Resolution

[rowyn]

1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic or weight-lifting).

Another month where I squeaked by on this one. I think I exercised 23 out of 30 days this month. Possibly only 22. In any case, still enough to make the goal. It's a good thing my regular plan is to exercise six days a week, because apparently I need to plan on six in order to manage five.

2. Read twenty-six books this year.

January: Zorro, Isabel Allende; Witch's Business, Diana Wynne Jones
February: Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
March: Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
April and May: In Our Hands, Charles Murray; The One-Armed Queen, Jane Yolen; Dhampir, Barb and J.C. Hendee; Resenting the Hero, Moira Moore; Emerald Sea, John Ringo; Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
June: Against the Tide, John Ringo; Waifs and Strays, Charles de Lint
July: Paint Your Dragon, Tom Holt; The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, The Hallowed Hunt, all by Lois McMaster Bujold
August: American Gods, Neil Gaiman; Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
September: The Doppelganger, Marie Brennan, Truckers and Diggers, both by Terry Pratchett
October: Tapestry of Magics, Brian Daley; Wings, Terry Pratchett; two "Dark-Hunter" novels (I don't remember the titles and, well, it doesn't really matter) by Sherrilyn Kenyon; The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diane Wynne Jones (thank you, John! <3 ); Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming, Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley; The Spirit Ring, Lois McMaster Bujold.
November: Moon Called, Patricia Briggs, Pride of Chanur, by C. J. Cherryh, Dance with the Devil Sherrilyn Kenyon

So I'm at thirty-one. Which means that even if I count the three very short Bromeliad books as one book, and don't count the Kenyon novels at all (mental cotton candy: so sugary it will make your brain rot), I'm still over my goal for the year.

I quit reading The Boy Detective Fails, a kind of magical realism novel by Joe Meno, about two-thirds of the way through. It was very strange in a way that never really grabbed me. Maybe I'll finish it later, or maybe I will leave it as a monument to the idea that "Just because you started a book doesn't mean you must finish it."

3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.

I still suck. It's not like I set the bar high here. How difficult is it to get rejected?

4. Pet the cat.

*puts hand down, clucks*

I must have one of the few cats in the world that reliably comes when called.

*cuddles cat*

5. Put more money into savings in 2006 than I did in 2005.

Yup, still done. I even went back and counted the money I used in April 2006 for my 2005 IRA as "2005 savings"* and even so I've saved more money this year. Yay me.

* I don't know that this makes any sense, given that I didn't have the money at the end of 2005 to put in the account, but in the past I've counted IRA money as savings for the year on the IRA, even if I didn't put into the IRA until some time in the following spring. So at least it's consistent.

6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.

I almost feel like I need to count "socializing" as a productive thing for this month, which is sort of a sad commentary on my usual in-person social life, which mostly consists of talking to Lut. This month I went to Contraception on Nov. 11 to party and see friends. (*waves to jimmy_hollaman and skyflame*) Then from the 16th to the 19th I visited Florida and saw koogrr, jordangreywolf, gwendelkitty, barbx's author, and a bunch more people who either don't have LJs or haven't told me their journal names. At the end of October, I also went to NC to see kagetsume, sophrani, tkurogrym and kamots_sawtooth.

While that last trip was in the previous month, I think the unaccustomed amount of traveling and travel-related things may've torpedoed my productivity for other things. For whatever reason, I haven't felt like doing much of anything lately. Even exercising is harder. Motivating myself to do something afterwards has seldom happened. Mostly I've been reading LJ or playing Puzzle Pirates.

Housework:

This was, however, a better than average month for doing things around the house. On Thanksgiving, Lut and I not only cooked a ton of food, but I cleaned up the kitchen and the living room, both of which have remained in semi-presentable states since. Maybe this weekend I'll clean the den and the bedroom and then the whole house could look tidy. (Apart from the basement, which doesn't count anyway, it being Of Doom and all.)

In addition, last weekend Lut and I cleaned the gutters, and I hauled out the leaf blower to clear the backyard of leaves. Which was good timing, since the weather was warm and pleasant last weekend, and it's snowing now. Pity I hadn't gotten the leaves from the front of the house, though. (There're fewer of those, but they're more annoying because it's not really practical to blow them to the back the way I do the rest of the yard, so I have to vacuum them up instead.)

Oh, and Lut reminds me that we took care of the sump pump problems, too. The float switch on the main pump died (again!) and so my plumber replaced it with a different model this time. The new one has a float switch that's fairly easy to replace; the float switch on the old one was integral. He also did a temporary fix of the leak on the backup pump while he was here. I bought a replacement piece for the leaky part on the backup -- my plumber expects it to start leaking again in the near future and it'll need to be replaced eventually, so that's on hand.

I need to call Sears about my washer/dryer. My washer's been funny about starting on one cycle, and my dryer isn't drying as quickly it used to. I got an extended warranty on both of them, so I may as well make use of it.

Writing:

-- Two entries on "Nightmare Waking".

Yeah, that was pretty much it for writing this month. I don't think I even did any editing.

Role-playing:

"Game of October" limps on; three out of five players got a single session.

Art:
-- I did a little sketching and some random coloring this month, including a small picture of waves in the sea at the Panera Bread art jam while I was in Florida. ("It's just a picture of waves. There's no figure or foreground or anything. Just waves.") I keep thinking that I did more art than this in November, but no, no finished pieces of significant size.

I wrote in October that "October wasn't terribly productive on most fronts, but oddly I'm not particularly perturbed by it." November, I'm perturbed about. haikujaguar wrote about "accidentally doing Nanowrimo". I joked with Lut that accidentally did "Nanowrinomo" because I practically stopped writing this November. It wasn't on purpose. It just turned out that way.

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.

445! Once again, not much backsliding over the month, though I did clear out a few hundred just now.

9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
Ten of eleven now.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

*hugs* };) All in all, pretty good work on the year's resolutions!

[rowyn]

*hug*

Thanks, Tufty. You're a good friend.

[krud42.livejournal.com]

You're the only person I know who continually holds themselves accountable for their year's resolutions. That in and of itself is highly commendable. ':)