February love number 14

Today? It's Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday to those non-french speakers who might be reading this (because you know, this blog is so hip with the international crowd. Just check my stat counter. Heh.) Anyway, this particular hedonistic day is the final live-it-up day before the season known by most of the Christian world as Lent, the 40 days of sacrifice that lead up to Easter. I think there seems a little bit too much of an "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" essence to Mardi Gras for your typical Mormon, but whatever. I did allow myself to go cray-zay and have 2 cokes from the food court at work. I like living on the edge.

So, tomorrow starts Lent. About 3 years or so ago I got all excited about Lent and did two things: gave up soda and fasted for all the Sunday's during Lent. I really enjoyed it but the whole fasting for 7 Sundays thing was really hard. I enjoy fasting and all, but I just don't have the energy to commit to that. But I've thought all day about what I want to do for Lent and I've come up with the following things:

1. I'm giving up soda, again. February has weighed in as a particularly hedonistic month with a grand total of 8 cokes being consumed. Mm. But, I do feel much better when I don't drink it, and I do better at giving it up when I have a definite goal in mind. So, bye-bye to the soda. Tiny sniff.
2. Run and/or Bodyrock 5 days in the week. Or more. I did the January Bodyrock 30 day challenge. I loved every minute of it. Okay, maybe not the burpees, but really burpees do make you strong even if they really suck. If you've checked it out and noticed that they always put a sex-ay picture of the host as a teaser to the workout - yeah. That's what they do. But, the workouts themselves are really intense and the hosts are genuine in the quest to help the world of living-room worker-outers who are out there body rocking in their underwear or whatever (but not me. I wear clothes, just in case you are wondering.) I dare you to try a week of workouts. It's 12 minutes of your life, you can use this online interval timer, and you aren't out anything. You might even like it. Let me know if you do.
3. Read scriptures or a church talk every day. One thing that I didn't anticipate from getting a kindle is access to the Ensign and other church magazines for frees. Now I have really no excuse for not reading this material. I used to use the excuse that I didn't want to pay for a subscription. That went away. I've read the Ensign two whole months in a row now. Who knew? Wow, I might be a real Mormon one day after all.

I'm going to leave it at that. A little bit of sacrifice, some attempts to make myself stronger with a little spiritual enlightenment. I like it. Oh, wait, no, I love it. Because honestly, I really, really do love the idea of Lent and am excited to have these goals for the next 7 weeks.

Do you have plans for Lent?