Normally, I only review my entire year to see how I did, but I thought I’d maybe check in at the end of each month. I may not do this again until the end of the year, but I had some time so let’s take a look at how the year is going so far.

We’ve had a very, very mild winter this year (so far) and I think I’ve taken good advantage of it. This month, I’ve biked 139 miles which is a total that I’m pleased with. Sure there were a few days where I drove to work that I could have biked, but that’s ok. Thanks to my smiley face calendar, I know that I’ve biked 19 days out of the month. I’ve driven my car on 14 days of the month. (Total mileage driven 34283-33788 = 495 miles.) On most days, I usually only use one or the other, but there were four days where I took out my bike and drove my car on the same day. Anyway, transportation-wise, I’m happy with how the month went.

I did finally get in to see a doctor about my knee and the good news is that she doesn’t think I tore anything. She sent me to a physical therapist that I finally got to see last week. Her diagnosis is that my glutes are pretty weak. My friend Shadla now says that I have arse-thritis, which is pretty funny. Anyway, I have exercises to strengthen my glutes and to try to stretch my quads, which is something else she said I should do. I’ve only been doing them for a few days and haven’t really noticed any difference, but I think it’s far too early to make a judgement. Aside from the exercises, I’m avoiding squatting per my therapist and trying to take things easy on the knee.

My workouts have been pretty non-existent as all my focus is working on my knee. So that’s one part of my month that hasn’t gone as well as I’d have liked. Though I’m trying not to give myself too hard of a time about it. The other part of my month that I thought was going well was healthy eating. I really haven’t eaten any candy until the birthday party yesterday when I had a handful of M&Ms. I had been pretty good about strictly eating three meals or if I did eat something between meals of skipping dinner. But since my weight has only gone down two pounds, it’s not working as well as I had hoped. Since I’m not working out much, I need to be even more diligent about what I eat. I’ll have to focus on that for February.

Those were the big things. For the rest of my resolutions, I think I’m doing fine. I didn’t spend too much money on dumb things. Since gas is so cheap, I’ve spent less than $50 on the car this month. I did sign up for three bike rides (Tour de Troit, Tour de Lou and Bike The Drive), so entertainment was one of my bigger expenditures. I paid my property taxes, which is nice to get out of the way, as that’s my largest bill around this time of year. I also decided to pay another extra $200 on my mortgage each month as a gift to my future self. If I keep on track, the place should be paid off in about five years. We’ll see if I have the upstairs done by then. My guess is no, since I have yet to start on it. However, I did take a woodworking class yesterday which was pretty good. It was all about the different types of joints you can make. I think this will come in handy later.