englandsword

I had acting class today, then spent the rest of the day enjoying the sunny 80-degree weather. I'm in love! This evening I've spent some time researching and writing an article for a new potential writing job. Food Diary Breakfast: 1 cup corn chowder w/ broccoli slaw and cauliflower Snack: 1 serving Dal Mix Lunch: 1 bowl Cracklin' Oat Bran with almond milk Dinner: Steamed veggie bowl with broccoli slaw, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, tomatoes, sprouts, nutritional yeast Pumpkin pudding My hips, shoulders, triceps, and back are sore from yoga yesterday. All those good balancing muscles! Workout: 45 minutes bike stretching Weights/strength: quads, calves, biceps, chest, abs Walking - 30-45 minutes? I didn't bring a watch or my phone. Yesterday I mentioned I had a half cup almond milk for a snack. I actually had pumpkin cinnamon almond milk, but I was too lazy to upload the pictures onto the computer. I buy the big cans of Libby's pumpkin, and then store it in glass j...

Thank you guys so much for your nice comments on my post yesterday!! I really appreciate your support. I had another good day today, full of exercise. I went back to InYoga, which I reviewed a couple months ago , for the Community Flow class. It was a pretty fast-paced one-hour class, instead of the usual 90 minute classes. I liked that because my main problem with yoga is getting bored. The teacher, Tara, really mixed it up and kept me interested and challenged. She also played good music instead of the regular yoga hippie crap. So I liked it! It was a full-body workout and she also pushed to make it more cardio by having us do all these silent hops in different poses. This afternoon I taped an audition for a feature film (it was requested) and did a bunch of acting administrative business. I also set up a visit to Kansas in a few weeks -- I'm going to see my dad, stepmom, and baby brother! Yay! I actually need to see my endocrinologist, which is why I'm going, but the family ...

I promised to talk more about my change in perspective about my workouts, so here goes. I've never really felt the need to be in great shape. And I never have been! I've been skinny and not-as-skinny, and I've usually been in decently good shape. I've exercised throughout most of my life, with a couple spotty teenage years where I'd go a few months at a time being slothful. I've also always been a fairly good eater, though my eating habits certainly got better after I went vegan almost 2 1/2 years ago. People have usually thought that I'm athletic, because my body type puts on muscle pretty well and I have freakishly low blood pressure (thanks, Mom!). I'm not actually good at any athletic endeavors, however (thanks again, Mom!). But as I was saying, I've never needed to be in great shape. I've wanted to be skinny, and I've wanted to be healthy. Right now I wouldn't say I'm skinny, but I think I'm "fine" and I'm heal...

On Friday night I went with some friends to Harvard and Stone, a bar in Hollywood/Silverlake where they have some burlesque dancers who come out every 45 minutes or so and do a sexy dance. It was fun to watch! That's me on the right, obviously... On Saturday I had acting class and in the evening I went with some acting friends to see Sucker Punch. What a crazy movie! There isn't a lot of character development but there is quite a bit of ass-kicking and some well-defined abs. Abbie Cornish in particular looks incredible. I talked before about the movie Bright Star and how much I loved it, and I will always like her because of that movie. See? Gorgeous. There's been some controversy around Sucker Punch, saying that there's a discrepancy between the apparent female empowerment message of the film (it's all about abused women kicking the shit out of everyone who has hurt them, pretty much) and the skimpy outfits they wear throughout the whole thing, that reeks to some p...

I am terrible at painting my nails. I usually paint all over my fingers and then wash my hands and hope the extraneous paint comes off. That's a slight exaggeration, but whatevs. I do like painting my nails, though, and I usually paint them dark purple or black, sometimes with sparkles, because I like sparkles. But today while I was watching The Duchess I decided to get creative! I bought a new, more natural/vegan nail polish remover: It works just as well as my old stuff and it should be better for my nails. I used several colors of nail polish. I would like to buy the more natural ones, but those can be pretty pricey and all the ones I own now cost about a dollar or I've had them for a long time. I remember reading that you should throw away your nail polishes after a year or two. HA! I still have some I owned in third grade. Take that, hygiene. I used base coat, then the "gray suede" color, then the dark purple and pink glittery ones to make stripes on my left han...

I pulled a muscle in my sleep last night! My groin muscle, to be specific. I must have been doing something very violent. It really, really hurts so I didn't do much today. Hopefully it'll feel better in a couple days. I did get to spend an hour and a half on Skype with my mom this morning. She just got back from her trip to Zagreb, Croatia and Budapest, Hungary and I wanted to hear all about it! She took a group of students there to study emerging markets and meet with business leaders. But she also managed to find vegan food and take a few pictures for the blog! This picture is from a vegetarian restaurant in Zagreb called Nova that Mom found on the internet. She said it was fairly standard, yet delicious vegan food - not especially Croatian. Unfortunately, Mom said the restaurant was totally empty all night and very difficult to find. Restaurants have been suffering with the economic downturn in general, but I hope that doesn't spell doom for its vegetarian restaurants! ...

On Friday we went to Venice Beach to see the interesting characters in that area. We were even blatantly offered pot -- while we were walking down the sidewalk, a guy asked, "Hey, you guys need some pot?" Doesn't get anymore clear than that, does it? I also ran into a friend of mine from high school who was out here on spring break. I had no idea he would be here, and we just happened to pass each other on the sidewalk! We went to a sandwich place that surprisingly had nary a vegan option. Not one. I was surprised, because there aren't many restaurants in LA with absolutely nothing to eat. Luckily, I wasn't really hungry. For dinner we went to LaLa's Argentine Grill. We wanted a somewhat nice restaurant where my brother would be forced to put on actual pants instead of athletic shorts, but we didn't want to spend a ton of money. There are a couple LaLa's in LA - one on Melrose and one in Studio City, so we walked there. It did take over 20 minutes, an...

On Wednesday I took my brother and his girlfriend with me to acting class and then we went to Hollywood and Highland for some touristy fun. We got lunch at a random Asian restaurant a couple blocks east of Hollywood and Highland that turned out to be amazing! I got vegetarian Bibimbap (no egg). It's a Korean dish with lots of veggies and rice, with some delicious gojuchang chili sauce. This was a seriously amazing meal and I was full for six hours! I didn't even finish all of the rice. After Hollywood we went back to Beverly Hills to walk around. For dinner we ate at Mexicali in Studio City, and I got tortilla soup and veggie fajita salad. Yum. Yesterday, Thursday, we went to Universal Studios. I hadn't been there before and it was so fun!! We rode the Mummy ride a couple times in a row: Fun. I also liked that all the trash cans sort out recycling: Cool, right? We went on the 40-minute Universal Studios tour. Fake plane crash made for War of the Worlds. Cars from Back to th...

We went to Santa Monica today, because it was supposed to be our warmest weather. We got there around 1 to some weird, intense fog. I've never seen fog like that -- we couldn't see the ocean from the beach! We walked down the beach to Muscle Beach, where exhibitionists practice strange forms of exercise. My brother did some flips on the rings: His girlfriend (a gymnast) showed off her mad upper body strength. She climbed all the way up the rope without using her legs . And that rope is really high up! I can do neither of these activities. Way to make me feel out of shape. We had a picnic of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I made. We explored the foggy beach... But then the sun came out! We drove up the PCH to Malibu for no reason, just because it's beautiful. It was in the seventies and we just blasted the radio with the windows down and enjoyed how beautiful California is. We took a random Canyon road that went up and up until we found a really cool view over the ...