New Blog Design

I'm still in shock that I hit "publish" on my 150th blog post a couple days ago. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd keep up with this blog for so long (or, let's be honest, have enough going on in my pretty boring life to have 150 entries worth of things to say).

But I've done it, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

In honor of my recent milestone (and because I'm bored out of my mind after Joe spent over 24 hours studying this weekend), I decided to give the blog a facelift.

Hope ya'll enjoy :)

Follow me on Bloglovin'

Post #100!

Well, I can't believe it.

The girl who started a blog (for the millionth time) and thought there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell she'd ever keep it going, has officially reached her 100th post.

*Cue the applause*

Since I can't just write any ole' post for the big 1-0-0, I thought it would be fun to jump back in time and see how much my life has changed since the first time I pressed "Publish" -

On November 29, 2012:
 
1.) We still didn't know if Joe would be going to dental school this fall

2.) Joe and I were living in California

3.) I was working a job I didn't like, but didn't realize how good I had it

4.) I was 9 pounds less than I was at the beginning of this month

5.) Buster was still living with his previous family

6.) I had never watched an episode of The Walking Dead or Downton Abbey

Now, on July 23, 2013:

1.) We have less than a month to go before Joe's dental school orientation at his top choice school - UPenn

2.) We are living in Philadelphia, PA and took a 6 week road-trip from California to get here. We visited the following states after moving out of our apartment: Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania

3.) I'm unemployed and applying to a ton of jobs. I'm hearing no good news. I'm also realizing I'll make 40-50% less and have worse benefits than my last job even though the cost of living is not much different

4.) I am two weeks into my second weight-loss journey chronicled on this blog. The first lasted a month and I lost 8 pounds, bringing my weight at the beginning of January to 17 pounds less than I was at the beginning of this month. I'm weighing in tomorrow to see how much I've lost in these first two weeks. Stay tuned!

5.) We have an amazingly adorable, smart, and very loving dog named Buster. We couldn't imagine life without him

6.) I am addicted to both Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead and have convinced several people to try one or the other (or both!). I am also counting down the days until their seasons start again and wishing I could find another fun show to get into (any recommendations out there?)


Overall, things have improved :) Well, except for the weight (which I am tackling!) and the whole being unemployed thing.

The truth is, as absolutely frustrated as I am about not finding a job yet, picturing where I was just 100 blog posts ago is very eye-opening. You couldn't pay me enough to make me go back to November 29 - the stress of my job and of not knowing where (or even IF) Joe would get accepted was weighing on me so much that I honestly felt like I was losing my mind. Fits of hysterical crying were quite common in the Brier household around that time (and, heck, I'll be honest - for several months before that as well).

But now, I actually feel like a different (better!) person. I am so proud of myself for sticking to this blog. I never in a million years thought I'd make it to 100 posts. But I wanted to, and I made it happen. There was something that just clicked, and I accepted as fact that I was going to blog instead of questioning when I would stop. The same thing is happening with my weight loss. And for that reason, I can't wait to see where I am 100 posts from now!

Catching Up: Vegas Day 2

Working hard to catch up on our adventures thus far - it's Thursday, but I only have time to brief you on Monday. Tomorrow we have a 10 hour drive to Kansas City, so I'll have some time to write some posts in the car. Until then...

Monday, May 6

Monday morning we got to the Strip around 10:30 a.m. - pretty good considering we spent the night in Vegas ;)

Our first stop was to the ABSOLUTE coolest thing in Vegas: Mob Attraction. This is the cross between a haunted house and a museum. Let me explain. They first take you through a few rooms that are mob themed (Ellis Island, then a dock, then a police station, etc.) and put you in some scenarios to see if you have what it takes to be made (otherwise, you are whacked). I don't want to give anything away, because I seriously recommend this to anyone who is in Vegas, but there are actors throughout testing your commitment to the mob (which is the part that reminds me of a haunted house).

Once you make your way through some scenes, you wind up in an incredibly informative museum that briefs you on several mafia members who were big in Vegas. I took a "History of Organized Crime" class in college (and am a very proud Italian), and Joe has always been interested in mob history, so we loved seeing the stories of people we don't often read/hear about.

Joe at Ellis Island

Multiple mobsters

I'd hitch a ride with the mob... though I'd probably be whacked.

After you are through with the museum, you are led to one of two rooms. In one room you are "Made" (become part of the mafia family), and in the other room you are "Whacked."

Joe and I were whacked.

It was not pretty.

I screamed and buried my head in Joe's shoulder.

Then I felt like I was a let-down to my Italian family.

I was whacked mostly because I am a people pleaser and I can't keep my big mouth shut: two things that do not bode well for a mafia-member-wanna-be.

Nevertheless, the whole experience was a TON of fun and we are so glad we made the time to do it.

After the Mob Attraction, Joe and I did a bit of gambling an earned about $4. SCORE!

We were killing time because we had an appointment at a CBS screening of a pilot that will be released this Fall. CBS has a place in Vegas where you can go and give your opinions on TV shows for coupons. Since they are so close to pilot season, however, they were offering $20 to anyone who would give up 1 hour to watch a show in development and then fill out a survey.

Being the fans of cash money that we are, Joe and I eagerly signed up.

How I rated what I thought about the show.

CASH MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our show was a pilot for Reign - which I would describe as a cross between Gossip Girl and The Tudors. We were instructed to flip our dial consistently throughout the 42 minute pilot. We could flip it anywhere from 0-100 depending on how much we "liked" what was going on during the show. I was around a 75-100 for most of the episode. I thought it was a good pilot and showed some real promise. I will definitely check it out in the Fall.

Joe, being the good student he is, was the absolute last person in the room to finish his survey. He agreed the show was pretty good - but a bit too CW. Funny he should say that, because we found out the show will be on the CW. I happened to love it BECAUSE I thought it would be a good fit for the CW.

I am pretty sure they are going to think I am crazy, though, because there were some pretty bloody parts (which I absolutely rated a 100), and then there were some sex scenes that I rated a 0.

Come on. In one of the scenes a chick was "enjoying" herself in the hall. It was pretty disgusting (especially because the king saw and liked it), so not only did I rate it a 0 on my Neilson dial, but I wrote on the survey that, "I could do without the girl in the hall. It was disgusting and irrelevant to the plot. A family watching this show would turn it off. Totally needless."

Sometimes I am a bit prudish - but COME ON. This isn't the Playboy channel.

(Some of the men in the room verbally announced during that scene that we should all rank it 100 - you'll have to tune in this fall to see who they listened to lol).

After we earned $40 total (SCORE!!!!) we walked down the strip checking out the casinos and hotels. We also had some dinner and a couple of drinks, then made our way back to the shuttle to take us back to the Rio.

We split pizza and...

Some Mac N Cheese. YUM!

When we arrived at the Rio, we were hoping to play video Blackjack (our new favorite game because you can take your time and not lose too much) - but they didn't have any video blackjack machines :(

We played a little bit of Texas Tea (my favorite slot), and actually won about $7 (SCORE!)

I find relaxed gambling is the luckiest gambling ;)

Then we went upstairs, made drinks with our Costco vodka, and watched The Simpsons.

Follow me on Bloglovin'

Bloglovin'

Apparently this news came months ago, but I somehow missed it.

Google is retiring Google Reader on July 1, so if you follow any blogs you'll need to figure out a new way to do so. I've looked around a bit, and elected to try Bloglovin'.

So far, I like what I see! One of the things that has always frustrated me about Google Reader is that I couldn't easily find blogs that are similar to my own, or on topics I am interested in. With Bloglovin' you can.

Importing the blogs you follow into Bloglovin' is super easy - except I am a terrible teacher, because I did it and didn't pay attention how and now can't instruct YOU how. But if I can figure it out so easily, so can you.

Guaranteed :)

I've added Diary of a Dental School Wife to Bloglovin', so you can easily follow me even if you don't already! Just click on the link on the right or at the bottom of this post... (notice it currently says 0 followers on Bloglovin'? This depresses me - so follow! haha)

Follow me on Bloglovin' 

Time For Some Reflection...

I love milestones (heck, I love any reason to celebrate), and I hit a big one with this blog a couple days ago: I have officially written over 50 posts!

**Side Note** That's about 48 more than I honestly thought I would write, which is why I am so excited to be over halfway to a three digit number **End of Side Note**

Since hitting a milestone naturally causes one to reflect, I've been pondering my blog's purpose(s) for the past few days. Obviously, the main purpose is to have a place to share/reflect/etc. on the experience of being the wife of a dental school student. While I am sure other blogs exist on the subject (and a few months ago was found by Ariel, the author of a great one), at the time I started Diary of a Dental School Wife I couldn't find any.

At that point, I was becoming very anxious about the unknown and (as I always do when anxiety hits) started focusing on the negatives that are coming over the next 4 years (ie: Joe's busy schedule, the expense, the delay in our baby-making plans, moving away from my family, etc.). I thought that reading the experiences of someone else would help me, and if I personally didn't have anyone else to learn from, then it might be worth starting a blog to help some other poor, lost dental-school-wife-to-be out there going through similar worries down the road.

A secondary purpose was to have a place for our family and friends to come and see what is going on in our lives. Most of Joe's family is in Missouri, and I knew that once we moved for dental school I'd be far from my family as well. Since I absolutely SUCK at keeping in touch with people (it doesn't help that I hate talking on the phone), I thought a blog would be a great solution to help keep people in the loop.

My final purpose was a bit more personal, and one that I haven't yet succeeded in doing with this blog. After finding and being inspired by a great weight loss blog (Mama Laughlin) I wanted to keep a blog as a way of keeping myself accountable in my own journey to lose weight. Although I've always fluctuated in weight and have never been "skinny" - I am now about 50 pounds heavier than I was at my lowest adult weight (junior year of college after 5 months of diet and exercise led to a 20 pound drop). While it could certainly be worse, the thought of seeing people I haven't seen in years on our road trip is humiliating. I feel like I am going to walk in, give them a squishy hug, and they'll step back and think, "Poor girl. Why is she letting herself go?"

Those of you who read some of my earlier posts may remember that I dieted for a month around Christmastime (stupid timing, what was I thinking?) and chronicled a lot of that process. As I do with most diets, I abandoned it and probably gained back what I lost and more (I've been too scared to weigh myself since early January).

This month home with my family hasn't helped my waistline (despite my dad's daily encouragement to do P90X with him), and I know that a 6 week road trip is probably going to do quite a bit of damage. To be honest, this is the last vacation Joe and I are going to get for a VERY long time, and maybe the last one pre-children (any time off we have in dental school will probably be spent visiting family). I'm not willing to diet on this trip. You'll probably see many photos of food posted on my Instagram and this blog and think to yourself, "Poor girl, digging a deeper hole." Yes. Yes I will be. But I am not going to set myself up for failure like I did by trying to diet during Christmastime and one of the biggest emotional roller coasters in my life (choosing a dental school, wrapping up work, moving, leaving my family, etc.).

Instead, I'm going to make myself a promise right now.

(And I'm not going to like it.)

Penn Dental School hosts an event every year (around April) called the Philly Oral Cancer Walk and 5k. I vow here and now that next year I will be running it. I may be the last one to that finish line, I may be crying big ugly tears, I may be cursing this stupid post where I made a promise I never should have made, but I'll be there.

Running a 5k has been a goal of mine for a couple years. Over the last year I've attempted Couch to 5k twice and abandoned it each time I had to run more than 5 minutes in a row because I physically couldn't do it (and because I absolutely flat out LOATHE running). That said, I can't stand the idea of something beating me. To run a 5k (or, God willing, something even longer some day?) would be like giving a giant middle finger to running and saying, "See?! You can't beat me!"

So, while I don't intend to make this entirely a weight loss blog (how boring would that be?), it will be something that I start to integrate once we get to Philly. Because if I don't, this 5k is not going to be pretty.

Follow me on Bloglovin' 

I'm Done Apologizing

I've realized that my original goal of daily blogging was a bit lofty for someone whose life is about a 2 out of 10 on the "exciting scale" most days.

For that reason, I'm going to stop apologizing when I take blogging breaks.

If you think about it, an apology is much more warranted if I write boring blog posts just so I can check "blogging" off of my daily to-do list. After-all, I'd hate to waste the time of my dear readers (all 2 of you).

My original point in daily blogging was so there would be consistency. I've read many-a-blog where the blogger took frequent long breaks between posts. I got tired of checking back to see if she had posted anything new, and would eventually stop trying.

But guess what?! There is this really handy gadget to the right of your screen that lets you subscribe to my blog! That's right - get auto-updated when I actually have something super exciting decently worthwhile to say!

You know you want to.

Just fill in your e-mail and press that "submit" button.
 
I promise this won't happen:

 

BECAUSE....... while things may be pretty boring in the Brier household right now - we have big changes and exciting events a-coming!

For example:

March 29: My last day of work!

March 30: Moving out of our apartment!

April 2 - 7: A trip to visit family and friends in Portland and Spokane!

April 26: Our road trip to Philly officially starts! We start off with a week in Southern California at the beach - Disneyland!!!!!! - and The Price is Right!

May: A month on the road! Stops like Vegas and Memphis, along with two weeks visiting Joe's family in Missouri!

June 1: Arrive in Philly and the start to a whole new chapter of our lives!


Yep - things are about to get real exciting :)

New Beginnings

Well, hello there.

Remember me?

I'm the blogger who has abandoned blogging for 2 weeks. I'm also the dieter who has abandoned healthy eating and exercising for 2 weeks (fun fact: my diet was a mere 2 weeks old before put on pause, so I'm pretty sure I undid any progress).

Darn holidays.


But I am back and, in the spirit of new beginnings and resolutions, resolve to get back on the horse with both the blog and diet. I'm too afraid to weigh myself and assess the damage, so I'll probably hold off a week or so and give myself a chance to lose some of the holiday weight.

So what have I been up to besides pigging out and drinking myself silly?

Well, the Friday before Christmas Joe and I drove up to my parents' house (2 hours away) and we stayed there for Christmas. We had some great family get-togethers first at Joe's Aunt and Uncle's house Sunday for a Christmas lunch and then at my Grandma's that night for a Christmas dinner.

Monday was my birthday (yup, Christmas Eve baby here), so we did some fun things like target shooting (I am a wicked good shot - especially considering it was only my third time ever shooting a gun) and mini-golf. Although I didn't win mini-golf, I did get THREE holes in one (hole in ones? holes in ones?)!!!!

Christmas was great. I was really excited because I got this beauty from my parents:

*Side note* Joe and I signed up for photography lessons, so once I finish those you can expect many more photos on this blog :) *End of side note*

I had to work Wednesday - Friday, so it was back to reality for a few days. Then I got one more four day weekend. Yay!

This weekend has been very laid back. We had our first photography lesson Saturday morning and had some friends over for dinner that night. Besides that, we only left the apartment to see two movies (Les Mis and Django).

Today was particularly fun, as all I really did was lay in bed watching Gossip Girl (I am real late to that party. I watched the first episode the same day as the series finale last month). Netflix rated it a 4.9 out of 5 for me, and they were right on the money. I.am.addicted. Since copious amounts of alcohol have been enjoyed this weekend, poor Joe's been subjected to quite a few ramblings about Gossip Girl. Sorry hon!

On that topic, is it just me, or is Blake Lively completely annoying? Since I'm not a fan, I purposely didn't watch until now, but I'm glad the show is so fun I can get past her :)

Anyway, now that all two of my readers have been updated on my goings-on, I'll sign off.

Happy 2013!

13 Days Longer Than Expected

It's officially been two weeks since I wrote my first blog, and I've gotta say that I'm shocked impressed that I made it this far.

I'm the queen of getting excited about something, starting it, and then losing interest real quick. I hope my commitment to this blog is a sign of the commitment that I'll have to losing weight.

On that front, Linda (my scale), was much kinder this morning. She was consistent when I stepped on her a couple times and I am officially down 0.4 pounds since yesterday. Maybe she was embarrassed that I called her out. (More likely, because Joe re-calibrated her and moved her to a better place in the bathroom).

Tonight was the Christmas party for my department at work, a party I chose to skip because I don't trust myself around free booze and Italian food. Two of my favorite things in the whole world *sigh* and I just couldn't trust myself yet.

It's the start of this diet, so of course I am teetering on the edge of giving up. One slip and I might just say, "Eff it!" (and wash down that sentiment with wine and alfredo sauce).

Once I see some good progress (10 pounds?) - I can loosen the reigns (just a little). I feel like at that point, I'll enjoy the losing more than the eating and I won't go overboard.

We shall see.

I also don't intend to just talk about losing weight on my blog. It's just that my life is pretty darn dull at the moment. However, once we move to Philly, I have a feeling that things are going to get more exciting :)

And So I Begin...

When I was in school, I always struggled when it came to writing the first paragraph of an essay. Starting a blog, I've come to find, is a million times harder.

So, instead of trying to be clever and launching with some wildly entertaining entry, I'll just jump in and see what happens.

Here I go...

I originally decided to write a blog because I am anxious about what life as the spouse of a dental school student will be like. (Anxiety, as you will find, is a running theme with me.) Whenever I am afraid of something I hop on Google and do my research - even though this typically backfires and makes me MORE anxious (thank you WebMD).

Anywhoo - hoping to get an idea of what to expect, I decided to Google, "Dental School Wife Blog." I pressed the search button, took a deep breath, and waited for blog after blog to appear and give me some kind of realistic expectations for the next four years.

So what did I find? Nada.

"Ridiculous," you say. "Everyone and their mom has a blog nowadays - look again!" Well, I did, and apparently dental school wives don't.

I'm sure I'm not the first or last gal who wants to find a soul sister going through this same ordeal adventure, so I might as well start a blog that chronicles my journey.

Plus, when school starts I'm going to be very lonely - at least at the beginning. This is a certainty. So a blog will keep me busy. As far as hobbies go, it's as cheap as you can get. And cheapness frugality, is a quality appreciated by my husband.

I feel silly already talking about my "blogging hobby" in my first post. After all, as a kid I'd buy diary after diary and write one or two entries before getting bored with it and giving up (until the next fancy-looking diary caught my eye at Target). That said, I am a grown-up married lady - it's pretty pathetic if my attention span now isn't better than when I was eight.

I guess we'll see...