A Not-So-Warm Welcome To Winter

I think that it is safe to say winter has hit Park City. Personally, this time of year has been very frustrating for me; it's cold enough outside to make you want to stay indoors 24/7, the ground is slippery enough to slip and fall every other step, there's enough snow on the ground to get your boots wet and make your feet cold and uncomfortable the rest of the day. Yet, there's not enough snow on the mountain for all of the runs to be open, there aren't any storms to possibly contribute towards a snow day, and none of the holiday cheer has quite kicked in yet. I would like to skip to the part in the season where you feel totally submerged in the winter wonderland.

I love winter. I love the cozy sweaters, I love the warm drinks, I love the roofs blanketed in snow, I love waking up to a blizzard, I love the feeling of fresh powder under my skis, I even love the tourists that come into town for Sundance. I think Park City, having the "best snow on earth", lights up during the Winter when most other places are starting to shut-down, and I enjoy being a part of that.

Park City's Main Street
Photo Courtesy NY Times

As of today, December 10th, there are six of the sixteen chair lifts open at Park City Mountain Resort, if that doesn't give you a rough idea on how much snow we are lacking, maybe if you saw the grassy grounds and blue bird skies that would. Being a skier, I am a little concerned that Park City will be experiencing yet another snow-hungry winter. All I can do at this point is keep my fingers crossed and twin-tips waxed.

Park City Mountain Resort
Photo Courtesy allseasonsresortlodging.com

Until the ski season picks up, I will be content enjoying the sweater weather and Christmas Sales commercials on TV and embracing the holiday season.

Song of the Week: Cigarette Daydreams

Five Exercises To Burn Off Your Thanksgiving Dinner

Now the 27th was Thanksgiving, a time for family, gratitude, and of course loads of food. Don't let that gobble send you for a guilt trip; try these exercises to shed those heaps of creamy mashed potatoes and fattening gravy...


Exercise Number One: Mountain Climbers

First get in a push-up position. Simply tuck your knee to your chest and then back next to your other foot in a swift motion. This counts as one rep. Alternate legs each time. Be sure to tighten your core and keep your back straight during these to avoid any discomfort or injuries. You should feel this exercise mostly in your abdominals, it is also normal to feel your shoulders and arms working.

Photo Courtesy: menshealth.com

Exercise Number Two: Crunches

Crunches are probably one of the oldest ab work outs in the book, but there's a reason for that; crunches are a quick, easy, and effective way of toning your tummy, if you do them right. Start lying on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the ground a foot or so away from your butt. The further your feet are from your bottom, the lower the abs that are worked. Knowing this keep your feet close to your bum if your want to work your upper abs, and keep them as far away from your but as possible if you want to work your lower abs. Before you start, make positive that the small of your back is touching the ground, to do this tighten your core and think of squishing a bug with your back. If you have a hard time maintaining this contact, you can try placing a towel under your lower back to compensate. When you have the correct body positioning, raise your head and neck off of the floor and too the sky by contracting your abdominals. Keep your hands tucked behind your ears, try your hardest not to use them, if it helps you you can cross them across your chest. Up and down is one rep, repeat.

Photo Courtesy: womenshealthmag.com

Exercise Number Three: Leg Raises

A leg raise is really simple and will tone your upper thighs, hips, and even strengthen your core. First get into the same starting position as a crunch (make sure your back squishes the floor the same way as well). One leg at a time, point your toes and raise it from the floor to about two feet off the ground, keeping your leg straight the whole time. Your other leg should stay cocked next to it. Alternate legs each time. One up and down motion counts as one rep.

Photo Courtesy: howto-all.com

Exercise Number Four: Pelvis Raises

This exercise may look kind of funny, but your hamstrings and glutes will thank you for it later. Start in the same position as the crunches and leg raises. Once your back is flat, knees are bent, and feet are flat on the floor, you can thrust your pelvis a foot or two off the ground by squeezing your butt and using your leg muscles. Your feet stay on the ground, the only thing that moves is your pelvis, it is also important that you maintain a strong core and flat torso. It may not feel like much at first, but after a while you should start to feel it in your hammies and bum. This is a great tush-toner and should help melt all that extra stuffing you ate right off ;)

Photo Courtesy: shape.com

Exercise Number Five: Bicycle Kicks

Bicycle kicks are a great abdominal, leg, and all around core workout. For this exercise start out on your back with your legs flat on the floor. Lift your legs about six inches off of the ground and lace your fingers behind your neck. Crunch your right knee towards your chest, and touch your left elbow to your right knee (while keeping your fingers laced). Then with out letting your legs touch the floor alternate sides by straightening your right leg back out and rotating your torso back to natural, and crunching your left knee to your chest and touching it with your right elbow in one swift movement. This will count as one rep. As always, make sure you are in good position with the small of your back against the ground at all times. The movement of your legs when alternating sides should resemble a cycling motion.

Photo Courtesy: popworkouts.com

If you have any interests in more exercises, these cites are great: 

• Fitness Magazine
• Muscle and Fitness
• Tone it Up

Song of the Week: Featherstone

Airplane Shenanigans

The previous weekend I took a trip to the East Coast with my family. (Yes kind of bizarre that my parents decided to go out of town the week before Thanksgiving break but you know how it is...) With the knowledge that a drive to Maryland can take up to three days, as you can assume we took a flight.

When catching a flight, any normal person should probably get there about one-and-a-half to two hours early. Although I don't think you could classify my hectic family as normal, we decide to show up to the curbside check-in with approximately forty-five minutes to spare until take-off. Great, right? No, actually, not-so-great. For some reason it takes the five of us an extra half-hour than scheduled to get out of the house.

After so conveniently arriving to the security line with t-minus twenty-seven minutes until take off (probably about when they started to board our flight), we slipped through the weaving lines and metal detectors. Thank god for TSA Pre-Check. Post-security, we all started to pull that awkward speed-walk (the one that's too slow to start running, but fast enough to get that weird little wiggle in your hips) trying to get to the gate in time. We made it fine, as we always somehow do.

As I rolled my carry on down the aisle to seat 27D, the man sitting next to me whips out a disinfectant spritzer from his breast pocket and started spraying his seat, tray table, and arm rests with a quite paranoid urgency. As he quickly sat himself down he took a few deep breaths to seemingly calm himself down. This is a true story, I kid you not. I think Ebola has hit some people a little hard in the head.

From that point on the four hour flight was breezy, shout-out to Delta ;).

Song of the Week: Mother and Father

Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice... Kind of...

It is October 23rd, and the pumpkin-spice lattes are stinking up Starbucks. It's that time of year when you can walk to school in a sweater being freezing and have to walk home feeling 212º. The candy is being sold in bulk at all the grocery stores, and the spectrum of colors has already come and gone in a fiery flash of orange and yellow. Now, with crunchy-brown leaves on the ground, and a disgusting layer of mud coating the surface of the ground virtually everywhere, we are left with the grand season of Fall.

Photo Courtesy of dmu.edu

Fall is not my favorite part of the year. First of all, I simply can NOT stand the weather. When the forecast is up to par, the sky is either deep breathing into the crackling dead trees, raining pointless drops of precipitation (where is the snow already?), or the air is cold enough to nip at the tip of your nose. Today, for example, was frosty in the morning, but by the time I had to walk to the high school for fourth period I was uncomfortably warm in my long-sleeve and boots. It's that obnoxious unpredictability of what the weather that day might be like as well. Raining in the morning and sunny and windy in the afternoon, or cold in the morning and hot in the evening. Getting ready in the morning is more difficult than it should be for me.

Photo Courtesy socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com

The beginning of Fall means the ending of the first quarter in school. Which always brings the loveliness of test finals, last minute retakes, and extra credit, and of course the praying that your grade point average might rise those last thirty-four-hundreths of a point. (I have this really frustrating A- in Math).

As I am sure you are aware, *Halloween is on the 31st. 

*Halloween: An American function in which people put on plastic costumes, ranging from the Grim Reaper to Snow white, and knock on the doors of unknown neighbors asking for chocolate in shiny wrappers. A "fun" time for people of all ages.

Halloween is not particular number one on my list of favorite holidays (that'd probably have to be the Fourth of July). I'm not so sure why, maybe it's the fact that my night never really goes as planned, not necessarily in a bad way though. Maybe it's because it's always a struggle trying to pick out what to wear, and how not to get judged doing so. Maybe I don't like gory costumes, and the little princesses running around make me miss those days. Maybe it's because I simply hate the idea of carved pumpkins and cheesy orange and purple decorations across people's lawns. Who knows...

Each day through Fall is another day closer to Winter, I season more liked by myself. Sooner or later we'll get there. In the meantime, don't put cheesy orange and purple decorations all over your lawn.

Super Sleep Deprived

Is nine hours really how much you're supposed to get? I'm expected to get nine hours of sleep a night... that's seemingly impossible. Yes, I am not the best at managing my time per say, but for me to get a full nine hours of sleep that means I have to be out cold at 10:00pm if I am waking up for school the next day at 6:00am. Lets see here; if school gets out at 2:25pm, I go straight to swim practice after. Swimming is from 3:00-5:00pm. After swimming I can also have lacrosse some days, if lacrosse practice is from 5:30pm-7:30pm, that usually doesn't leave me getting home until 7:45pm or sometimes even closer to 8:00pm. By the time I come home and get something to eat for dinner, that's already pushing 9:00pm. That leaves me to shower (the chlorine often leaving knots the size of dreads in my hair doesn't necessarily help with time efficiency), and get ready for bed. At this point it's usually around 9:30pm or 9:45ish. Keeping in mind I still have yet to get to my schoolwork for the day, I generally get to bed around 11:30pm or 11:00 on a good night. Thats also if I don't get sucked into the vortex typically called Tumblr for an extra "ten minutes" (which is an hour when we're talking Tumblr). *Side-note: My phone is probably the sole excuse of my unhealthy time-management skills. Leaving me with six to seven hours of Zs.

Photo Courtesy imgarcade.com

Sometimes I feel better going off of three hours of sleep then I would six. At school lack of sleep can definitely start to catch up to me. Between the five to six hours of sleep I've been getting over the course of the past three weeks, the stress overload, and my science teacher's melodic voice-- how could you not have a little understanding for the exhausted and half-asleep head bob? That's bad, I know... I should at least be able to stay awake during class.

Photo Courtesy imsa.edu

I've gotten to a point where I'm so used to going to bed at later hours that I can't even fall asleep when I do scrape up the time to. Sometimes I try falling asleep to music, that can either do the trick right away or totally backfire and resulting in me wide eyed for an extra hour or two. Counting down from one-hundred is a myth, and counting sheep is a joke. I know they have sleeping pills and other medical options out there, but I'm that type of person that will NOT pop the pill unless I am in dire need. Sleeping drugs kind of scare me.

Thus I am still waking up every morning with bags bigger than a Louis V under my eyes. Long story short, I think I've accepted the fact that I will not be getting my full nine hours of sleep.

Song of the Week: From Eden

Dress to stress...

Alright between school, sports, friends, parents, and sometimes just the elephant-on-your-chest of life itself adds up. A.k.a. stress.

Definition and Photo Courtesy of Merriam-Webster Dictionary

If feels like a little tornado gusting inside of your stomach and tumbling its way into your chest, sucking the breath from your lips and leaving you wide eyed. It smells of body oder and tastes like the sourness of nothing between your teeth. As the sweat collects on your hairline, you suddenly become aware of the massive weight your clothes now seem to put on your body, your cotton t-shirt dragging you down to hell. All you can do is sit there and simply tell them you're fine. Even though the monster inside you is punching holes in your wholeness.

It happens, the chemical build up of toxins due to the fight or flight reaction process our bodies experience for survival purposes. Stress and anxiety are purely a human extinct, but purely the thing eating kids alive these days. Stress can lead to depression. Depression is the third leading cause of death in people ages fifteen to forty-four, and it is estimated that ten to fifteen percent of teens are depressed. We all experience it, the stress and anxiety, yet some of us still can't cope with it. That being the scary part.

My cause of stress is mostly caused by school work and deadlines. I'm a natural procrastinator, and don't act like you haven't ever been there too; pulling the two-hours-of-sleep nights to get that project in on time. Well, maybe not to those extremes. Homework isn't always the most pleasant when you struggle managing your time. Then why don't we through a little after-school practice or game in there, which is always something to look forward to, until the reality of that blog post you had to do tonight is looking you in the eye. Along with the fact that you had gotten in a fight with your mom that morning sprinkled on top of the situation. Now she is ignoring you the whole ride home. You still haven't caught up on your reading you needed to do yesterday, as  well as feeding the dogs and doing your laundry before your mom gets even more mad at you then-- KABAM! It started as a little salamander slithering through your tummy but now it has escalated to a basketball stuck up your sarcophagus and before you know it the stress seems to have engulfed you whole. Yes, I know the feeling.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Once more.

Maybe twice.

That can usually do the trick. For me, at least.

If you are interested on learning more about the direct side effects and health facts behind stress these are a few links that you make take use of:

Mayo Clinic

Help Guide

American Psychological Association

University of Maryland

Oh the Places We'll Go

Wow my first blog post! This is exciting... I'd like to consider this the first baby step to an exceedingly winding, changing, and rousing path; don't feel like you can't turn back a few miles in if you don't think you'd like to stick around for the hike [as much as I'd miss the hiking buddy]. Hopefully this will give you a trail map of what my blog will somewhat look like.

This blog is birthing from an assignment in 9th Grade English, to be up-front and honest with you. I plan to have a lot of fun with this though. Life as a high-schooler is complicated, hormonal, and frustrating as I've come to figure out my first two months as a freshman. Life is a journey and everyone has their own, this blog will definitely give you a glimpse at mine. If you find it on here it's because I either: feel the need to write about the matter, find it interesting, fun, and exciting [chances are you will too], or relate to it.

Besides those guidelines, which are pretty broad, I don't have any other specific plans for this blog, so it should be super fun to see where it takes us. If you don't like my blog I'm alright with that, this blog is for me just as much as it is for you. You can take it or leave it ;)

I am pretty much as close to an inexperienced blogger as it gets. I've never had a blog before. I have read and heard of several blogs in the past, but have never been intrigued to an extent as to start one of my own. This assignment encourages me [more bluntly forces, shoutout to Mr. Parker;)] to try something a little bit out of my comfort zone, so work with me a little bit through this process and we'll embark on this unknown-territory together, reader and first-time blogger.

Photo Courtesy: beversbendblog