Aurora in Alaska - Spring 2012

I should be finishing up a paper, but I wanted to take a few moments to share a beautiful site, the Aurora Borealis in Alaska.  My friend and I drove up to Birchwood a few miles north of Anchorage and stayed until around 1:30 in the morning snapping picture after picture of the beautiful aurora.  Although when we arrived at our shooting location the aurora was not much more than a faint green light, by about 11:45 it became a vibrant, dazzling, dancing display of lights and colors.  Much brighter and more active than anything I have seen during the last 8 years that I have lived in this state.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from that night:

It's been cloudy ever since this night, but I really hope that the clouds disperse and leave at least one more clear night that I may hopefully be able to practice taking more pictures of the aurora.  Although I'm not sure if I will see it as vibrant and beautiful as it was last Thursday anytime soon in the future.

Exercise!!!

So, I've been on a pretty hardcore exercise regimen for the last six weeks.  Hardcore as in I got almost every day, unless I'm out of town, and take kickboxing and weight training classes twice a week in addition to running and regular workouts.  Okay, so maybe that's not *hardcore*, but for me, who went from doing nothing but sitting around this winter...that's hardcore.  :)  Problem is, I haven't lost
one.
single.
pound.
since I started.  How can this be? I'm on a strict two shake a day diet with a salad for dinner, while exercising my ass off!  So I started off being a completely lazy blob, stuffing my face all day with junk food, to eating much better and exercising and it might as well all be for nothing it feels like.  I'm literally hungry all the time now, and even after I treat  myself to a little snack like hummus, within the next half hour my stomach is growling LOUDLY.  Loud enough that people comment on it.  I just don't understand unless it is because of my birth control pills.  I'm on Jolivette, it's not the combination kind which I was on before, and when I went on this pill is when I started gaining weight.  I gained it fast, blew up 20 pounds since October, and I thought it was from me just being lazy around the house (which I'm sure didn't help).
I'll be going off of them soon, just as an experiment to see if that helps (because from what I've read online, I'm not the only one who has gained an excessive amount of weight in a short time on these damn non combination pills and then has trouble losing it.)
I thought I'd try my hand at intermittent fasting.  The idea is you fast one day a week and it helps the fat melt off faster and muscle build faster.  It's an interesting article that I linked to, very informative.  I wouldn't mind the IF either, as I used to be able to go pretty much a whole day without eating when I was busy and just forgot.  I absolutely hate that my stomach is always growling and hungry causing me to think about food every 10 minutes.  I just hate revolving my life around food when it was never that way before.
Even now, I just ate a nice big delicious salad about 20 minutes ago, and I feel starving.

Something's gotta start giving here.