Ok, so I know… it’s pretty much been an unfortunate amount of time since I last blogged. But I’ve really had a lot going on! So, I thought I would give you all a “life update” blog in case you were interested.

My last update was in May, so here’s what’s happened since then. Well, for starters… I bought a new car! Not a NEW new car, but a new to me car. And it’s actually ALMOST new, seeing as how it’s only a year old. I was driving a 2005 Mini Cooper convertible. Then, one day the convertible top broke on it. I took it in to get that and some other things fixed, and it looked like my extended warranty was going to pay for getting the convertible top fixed. But after almost a month of back and forth between the warranty company and the Mini dealership, the warranty company finally came back and refused to pay. It would have cost me $3,000+ to get the top fixed, along with about another $800 of repairs. Yikes! Now, I know that I could have either 1) gotten nothing fixed or 2) gotten only the other repairs done or 3) ponied up and paid to get the top fixed too, but really, I didn’t have the money to fix all of it at once. And I know how I am, and how it would start to bother me that the car was getting older and started to have other problems along with having a convertible with an unusable top. So… I ended up finding a (non-convertible) 2013 CPO (certified pre-owned) Mini at the dealership that I liked, so I traded in the old one. Here’s my new baby:

So there’s that. Life change #2… we also bought a house! Yep, after living in apartments together for 4+ years, Ricky and I decided we wanted to own something of our own instead of continuing to live in an apartment forever. After much searching and not finding what we wanted for the price we wanted, we were almost ready to give up, then with the help of a new realtor, we stumbled upon a place that we really love so far. It has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a two-car garage, two floors, and a FABULOUS view from our front balcony (we also have a back patio and back balcony as well). We are loving almost everything about it. (I especially love that view from the balcony and having a much bigger kitchen to cook in!) So moving and unpacking are some other things that have kept us pretty busy.

Check out our fabulous view!

Among those and other changes and things we’ve had going on, I’ve been traveling for work and dealing with a few changes going on there as well. I flew to Charlotte for a week in May, flew back to Phoenix for Memorial Day week/weekend, then headed back to Charlotte for another week to finish up the planning and training we’d been doing there. But, I’m back home now and trying to get settled into the new house. I’ve finally gotten most things unpacked and in place except for all the things we need to hang up on the walls. We’re getting there.

I have a few events coming up that I hope to blog about, so hopefully you’ll be hearing more from me in the coming weeks. July is just around the corner, and I have two trips planned for then. July 11-13 I will be in Portland for World Domination Summit, which I’m looking forward to experiencing and writing about. And then two weeks later, I’ll be hearing to San Diego for San Diego Comic-Con, which should be quite the experience too. I look forward to sharing all of this with you, my dear readers, so stay tuned!

I’m a member of a group on Facebook that a friend of mine started called The Healthy Eating Support Group. Basically, it’s a bunch of us that would like to not necessarily just lose weight, but work on having a healthier lifestyle in general. I think this was a great idea for a group, and I like seeing others’ posts, comments, struggles, tips, etc. Last week someone in the group posted a link to an article titled 6 Things I Don’t Understand About The Fat Acceptance Movement. I went to read this article, and agreed with some of it, but not all of it. This post will make more sense if you go take a look at the article yourself, but to summarize it, the author basically makes 6 points and then expounds on them. The one that I disagree with a bit is point #1: “America is extremely accepting of fat.” Now, I think this is untrue. America is NOT accepting of fat. Look at any magazine or TV show or movie out there, and you will see that. Society in America is far from accepting of fat. If they were, you would see more large women (and men) in movies, on TV, and in magazines. If they were, I would not feel uncomfortable going out to a nightclub where all of the women are wearing tight, short skirts and are mostly no bigger than a size 10. In general, I am not comfortable being a fat person in America. So this leads me to disagree that America is extremely accepting of fat.

Now, the counterpoint to this, and the true argument that I think the author is trying to make is that American businesses promote unhealthiness. This I would say is the truth. America markets the ideal for people as being a thin, healthy person, yet look around at American businesses. Restaurants promote food with lots of fat and grease and sugar, in large portions. You have all kinds of unhealthy snacks – chips and dessert are rampant at convenience stores. The fastest, cheapest food you can get is also the most unhealthy. America makes it easy to be fat, while at the same time condemning it. This is something I would really like to see change. It’s also what I think the author was getting at in her first point.

It’s interesting the other articles that have sparked up from this original one. We have 6 Things I Understand About the Fat Acceptance Movement from a Huffington Post author. And then we have a follow-up from the original author, titled 8 Things I Learned From Writing An Article Critical Of Fat Acceptance. Hmm.

I had a couple of other points that I wanted to make after thinking about this some more. I think there should be a distinction made between fat acceptance and self acceptance. Thin people often have as much struggle accepting their bodies as fat people. I don’t think there should be a “fat acceptance” movement so much as a “body acceptance” movement. Why are we putting ourselves into categories based on how we look or how big or little we are? We all have trouble with something about our bodies, or at least most people I know do. And if you don’t now, I would bet that you likely did at some point in your life. I think that in most cases, anyone that accepts their body as it is, probably is having an easier time leading a fulfilling life. It is a lot of frustration hating your body. I know, I’ve been there. Heck, I’m still there. And when I say “accepting your body”, I don’t mean that you stop working to improve it or stop trying to be healthier. I just mean realizing your value no matter what your body looks like. We should all accept ourselves (including our bodies) and other people regardless of characteristics such as size, shape, gender, sexual preference, or skin color. That’s what I think it should really be about. Healthiness is a whole other thing, in my opinion. You can’t really determine a person’s health just by looking at them. Yes, fat in general is unhealthy, but you don’t know what that person might be trying to do to get healthy. Our society should support that instead of continuing to perpetuate unhealthy lifestyles by promoting greasy, battered, deep fried fast food and huge portions. Health is a good thing to strive for, but so is body acceptance… SELF acceptance. You can be perfectly healthy and still not accept yourself, and in my opinion, the latter is every bit as, if not more important than the former.

So I have been on a bit of a reading kick lately. Ricky keeps giving me a hard time about it, because I am on Goodreads and they have an annual reading challenge. Last year, my goal was 25 books, and I topped it by 1. This year, my goal is 30, and so far I am already 5 books ahead of schedule. The reason Ricky gives me a hard time is because every time I finish another one, I tell him how many I have read.

Like others I know, ever since reading the Hunger Games a few years ago, I have gotten into YA (young adult) dystopian fiction. You know… Divergent, etc. I actually read both the Hunger Games and Divergent long before any of the movies were released and loved them. Now it’s fun to see all of my friends reading them. There’s been a few more that I’ve read too. Here’s a list of the ones I can remember.

• The Hunger Games series
• The Divergent series
• The Maze Runner series
• The Razorland series
• Life As We Knew It (this one was ok, but since the rest of the series wasn’t about the same characters, I wasn’t too interested in reading them)
• The Legend series

The most recent and the one I’m going to talk about right now is the Legend series. I actually enjoyed these more than I thought I would. The best way to tell what is popular in YA novels is to head to a Barnes & Noble. When I worked there, I would see all the stuff being the most prominently displayed and get ideas for what to read. I need to visit a bookstore to do that again, as I’m running out of ideas!

The Legend series has similarities to the Hunger Games (and other dystopian novels, obviously). It takes place in the U.S., but it’s a U.S. that has been divided into the Republic and the Colonies. The main characters are Day, an outcast that has now become a criminal, and June, the nation’s prodigy. The books tell their stories, both how they got to where they are as well as how their paths end up crossing when June loses someone very close to her.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I really enjoyed these books. This series, as well as most of the other ones listed above, I could easily reread. And all of them are very hard to put down! It’s interesting reading about an imagined America that is broken and has some twisted ideas. The Legend series takes a look at both the Republic and the Colonies, both of which have become something very different from each other as well as very different from the America we see today. I’m not sure how authors like Marie Lu come up with their ideas, but they make for great fiction.

Something else to note is that in a lot of these series, they have very strong female main characters. The Legend series is no exception. June, in addition to being very smart (she got a perfect score in the Trials) is also a fighter and a soldier. As the story plays out, you get to see this more and more. It’s good to have role models like this in the books kids are reading. Is it weird that adults are reading them too? I don’t think so, since honestly, it’s just very entertaining fiction. All of these books are interesting and intelligent reading, in my opinion.

So if you got hooked on Hunger Games, definitely check out some more on the list above, particularly the Legend series. They’ll keep you busy in dystopian America for quite a while.