Archive of posts with category 'Resolutions'

Hello 2024!

Life is good! I want to remember this all the time. I really have no complaints and feel very lucky.

Happy 2023!

2023 has begun. I just finished a nine-mile bike ride because it’s only 40 degrees out and it seemed like a good way to start the year. Plus, I always want to bike more. That’s a given resolution. I also just put a hold down on a novel at the library because I want to read more books this year. If I could do one novel per month, I’d be happy. On a recommendation from my friend Shadla, I’m starting the year with Miss Benson’s Beetle. I can say that I have no idea what this is about, except that it’s a work of fiction. Hopefully, it’ll be good.

Hello 2022

There’s really no burning desire that I have for this year. I think the pandemic has washed away any big hopes or ideas. All I’d really like to be able to do this year is maybe travel somewhere and not worry about getting sick. The other stuff is just continuations for my resolutions for previous years. I’d like to continue to walk more. Getting up and going for a walk first thing in the morning just seems to start my day off right. That doesn’t include walking in a few inches of snow (like now), so I know I won’t be doing it every day. But a general moving around more is what I want to do. And I have been doing that, so it’s just a matter of keeping it up.

Hi to 2021!

I’ve decided that 2021 is the year I’m going to try to get organized. I’m getting pretty good about doing lots of projects around the house, but I spend too much time looking for things. And even the stuff that I know where it is, is basically just in a big pile of boxes. So my “system” works for me, but if anyone else uses or moves anything, I get frustrated by not being able to find things. If I could make it more obvious where things should go, I think it would work better for everyone. So 2020 is the “Year of Organization”. How exactly this will work remains to be seen. But even if I just gather like things together, I’ll be making progress. Hopefully this will also clean off some of the horizontal surfaces in my house so I’ll have more workspace.

On to 2020!

I worked yesterday and have a somewhat pressing deadline for a server and website I need to have up soon, so I didn’t think much about it being the last day of the year. We’re also waiting for the arrival of my brother’s baby which could be any time now, so my thoughts were elsewhere. And one of the things I wanted to do last year was do more with physical objects. I’m going to call that an unquestioned success. And the idea of continuing to do these blog posts is not as appealing anymore. I may switch over to doing them in my journals which I’ve been using a lot more. For the first time, ever, I think, I even ordered a planner. It should arrive in a few days and I’m going to try it to even more organize by thoughts and days.

Happy 2019!

Got a decent amount of sleep last night, so I’m starting the year off right. Just went for a short walk to the mailbox to pay some bills and now I want to think about things for the coming year…and beyond.

Cost Per Mile

I have some time to kill before podcast recording tonight.  I was balancing my checkbook and took a quick look at the report it generated for last year.  I noticed that all my auto expenses for last year were $2532.10.  It breaks down like this:

Starting Off Right

When it was below 0F last week, I saw some people out biking and admired them. I thought if it got above 15-20F, that I would ride too. So this morning, I had a nice, slow ride to work to start the year off right. It’s around 27F, so a little chilly, but pretty nice compared to last week. I felt good, though, a second thin pair of socks would have been helpful. But that’s ok. I want to start riding to work more and this is part of the process.

Happy 2018!

Happy New Year! It’s 2018! This is the year that I turn 50. I feel like I should mark the occasion somehow. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do the week of my birthday, but I’m not sure about the rest of the year.

Year is Half Over

That was quick. 2017 is already halfway over. Thought I’d take a minute to see how the year is progressing so far.

January 2017 Checkin

Based on last year, I know I won’t keep up with checking in each month. However, January is usually pretty easy. Let’s go straight to the chart.

Not a great start

So I thought I was doing a great job avoiding sugar last week and it turns out I was mistaken. I think it started with my Costco run where I thought I was buying food without sugar. I swear that I read all the labels and didn’t see sugar on what I bought. But I should take my reading glasses with me when I shop because two of my purchases have sugar. I ended up eating a chicken pot pie because I already had it in the oven when I reread the label. I wasn’t going to throw perfectly good food away. The second one was a pot roast and thanks to the chicken pot pie incident, I reread the label before I even turned the oven on. That one sort of pissed me off because I don’t think there’s any need for sugar in it. And because I love pot roast, grrr.

Hello 2017!

Happy New Year!

Been A While

My summer has been pretty crazy with a big work conference that is finally over. My life is now my own again. Yay! I’ve been very behind in doing my monthly checking, but that’s ok. The good news is that I don’t have to go back to work for over a week. So I’m trying to do a bunch of projects around the house.

May Check-In

May was a good month. I biked on 25 days and drove on 16. Four of the driving days included a trip to Nashville, which was fun. I did the Tour de Nash, which was my introduction to NashVegas Nashville. Also had my longest ride, when I did 40 miles on Bike the Drive, including the ride to the drive. I biked 312 miles for the month, which made it a very good month. As for driving, my odometer reads 37599, which means I drove my car for 621 miles in the month. But I took my Mom’s car to Nashville, so I have to add the 1068 miles for that trip. So my total in the car was 1689. That’s quite a lot, but it was worth it for the trip.

April in Review

Since the weather today is very rainy, I know I’m not going anywhere. Figured I’d take a look at April.

March Roundup

Pretty uneventful March. I didn’t spend a lot of money, which is good. So I had plenty to save after I paid my bills. The odometer on my car read 36,722 which means I drove 1150 miles in the month. That’s a lot more than I should have. And in looking at my calendar, I know that I drove my car far too much and biked much too little.

February Check-In

I’m going to say that February was the worst month that I’ve had in a very long time. The main thing that happened is one of my favorite people in the entire world passed away. Short of something happening to my Mom, nothing could hurt as much. Along with my parents, for my entire life, my Aunt Lu was around. I will think of her on every Fourth of July (her favorite holiday) and Christmas Eve because we always went to her house. I often said she was hilariously funny, often unintentionally so. I loved going to visit her to hear about family members I never knew and what her life was like growing up. Since we knew she was sick, my siblings and I all made sure to visit her as often as we could during the month. She always loved to see us and I felt lucky to be there. If I could make people feel a quarter as good around me, as I felt around her, I’d be pretty happy. One of the last things she gave me was the dollhouse that someone made for her when she was a little girl. It has needed some work for a while and she gave it to me to fix it up. But only if I have fun doing it. If it’s not fun, I shouldn’t do it. I hope that I can get it into decent enough shape that I can donate it someplace where kids can play with it. I know she’d be happy if kids were playing with it.

January Check-In

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.

So far, so good

We’re three days into the new year and it’s so far, so good. Tomorrow, I have to go back to work. I’m a little bummed that I can’t wear sweatpants all day anymore, but that’s ok. It’ll be good to get back in the swing of things. I’ve taken short bike rides every day so far and am up to 11 miles. So only 2242 to go to hit my goal. 🙂 I’ve cooked some good meals (homemade pizza, eggs with pepper, onion and avocado) and some ok ones (roasted vegetables with noodles). I’ve also used up my blackened bananas by making banana muffins, which turned out pretty good. I went with Paul today to his bar and helped him clean up some wood. So while I didn’t technically do a workout, I worked there for a couple of hours and got my heart rate up. My car has only been out of the garage one day. And since the weather looks pretty good, I’m hoping that the bike will get me to work for most of this week.

To 2016

Happy New Year!

A Splendid Torch

This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Starting Off

My 2015 has started pretty well. I’ve already built myself a new workbench, which makes me very happy. And since I was about to buy one, I saved myself a couple hundred dollars as well. This has also inspired me to get started on another cabinet for my kitchen and the kitchen table.

To 2015

Happy New Year!

Talk Too Much

I have picked up some bad habits of late. The biggest one being I’m talking too much. I don’t like myself very much when I talk a lot, especially when I’m just talking to make myself look good. And that’s what I’m doing, no matter what I might think. So the first thing I need to start doing is talking less and listening more. The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’m being very rude and judgmental with people. This is ridiculous. What right do I have to judge other people? That needs to stop. For some reason, I’ve recently gotten a rather large ego. Here’s the thing, I know I haven’t done anything to earn that. And I also dislike other people who have huge egos and have a sense of entitlement. Thus, another reason to not like myself. So before I do anything else, I need to quit thinking I’m so important and start seeing how I can be more helpful to others.

Maybe Unstuck

A few days ago I ordered the book, “The Art of Electronics”. Today, it arrived. I’ve heard that it’s a great book for learning practical electronics. I’ve been meaning to do some serious study of electronics for a while. With my job, I should know more than I actually do. So, I think I finally have my plan. I’m going to try to work my way through the book. Nothing drastic and I have no real time table. But I’m going to try to study like an hour a day. And to limit distractions, I think I’ll work in the library at work. I’m thinking this is also how I got started in learning Rails programming. I want to say it took me a few years before I could do anything usable. I’ll have to check my old notebooks for the exact dates. But there’s no deadline or anything that I need to hit. So I can take my time. And when I get a decent feel for things, hopefully, I’ll be able to make the game that’s been floating around in my head for a while. And once I start working on this, it will hopefully kick me in the butt to get moving on the rest of the stuff in my kitchen. Tomorrow I’m going to see a ballet. So perhaps I’ll start at the library on Friday. Or I’ll just wait until next week and start off on Monday.

Must Plan or It Won’t Happen

I’ve been doing really good this summer with biking. The 30daysofbiking in April started things off well and my trips have been tons of fun. Unfortunately, Bike the Drive at the end of the month is my last planned ride I have. I am old enough to know that if I don’t plan things, they aren’t going to happen. So here is a list of rides I’d like to do this summer. They’re just about all in the midwest, so I should have no problem getting to them.

Getting Started

At this rate, I’ll read 365 books this year. 🙂 Anyway, had a lovely New Year’s Day, where I watched some hockey and just sat and read. I finished Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I don’t really understand why, but I liked this book a lot. I guess it’s because I liked the characters and the weird things that happened to them, but I can’t really say for sure. This is now the second book by Murakami that I’ve read. I read 1Q84 a couple of years ago and liked that one as well. So I guess I’m going to add Murakami to William Gibson and Isabel Allende as authors that I really like.

To 2014

I’m hoping that 2014 will be as good of a year as 2013 was. But I like to set specific goals/resolutions/whatever you want to call them. So here are some things I’d like to accomplish in the coming year.

Getting Ready for the Wrap Up

For the past couple of years, I’ve done a sort of year-in-review post with my thoughts about what went well over the past year and what I’d like to do in the upcoming year. I don’t really refer back to this list at any point during the year, but perhaps I should. In general, I like to see things that I think would be helpful/fun to know/learn/do in the coming year. And if I see things that I’ve had on my list for more than one year, I’d like to think that I make a bit more of an effort to do them. Anyway, as the end of the year is coming up and this is how I sort of like to spend my January 1st, I’ve been starting to think about the year in general. By and large, I’m pretty happy and think I had a pretty good year. I may have gotten a bit lazy toward the end, but overall, I’m not complaining. I’ll go into more details next week.

A Bad Habit

Until yesterday, I had been carless for the past few weeks. Even though it was ridiculously cold, if I wanted to get to work, I’d do my bus-el-bus trip to get there and then reverse it to get home. In all honesty, this wasn’t that difficult, though it was rather cold this week. One of the things that I had thought about, when I bought my house, was that I didn’t want to be dependent on a car. So, I can take public transit to work, I can walk to a grocery store or other stores that I might need. Now though, that I have my car back, I was just thinking that I’ll drive over to Target this morning to pick up some stuff. This is ridiculous. Last week, I would have (and did) just walk there. There was a talk in the evening the other day downtown that I wanted to hear. So, even after I took public transit home, ate dinner and was a bit tired, I bundled up again and walked to a different el stop to take the train to go to the meeting. Now, I’m being a total weenie and want to drive to a store that’s maybe a mile away, but probably less to buy some things that aren’t even heavy. I am completely ashamed of myself. This is a habit that I need to break and I’m not sure how I’ll do it. But, I’m going to try and be more aware of when I instinctively think to just get in my car and drive. More immediately, I’m going to put on my boots and coat and walk over to the store. Self, quit being such a wuss!

To 2013

Here are my goals for 2013. A lot of the same things as last year, but hopefully I’ll get further along with them.

2012 in Review

Being the last day of 2012, I thought I’d take a minute and check out how I did with the goals I set for last year.