Clean(er) Eating

I am in love with food, and just want to taste anything and everything I can. I'm constantly watching the Food Network, and am in love with reading food blogs. After going off the meal plan on campus two years ago, I decided I wanted to cook as much as I could- while still maintaining school and other life obligations. And I've succeeded for the most part on those counts, by perfecting certain dishes and working on newer and more exciting palettes.

However, there's a discrepancy in what I eat, and how I lead my life. As someone who isn't the most active person, I tend to eat tons of junk food. If I can put cheese in a meal, I probably will. Pasta dishes are a weekly- even daily- occurrence. And we won't discuss cookies. (I'm practically the cookie monster.) It's definitely difficult to eat healthier, especially when a lot of the things I enjoy eating are more appealing to my really unhealthy eating habits.

(This is an all too common occurrence...)

I've never been a big fan of going on diets. While I say I can live off of salad, I really truly can't, and find myself reaching for a bag of potato chips maybe an hour after a salad. This being said, I think I've slowly started to transition to healthier/cleaner eating habits. Incorporating salads as a side to a meal, cutting back on baking cookies, and simply having more fruit has helped a ton.

However, I feel that since I'm training for a small run, and will soon be incorporating more running into my daily life, eating like I have been will not be suitable. (I mean, how many runners do you know will douse their cheesecake in whipped cream?) So while this change will be difficult, it'll be for the good in the long run.

Ideally, I would definitely follow a clean eating model, where you eat a ton of fresh and non-processed food, that lifestyle is too intense for me. I need my chocolate cookies, and Ben and Jerry's ice cream for those nights where I put off writing a history paper. I want to be able to eat healthier, without sacrificing too much of what I already eat. I've decided to work with portioning, and resizing meals. So if I'm going to make a pasta dish, I will make sure that I have double the size of salad I eat than the amount of pasta I eat. I won't eat chips and dip while marathoning How I Met Your Mother. (The struggle will be very real.) Small changes in my life will help me get into a healthier state. So naturally I typed them up, and signed my name (and made my roommate do it too).

(Framed in neon pink tape, and posted on Instagram for more serious guidance?) 

Let's see how long this lasts right? (It'll last I'm sure.)
Sheilly

Hello Readers!

I'm back!

After last semester, I've really decided to come back to the blogging realm for good. Last semester was difficult with classes, and now I'm looking forward to continuing blogging, although a little differently.

Blogging and keeping an updated journal has been a bit difficult for me. As I've mentioned in the past, I hate hate HATE talking about the routine things I do, and often find myself annoyed at the fact that I don't have any thing interesting to share.

So far that, I am sorry. :)

However, right now 2014 has started, and I've got a couple of things on my plate.

• As of this Spring, I am double majoring (!!!!!) in German and Bioengineering. For my senior project for German, I'm bridging the gap between science and the German language. (More specifically the terminology used in Genetics and the terms used in the German language.) To keep myself on top of this project, and make sure I'm doing it in a timely place, I've decided to blog about my findings. I've found in the past, explaining why a certain topic is important in a research paper, I've found blogging and jotting down my ideas in a blog format to be very helpful. 
• It's my final semester here on campus at Stony Brook University. As happy as I am to graduate and go on with my studies elsewhere, I am sad to leave my friends. I've got some fun excursions and things planned with my friends that I'll be sharing here as a way to hold on to the memories for both myself and my friends. :)
• I'm also in the process of redo-ing my whole entire wardrobe. It's been a challenging experience, but a very happy one. I'm hoping to bring my style to this blog, and maybe help add to this blog. :)
• Last but not least, I'm writing a memoir for fun. While someday I hope to get published, at the moment it's very rudimentary. The memoir is full of silly life stories and is a huge side project. I have no timeframe for this project, but it's a silly side project that I'm happy to share with you. While I won't be posting entire parts of it here, I am hoping to add some excerpts here and there. 

Anyway, I'm glad to be back, and I'm ready to take this blog to a whole new level. Let's hope I keep up with it this time! (Really, let's hope!) 

And in case you didn't read all of that, or don't want to, here's a short summary in gif form: 

(How great was Benedict Cumberbatch's photobomb?)

XO, 

Sheilly

Senior Year Dorm!

Many of my family friends have asked me how I manage to stay away from my home for so many months, and I will admit, it's incredibly hard. A lot of things that really bothered me my first year here really had to deal with how my environment wasn't really as warm as it could have been. While it's still difficult to spend so many months away from home at school, I've found my dorm to be a little spot of my own in this giant campus.

I've lived in my dorm suite for three years, going on my fourth. The last two years, I've been in the same room, lovingly referred to as the Annex by my roommate and I. My room is separated from the other rooms in our suite because we're right next to the elevator. It has its perks... kind of.

This year, the room is wonderfully decorated-- at least by my standards. It's been a cross between how I had it the last few years, and something completely new.

So to start with the bed:

Every room in Stony Brook comes with a desk, a bed, a small drawer set, and a big one. This is the first year where I didn't have a drawer thing in the closet, but we'll get to that later. 

Unfortunately my room doesn't have an AC, so I can't really keep a comfy big comforter on my bed because I can never use it. (Because even during the winter, the heat is turned up so much, that it's still too hot!) So I opted for a light quilt for the past two years. I sleep in a pillow fort so I have a bunch of pillows near the head of my bed. 

The main wall has 58 pictures of myself with my friends who I love the most. It's so eye-catching because it's the first thing you see when you come into the room. The pictures were put up using poster putty, and I highly recommend using that! Sometimes the pictures will come up if you didn't use enough of the putty, but none of them have fallen down. My whiteboard is also there on the side so I can work out my mechanical engineering class homework and calculus problems. 

Next is the desk: 

I upgraded to the big tv that I had in my bedroom at home. It's definitely better than my old tv from last year because now we can utilize the whole room! I have my desk supplies and books on the side, and my schedule pinned up. I obviously have a dalek, a stem cell, and an AIDS microbe chilling near my fan for fun and my arsenal of body scents and perfume for fun? I find keeping my desk with minimal stuff on it really helps keep it clean, but we'll see if it'll last! 

This is the side view of the desk. As you notice the drawer set is below my desk, which has cleared up so much space in the closet! The best thing is the drawers open so nicely there, and it keeps things so much more organized. I have all my school supplies in my drawers so I don't have to have it stored anywhere else. There's also my emergency flannel for late night fire alarms, which are sadly very common. 

One of my favorite things is I have my fridge out in a more prominent location. Instead of leaving it empty, I filled it up with more photos, and fun magnets. The letter magnets are actually elements from the periodic table, which definitely fit in my alley of science-y geek. 

Closets are always the hardest part of the room to keep clean. This year I have so much space in there, it's going to be tough to just throw a million things in there and keep the door closed. I invested in some hanging closet shelves for my shoes and clothes and extra bed sheets.

And there it is, that's my side of the Annex. 

If you're a college student reading this, here's some things that I definitely recommend. 

1. If you're living in a dorm without an air conditioner, make sure you get a box fan! Since the Annex is in this weird alcove where the there are two walls blocking air flow, my room gets incredibly hot. Having a box fan helped so much to keep the air circulating and room feeling immensely cooler. Box fans are not too expensive, and it's definitely something you will be using year round. 
2. For laundry, I really recommend Tide pods. They don't take up too much space, and they work amazingly. 
3. Regardless of whether you live in a room with access to a kitchen or not, a water filter is a must. While it's easy to buy water bottles, a water filter is going so much better. If you ever feel like making ramen, you won't have to use sketchy dorm water to make it if you have filtered water instead!
4. Lighting in dorms are horrible. I hardly use the dorm lights because the florescent light often gives me a headache. For lighting, I've used a desk lamp and tilted the head back so it illuminates the whole room. It gives the room an ambience that is perfect for watching some tv and relaxing. 
5. Play around with your furniture. You might be surprised with how you can make things work!
6. You can use over the door hooks for other things in your room. I used one in my closet for my towel, and another is hanging off of my desk for my bag. They're pretty sturdy for things that a command hook can't handle. 

Best of luck to any people in college this semester! 

Blogging Senior Year

This year is my final year of college (yikes!) and while it's just the beginning, I already have done a couple of my 'lasts'. (Like my 'last' Labor Day weekend, 'last' first day of classes, 'last' move in day.) It's been fun, because I've been trying my best to keep positive by not dwelling on how things will be drastically different next year. It does help that classes have resumed in full swing!

I've got a couple of fun things planned for this year including Friendsgiving, Oscar night, and a couple of small little get togethers with friends from here. (like Disney movie night, and watching the Breaking Bad finale). I still have the same roommate as last year, and am living in the same room as well so there haven't been too many changes! Classes are a lot more different and juggling what I need to do class wise and future wise has been a challenge. Oh well.

Some things I'm hoping to do with this blog for this year:

• New design. 
• More posts!
• Write more about my classes, and Stony Brook in general. 
• Have more fun with it!

So readers, that's where I am mentally at the moment. So we'll talk again soon/ I'll write some more soon?