Progress already

There are some things I have learned from doing the list last year that, as I said previously, are going to be a bit different. One of them being I'm not going to be as strict about the "limbo" projects. The limbo projects, are things I started prior to Jan. 6th but finished after. Things like the sweater I finished last night. Last year, I wouldn't have counted it on the list. This year - you betcha.

Also, I know I don't have any evidence yet - and I am honestly trying to figure something out - I have been cooking things and taking pictures of what I've made. So far - Pizza, Cookies, and Muffins - all from cookbooks. All huge successes. Additionally, I had a restaurant review for the Dry Dock in the works, but lost my mojo after not posting the pics. Plus my sister works there so maybe it's not the best idea anyway. I have been reading a lot of food books and blogs lately. I am intrigued by cooking, eating, growing food, and of course writing about it. It may be time - we shall see - I step into the ring.

About the pictures, and blogging and whatnot. Yeah you've heard it before - I ain't got no high-speed internets out here in the boondocks. I have the satellite which *allegedly* is just as good, but doesn't even have enough balls to load a youtube video smoothly. What I envision for 09 - probably starting in April - is me - getting an iphone and then smoothly uploading stuff to my blog on a regular basis. But this might be as likely as a unicorn emerging from the forrest. We shall see. I really cannot be doing this: take a picture, wait for Mike to upload it into his computer, take computer to office - upload pics using the high-speed there, logging in, finding what I want, uploading it, then blogging about. You see what a pain in the ass this is? Are you sick of me bitching about my Internet connection? Do I care? It is truly the bane of my existence and you can be sure I'm going to continue bitching about it until the problem is solved.

Enough wit' that. I'm still looking for a good blog/log/widget tracker. I got a lead on one - joesgoals.com but I hate the graph. In fact the graph is really stupid and lame. The tracking software is good, but whoever you are - Joe - listen - you can do better than that. How about a freakin' bar graph at least? Hmm. This may be a good project for Mike.

Books and Movies so far this year - I've already burned through a few so I wont' be giving you to much detail - sorry:

Movies:

In Her Shoes: I give it a Woot. It's totally a chick movie. But I give it a WQot because it portrays how sisters treat each other in a pretty accurate light. Also, I watched the DVD extras about making the movie. I found them pretty interesting and probably skewed my opinion of the film in a more positive light.

Elizabethtown: Poopsandwich. As I said to Mike "This movie was way too long. And then it continued for another 15 minutes." Plus, it was a sort of cheesy idealistic love/coming of age story which I don't usually like, and this movie was no different. There were big huge holes in the plot. It contained Free Bird. The whole song. For a whole huge long scene. It was agonizing. Note to directors, music score selectors etc. DO NOT PUT FREEBIRD IN A MOVIE. Seriously. Move on.

A note about the next two movies - last year I did not include any of the numerous kids movies I watched, this year I'm gonna. So there.

Corpse Bride: Double Woot! Tim Burton + Claymation = Awesome.

Toy Story 2: Woot! Really, I liked it quite a bit. It did not make a bunch of weird sexual innuendo jokes with a wink wink at the parents that kid movies sometimes do. These jokes inevitably don't work and just make me uncomfortable. Toy Story 2, despite being a kids movie - and a sequel - which usually signals an eminent poopsandwich - had a good plot, was funny, not too scary, but not dumb either. Perfect to watch with your 3 year old and not want to gouge your eyes out. Actually, I think even grownups without kids would like this movie.

Books:

I Like You. Hospitality Under the Influence - Amy Sedaris: Double Woot! This is an entertaining/cookbook and by entertaining I mean - having parties at your house. But, it also entertaining, as in fun to read, good times etc. It is hilarious. A good, funny read with recipes - what more can you ask for? We made the Oatmeal Cookies (from the Lumberjacks section) the night I bought the book. Mike ate a pan of them as soon as they were cool enough to not burn his mouth. Stop reading this blog and go buy this book right now. You will not regret it. And yes, buy it. Don't just go get it from the library. You will keep it for too long, or end up stealing it, and that just upsets the old ladies that work there.

That's it for now. Stay Warm peoples. It's -14 here. Ridiculous, I know.

Drumroll Please....

It looks kind of gross over there on the side doesn't it? I'm working on it. I really need to figure out a new goal tracking system for 2009 - if you have any suggestions for improvement such as a slick app or some sort of widget please let me know. Currently I keep track of my stuff on an Excel spreadsheet, then I have to manually enter my numbers in two places in this rickety HTML code in the back-end of this blog. It's a pain and far too much work. This is why I failed to keep track of a lot of my things last year. Excuses excuses - I know.

Moving right along. My list contains 31 items this year. As you can see I had some returns, but the majority of things on the list are new. Many of them are one or two shot deals. Seems like I'm aiming lower? Higher? I don't know. You probably noticed a number of personal grooming/taking care of Kate type items. Seems like I'm pretty gross right? Yeah I am. True confession - although I bitch and complain incessantly about how expensive our health/dental insurance is I NEVER utilize it. I seriously have not been to the doc. or the dentist for like two years. This is the stuff I don't get around to. The stuff that has to be done that I reschedule over and over.

Doing the list last year I realized that saying you are going to do something ever day is ridiculous. It's just not going to happen for me. Maybe you can, but I have things going on. My life is willy nilly, things come up. Which is why some things like write 200k words are just variations on doing something daily for 30 minutes. I can keep track and keep up with a 200k word goal, but once those minutes start adding up and slipping away, I'm dunzo.

Did you see that I want to double my income?! Yeah, that shouldn't be hard considering I made very little money last year. Like, under 5k. So doubling that even in the worst recession in nine million years shouldn't be that hard. Hopefully it will increase due to accepted submissions.

This year I have also done a bit of preparation for my tasks coming up. I queued up a bunch of knitting projects and ordered up some yarn. I have a pretty good idea of the books I will be reading this year. And movies are no problem as my Netflix list has like 300 items in it.

I think that's all I have time for right now. You may also notice - though not on the list - I'm going to try and clean up ye olde salty language. Swearing is too easy. I need to exercise my brain and my vocabulary and find other ways to call things shitty.

I'm out.

Bear With Me.

While I move all the crap from over here --->

Over Here

• Knitting :: 100%
• 30 Blog Entries :: 110%
• 30 Books :: 100%
• 30 House Projects :: 85%
• 30 Hours of Volunteering :: 50%
• 30 Mins. Less TV :: 100%
• 30 Mins. Exercise :: 25%
• 30 Mins. Cleaning :: 100%
• 30 Movies :: 140%
• 30 Recipes :: 100%
• 30 New Things ::30%
• 30 Words Eng. :: 20%
• 30 Words Other :: 1%
• 30 oz. water :: 15%
• 30 Acts of Kindness :: 6%
• 30 Submissions :: 120%
• 30 Visits with Grands. :: 85%
• 30 Birds ID'd :: 47%
• 30 New Tunes :: 100%
• 30 lbs lost:: 27%
• Household Expenses less 30% :: 100%
• Spend $30 less per week :: 100%
• 30% less waste :: 100%
• $30 on local foods :: 120%
• 30 mins. of writing :: 100%
• Give Away 30 Things :: 100%
• 30 Things I've been meaning to do :: 63%
• 30 New Articles of Clothing::100%
• Drive 30 Miles Less pw. :: 75%
• 30 Visits With Friends:: 100%

New Words - English

• amative
• ersatz
• perdurable
• pestiferous
• virago

Birdie Birdie Birdie

• American Robin
• American Three toed Woodpecker
• American Tree Sparrow
• Black Capped Chickadee
• Blue Jay
• Dark Eyed Junco
• Mourning Dove
• Northern Cardinal
• Nut Hatch
• Tufted Titmouse
• Turkey Vulture
• Wild Turkey
• Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker

Ok, I think that's it. If you have a burning desire to see my 08 movie or book lists just email me and you can see them. But for now they are ditched.

Hurray for Accounting Errors!

Dudes, I have been reading/knitting furiously for the past few days, and was getting a bit down last night realizing I have to finish a book and a knitting project (which I will get to in a second) before Tuesday. Which is tomorrow. Then I started reviewing my lists of books I have read and realized, I forgot to record one! Cell - by Stephen King, which I think I even wrote about in here. Anyway BOO YA 30 books down.

Then this morning, as I was sitting here furiously knitting a sweater, oh yeah, instead of knitting a nice simple pair of mittens or hat which would have been too easy for me the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to cast on this sweater about two days ago. Yes, I am an experienced enough knitter to know that there is NFW that sweater only takes 3 hours. Especially with the size and weight of the needles and yarn. It is however a very cute sweater - that pic doesn't do it justice at all. But I would say more accurately that each side - i.e. the front and back take about 6 hours a piece. Which is still phenomenally quick. I really like this pattern and will probably knit it again, with some mods. Next time I will probably knit it on circular needles instead of straights, that will also add to making it super speedy. ANYWAY, what I was going to say is that there was little hope that this would be completed by tomorrow, and was getting ready to cast on a nice hat or pair of mittens in bulky weight yarn to even up the score, when I had a completely unrelated conversation with a friend of mine this morning. A friend who has a baby who is not yet one year old, a baby for whom I knit a sweater when she was a few weeks old. AHA! I forgot to count her sweater! Which means - yes kids- 30 knit items down. Hells Yeah.

As you can see from the graph - 100% or more on 17 of my goals! Holy crap. When I made this list a year ago, I said I would be thrilled if I made 30% on 30 of them :) I cannot accurately describe how this list has changed my life. For reals. Setting goals and keeping track of them in such a public way motivated me to achieve like never before. Apparently for me public humiliation is an excellent motivator. I feel pretty cheesy using the term "life changing" or "eye opening" but I did. So there.

I have the list for next year finished and will post it either tomorrow or the 7th. I need to figure out how to preserve this year's list - probably take a screen shot and post it - because the list and widgets you see over here - are seperate HTML items that will go away when I add the new stuff. Either that or leave it and have a super massive scroll down thing. Which I find annoying, so screen shot it probably will be.

In any case thanks for reading, and next year this blog will be Bigger! Better! Faster! Stronger! With 100% More Excitement!

BTW- this is the 50th blog post this year. Just thought you might be interested.

Peace.

Sooooo Close

I should have some pics. to post for you later today, but honestly who am I kidding - most likely not until tomorrow or the next day. Anyhow, I am sooooo close to having 30 knitted items and 30 books done - the only two I am really pushing to get finished by next week.

I finished the socks for my dad - AND a hat over the last week so I am now at 29 knitted items. I also read The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain over the holidays. I have probably mentioned this before but I love Anthony Bourdain. He has a fantastic travel/food show on the travel channel and has written a bunch of books which are fantastic. He became famous a few years ago when he wrote Kitchen Confidential which is one of my favorite books. The Nasty Bits is a collection of essays/articles that he has written over the past few years highlighting some of the places he's visited, thoughts on various food trends and celebrity chefs and is a very quick and interesting read. Included is an essay he wrote about his four favorite books which I am including in my list of thirty books to read for 09.

In the next 4 days I need to knit one more item and read one more book. PFFT. Easy Peasy. I'm having lunch with my grandmother today which will be fun, and counts towards my goal as well.

Hope y'all are having a good New Year thus far and have recovered from any ill effects from NYE alcohol consumption.