New Year's Resolutions

I have been a bit lurky lately... Haven't really felt productive either. My stack of 90 freshmen research papers are actually still sitting in the car, though I have every intention of pulling them out this afternoon. I first have to clean the entire downstairs (yesterday was supposed to be bathroom and kitchen with today being dining room and living room, but I got distracted).

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about New Year's Resolutions and things I want to change. I think I'm in such a different place in my life then I was a year ago, so it's strange that my Resolutions are almost exactly the same. It's depressing, but only one Resolution has stuck--I quit smoking many years ago. So now, with the public determination, I will achieve some of these goals. Feel free to laugh at me when this becomes a lie (it might inspire me to do better):

1. (This is the thousandth year running) Lose the weight I gained after quitting smoking (irony) (the goal is five pounds per month)
2. Get myself financially straightened out
3. Send a birthday card to everyone (on time!) for their birthday
4. Stop collecting clutter and be a regular cleaner
5. Read 100 books, including the Bible and all of Shakespeare

I will probably add more, but these are the immediate ones that have been nagging me. I have some house goals for the summer--repaint the porch (the floor is a pine green, which really doesn't match a pale blue house), repaint the bedroom, remove that awful wallpaper in the kitchen and mudroom, and replace the window treatments.

Yesterday Ryan and I put up Christmas lights... Huh, yesterday being two days after Christmas. I copied our friends L and A and put up those white rope lights (well, K really put them up while I supervised from the ground and hopped around in the cold) along the ceiling of the porch. Ours are droopy compared to L & A's, whose look really lovely even during those warm summer nights. Now we just have to work on that stupid lace that we have up all over the place. Blech. K said the only reason he was helping to put those lights up was because he knew it would illuminate the lace. Ha, ha, K.

We have no thrilling plans for New Year's (our friends L and A will be in Georgia and my best friend KF and I have never spent New Year's together--strange!--and I accepted a shift at the bookstore (time and a half!) so we won't journey to the land of our parents). A quiet New Year's might be nice anyway as I will have to brace myself to what my father calls "The March of Death" (the time between winter and spring break).

Speaking of spring break, we were thinking about going somewhere tropical with L and A and C... But every trip wound cost somewhere around $1200 per person (and I assume that's just the basics, no cost for postcards included there!) and K and I have sat down and discussed how we need to be more Smart with Money. Wouldn't that be going against our plan to be Smart with Money? But at the same time, it's every teenager's fantasy to go on a tropical vacation with his or her friends; I'd actually have the chance to live it out six years later. :) And I'll really need to get away from the desolate cold and unending snow that is Here. It's a conundrum, I tell you. I checked out Investing for Dummies from the library. Those bright yellow books are kind of embarrassing, but when you aren't so bright when it comes to moolah, start from scratch. I just see that my grandparents have set themselves up pretty comfortably in their retirement, and I wouldn't mind looking forward to not fretting about living paycheck to paycheck. (That will happen at some point, right?)

OK, off to collect some papers and do some cleaning... Ah, vacation...