"All that counts is here and now"

This post and the picture above are evidence that I survived (and loved) Spring Break Challenge 2012. For those of you who don't know, I went on a cruise with 15 of my law school friends that took us to Grand Turk (Turks & Caicos), Half Moon Cay, and Nassau. It was a pretty incredible vacation. I was initially worried that the cruise might ruin friendships or otherwise be replete with serious drama, but I could not have been more off base. My existing friendships were strengthened, and I became close to people I didn't know very well beforehand. I can now claim a few new friends, and I hope the entire group stays as close as we were. Realistically, I know that we're going to be in different places next Fall, but I am going to do my best to stay in touch.

As a result of the trip, I'm very energized. Unfortunately, my energy does not translate into academic productivity, but I generally feel high on life. Aside from minor troubles with my hip, things are really great. I just hope this trend keeps up, at least until bar studying starts. Once that happens, it will all probably go to hell in a hand basket, but maybe not. For now, I'm just focusing on today and tomorrow, living life minutes and hours at a time. The here and now is pretty great, so I'm not going to play Ms. Cleo and look one way or another at what the future holds. :)


Besito,
A

"This has gotta be the good life."

So, I'm on the verge of tears. Yes, tears. I'm not sad. In fact, I'm exactly the opposite. Something about today, about this week, about this year has my eyes welling up with tears of happiness. There's no one thing that caused me to feel this way, but, if I had to point to a few things, the list would inevitably include (but not be limited to):

1. catching up with some of my favorite people,

2. spending quality time with one of my roommates, and

3. anticipation of lots of traveling (my cruise next week and my eventual bar trip).

Of course, there are things that have frustrated me (e.g., certain classes) or the fact that I somehow broke my headphones today. However, all of that seems so small in comparison to all of the great things going on these days. I won't say that I'm walking on clouds, but I feel pretty incredible. My hip has been really good recently, and I've managed to stay at the 2012 low for a week now, despite a bit of indulgence this weekend. At this point, I'm 4.6lbs from my all-time adult low, and I'm looking forward to crushing that when I get back from the cruise. I know that it will be tough to maintain this while I'm on vacation, but I am hopeful that nothing too extreme will happen to my diet. I'm thinking lots of fruit combined with snorkeling and swimming. We'll see what happens. In any case, I guess this emotional high seems to really be driven not by anything related to my physical health but really more by my emotional well-being. I have tried to make each moment count in the past few weeks, and it feels like everything is more meaningful because of that. I only hope I can keep this up. To repeat something I heard at Shabbat dinner on Friday night, great things are happening everywhere. I'm glad that they're happening to me, and I hope they're happening to you too. :)

Besito,
A

"We're just having fun, we don't care who sees."

Reading over my last post, it seems like every other time I write on here, my hip has done a complete 180. For the moment, knock on wood, it is feeling the best that it has in a really long time. It feels so good that I even played lazer tag, during which I ran for the majority of the ten minute game. Crazy, right? The really remarkable thing about it is that I haven't taken my anti-inflammatories in a week. There is a good reason for that--I was sick last week with a fever that spiked all the way to 103.3 and as low as 94.8. For some reason, my anti-inflammatories had no impact on my fever, so, for good measure, I stopped taking them and replaced them with regular Advil. That seems to have worked, and my fever held off for the duration of my last Unofficial. After that, it seems to have just disappeared. Nevertheless, I'm guessing that my rheumatologist would probably like me to start taking my anti-inflammatories again, but what fun is that? It's so much more fun to rebel and experiment, but I guess I'll follow doctor's orders on this one.

One really nice thing about being so sick last week and my mostly OJ/Gatorade diet is that I managed to lose 1.8lbs. Even though I'm healthy again, it seems like that weight is staying off. At this point, I'm back to 22.8lbs down. That means that I have another 19.2 to go. I have my sights set on losing that weight before I start work in October, but we'll see how studying for the bar exam impacts my goals. In the meantime, I'm going to do all that I can to keep heading in this direction, especially in light of my upcoming spring break cruise. Until then, it's back to studying, and maybe a workout later today. Wish me luck!

Besito,
A