I've been mulling around my post from a couple of days ago, thinking and analyzing possible strategies to make 2011 a great year full of accomplishment. I've determined that the four areas of my life I'd like to focus on are Health, Money, Education, and Personal Development. Those are broad areas, and we've all heard that goals should be SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound, so here is a breakdown of goals within each area.
HEALTH
1. Drop BMI by 3%.
I'm right on the cusp of the "marginally overweight" category on BMI charts. It's so depressing and discouraging to know that I've let my health get this bad. BUT it's reversible. If I drop my BMI by 3% that will put me mid-range in the acceptable BMI category. I will attain this goal by exercising 5 days a week, at least 30 minutes each session. This goal should be complete by 3/31/11.
2. Run a 5k.
The company I work for participates in corporate challenge each year. One of the events is the 5k. I've never been a runner, but one of the things I've always wanted to do is to be healthy enough to run a 5k without stopping. The event is normally sometime in May I think, so I'm going to set my deadline for 5/31/10. Luckily, this will also help out with goal number 1. In order to help me train, I've started the Couch-to-5k Program. http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml
3. Maintain a consistently healthy diet
There will be days when I want to enjoy Burger Thursday or when I need a piece of cake, but I'd really like to focus on eating more fruits and vegetables and less processed junk. To do this, I'm going to visit a dietitian a few times per year, depending on what is covered by our health insurance plan. There really isn't a deadline for this since it's something I need to maintain all the time, not just for a few months or even years. Crucial to the success of this is another goal...
4. Eat lunch brought from home four days per week. Eat dinner at home 6 nights per week.
MONEY
1. Pay off credit card.
I don't have much credit card debt, but the APR is high on what I do have. There's no reason why I cannot pay this off completely in 2011. Deadline - 12/31/11.
2. Stick to a budget
At the suggestion of a blog I follow, I spent last night checking out http://www.mint.comand have really started scrutinizing where my spending is going. I want to spend less of my money eating out and more of my money on important financial goals, like retirement, or a vacation, or financing 'Lil Bit's college education. I plan on going over my budget on a bi-weekly basis when I get paid.
3. Open a college savings account for 'Lil Bit and contribute $100 every month. This one has already been set up! YAY! The reason it's not more money is that I've got to continue to pay my own tuition costs while paying off that pesky credit card. Therefore, I'm going to start small for this year, but hey, by 12/31/11, there should be at least $1200 in her account.
EDUCATION
1. Obtain Cisco Certified Networking Associate certification. Deadline - 1/19/11. This one is coming up quickly! I'd like to finish it before I start classes in the spring semester.
2. Finish my Associate's degree. By taking three classes in the spring, one in the summer, and three again in the fall, I will be able to complete my Associate's degree in 2011. Is it going to be hard? Heck yes. But it's going to be so worth it, and I really feel it will renew my motivation to keep going for my Bachelor's degree. Deadline - 12/22/11
3. Obtain VMware Certified Professional certificate. Deadline - 12/31/11
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
1. Write more. I've got this blog right here at my fingertips that I really enjoy posting in but haven't done consistently for quite some time. My goal for 2011 is to post weekly. As a result of this, you'll be seeing a lot of changes coming up, including some themed weekly posts and such. Stay tuned!
2. Find a reliable babysitter! The Hunk and I rarely spend time together without 'Lil Bit in tow. While we love our family time, we need time together as a couple as well. Babysitter location deadline - 2/28/11. After that, we'd better be going out once a month!!
So there you have it! In order to keep tabs on these goals, I'll be checking in on the last day of each month.
Until next time,
MFW
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Who says you can't have bacon for Christmas?
We had such an awesome Christmas! Everyone got great gifts, and we got to spend lots of time together as a family.
You might remember that CAG (Cool Asian Guy) and The Hunk have this endearing fascination with all things bacon. Might I remind you about the Bacon Explosion?
And the red velvet bacon cupcakes?
CAG and The Hunk also went to Bacon Fest this summer, but they were silly and didn't take any photos. At any rate, the point has been made - we love bacon.
Therefore, it was only fitting that CAG give the three of us bacon-themed Christmas gifts!
Be jealous.
That's right, Bakon - "a premium bacon infused vodka" - for The Hunk, a delicious-looking chocolate pig (I wonder if it's bacon flavored?) for me, and a "My First Bacon" for 'Lil Bit.
Have you ever seen such a perfectly themed set of gifts?
We have yet to taste the Bakon; we're waiting until CAG gets back from visiting his family. I really should search for cocktail recipes featuring this so we stand a chance of enjoying it, although The Hunk says we are required to try it straight out of the bottle. Yum....???
I haven't eaten my pig yet either...it's kind of cute! I should try it soon.
And 'Lil Bit...precious little girl... she's terrified of "My First Bacon." It has a button you press to get it to say, "I am bacon!" The voice is somewhat menacing. She won't go near it and says, "Bacon scared me, Mama!" LOL
Thanks, CAG for the ultra-cool gifts. We hope you will come enjoy some the Bakon with us soon!
Until next time,
MFW
You might remember that CAG (Cool Asian Guy) and The Hunk have this endearing fascination with all things bacon. Might I remind you about the Bacon Explosion?
And the red velvet bacon cupcakes?
CAG and The Hunk also went to Bacon Fest this summer, but they were silly and didn't take any photos. At any rate, the point has been made - we love bacon.
Therefore, it was only fitting that CAG give the three of us bacon-themed Christmas gifts!
Be jealous.
That's right, Bakon - "a premium bacon infused vodka" - for The Hunk, a delicious-looking chocolate pig (I wonder if it's bacon flavored?) for me, and a "My First Bacon" for 'Lil Bit.
Have you ever seen such a perfectly themed set of gifts?
We have yet to taste the Bakon; we're waiting until CAG gets back from visiting his family. I really should search for cocktail recipes featuring this so we stand a chance of enjoying it, although The Hunk says we are required to try it straight out of the bottle. Yum....???
I haven't eaten my pig yet either...it's kind of cute! I should try it soon.
And 'Lil Bit...precious little girl... she's terrified of "My First Bacon." It has a button you press to get it to say, "I am bacon!" The voice is somewhat menacing. She won't go near it and says, "Bacon scared me, Mama!" LOL
Thanks, CAG for the ultra-cool gifts. We hope you will come enjoy some the Bakon with us soon!
Until next time,
MFW
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
In the Spirit of All Things End-of-Year
Like most people, I find myself reflecting on the past year as the year 2010 draws to a close. I marvel at how much shit I've managed to accomplish, and then without skipping a beat, I chastize myself about all the shit I feel I should have accomplished. Do you find yourself doing the same? I'll bet that most of you do! It's human nature, after all.
Before I go into any specific whiny tangents about how things could have, would have, should have done, I'm going to take a little while to toot my own horn.
Did you know I finished FOUR classes in 2010? I didn't realize it either! That's 15 credit hours completed towards my degree. And I did them while managing a household (with the support of The Hunk) and while being a career woman (with the support of Bossman).
In addition to checking the requirements off of my degree program, I used that coursework to develop my skillset that I use day to day at work. This makes me a better employee and more marketable down the road should I want to or need to move on. How empowering is that?! It's such an awesome feeling to be able to really understand advanced networking concepts and how they relate specifically to the architecture at my current job. (And dammit, I feel SUPER smart!)
I almost completed the P90X program on two different occasions. Okay, okay, it's cheating to list that as an accomplishment since I didn't actually finish it either time I set out to, but trust me, if you've ever tried it, you know that it's only cheating a tiny, tiny bit. However.....well, we'll get to the however statements later....
My daughter is amazing. No, I didn't make that happen by myself either; it also goes down in The Hunk's list of 2010 Greatest Acheivements. Still, I'm claiming half of it. Being a parent is really, really hard work no matter how you spin it. Is it worth it? Hell yes. It's so awesome to watch her run around, singing songs, pointing out shapes, reciting her ABC's, and being a joyful little girl (for the most part).
I learned the value of a hobby and decorated some cute cakes along the way. When I'm tapped out from working and going to school, it's nice to have something to do for sheer pleasure. The Hunk will tell you that my hobby also tends to stress me out, but at least it's to a lesser degree! LOL
I began learning how to save money. This is something that I plan on capitalizing on in 2011 to pay down some debt. It's so crazy to think of how much money I blew paying full price for everything for so long. I still have a lot to learn, as well as some other things I can do to cut my spending, like eating lunch in the office instead of going out, but I made a lot of great progress in this area! Our grocery and household goods bills are cut in half!
While that's all fine and dandy, I still find myself feeling like I fell short for the year. Maybe it's my endless quest for self-improvement. Maybe it's that I'm overly critical of myself and normally fail to give credit where credit is due. Who knows? At any rate, there are so many things that I find myself wishing I'd have done. Some of you are nodding your heads and thinking, "Amen, sista, I'm SO THERE!"
ALL HAIL THE NEW YEAR, right? I mean, isn't this a "fresh, new start"? Don't we get a do-over on all the crap we didn't accomplish? Isn't that what all this New Year's Resolution hocus pocus is all about every year? Don't worry about eating those extra three Christmas cookies because you can just start over on January 1st. Don't worry about spending that money on that extra pair of boots - you'll work on saving money NEXT year. Come on, you know you've rationalized something to that effect this week! (Or is it really just me?)
So that brings me to the concept of the New Year's Resolution. For the most part, I think people make them with the purest, best intentions. I want to lose weight. I want to learn to budget. I want to be nicer to people. Whatever the case may be, it's all great stuff to work on, but the question is two fold - WHAT do we need to do in order to be the person we want to be and HOW are we going to do it? For me, it's going to require a complete overhaul. I know, it's completely unrealistic to think that I can reinvent myself in a year, and truthfully, I don't think that. I think I can, however, make a good bit of progress.
The thing I'm most in need of is to be able to wake up in the morning and feel GOOD. The Hunk pokes fun at me because I normally have some sort of ailment on an almost daily basis. I'm either tired, have a headache, have sore knees, have heartburn, or a host of other things. The truth is, I'm terrible to my body. I fill it full of junk and don't take care of it consistently. Remember my ALMOST completed attempts at P90X? Yeah....see? I suck at consistency. And I tell you this while putting away a few Reece's Pieces because I'm "getting rid of them before the new year hits."
I also don't get enough sleep. My mind is always working, even when I'm trying to sleep in order to be ready for the next day. I often wonder just how much better I'd feel if I could regulate my sleeping habits. Those headaches I get? Almost always in the morning or a couple of days after a stretch of poor sleep. I spent most of 2010 blaming my husband's snoring for my craptastic sleep habits. He got a C-PAP a few weeks ago, and while he's waking up feeling more refreshed than he has in years, or maybe even ever, I'm still waking up exhausted, wishing I could go back to bed. Maybe it's a matter of habit; maybe I'm just used to waking up so often from the past snoring that my body just thinks it's ok to wake up every hour. Or maybe I'm just stressed out from taking on so much and not making it a priority to spend some time decompressing and taking care of ME.
I KNOW the things I need to change. I know I need to eat healthier. To put it plainly, I SHOULD BE EATING HOW I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO EAT. I know I should exercise REGULARLY. I don't want my daughter spending her waking moments in front of the tv, so why do I do it? I know I should sleep more. I know I should learn to maintain patience with my daughter, especially at a time when she's really starting test boundaries. I know I could spend less money on frivolous things and more money on getting rid of my car loan and student loans in addition to saving for retirement and my kid(s) college expensive. But how? HOW?!
This is the part I'm still working on....
Until next time,
MFW
Before I go into any specific whiny tangents about how things could have, would have, should have done, I'm going to take a little while to toot my own horn.
Did you know I finished FOUR classes in 2010? I didn't realize it either! That's 15 credit hours completed towards my degree. And I did them while managing a household (with the support of The Hunk) and while being a career woman (with the support of Bossman).
In addition to checking the requirements off of my degree program, I used that coursework to develop my skillset that I use day to day at work. This makes me a better employee and more marketable down the road should I want to or need to move on. How empowering is that?! It's such an awesome feeling to be able to really understand advanced networking concepts and how they relate specifically to the architecture at my current job. (And dammit, I feel SUPER smart!)
I almost completed the P90X program on two different occasions. Okay, okay, it's cheating to list that as an accomplishment since I didn't actually finish it either time I set out to, but trust me, if you've ever tried it, you know that it's only cheating a tiny, tiny bit. However.....well, we'll get to the however statements later....
My daughter is amazing. No, I didn't make that happen by myself either; it also goes down in The Hunk's list of 2010 Greatest Acheivements. Still, I'm claiming half of it. Being a parent is really, really hard work no matter how you spin it. Is it worth it? Hell yes. It's so awesome to watch her run around, singing songs, pointing out shapes, reciting her ABC's, and being a joyful little girl (for the most part).
I learned the value of a hobby and decorated some cute cakes along the way. When I'm tapped out from working and going to school, it's nice to have something to do for sheer pleasure. The Hunk will tell you that my hobby also tends to stress me out, but at least it's to a lesser degree! LOL
I began learning how to save money. This is something that I plan on capitalizing on in 2011 to pay down some debt. It's so crazy to think of how much money I blew paying full price for everything for so long. I still have a lot to learn, as well as some other things I can do to cut my spending, like eating lunch in the office instead of going out, but I made a lot of great progress in this area! Our grocery and household goods bills are cut in half!
While that's all fine and dandy, I still find myself feeling like I fell short for the year. Maybe it's my endless quest for self-improvement. Maybe it's that I'm overly critical of myself and normally fail to give credit where credit is due. Who knows? At any rate, there are so many things that I find myself wishing I'd have done. Some of you are nodding your heads and thinking, "Amen, sista, I'm SO THERE!"
ALL HAIL THE NEW YEAR, right? I mean, isn't this a "fresh, new start"? Don't we get a do-over on all the crap we didn't accomplish? Isn't that what all this New Year's Resolution hocus pocus is all about every year? Don't worry about eating those extra three Christmas cookies because you can just start over on January 1st. Don't worry about spending that money on that extra pair of boots - you'll work on saving money NEXT year. Come on, you know you've rationalized something to that effect this week! (Or is it really just me?)
So that brings me to the concept of the New Year's Resolution. For the most part, I think people make them with the purest, best intentions. I want to lose weight. I want to learn to budget. I want to be nicer to people. Whatever the case may be, it's all great stuff to work on, but the question is two fold - WHAT do we need to do in order to be the person we want to be and HOW are we going to do it? For me, it's going to require a complete overhaul. I know, it's completely unrealistic to think that I can reinvent myself in a year, and truthfully, I don't think that. I think I can, however, make a good bit of progress.
The thing I'm most in need of is to be able to wake up in the morning and feel GOOD. The Hunk pokes fun at me because I normally have some sort of ailment on an almost daily basis. I'm either tired, have a headache, have sore knees, have heartburn, or a host of other things. The truth is, I'm terrible to my body. I fill it full of junk and don't take care of it consistently. Remember my ALMOST completed attempts at P90X? Yeah....see? I suck at consistency. And I tell you this while putting away a few Reece's Pieces because I'm "getting rid of them before the new year hits."
I also don't get enough sleep. My mind is always working, even when I'm trying to sleep in order to be ready for the next day. I often wonder just how much better I'd feel if I could regulate my sleeping habits. Those headaches I get? Almost always in the morning or a couple of days after a stretch of poor sleep. I spent most of 2010 blaming my husband's snoring for my craptastic sleep habits. He got a C-PAP a few weeks ago, and while he's waking up feeling more refreshed than he has in years, or maybe even ever, I'm still waking up exhausted, wishing I could go back to bed. Maybe it's a matter of habit; maybe I'm just used to waking up so often from the past snoring that my body just thinks it's ok to wake up every hour. Or maybe I'm just stressed out from taking on so much and not making it a priority to spend some time decompressing and taking care of ME.
I KNOW the things I need to change. I know I need to eat healthier. To put it plainly, I SHOULD BE EATING HOW I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO EAT. I know I should exercise REGULARLY. I don't want my daughter spending her waking moments in front of the tv, so why do I do it? I know I should sleep more. I know I should learn to maintain patience with my daughter, especially at a time when she's really starting test boundaries. I know I could spend less money on frivolous things and more money on getting rid of my car loan and student loans in addition to saving for retirement and my kid(s) college expensive. But how? HOW?!
This is the part I'm still working on....
Until next time,
MFW
Friday, December 17, 2010
Paying it Forward at Pump 15
Have you ever noticed that holidays tend to bring out either the best or the worst in people. The Hunk isn't typically a fan of Christmas due to its commercialization and the stress people wear on their faces or spit out in vile phrases because they've overspent, can't find a Sing-a-long Pal or whatever the hot toy is, or simply can't afford to provide their kids the Christmas they wish they could. I, however, love this time of year, and I was reminded of one reason why yesterday morning.
It was a typical Thursday morning. 'Lil Bit and I rushed out of house, only to find that the gas light came on as I was pulling out of the driveway. Oh great. I was already later than I wanted to be. I made a mad dash to the QT just down the street from our house. Once I got out of the car, I swiped my debit card, only to find that it didn't seem to be working. Suddently, I noticed that the little screen said "Prepaid $25." Thinking I was about to rip someone off and not wanting someone else to pull up to the pump and rip whomever off, I got 'Lil Bit out of the car and went inside. The clerk informed me that the customer before me instructed him to tell the next person that went to Pump 15 "Merry Christmas" and said that it was my lucky day. How damn cool is that?
I, in turn, did the same for the next patron. Wouldn't it be cool if it lasted all day long? I sure think so!
There really ARE decent people left, as scarce as they may seem. They're the ones that don't steal the coins and dollars out of the Salvation Army buckets they man at the retail shops. They're the ones that call up the local radio stations and selflessly donate a couple hundred bucks so a stranger can make rent and get their child a winter coat. They're the ones that spend hours organizing and managing the toy drives, the food drives, and ways for soldiers to send a story for their kids back at home. They're the ones that prepay at the gas station, not knowing who is going to pull up next. Maybe, just maybe, the person after me was a single mom or a college student or someone that needed just a little help. And even if they did the same thing I did and decided to "pay it forward", maybe in the very least, I gave them a small reminder about the GOOD that holidays can bring out in others.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Until next time,
MFW
It was a typical Thursday morning. 'Lil Bit and I rushed out of house, only to find that the gas light came on as I was pulling out of the driveway. Oh great. I was already later than I wanted to be. I made a mad dash to the QT just down the street from our house. Once I got out of the car, I swiped my debit card, only to find that it didn't seem to be working. Suddently, I noticed that the little screen said "Prepaid $25." Thinking I was about to rip someone off and not wanting someone else to pull up to the pump and rip whomever off, I got 'Lil Bit out of the car and went inside. The clerk informed me that the customer before me instructed him to tell the next person that went to Pump 15 "Merry Christmas" and said that it was my lucky day. How damn cool is that?
I, in turn, did the same for the next patron. Wouldn't it be cool if it lasted all day long? I sure think so!
There really ARE decent people left, as scarce as they may seem. They're the ones that don't steal the coins and dollars out of the Salvation Army buckets they man at the retail shops. They're the ones that call up the local radio stations and selflessly donate a couple hundred bucks so a stranger can make rent and get their child a winter coat. They're the ones that spend hours organizing and managing the toy drives, the food drives, and ways for soldiers to send a story for their kids back at home. They're the ones that prepay at the gas station, not knowing who is going to pull up next. Maybe, just maybe, the person after me was a single mom or a college student or someone that needed just a little help. And even if they did the same thing I did and decided to "pay it forward", maybe in the very least, I gave them a small reminder about the GOOD that holidays can bring out in others.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Until next time,
MFW
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
