Saturday, December 29, 2012

New Years Resolutions: be cheap, organized, thin, and others.

Dear Diary,

I've made several New Year's resolutions: to be cheaper, organized, thinner, and faster. Also, I want to get new states, marathon-wise. Because nobody has ever, ever in the history of the world made those resolutions before. Especially me.

Cheaper. I'm well on my way.

For one thing, being as wearing contact lenses for all night ultra trail runs were causing scarring on my corneas--I shit you not, scarring, although the OD said, casually, "well, it's a small scar, and it's not going to affect your vision over there," while I was thinking, EEEK!!!

So, I have switched back to glasses. They make me look all smart and shit anyway, and the nerd look is in. My first foray into this will be via Zenni Optical, which as gotten good reviews from strangers. Last year, when I first heard about it, I mentioned it casually to my oldest offspring, you should try this, it will save you money and then sat back and watched to see the results DON'TLOOKATMELIKETHAT; HE'SYOUNGANDCANGETALLSORTSOFTRANSPLANTS and he was quite pleased. I ordered a pair of specs, experimentally. If I like them I'll be ordering some lightweight specks with transition lenses for all day and all night running, as well as various colors to match outfits.

Second, I'm using a fantastic app on my ipad, How To Cook Everything by Bittner. I use this to pick out seven meals and populate a shopping list. I've found that planning seven meals, and buying the ingredients I need for those meals, results in two weeks worth of food, including leftovers for Sweet Baboo's lunches. I don't know how. I spend less money, and less food goes bad.

 

Organized.I'm still purging.

Last year I filled up the garage from the house, and then got rid of all of it. I had, oh, I had high aspirations of having the world's greatest garage sale, but that never happened. I wound up donating it and giving it away, mostly to group homes for people in recovery and Goodwill. Now, the new rule is that ever week I have to go to each room and get rid of five items. Not trash, but items, no matter how small. Once a room is considered done, then I can do ten from another one, and so on. On my way to work there are these collection bins and I drop stuff off.

Meanwhile, I've put much of my library on Half.com, and I sell a book, oh, every other week or so.

As part of my organization, I'm also going to track my workouts, my eating, and blog more frequently. I'm going to go back to venting on my blog, and using it as my brain toilet.

 

Thinner. I'm still fifteen pounds over where I was a year or so ago. I'm doing daily workouts, starting today. Five days a week, on the treadmill for at least forty-five minutes, and a long run on the weekend. The other two days I do yoga or some sort of fun thing, like raquetball. Sweet Baboo bought me a raquetball and other stuff. We went to the gym, and I ran around like a spaz while he stood mostly in one place and smiled a lot. But I have to say that as terrible as I am, it had a blast.

Also, I have the world's best salads for lunch. I'm not making this shit up. They are fantastic. The other therapists said I should take pictures of my salads. They usually involve mixed greens, brined artichoke hearts, calamata olives, chopped tomato, hard-boiled egg, a good balsamic vinegar. Occasionally, I treat myself to a good hard cheese, grated, but just a tablespoon or so. Sometimes, a single slice of applewood bacon, crumbled.

Of coure, it would HELP if my coworkers wood stop hitting Krispy Kreme on the way to work. That tray of do us...I'm not made of iron!

Faster. Of course it goes without saying that if I work my ass off and lose some of it, I'll get faster. But also, Tuesday is intervals day. I run like hell for 90 seconds or so, and then walk for thirty seconds, rinse repeat.

 

Marathons. So far I have planned: Oregon/Washington State in April, Nebraska in May, and Iowa/South Dakota in June. That's five new states. I'm thinking of Marine Corps marathon in Virginia too.

So that's it. I don't know if I'll do thirteens on Thursdays. I'm going to probably link my blog posts to my resolutions. Or not. I have a short attention span. We'll see.

...

 

3 comments:

  1. I like your method of going into the room and getting rid of 5 items. Great idea. I'm a bit of a pack rat, might have to try this method.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Does half.com suggest a price for you, or do you choose? Are you selling from a library of professional-type books, textbooks, regular books, or a combination?

    All of your resolutions could be mine. Well, except the 50 states part. I may just bookmark this page and keep coming back to it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. All three, actually. Most don't go for much, and when you list them half.com gives you Information on what they've been selling for. Many if my personal books might not go for more than a dollar, but half.com reimburses you for postage, and you've kept a book out of a landfill, at least for a little while, and given it to someone who specifically wants that book. After a while if things clearly aren't going to sell I remove them from my half.com inventory and donate them to Goodwill.

    Textbooks can sometimes be recycled, ask your local bookstores who sell used books. The may not give you any money, but they'll recycle them.

    ReplyDelete

Comments containing links to commercial websites from people with invisible profiles are deleted immediately. Spammers are immediately deleted.

Moved.

 I'm no longer involved in multisport or endurance sports. I've started my own business, a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety d...