This is my life right now… Cleaning one thing has led to cleaning several other things. I might be stuck here for days with no end in sight…
Wish me luck…
Archives
My Plan for the Weekend
Well other than working and seeing the boy, here is my current dilemma:
What my closet looks like now:
What it will look like after Monday:
So this isn’t entirely true. My closet is actually more similar to the end goal, just a bit disorganized (I’m way too organized to just throw things wherever). My current problem is that I’m not quite sure what all I have and I think I need to go through things and find a better way to organize them.
I realized this when I fell in love with these:
But, I have tons of jewelry I never wear! It’s all compacted in a carrying case, so I never see it. So I think my real goal here is to figure out what I have and make use of that before I go out and buy a bunch of new pieces.
November Resolution Check In
So it’s the first day of November 2011… Time to check in on our resolutions/Bucket Lists again!
Here is the numbered list I made back on January first:
1. Travel: Travel is still just Vegas, possibly? Probably? I am going to California for Allie’s wedding in December/January. Lilac and I were talking about a trip to Montana and Wyoming at some point. Because she was shocked I’d never been to Wyoming.
2. Get an apartment: The story here is the same as it is every month, pretty much. But I might be changing career fields completely, so we’ll see.
3. Get a car. (See above)
4. Keep blogging: As of today, November first, this is my 300 and somethingth post. I don’t know. I have some drafts I need to get on posting.
Notes from last time:
The Beauty Bootcamp is going well thanks to an app on my baby.
As far as visiting the alma mater, I have been there three times in October.
And from 24 by 24 (I’ll only list the ones with some headway that haven’t been mentioned above):
11. Watch Titanic sixteen more times. I watched it once in October. I’m watching it right now, but this isn’t exactly October. Nine more to go officially (but I’m working on that ninth viewing now).
12.2. House Maintenance. I’m not really following FlyLady to an exact science, but I’ve got my own routine down.
20. Meet a nice guy in a bar. I also met Cameron and Jason. One’s new, one’s not going as well as it could be… We’ll see….
22. Embrace being a woo girl. I’ve kind of traded this in for being a Coloradoan belle. It’s going well.
23. Complete at least 3/4 of NaNoWriMo. It’s November first! GO!
25. Get back into being Greek. I slacked a little this month due to transportation issues. I hope to change that this month.
We’ll check on this Bucket list in December again. I hope everyone else is keeping up with their bucket lists.
October Resolution Check In
So it’s the first day of October 2011… Time to check in on our resolutions/Bucket Lists again!
Here is the numbered list I made back on January first:
1. Travel: Travel is still just Vegas, possibly? It’s hard to coordinate with three other people when one of them (I’m looking at you Blake) has to travel for his job all the time. I am going to California for Allie’s wedding in December/January and there is something possibly going on in February next year, but that’s next year…
2. Get an apartment: The story here is the same as it is every month, pretty much.
3. Get a car. (See above)
4. Keep blogging: As of today, October first, this is my 300 and somethingth post.
Notes from last time:
I’m doing pretty good on my running. Be proud of me.
As far as visiting the alma mater, I have been there three times in September and headed up there today as well.
And from 24 by 24 (I’ll only list the ones with some headway that haven’t been mentioned above):
8. Take the GRE and score in at least the 95th percentile. I took the GRE and will hear my more accurate results in November.
12.2. House Maintenance. I picked up the FlyLady and am doing my best at establishing cleaning routines.
20. Meet a nice guy in a bar. I have been dating Vic for a bit now, so I’m going to call this one done. Nice.
25. Get back into being Greek. I’ve been going to Panhellenic meetings and I offered to help chair the Young Alums group, so progress is being made indeed.
We’ll check on this Bucket list in November again (and prepare to start tackling number twenty-three on this list then). I hope everyone else is keeping up with their bucket lists.
September Resolution Check In
So it’s the first day of September 2011… Time to check in on our resolutions/Bucket Lists again!
Here is the numbered list I made back on January first:
1. Travel: Travel is still just Vegas. Traveling is hard.
2. Get an apartment: Time and additional money are still necessary. But, I went on restaurant interviews yesterday, yay!
3. Get a car. (See above)
4. Keep blogging: As of today, September first, this is my 200 and somethingth post.
Notes from last time:
I’m doing pretty good on my running. Be proud of me.
As far as visiting the alma mater, I have been there twice since I’ve been back and am going again this weekend.
And from 24 by 24 (I’ll only list the ones with some headway that haven’t been mentioned above):
6. Take up tennis seriously. At the end of the summer job, I got some lessons from the Tennis HOA, so that was nice. Now I just need to find a tennis partner here again.
7. Learn to cook. I bought a cookbook! This is a step in the right direction, right?
8. Take the GRE and score in at least the 95th percentile. I have been studying and I signed up to take the test later this month. Wish me luck!
12.2. House Maintenance. I cleaned a lot prior to Rich visiting and started redecorating. But now I need to find some ticky tack or something for my pictures because tape is not holding them up.
15. Go on local brew tours. I did the New Belgium tour again, yay!
22. Embrace being a woo girl. I’ve got a few more single friends getting back into town. Thank goodness! Now I have people to party with again.
We’ll check on this Bucket list in October again. I hope everyone else is keeping up with their bucket lists.
So What Are You Doing With the Third?
Did I mention that I was cleaning? Because I am…. It’s my first day off in a long time, so it is all for me.
Titanic is in and I am cleaning everything. I need to get back on that. We’re going one room at a time here. Tune in next week when I plan to tackle the kitchen… joy…
On the other side, the boys invited me up to wings again… I may go or not. It depends on how much I hate my cleaning by the end of all this, I guess….
What are you doing with your May third?
A Typical Day Where I Don’t Do Anything
Well, today’s not a typical day where I don’t do anything, I’m actually off on my ski weekend. But, I wanted to talk about something.
See, originally when I had this weekend of nothing I got really depressed and tried to figure out what the heck I would do with myself… I had my days and days and days off back in November and I hated every single one of them. I sat around and did nothing. Maybe I vacuumed… Maybe. If I was lucky enough to think of that… And then I called all my friends and asked them what they were up to.
But, that’s the great thing about having the 24 before 24 list. When I lamented to Seth about not having anything to do for my three-day weekend (that turned into a nine-day weekend, that thankfully turned back into a four-day weekend), he said “Well, why don’t you think about your list and go on a road trip?”
A road trip? I hadn’t thought of that!
So, I went around seeing who I could visit, and I didn’t have enough planning notice for anyone, but then Dezi asked if I would want to go skiing. It wasn’t a road trip, but learning to ski is also on that list. So why the heck not? So I get to learn how to ski.
Take my past Thursday before the ski trip. Normally, I would have lamented my day off and sat around watching That Seventies Show or something.
But having the list is nice. I popped Titanic in and started folding and hanging my laundry. Then I put away some shoes and picked up my cards and things. And I went to the gym later.
I really like having my 24 before 24 list. It’s not really like a hard and fast to-do list, but if I need something to do, there’s an entire list of things I’ve dedicated myself to for the next year. And because of that, I think my March was pretty darn productive. I’m hoping I have just as exciting of an April too.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll see a new state? Or finally go on that road trip? Meet a nice guy in a bar? Win some more trivia? You just never know what could happen.
The Clean Plan
So I’ve been talking about March Madness a lot lately. Is this how you all expected March to be? I doubt it and I’m sorry.
I thought I might tell you all what I’ve been up to lately, but I thought I would talk about my amendment to my twenty-four before twenty-four list.
So here’s my goal in my home maintenance: I want everything to look lovely and I want to get in a habit of doing little cleaning daily, so I don’t have huge cleaning to take care of weekly or super huge mega cleaning to take care of monthly.
So, here are things I can easily do daily or every few days:
Dust. I can totally dust every day. In fact, I should dust every day.
Vacuum. I can totally vacuum at least weekly. I need to get on that.
Dishes. Sometimes I put these off and I have got to stop doing that.
I can’t do a little laundry every day, unfortunately, due to pay machines and such, so that’s still weekly.
And I need to learn how to clean a toilet. I know, it’s sad. So, there’s a big goal for me.
And that’s pretty much all I can think of now as far as cleaning goes.
But decorating, that’s fun. I need to switch out my decorations big time. Also, I want to acquire a dry erase board of the United States. Does such a thing exist? Apparently they do, but not quite what I was thinking… Hmmm…. I really want one of these though. Maybe I can print it and have it laminated. That might work.
Anyway, more March Madness tomorrow. I’m not sure what we’ll talk about on Monday.
24 Before 24 Amendment
I wanted to make a 24 before 24 amendment. I have “Beat old Brody in scrabble” on my list. But, why should anything on my list depend on another person?
This goal depends on Brody still speaking to me long enough for me to beat him in scrabble. And, he hasn’t been speaking to me for a couple of weeks now…
I don’t want any one of my goals to depend on whether I’m still spending time with any one person.
My goals are about things I want to do.
Sure, I do want to beat old Brody in scrabble. But that’s not the same as saying “get on a horse” or “visit four new states.” I wouldn’t want to do those things on my own (because conquering your fears alone is terrifying and traveling alone for an entire trip is no fun, respectively), but they are things I am fully capable of doing on my own. I can’t beat Brody in scrabble without his full participation.
So I want to edit that item on my list. I’ll keep it on there, and if I can complete it and my alternative, I’ll call myself awesome.
But for now, my alternative is to really focus on redecorating and cleaning. I don’t know what you call this.
Let’s call it house maintenance. I want to focus on house maintenance.
It’s time to bring back Operation Room Redecoration!
Celebrating the To-Do List
Happy midnight and welcome to “If You Don’t Talk to Me, I Don’t Talk to You” here at Help! I’m Post-Grad… Actually, it’s not that mean, but I thought it was a rather clever way to say that we are shutting our phones off today unless people actually want us. By all means work or friends, if you want to speak to me, please do. I will be all ears then (and only then).
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I spend so much time (so much time) worrying about other people that I have let a couple of things that are important to me get by the way-side. So, today I am focusing on me-centric things. No, this is totally not selfish and it is just something that needs to get done. I will be coming back throughout the day to let you all know my progress.
1. As I said, I am horribly behind in my NaNo novel. Yesterday, I managed to make it up to just under 10,000 words, which is a great accomplishment when you consider that I only started on the eighth (with 942 words), increased that to 1,165 on the eleventh, and saw a burst of productivity on the seventeenth when I managed to up that to a total of 4,207 words before coming to my now total of 9,686. So, yes, about 300 words short of 10,000. Today’s current target is 31,667. I am clearly nowhere near that, but I would like to continue trucking toward it. Maybe we about 10,000 words for the next couple of days if possible. Because at the moment, my average daily word count is 510 and I am slated to finish on February 6, 2011–an extra two months or so after NaNo officially ends. In order to finish on the thirtieth, I need to write 3,665 words per day. I would like to get that back as close as possible to 1,667 words per day as I would really rather not deal with a potential server lag or a dramatic lack of words to make up for on the thirtieth. So, for NaNo:
~Bare minimum of 15,000 cumulative words today (that’s only 5,314 more words and totally doable as that’s a little less than what I wrote yesterday)
~My actual goal for tomorrow is 20,000 cumulative words which only puts me 11,667 words behind the target goal, which I can then make up for over the weekend. So, in reality, my goal word count for tomorrow is 10,314 words. Really, I should just go back and find a place to stick those 314 words in what I already have because I’m sure I can come up with something. I have yet to describe the main character and only vaguely glossed over one of the other important characters. There are a few random people actually in a scene that could use a brief description as well as a few places so it’s less “white space.” I know this is technically editing and I should let my characters hang out in white space if that’s what they’re doing, but I don’t really mind going back for 314 words. No big deal since I hit a scene stopping point anyway. And it’s not like I’m going back and saying “Ah, I left a random plot hole and I need to fix it NOW!” Really, it’s just me saying, I remember these specific spaces and I can go back and embellish them a little. Honestly, I’m still only on the first day of the novel’s timeline, so it’s not like I really have a lot of plot holes to fill. Yeah, I know, it sounds like a really slow-paced novel. I do apologize. I’m honestly just writing and not really worrying about pacing. There are some places, though, where I kind of glossed over a conversation that took place and just said “Here’s MC’s inner monologue. Meanwhile, everyone else was talking about X.” Forgive me for that. Actually, that’s probably for the best, because if I remember it was major league baseball predictions for last season that were being discussed, and I honestly don’t remember what exactly they were in specific.
Anyway, the rest of my to-do list for today!
2. Print out and fill out some forms for my summer job. Mail them off. Similarly, email my contact and let her know my computer was having some issues and I have faxed the contract to her as well. Also let her know I’m keeping my medical form for a little while longer. (05:50–Part one has been successfully completed. 16:00–forms have been mailed. 14:30–I send off my email, but the fax seems to be unresponsive.)
3. Do some cleaning. Vacuuming could use some doing and there are still frames to be hung.
4. Something is wrong with my iTunes. It needs to be fixed. I’m actually doing that right now because I wanted to have something to listen to while I wrote and well, I really just can’t live with myself if the entirety of my iTunes folder is not actually being shuffled. (05:00-My music has been located and consolidated back together. 06:00–iTunes is working its hardest to transfer over all of my music to the drive I actually wanted it on in the first place. It’s on “D” right now. “B” has the most music, so it’s actually going relatively quickly. 06:50–iTunes is done doing its transfer.)
5. Get some more hours for work (thus wake up at seven). (09:18–there are still no extra hours available… 15:30–there are still no extra hours.)
6. Apply for some volunteer positions–I’ve just really been meaning to do this, so there’s that.
7. Today’s blog post for NaBloPoMo. (01:17–Oh, here it is already)
And yeah, this is pretty much the bulk of my to-do list. I will be coming on throughout the day and notifying everyone on my progress through it.
So, cellphones off please! :) Oh, and in case you were wondering why this has a greeting of “happy midnight,” before I got distracted by what was wrong with my iTunes folder, I had actually started writing this at midnight. I decided I should finish it before I got any further into the abyss of iTunes fixing (which distracted me for about forty minutes already).
Help! I'm Post-Grad... 