Ambivert

Happy Tuesday! I'm feeling very refreshed after getting a full night's sleep. I stayed up far too late on Sunday night, so that 7:10am alarm was not my best friend on Monday morning. But I took a power nap after my swim yesterday and I managed to get to bed at a decent hour last night, so I am recharged and ready to go today!

Workout

Yesterday after work I took advantage of the sunshine (and furthered my ever-present one-piece tan), and walked over to Gregory to use the pool. As sad as it is that I will be leaving Austin and so many wonderful people, the thought of giving up the Gregory pool forever also brings a couple of tears to my eyes. Probably because I still don't know what I'm going to do about a gym membership this upcoming fall, and a good pool is a definite factor in my decision-making process.

I even swam a little butterfly for the first time in a while, and while it left me gasping for breath, it felt great, and I am slowly but surely going to have to incorporate that stroke back into my swims.

Dinner

I woke up from my nap feeling like my stomach was going to eat itself if it didn't get some food into it soon. I finished off the last of my food the day prior, and I honestly didn't feel like cooking anything up, so I went up the street to Central Market to fix myself a quick salad from the salad bar. I needed to pick up a few items anyway, so it was a win-win trip.

In my salad went: spinach, tomatoes, black olives, chick peas, grilled chicken, and when I got back home, I added some Vlasic Snack'mms Kosher Dill Pickles to the mix. I topped it with balsamic vinaigrette dressing and ate every last bite. Yum!

Breakfast

Today's breakfast is a little bit different than my usual scrambled egg whites and spinach, so just prepare yourself for this deliciousness. After my JuiceLand smoothie on Friday, I remembered my serious love for smoothies - I used to drink a Smoothie King smoothie before every single volleyball game in high school - and I decided to use up some of the frozen fruit in our freezer and create my own rendition of this refreshing drink.

Into the blender went -

• 2 Fredericksburg peaches
• 1/2 carton raspberries
• Sliced strawberries
• 1 sliced banana
• Handful of chia seeds
• 2 cups spinach
• 1 cup almond milk

And I blended it all up and put in my Longhorn Tumblr to take to work with me. It looks gross, but never judge a book by its cover, right? Smoothies are the perfect portable breakfast, and I see myself making them quite a bit next year. Hopefully this will lend itself to pictures that are more exciting than egg whites and spinach, though I wouldn't say this is much more aesthetically pleasing!

Sidenote: I didn't put any ice in my smoothie because I knew I was going to put it in the refrigerator for a little while once I got to SRD. If you want to drink it right away, I would recommend using either frozen fruit or adding ice cubes to the recipe to give it a little chill!

Ambivert

A few weeks ago when I attended the AP Summer Institute here at UT, we talked about a couple of other topics that maybe weren't English-related, but were absolutely classroom-related. We discussed the whole introvert/extrovert topic, which to someone who might potentially want to become a school counselor one day, really interested me. Over one-third of the population are introverts, and contrary to what many of them have been told, that's not a bad thing. We watched this TED Talk, given by Susan Cain, and if you have 20 minutes to spare, I absolutely recommend it. I'm not one for YouTube videos, but this one held my attention the entire time. 

(Source)

I see characteristics of both introverts and extroverts in my personality, as I am sure everyone does, but whenever I take personality tests, I find that I sometimes get labeled an introvert, and other times I get labeled an extrovert. And just a few weeks ago I learned that there is such a name for those of us who display qualities of both the introvert and the extrovert - ambivert. There are times when yes, I love being around a large group of people in a social situation, and there are other times when I want nothing more than to curl up in bed with a good book. Taking personality tests have always been hard for me, because my answer always seems to be, "It depends." And my status as an ambivert was further confirmed via these 20 questions, also answered at my AP Summer Institute. I answered 11 'yes,' and 9 'no,' putting myself smack dab in the middle of the spectrum. People tell me I'm a good listener, but I also consider myself to be the queen of multi-tasking.

And on that note, I'm off to bury my nose in my book. Have a great one!

P.S. I learned that yesterday was National Chocolate Day, a day that was essentially made for me, and I didn't even know about it. Good thing I still managed to eat some chocolate!