Um, hello! This whole thing looked like fun, so I figured I would check it out. I always thought of myself as Ravenclaw-ish. The rules said to post here to be sorted, so I hope I'm doing this right!

So, hi! I am an ornithologist who tries to stay in shape. Nice to meet you all!

Welcome, thewinged! I'm fairly new here, too. If you go back to page 13 of this thread, you can see this week's OWL and NEWT challenges if you want to jump right in. New ones should be posted in the new couple of days.

Hi Everyone! Sorry I have been MIA from the common room - I am still swamped with work and I have an article that is overdue that I have complete writers block on - haven't been as good with food and exercise as I would like to be - hopefully another week or two of insane hours and I'll be able to get back to a more manageable schedule (and hopefully the spin bike I bought will finally get here in an assembled form - very long story that I'll post more on when I see how it resolves...).

Welcome to the new memebers, and momofJandA - your runs are so impressive - keep up the good work!

Thank you for the welcome ^^
I was living in the Dominican Republic for four months due to work, and I am returning to the USA tomorrow. So I think I shall join in the stuff when the next ones are posted just for simplicity's sake. But I have been pretty active! I've been trying to get back my muscle so I can get right into things once I return to Colorado.
Despite spending most of my time packing and stuff, I ended up biking all over the place yesterday looking for a hawk that went missing in action...her transmitter seems to have stopped working! Ah well, not much I can do about it now, since I'm leaving the country. The point is... it was a lot of biking ^^ The food tracker here warned me I didn't eat enough, but that's because I slept through breakfast, forgot about lunch due to tracking hawks, and basically only ate dinner and some snacks. I was kind of amazed my big dinner really amounted to so little.

Anyways, I only have one friend on here. So if you don't mind me blabbing about science and geekery, feel free to add me

Hey guys, just checking in. I hope you've all had a lovely week .

I've gotten sick again so my gym routine has been interrupted ~again, but I'm looking forward to getting back in there. Finally started running on the treadmill, and I have to say I much prefer running outside. But it's Winter over here, and it's dark by the time I get home. By the time it's Summer it's going to be too bloody hot! So I think the treadmill is a bit more of a sustainable exercise plan for me.

My eating has gotten back to a more normal state though :drinker: . I think that if I start eating any junk it just completely throws everything out of whack for me, does anyone else have that problem? I love oreos so I started eating them again - then suddenly I was craving all sorts of sugary fatty things, and I was overly hungry all the time. Maybe it upsets my blood sugar levels or something like that?

I'm moving house at the moment, very exciting, that should count as exercise, yeah?

Went for a harder walk today. Great view, about an hour long (although I shaved off some time just by being better than before)... but boy was I RAVENOUS when I came back. Couldn't wait; ate my lunch at 10am. That's a good thing, right?

Soooooo...what are our challenges this week? This was supposed to be Ravenclaw's week to assign the OWL challenges, right? Or am I a week ahead?

I have no idea about our challenges. I've just been counting the posts, and I haven't seen anything on the thread.

What about some peanut butter? Or nutter butter in general? I'm lactose intolerant, but if I need protein & fat, I did order a butt load of nut butter the other day...

Can we just go ahead and make our own challenges??

Okay, same challenges as before. Sounds good!

I would like to join Ravenclaw house!

Hello everyone!!!

Wow, what a holiday. Budapest is the most beautiful city I've ever been, and the music festival was amazing as well. Slightly extended the holiday due to a lost passport (not mine!), but we didn't really need an excuse...

As for Ravenclaw.... Thank you so much Sue for doing the challenges, I had emailed Kelly with challenges for us but iguess she's not around much at the moment. And thanks to everyone else for logging in and keeping the common room going while I've been away.

Welcome to the new members, I will email you separately in a minute.

I have put on loads of weight in the last six weeks (school holidays, always the same, bah!), so I'm hoping to have a good month or so to counteract this. I am going to be logging seriously, and to encourage this I am going to check in here everyday, hopefully you all will join me in this as well.

In other news, I have just finished re-reading all the Harry Potters- still awesome!!

Hi brittlynn8907,

I used to have problems with water, but I've pretty much fixed this. I bring 3 bottles of water with me to work. One I drink in the car before I get to work, the next I drink before lunch, and the 3rd I drink as I go home for the day. I also have a cup of tea (herbal, non-caffeinated... basically mint and water) when I first sit down. I may try to drink more, but at the minimum I've planned 7 cups of water. Then I go home, eat dinner, and have another bottle of water. Then I'm set for the day.

When I first started, drinking calories was the biggest culprit in the weight gain. I was a coca-cola-holic. I don't even miss it anymore.

For the abs challenge, I did 100 crunches last night. I didn't think it was going to be a big deal, but when I started the second set of 50, somewhere I could feel the strain of teeny tiny muscles. :bigsmile: