Chicago Marathon Val

Hello!  How was your day?  Mine was spent at a School Social Workers conference, which was a nice change from the daily grind!  I look forward to this particular conference since it’s always full of innovative and cutting edge interventions and theories about how to best help our students.

Today I attended a conference on using yoga with students, which was awesome!  As you may have read on my guest post on Maggie’s blog a while back, I’ve been interested in using yoga and mindfulness with students in the past and I’m trying to figure out a way to incorporate this into my practice on a broader scale. 

This training was just what I was looking for – it basically walks you through various yoga poses that have simplified instructions that are tailored to children.  I’m not very advanced at yoga, so this was a big help!  I did think it was funny that I was given a “Yoga Coach” name tag to wear during the training since I was one of the few social workers who had used yoga with students before… this seemed ironic to me since the last time I attended yoga class at my gym the oh-so-friendly yoga instructor told me during tree pose that “I was ignoring everything she said” because I had my foot against my knee instead of my calf/thigh.  Apparently there are still some elitist yoginis out there!

The second conference I attended was about enhancing students’ self-esteem via various activities.  I loved the ideas we discussed, but I’m just not sure when I will find the time to add in extra programs to my already jam-packed schedule!

I love talking about social work but I don’t want to bore you guys…. so if you have any specific questions about these trainings, or anything else social work related, please let me know and I’d be happy to talk to you about it either on the blog or via email!

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A few days ago I was privileged to receive two awards from Melissa from Fitness NYC!

As part of the award, the blogger is supposed to answer this series of questions with one-word answers – which is tougher than it sounds!! Here goes:

1. Where is your cell phone? Kitchen
2. Your hair? Shorter
3. Your mother? Compassionate
4. Your father? Driven
5. Your favorite food? Chocolate
6. Your dream last night? Work
7. Your favorite drink? Water
8. Your dream/goal? Fulfillment
9. What room are you in? Living
10. Your hobby? Cooking
11. Your fear? Failure
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Happy
13. Where were you last night?  Home
14. Something you aren’t? Arrogant
15. Muffins?  Blueberry
16. Wish list item? Europe
17. Where did you grow up? Indiana
18. Last thing you did? Dishes
19. What are you wearing? Pajamas
20. Your TV? 46″
21. Your pets? None
22. Your friends? Fun
23. Your life? Fortunate
24. Your mood? Lazy
25. Missing someone? Parents
26. Vehicle? Explorer
27. Something you’re not wearing? Scarf
28. Your favorite store? Express
29. Your favorite color? Yellow
30. When was the last time you laughed? Mike
31. Last time you cried? Recently
32. Your best friend? Mike
33. One place that I go over and over? Gym
34. One person who emails me regularly? Mom
35. Favorite place to eat? Vegan

The second award was:

For this award, I’m supposed to tell you 7 things you don’t already know about me:

1. When I was little, I was a complete Beatles fanatic.  I not only memorized all of their songs, but also knew pretty much every random factoid out there, such as what date a song was recorded!! I went to the Beatlefest in Chicago once.  I’m not as good with the dates now, but I’m still a huge fan!

2.  I desperately want a dog (a golden retriever or a yellow lab), but as much as I love dogs, when I was growing up we always had a huge yard to let our dogs out in.  Thus, I’ve never had to walk a dog in the cold Chicago winters, and this is what is holding me back from getting a dog! I love dogs but I also love not going outside at 10pm when it’s negative degrees outside…

3.  When I was little, I was pretty much the least athletic kid out there.  My poor dad tried to get me into every sport imagineable, but either I hated it, or sucked at it – usually both.  Ironic that now I’m a 3-time marathoner!

4. I can either be very energetic, bubbly and outgoing, or very shy and nervous, depending on who I am with and what the circumstance is.  At times I love talking to a crowd, but I also get nervous for silly things like giving a presentation in front of a kindergarten class.

5. I met my husband because I needed a tutor for statistics class in college, and my friend Dyan told me that Mike was very smart and would be able to help me.  Well, Mike IS very smart, but he couldn’t help me with statistics!!  But thankfully I failed statistics that semester or we wouldn’t have met

6. I took ju-jitsu as a kid, with my dad, and got to be a second-degree yellow belt.  I have always wanted to take up classes again, but haven’t because they are expensive, and because I would have to give up my current workouts (running, spinning, etc.) to make time to do so which I don’t want to do.

7.  Some of my very favorite things to do are simple and cheap: going for a long morning or evening walk in the crisp fall weather, wandering the aisles at Whole Foods, or spending hours reading books at a bookstore. 

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And now I get to pass along this award!!  Although there are so many awesome blogs out there, I’m going to send this one to:

Biz from Biggest Diabetic Loser

Erin and Andrea from Care to Eat

Jenn from Eating Bender

Alex from Happy Go Lucky

Mia from Runs and Rests

Leah from Simply Fabulous

Mara from What’s for dinner?

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Alright folks, I’ve been trying to find the zip drive with all of my wedding pictures on it, and have not had any luck.  I’m not worried that it’s lost, but I’m just irritated because I wanted to post some pictures for my anniversary (which is on Sunday). 

If not, I may put up some honeymoon pictures in the meantime…. and if that doesn’t end up happening (due to the fact that Mike is about to steal my computer away from me in a few minutes), I will be out of town for our anniversary this weekend and will get a posting up when I come back.

Gratitude Journal:

1) I enjoyed my conference today! It felt great to learn some new techniques!

2) Lunch was from the hot bar/salad bar at Whole Foods…. ahhh the joy of Whole Foods

3) My 2.5 hour long commute home in the rain was miserable, but it really did make me appreciate my regular commute which is about 20-30 minutes

Night!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.