2009 Resolutions at 7:45 PM

Just before the new year is a week old, I'm posting the ol' resolutions for this year. We won't talk about last year's resolutions, because I tried something a little different (remember the year of the month?), and kind of fizzled out around March. So I've got a few things I want to get done this year:

1. Lose 30 pounds
Right now I'm about 35 pounds lighter than I was this time last year, so I know it's possible. Losing another 30 will get me down to about 200. It can be done! We joined a gym in late November and I've been going three times a week since then. I also finally got serious about dieting around September and dropped about 20 pounds in 3 months. So I'm pretty confident that I can keep going.

2. Blog once a week
I know, I've said it before, but I'm putting a number on it this time. That will give me 52 posts this year if I keep it to only once a week, which would be more than 2008's 37 posts. As of now I've set my blog day to Thursday, which is 2 days after my column day. I'm a day early this week.

3. Organize memories
I've got hours of home video that I haven't even transferred from the mini DV tapes on which they were recorded. So this year it all gets transferred to the computer, edited, and turned into an ISO file, to reside on an external hard drive in addition to a DVD format. And that's just the video side of things. I'm also going to come up with a system for organizing my photos (I haven't decided on one yet - Picasa? Flickr? Just put them on the hard drive and organize by folder? I don't know.) But I'll figure that out and make it easy to perpetuate the photo organization.

4. Stick to the Budget
Yeah, this one's a given. But this year we've got a system. The wife and I will track the finances together instead of only having one of us do it, and we'll meet once a week to sum up what we did, where our budgets are, and that way we won't just ignore the fact that we're spending way too much on groceries and eating out until the 15th of the next month when all the expenses are finally tracked. I'm just sayin, that's not the most effective method.

5. Get the House Where We Want It
Or at least have a plan of action to finish what we can't afford this year. There's a lot of projects that we need to start in the house to make it a more pleasant place. The problem is not wanting to put a lot of money into the house that we're not going to get back. But we at least want to paint, and get the place decorated to where it's nice to look at. We're just incredibly lazy when it comes to beautifying the house. Upkeep? No problem. Making it "homey" or whatever? That we could work on. The first thing on the list is to paint our bedroom, which has walls resembling a jungle. It's kind of like living in a safari. After that's done, I can move the desk into the bedroom from the basement and have a decent workspace where the kids don't mess with all the stuff in the desk. I can't even work there now because it drives me nuts. But that's a whole different rant that I'm not going to get into.

I think that's about it. I also generally want to be more organized with my time, but that's way too general and broad a goal to even expand upon just now. For the moment, I think those five will suffice.