Updating My Five Goals

New Year's Resolutions, by nature, are usually about self-improvement. People want to lose weight, or read more. I'm okay with that, except on those issues I'm pretty happy right where I am.

I have in the past, however, kept five goals going at any one point in time. Last year I abandoned those goals. My goals were difficult to complete, things that required changes of habit that should be ongoing--essentially resolutions. And like New Year's Resolutions, my goals were doomed to failure.

So this year, my only resolution is to change how I set my goals. I will only set small measurable goals. There will always be five goals because I am sure there will always  be five good things I could be doing.

So here are the goals I have in mind thus far:

1. Recycle old electronics. I have a box of archaic cell phones, digital cameras, and random cords to nothing that I have been moving from apartment to apartment for about five years. I've just added a twenty-some-year-old TV which cannot produce sound to the junk pile. (Ask me about my elaborate sound-rigging that kept that TV in action anyway. Like any cheap-skate, I'm insanely proud of my ludicrous work-around.) Anywho, with a TV now on my living room floor, I need to finally haul the e-junk off. (I'm also going to need some help. The TV is quite large.)

2. Read classic books I have never read. This goal has the nature of being ongoing and unmeasurable, so I am tasking myself with assigning one classic at the beginning of each month. I expect myself to read 2-3 books a month, so one classic won't kill me. I can still devote the larger percentage of my reading efforts to science fiction.

3. Volunteer for something. I haven't decided what yet, but I need to find a way to do external good. About a year ago, I looked into Big Brothers, Big Sisters and similar programs to see if I could get involved in tutoring or anything, but with a long-distance relationship that requires regular out-of-town travel, I couldn't commit to something that needed all my weekends. I could volunteer grant-write for one of these programs, but I genuinely miss tutoring because I like having exposure to people that I never imagined existed. I should probably ask around at schools and the libraries.

4. Bake something new. I keep telling myself I will branch out into pastries or some such, but I haven't done a darned thing. Like reading, I might set this as monthly or biweekly (fortnightly) goal and assign myself with a new dish to bake each period.

5. Take my cat to the vet. My cat lives a very secluded life. I don't let her outside (letting her outside in this Downtown environment would be a bad idea, but I didn't let her outside when we lived in smaller towns in residential neighborhoods--mostly because she is incompetant at being catlike). I've always figured I didn't really need to force her to go through the torment of visiting a vet because she has exposure to nothing, but I also freak out and get paranoid when I think she's sick. I'd feel much better if we had a kitty doctor I felt comfortable with that I could go to when she feels down and out. If I need to get my generally quarantined cat vaccinated to foster such a relationship, so be it.

I have some other goals in mind that can replace 1, 3, and 5 when I get those done, but it's not worth planning ahead too far. No need to overwhelm myself--I do tend to exihibit a certain degree of laziness that I need to account for.

2013 Resolutions

I started 2013 with style.

Some people blow kazoos to bring in the new year. I was blowing my nose.

The new year is brought in with fancy drinks and champagne. I had camomile tea with honey and lemon.

It's supposed to be spent with loved ones and friends. My favorite person was curled up under a pile of blankets hacking his lungs out, but he was here.

I'm tired. I have things I need to get done at work, but I don't feel at all ready to return.

The idea of setting any New Year's Resolutions seems stupid. I just want to be able to breathe through my nose.

Mac and Cheese Feet

Tall Other and I are making mac and cheese...with shells and fancy cheese. It's presently in the oven.

I don't think I want to eat it, which is weird. I'll eat anything.

We made this Addictive Mac and Cheese Recipe. It has a key ingredient I believe in for mac and cheese--nutmeg. It also uses a lot of milk. We substituted some half-and-half for some of the milk because I believe mac and cheese should be death by calories and fat.

Chris picked the cheeses--a fancy gruyere and sharp white cheddar (the recipe gives options). This is where I think we went astray. The gruyere smells and tastes like rotting feet to me. It's tainting the entire recipe.

I tried the creamy, beautiful looking cheese sauce...yuck, just yuck. It's a mouthful of athlete's foot as far as I'm concerned.

Chris thinks it smells and tastes wonderful. I'm questioning his judgment as a gourmand. I'm also really sad that he'll be eating mac and cheese, and I will be eating leftovers.

Sad face.

"Chicken Noodle" and Art

The tall other came to visit this weekend. We usually cook with each other, but my cupboards were bare, and the fridge was pretty empty. My food amounted to some carrots, celery, and a coupon for some organic chicken, so we decided upon chicken noodle soup.

Then I remembered I had potatoes and Chris requested what he knows as "chicken noodle." In elementary school they used to serve up chicken noodle soup over mashed potatoes with a buttered roll on the side. The kids would fill their roll with the taters and soup and have a pretty carb-tastic sandwich.

My school had no such delicacies. In fact, I don't remember a school hot lunch from my childhood that I would recall as delicious the way he did chicken noodle.

We decided to skip the rolls for our childhood school lunch cooking adventure and ran off the grocery store to gather the goods needed--a whole chicken, a white onion, and some egg noodles. Chris chopped up the chicken then browned it and the veggies. The whole mess went into the crockpot, and we ran off to the art museum to wander around while it cooked.

The art was so-so, and I thought it was strange to see an Egyptian bust from 860 BC right next to a weird painting from the 1980s, but I suppose it's hard to organize such a small museum.

One of the security people at the museum pointed out to us a painting on exhibit that showed, in its background, another painting (by another artist). The painting that appeared in the background was of the first artists wife, and it was kind of cool that he included a painting of his wife by another artist in the background of his own painting. 

Post-museum wandering, we returned home to a pretty tasty-smelling apartment. We hadn't eaten anything but a snack since breakfast, so I started the mashed potatoes and Chris started the noodles so that we could finish our dinner. The taters were whipped up with with butter and cream because we both eat indulgently.

The end result was heavenly and definitely had a home-cooking comfort to it--creamy, and salty, and messy.

Sweater Election

So on facebook (before I ditched fb--over 2 weeks ago!), I had a bunch of people vote from a select few striped sweaters that I liked. When I went to buy the sweat that won, it was sold out of my size. :(

Here is a creepy and poorly done photoshop of me in the sweater for you to imagine the potential joy I was denied.

 

 Here is a sweater I bought instead in order to try on and potentially keep. the armpits and shoulders are really big, so it's going back.

Here is another sweater I actually bought. It's comfortable and soft, so I will probably keep it.

This is the sweater that in appearances I loved the most. Actual physical comfort in this sweater leaves something to be desired. I felt like it was too short and worried that it might shrink. I will probably return it for a bigger size.

 

Your thoughts on the sweaters? Which do you like best? I should really only keep one.

Screwtape Letters of Fitness

For a while, I was running 3 miles before work every morning. Then I stopped. I'm not sure why or when or how. It was roughly a month ago.

Post-Thanksgiving, I was ready to get back on board, so the immediate week following, I did cardio kickboxing on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday I did Zumba. Friday I went to a class called "Fierce" that physically made me sick and so sore it hurt to move for three days.

This week, I'm back to a whole lot of sitting around doing nothing. I think I will blame some demon, tempting me to sit at home and vegetate. Let's blame Screwtape's nephew Wormwood, Junior Tempter. If you haven't read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, it might be worth your while.

Monday, I knew I had to buy groceries, so I didn't work out. Wormwood and I had a little chat, and we decided that going to the grocery store is time consuming, so I didn't have time to work out. After shopping, I would need to go home, make some dinner, and then relax after the arduous trials of 30 minutes in a grocery store.

Tuesday (yesterday), work was just awful. Wormwood told me I needed to go home and relax, or there's no way I would survive the week. I concurred.

Today, well, Wormwood was kind enough to remind me that I needed to return some books to the library. I forgot to do it on Monday (though they're not due until Sunday), but it takes all of 5 minutes for driving there, parking, and walking inside to return the books. And I have laundry that needed doing (which I am post-poning until Friday for some reason which actually makes no sense when I try to put it in words). There was just too much to do. The gym must be put off.

In summary, I am sitting, vegetating, as usual. I'm off the hook the rest of the week because the Y is closed. How convenient is that? Wormwood can take the rest of the week and the weekend off. He deserves it. He's been successfully keeping me away from the gym for over a month, only sliding the one week.

Hat Crafting

So my hat project of last year never really got very far. Mostly I found myself in a standoff with some curly yarn that was interfering with the attachment of some eyeballs onto a frog. So I chose to ignore the project for almost a year.

I recently resolved that conflict by giving up on the curly yarn and doing all the stitching on of details with white straight yarn. This hat, of all my hats, defintely has what we in the yarn art world like to call "homemade charm." It looks much cooler on, and I am pretty pleased with the spots on the back. I will say, that considering the yarn, this is the hardest hat I have made. I am still tempted to removed the eyes and redo them.

 

(Forgive the quality of the photos. My only camera is my defiantly outdated phone.)

 

I also recently completed this bear hat, with which I am quite pleased. It turned out fairly well. 

 

A blanket is also in progress. Take that worldy demand for productivity!