The Sunday Night Report

Last Sunday night, I shared with you some self-improvement goals and one of those goals was to blog more often; specifically, to blog on Thursdays about whatever I want, and to blog on Sundays reflecting on whether or not I achieved the last week's goals. I've decided to include a little bit more in these Sunday evening posts, however, so the content doesn't get too boring. In addition to sharing about how well I've done with my goals, I will also share what I've been reading or writing or if I'm working on a special project. Maybe I'll even post more videos, if you are interested. I'm sure it will take a few weeks to figure out a format for these update-y posts. Or maybe they will all be different. Who knows! Stick around to find out.
Without further ado, let us get to the report:

Sugar:
It has been nearly two weeks since I gave up eating processed sugar and I'm still doing really well!
My mom and I went to Costco the other day and it was really hard not to eat their free samples. I had fun looking at food labels, though.
I had another hard-ish day today... Our church had a potluck and there were many delicious-looking, chocolate-y deserts. I told myself, "No," and then put them out of my mind. Instead, I took some sugar-free, gluten-free apple crisp that my mom made.
For snacks, I have been eating sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and raisins in the prescribed serving size (1/4th of a cup a day for all three, though, so far, I have eaten less than a serving a day). Like many things, too many seeds and raisins can be bad for your health. If you eat them for a snack, don't eat more than the serving size per day.

Exercise:
At work, I clean four different industrial parks in a week. This past week, three of the four parks were being inspected so I had to make sure they were extra clean. One of these parks is nice to clean because I get to ride around in a golf cart. The other two, however, I have to walk around, carrying my bag of trash with me. On Monday and Tuesday I definitely got my exercise lugging full bags of trash around those two parks. The rest of the week I did well with exercise, too. I started doing my ab workouts again, though I took it easy since I was stricken with sciatic nerve pain on Thursday. When my sciatic nerve is bothering me, it can make even walking excruciating, but, thankfully, my mom found me some yoga poses that help ease the pain. (If you are interested, they can be found here.)

Sleep:
I've done well getting up earlier than usual, but I consistently went to bed at midnight this week. As I keep telling myself, this has to change. I just need the willpower to do it.

Reading:
I've finished the Silmaril part of The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. I hope to finish the last two parts before the end of the month.
In the car on the way to work, I'm listening to The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. The combination of driving and listening to this radio-theater style recording isn't proving to be the most comprehensive way to absorb this book. I will have to read a physical copy of it some time in the future to glean more. I am loving Andy Serkis as Screwtape! It's fun to hear little bits of Gollum and Captain Haddock sneak into his Screwtape voice.

Project:
My project this weekend has been to pack up my American Girl Dolls. It's been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I remember how I got each doll. I remember the personalities and hobbies I gave each one. I remember the stories I made up for them. I remember how excited I was to buy a new outfit. It's hard to pack them away. So hard, in fact, that I haven't done it yet. I dressed them in their original outfits and put their hair in hairnets, but I haven't had the nerve to wrap them in muslin and put them in the box we bought for their safekeeping.

My goals for the coming week are to do better going to bed on time, finish the books I'm reading so that I can start some new ones, and get some kind of work done on one of my story ideas.

What's the best and worst thing that happened to you this past week?