I feel like spring always gets so busy, and April is already flying by!
Check out my previous R.E.P.O.R.T.s here, I copied this format from Ella Henry’s Substack, Gut Feelings.
READING
I just started The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. From the cover, it looks like it may be fantasy? I don’t really know what it’s about, but I know it got popular a couple years ago, and it has great reviews on Goodreads.
EATING
For the past year and a half, I’ve been seeing a personal trainer (see the Recommending section below) twice a week at 7am. I’m not always hungry before, but I have to eat something and drink a lot of water, otherwise I predictably get lightheaded and can’t make it through the workout. For the past couple of months, I’ve been eating a few Girl Scout cookies because they have the carbs and sugar that I need, and I can force myself to consume them at 6:15am. However, I’m finally running out of cookies and so I tried these raspberry Trader Joe’s Oat Bites last week, and they’re really good! I was worried they’d be messy and crumbly, but they’re more sticky and chewy. I just picked up some more today and am going to try the PB&J flavor.
PRIORITIZING
My car. I have spent a small fortune on her over the past month. She’s gotten an oil change, a new battery, fuel injection cleaning, spark plugs replacement, brake fluid exchange, and coolant drain and fill. I also got an alignment but I purchased the lifetime alignment at Firestone last year so that was basically free. I’ll drop my car at the Santa Monica Firestone in the morning on the weekends and then go for brunch or a long run by the beach.
OBSESSING OVER
I’m obsessing over not becoming a hunchback. In March, I got a massage, and the masseuse said I had a little bit of curvature in the C4 area of my spine at my neck, likely from slouching over the computer. I don’t have neck pain, but I feel like I store a lot of tension there and my neck sometimes just feels tired from the weight of my own head. I started to get Instagram ads for these neck massage pillows to get rid of a neck hump (Dowager’s hump), but the reviews didn’t seem convincing. Then, I started to research Dowager’s hump more and it seems that it can cause neck fatigue and even migraines. I searched for YouTube for videos of exercises I could do to get rid of a neck hump. I realize I’m already doing some in weight training, but I’m keeping a resistance band out so I can do some extra PT while watching TV.
RECOMMENDING
I started weight training after my first DEXA scan in November 2024 (blog post here) showed that I had low bone density despite taking a calcium supplement. I found a local personal trainer, Ben Villers, who offers 60-minute personal training sessions via ClassPass and started going twice a week at 7am before work. Now, I know proper form, I can lift my suitcase into the overhead bins, and my hips are a lot stronger, which I’ve noticed as I haven’t had too much knee pain during my half-marathon training block. I highly recommend working with him if you’re in the West Los Angeles area, since he does in-person sessions at a private gym near Culver City. He also posts exercise videos on his social media accounts and offers online training plans for anyone not in the LA area. I also got another DEXA scan in December 2025, and I’m happy to report my bone density increased from -1.1 to 1.06, which is still in the bottom 5% for my age group, but an increase is an increase!
TREATING
It may be 2 years away, but the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics ticket sales have already begun. I entered the lottery for tickets and got selected for the LA local pre-sale. My timeslot was on the third day of the ticket window. I wanted gymnastics, swimming, track & field, and soccer, but the rumored $28 ticket tiers were already sold out. Gymnastics was completely sold out, track tickets started at $250, and swimming was $500 for the prelims (over $1,000 for the medal events).
I ended up getting 4 tickets for a women’s soccer quarterfinal, which will be at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena on July 21, for $150 each. There are sadly 20% ticket fees, and so they ended up being $180 apiece. But when else am I going to get to go to the Olympics without buying a plane ticket or a hotel? At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I also secured 2 women’s cricket prelim tickets for my boyfriend, which were $105 each after fees.
The consensus of the Olympic ticket Facebook group that I joined is that there will be plenty of tickets in future drops and many people have finalized their tickets in the last few months before the event. However, the consensus is also that these tickets are much more expensive than previous summer Olympics. You’re allowed to buy up to 12 tickets not including soccer, so I have 10 tickets left and we’ll see what I can get in future ticket drops. If you want to sign up for Olympics tickets, you can do so on the official LA28 website.
