Read Evidence or Take Survey? Survey.

Well, it's Saturday morning, how's that weekend To-Do list coming? Well, it's coming... Haha. Got a lot of cleaning done yesterday and one school project. I've got a lot of things on here I'd like to do today, such as the Farmers Market! I'm also going to try and chip away at the school work... yay. 

In the spirit of getting my school work done, I started out by going through my Evidence notes and re-writing and organizing them (during class it's a scramble to type whatever I can that the professor is saying!). What is that on my desk? Oh just had to whip out my dictionary to look up a term:

 I decided to start with Evidence because we ended up only having one class this week, aka I'm starting small and moving on to more daunting tasks later. Our class Monday was cancelled because the professor had to give closing arguments in a murder case. Totally normal. Happens all the time. Haha, well I guess in lawyer world it does, but I was thrown off by that e-mail!

My stomach was bothering me this morning, so for breakfast I just had some sliced up fruit. Nice and fresh.

So this morning, Chelsey on Clean Eating Chelsey did a fun survey that I thought I would do so people could get to know a little more about me! And so I could procrastinate...

5 Words to Describe Myself

• Observant
• Sarcastic
• Loyal
• Reserved
• Controlling (I like to have plans, okay? Haha there are two people I can imagine laughing at this right now...).

4 Favorite Foods

• Ice cream - just about any kind
• Fresh fruit - again, haha just about any kind
• Cereal - this includes oatmeal! 
• Indian food

3 Things I'm most Proud of Accomplishing

• Going to law school and doing well! (so far...). When I decided to go to law school I went through the whole process by myself, no counselor or anything. I just set my mind on it and figured it out on my own! 
• Having this blog for THREE WEEKS. Honestly, I tend to get bored with things pretty quickly. Although this blog has been ridiculously time consuming, I really enjoy doing it and I hope you all enjoy reading! 
• Keeping Neville alive. Okay, so this is really his biggest accomplishment, but I couldn't think of much else. I've done a lot of little things I'm proud of, like finishing my 10K last year, finally losing my college weight, graduating college and doing well, everything that I did for my sorority, having some really great friends, etc. But Neville has lived for over a year! Everyone is shocked when they hear he's still alive. As I am I... 

And yes, he was named after the character from Harry Potter. I felt they had similar
personalities... and clearly similar resilience. 

2 Favorite Workouts

• Jazzercise!!! I used to go in college, but now when I'm home I go with my mom! 
• My cardio/weight training workouts: 10 min cardio, 15-20 min weights, 10 min cardio, 15-20 min weights, and then 10 min cardio! Breaking it up makes it more fun, and I always feel like I've accomplished something afterwards! 

1 Thing to Expect from my Blog

• ME! That's all I've got! Since my blog is so new I think I'm still figuring out exactly what it will entail, so stay tuned and be sure to leave comments! Let me know if you have questions about me or would like to see me write about anything! 

Thanks for reading! 

What's one of your biggest accomplishments?

2L Year, What? Bring It.

Today is my first day back at law school! Bring it on 2L year! 

First Day Outfit! Off to school! 

When I got up this morning I decided to do my workout right away, get it done before I got consumed by nerves! I have the Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred DVD, which I love to use when I'm short on time. I can just pop it in my computer rather than having to walk all the way to the gym and back. The DVD has three 20-minute workouts: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. The workouts start with a warm up end with a cool down and have three 6 minute circuits. Each circuit is 3 min strength, 2 min cardio, and 1 min abs. It's meant to burn as many calories as possible in a 20 min workout. I did the Level 3 video and then the Level 1 video, because I feel like 20 min is just not enough! 

After I'd showered and done some blog work, I was STARVING! So I made some banana and PB2 oats and a side of scrambled egg whites.

Oats:
1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup water
1/2 sliced banana
2 tbl. PB2 powder
sprinkle of flax

Perfect and filling breakfast! Exactly what I needed after my workout and to get me ready to head back to school! I also packed up my lunch and snacks. For lunch I packed a salad of chopped Romaine with cucumbers, mushrooms, carrots and 1/2 cup of white kidney beans. I used some lemon juice, apple cider viengar and pepper for a dressing. I love mixing this dressing because I think it's nice and light for the summer!

For my snacks, I brought a mini Luna bar for before lunch, a sliced apple, and then a normal Luna bar for later in the afternoon. Let's just say I was glad my last class was cancelled, because I would have been very hungry by 7:25 when it ended! Note: pack more filling lunch for next Monday! (that's my longest day).

Once school was over I headed to my bus. I love going to school downtown because there's always so much energy and I love the buildings and the river! It's so pretty! Ok well today it was pretty, let's see if I'm singing the same tune in January...

When I got home I decided to try a Chicken Pot Pie that I'd had in my freezer forever. I wasn't super hungry so I knew I wouldn't mind waiting 45 min to bake it in the oven.

 It's made with organic vegetables and crust. I got it at whole foods months ago and never pulled it out to try! Tonight feels like a chicken pot pie night! (aka I don't feel like a smoothie for dinner and I'm tired of veggies from lunch...).

When it came out it was alright. The crust was good, but not super flaky, and it was really soupy. I wish there were more veggies in there and less gravy stuff. Oh well, gotta give things a try!

Now it's time to go pick up Neville from my brother's apartment! He's been there because I needed someone to feed him while I was in Kansas City. Now I miss the little guy! Plus his bowl is probably quite dirty...

All in all, my first day back was pretty good! I feel good about my classes and it was nice to have the last one cancelled so my day wasn't quite as long. I feel like it just flew by! It was also great to see people I hadn't seen since May! I kind of flew under the radar this summer.

Today was the first day for a lot of schools, anyone else have a big day? 

Intern Lunch Series - Local Food!

RUN AWAY!!! THEY'VE ARRIVED!!!!

Don't worry... It's just my text books for this semester. Haha, and not even all of them... In law school the teachers expect to have a normal class on the first day (no syllabus week...). Which means that I have to do my reading for my first week of classes. Luckily, only 3 out of my 5 teachers have posted assignments... so far.

First up is evidence: pages 1-65 in the text and Federal Rules of Evidence 101, 102, 103, 401 and 402. Good thing my Federal Rules of Evidence book is on back-order...

So today I went back to Openlands, the environmental non-profit organization I worked for this summer, for the last of their Intern Lunch Series.

Every Wednesday for the entire summer Openlands and the Illinois Student Environmental Coalition (ISEC) have been hosting brown-bag lunches for interns at various environmental organizations. Each lunch has had about 3 speakers on a certain topic. Since today's topic was Local Food and Planning, I just had to come back for it!

(being a creeper picture...)

Today's lunch featured four different speakers. The first was Josh Ellis, who is the project manager at the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC). MPC works on regional needs and finds solutions for the Chicago Metropolitan region. One of their current projects is working on Public Private Partnerships, or PPPs, which allow the city to contract private firms to do infrastructure work and their hope is that they will be able to do so in creating Bus Rapid Transit, which is a new form of transportation that's being done in several other cities in which the city uses the current road infrastructure and has specific lanes for these buses, which move more quickly and are more efficient. By using a PPP, the city can ask the private firm to meet certain sustainability or ridership quotas, which could not be done before.

The second speaker was Karen Lehman who is the director of Fresh Taste, which is a funder collaborative that encourages diverse local agriculture and access to healthy, green and affordable food in the Chicago area. They hope to bring leaders together and increase the investment of time and money that will lead to changes in the way food is produced, distributed and consumed in the state.

The third speaker was Glenda Daniel, Associate Director and Community Greening Director at Openlands!

Glenda talked about Opelands' newest project, HomeGrown Chicago, which is a community vegetable garden training and support program for Chicago residents. They are supporting the local food movement by helping residents clear out vacant lots and start up community gardens. Part of what they do is to help the community come up with a management system and then hopefully apply to NeighborSpace, which is a company that will hold the lease to the land, rather than having it owned by the city. Glenda's talk was especially inspiring because she told several stories of how the community gardens had changed both the community and people's lives, constantly stating that food brings people together, which is so true! These people who barely knew each other are now all working together and helping one another live healthier lives!

I also really enjoyed the final speaker: Dave Snyder, Farm Program Coordinator at Uncommon Ground. Uncommon Ground is a local food restaurant with two Chicago locations and they are the first certified organic roof top farm! On the roof of one of their restaurants is a roof top garden, where they grow several varieties of greens and vegetables. The company is also very supportive of local foods and tries to be as green and sustainable as possible. Dave made a comment that they don't only use recycled paper; they use recycled paper made at a factory powered by windmills! Talk about being green! I'm really excited to try one of their restaurants and maybe even go on a tour of their garden; they give tours every Wednesday!

I also loved going to the lunch because I got to see some of my co-workers! Here's a picture of Tina and I. I've mentioned Tina a few times since she's the one who suggested taking Power Sculpt at Core Power Yoga. She is also the person at Openlands who has been helping to coordinate all of these lunches over the summer! So a big thank you to Tina for putting in the effort! I sure appreciated it!

The best way I've found to support local foods is trying to buy from our farmers markets in the summer. Do you all do anything to support local food? Do you think this is a lasting and important movement, or just a fad?