The Best Laid Plans

I know I've been a little absent lately. It takes me a little while to get back into the swing of things once school has started back up. I promised in the last post that I would detail how I'm planning on reaching some of my goals/resolutions for the upcoming year. But first, I wanted to revisit my plans for winter break and see how much I actually got accomplished.

So, if you remember, I had quite a bit on my list. But unfortunately, I didn't get to all of them before I had to go back to school. Part of the reason has to do with the fact that the pink eye situation (first mention here) isn't going away. Well, it goes away, and then comes back. I have contacts, but I don't have a back-up pair of glasses. So, if you can imagine, I keep reinfecting myself each time I touch my eye or have to put my contacts in to drive or work. Yes, I have done my best to keep them out of my eye as much as possible - I went an entire 4 days over break without having them in! But let me tell you - I am blind! I can barely read the computer screen or watch television without my contacts. I couldn't go anywhere unless the husband drove me, and even then I was afraid to go out and infect other people. I'm just glad the hubby hasn't caught it yet.

Anyways, here's a recap of what got accomplished and what didn't (things that were done are marked through, things that were not done are in red, explanations are bolded, and things that were kinda done were left alone):

• Health
• Go to the radiology facility and have my ultrasounds done (no, I'm not pregnant - they are for another long-standing health problem that I might share one day...we'll see)
• Have my blood drawn
• Make a follow-up appointment with my doctor once all of the results come back - this one was sort of accomplished. I called & made the follow up appointment, but it hasn't come yet. But, the nurse called and said all of my results were normal, so I'm not even sure if I need to go in for the appointment or not
• Wedding Stuff
• Write all the thank you cards for our wedding gifts (is it bad that the wedding was over a month ago and we still haven't sent out one card yet??) - is it bad that they still aren't done yet?? I know... I know... but I did make some progress. That has to count for something, right?
• Name Change
• Go to the Social Security office and get my name changed on my card
• If that comes in, make a trip to the DMV to have my license changed - went to the DMV the same day as the SS office because the guy at the SS office said all I needed was my receipt to get my license. However, he failed to tell me that I needed to wait 24 hours for the information in his computer database to load so that the DMV had access to it... so I wasted 3 hours of one afternoon waiting in line for nothing. But, the name has officially been changed on both my license & my voter registration card! It feels so weird to not have my birth name on my documents anymore...
• If that happens, then go to my bank to change my name on that account - planning on doing this one weekend this month
• Call around to the different utilities that we are subscribed to and figure out how to change my name with all of them (this whole name change thing is becoming a bigger pain than I anticipated...)
• Christmas Eve & Christmas Day (see more details about our Christmas here)
• Celebrate our first married Christmas together Christmas Eve morning
• Spend Christmas Eve Night with the in-laws and stay the night at their house
• Spend Christmas morning with the in-laws
• Go to my parents house for a late morning Christmas celebration
• Go to my aunt's house to see the rest of my family for Christmas
• Figure out what we're doing for New Year's - we ended up going to a friends house for their annual bonfire
• School Stuff
• Finalize some stuff for my AP course (lecture notes, powerpoints, all that fun stuff...)
• Finish updating the website for the AP course
• Finalize my lesson plans for the first couple weeks back - got the first week done, but have not gotten any further than that
• Get prepared for my first formal observation of the year - had to reschedule. On the first day of classes after the holidays my projector bulb blew. So, I've been teaching in the "old school" way with an overhead projector. My administrator has been kind enough to let me adjust to the "new" technology before coming in for my observation.
• Around the Apartment
• Clean the apartment & try to organize our guest bedroom closet - this one is partly done. We've gone through everything in the guest bedroom closet. We've put things aside for our upcoming yard sale & priced everything before they went into boxes. And we condensed our stuff into fewer boxes then before. However, the house looks like a tornado has blown through it with all of the random boxes lying around.
• Set aside stuff for a yard sale (we're hoping to have one sometime in January)
• Blog Maintenance
• Try to empty out my blog draft box - nope, not yet
• Write a post about our recent weekend trip to St. Augustine (see below)
• Write posts about Christmas & New Years as well as anything else that comes to mind - well, I managed to get a Christmas post done as well as a Resolution post done. But, we really didn't take any pictures at the bonfire, so I don't think there is really much to write about on that front. As for whatever came to mind - plenty has come to mind in terms of writing, however I haven't been able to find the time to write.

Ok, so now that that's out of the way, onto my plans for accomplishing some of my resolutions/goals for the upcoming year:

• Learn to live with a roommate. - My friend still has not moved in with us. So far the plan is that she'll be moving in with us in about a month or so. But so far, our steps towards making the apartment more "roommate" friendly have gone well. We've moved a couple of things out of the guest bedroom that she won't need or that was taking up too much room - specifically we moved our papasan into the living room and cleaned out the closet to make room for her stuff. We still need to move our computer/desk into our bedroom. Also, we're trying to discuss every possible scenario up front so that we know how we'll handle it and make sure the 3 of us are all in agreement.

• Purchase a new car for hubby. - Ugh... this one stresses me out. We're really hoping to purchase a car outright, but we don't think that our current car will give us enough time to save up cash before it dies on us. We've gone looking at used cars to get a ballpark figure in our head of what we need to save up for. But, I'm still afraid that we're going to have to take out a small car loan to get the car.
 
• Work our debt snowball. - So far we've drafted our first month's budget. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way and I've had some health things come up that are requiring more money for copays, prescriptions, and new glasses. But, we're not discouraged. I'll hopefully be able to share our budgeting system with you guys once we get into more of a routine with it.

• Have another successful year of teaching AP. - Well, I've met the kids, and I'm excited! They seem like a great bunch and they all seem highly motivated. 
 
• Get into better shape.  My specific goals: lose a minimum of 25 pounds and be able to run/jog 1 mile without stopping before the end of the year. When I first discussed this goal with the hubby, he was excited. He is always asking me to go to the gym with him. We talked about setting up a schedule for going to the gym. The plan was to go twice during the week (Tuesdays & Thursdays) for a minimum of 30 minutes and once during the weekend for an hour. But my excuses have already gotten in the way... I complain about being overly tired, or my pink eye (which is actually a pretty legitimate excuse - don't want to risk getting it on the equipment and spreading its germy goodness around), or too cold outside to walk in my gym clothes. I think my main problem is that I'm not getting to the gym when I first come home. By the time the hubby comes home, I've already been home for an hour. Sometimes I've already eaten, but usually I wait until he comes home to fix something for dinner. By the time I've eaten dinner, I am not in the mood to go work out. I think if I could go as soon as I got home I would be much more motivate to go. My problem now (and no, I'm not trying to give another excuse) is that I'm staying a work later in the afternoons and by the time I get home my stomach is growling and I have to sit down and eat. But, a couple of the teachers at school invited me to walk the track with them twice a week after school, so I'm hoping to join them and start shedding some pounds. As for the run/jog a mile without stopping - when I do make it to the gym I have been alternating walking & jogging. For instance, I'll walk for a minute, then jog for a minute. Once I get comfortable, I start jogging for longer increments and I try to keep the walking time as close to the original one minute as possible. I find that my endurance has been building slowly. But, I'm excited because I've been running for longer time frames than I have been able to in years!

• Try more foods. I'm relying on Pinterest to help me with this one. I've already found the first recipe I want to try. It's an oatmeal recipe (I'll share the source and recipe if I actually choose to make this). But the hubby wants me to try some of his instant oatmeal before we spend the money on the other stuff in case I don't like it. So, we'll see what I end up making. But the hubby & I are both looking forward to having more recipes in our repertoire. 
  
  
• Not let the stresses of school get the best of me this year. My goal is to not let grading carry over into the next week. To try and stay after school until all the tasks for that day is done. So far, so good. I've been able to keep up with everything. Granted this is only the first week back, but if I can stay in the routine that I'm in, I think I'll be ok. I've been getting to school 30 minutes early and staying after school 2 extra hours to work on stuff. I find that as long as I'm in my room I can stay focused, but once I'm home, I have so many other things to do that I don't find time to do school work. I do try to spend at least 1 more hour at home doing something school related, but I don't do it every night. If you're counting, that's 11 hours a day that I'm working if I can manage the extra time at home. I'm predicting that every so often I'll have to break this cycle and have an afternoon where I just come home and crash. Plus, the afternoon walking sessions will cut into this time. But, trying to figure out the balancing act of life is all part of the game, right?

So there you have it. I've heard that resolutions/goals are easier to accomplish when you've made a plan for accomplishing them. So many people simply say "I'm going to get in shape" but they don't specify how they are going to reach that goal.

I'm sure many of you made New Years Resolutions. Care to share? Did you develop a plan or system for accomplishing those goals? Or maybe you've already failed (like I did in terms of getting to the gym)?