Day 10 - Meet Jonas Day

Today was a day I got to meet Jonas. Meet him by going on a website that tracks HIS progress through the book. Dumb. Honestly, I don't care because I don't know him. And I figured that going online to read about him would be a waste of time and wouldn't change my life.

But... I still had to "meet Jonas."

Well ironically, this day fell on the same day that the Jonas Brothers were in AZ. All I knew about the Jonas Brother's before today was that they were a product of Disney and a bunch of little girls are in love with them.

After today? I know so much more....

I listen to Johnjay and Rich most mornings and so that is how I knew the Jo Bros (that's one of their nicknames) were going to be in town. More than that, they were having a free kickball game in Peoria. I was SO totally going to go but it started at 1:30 and I had to be on the other side of town at 2:30.... it wasn't going to work out.

So instead, the whole day (okay, a big portion of the day) I spent some time looking a various Jonas Brothers websites. Seriously, these guys have a lot of fanatics out there. I was laughing at most of it, surprisingly impressed with a little bit of it, and, when I take an honest look at myself, I have to admit I would be head-over-heels reading Teen Bop magazines about the Jonas Brothers....if I was 15. Bummer. I missed the mark.

Whoops

Well, there goes that July 31st deadline of having a new life. Oh well. New guideline: Just complete the book.

Funny that this BOOK is supposedly going to change my life but in the past couple of weeks, my life has changed so much on it's own. For the better I must add.

So I will post the last two "days" I had actually completed and I will be back on track to updating and changing my life on a regular day-to-day basis.

Day 9 - Something Before Breakfast

Today, my first day of not working at Sony anymore, I didn't quite get to sleep in as planned.   And coming off a day without any real caffeine, this proved quite difficult.  

The alarm clock went off at 5am (as instructed) and when I looked around I was definitely disoriented.  I totally thought the sun was up at 5am in the summer time.  I guess not in August.  It was dark.  

I pulled myself out of bed (after only pushing snooze once!) and washed my face for a wake up call. As I was drying my face and rubbing my eyes a bit, I realized that I was allowed to have my soda again!!  When I got to the fridge though, I was very distraught when I found I had forgotten to put some Diet Dr. Pepper cans back in last night.  I'm feeling this book set me up for this.  What, no addictive substance one day, and then wake up at the crack of dawn the next??  Sheesh....

Well by this point I'm up.  Not wide awake, but I'm up.

So what do I do so early in the morning?  I have no place to be so I don't really need to get ready.  The first thing I did was get on facebook to see who else is crazy enough to be up this early.  And I also thought of my friends at Sony who are already talking to our east coast customers.  (I guess it is no longer "our" customers.)  It was on that thought that I realized what a glorious day it is today.  Sun is now breaking the sky and I have the whole day ahead of me. 

I put a load of laundry in (figured it was the most productive I could be while doing the least amount of work) and turned on the TV.  Blah.  Off.

So then I picked up my Sudoku book.  Much better.  A perfect waste of time.  Soon it was 6:45 and it was time to wake the boys for the their first day of school.  Morning went on at our house as it will for the next 9 months or so, including my daily phone calls with my sisters.  (And now I'm not disrupted in these phone calls by having to park in parking garage just to get on the phone with people who I don't know and can barely understand)

Now my kids are in school, I have no job to be at and I've already been up for hours with hours of daylight still ahead.  I might not have done "much" this morning before breakfast (oh, breakfast was at 9:30am with a bagel and cream cheese), but I feel very alive and refreshed.  Perhaps that is also by the help of my Sonic Diet Dr Pepper, but nonetheless, this is a great day already. 

But no.  I will not be waking up at 5am anytime in the near future. 

Day 8 - Addiction Free Day (Take 2)

So here it is, just after 10pm and I can officially say I made it through Addiction Free Day.
No Diet Dr. Pepper.
None.

It was an excruciating day. Around 11 or so I was cutting out coupons from the Sunday paper w/out having my daily morning Sonic soda and what do I see?

I mean really, is this a joke? 

Dr Pepper ice cream topper and Dr Pepper BBQ sauce!!?

By around 2pm it was really setting in and I couldn't help but take a couple Excedrin to take off the edge of my monstrous headache.  It didn't help.

By 4pm I was starting to get extremely irritable so I knew I had to be productive to get my mind off it. I did laundry and went to the store. It helped a little bit. When I opened up my fridge I realized it was a good thing I didn't restock it last night with soda, there wasn't any in there to tempt me and a warm soda doesn't sound so good when it's 110 degrees out.

At 7pm I wish finishing up dinner with my water and realized I would make it the next few hours even though my massive headache has only gotten worse. But the end is in sight at this time.

Now my boys are in bed and I've cleaned up my kitchen. For not having to go to work tomorrow I should be soaking in the next few hours of the night but I'm ready to crash. I'm looking forward to a nice, big, ice cold, Diet Dr Pepper in the morning. The sooner I go to sleep, the sooner I can make that a reality.

Day 8 - Addiction Free Day

Unfortunately, I did not read ahead on this one and looked at it too far in the day to truly cut out an addictive substance...so I've lost a day now and will go for it tomorrow.

Which will make tomorrow be the toughest day of the whole year.
A day....without Diet Dr. Pepper. I better drink up the last few hours of tonight!

Day 7 - Umm

My first official "pass" on a task takes place today. Let's just say guys and girls are very different when it comes to some things.

No other comment.

Instead, I will bask in the glory of my last day at Sony. That deserves some recognition.

Day 6 - Begin Your Novel Day

Today I begin the novel I've always wanted to write. (Which is a bit fun since I have in fact always wanted to write some type of book....)

I am to write the first sentence to my debut novel. So after much, much thought, here it goes:


"Pshhh."


Makes you wonder what the second line will be, huh?
Someday.

Day 5 - Out of Order Day

Today was a fantastic task! The assignment was to put an "out of order" sign....anywhere.

My place of choice? The men's bathroom at my work. As quick as I could I hung my little sign (written with a red pen on a blank sheet of white paper) and grabbed my phone to take a picture. Only, I had no idea that the camera on my phone is somehow broken!! So I popped into the women's bathroom right next door to try to figure out what was going on with my phone. All the while, I'm hearing footsteps in and out of the little hallway into the bathroom area and then footsteps turning around.

Luckily I was alone in the women's bathroom because I couldn't contain my laughter. Unfortunately I could not figure out what was going on with my phone so I finally went back to my desk.

One hour later it was time to head out and I after a lot of consideration, I decided to take the sign down on the way out. We have all kinds of cameras in our building and I could only imagine them going through security tapes or something and seeing me carrying the sign.

So as I was walking to the bathroom, there was a guy walking just a few feet in front of me. Sure enough, he opens the door to the hallway, stops, and turns around and practically runs right in to me saying "excuse me." I popped into the bathroom and once again giggled out loud to myself.

I did take the sign down and throw it in the trash.

Possibly it could have been more exciting, but I'm still new at this. I'll get better.

Day 4 - World Color-In Day

The only task for today was to color a map of the places I've been, the places I intend to go to this next year, the places I want to go before I die and the places I would never step foot in. That's it....

So, I'll upload the picture at some point, but I've been on a time crunch the past couple of days.

Nothing much to say other than the fact that I wish there was an option in the middle of all the places I want to visit before I do and the places I would never step foot in. Many places I wouldn't mind going to but when it just comes down to it, it'll never happen.

Okay, not exciting for the day's task...I'm sure there'll be a few like this.

Day 3 - The Love of Your Life

Day 3 did not go quite as planned. I tried. Probably not hard enough, but I tried. I thought this was still considered a warm up week but this should have been a least a couple of weeks down the road. I haven't been 'broken-in' yet. Oh well.

Today was the day I was supposed to stare at everyone as if they were the love of my life. Ha. It is a lot harder than it sounds! I thought it would be easy at my work since there are a lot of people I don't know and after Friday, I won't have to see them again...and I also thought it would be silly to stare at my friends that work there and then explain later...but it didn't turn out that way.

When I first got to work I just started cracking up at the thought of staring at Brian or Israel as if they were the love of my life. I mean, I love those guys, but come on. And it doesn't help that Israel tries to stare ME down first after finding out what it is I had to do today.

So next I was out to find those I didn't know. Strangers.

There was ONE guy which I caught his eye walking down the hall. He was an older guy....much older. I gave the little sly smile, kept staring directly at him and smiled some more. He just stared at me (not knowing what to think I'm sure) and smiled back. I'm glad we were just crossing paths and that it had only lasted a few moments! I'm not cut out for this.

So last but not least, I also lovingly stared at the back of people's heads down my cubicle aisle. The book never specified that they had to be looking at me in return!

Moving on. Tomorrow is pretty simple so I should I have made more of an effort today. I will learn from my shortcomings and prevail the next time.

Day 2 - Throw Something Away

First of all, I did switch today's task for tomorrow's....Don't ask me how I'm going to get through tomorrow, it is really going to be...interesting.

So as for today, I had to throw away something that I like. That's it. No other guidelines. My first thought was that I wasn't going to actually throw something away, but that I would donate something I like instead. But the more I thought about it, I realized the point of this task was for that feeling you get when you really do toss something out and you'll never see it again. Down to the dump. Forever just...gone.

It took me all day to figure out what I throw out. There was nothing that seemed like a good option.

So at the end of the day, this is what I chose:


These shoes are honestly my favorite pair of shoes. I probably wear them four out of five days at work. But...because my feet sweat so much (if you didn't know, my hands and feet are a little bit like waterfalls), my shoes don't last as long as they would for someone else. Granted, my sweat does NOT smell, but when you have water trapped in shoes for 10+ hours a day, day after day...they start to work up a slight order. But these are my FAVORITE shoes! So although it had gotten to the point where I actually keep these shoes outside, I still decide to put them on over and over and over again....

These shoes have now seen their last day. Goodbye.

Day 1 - Warm Up Day

Since this is the first day, I got to start off with an easy task that will only change my life a little bit.

There's a list of 20 small little tasks and all I had to do is pick one of them. Instead, I chose 5.

* Set all your clocks to the right time
~ This was not as easy as I thought it would be! I realized I have 9 clocks that are in my life on any given day. Including my car. This took longer than I thought.

*Hold up the phone to your other ear
~ Seriously, I think I might be going deaf in my left ear, there is no comfortable "indent" in that ear and my left arm is not nearly as strong as my right.

* Tell someone your middle name
~ I do not particularly like my middle name (sorry Mom) so this was awkward. I introduced myself to someone today as "Hi, I'm Kellie Jean."

* Decide which toe is the prettiest
~ I had never thought about that before...I've always liked my feet, but I have never examined them on a toe by toe basis. I must say, my middle toe is the prettiest.

* Insult an insect
~ While I curse on any insect that breeds on this earth, I still have never done it out loud. So today I told a little tiny black bug of some sorts that he was ugly. Out loud. And maybe it was a "she" which I guess would count as a double insult.


So, there it is. Day 1 is down and 364 more to go. I read ahead and Day 2 looks a little tricky, at least for a Sunday....I'm contemplating switching Day 2 and Day 3 ... There's no rules against that, as long as I do them. We'll see.