I heart Aziz Ansari

I love Aziz Ansari.  I think he's hilarious and I bought tickets for his show this past Friday at the Sony Center in Toronto.  He did new material which was pretty exciting because we have seen his old bit but you could tell it was new material as it was a little rough around the edges.  He stuttered over some of his material but it was still pretty darn hilarious.  I wish he didn't focus so much on relationships and did other observations as well.  & what happened to his cousin!?

This picture right here is form my camera....If you've ever seen his show, you know he does a bit where he lets the audience take as many pictures of him as they want before he tells them to put it away.

Jobless and a little frustrated

I did this amazing thing last year -->  Took a year off and moved to the US to be with the hubby and now we're back.  I figured I am young, if there's a time to do this, this is it.  I thought when I came back, I would have no problem finding a job.  After all, I have experience, am smart and have a few networks.  Well let me tell you it's not panning out as expected.  I've applied to over a 100 jobs in the span of 2 months with only 2 call backs from companies.  The first one didn't pan out....I knew that during the interview, I didn't answer the questions well.  But I had one last week and I thought I knocked it out of the park.  Seriously looking back, there is nothing I would have done differently and I was expecting that they would call me back yesterday but nothing :(  I seriously never wear my emotions on my sleeve but I cried yesterday because I felt worthless.  I seriously spent hours just lying in bed wallowing and watching hours of beauty youtube videos.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my year off but now I am feeling depressed and getting discouraged.  I know the answer is to not be discouraged and just keep on trucking but man it's hard.  My goal is to at least apply to 2 jobs a day and spend time catering my cover letter and resume to the job but wondering if I just need to fire them out instead with a generic cover letter and resume.  I've also been told I need to network and I've networked with everybody I can.  & plus I am not that kind of social person!!!  So I've exhausted my network and don't know where else to go besides applying online.

/end bitchy jobless rant.

My negative GymPact experience - Stay Away

If you know me then you know I am a sucker for making a little beer money on the side.  So when I learned about GymPact I figured I had nothing to loose and everything to gain by signing up.  The idea behind GymPact is you essentially make a bet that you are going to workout X number of days of the week and each day you don't make it, you loose out on $5 or more and each day you make it, you gain from all the others that don't make it out there (their website says typically $0.30/workout).  Sure that's nothing but I figured it would add up and plus I don't have to do anything extra since I already work out.  Plus they emphasized on their website that they had runkeeper integration so I figured sweet since I walk so much now that we don't have a car there's no way I am going to miss my weekly pact. I typically walk an hour almost daily!

Well it's all great in theory but here is my experience with GymPact.  First week is apparently a try out week where you figure out the kinks of gympact and give 'er a try.  This would be great if I had known it was a try out week.  No where did it indicate this on the website.  I had to google and that's what the interwebs told me.  So can you imagine here I am doing my workouts for the week and nothing is really changing in my profile.  So anyways now it's on to week 2 and I am still doing my work outs regularly except for whatever reason my runkeeper isn't syncing with GymPact properly.  I send them an email to try and find out what's going on and nada.  I send a follow up email and still nada.  I eventually was able to get it to sync on the 3rd device I tried.  But get this, I get a notification saying my runkeeper workout didn't count with no explanation why even though it met all the criteria on the website.  And the worst part was I couldn't log another workout for the day to compensate.  Thankfully I set my pact to working out 6 days a week so my 1 day buffer was taken.  I sent an email to GymPact asking them why my runkeeper workout didn't count and are you surprised that there wasn't a response?  Well week 2 is over and now we're onto week 3!  Except no indication of any money being earned.  Another email off to GymPact saying if I don't hear from them soon I would cancel my account.  My email it seems fell on deaf ears.  And well I did what I said I would do which was try to cancel my account.  Their website doesn't let you cancel your account but it does let you take a break from your pact so that's what I did.

So if you're thinking of joining GymPact, NAY I say.  If you google, you'll find plenty of others complain about their lack of customer service.  However when you miss a workout, they are quick to debit that $5 from your credit card right away.  No thank you.

UPDATE - where have I been and all that jazz

Well I haven't posted for what looks like over half a year.  What has happened?  Life I guess.  Here is a quick summary what has happened over the last half a year when I did not post.  Changed jobs, got married, changed jobs again, moved to another country! and quit my job.

So yeah a lot.  Now I am living the life of susie home maker for a few months before we move back to Toronto and I must say that I am rather enjoying life.  I feel like I have almost a clean slate with lots of time to reflect and take it easy before entering real world again.

Will I post regularly?  Unsure but I do have a fair bit of time on my hands so only time will tell....

Settling into a routine

In the past 2 weeks, I feel like a gazillion things have changed in my life.  Safe to say my eating/workout habits got pushed to the side.  But now that things are streamlining again, I was able to spend the day on me.  I love sundays/'day before work' days where I often don't go out and do the following.

• Making lunch to take to work
• Doing my nails
• Pampering my hair (protein & moisture treatment)
• Washing my makeup brushes
• Laundry
• Working it out (unfortunately I went to the gym after it closed & drove home right after.  Apparently holiday hours didn't click for me

I like to stay in and enjoy just vegging and taking care of me!

Making strides

I used to run daily about five years ago.  I wanted to loose weight and didn't know much about fitness so I would do as much cardio as I could.  My knees would hurt every day but I kept doing it.  Eventually I got too busy with school and stopped.  Now I am older and wiser.  I try and do 1 session of cardio and 1 session of weights a week if I can manage it.  Some weeks I do more, others I do less but I try not to beat myeslf up over it.  I do curse myself when I am trying to do something after a long break and I find it hard because I've already lost the strength I worked hard to get.

Yesterday, I ran on the treadmill since it was still a little cold out there and was able to do 12 mins @ 6.5 & 18 mins @ 7 and the usual 5min warmup and 5 min cool down.  Considering I would 'run' @ 5 before and think I was doing well for myself, I am happy with my little accomplishment.

Calming my skin down

I've been using dermatologist prescribed Tactuo gel which is Canadas version of the Epiduo gel for about half a year nightly on top of lotion.  I figured after half a year, I could now transition to using it first and then putting the lotion on after.

Since I stopped taking my anti biotics, I've been seeing breakouts again though not quite at the level if I wasn't using the Tactuo gel.  I figured if I transitioned to using the Tactuo gel first, it would be more effective.  Well it could be more effective but boy was my face not ready for it.  My face is a red mess right now after about a week of using it first.  I am trying to calm it down without completely stopping the Tactuo gel because I felt like it was helping my acne.  I am also holding off on trying my new foundations till my skin calms down.  Cross your fingers for me...