I have been such a freaking slacker on here for the past month or two. I’ve been slowly messing with and rearranging stuff on the site, but never finished with it since I haven’t made the time (no excuses, just haven’t made it a priority). But now I’m sick. It’s just a regular sinus/allergy thing, but it’s made me feel unmotivated to do anything else except write. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s kind of a personal post instead of a recipe/product review/project post, so if you want to skip it no harm done.

I’ve been slowly making some changes in my life that I hope will have a long-lasting, positive impact. I started by wearing nicer clothing, make-up, and doing my hair every day. I now only wear t-shirts when I go over to Kita’s or when I laze around the apartment with no plans to go out. The goal for DEF CON is to not wear t-shirts during the day or at parties, so we will see how that goes. By doing this, I feel better about myself because I look better and I feel more confident as well. It’s also been pretty easy because (after reading this blog post), I more or less switch between black slacks or khakis, a blouse, and a black jacket over it. It’s cut down on the amount of time I spend trying to figure out what to wear as well as reduce the amount of clothes in my closet.

I have also found myself getting more and more frustrated with Weight Watchers. It was getting results for a while, but I still felt like crap after eating some of the stuff that was considered ok as long as I stay below my daily alotted number of points. I like that it makes me more aware of my portion sizes, but I don’t think that any diet that says I can have an infinite number of diet sodas can be considered sustainable. So I started looking around and reading as much as I could get my hands on and stalking my friends’ twitter feeds about their results with going paleo/primal.

I finally made the plunge about a week or so ago. Besides a couple of days with a headache and slight nausea (and the urge to stab M and steal a donut he had), I’m doing pretty well on the paleo-esque diet (cut the dairy and the carbs, but haven’t done the sugar yet. I’m a sucker for sugar in my coffee) and have found that the carb cravings are gone, I’m sleeping pretty darn well, and I don’t feel as hungry as I usually do. I need to still get better about drinking all the water I’m supposed to as well as getting in enough steps in the day, but overall I’m very happy with the little bit of progress that I’ve made.

I spoke with my sister about my dietary changes and we found ourselves opening up about how we want to be happy. Not the fake happy that is associated with status and money that I thought I wanted, but being ok with who I am and really accepting others for who they are (or aren’t). Since opening up, she and I started talking almost daily (those of you who are reading this and know us will know that this is some major shit right there) about everything from how the diet is going for me, both of our struggles with finding happiness, her wanting to reach enlightenment (my word, not hers), and just everything else in between. It’s been refreshing because we never had this open line of communication before. We both sucked at communication and wouldn’t try to see where the other was coming from and it would result in a lot of fighting and general butt-hurtedness. But we are slowly working to change that and I’m glad that we are.

In not health-related news, I’m still liking my job and am planning to stay in QA/testing for a year or so and then make a transition into penetration testing (mobile app testing in particular has been pretty interesting to me). Also, the book club is going slowly, but surely. I have a blog up for it and will be getting a dedicated domain and customize the layout of it in the next week or so. I am also working on stickers/shirts to have ready for DEF CON, even though it is looking like it will be a plain “ISBC” in white block text over black background until I find someone for me to throw money at to make a “real” logo for it.