Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Skiing & Boarding!

We're off in the mountains right now! It's gorgeous but I forgot how sore I would be! It's been a good 7 years since I went boarding and it shows. T skiies but right now he is switching to a board to join me in learning. Things like that are part of why I love him.

T on skiies and his brother on a board were way better and and faster than me which means they are always waiting for me. I keep telling them to go ahead but they don't. Then I feel bad...

So it will be fun having everyone on a board.

How do you handle it when others are better than you and you feel like you are dragging them down?

Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has had wonderful day of family, fun and love. :-)

I have had a lovely vacation so far and it's not even half over! I'm am exhausted but in the good way! I'll share some of the gifts I received that should help with some of my personal goals for 2010!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Monday, December 21, 2009

How Gifts Change

I was at the mall with my niece today; she's 13 and the tom-boy type. It was interesting to hear her perspective on gifts. She said she doesn't get friends gifts; they just give a candy cane and say Merry Christmas. They did gifts in 6th and 7th grade and realized it was silly! When she shops for family, she is more focused on just getting something than finding something the person will really like.

For me, finding the perfect present for people is the toughest and best part about Christmas. I will confess... I'm not great at receiving gifts, but I LOVE giving them. Over the years Christmas has become more and more about seeing things that remind me a person and just getting them, even if I hadn't planned on it. (Within reason of course!) This year I still have a few more gifts to get, and a few family members that I'm really just not sure what to get them. In those case, I go with experiences: restaurant gift cards, tickets to something.

What do you do when you just can't find a good gift for someone?

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Craziness of the Holidays

I'm heading out of town today... I was supposed to head out yesterday, but that NorEaster delayed my plans! I'll post occasionally while I'm gone, but I hope everyone has a fantastic holidays.

Per usual, I'm a bit sick. Whenever I slow down, I tend to get sick a little. Perhaps that should be a goal for the new year: Not getting sick when I go on vacation!

Given my prerogative to be 3 months forward I got a lot of my Christmas shopping ahead of time. This not only helps with the stress, but with the budget as well. In fact, in Christmas shopping I found a book for T for Valentine's Day already! However, since I've started ahead of time, I tend to figure I'll be fine. Then the week before hand I realize how much I have left to do!

Happy Holidays to All!

Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Week's Favorites!

Here are a few articles that I really enjoyed from this week! I hope you enjoy them as well :-)

Jonathan over at Awake@theWheel has a fantastic reminder to make sure you have a trajectory
I feel like this is something I am always trying to remember, but the craziness of day to day activities distracts me!

We're Only Human has a interesting article on working memory and parenting: Remembering who is the parent!

The Happiness Project has a nice article on how letting go of your resolutions made lead to you completing them. Thanks stress reduction!

Simple Organized Life covered one of my favorite and most battled topics: Keeping my home office organized! Check it out for some good tips... although I'm not sure I can stop myself from keeping extra supplies in my desk!

Friday, December 18, 2009

2009 Job Goals

And finally, goals for my other job in 2009:

1) Organize Office: C+, it’s better than last year! I have a bookshelf now, and my calendar is better kept, but my files still have a long way to go

2) More involvement with various departments: B, I have been trying to spent more time going to various departments and I am feeling more comfortable. I can’t get into this too much without losing my anonymity.

3) Develop more intense specialized training: B+, I am leading the group developing a multi-year training so that is good. I do still want to have some smaller trainings for those not in the multi-year group and for new employees.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

2009 Self-Business Goals

My Goals for my own business in 2009:

1) At least 1 day off a week & still make 25K: A+, I rarely worked Sundays (rare occasions) and usually half day on Saturday. I hit the 25K mark in November!

2) Further develop consulting side: D+, I have worked hard to train therapists well and begin having more monthly meetings and provide more resources to parents, but I have really standardized any of it.

3) Keep client files current: C, My clients files update at least 1-2 times a month, and I’m always a little bit behind… it’s getting better, slowly!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

2009 Personal Goals

Here are my 3 personal goals for 2009:

1) Go to gym consistently/train for runs: C+, I was doing okay for a little while. Then just one of getting sick back and forth and life… and the training didn’t go so well. I still ran my whole marathon, just VERY slowly! I have been going to the gym about 2-3 a week right now and I want to up that starting January.

2) Have people over at least 2X/month: C-, during the summer, we had people over almost every weekend for BBQ. However, during spring and fall it was much less frequent. In fact, it was almost non-existent during the fall.

3) Volunteer & Donate at least 1X/month: B+, this summer I became a volunteer instructor for the Red Cross and have instructed twice. (Their schedule and mine don’t match very well.) Hopefully in a month or two I will start volunteering at a local hospital too. I have averaged a small donation each month!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

2009 House Goals

Here are my 2009 House Goals:

1) Improve the Yard: B, this was mainly T’s doing (often with my funding!). We sodding some of yard that was just dirt. We have guys who come cut the grass and take away the leaves every other week (that’s on T’s budget), and we spent some time trying to put in some flowers, although neither of us have a green thumb.

2) Organize Office: D! When T moved in this summer, we did managed to get both of our office furniture in there and arranged, but it is a still a mess. Things pile up, and my papers are just not organized enough. While I did do a little here and there, it has a long way to go!

3) Home Inventory: C-: I have made a video walking through the house. However, that is all I have done and its just on a computer, not remotely backed up anywhere.

Perhaps I should keep most of these… on the flip side here are the house projects I did accomplish:
1) Solar Panels!
2) New Roof (thanks hail storm!)
3) Painted the garage floor
4) More or less merged furniture with T
5) Bought a nice dinning room table

Monday, December 14, 2009

2009 Goal Review

At the beginning of the year, I set some goals for myself.

I broke my goals into 5 categories:
1) Finances
2) House
3) Personal
4) Self Business
5) Job

Each day this week, I'll go through one of them and give the update on how I did.

Today: Finances!
1) Save $1000/mo into a savings account to pay off the 0% credit card due Jan 10: A+! I already paid the entire balance a month ahead of time.

2) Save an additional $500/mo for travel, life etc.: A-, I saved over 6000 and used it to by solar panels for the house. So yes on the savings! And I was able to afford the little trips I took as well.

3) Pay off the remainder of the loan from my mom for my house downpayment ($6200): C, I have paid $2400 so far this year (which is the usual for my $200/mo repayment plan.) I hope to give another $1000 at least at Christmas... right now the balance is at 3800.

I will also start working on my 2010 goals and have those up in the next week or two!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Exam Morning / Dream Paranoia

Good morning... I woke up a little after 5am having weird dreams about how I overscheduled myself (as usual) and had no time to study. I stayed in bed until about 6:40, and now its up and studying!

I essentially have 12 hours to study, shower, eat a little, and make it to the exam.

I am one of those people who often remembers my dreams. Most of the time, I can pick out what parts came what what events during the day. Sort of some convoluted attempt of my mind to organize itself. I feel like my mind likes to organize the same way I do... dump EVERYTHING out, attempt to sort through it, then hope I have enough energy left to put it back where it belongs. Perhaps those tired mornings are the ones where everything is still in a pile on the floor of my mind.

So last night's, I went to work, had printer trouble, forgot about an observation at work, went to some weird christmas show/rodeo/variety show I was supposed to go to. When I woke up from the dream, I had less than 4 hours to study. My mind compensated for this by making sure I had a good 12 hours to study.

This time I forced myself now to schedule anything for this entire day. I'm working at home for a little, then it's off to the bookstore for the rest of the day.

After this I should be able to focus more on writing coherent posts!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Waking Up Tired

Every have one of those mornings where you wake up and feel like you've already been through an entire day and someone is playing a mean trick on you. That was me this morning... if it wasn't for my wonderful man and the friendly Starbucks barista guy, I'm not sure I would have made it through the day. As it is, it's 9:30pm and I'm about to head in bed as T heads downtown!

Any ideas on preventing waking up tired? Let's hope it doesn't happen again tomorrow...

Tomorrow's agenda starts with a vet appointment at 7am and ends at a jewelry party around 8:30, with no break in between. Hopefully, I can find a few minutes to study and a few more minutes for T....

Goodnight everyone!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Great Articles from the Week!

The Wisdom Journal has a nice article with a general overall tip as well as a specific recommendation. As he says, Don't Wait Until January 1st - Button Up Your Life Now!

Frugality as a Necessary Evil? An interesting concept over at Get Rich Slowly, and I think it's true as a general rule. And perhaps not intense gazelle like frugality, but at least "reasonable living"! That means WITHIN your means!

Stacking Pennies had an article that really resonated with me... she said a seemingly simple, yet rather hard Dec/Jan goal for herself... more on this in a later post!

And congrats to Jenny at Life After College for being the #1 Gen Y Blog!!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Optimism of Morning

I am a morning person. I fought it for a while, but finally my junior year of college came to realize I was at my best sleeping from about 10pm-6am.

Now I can easily accomplish 5x as much from 6am-8am than I can from 8pm on... it's almost ridiculous.

But I know why... it's the Optimism of Morning. At 6am, the sun is just beginning to rise I have the whole day ahead of my to accomplish whatever it is I need to accomplish. At 8pm that's just not the case.

I start each day with an extensive to do list and barrel through as much as I can. Do I do the easy or hard tasks first? Depends. I just push as much as I can before the day takes control and I've lost all track of what's going on.

As the sun lowers, so does my mood. What happen to all my great productivity plans for the day?! How did I not accomplish those few simple things...

So I curl up with my man, practice being thankful for him, and drift to sleep...

Exams!

This semester, on a whim regarding some possible future plans, I decided to take a class. The class is an old enemy of sorts that still haunts me from my undergraduate days. However, in my decisions regarding my future I ended up taking two tough courses and one self-paced online course. A little more than I bargained for... given I have two jobs already, one of which is my own business (that is not home based.)

So I have one exam this evening, a probably final next Thursday, and another final Saturday night. (Yes, Saturday night... big university equal bad exam times.)

I have this propensity to always take on more than I really should be able to handle. I'm sure I am not alone in this aspect. As T tells me, "When your worklife goes down your personal life goes up and vice versa." Is there a way to avoid such an unfair exchange?

Now it's time to study...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Team Mentality

Last night I did a Team Fitness group at my gym. They offered the first two days free so you could come check it out. During the day I had started listening to Keith Ferrazzi's book Who's Got Your Back which begins with a story about the woman who started Weight Watchers.
Both the book and the Team class stress the importance of having a support system in order to make true progress on your goals. Personally, I am a rather independent woman who usually tries to do things by herself. Receiving help can be hard for me, yet I do crave it.

Last summer, the boyfriend, T, and I ran a marathon. When we first signed up we were going to do it. But an illness, followed by lots of other random events, and we barely trained much less together.

I've been getting the emails to register for the marathon again... and I want to. The choice is to do it alone or have T do it with me again. If we do it together, I really want to do it together. There is something sweet about making a plan and accomplishing it as a couple. This morning he told me he would run it with me, so we are going to sign up tonight.

Here's to creating a support system... I'll cover this topic more in a future post.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Inaugural Post!

Welcome to Three Months Forward! The meaning in the name is from a friend a mine who always told me I like to plan three months in advance and seem to think everyone else does.

This blog will be a combination of a variety of topic: money, love, friendship, travel, trying to do too much while feeling like there is always more to be done! You know, life...

Feel free to comment as much as you like!