Good Sunday Morning to you and welcome to of my Sunday State of the Union! This is the week in short and will cover everything from A to Z, or at least everything between A and Z that I care to mention. This weekly post will be published EVERY Sunday morning and will be written throughout the week.

.  .  .

As we approach Super Tuesday, this past week has been politically heavy in my news feed. This week in my SOTU is going to both look deeper into and also look outside of politics. Why? Because if I have to read too many more political arguments and articles, my brain might just explode. I mean don't get me wrong, I love, love, love politics. For goodness sakes I'm even majoring in it. But if it's just 100% politics all the time, yeah I don't like politics that much. Everyone needs a break every so often, yeah? So, without further ado, here's the week

1. Tuesday Night Smackdown - No despite my title here, the WWE has not changed it's weekly schedule for Smackdown. I'm talking about Super Tuesday, the primary election Holy Grail. This coming Tuesday, March 1st, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will have primaries for both Republicans and Democrats. Alaska has a Republican caucus, American Samoa has a Democratic caucus, and Colorado is choosing a Democratic candidate through caucusing and delegates for to choose a Republican. I for one am on the hunt for a Super Tuesday party, a rare occasion that I won't be watching results and knitting.  There will definitely be some live-tweeting and a follow up next week!

2. Bloom - So moving away from politics now, I want to hit up the really important news of the week. Some of you may know Estee Lalonde (formerly EssieButton), a fashion/beauty/lifestyle blogger/vlogger/YouTuber. I've been passively watching her videos for years and over the past few months I finally subscribed and started watching her videos regularly. This Monday, Estee announced that she is writing a book titled Bloom! Last I checked, there was no US pre-order for her book, but the second it does open up, I will be the first on the list! I love Estee and I am so excited to read her book. Check out her blog and her channel!

3. Carrie and the Robots - My absolute favorite Carrie Fisher was featured in IBM's new commercial along side the support group for evil robots. The commercial also features IBM's little Watson, their genius artificial intelligence robot. It'll the cutest minute of your day! The only thing missing is 3PO and R2!

4. Baby Meesha - Little Meesha from the BARCS Animal Shelter in Baltimore, MD was waking up from surgery and making the absolute saddest little puppy noises. According to the post, Meesha was having trouble coming out from the anesthesia, and one of her doctors, Dennis Moses, comforted her by holding Meesha and rocking her. Little Meesha's sad whimpers will break your heart the whole time, but seeing the doc's reaction and comforting of the little dog, it's just the sweetest thing! Check the video out on BARCS' Facebook page!

5. Land's End Weenies Out - I'm sure by now you've heard about how Land's End took down their interview with Gloria Steinem. After pressure from viewers calling Steinem "anti-child" and claiming that Land's End want to "kill off future customers." Which is an absolutely ridiculous claim. Regardless of her recent opinions, Gloria Steinem has worked for gender equality. Moreover, the interview with Land's End had nothing to do with Steinem's opinions regarding abortion or any other political issues. I'm quite ashamed of Land's End for taking down the interview, and I for one will be keeping my business elsewhere for a while.

Photo of the Week:

I found this gorgeous Skeleton Flower on Town & Country. Found in Japan and China, the usually white flower, turns clear when hit with water. As it dries, it fades back to white. Apparently they're also found on the Appalachian mountains, so guess where I'm going hiking this summer!




Quote of the Week: With midterm season starting, I think this quote is pretty accurate.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

-Henry Kissinger

And that's where I'll leave you today. Let me know in the comments what articles highlighted your week!

Until next time,
Writing to you from M, Personally

Politics SOTU

6:21 AM

Good Sunday Morning to you and welcome to the first installment of my Sunday State of the Union! This will be the week in short and will cover everything from A to Z, or at least everything between A and Z that I care to mention. This weekly post will be published EVERY Sunday morning and will be written throughout the week. Being the first post, this SOTU will cover this past week as well. So without further ado..

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The post Valentines Day week! The week where the newly engaged couples are happy together, the new couples are happy together, and us single people are happy alone with sale price chocolate. While I sit here eating an obscene number of Hershey kisses, let's see what happened this week:


1.Conservativism on Campus - This past Tuesday evening, GOP strategist Karl Rove spoke at American University. Earlier that day, as a response to some on campus backlash to Rove as well as many other speakers, a friend of mine had an editorial published in the Washington Examiner. Krista Chavez, president of AU's chapter of the Network of Enlightened Women,  wrote incredibly well on the topic of conservatism on campus, a topic that I myself am incredibly passionate about.

2. Apple Does Fall Far - By now I am sure you've read the open letter from Tim Cook regarding the FBI's requesting Apple to unlock the iPhone from the San Bernadino shooting. And I have to say, I strongly agree with Cook. We can all agree that there is no way in the world that the US Government can keep the necessary iOS adjustments secure and only ever use them for extreme cases. I don't trust the government with that technology, and I don't even have an iPhone any more! Despite that, there has to be some way for Apple and the FBI to come to a compromise to access this specific phone to access the information held inside.

3. Missing the Mockingbird - This week we lost a literary great. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman, died this past day at age 89. She wrote the book that help me make the change from children and young adult books to the 'grown up' classics as a child and I have always loved Lee. Her life, especially that surrounding the publishing of Watchman, will be thrust back into the spotlight again, something she often avoided. Regardless, Harper Lee will be greatly missed by all in the literary community.

4. Koch and Bern? - So. Many. Inapropriate Puns. Last week, Charles Koch of the (in?)famous Koch brothers, agreed with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that our current system is broken, trapping millions in poverty and hopelessness. I for one, strongly agree with him. But does that make me and Charlie K liberal socialists? Heck to the no! Well actually, I should only speak for myself. I actually agree with a lot of what Bernie Sanders says and I like/respect him a lot for bringing these problems to light. That being said, I disagree with pretty much all of his methods to resolve these problems. But talking about these things is the first step towards a solution!

5. U Got The Power - I put this last on the list even though I started last week with this feeling. If you read the conclusion to my little saga last Thursday, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I found the amazing article by Molly Longest from thelala.com about how to deal with one-sided love. I won't lie, this one definitely hurts a bit more than a regular break up, at least for me it does. But I'm going to try my very hardest to keep my head up and my upper lip stiff. Molly's article is the perfect way to jump start the recovery from this. She ends the post with the great song to start off your week. It's silly, but you know you love it, so give it a listen and don't forget to dance, because you just have to!

Photo of the Week:

This past week John Kasich made headlines after he hugged a young supporter, Brett Smith, who shared his story with the Governor. Why did I pick this photo for this week? Because for the absolute first time this entirely too long campaign cycle, a candidate wasn't a acting like a candidate. Kasich too his time to be a real, legitimate human person. When asked about this moment during CNN's GOP Town Hall, Kasich pretty much said it wasn't anything out of character for him and that he has done this before and will continue to do this. While Kasich isn't my number one choice for this upcoming election, this solidified him as a really great guy in my mind, and pushed him to the top of my list.





(Source: Washington Post)





Quote of the Week:
                             "Cultivate Your Positivity"
                                                                 -Devon Werkheiser 


That's all for this week's State of the Union, so until next time,
Writing to you from M, Personally

SOTU

5:00 AM

Hello everyone ans welcome back to my Weekly Workout Post! We're going to start today's post off right with Day 2 of Brett Larkin's 18 Days of Yoga.

I've sort of turned this daily series into a weekly one for me. I've got plenty of time for more, but I've only got the free room once a week! This week's theme was Ease, something I definitely need to add to my life after the absolutely crazy past few days. The class was 45 minutes long, and suited my level much better than last weeks adventure. The twists and stretches felt amazing on my left side, but not so great on my right. A few years ago I sprained my shoulder and I still have a micro tear in the tendon, which makes a lot of yoga poses more difficult for me, limiting my mobility and strength. Classes with a lot of downward dog are pretty much the first circle of hell for me, after 10 minutes with all that stress, my right shoulder starts to tremble! I liked this class because there was very little downward dog or plank pose and the stretches didn't strain my body too hard, just enough to be tough. It started out pretty tough, the first 25 minutes were definitely trying, but I stuck with it, and it slowed down towards the end and felt great for me. This week's meditation was Savasana, corpse pose, and definitely my favorite. It's so relaxing for me and it's the real reason I stuck with yoga after trying it a few years ago!

So the weekly yoga is done, now time to move onto the much less fun part, the daily workout.

To recap, I split Day 9 up into two days, as I had a hectic weekend. Yesterday was getting back on track with Day 10, and today is Day 11. It's going to be tough getting out of bed tomorrow with all these stretches and workouts!

Day 11:
22 Tricep Dips
30 Mountain Climbers
110 Crunches
15 Oblique Squats


Because of that earlier mentioned shoulder, I've started modifying my tri dips and I've gotten much better results. Instead of the usual stance with a chair in sort of a triangular pose, I sort of make an M shape with my body, almost a table, but my belly isn't flat. Then I bend my elbows, lowering my upper body and core for the same workout of the triceps. It's not so much weight on the shoulders, which is really helpful for me
The crunches were hard for me at first. I was thinking, how do you do 110 crunches at once?! But once I started breaking them down into sets of 20 or 30, counting up to 10 or 15 and then back down, it seems like so much less once you're doing them!
As for the oblique squats, the best way to explain them is with this gif:

So 15 of those should be fun today and absolutely awful tomorrow morning!

Today's fitness motivation is super true. People have started to notice how my body has changed, and it feels absolutely amazing when people look at you and ask, "Have you lost weight??"

And after working every day to become stronger in mind, body, and spirit, seeing the all of your work, dedication, and literal blood, sweat, and tears culminating into the goal you've been striving to achieve, nothing feels better!

Until next time, stay active, drink your water, and Namaste.

Writing to you from M, Personally

Check out last week's WWP here!

Fitness WWP

9:08 AM

I struggled to write a post for Valentines Day. Being a holiday and all, I figured it deserves a special post.

See here's my problem though, I don't have anything to write about.
I'm not in a relationship, so there's no reason for me to write a sappy love post or describe the day I spent with my SO
I'm not at all about that hookup life, so I'll have no wild and crazy post-party night stories.
I'm not going out with friends, so no Galentine's day stories either.
And I'm not miserably single, so I can't even complain about that!

I'm happily single this year, which is a new thing for me. So I guess I am obliged to write about how I live my life as one of Queen Bey's Single Ladies. Which I will be playing and dancing to while writing this post, of course. So without further ado...

I mean I can't have a post about being a single lady without a Beyoncé gif.

(And for the record, my autocorrect has Beyoncé's name saved with the little accented e)

 For the longest time I had craved a relationship. Looking back, I just wanted a person. Actually not a person. The person. My person. Which was a pretty selfish reason, to be honest.

I finally did find my person, though quite on accident. It was great between us for the time and I liked him a lot. Like, a lot. Unfortunately, it ended abruptly because of some outside difficulties. For example, the Atlantic Ocean. We ended it on good terms and still talk pretty regularly to this day. I know you're all dying to hear all the details, but it's that's a very long post that isn't coming in the foreseeable future. Some things I do like to keep anonymous.

But after him came another guy. Who was indeed on this side of the Earth. It was good with him, but it ended after four months. I was pretty broken up about it for a while, but looking back it probably was all for the best.

After him though, I went through a few month period that I now call the "dark days." Bad times, unfortunate guys, desperate emotional me, and a few too many (mis?) adventures. I don't look back on those months proudly.

But thanks to those awful few months, I learned a lot about life and about myself. I wrote The Boyfriend List. I gained a bit of confidence. I lost some self respect. Altogether, I grew a lot from that time, learned my lessons, and moved on into a better lifestyle with a better mindset.

Which brings us up to now, where I am happily single and, as A calls it, dating myself.

What does dating yourself entail? Well it means whatever you want it to really. Dating yourself really comes down to you taking some time to find yourself and learn to love yourself. It's easier said than done at first. It's taken me a while to fully understand what it meant to 'date myself'.

So now that I am in the one-girl relationship, what are my plans for this big V-day? Well that is a very good question that I don't completely know the answer to. Probably a lot of reading, I'm in the midst of Sense and Sensibility, just getting into the good parts now. I also want to try a new cookie recipe from Carly at TCP. I've heard a lot of rave reviews of her mom's recipe and I've just got to try it! After cookies and reading, I'm going to a late night showing of Deadpool with a few friends, because we pick only the most romantic films to see.

Who knows, maybe I will have a wild Sunday anyways. If anything exciting happens, you all will certainly be the first to know!

Until next time, have a wonderful Valentine's Day, from me and Liz Lemon

Writing to you from M, Personally 

Check out a bit of a follow up to this post here!

Holidays Relationships

6:07 AM

Every college student dreams of the day they graduate into their dream job. For me, that's managing political campaigns. Unlike many who long for the spotlight, ready to change the world, I dream of the late nights, early mornings, and poor dining that comes with campaigns. Any of you political minded people are definitely wondering, what the heck is wrong with me. Campaigns are notoriously grueling, testing, and trying. Generally people hate campaigning. Except me. I'm one of the very few political nerds who lives for it.

Regardless of field, we all know that in order to get a job, one must spend a lot of time in college interning, networking, and connecting with the 'real world.' As a future campaign manager, it can get to be a little difficult to make those connections, but this is a lucky year. With plenty of campaigns going, it's a great time for me to make those connections.

Seems great right? Well not quite. 99% of these connections are through unpaid internships. And as someone carrying a pretty hefty student debt already, I'm not a big fan of working for free when I've got about $56 to pay to the state every month. Plus. I occasionally like to eat, so buying some food would be a plus too.

So here's the TL/DR:
I need to network and make connections within campaign management by interning on a campaign, but I'm poor.

Now onto my current dilemma.

I was offered a chance to interview with a campaign manager last night. A local Congressional campaign, nothing too fancy. The candidate is apparently very nice, taking on a lot of interns from my University. Office is a few metro stops down. Busy office often with the candidates dog around too. Interns are required to work 3 shifts per week, about 15 hours, with really flexible shift schedules. AND Interns are paid $13 an hour. Which is pretty substantial for DC! With 15 hours at $13/hour, I'm making net about $115 per week! Of course with taxes it's less, but it'll be enough for me to pay for my loans every month, buy some food, AND maybe even splurge to help refill my closet with clothes that actually fit.

Sounds great, right? Connections, networking, campaigning, politics, AND paid?? It's perfect! Too perfect...

What's the catch? Well it's a pretty big one. The candidate is a Democrat.

(Dun, Dun, DUN!)

Cue the horror movie scream, this is my worst nightmare. I figured I would have this issue eventually, but not yet! I thought I thought I had a few years to decide whether I would cave to a Dem for the sake of a paycheck. But no. The issue is in the now. My connection is passing my cell phone number to the campaign today, giving me a few hours to decide whether or not to take this or not.

I've decided to think seriously about it. Though I am a registered Republican, I'm not so proud that I won't work for a paycheck. Working on a campaign will be much better than working as a nanny or dog sitter like I was prepared to do. It'll look great on my resume to have real campaign experience, and in an interview I can easily spin working for a democrat into a positive.

It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I've got to get my dog into the ring. The phone interview should be within the next few days, so I need to decide by then.

Until next time, writing to you from M, Personally

College Life Future Internship Politics

6:00 AM

source

One of my goals this year is to be able to run the Marine Corps Marathon next October. In order to do that, one requires a serious level of fitness. A level that I pretty severely lack. While my goal may be a bit loftier than possible, I like to set this one high. I'm okay if it takes a little longer than I wanted it to, since personal health and fitness is not something to joke about.

I'll be writing more about my personal fitness goals another time, but becoming healthy and active has been important to me for a while. And especially over the past year. Because of that, I want to keep myself motivated to get and stay fit. Part of that is going to be holding myself accountable by telling other people. And you my dear readers, are often going to be those people.

Every week, I will post that day's workout, for you all to try and enjoy. I'll post it every day on my Twitter as well!

So without further ado, here is the Weekly Workout Post #1!

The Daily Workout today was:
15 Basic Squats
15 Kickback Squats
6 Tricep Dips
10 Mountain Climbers
30 Crunches

This morning also featured some yoga from Brett Larkin's Channel.
I started out with power slow flow, which was an intermediate class. I shouldn't have been so ambitious, as it proved a little difficult for me. I decided to go with Day 1 of her 18 Days of Yoga series, and skipped around through the class a bit (not good, I know!) as I was running out of time and getting a bit frustrated with myself. I ended up doing about 30 minutes of yoga this morning. I didn't want to end on a bad note, so I followed through to the meditation sequence on the end of the Day 1 video. I've never done meditation before, outside of meditative breathing techniques for anxiety or Savasana. In Brett's video, we did about 6 minutes of meditation, including 2 minutes of Kapalabathi. And it was actually really great. While I wasn't super comfortable on my towel and I was a bit impatient through it all, once I finally resigned myself to sit and actually stop for a couple of minutes, it was great. I 100% recommend Brett's videos to anyone, just make sure you pick one that fit's your workout length and skill level! I'll link the two I did below:


60 Minute Power "Slow Flow" Yoga
"A power yoga class that doesn't rush you! Perfect for midday but practice it anytime. Sweaty & serene!"

Day 1 HOPE - Strength and Surrender
"In this 35-minute class, we learn the yogic breathing that will guide us through the rest of this challenge and tone the abs and legs w/ lunges and seated core work."












Until next time,
Writing to you from M, Personally

Namaste!




Check out the next WWP here!

Fitness WWP

7:21 AM