Roamin' with Romagni

Hey there,

First of all, where did the summer go!?

It felt like just yesterday I was taking final exams and praying for a day above 50 degrees. Now, I feel like I need to cram all of my summer fun into one short month. On the upside, this will be my last fall semester in school and even though I have had a great experience, I can’t wait to get out and grovel for a job! hahaha I often find it hard to believe that just 3 short summers ago, I was 18 and all ready to hit the college scene running.

Wow, to be 18 again would be a huge difference. Although I will only be 22 in a week, I can’t help but think about the major birthday milestones that come in a person’s life. Although it was nice to hit the bar with my older friends at 21 and get into some bars and dance clubs at 18, my favorite birthday was my 16th. For as long as I could remember, I wanted nothing more than to jump into a car and just drive. When I finally hit 16, you couldn’t keep me at home for more time than it took me to eat and sleep.

And just six years later, here I am not looking forward to the perks and responsibilities that come with a major birthday, but wondering what my future will hold for both my social and professional life. In less then a year from now I could be in a completely different state, surrounded by people I don’t know, places I’m not used to, and possibly nothing but the fear of failure to motivate me. Don’t get me wrong, I want nothing more than to be out starting my life, but with a new birthday comes the reminder of how much easier things were when I was 16 and driving around just to get away.

What comes after 22? Is it something as good as my freedoms at 16, 18 or 21? I will dare to say it is something better, or at least bigger!

Until next time, don’t forget your 16-year-old spirit!

Hey everyone,

If you have been following my blogs for the past few months, you may recall one of my first few blogs, It’s Fitness Time, when I outlined my new fitness routine and nutrition plan. For all of you recently tuning in, here is a recap of all the major highlights of my 90-day program:

- No fast food

- No soda

- A six-day workout routine

- A three-phase nutrition plan

- No eating three hours before bed

- Last but certainly not least, NO ALCOHOL!

Yesterday marked the 30-day mark in my new lifestyle and it has not been easy. In fact, there have been a few times this month that I have deviated from my goals. Skipping a workout at the end of the week and having a drink or two have been my major slip-ups. However, I can say that I am only human and I am doing MUCH better than I originally expected.

Now to the good news:

Since dramatically altering my eating habits, I have

-Lost 10 pounds

-Felt more energetic

-Felt better about myself

-And my clothes have been fitting MUCH looser!

I haven’t been able to see a huge physical difference when I look in the mirror – something that would have discouraged me a few years ago. However, I realize that I see myself everyday and will not notice changes like people I don’t often see would. Also, the largest physical changes in my plan will only start to become noticeable in the last 30 days, a point I will hit in another 30 days. The hardest part of this entire plan is finding a balance between the monotony of my routine during the weekdays (wake up, eat, work, eat, work out, eat, watch TV, eat, go to bed) and the temptations that haunt me on the weekends (bar trips, over sleeping, eating poorly, etc.) It made me realize I need something to look forward to that was out of the ordinary.

Just as I began dreaming of the perfect getaway, my phone rang. A good friend explained that she needed a break from her stressful job and that I should join her in a trip to Chicago.

If you have ever had a perfect situation fall into your lap, you can appreciate how well this played out for me. If you remember my previous blog, Tuesday’s Daydream, I mentioned making a trip to Chicago. We picked a weekend to go and I asked my roommate to join, thinking he would have other plans. To my surprise, the weekend we picked was perfect! I called my cousin in Chicago to let him know about our trip, and he informed me that one of the largest music festivals of the year, Lollapalooza, was going on that weekend!

I feel like this is going to be one of the best trips ever! To top it off, I will be using the weekend after my Chicago trip for my motorcycle trip to the Dragon’s Gap!

Sometimes when you need a change the most, an opportunity can be found. All you need to do is peruse it!

What is your opportunity?

Happy Almost Friday!

The other day, my mother and I were having what my mother likes to call a nice “chat” (to me it felt mostly like a slew of questions aimed at my personal life) and the topic of dating came up. Usually I try to avoid this topic with my mother, as most of the time I have nothing new to talk about in that department (only because I’m so busy bringing you stories like this). However, after spending a bit of time actually answering my mother’s list of questions, I realized how different dating was “back in the day” versus today.

Now, most of the time I am extremely grateful for the amount of technology I have the privilege to use, but after listening to my mother explain her dating experiences, I started looking at things a bit differently. People in my age group (21 give or take a few years) hit the teenage years when the cell phone became an affordable piece of technology. I know it may be hard, but try and remember what things were like without the use of your precious Blackberry.

Since I was young enough to receive a cell phone by the time I was able to drive, I had to rely on what my mother told me was the social norm in the dating world. Scary I know, but this is what I got out of the conversation:

When a guy or girl would be out with his or her friends and see a person whom they were attracted to, they would actually approach that person and start up a conversation. If it worked, most of the time the guy would ask if he could call that girl, then proceed to write down her number. During the week, the girl would receive a phone call asking for a date – not the day before, the day of, but multiple days in advance. The two people would go out and things would either continue or stop from there.

I realize that that was not the exact situation for every person in my mother’s generation, but compared to the way things work now, in my opinion, it sounds a lot less complicated.

Here is a college dating scenario from the present day:

A single guy or girl will go out with their friends to some place like a house party or bar and spend most of the night TALKING about the people that catch their eye. In most cases, the fear of failure keeps a person from pursuing a conversation. Here is where the problem with technology comes in. If a guy (for the sake of situational familiarity) somehow gets the girl’s contact information, what does he do? Call to talk and get to know her? Call to ask her out on a date? No, the word “date” has almost completely been retired from the vocabulary of young people. Replaced with “hang out,” a guy would most likely find this girl on some sort of social media outlet like Facebook or Twitter to make his presence known. At the most, he will find an excuse to text message this girl about things that really tell him nothing about what she is like, besides maybe the fact that she “likes to party” or is “hanging out by the pool.” By the time these two get to “hang out,” they realize that they have nothing to talk about that exceeds 160 characters in a text or wasn’t found in their Facebook information. The problems just get worse from there.

What ever happened to reservations at a nice restaurant or a long walk on a beach? Call me square, but I think we could all take a lesson from our parents on dating.

After all, how do you think you got here?