Jennerosity

Goals . . . resolutions . . . whatever you want to call them, I make them. One of my favourite things about the New Year’s Eve holiday is this part. I started doing quarterly goals last year, and I think that works even better. Helps to take some of the pressure off this time of year and sets up a review period so you can see how you’re doing. I always try to work on goals from the same general categories. Last year I did them each as separate posts (reading, fitness, money & random), but this year I think I’ll do one overview¹, but do less detail about each goal.

Reading

• Read at least 50 books
• Complete at least 1 non-fiction reading challenge
• Read at least 12 books that are currently on my to-read shelf

Fitness

• Be able to run for 30 minutes straight by the end of the year
• Establish a daily walking habit

Travel

• Plan a trip to Japan in 2013
• Research a trip to either France or Hawaii

With Locutus around I don’t want to push myself too hard to achieve things. Instead I’m just focused on building a strong family foundation. The older Locutus gets I’ll be able to re-asses my progress and add more goals as I’m able.

1. With the exception of the money goals, which get their own post with more details [↩]

Here goes one last installment in my mid-year review.

I haven’t really talked about it much on the blog, but one of the areas in which I wanted to set some goals this year was Adventure. At the beginning of the year we had tentatively planned on making several shorter trips this year including: a steampunk convention in Arizona, crashing a wedding in Mexico, a stagette trip to LA, and another wedding celebration to Las Vegas. We ended up nixing all but the trip to Mexico. As we started planning the rest, circumstances just kept coming up to make them more difficult. Plus, when we found out I was pregnant, we had concerns about the radiation levels of the TSA scanners. The alternative option of having someone pat me down weren’t very appealing after hearing many stories about how invasive it actually is. In retrospect, we’re very happy with all of our travel choices. Plus, we do have one last adventure planned this summer . . .

• Attend PAX!!!

I’ll be very pregnant when we go, but so long as I’m still feeling as good as I do now, I shouldn’t have any problem attending¹. We’re looking forward to picking up a giant pitcher of dice. I’m going to keep my eyes open for any must-have geek-baby gear as well. Definitely looking forward to a weekend away to check out all the latest gaming stuff :)

Finally in the realm of Finance I think we’ve also made some good progress so far this year. I actually started up a Money Club and we’re working towards a savings goal that will ideally be a chunk of money against our mortgage. My overall purpose for this category was to have a better sense of control over our finances and doing the money club is definitely helping me in this respect.

When I started doing this little review, I felt kinda bad about my progress on my goals. Especially lately where any planning seems a little pointless because I know this huge life-altering event is going to happen in just a couple of months and change everything. Plus, a lot of goals I did set for myself this year didn’t see completion because having a baby does take over a certain portion of your brain, body, and life.

Looking back after typing everything up I’m feeling much better though. Despite all the changes of plans, I still feel like I’ve managed to accomplish a lot this year. Plus, I didn’t really touch on a lot of the other things we did, goals made and met, BECAUSE we’re having a baby. It’ll be very interesting to get to the end of the year and do my final review. One caveat readers . . . expect that one to have more than 4 parts to it!

1. though I will be making a lot more frequent bathroom stops this year!!! [↩]

For those uninitiated in the world of pregnancy, a push gift is a gift that the father of the baby gives to the mother when she gives birth to their child.  According to the wikipedia article about push presents, the tradition goes back quite a ways, but has gotten quite a bad rap recently as a lot of jewelery stores exploit the tradition in order to sell expecting father’s fancy baubles to dangle in front of their wives eyes as they grunt and sweat through the rigours of labour¹.

As my jewelery tastes are rather simple and I knew it was highly unlikely that my husband would ever buy me jewelery, I never expected that I’d be offered a push gift. The idea of it never appealed to me and I hadn’t brought it up at all. Which is why when Benevolance sent me a chat message offering a push gift, I nearly fell out of my chair.  However, after some further elaboration I discovered that my husband was not actually suffering from temporary insanity or been replaced by body-snatching aliens.

You see, the push gift he offered me wasn’t a ring or necklace.  No, what he offered me was airfare to a destination of my choice and then an appropriate souvenir (also of my choosing, but only one, because it isn’t like we’re having twins). Since we both love to travel, the gift is really for both of us.  It’ll be the first vacation we take with baby along. The only downside is that making decisions is one of my weak spots.

So friends and family, let’s hear some of your vacation ideas in the comments!

P.S. If you want to keep up with my blog, don’t forget that you can subscribe with the RSS feed or sign up to get emailed whenever I post.  If you are only interested in the baby stuff, I’ve got a separate feed for only those posts, just let me know and I’ll send you the info or put it on the blog.

1. Gee, do I sound a little jaded and biased? [↩]

There are a bunch of other goals that I have for the year, that I don’t think really warrant an entire blog post.  Plus, I’m really busy, and only going to get busier, so it’s more efficient for me to do it all in just one post.

Homemaker Goals

One of the things I really want to work on this year is my cooking skills.  Instead of simply trying to cook more as my goal, I thought it would be better and more interesting to set it up as a cooking challenge, like my reading challenge.  I’m working on a list of 10 dishes that I want to learn to make over the course of the year.  And breaking it up quarterly too.  I’m trying to ensure that I get a mix of healthy food and some vegetarian dishes as well.

For the first quarter, my cooking challenge includes the following three:

• pancakes – I figure this is a good one to start with, because there can be so many variations to have fun with throughout the rest of the year.  I’m working with whole wheat flour, which also tends to make really thick, dense pancakes, so I’m going to try to adjust the recipe to get them more light and fluffy.
• kung pao chicken – A basic stir fry that is one of my favourites.  Plus, stir fry recipes are another type that is easy to vary, shake up, and experiment with.
• perogies – I’d like to do up a batch once per quarter.  It’s a challenging and more time consuming recipe.  Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll have gotten the hang of it.

The other homemaker goal I have is to expand the number of plants that we’ve been growing in our kitchen.  This year I’d like to grow some Christmas cactus.  I have a source for a cutting, I just need to get it and try to propagate it.

Job Goals

This year I’ve finally started taking some more continuing education classes.  Right now I’m working on a Human Resources Management course that I’m finding very interesting but also challenging.  There’s a lot that I’m learning that I’d like to apply to my job, but theory is often very different than practice.

I got to start a company website last year, and this year I’d really like to get a bunch of information content written up and posted to the site.

Adventure

Travel!  A couple of smaller trips planned this year.  We’re heading to LA for a few days in May and I’m looking forward to seeing the city as an adult.  Plus we’re going to be going to PAX again this year in Seattle.  It isn’t on the long weekend this year, which ironically will make it easier for us to attend.  And, there is a small chance of another trip to Japan in the fall.

December 22 – Travel. How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year?

(Author: Tara Hunt)

How?

We traveled like vagabonds or well-seasoned travelers – one bag each, no more.  We traveled for leisure at our pleasure, with smiles on our faces and a skip to our steps.  We traveled by plane, train, bus, subway, automobile, and bike, but no boats.  Walked over and under cities in big boots.  We wandered and got lost and found, and then lost and found again.  We found each other and found ourselves too.  We traveled to be free and to wander and escape.  Traveled with a purpose but not always with a plan.

I heard something today that resonated so strongly with me that I just had to share it.  I was listening to episode 241 of the Zencast Podcast and in one part the speaker was discussing that time in between when you’re traveling.  How it’s time when you are no longer where you were, but not yet where you are going to.  It was like a bell was struck inside me.  I think that’s why traveling between places, especially long trips, feels so freeing to me.  I know to some people, waiting in an airport gate, sitting for hours on a plane, or spending time sitting on a train between cities would feel more like a prison, but it’s quite the opposite for me.

I’m released from everything that was, but am not yet everything that will be.  I’m unattached to any place and free.  There is no defined place of being that I exist in, so I can exist only for me.  My soul feels unbound and I can simply spend time existing in a more pure state.  I feel more peaceful, more rested¹, and the world just seems to make a little more sense when it’s hurtling by me, as opposed to when I’m attached to a particular part of it.

1. even though I don’t sleep on airplane rides [↩]

My husband and I started a travel blog for our last trip to Japan.  I made a few posts about my New York trip with my sister too.  We’re planning on updating it from the land of rising sun once again, so if you want to follow along, then head over to Sauntering Sunflower.  You can subscribe via RSS and I may get my husband to insert email functionality so people can be emailed updates as they happen.  But, we’ll see what we get around to before we go.  Hopefully there won’t be any long stretches between our updates, since this time we’ll have a netbook with us and won’t be so dependent on internet cafes while we are there.  This will also hopefully mean that we’ll be able to post a few photos along with the blog posts.