Abbie's Real Life Blog

Early April 2009.  Time for wrapping up last quarter’s resolutions, and to set up the resolutions for this quarter.  And maybe a little reminiscing.

Just this time last year, I was a few days away from my trip to San Francisco and Northern California, which was so absolutely fabulous.  I would repeat it every year if I could.  Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t thought about it in some way.  Just yesterday, I was playing with the Google Maps Street View feature along some of the routes that I took.  Great memories.

This year, my vacation will primarily be the beach vacation to Florida in early June.  It’s only two nights on the beach and something like 4 nights in Orlando, but it will be very pleasant.  It’s all arranged too- I bought tickets on Friday and the beach hotel is booked.

Okay, back to the resolutions.  If you don’t remember, I started this last September as a way of motivating myself to get through some stuff before the end of the year, because I didn’t want to wait until January to make them resolutions.  I tend to like deadlines.  Then I did it again in January instead of annual New Year’s resolutions.  Yearly is just too long a time (I procrastinate way too much), but monthly is far too short (some months are just busy, and weekends get zapped up by traveling, chores, and the necessary amounts of plain vegging out).  I’m happy to do it again.  Some stuff I haven’t done yet, and there’s new stuff I want to add.

Stuff I Got Done:

• I started working on California pictures.  I have finished several dozen.  I have not finished them, but I am scheduled to show a presentation of them at the May photo club meeting.  So I have to do most of the rest of them before then.  That will help.  But I’m pleased with what I’ve finished.
• I watched five AFI movies.  (It’s been a longtime goal to get through all of the movies on the American Film Institute 100 Years, 100 Movies list.  When they updated the list last year, I updated my goal to include all the movies from both lists.)  I saw King Kong, Giant, Dr. Zhivago, A Place in the Sun, and From Here to Eternity.  This leaves about 21 AFI movies left, so I could potentially complete my goal in a year and a half!  Very awesome.
• I read three books: Blue Highways, by William Least-Heat Moon (a travelogue set in the late 1970s about a man from my city of Columbia, Missouri, who travels around the country); Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer (a memoir about a mountaineering disaster at the top of Mount Everest in 1996); and Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth (a classic).  I am glad that I spend time in airports so that I can get through my book requirements.  I swear, a majority of this reading was done on airplanes except for the Jon Krakauer book, which is kind of pulpy and a quick read anyway.
• Tracy and I have been working through most of the house, making lists of everything she’s taking and everything I’m keeping and everything that will have to be replaced by one of us.  It’s a pretty big project.  We’ve done the books, the CDs, the electronics, the kitchen, most of the pictures in the house, and had lots of discussions about furniture.  We have one gigantic mess of a room left: the office, and all the files and paperwork.  Nightmare.  But we’re making headway on everything else.
• We did take a trip to Orlando in late February, and had a great time.  We have tickets for another trip in June, and Tracy’s mom will probably come for a visit at the end of June around the time of the move and Tracy’s graduation.
• I have continued my exercise schedule, and have gone regularly at least twice a week since January.  Between that and the diet I started in January, I’m making good progress.
• I have had monthly dinners (or so) with my grandparents.
• I only met with my International Center friend once.  Maybe twice.  But I did meet up with her.
• I participated in the January rotation with the Columbia Art League.  I’m on the schedule for March as well.  I managed to do a new group for display in January, and I’ll use the same ones in March.  Yay!

Stuff I Didn’t Get Done:

• I must seriously hate to garden, because I didn’t get out there at all.  Yes, it’s cold right now, but things are growing and there really isn’t that much excuse.  I only managed to take down Christmas lights last week!  Ugh, I am a terrible gardener.
• I still have not taken anything to Goodwill.  It’s mostly stacked, and it’s ready to go.  I just haven’t done it.
• I have not messed with the photography site.  I haven’t even posted much to it this year so far.
• I did not make any prints for Etsy.  It wouldn’t be hard to set that up, but I haven’t done it.
• I did not clean out the guest bedroom closet or the attic, though it’s obviously going to have to be done in the next few weeks.

Some of that stuff that I didn’t do is left over from the last batch of quarterly resolutions, when I didn’t do them then either.  But they need to get done, so I will have to do them, so they’ll remain on the list.  But I intend to put more stuff in this group of resolutions that I probably will do, so that I can look at this list with a feeling of impending accomplishment, and not just dread.

So, without ado, my quarterly resolutions for the second quarter of 2009!

• Read three books.
• Watch five AFI movies from the list.
• Finish the California pictures so that I can put together a presentation for the photo club in May.
• Also photo club related: I want to participate in all of the monthly contests, and this does not mean dig through the archives for stuff that works.  Take new photos for the monthly contests.  It’s supposed to be a challenge.
• Finish taxes and file them.
• Gardening!  Specifically, I want to tear out what is in the front flowerbeds and replant them with a few native grasses.  I will ignore the side flowerbed for now.
• Get Tracy moved.  This includes, but is not limited to, going through almost everything and sorting it out, throwing some stuff away and taking other stuff to Goodwill, and replacing things that she’s taking.  It also means actually helping her move and get set up at the new place in KC.
• Get the new couch recovered.  It’s taking up space in the living room right now, and it won’t be needed until after Tracy takes the living room furniture to KC, so it makes sense to have it reupholstered now.  This means finding a reupholsterer, picking fabrics, getting the couch to the reupholsterer, and taking it home again.
• Switch out to summer clothes and do a thorough clean-out of the whole closet.
• I’ll ignore the photo website for now, but I do want to pick out some photos and put them on Etsy for selling.  I don’t think it’s hard to do.
• Go to Florida in June.  Buy a new swimsuit for the trip, because I didn’t get a new one last year and I know I will wear it to my sister’s pool as well.
• I have at least two, possibly three, photo shoots and weddings scheduled between now and June.  I want to turn around those photos within two weeks, maximum.  This should not be that hard to do.  I’m tired of it taking forever to get through the photos.
• Continue visiting my grandparents regularly.
• Continue visiting my International Center friend regularly.  Schedule a barbecue at my parents’ house and invite my friend and her friends up for hamburgers on a Sunday afternoon in May.
• Write letters to various family members that I don’t see very often, ones that I usually only write at Christmas.  Especially the elderly family members.
• Continue with exercise schedule.
• Continue with diet.
• Participate in the July rotation for the Columbia Art League.  Decide if I want to do new photos for that rotation, and use the current group for a different exhibit somewhere else.
• Eat lunch out of the office once a week.  Bring a book to read and eat at the restaurant rather than getting takeout.  This is good for the environment if I’m not using plastic takeout stuff, and it’s good for me to get out of the office for an hour a week.  Eating out with other people counts too.  I swore when I left Scary Job that I would eat outside often, but I haven’t done it.

I feel like this isn’t a huge list, and it includes a lot of duplicates from last time, but that part about Tracy moving is going to take up a huge part of the next few months.  I have to go through the whole house, all of it.

Well!  Good luck to me!