Hello October!

September sucked slightly less than August.  I was sick in some form or fashion for the majority of it, but I made some personal progress that makes me optimistic for October and the rest of the year.  This is much improved over the dread I had before.

The rest of the year is gonna be good.  I can just feel it. 

• I get to see my sister soon.  
• My projects in my classes are gonna be fun.  
• Curiously enough, I am really excited for Halloween.  I have an intense craving to carve pumpkins.  I have no idea what my costume should be.
• NaNoWriMo site relaunched, and I am really getting eager to write again! Here's my author profile on the site.
• It's the holidays! What's not to like! 

And now for other news and goal updates!

With my recent sickness and onset of the busy season for both work and school, I have decided to bow out of training for the Rock and Roll San Antonio Half Marathon.  I should have learned last year that training is just one thing too many on top of my other commitments.

I read a bunch of stuff. Mockingjay, Good Omens, and 13 Little Blue Envelopes were in the first part of the month.  Since then I've read a lot more: an additional nine makes the running tally 45.  Maybe this would be a good time to back off on the reading so that I can work on some other projects!

• Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare.  The first of The Infernal Devices series, prequel to The Mortal Instruments series.  Shadowhunters gone steampunk!  Nice start to a new series.  I could see where twists were going to be, so it wasn't as much of a on-the-edge-of-your-chair read for me. 
• The Laughing Corpse by Laurell Hamilton.  Second in the Anita Blake series, this one was more zombies, less vampires. I really like the Anita Blake character a lot, but don't know if I can continue to read the series. I might gag myself to death if I read anything else about vampire love.  It did contain some interesting asides about women working in male-dominated fields that make me think.
• Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce.  A reread of a great YA duet.
• Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund. Sequel to Rampant and another setup-for-the-third book.  Lots of information for plot and world building, but not really interesting on its own.  
• Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. A TON of teenage drama and angst.  Loved the included lyrics. Made me think about teenage sex as portrayed in YA books.  To do it or not to do it? To show it or not to show it?  Probably a difficult decision for each author for each book, and probably also a difficult pitch to publishers. 

I haven't made a lot of progress on paying off my debt this month, but I'm still at 80% there with only 75% of the year complete.  With vacations and holidays coming up, we'll see how that goes. I was able to refinance my mortgage so reduce the APR by 1.5% and monthly payment by $100.  Also, switching ISPs saves me another $25 a month. So hopefully that will help a bit.

Good Grief, August!

Yikes, August was rocky.  It was supposed to be a chill month.  With school out of session, my schedule was supposed to open up.  For some reason I think I got less done than possible.   A couple good things happened and a couple of bad. 

I got a haircut!  This length suits me so much better, though I'm still working out how to secure it when at the gym or lab.  I was able to donate ten inches to Locks for Love for my second time.  It's so cool to be able to do that. 

I was more social in August than when school was in session.  I was able to catch up with some friends and see some movies:  Despicable Me, The Good Guys, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  Scott Pilgrim was the best movie I've seen in a long while.  If you haven't yet, go see it!

I started running again!  I had a summer hiatus due to a way too hectic schedule.  I gained about ten pounds after my Professional Dining Class, so now I feel like I'm at a disadvantage going into half marathon training.  I'm now working out after my classes and that makes for some very late nights.  After completing 50 miles this month, I am at 241 miles year to date.  Finally crossed the 200 mile marker!

I started writing again!  Not a lot, but this month included almost 9000 words, which is more than May, June and July word counts combined.  And August included the first new fiction in a long while. A good chunk is a new short story which is now ready for submission.  In a good way.

Gwen was sick.  She's my first dog, so now that she's getting older (she's eight)it makes me scared whenever she gets sick.  She's okay now, but she had to have blood drawn and x-rays and everything.  Poor thing.

I'm going through another episode of depression.  My third.  I am trying a lot of different things, but so far it hasn't been great and I'm still not as functional as I need to be.  That was a major reason why I picked up Undoing Depression, but I still think I need medication and therapy.  I am also going to try some different supplements, pending doctor's okay.  Sigh. 

I have hope for September, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is rocky too. 

Sunday News Edition

I have a few pieces of news, none of which merit their own blog post.  So here's the digest version of everything.

• I just passed 200 miles run in 2010!  The goal for the year is 500, so I'm behind.  But for taking a six week break, I think I'm still in an okay position.  It'll take me about 15 miles per week for the rest of the year to meet the goal, which is still very doable.  It's even more doable when you factor in my training plan for the 2010 Rock'N'Roll San Antonio Half Marathon.  The 15-week plan ranges between 16 and 28 mile weeks.

• First week of the 2010 RnRSA plan I believe I must call a success. I ran most of the plan, even after the hiatus. Only running 12 miles of the 16 makes me feel a bit disappointed, but it's the most miles per week I've completed since April.  Coming out the other end with no injuries has to be counted as an accomplishment. Here's to next week!  May it be filled with 17 miles including a quality speed interval day.

• My eyes are paid off! My expensive self-splurge this year was on LASIK surgery, which has been pretty awesome.  Sometimes when my eyes are dry, I can't help the feeling of wanting to take out my contacts.  However, I have gotten over the habit of groping my bedside table for my glasses in the morning.  I think I'll appreciate this more in the years to come.  But for now, I will appreciate that I have no bills for it!  So I've taken care of 80% of my pay-down-debt goal with only 60% of the year gone by. 

• I'm behind in my movie watching.  Here's the rundown of ones I've seen recently. Loved the A-Team.  In my opinion, a better series remake than Get Smart or StarTrek. Karate Kid was okay, but my favorite part was the credits for the photography and the Justin Bieber/Jaden Smith song.  Inception was freaking awesome, as everyone should know by now.  The Sorcerer's Apprentice was cute, but not as good as I was hoping.  Despicable Me was very funny, but the trailers were misleading. The dude laughed a lot more than I did.

• I had to abandon the re-read of a book I loved in high school: The Spellsong Sorceress by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.  Twenty pages in and it had all of the writing sins now shunned in recently published books.  The ones that irked me the most were his paragraphs of laundry-list descriptions and flip-flopping verb tenses.  Pairing that with the high fantasy genre, it just felt snooty.  Alas, there goes a fond memory of a childhood read.

• Douglas Adams' sequel to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was another excellent book.  This particular book had more commentary than narrative, and the time-travel aspect got a bit confusing, but I still very much enjoyed it. His writing style is fantastic, putting character-driven narrative next to laugh-out-loud, snarky, satirical social commentary.  I don't know of any other writer who has achieved both or done it with such a light heart.  My favorite part is the mathematical proof of why there the universe has a population of zero.  Oh, "and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

I think it's been a good week, though not very productive.

Where Did 2010 Go?

Okay, so April, May, and June went really really fast. 2010 is now halfway over and time is going by faster than ever.

• I am very surprised that I'm actually on target for my reading goal this year: 27 books read out of 50.  I'm also already met the 10% nonfiction goal, already have read 6. I'm discovering "adult paranormal romance" is my preferred genre to read.
• Of the total debt amount I hope to pay off this year, I'm already about 75% through it.  I'm almost done paying off the LASIK surgery from April, then it's back to hacking away at my second mortgage.  If I keep on track, I should be ahead of the goal by the end of the year. Take that silly interest rates!
• My writing has been blog only in the last few months.  I have finally resigned to leaving my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel unfinished.  I've completely lost momentum on it and have no love for it anymore.  I have decided to work on the planning for my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel in the upcoming months instead. Scenes from that have been jumping in and out of my thoughts more recently.  It might be time to get those out of my head and onto paper. 
• I am absolutely loving my culinary class this summer.  My chef actually went with my plating design for the dessert for the Scholarship Donors dinner this past week and chose me to be the student wine steward for the evening too.  Class is a lot of work and makes the week feel really long, I am enjoying every moment. 
• I have not been running a whole lot in the last couple of months, but so far I've run 191 miles in 2010.  I don't think I'm going to make it to do the half marathon this fall.  I love the weight training that I've been doing, but I'm still trying to find a balance between work, school, gym, and the rest of life.  I did manage to get two 10K PRs in April. 
• Life in other ways has been good. I've gone to some great restaurants, seen some great places in Texas, and done things that I haven't done in years.  And I've been having a blast.

All in all, life has been good. I hope it keeps it up! 

March's Lion and Lamb

March for me came in like a lamb and out like a lion, with life getting crazier the last half of the month. It includes some big changes for me, and the intense desire for more. I think I'm more myself and closer to being on the right track, but who knows at this point.

• Read 4 books - Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, Stardust by Neil Gaiman, and Angel Time by Anne Rice.  This puts me at 11 books so far for the year and 25% non-fiction.  I don't think I'm going to make it to 50, but I'm okay with that. 
• Paid down more debt.  I'm now focusing on my second mortgage, and the interest rate on it pisses me off every day.  According to mint.com, my net worth is now more than my retirement savings.  This makes me happy because it means that right now I have a positive net worth.  Sure, it's only a thousand bucks or so, and it's only projected worth of my assets, but still, it makes me happy. 
• Wrote 13045 words in March, the largest monthly tally yet.  I blew past the goal of 12000 words, but wrote a whole bunch on the blog rather than on finishing the NaNo novel.  I'm okay with that because I did a whole bunch of stuff in the latter half of the month that I wanted to share in this space. 
• Made a healthy-ish blueberry coffee cake during my week to bring noms to work.  The guys really liked it, which always helps.  I even overheard a teammate bragging about it to someone visiting in the area later.  
• Ran my fastest year-to-date 5K in 37:44.  Convinced a posse of friends and family to walk a 5K.  Passed 1000 miles on Nike Plus.  I want to be more consistent in my miles per week and in my nutrition habits.  For April I want to close the gap on my target year to date total miles. 
• Saw some new places in San Antonio, which I'm counting for my artsy endeavors for this month.  The brunch at Alamo Drafthouse was pretty cool too.  
• Had some great time with the family when Beth came down.  Above was a great family photo with my sisters and my niece and nephew.  They're so stinking cute. 

I made some big decisions in March.  Growing up is definitely difficult.  This is the first time I've had to make a hard decision because it's the right thing to do.  It was hard.  Even now when I struggle to go back to the easy way, I know it was the right thing and stick to my decision. 

I have had an intense desire the last half of the month to have a drastic change.  Ideas entertained include a tattoo, chopping off my hair, moving to a condo in Alamo Heights, and getting LASIK surgery.  The tattoo is something I definitely want, but need to go to the local tattoo convention in June to see first hand what I really want.  My long hair is too convenient to put back when I cook or run, and I want to keep it that way.  A condo is the next step for  me if things go according to plan, but there's still too much still to do on the house before it's ready to rent out. 

So that leaves LASIK.  I've known I've wanted to do it for a while, but planned on saving it as a treat for when I payed off all my debt.  I've gotten consultations and have discussed it with some people, and I think it's going to be a go for sometime in April.  I'm really looking forward to it.  It feels like a quick decision, but I think it's the change I need for this part of my life. If anyone has feedback on LASIK they or a friend have had, leave it in the comments below!

February Wrap-Up

The year is flying by so quickly! Already another month gone.  I have a warm fuzzy feeling about February, but I think that's because it ended better than it started. 

• Read 4 books: He's Just not that Into You, and three of the four books in Larissa Ione's Daemonica Series.  I muscled through three-quarters of Love in the Time of Cholera, but I definitely was trudging along. I think Amanda has the right idea and it should be abandoned.  My perfectionist nature doesn't want to let it go unfinished, but I really don't want to go back to it.  I just finished the fourth book of Ione's series, so a review of that will go up soon.
• Made lots of progress on the debt home front.  Car is paid off and now attacking the second mortgage. Still fortunate to have gotten a raise with the current economy. I need to be more cognizant of how I spend my money. So I'll be watching that closer in the upcoming months. 
• Wrote more words this month!  Another 12k to the total.  I was trying to make it to 15k and finish the NaNo Novel, but that didn't happen.  I think 12k is a good goal number.  10k was too doable, and 15k is a little further of a stretch than I had thought.  Again, I did a fair share of the words on the blog, still around 55%.  I'm so close to the ending of the NaNo novel that it's irritating. 
• Raced well!  The first trail run was a success, though I'm still hurting from the second trail run. I have learned my lesson: be much more discerning when signing up for another trail run.  Looking back at my training log, I was less consistent this month. A couple weeks were good; a couple weeks had nothing. My schedule is getting tweaked a bit starting in March, so I'm hoping that will help.  
• I upped my artsy quotient this month with a concert at Luna and seeing Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead with the girls.  I'm now re-reading Hamlet because I'm not sure how I feel about an actor's take on their character and want to formulate my own opinion before I comment on it.  Look for the review soon!
• Cooking skills were definitely worked this month.  Valentine's Day dinner was a blast.  Homemade doughnuts went over well at work!   Loved making salads in class; mine turned out awesome. I killed at making the sauces in class. I am not doing a very good job of feeding myself.  I tended to eat more fast food than real food.  That goes along with my spending comments above.  My sister has given me a new mantra to help with this goal: "Cut that s**t out!"  
• Had a little breakdown in the middle of the month, but got through it.  I think it helped me grow some and realize some things.  I'm a hyper-planner and a dreamer, so I'm dreaming of life a few years from now.  It's not really conducive to living in the moment.

Again, a month well lived.  I realize now how much I actually did in February- and how much fun I had at the movies, runs, write-ins, girl chats, everything.  The time between drags and stalls, but looking back, those bright lights are going to be the things I remember.

I know there are still more bright lights to come this year.  

No More Car Loan!

No more car loan! La La La!

I am super excited. I love my car and now it's really mine! Not the bank's!

So most people won't talk about their finances, but this is something that I think people can benefit from seeing how possible it is to get out of debt, and how rewarding it is!

I've been working hard the last few years to get out of debt. I'm loosely following Dave Ramsey's program.  I say loosely because I still do a fair amount of luxury spending, like the TV/DVD I bought for my kitchen last month and the new vacuum cleaner in December. I also use credit cards for my daily expenses instead of cash.

I am currently still on Baby Step #2- "The Debt Snowball," but so far I've paid off over $10,000 in credit card debt. It's kind of embarrassing to admit I had that much debt in the first place, but it was a product of a time in my life that I needed to grow out of. Paying off the credit card debt made it possible for me to not be so dependent to my salary.  I am now putting 35% of my salary toward paying off debt.

I am a huge fan of not having car payments. I hadn't had a car payment for a couple years, but last summer when my car's A/C went out, the car wasn't worth the cost to get it fixed. So, I got a brand new car, a cute little Scion xD that makes me feel cooler just driving it. I was able to throw 15-20% of my salary to my new car each month. Now I've paid it off in ten months- four years ahead of the loan schedule! It was mostly possible because I received a very nice bonus this year, but I've been consistently hacking away at it since I got the car.

I still have my second mortgage (29.5% of current salary) and my student loan (39.9%) to go. I'm lucky that my cooking classes count towards letting me defer the student loan payments so I can chunk the little extra at the second mortgage.  The interest rate on the second mortgage just irks me when I see the balance creep up every day.  The current plan is to pay off the second mortgage by June 2011 and the student loan by December 2012. As I focus on the second mortgage, I'll be allocating a third of my income to it. It's still a long road to go, but I've hit a major way point in getting there.

When all of this is over, I'll be able to live on a little more than half of my current salary. It means being able to max out retirement contributions. It means being able to travel. It means I am no longer chained to an IT salary.  It means that there are many other possibilities.  Now THAT is freeing.

January Wrap-Up

So I have some pretty lofty goals for 2010.  Only one month in, how am I doing?

• Read 3 books: Terrier; Women, Work, and the Art of Savoir Faire; Chalice.  In progress on two others: Love in the Time of Cholera, Angel Time.  Means I'm slightly behind on my book-a-week goal, but it's probably a "stretch" goal anyway. 
• Splurged on a TV/DVD combo for the kitchen so I can have something to watch when I'm cooking. Otherwise I'm well on my way toward paying off my car.  My tax refund is in, and in the next few weeks I should be getting my company's bonus.  I'm hoping that will take care the rest of the balance, but I'll have to wait to see.  Keeping my fingers crossed for a good performance review.  I'm nervous! 
• Wrote 10,134 words in January!  My blog accounted for 57% of the total, so for February, I'm going to try to write more on my novel than I do on my blog.  But so far I've been consistent at writing every few days, and that's a good sign!
• Raced well. I've decided on a couple of trail runs to do as my February runs.  The last couple of weeks had a good schedule of workouts and combination of running and lifting weights. 
• Attended a Symphony concert.   Was inspired.  I definitely should do that more often.
• Challenged my cooking skills!  My mom asked for one of Paula Deen's Gooey Butter Cakes for her birthday, pictured above.  It was easier to make than I was expecting, but it was very well received at her party.  My niece Ava bounced very happily when she got some.  I also was responsible for bringing breakfast for my team at work earlier this month.  I brought in smoked salmon on wheat pancakes and fruit with cream cheese frosting on sugar crackers.  The guys at work cleaned me out of the fruit things because most of them got queasy at the thought of salmon. 

The year has gone well so far.  This month was filled with more good days than bad, several inspiring moments, and increasing amounts of hope for the future.  I know they can't all be this good, but I shall revel in the small accomplishments.  January has been a month well lived.

Welcome 2010!

So tomorrow marks a new year. I look back on what I did in 2009 and am proud of myself. I didn't set any resolutions last year, but I think it served me well. At that point, I don't think I was able to look outside the rut I was in. The first half of the year I didn't do much but wallow.

But in the summer things started turning around. I challenged myself in other endeavors that I think are starting to round me out as a person the way other things I've done haven't. And while I have only dipped my toe in the water, both culinary arts and writing feel like other avenues that I might be successful in. It's too soon to tell, but I remain hopeful and eager to see what will happen there.

I just turned 27, and now it feels like 30 is just way too close. It got me thinking of a few things that I want to accomplish before I turn 30:

- Make my own birthday cake, complete with fondant and decorations.
- Run a marathon.
- Be debt-free other than my mortgage.
- Have a query-able novel manuscript.

Those goals lead naturally into my 2010 resolutions. Being a compulsive overachiever, I must admit I have many more goals than this, but here's a few to share.

- Read 50 books, at least 5 of which are non-fiction.
- Pay off the loan on the brand-new car I bought in 2009.
- Finish my NaNo 2009 novel.
- Run a race every month, any distance.

But my most important goal is something that I'm notoriously bad at doing. Don't lose connections with people. That's something I really need to be better about. The people that mean a lot to me deserve better than that.

While I may not be staying up to see the new year in its first moments, I would like to think of it not as the tragic nature of a homebody, but as a chance to greet the new year refreshed and ready to go.