Keeping Up With Elizabeth

Another week and a half has passed in this wonderful life o’ mine, and though it’s been a kind of off week for me in terms of keeping up with my resolutions, I’m going to write about them anyway. Here’s my progress for this past week:

1)   Reading a book a month

a.     Well, I’m still behind on this count, but I finished Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Human Strength! Such a great book. Next, I’m going back and finishing Something’s Rising by Silas House and Jason Howard, which I began late last year and never completed, despite it being a fascinating read. I’m definitely going to catch up on this resolution by the end of this month!

2)   Watching every movie on the AFI 100 lists

a.     I watched two movies on my AFI list in the past week and a half:

                                               i.     In the Heat of the Night: 4.5/5 stars—Sidney Poitier is wonderful (and has the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen). Sadly, some of the scenes of this movie still seem like they could happen today.

                                              ii.     The Wild Bunch: 3.5/5 stars—I expected to like this movie much more than I did. It was like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (one of my absolute favorites), except overly long, overly confusing, and overly gory.

b.     I also watched a few non-AFI movies as well:

                                               i.     The Lucky One: 3.5/5 stars—Zac Efron is so gorgeous, but the climax of the movie was absolutely ridiculous.

                                              ii.     Iron Man 2: 3.5/5 stars—Nice to see Tony Stark humanized and working with other people, but his trademark wit and sarcasm were a little lacking, and it wasn’t as much of a romp as I expected.

                                            iii.     Captain America: 4/5 stars—a little bit different than your usual superhero movie. I already bet my friend Alex that they won’t let that tragic ending stand in the sequel next year!

                                            iv.     Dredd: 2.5/5 stars—ugh. This movie has a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but really, I cannot see why.

c.      I have to discuss the Oscars, which I watch every year. I am not a huge fan of Seth MacFarlane, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy his humor very much—and I didn’t, really. But there were great moments (i.e. the Von Trapp Family Singers joke; the musical numbers in the beginning with Channing Tatum, Charlize Theron, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe).

                                               i.     I have to say, I took umbrage with the tribute to great musicals of the last ten years. They only paid tribute to three of them: Chicago, Dreamgirls and Les Miserables. I understand that these three were the most critically-acclaimed of the bunch, but really? You’re going to leave out Enchanted, The Princess and the Frog—even High School Musical? As silly as HSM is, those TV movies got a whole generation of young people into musicals again. I couldn’t believe they ignored those films. The tribute with Hugh Jackman several years ago blew this one out of the water.

3)   Complete a writing project and submit it somewhere

a.     I’m still working on my ‘manuscript,’ which I have titled ANON. It’s hard to keep writing scenes when I feel like my writing doesn’t do the story justice, but getting words on paper is more important than being in love with them immediately. So I’m just plugging on with this story—which I really believe in!

4)   Exercise

a.     The weather has really been great the past few days, which makes me much more inclined to exercise outside. I’m still working on exercising every day, but I’ll get there!

5)   Being on time

a.     This has not been going well this week, and that’s all I have to say about that.

My Lenten challenge escalated, with my giving up soft drinks and desserts. It has been much harder than I expected—giving up fast food hasn’t affected me much, but since there are sodas and desserts everywhere I look, it’s harder to resist. Especially since I literally got an email this morning saying my Girl Scout cookie order just came in. GRUMBLE. But I’m still doing well in my challenge—in fact, I take pride in seeing this thing through!

I’ve been a little down lately—two people I really like left my office on the same day to move on to other ventures, and I’ve been feeling old (with my 24^th birthday) and fat (because, well, let’s face it). I still have this habit of talking myself out of doing things that I know would make me feel better—like Zumba or writing. My real hope is that, someday in the near future, some other voice will emerge from inside of me that will counter the one that makes bad decisions. I just have to learn how to cultivate it!