Are You a Supergirl?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Supergirls Speak Out author Liz Funk for ChickSpeak.com. She's such an awesome girl. Very inspiring, too. You really ought to read the Q&A, then read her book. (Then join ChickSpeak and comment on all of my articles! haha)

Miss me?

Sorry for the brief lack of posting. My mums was visiting, so I spent my time with her. She left today, so I'm a little really sad. I've never been one for goodbyes.

But to make up for the lack of posting, I thought I'd share some pictures from our adventures at the zoo. The animals were all out and about. And it's spring after all, so I was super excited to see babies! I saw the baby gorilla, but failed to get a clear picture of her. The other baby is pictured below. Sadly, mama panda isn't preggo, though. Cross your fingers for next year. Anyways, here you go:

Oh my goodness. I love the pandas at the zoo. What a perfect pose, too.

Even the sloth was out and about!

This is an anteater with her baby on her back. She came so close to us; it was crazy!

Cleanliness is even important at the zoo. The male grey seal is getting his teeth brushed!

Total War

So I’m currently at war with the treadmill in my gym. This war, however, has spread to the weight machines, free weights and even my kitchen. It feels so good to be working out again. I can actually see the muscle coming back!

But to really get a good grasp on how I’m doing, I want this: Tanita BC-350 Ironman Body Composition Monitor.

According to the description, it provides your “weight, body fat percentage, body water percentage, muscle mass, bone mass, basal metabolic rate, physique rating, visceral fat level, and metabolic age.”

It’s $269.99, but isn’t it pretty?

Buy Me Some?

Article number two is up now. If you're a female, you should join the site and hang out and chat on the forum. You can also follow the site on Twitter. And there's a group or fan page on Facebook. You can find it on my profile. Read and enjoy! Thanks.

Books, Books, Books

There’s this pretty cool project going on called “Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project.” I discovered it here on the blog, Editorial Ass.

The basic idea is to create a list of 100 books that you have been meaning to read or that you think you should read. Then you start reading them. You have five years to finish the list.

Interested? Check out this blog dedicated to the project: “Fill in the Gaps: 100 Project.”

I want to participate, but coming up with a list of 100 books to read is not very easy. I read over a few of the other lists and here are a few books I think I’ll add to my list:

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Middlemarch by George Eliot

But there are also books I want to read again because I read them when I was younger and don’t feel like I took everything I could from them. Like these:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Ahh, so many books. I’m currently reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (one of my favorite authors). So at least I don’t have to include that on my list.

Do you have suggestions for my list? What criteria should I base it on? Do you have a list? What are you reading? Let me know; I’m curious.

Gift Emergencies Solved

Is it just me or is everyone getting married? I guess I’m sort of at that age where marriage becomes a real possibility. Then there is graduation; the class of 2009 is now out and about. And all us “adults” are working on that whole “career” deal, whatever that’s about.

All these celebrations call for gifts, too. But what should you get them? Shopping for presents is always hard unless of course they tell you what they want. During these occasions, you generally want a gift that’s useful, too. More stress.

Well stress no more because I found the coolest site: Ms. & Mrs. (I found it on SELF’s Beyond the Beauty Pages. Elaine, the beauty director, blogged about it.) This site offers “special occasion survival kits” for things like weddings, babies, college, new jobs and random emergencies.

I like the Shemergency and Working Girl’s kit most. Check it out:

What A Story

I meant to blog about this earlier, but now will have to do. I imagine most ladies have read Pride & Prejudice (and most men, too, as it’s generally required reading in school at one point or another). Then there is the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and the movie version with Keira Knightley.

If you haven’t done any of the above, then perhaps you might be familiar with this quote:

“IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

It’s the first line of the book.

Well now there is another way to appreciate Pride and Prejudice! It comes in the form of a comic book. Marvel came out with the comic on April 1st.

What do you think? Will you pick it up? I haven’t… yet.

To the Rescue!

Is it common for kangaroos to go swimming? Because according to this story about a man saving a kangaroo from drowning/sharks, this crazy kangaroo seemed to go out in the ocean with the purpose of not coming back. Thank goodness the man was walking on the beach with his son and saw this crazy kangaroo. Apparently, he ran home (I guess he lived close), got his surf board and swam out to save the kangaroo. Here’s the video:


This guy pretty much risked his own life by swimming out into shark infested water. Pretty heroic, right? Or crazy? What do you think?

(Not) In the Mood

This week has not been all that great of a week. So I haven't really had any motivation to blog. But last night around 2am after watching Journey to the Center of the Earth and Sex and the City, I finally decided to do something. So I started to fold my laundry while listening to some music. (Let me tell you; there was A LOT of laundry.)

Anyways, Stand by Rascal Flatts started on my iTunes, and it made me feel a little better. So I wanted to share it with you guys to use when you're not having a good day.

Shameless Self Promotion

So I'm writing for a Web site, ChickSpeak.com. It's a pretty cool site, and I definitely believe in the mission. Here's my first article. Check it out!

Fun and Famous

Hello all. I'm back! Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I was suffering from a miserable migraine. Normally if I just relax, it passes. So I made a bowl of baby brussels sprouts (I love steamed veggies in the microwave!) and watched Hancock. Well, no luck, it just got worse and worse. So I slept it off.

Anyways, this weekend was fun. I saw a famous person--William H. Macy! Well actually my friend saw him first. He was running and ran right past us! I remember him from Air Force One, Pleasantville and Sahara. He and a whole slew of other celebrities were in town for the White House Correspondents Dinner. Fun, huh? DC really is becoming the new NYC. (Ok, maybe that's stretching it. But still I saw a celebrity in DC faster than I did in New York.) Cool huh?

Sorry!

I've totally been disregarding my blog this week. YIKES. And I'm going to disregard it all weekend because I have a friend visiting. So I'll be back Monday with lots of fun and interesting posts. Until then, I'll leave you with these:

Save Your Printing Ink!

As summer approaches, many of you will probably be out on the job or internship search. But before you print out that resume, check this out!

Staples has launched their "Career Stimulus Program," which entails of printing out 20 free copies of your resume and 40 free business cards! You have until June 13th, 2009 to print them, too!

So update your resume and head over to a Staples near you.

I am a Blogaholic.

Some of you may have caught my earlier post about possibly being a blogaholic. Well there is no possbility. I -am- a blogaholic. And thanks to Google Reader, my addiction gets worse and worse and worse. I'm currently at 83 subscriptions.

Ok, to make sure you don't think that I'm sitting at a computer all day, I don't necessarily read every post. I skim through a lot of it and read what interests me the most. It's so easy to do on Google Reader, too. I don't have to visit 83 different Web sites when I want to see what's happening.

Last time I got some great suggestions for new blogs. So once again, I figured I'd share a few favorites of mine and ask you about yours. What are you reading? Because here's a spotlight of what I'm reading:

Funemployed in NYC - They have a great "Job of the Day" feature where they find ridiculous job postings. It's pretty funny. They make unemployment funny, which is nice.

Save Like Me - This is SELF's money saving blog. MP Dunleavey gives you great suggestions on how to go about saving money. I like how she uses real life examples, too.

Salon.com's Broadsheet - This is my go-to blog for women's issues and current affairs. I like how they talk about serious and not-so-serious issues with a conversational, witty and amusing tone.

Almost Savvy - This blog isn't updated too frequently, but when it is, you can find some great information.

Beyond the Beauty Pages - This is SELF's beauty blog. I've learned a lot from all the women there. I love reading what they're up to and what they suggest. (I also love that my friend Ale is a regular blogger. She's awesome!)

I May Have Found Another Addiction

Remember how I told you I joined Twitter? (I actually really like it, too.) Well I kind of found a new thing to play with. It's not new, but I guess Twitter wasn't really knew either.

Anyways, I'm on Tumblr! You might think I'm crazy for starting another blog, but this will be my main fix for a blog. My Tumblr blog is just about little quotes or photos that catch my eye. It's my latest fix.

Are any of you on it?

Cheap, Cheaper and Free!

You know me, I can't resist a good deal. And, wow, there are so many out there right now. So I hope you find some of these deals helpful this weekend and the upcoming week.

- Are you a Barnes & Noble member looking for a cheap subscription to a magazine? How does 89 cents for a year of Redbook sound? Or $2.70 for Marie Claire, Esquire or Harper's Bazaar? I'm so tempted to join, just to subscribe to all of these magazines! It costs $25 per year. Or find a friend or family member that is and use their membership! Check it out here.

- Mother's Day is around the corner. Do you have a card for Mom? No? Well get over to Hallmark to make a free card (postage included!). Follow the instructions from this site before May 4.

- Have a Sonic's near you? Get a free CroisSONIC breakfast sandwich by signing up here. Or do you prefer White Castle? Here's a coupon for a free pork slider. Or you can head to KFC and get a free drink with a purchase of their grilled chicken.

- Not a B&N fan? What about Borders? Get a free 12 oz beverage while perusing books.

- Is your birthday coming up? Do you like going to Benihana? While it's not near my birthday, I do love Benihana's. So I think you should join The Chef's Table and get a $30 max dinner certificate for your birthday!

- There are so many free samples on this site, I just can't pick one to share. Check it out for yourself!

A Sad Day for the Zoo

I am so sad. Happy the Hippo is leaving the zoo. He's probably one of my most favorite animals to visit. (I'm also a big fan of the giant pandas, the otters and the beavers.) It's always fun to watch him for long periods of time. If you only watch him for a few seconds, he might not move much. But he'll eventually come up for air or waddle around in his pool or make funny noises.

Anyways, I think Happy is fabulous. He's a 28-year old Nile hippo. Nile hippos can grow to be 15 feet long and weigh up to 8,000 lbs. Happy's diet consists of seven pounds of herbivore grain pellets, 35 pounds of hay, one and a half pounds of fruit and three pounds of vegetables. Yeesh!

I'm happy for him though. He's moving to the Milwaukee County Zoo, and he'll be sharing his new pad, which includes a pool and sandy beach, with two possible girlfriends, Puddles and Patty.

Make babies, Happy!

Please Wash Your Hands

Swine flu also known as the H1N1 flu has (probably) reached my home state of North Carolina and definitely reached the state I'm currently living in. This is not a good sign, friends. Having the flu definitely sucks..

So I hope you're all taking the time to really wash your hands, try not to touch your face or eyes much and pay attention to your surroundings. Me? I'm going out to buy anti-bacterial hand stuff and lysol tomorrow. Oh, and please refrain from doing the following:

Thanks.

(PS: Where are this poor kid's parents?)