Week 4: Mixing it Up

So...not a WHOLE lot to report this week. I'm finally getting into the swing of things and am starting to get my time management worked out as far as how much I need to be spending on various things for school.

So last weekend I was in Tucson and had soo so much fun. I stayed with one of my previous coworkers from LensCrafters Friday night. We ate food and watched movies and woke up a little early to go have breakfast at IHOP before she had to go to work. I spent a few hours at the Starbucks studying and enjoying my first pumpkin spice latte of the season and then went to visit some of my old coworkers, which was super fun seeing and talking to them all again. Then, Saturday night, about 15 U of A alumni joined the Symphonic Choir (my old choir) and sang the national anthem at the football game that night. I didn't stay for the game, but we did end up winning.

I stayed the night with one of my friends from choir that I had a ton of my undergrad classes with. We were up until the late hours of the night singing/guitar playing/ukulele playing and making videos. Here was one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTu80_OCWk

(I can't get the small video to embed here, so here's the link)

So...yeah, I had so much fun and it was honestly just a nice break. I probably didn't get as much studying in as I would have liked to, but it was most definitely worth it.

In the realm of our Basic Science classes, we have officially finished course 1501 and are onto 1502, so we've already gotten one of our final grades for the first course and from now on, any other grades won't be factored into that score. It's kind of nice to start with a fresh slate again. Still lots of material though. 

Today in our methods lecture/lab, we learned about eye movements, the eyes working together, and how your eyes accomodate  (which is what people start having trouble with once they hit about 40 :) and they need reading glasses). So we practice on each other, getting their visual accuities (like if they can see 20/20 or not), moving objects around and watching their eyes move, etc. and we had to practice documenting everything as well. Eventually, at the end of the quarter, we will have a practical where we will have to perform all of these things in front of professors on someone and will receive a grade, so at least we are getting plenty of people to practice on now. 

Oh, and another un-optometry related note (because I feel like if I put it here and people can read about it, I'll be more likely to stick with it), I am officially back into working on getting into shape and losing some weight at the same time. Right now I am trying to run at least 5 nights a week (I registered to do a 5K run at the end of October) and while I am still in my first week back to running, I can tell it won't take too long to get back to a point of feeling like I'm not going to die while doing so :) I even picked up a fancy schmancy(?) heart monitor watch that keeps track of my heart rate while exercising and calculates how many calories I've burned (based on age, weight, height) and my average heart rate over the entire workout. I had it up to 196 beats per minute last night on my run and supposedly my max is supposed to be 198 (220 - your age). 

Below are my "weight" jars. An idea I found on pinterest. Each pound represents a pebble. So once you've lost a pound, you can move a pebble from the "Pounds Left" to "Pounds Lost" jar. I thought it would be a neat visual for myself to see how much I've accomplished as well as be a reminder to keep going :)

I figure losing weight and getting into shape is never going to get easier, so I don't know why I've put it off for so long. So I'm going to do it the long way and do it right by eating better and exercising a little more. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Maybe every 3 weeks or so, I'll post a brief blip of how I'm doing and how much weight I've lost. My goal is to get back to at LEAST my pre-college weight (haha) and then a little more, so right now my total goal is to lose 40 pounds and I've lost 3 so far this week. So...so far so good. 

And as another (minor) incentive, I've decided once I've hit 20 pounds lost (half way), I'll get my hair cut. It's very very super long at the moment and probably needs something to be done with it soon. Here's some pictures in case you haven't seen me recently. 

 It's long, right?

ANYWAYS...that's it for now. Cue the optometry fact of the week.

OPTOMETRY FACT

Your eye is controlled by 6 muscles (SIX!) all attached to the eye. The names (if you care) of these muscles are the Superior Rectus, the Inferior Rectus, the Lateral Rectus, the Medial Rectus, the Superior oblique, and the Inferior Oblique. All of these muscles work together to produce different movements like moving the eye up or down, from side to side, or when they rotate in or out. 

We made "eye models" of the attached muscles today in lab. How cool are these? Haha. The pieces of tape represent all of the muscles. The fuzzy fiber sticking out of the back in the picture on the left is the optic nerve. The toothpicks just allow us to "grab" the eye and pull on one of the muscles to see what its action is (if it moves it up or down or to the side)