Hmm, it seems so strange to write that date. It still seems so far in the future, and impossible date, like when you are 16 and imagine being 40something. It will never get here, and yet, here it is.

I’ve been thinking a bit about goals for the new year, as most of us tend to do after Christmas, and I have reached a few decisions. No really grand schemes, but a year I plan to spend doing the little things that make me who I am. No big vacations, no weird purchases, not even humidifier filters, but a year of quiet pleasures. I’m thinking that a gal whose kids have planned visitations with their other parent ought to have plenty of time for dates with herself. For me, 2010 will be the year of

• burned candles
• snapped photographs
• read books
• watched movies
• finished projects
• studied Word
• reclaimed self

There is one other thing I want to do this coming year, a bigger thing, and it will require a great deal of thought and prayer on my part. This year, I want to be a life-giver. That probably seems like a weird statement coming from a woman who has given birth eight times, but I am not talking about physical life. I am reminded that the power of life and death is in the tongue, and this year, I want to build people up with my words and not tear them down, to speak the truth in love and with kindness, to cultivate that meek and quiet spirit that is so precious in His sight. That last will take the rest of my life to master, and if I ever think I have attained it, it will be lost again.

So, as I was going through my feedreader this morning, I saw this from Booking Through Thursday:

Happy New Year, everyone!

So … any Reading Resolutions? Say, specific books you plan to read? A plan to read more ____? Anything at all?

Name me at least ONE thing you’re looking forward to reading this year!

and I decided to use it as a springboard for my yearly goal post, because, yes I do have reading goals, and lots of other goals, too.

This year, I want to read the rest of the Harry Potter books. And my TBR pile. In fact, I am going to set a lofty goal of a book per week. Crazy, right? If I aim for the moon, perhaps I will reach the stars.

This year, I want to use up the craft stuff I already have, and not buy more.

This year, I want to exercise. In fact, I want to be able to play the card squat game up to 10 cards by the end of the year. I’ll have to post a video of the card squat game so you will know that this is a serious event.

This year, I want to learn to play guitar. I have the instrument, I have the learning dvd. All that remains is to make and take the time to learn.

This year, I want to clean the house. I’ve kept hoping for something bigger, but it hasn’t happened, so this year, I am purposing to make our stuff smaller.

This year, I think I want to do project 365. I guess I need to make up my mind, huh? I used to do a photo a day, and it was a love/hate relationship for me.

This year, I want to send my kids to booty camp. They need to learn to do what they are told, come when they are called and speak when they are spoken to.

And on that note, I guess I just committed to Project 365. I may or not actually scrap the pictures in a book, but here’s the first one.

Notice the five booty camp recruits. (The other two are not yet home from a retreat.) Notice that one girl is holding a HP book, and one is holding 10 cards. Notice that my oldest son is holding my guitar for me. Notice that the girls are sitting on the clean counter I cleared last night. Maybe I should try again. I forgot to have some one hold craft stuff.

There, that’s a bit better. This time I included the craft stuff, and there are two children holding five cards each, (DaBaby lowered hers as I snapped) since I could play card squat through five cards when my nephew and sister taught it to me.

Please note that there are no goals here about money and there are no goals here about people who are beyond my control. I have no idea about my finances at this point, and I have learned that making goals that involve other autonomous people is setting yourself up for big fat failure.

IF I was to set one goal that involved others, it would be going to see Ang. this year. But that means I have to have a sitter, and a sitter falls in to the category of “other autonomous people”.

That was my weight this morning. I guess stress is almost as effective as Fenphedra
when it comes to weight loss. I’m not real thrilled with the cause, but as long as I have been wanting to lose the weight, I’ll take it. I mean, I have been dieting since January, but suddenly, I am just..not very hungry, and the weight is just …going. Odd. Maybe that whole “computers put your brain and metabolism to sleep” stuff is true, LOL!

While I am here, and by here I happen to mean the library, let me tell you what else is going on with my goals and aspirations. Doesn’t that sound so …. BIG? Haha! Anyway, I’m still reading, and this time it’s the third Harry Potter. I’m churning through a custom knitting order, and I’m singing. That’s right! In fact, I have a practice tonight that will probably lead to singing in church Sunday.

And speaking of church, I sure had a blessing yesterday. Someone said something to me Sunday when I was buzzing around doing 47 different things to get ready for 62 more, and I missed that thing. Mama happened to hear it and she repeated it to me yesterday. I’m a blessing, apparently. Does it seem odd to you that being called a blessing would be a blessing to me? Well, it is. As you know, I am in a very discouraging time right now. Even in the midst of that, though, I am attempting to keep on doing what I know needs to be done. And you know how sometimes it seems like no one notices what you do? Well now I know someone notices.

And speaking of library, let me apologize for the way my blog looks in whatever version of Internet Explorer I am using here. Blech! I’ll look into it when I have my system back. Also, please forgive any typos. My FireFox catches those, but IE does not.

Ok, I think I have rambled long enough here, don’t you?

Well, I guess I should break the silence, eh? After I posted about my lack of time and general frazzled-ness, I spent some time thinking. I feel like I have to much to do, becasue I have a metric ton of things to do. And so I spent the last two days reviewing a huge stack of books that had been sitting there by my desk giving me guilt. Books, done. Yay, me! Now I can turn my attention to other things.

Like video. That’s right, I’ve decided to branch out into video, and I have actually shot a few over the past couple of days. I used Windows Movie Maker to do my editing, but then tonight, I read this Blaze Media Pro review on Gadget Advisor and I’m thinking I might need to check it out. WMM does the job, but I couldn’t figure out how to mute just a split second of sound on it, so I had to cut more of my movie than I wanted to. If the Blaze Media Pro can do everything but the dishes, then surely I can cut one word out of a video, right?

As for the rest of my list, I’m not sure Gadget Advisor can help me. A new MSI x58 Eclipse motherboard may speed up my system, and the best extensions for Firefox may boost my productivity a bit, but in the end, it’s time management/goal setting and some boundaries that are going to allow me to get more done. Or less, depending. You know, less isn’t necessarily bad, particularly when you replace the things on your list with people you love.

I think maybe tomorrow, I’ll be tackling something else. Uploading my SPS to flickr? Maybe so.

So, basically, I suck and I suck. I read three items: two books and a magazine. And I gained six tenths of a pound. But I also had the flu for 10 days and worked 16 hours a day anyway. I am so stinking tired! I want to sleep! I want to spend time with my kids! I want to blog! You know what I need? A wife. And if I can’t have a wife, I need Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, as recommended by Lisa.

Brett likes it, too. Check this out:

Here is another great video review by Lisa, who coincidently writes the blog Lisa Reviews. She writes about how she can write at 150 words per minute with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

I think one of the key takeaways from her video, the key insight that is, is that she is able to write a lot more in those spare moments of time that she has while she’s doing other things. Sometimes it’s great to multitask, but it’s even more important to be able to accomplish useful goals in those spare two or three or four minute pockets of time that we all experience throughout the day.

With Dragon NaturallySpeaking a four minute pocket of time can translate into 600 words! That could be three or four e-mails or one or two long blog articles if you’re a blogger like Lisa.
Slick

For just $99 you can get started with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and have it trained in running in about seven minutes. The software with version 10 is simply amazing.

I have been writing about Dragon NaturallySpeaking for almost 2 years now. I have been able to type at rates of up to 167 words per minute with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. That speed was clocked while I was taking a typing test, but even in practical situations when I factor in not only the time it takes to type, but the time that it also takes to edit the words I typed, the end result is that I can still achieve about 100 words a minute, INCLUDING editing time! J

That is extremely fast, and the inclusion of editing time, speaks to the advances that you can see in version 10 as compared to older versions such as version 8 or version 9. It’s a lot easier to edit on the fly with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.

So if you’re looking for a practical tool for your home office, for your writing or blog work, or even just to keep up with e-mail in your spare time, Dragon NaturallySpeaking can give you the power to write at 150 words a minute for a price that starts at $99. Heck, I think I paid that much almost for my last keyboard so that I wouldn’t pound my fingers to death.

Sincerely,
Brett Bumeter
Softduit Media
www.softduit.com
PS this article includes about 376 words that I wrote with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. It took me about 3 1/2 minutes to write and edit this article, which is just a little bit better than 100 words per minute and that includes editing time.

Man, he’s wordy, isn’t he? And to think that I sat here and typed those long posts I wrote this week. Obviously, I need to get with the program. If I could blog in my spare minutes….man, I could dictate my blog posts in the morning in odd pockets of time between this and that student/chore/distraction while my mind is still working and then edit/publish them in the afternoon during quiet time, and I wouldn’t be sitting here at ..what time is it??…. 8:20pm while my family is watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks without me.

Cause in the morning, when I am still smart, I say twitter stuff like this:

Dear Blog, I want to come into your inner, secret areas and leave a deposit of warm words on your public face. Why have you locked me out?

But now? All I have are memories of wit, and pitiful tweets like this:

just can’t make my brain work

So, I made it. here I am for the second week in a row to let you know about the progress I have made on my goals. Yay! I guess that means that telling you about my goals is now a goal. HA!

On the weight front: minus one pound to 152.6. I was hoping for more than this since I know I burned about 10,000 calories mowing the yards this week. But, I also ate fast food Saturday and had a family reunion on Sunday, and treated myself to this after I finished the yards:

It was a real rough day. And the fun didn’t end there, because on Wednesday morning, dh called his boss and quit his job. That’s a mixed bag, since it was costing so much in gas for him to continue driving all over the place, but… *gulp* he quit his job. You can expect me to be talking about new financial goals next week, I guess.

And on reading, not so great. I did take three items off the pile, but I added about five. I did not meet my goal of one item off the pile per day, but it was indeed a crazy week. I went over to Mama’s on Wednesday afternoon and stayed until 9 beading, and then I went back on Thursday morning and stayed until 9pm again. I got a lot of pieces made, but I didn’t have the mental energy needed to read after that. I may need some accountability help in that regard, ya think? Although, I am not holding the lack of reading against myself considering what I got done. Also, you should totally check out my awesome handmade jewelry. It’s gorgeous, and I need money. HA!

Well, then, it appears that it might be time to bring ya’ll up to date on some of the goals I have set for myself. I have good news and bad news.
Weight first. Last week, you may recall that I said nothing about my weight. That is because I was too embarrassed to say that I had gained a pound. And also, because I remembered telling you all the send someone to paddle me if I didn’t stick to the plan I set up. Well, I knew I had gained because of the Orlando trip, and when I got home, I didn’t quite stick to the plan. Oops. This week, however I am back on track, and I’ve lost 1.2 pounds from last week. My new weight is 153.6. When I started on September 5th, it was 153.8. So yeah, a whole month, and I’m basically the same. Yay me. Or not, but whatever, there it is. This week I lost weight.

Magazine and other reading second. I committed to reading one magazine per practice day not too long ago, and that worked for me for a while. Then, I started walking with a friend during practices, then the sun started setting earlier, and then I got a butt load of knitting and cooking books to review over at Cass Knits! and well….this is what my read it pile looks like now:

Plus the ones in the basket in my room. Yeah, so obviously, the thing about one per practice day is not going to cut it, and I am going to be forced to take drastic measures here. I am going to be forced to commit to reading every day. For an hour. See, here is the problem: I love love love to read. The drive to read is second only to the drive to create for me. And so I see both reading and creating as rewards. I only do them if I have everything else done. And as many times as I have told myself I should be nicer to me, it isn’t happening, at least not in regards to the creating and reading. So right this minute, I am going to my Google calendar, and I am typing in read for an hour, and setting it to “daily”. The crafting, I’ll deal with after football season, when I will once again take Saturdays to feed the muse.

K. So that’s where I am in these two areas and a roadmap for how to get where I want to be. If I don’t keep my goals this time, instead of sending someone, feel free to come yourself.

Sorry, ya’ll, I spent Friday in a spin, remember? I never got my weekly weight posted, though I did get on the scale. I have to tell you, I was pretty scared. I came back weighing a bit more than I did when I left, and truly, I expected it, because….well, when I travel certain things just stop working like they should, and that’s all I will say about that. Once I got back home, things started getting back to normal, and I lost quite steadily all through the week, ending up at 152.8, down a pound since September 5th. Not quite goal, but I was happy with it, since I spent 5 days eating restaurant food, and maybe having a few drinks. *cough*

Now that I am back home, I am continuing to walk during practices, but it is sure getting nippy out there in the evenings. I don’t think I will much be wanting to go outside for walking once practices end, so I am looking at alternatives. I’ve been thinking for awhile that I want to try yoga, but I am not sure that assuming contortionist positions that leave me precariously balanced is the wisest course of action, living here as I do with lots of active little people. I’ve been thinking I would be better off with some sort of dance or aerobics, and if they could join me, well that would be good, too.

With all that in mind, I was intrigued when I saw this XFLOWSION contest. XFLOWSION combines dance, power yoga and martial arts into a program that promises to burn fat and tone muscle. That translates to less jiggle in my wiggle, and that would suit me just fine. It was designed by Eric Paskel, who has trained some fine Hollywood hotties, and if it’s good enough for Hollywood, it’s good enough for me. At least as far as exercise. Some of that other Hollywood stuff, I’m just not real sure about, but we won’t go there just now, either.

Now listen: there is no getting around the fact that this post is compensated, but you know I would not lie to you. The reason I am writing this post is not for the money. No. I want the videos. They are offering 20 bloggers the exercise DVDs, and I want them, because I think they will genuinely meet the need I have for fun exercise that I can do with the kids around. And maybe they will join me and not laugh at me, and then that’s just an all around win, don’t you think?