Update: Wednesday 5 Jun

Hi!

So today my hair was cooperating nicely, and it's so warm out (ha, ha. By that I mean 70F) that I wanted to wear this nice dress that Mommy bought me in Ocean City, Maryland. I decided I look nice today. But there are no roommates in the nearby vicinity, so I had to take pictures with my webcam… for you. Because you don't get to see my face often enough, I think. ;)

So I kind of still look terrible anyway, but I feel overwhelmingly happy sometimes about my weight-loss progress. Then I start feeling like I should cry or something. I love walking around downtown, or even walking to school, because I walk past all these massive store windows that are very reflective, and then I can't help but keep looking at my reflection and marvelling at how far I've come. That's probably not a healthy thing to keep focusing on, but it just feels good to know that I'm not overweight anymore. Really, my BMI is finally in the "healthy weight" range, although I know BMI is often terribly inaccurate. I haven't been this weight since I was 16 years old, maybe even before that. I wish I had some decent "before" pictures, but if you've known me all that time, maybe you don't need it. I think over the summer I am going to start going out for a few hours on my roller blades, or at least go jogging a bit, and see how much better we can do with that. It's hard to motivate myself to do even more when I've already had this much success just by eating better, but I do know that there's only so much that diet controls and it's probably time to step it up a bit.

So uh, anyway. Yesterday I made this terribly not-exciting meal that was very yummy regardless of its simplicity. It's just quinoa seasoned with only salt, and steamed veggies. They'd have been roasted veggies, but it's so hard to roast veggies without an oven… Margaux has two friends visiting from France and Alicia had told Margaux a while back that she wants to try ratatouille. I never really liked ratatouille (just because I really dislike eggplant) but she asked if I wanted to join them and I said sure, why not. So tonight we're having ratatouille, and I have leftover quinoa to eat with it. I'm going to be very sad when I run out of quinoa…

Hanna emailed me this morning and suggested that Amber and I come visit her some time in August while Ian is in the Middle East, so that we can complete the tax forms that she will need us to sign. But uh… I guess I have no reason to say no to that, I'm sure a weekend or something in Belgium would be nice. I guess one day I should tell these people I don't eat meat…