Delirity

It’s been busy around here recently. My mom came up for a visit last weekend for my birthday, Jesse finished up all his make-up finals (the ones that got snowed out), we had a meeting with our financial planner, Jesse had a thyroid disorders seminar and we went out with his mentor (the guy he’ll be working with in SD for a while after graduation) and his wife.

The funny thing is that I know this isn’t too much more than normal, but thanks to my awesome auto-immune hypothyroidism (hashimoto’s), things feel busy. The blood test results I just got back indicate that a little piece of my thyroid died off recently – which totally explains why I’ve been having trouble focusing on even simple tasks and getting things done. Hopefully now that I’ve upped my Armour dose things will be back to “normal” soon.

Since my brain hasn’t been in the mood to handle too much, I decided that now would be a good time to finally watch some videos on the internet that I’ve been meaning to check out. I found them completely worthwhile and am glad I finally got around to watching them.

• The Story of Stuff
• Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

Just a quick update on how my goals are going so far after 1 week of working on them:

1. Recommit to Flylady - Jesse is still figuring out how to follow the 15 minute missions. I’ve been spending a little time each day working on the detailed cleaning lists.

2. Continual Reassessment of Finances - We have a meeting with a financial planner on Monday. I’m rounding up all the information she needs (not too hard since I track all our finances on the computer) so we’ll be ready!

3. Run 250 miles - 5 miles down so far (and I’m off to do a few more right now) - completed in the freezing weather and even on some ice! If I do 5 miles a week I’ll surpass my goal.

4. Watch AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies Top 10 - I’ve got Citizen Kane in hand, just need to watch it. Jesse is board with this goal too, so it’ll be something nice for the two of us to do together.

5. Find 5 Ways that I Want to Give Every Year - No progress yet. But, I have been reading Your Money Or Your Life and working through some Dave Ramsey stuff and these touch on the ideas of giving and community. This is something I won’t be working on much until at least February.

I love reading. I’ve always loved reading. And I’ve thought about joining a local book club as a way to meet some new people. The problem is – I don’t always enjoy talking about books. As a way to ease myself into the book club idea I’m going to take part in Simple Mom’s book club. No, I’m not a mom, but the books look interesting. And the discussion is online which I think will help me ease into the talking about books thing.

Today I went and bought the first book at Borders (ugh, something I hate to do – but it was going to take me forever to get through the library/paperback swap and I couldn’t find it at goodwill) with an old gift card and a nice $5 off coupon.  I’ve read the chapter for the week and so far am totally impressed with the book (and the discussion online!). If you join, I’m delirity on the forum.

Here’s what we’re reading (I’ve got all the books on order w/ Paperback Swap and am hoping to get them that way or at Goodwill): 

Your Money or Your Life 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder

For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men

It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families

As I said before, 2009 is going to hold some major changes for us. That makes goal setting for the new year a little difficult, but here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. Recommit to Flylady - Since Jesse doesn’t have as much time commitment this quarter at school, he’s actually doing a lot of this. With 2 of us doing a little bit everyday, I don’t see why either of us should have to do major cleaning sprees again.

2. Continual Reassessment of Finances - All the changes in 2009 are going to have a major impact on our finances. I’d love to make some goals about debt reduction, but I’m not confident enough with the situation to start making decisions about agressive payments.  My focus for the first half of the year will be making sure that we’ve got access to cash that will get us through any unpaid period that Jesse is in San Diego, making sure to pay down Jesse’s loan interest before it turns into priniciple, re-evaluating all our insurance, and figuring out any places we might be able to cut back to have a little more flexibility. This will also include me doing a lot of finance reading.

3. Run 250 miles - I did 150 this year in ~6 months (of course, my primary focus was running). 250 miles sounds like a reasonable amount for me to do in my 2nd year of running while reincorporating other activities as well. This is part of a longer term goal to get into significantly better health. Eventually I’m aiming for a weight of 140, a stable thyroid, and being able to fight off almost any cold that comes my way.

4. Watch AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Movies Top 10 - Citizen Kane, The Godfather (I’ll actually be watching all of them), Casablanca, Raging Bull, Singin’ in the Rain, Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List, Vertigo, The Wizard of Oz. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve only seen 2 of these in my life. So, this year I’ll remedy the situation.

5. Find 5 Ways that I Want to Give Every Year - After my December giving focus, I realize that it’s important to give in ways that matter personally. For me, a big issue is focusing my giving on my community (or, my future community since I know where we’ll eventually be settling down). I’m not 100% what’s out there, so I’m going to do some research to figure out what events or charities there are that I want to be a part of.