes before coming in, but do make yourself at home.

My first order of business tonight is to talk about something that is not about me. Why? Well I don’t really have anything tonight to say about myself other than my welcome message above. And since I was thinking about writing a short review about this particular topic, I figured this place would be as good a place as any. So here goes.

I’ve just finished watching the latest podcast from a couple of friends of mine who do them on a regular basis. They are known as Horse and Rabbit, and they offer up several engaging and cute podcasts during the year with various locations and themes that include anywhere from Disneyland to the San Diego Zoo to a Ren Faire to a cross country trip. Recently joining them is little Rat, aka Wyatt, their new son, who is absolutely adorable and such a ham ever since he learned to talk.

I felt kind of compelled to clarify Wyatt’s actual name besides Rat. I’ll admit I first turned my head at the nickname until I was informed that there was an actual meaning behind everyone’s on-screen aliases. Just know that there isn’t any kind of sneaky or negative connotation accompanying this, haha. Wyatt is far from the rat I caught outside in my backyard this very afternoon (true story!)

As it turns out, I’m Tiger… or I would be if I were part of the podcast. One day, maybe, right? Except this is hilarious to me because just as Wyatt isn’t anything like his alias, I’m pretty much the opposite of mine too. If we were basing this strictly on personality, Wyatt would be Adorable Playful Clever and Mischievous Puppy and I would be something like Mouse or Insectinthecorneroftheroomthatissosmallyouignoreheranddon’tevennoticeherever.

Either that, or Wy would be Tigger and I would be Piglet. Aww squee!!!

Digressing will be over in 3, 2….

The latest podcast sees the family at the San Diego Zoo featuring the Elephant Odyssey. Joining them was a special guest, an actual employee from the zoo that served as their tour guide. I must admit that I was incredibly impressed with this podcast. It was an interesting mix of visuals and fact. Not only did everything look really cool, but having the tour guide there to explain it all proved rather intriguing and I actually got a feeling almost like I had experienced it all myself. This was balanced with actual shots of their family and other visitors candidly enjoying the zoo, which kept things bouncy and fun and prevented it from being too documentary-like. Its was a great balance and I found it worked quite well and made things very enjoyable. I really enjoyed seeing Rat play in the zoo’s park and become excited about the new things he was learning. And ho boy, were those NACHOS I saw Rabbit eating? Or did I just crave nachos bad enough that they looked like nachos to me?

I’ve said this before on other platforms, but I would REALLY encourage anyone reading this to check out Horse and Rabbit Adventures. If you look hard enough, you may even find the story of Rat or a comic con in there! Who knows!

Find Horse and Rabbit (and little Rat!) at www.horseandrabbit.com, or on itunes!