benign

Biopsy was benign, by the way. No surprise, but good to hear. I have to go back in 6 months for another exam and ultrasound. Hey, as long as it's not a mammogram, I don't care!

Final secret pal package

My secret pal, lspst8, sent me a super awesome final package! Lots of great yarn- 3 skeins of beautiful mercerized cotton in a gorgeous purple, 2 skeins of Shine from Knitpicks in Cherry (Shine is one of my favorite yarns- I love it!), AND some super awesome Blue Sky Alpaca/Silk yarn, which I will probably use to make Branching Out.

Also, a bar of jasmine soap, some cool funky buttons, and.... a KNITTING NEEDLE CASE! (fabric rollup thing? "Case" isn't necessarily the best descriptive term.). Did you make it yourself, lspst8?? It is PERFECT for me- I love, love, love tea (the pattern is all teapots and cute tea sayings), and I love the bright colors. It is perfect!

I was thrilled to get it- she was such a great secret pal! Thank you so much for all your work putting together great packages for me! You are so thoughtful.

Squish.

I had my mammogram and biopsy today. Wow. The mammogram was the MOST PAINFUL medical procedure I have ever had. I started crying because I was in so much pain. It was horrible. I can see why women skip it. It's a truly hideous experience. I also believe that if men had to take a diagnostic test that required sticking their private parts between two plates and squooshing them as flat as possible, someone, somewhere, would have invented a special chamber just for this purpose, no squishing required.

Compared to the mammogram, the biopsy was a walk in the park, although I bruised really, really badly, and now my left breast is one big bruise. DH is so sad about that- he feels really badly for me and my poor left breast.

Results in three business days? I'm not worried about it, but I hope I don't have to repeat this experience any time soon.

Resolution update

Sooooo.... The year is 1/4 over, and let's check in on how I'm doing on my resolutions.

1. Flylady
2. Run a 5K by June
3. Get my act together with regards to school
4. Spend less money on groceries

Flylady: Not bad, considering. I wash the dishes every night before going to bed, and will occasionally do 15 minute tidying sprees. I've also made the bed often enough that even DH will sometimes do it. We are also much better at meal planning, which is part of Flylady. I don't have a good morning/evening routine yet (except for dishes), but kind of feel like it's more under control right now. I still have a long way to go.

Running: Speaking of a long way to go... I am at least being consistent. I have worked up to doing 5 run/walk intervals of 4:30 run/2:45 walking. I'm running at a relatively consistent 10 minute/mile pace, which is darn fast for me. I may mix up some of my workouts to try for distance rather than time, and slow down my pace to an 11 minute/mile to see how far I can go. I would like to run a whole 5K. I could probably complete one doing a run/walk combination (not at the intervals that I'm doing now, though- I probably cover about 2.5 miles total in my workout), but I really want to run the whole way. In a similar, but not resolution-related, vein, I have really been watching my calories using Self Diet Club (free to subscribers, but sadly, not free to everyone else- I think you can only get it if you subscribe), and have lost 5 lbs in about 3.5 weeks. Pretty good!

Getting my act together regarding school: Wow! I am doing pretty decently on this front- I finally set a deadline with my advisor to get a draft of one of my papers to her, and it worked! It's a crappy, crappy draft, but hey, that's what editing is for! I'm supposed to get her another draft by tomorrow (ulp). I am great about working to deadline, and pretty bad about working when I don't have one. So I am going to keep setting them with my advisor, who totally kicks ass. Love her. Also, I found out that the symposium I put together for our national conference (sneakily including my paper, heh heh heh) has a GREAT time and location. I was afraid that we'd either be early in the morning, or worse, on the last day. Most people leave the morning of the last day of the conference. We're first day, afternoon, though. I also took the plunge and signed up to present my paper at our student colloquium series. It's all about deadlines, baby.

Spending less on groceries: I haven't been following this super closely, but it does look like we're spending less. Yay! This is b/c we're meal planning, and shopping less. This automatically reduces our bill. I tried following the grocery sales, but it just didn't seem to help too much, b/c we're so picky about what kind of meat we eat. We've been buying our meat from our local halal market, which is reasonably priced (maybe a little more than sale priced meat), and hormone/antibiotic free, which is so nice. The meat there just tastes really good. We've decided that paying a little more for higher quality meat is worth it. We've also barely eaten out in the last three months. We still occasionally get takeout Vietnamese, etc., but not so much. DH also, as part of the money saving plan, has implemented an "Eat What We Have" policy. This is what it sounds like. Eating leftovers, even if we're not excited about them. Digging through the fridge periodically to ensure that we don't forget about something tasty (or even just decent) before it goes moldy. It's a good policy.

So, all in all, I'm doing okay. I'm procrastinating on my schoolwork like crazy, but slowly chugging along.