Goals check-in

What-ho!

Given that it is half way through March, I thought this would be as good a time as any to check in on my February goals...

They were:

Finish Harry Potter #5
Project365 & BibleYear
Try 3 new recipes
Run at least 12 times
Don't buy any CD's, mp3's, DVD's or books

I have now completed all of the Harry Potters, so that goal = check.

I have continued with my two every-day-for-a-year goals, so check.

I lose track of which recipes I tried when, but I have definitely been cooking for myself more than I did in 2008. I'm going to call this one a check.

I got a cold and got lazy so I have NOT been exercising much. So that goal = blarg

I didn't buy any new media! Not even since March started! so that one = check.

I didn't make any new goals for March. I was lost in other things at the time, I guess.

I did, however, make some commitments for Lent this year.  I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. I don't know if all SB churches do it this way, but ours never mentioned Lent. So my exposure to that part of the church calendar has been relatively recent.

For some reason, I felt compelled to observe Lent somehow this year, and I was thinking about what that should look like for me when my pastor gave a sermon on the historical reasons and components of Lent.

According to my pastor, Lent should include three things: 

• Almsgiving (giving to poor)
• Prayer
• Fasting
  

So with that guide, and the ideas and themes that I had been musing over, I plotted out a roadmap for my observation of Lent.  Also according to my pastor, Lent is to be between each person and God. So while I have told a close friend or two about my commitments to hold me accountable, I haven't broadcast my goals, and I don't want to here either. But I do want to say that I have been contemplating simplicity in a materialistic society this year.  If you have any insights on living so that your camel could make it through the needle's eye here and now, I would love to hear them!

Comment away!

WWJD

This past weekend I watched Lars and The Real Girl, which I had been curious about since I saw a trailer for it about a year ago. 

The punch line of the story is that Lars treats a life-size, realistic, sex doll like a real person and his girlfriend.  Her name is Bianca.  The family doctor, who has training in psychiatry, advises Lars's (Lars' ?) brother and sister-in-law to play along. They agree, the brother reluctantly, and visit his church to make the priest and leadership aware of the situation and ask for their help.  The leadership, made up of several old people, have a problem with a sex doll and begin to refuse.  One spunky lady tries to convince them that it's no different from pretending that one guy's wife wasn't a kleptomaniac etc. and then the priest, wisely speaks up and asks "What would Jesus do?"

Lars and Bianca (the sex doll) are in church on Sunday. 

The rest of the movie is about the whole town playing along with Lars as he works out his issues with being an active member of a community and family. 

The whole thing could have easily been a farce, a harsh, unkind treatment of people with delusions.  Instead, we see a family, a church, a community, a person come together with compassion.  Each person faces some of their own struggles when confronted with Lars and Bianca, and each person manages to come out on the other side a better version of themselves. 

I highly recommend it.

frankie

I want a dog. 

I want a dog so badly that when I see one out and about, I begin the high-pitch-talking and the drooling one usually associates with my desire to have a baby.  I think I will name it Frankie.

My roommate of 3 years, Bethany, has had Ava for about as long as we have lived together, and she will be leaving me, and taking the dog with her, at some point this summer.  I will be sad.  Ava and I cuddle and play together. She greats me with much enthusiasm and gives me doggy kisses. 

And then we watched a bit of the Westminster Dog Show. Oh the dogs! Oh the Purina adopt-a-dog commercials!

So, I have been looking at dog breeds online lately when I should be working.  There are so many things to consider! How much money am I willing/able to pay? How much time am I willing to spend grooming, exercising, cleaning up after and training the dog? Where will I live - will I need a dog tolerant of cold AND heat? Will I have a yard that I can let the dog run around in, or will I need to take it on long walks every day?

All these questions, and the only answer I have figured out for sure is that I want a small dog. I do NOT want a purse dog - let's be clear, but I do want a dog small enough for me to pick up when necessary, and not large enough to knock anyone over.  Ava is pretty much the perfect size for that. She also does not shed much. Major bonus.

So. Dozens (if not hundreds) of dog breeds out there. Any suggestions, dog lovers?

in my dreams

I am on medication that makes me have crazy, detailed, vivid dreams.  Sometimes they are disturbing - like when I had my little sister with me on my honeymoon - other times they are just crazy - like when I worked at Best Buy and a guy had a heart attack, so I went to taco bell to get his wife a custom taco. Over the past month I have had more and more dreams that involve a certain male. They would make a great preteen romance story. Lots of significant looks and comments that need to be analyzed and discussed with one's friends. 

But last night, something happened in dream world that pushed us over the edge from significant looks and possibly-meaningful comments to an actual acknowledgement of feelings and the beginning of a relationship. It was rather sweet. He seemed surprised by the possibility of me - like he had never considered it but thought it was the most wonderful idea ever. (Is that a good thing or not?) I wrote him a letter that made him happy. He chose seats next to me, sat very close, and put his arm around me. I changed my facebook status to say we were in a relationship, worried that it was too soon, but he loved it. 

And then I woke up.

At least I made it through Valentine's Day sans self-pity and depression.

dying to self

Some people are easy to love. 

Some people are hard to love. 

I'm not talking about romantic love here - I'm talking about the love that will listen to the happy stories, the funny stories, the sad stories, and the painful stories equally willingly.  I'm talking about the love that values you as a human. Period. I'm talking about the love that will spend 3 hours to take you to and from the doctor's office. I'm talking about the love that passes over quirks and flaws to see the personality beneath. 

There are some people whose quirks are so prominent that they can fill your vision, if you let them, so that it is impossible to see and love the human beneath.  There are some people who seem so needy that it tires me to even think about helping them, loving them.  I would rather stick to loving and helping the people in my immediate circle of friends - people I already know and love.  But this is not how The Body is to work.  This is not how The Body is supposed to behave.  This is not how The Body is supposed to relate to each other. 

Scripture teaches us that we are to love sacrificially, as Jesus did.  I can tell myself this over and over, as I have done. I can preach to myself, I can reason with myself, I can make myself feel guilty for not doing things, but this will not be enough.  It is only through the transformation of my heart that I can love like this.  And it is only through divine intervention that my heart will be transformed. 

So the question is, am I brave enough to ask for it?

Cooking

I have tried my first new recipe for this month: Chicken with Roasted Sweet Potatoes.

It was very tasty! The combination of sweet potato, red onion, spinach, and lime juice was very interesting, and (a little unexpectedly) quite good! 

I made the following adjustments/observations:

• I had to nuke the sweet potatoes after peeling them so that I could slice them, and I think that cut down on the roasting time a bit 
• I didn't need to use an entire bag of spinach (which said it was 4 cups)
• I don't think it reheats well. 

But you know, when Real Simple says that something is an easy dinner, they're right!

February goals

• Finish Harry Potter #5
• Project365 & BibleYear
• Try 3 new recipes
• Run at least 12 times
• Don't buy any CD's, mp3's, DVD's or books

January Goals Check-in

To review, my 6 goals were: 

Write draft of motivation section of proposal
Buy NO more clothes
Continue with Project365
Continue with BibleYear
Try 3 new recipes (first one tonight, have ingredients for second)
Go to the gym at least 9 times (3x a week for remaining 3 weeks)

I am proud to report that I have met 5 out of 6!

Guess which one I didn't meet...

I did read several articles on motivation this month, meeting all of the weekly goals that I set, but I couldn't manage to sit down and write the draft.  But I did meet with my advisor yesterday, and she gave me a two week goal of doing an annotated bibliography/outline for that section. I can do that. 

I think my favorite goal was the food-related one.  I did try 3 new recipes (Tuscan Turkey & Beans, Southwestern Bean Medley served over rice, and Orecchiette with Roasted Broccoli and Walnuts). They were all very tasty.  I would recommend doing the Bean Medley for when you won't have many leftovers.  It's good, but if you eat it every day for a week, it gets old. And I would recommend steaming the broccoli half way before roasting it - the stalks started to turn black. 

I'm most proud of the working out goal.  I am going to go for the 9th time in just a few minutes, and I feel better about working out than any other get-fit-season in my life. By the end of the year, I hope that running will come naturally to me, and I won't have to make it a goal to meet.

thoughts on being robbed at planet fitness

All in all, I'm a fairly trusting person.  It is automatic for me to lock the car when I get out, but other than that, if I need to leave a door unlocked so that someone can get something out of our house, or pick up the dog, I'm ok with that.  I figure, who's going to steal from two graduate students? Really, you want our collection of games? Or our cheap dvd player/big box television? Really? You would break the law for that? If you're going to rob my house, breaking one of the many ground level windows would do the job.  Locking the door probably won't help much.

With lockers at the gym, I usually keep pants and/or a jacket, and my cheap-o bag.  The locker room is fairly busy, there are lots of lockers used without locks, and I've never heard of complaints before...So I usually stash my stuff, close the door and leave, trusting that no one will open a locker that isn't theirs, or that the other women in the room will notice someone rummaging through my things and say something.

And statistically speaking, what are the chances that MY home/locker would be picked out of all the ones in this town/locker room? 

But today, my locker was defiled. Someone opened my locker, moved aside my pants, rummaged through my bag, found my wallet, took the cash, and then put things back.  I didn't discover it till I had gotten home, and the gym has a no liability policy, so there is no hope of getting the money back.

And it was my fun money for the next month or so. It's not like I was going to use it to pay bills or buy groceries. Maybe to see a movie or get some Taco Bell...but nothing vital. So I haven't lost anything of major importance.

Except my rosy view of my fellow woman. My naivety.  My belief that I am too unimportant to steal from. And that's the part that upsets me the most. 

23 Things

I got tagged by one of my old nerd camp friends! (Hi, Fumiko!)

So. 

Things about me.

1. I really like how I feel when I manage a good run. Yesterday I got 4 miles total, running for half the time. It felt really good.
   
2. On the other hand, I don't like building up to the good runs. And I'm pretty good about rationalizing NOT running if I feel tired or am sick.
3. I recently started using www.dailymile.com to log my runs. And by recently, I mean last week. It's making me want to run a lot so I can log a lot of runs. :) Feel free to be my friend on the site. We can motivate each other!
4. My favorite art museum that I have visited is the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. It has many different types and sources of art, it is large enough to take a whole day, if you want, and small enough to not be too intimidating.  They change things often enough that I always find something new, but there is enough that seems familiar to be comforting to go back.
5. My love of the MFA may be linked to my love of Boston itself.  Boston is definitely large enough to be full of diversity and culture, but small enough that I love to walk around by myself. I'm not intimidated by it. 
6. I am rather intimidated by NYC.
7. I love teaching. I lose track of time while teaching, in some ways. I know when we've been going long enough for one class somehow, but it never feels like a full 50 or 80 min to me. 
8. I don't think about my problems while I'm teaching. That part especially rocks.
9. I got an iHome speaker/iPod dock for Christmas this year and my remote battery is already dead.
10. Cool thing I saw online: there's a lady who interviews people after near-death incidents like the Hudson river plane thing.  She says that people usually behave very calmly during things like that. I find that very intriguing. 
11. The thought of getting a tattoo seems less impossible to me lately than it used to. 
12. I love argyle socks. Especially knee-high argyles.
13. I started re-reading the Harry Potter books over break. I read the first four in quick succession.  I am back in NH now, and reading #5.  It's probably my least favorite because Harry is so emo and cranky the whole time, and I can't seem to get into it as easily as I did with the others. I am really looking forward to the last two though.
14. The first time I read the last book, I cried. Frequently.
15. I would really like to go back to Nassau, to my formerly orchard hotel. It has a pool, kitchenettes, snorkeling equipment to borrow, and a you cross the road and you're at the beach.
16. I re-read books, re-watch movies, and apparently want to re-visit vacations.
17. Re-doing something is comforting to me. Familiar ground. I know the lay of the land, so I am more at ease to truly experience it. 
18. But sometimes that means that I don't make new experiences because my time is taken up with re-doing the old ones.  For example, I have several new books that I could read in my spare time, but I am using it on Harry Potter.
19. I am really excited about teaching this semester. It's my second time doing Child Development and I feel like I've got my head wrapped around it a little better this time.  Which should make me a better teacher.
20. I function better with order imposed on my life. This semester, my only obligations with specific time commitments are my classes and office hours. I may need to get someone to impose some more time commitments on me.
21. I like to buy books in sets.  If I get one of a series in paperback, then I like to get the rest of the series in paperback with the same design. Makes things feel complete.
22. Once I carved out a space half the driveway wide and one car length long for my roommate's return from a trip after a heavy snowfall.  My shoulders and arms were sore as all get-out the next day, but I was so proud of myself and my visible accomplishment.
23. The neighbors are taking care of the driveway this winter, but I have placed the responsibility of keeping the front porch clear for the postal workers on my own shoulders.

There. I have submitted 23 things about me for your perusal and, I hope, approval.

jan12

jan12
Originally uploaded by pigstubs

I took a day trip to L.L. Bean with my friend Lucy. We both had things to return. After shopping, we got some chowder for lunch, tried to get some chocolates (the shop was closed. boo.), and then drove home. Good conversation, good music, good food, good friend.

1. The big boot!
2. Lucy and me in the bubble thing where you can look fish in the face.
3. Fuzzy picture of the fish.
4. The salt really built up on the car since it snowed this morning and yesterday.
5. Happy L.L. Bean bags in the back seat.
6. Construction going on (sort of) at one of the toll booths.
7. Sign.
8. Paying a toll. I can't believe that guy wasn't wearing some kind of gloves.

jan11

jan11
Originally uploaded by pigstubs

My dad introduced me to Moleskines a few years ago.
Since 2006, I have had an unbroken line of Moleskines. I usually have at least two going at once. I'm on my third year of large size daily planners that I use as journals, not planners. Right now, I have one daily planner/journal, one weekly planner (horizontal + notes) that I actually use as a planner, and one red lined notebook that I use to take notes at church and such.

I really like how sleek and uncluttered they are. I love how many varieties they come in. I love the elastic band they come with that so firmly keep them closed. I love the smooth feeling of the cover and the pages.

I'm a member of this flickr group, Moleskinerie. Most of the members use their moleskines for art. Not being that kind of artist, I just use mine for words, but not being an author or a poet, just personal journal-ish words, lists, schedules and the like.

So basically, I feel like I am using the journal of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Hemingway to write trivialities, but that won't stop me from using them!

January Goals

• Write draft of motivation section of proposal
• Buy NO more clothes
• Continue with Project365
• Continue with BibleYear
• Try 3 new recipes (first one tonight, have ingredients for second)
• Go to the gym at least 9 times (3x a week for remaining 3 weeks)

Made of strong stuff

jan6
Originally uploaded by pigstubs

There's this really cool group on flickr called Utata. The people that are most active in the group are really serious about photography. Someone presents a Salon every Sunday on a different photographer, the editorial staff chooses a photo every weekday to feature and write about, and challenges are presented for anyone to participate in.

One type of challenge is called Iron Photographer. These challenges are posted every couple of weeks or so, and always include three elements. As far as I can tell, two of the elements are objects you must include in the photo and one is a technical aspect to the photograph. The goal is to incorporate all three elements into a good picture. I've participated in a few before, but I kind of just slapped them together as soon as I thought of something. Many of the Utatans put a lot of thought, time, and effort into their submissions, and the results are highly creative and of high quality. It is really cool to look at how other people interpret some of the challenges.

The most recent Iron Photographer challenge, #65, included a button-having shirt, something you would find at a child's birthday party, and square format.

This is the first Iron Photographer that I have participated in because I had a good idea of what I wanted to do before I decided to do it. Before, I decided to participate and then had to come up with a way to incorporate the 3 elements. I knew that I had this wonderful shirt that had buttons, I knew that I had some leftover Happy Birthday napkins and a tablecloth somewhere, and I thought a good way to combine them was to have someone eagerly awaiting the delivery of birthday cake at a party. I have some medium format cameras that I could use to have a square format originally, but then I'd have to wait for the film to be developed, and I don't think those cameras work with my tripod. So I used my new camera (Fujifilm Finepix J10. I really like it.) and then Picnik to crop the photo to a square.

Done, and done!

losing track

C.S. Lewis, I am 99.9% confident, was the guy who said that perhaps the reason we lose track of time is because we were made for a place outside of time.  I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia in 2008, and I always found myself crying because of the beauty and simplicity of the way he explained things like prayer - or the Narnian equivalent of them - so that children could understand them.  Apparently my granddaddy was like that. I wish I could have talked to him more now that I'm older...

Over Christmas break, I started reading the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeline L'Engle.  I've read the first four of the quintet now.  The children in these stories tesser - they jump across space and/or time.  They sing with the stars, talk to angels, they witness the creation of the world.  And these books are getting better as I go along.  I'm about to start the 5th one now, and since I stayed up till 3am to finish _Many_Waters_ and it was so good.  I shed a tear or two at the beauty of it.  If I had been willing to pause long enough to reach for a pen, I would have underlined so much of the last few chapters.  Anyway, good books. Read them. 

Since I got home from home for Christmas break (do I need a post about how I refer to Florence as home when I'm in Dover and vice versa when I'm vice versa?), I've been losing track of which home I'm in.  I'll be drowsy downstairs and think "yeah, it's time to go up to bed" but the bed I'm thinking of is the little twin bed in Florence and not the nice big queen bed in Dover.  I'll be doing my nails in Dover and think I'm doing my nails in Florence.  Sometimes I'll even start to talk to my mom...This morning when I was in that half-awake state of being, I thought I was in Florence and my roommate downstairs in Dover was my mom AND my dad (talented girl, huh?) doing their morning thing in Florence.  Basically, if my mind is elsewhere (half asleep, half awake, focusing on creating perfectly rounded fingernails, etc.) I have the ability to lose track of space.

So apparently, I'm not created for space or time. 

Maybe?