September Goals: Review
Goals, September '10:
- Exercise (running, basketball, tennis) twice a week.
Hm. Well, I didn't run at all, and I only played tennis with Kathy once. However, I started riding my bike to my student teaching job and started to get really into it. My school isn't that far away at all so biking there isn't a tremendous feat, but I was then inspired to bike elsewhere in the city I never had before. I biked once to Hawthorne, which was an absolutely lovely ride, and then one day this week I biked from my student teaching school to downtown for classes at Portland State, which is QUITE the hike (with a few misdirections, took me an hour and a half) and then biked from downtown back home (about an hour). Phew. Biking around downtown actually wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be, but with all the hills involved in these rides, I was wiped by the end of the day.
- Continue my current practice of eliminating high fructose corn syrup from my diet.
I tried, but am still not an expert at this. I'm good at checking ingredients on everything when I go grocery shopping, although even then I broke down once this month and bought a can of chili sauce in order to make my mom's sweet meatball recipe, because chili sauce is an essential part of it and I couldn't find ANY brand without HFCS in it. (Curse you, Heinz!) What I'm bad at is keeping this in mind when I'm out and about. For instance, we were at a friend's house and when offered some awful sugary soda (I later checked and HFCS was the second ingredient), I said, sure! It's like I don't think about it if I'm not personally buying it. I also have a big candy bar problem.
- When I finally receive my student loans for the fall, immediately make a budget, and do my darndest to stick to that budget. Put as much of that budget as possible to paying credit card bills.
Holy - crap - guys. So, I finally got my student loans. And I have NO IDEA what I was thinking when I believed I could live off of them while I'm student teaching. I made a budget, and with only paying for bills and essentials, my loans maybe would have lasted me two months. And then I had to pay for a bunch of big stuff (textbooks, car rental and hotel for the Austin wedding, vet bill for Toby, oh, and then our car broke down, and that really cost a lot of money). Guess what? Boom, pretty much all of my student loans are gone after just a few weeks. Have applied for a bunch of work study jobs as well as re-applying to Starbucks, but my availability is still so limited that I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to survive the next few months. Especially with the plethora of plane tickets I need to buy in the near future. But, trying not to freak out about it.
- Make getting to know as many kids as possible at school my first priority. Memorize the (at least first) names of at least 50 kids; slowly work to knowing all of them.
Yes! Check. Know the names of 50 kids for sure; love them all, and especially love the ones who annoyed the heck out of me at first. I don't know if I necessarily know a lot of them yet, but I feel like I know certain ones better than others, and am comfortable around all of them. Love the kids.
- Do not let the cynicism of other, older teachers at the school who are close to retirement bother me. Also, observe in as many different classrooms as possible. Take personal notes on observances/thoughts every day.
Check. The only teacher that bothered me was this crotchety old science teacher who referred to a kid who is in fact quite smart but has a tendency to act out, as a "jerk," in this really annoyed tone of voice. [To another teacher, not in front of students, but it was still unprofessional.] And I was like, really? We've been in school three weeks, and he's 12. How about we don't refer to our kids as jerks. But, I have observed in quite a few different classrooms (Mr. Chu was my favorite, so much good stuff happening, along with Mr. Soto), and have been taking tons of notes each day.
- On the days that I do go into my old job to work (yes, I am bad at actually being unemployed), if co-workers or customers are bitchy to me, do. not. let. it. bother. me. like it has for the last 2.5 years, because they do not own my life anymore.
Check, too. The couple of days that I worked were actually quite pleasant. It does still feel very much healthy for me to be away from there, though, although with my current financial situation I would not mind at all if they called me in for a few more days.
- Kathy and I made a joint goal today of only going out to eat 5 times a month. Given our current financial situation, even 5 is too high of a number, but again, we are trying to be realistic because we really like to eat out.
Ugh, I don't even want to talk about this one. I'm pretty sure we had surpassed 5 times by the second week of the month. I do want to clarify though that I define "eating out" pretty broadly, and it's not as if we are often like "Hey, I feel like going out to eat tonight, let's go!" I wish this happened; we have been so insanely busy this month that the possibility of any such "date night"-ish event occurring has been incredibly slim. My cousin was here from out of town for a few days though to visit my other cousin who lives here, so we obviously had to meet them for happy hour two days in a row, and there were a few nights where our kitchen shelves were so bare but we totally lacked the will to go to the grocery store and so ordered in, etc. I do know that these are excuses though, and I hope to actually be better next month.
- Write in my blog at least twice a week. I feel better when I am writing more.
This was one of the goals I wanted to accomplish the most, but sadly I didn't. Twice a week would have meant roughly eight entries; I only made five. I DID, however, start a new daily photo blog, Daily Daffodilly, and I updated that 16 times in September, which has been pretty awesome.
- Keep up to date on my Oregonians.
Check! I am so proud of myself! Okay, with the exception of the last weekend or two, since going to Austin and being insanely busy since then has thrown me off a little. But, previous to that, I was so on top of it, and even got to read quite a few old back issues.
- Make my lunch to take with me to school every day.
Check. Well, kind of check. For the first half of the month, I was just at my school all day every day, and I brought my lunch every day for that. For the second half of the month, I have started my kind of funky and hectic schedule which will continue for the rest of the fall, where I am only at my school for the morning and then rush downtown for afternoon classes at PSU. I don't know why this makes me less capable of bringing my lunch, but there have been at least 2 days where I haven't packed anything and had to grab something downtown. I need to get back on track with being good - even if there ARE so many fun eating opportunities near campus (coffee and snacks and the like included).
- Read 5 books (books for fun, not for school).
I read: The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 4), Rick Riordan
The Eternal Smile, Gene Luen Yang & Derek Kirk Kim [graphic novel]
The Vast Fields of Ordinary, Nick Burd
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury [for GTEP Book Club]
So, only 4. And one of them was a graphic novel that I read in one sitting. So, no. Darnit.
- Research Austin, Texas before we go, places to eat and things to see, because I have wanted to go there for forever. Although we will only be there for a very, very limited amount of time, make sure to squeeze in as much as possible.
You know, I got the names of some places to check out from a girl I know who used to live there, but that's about it. Kathy and I were both generally very busy leading up to this trip [I know, I have to quit whining about being busy] and I didn't do any of my normal travel-researching at all. I do blame the fact that this weekend on the whole was kind of kooky and weird on this. We did, however, get to see the bats on the Congress Street Bridge which was super cool, and walk around and grab a beer on Sixth Street during the Old Pecan Street Festival, which was WAY cool. I also enjoyed our eating experiences at Shady Grove and the Magnolia Cafe. So yeah, essentially there still was a lot of awesomeness in between some of the weird stuff that happened (like getting lost a lot, oh, and missing the wedding ceremony, and stuff). But we didn't see any live music, and there still wasn't enough of the Austin food for me, so, I guess we'll just have to go back.
- Exercise (running, basketball, tennis) twice a week.
Hm. Well, I didn't run at all, and I only played tennis with Kathy once. However, I started riding my bike to my student teaching job and started to get really into it. My school isn't that far away at all so biking there isn't a tremendous feat, but I was then inspired to bike elsewhere in the city I never had before. I biked once to Hawthorne, which was an absolutely lovely ride, and then one day this week I biked from my student teaching school to downtown for classes at Portland State, which is QUITE the hike (with a few misdirections, took me an hour and a half) and then biked from downtown back home (about an hour). Phew. Biking around downtown actually wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be, but with all the hills involved in these rides, I was wiped by the end of the day.
- Continue my current practice of eliminating high fructose corn syrup from my diet.
I tried, but am still not an expert at this. I'm good at checking ingredients on everything when I go grocery shopping, although even then I broke down once this month and bought a can of chili sauce in order to make my mom's sweet meatball recipe, because chili sauce is an essential part of it and I couldn't find ANY brand without HFCS in it. (Curse you, Heinz!) What I'm bad at is keeping this in mind when I'm out and about. For instance, we were at a friend's house and when offered some awful sugary soda (I later checked and HFCS was the second ingredient), I said, sure! It's like I don't think about it if I'm not personally buying it. I also have a big candy bar problem.
- When I finally receive my student loans for the fall, immediately make a budget, and do my darndest to stick to that budget. Put as much of that budget as possible to paying credit card bills.
Holy - crap - guys. So, I finally got my student loans. And I have NO IDEA what I was thinking when I believed I could live off of them while I'm student teaching. I made a budget, and with only paying for bills and essentials, my loans maybe would have lasted me two months. And then I had to pay for a bunch of big stuff (textbooks, car rental and hotel for the Austin wedding, vet bill for Toby, oh, and then our car broke down, and that really cost a lot of money). Guess what? Boom, pretty much all of my student loans are gone after just a few weeks. Have applied for a bunch of work study jobs as well as re-applying to Starbucks, but my availability is still so limited that I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to survive the next few months. Especially with the plethora of plane tickets I need to buy in the near future. But, trying not to freak out about it.
- Make getting to know as many kids as possible at school my first priority. Memorize the (at least first) names of at least 50 kids; slowly work to knowing all of them.
Yes! Check. Know the names of 50 kids for sure; love them all, and especially love the ones who annoyed the heck out of me at first. I don't know if I necessarily know a lot of them yet, but I feel like I know certain ones better than others, and am comfortable around all of them. Love the kids.
- Do not let the cynicism of other, older teachers at the school who are close to retirement bother me. Also, observe in as many different classrooms as possible. Take personal notes on observances/thoughts every day.
Check. The only teacher that bothered me was this crotchety old science teacher who referred to a kid who is in fact quite smart but has a tendency to act out, as a "jerk," in this really annoyed tone of voice. [To another teacher, not in front of students, but it was still unprofessional.] And I was like, really? We've been in school three weeks, and he's 12. How about we don't refer to our kids as jerks. But, I have observed in quite a few different classrooms (Mr. Chu was my favorite, so much good stuff happening, along with Mr. Soto), and have been taking tons of notes each day.
- On the days that I do go into my old job to work (yes, I am bad at actually being unemployed), if co-workers or customers are bitchy to me, do. not. let. it. bother. me. like it has for the last 2.5 years, because they do not own my life anymore.
Check, too. The couple of days that I worked were actually quite pleasant. It does still feel very much healthy for me to be away from there, though, although with my current financial situation I would not mind at all if they called me in for a few more days.
- Kathy and I made a joint goal today of only going out to eat 5 times a month. Given our current financial situation, even 5 is too high of a number, but again, we are trying to be realistic because we really like to eat out.
Ugh, I don't even want to talk about this one. I'm pretty sure we had surpassed 5 times by the second week of the month. I do want to clarify though that I define "eating out" pretty broadly, and it's not as if we are often like "Hey, I feel like going out to eat tonight, let's go!" I wish this happened; we have been so insanely busy this month that the possibility of any such "date night"-ish event occurring has been incredibly slim. My cousin was here from out of town for a few days though to visit my other cousin who lives here, so we obviously had to meet them for happy hour two days in a row, and there were a few nights where our kitchen shelves were so bare but we totally lacked the will to go to the grocery store and so ordered in, etc. I do know that these are excuses though, and I hope to actually be better next month.
- Write in my blog at least twice a week. I feel better when I am writing more.
This was one of the goals I wanted to accomplish the most, but sadly I didn't. Twice a week would have meant roughly eight entries; I only made five. I DID, however, start a new daily photo blog, Daily Daffodilly, and I updated that 16 times in September, which has been pretty awesome.
- Keep up to date on my Oregonians.
Check! I am so proud of myself! Okay, with the exception of the last weekend or two, since going to Austin and being insanely busy since then has thrown me off a little. But, previous to that, I was so on top of it, and even got to read quite a few old back issues.
- Make my lunch to take with me to school every day.
Check. Well, kind of check. For the first half of the month, I was just at my school all day every day, and I brought my lunch every day for that. For the second half of the month, I have started my kind of funky and hectic schedule which will continue for the rest of the fall, where I am only at my school for the morning and then rush downtown for afternoon classes at PSU. I don't know why this makes me less capable of bringing my lunch, but there have been at least 2 days where I haven't packed anything and had to grab something downtown. I need to get back on track with being good - even if there ARE so many fun eating opportunities near campus (coffee and snacks and the like included).
- Read 5 books (books for fun, not for school).
I read: The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 4), Rick Riordan
The Eternal Smile, Gene Luen Yang & Derek Kirk Kim [graphic novel]
The Vast Fields of Ordinary, Nick Burd
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury [for GTEP Book Club]
So, only 4. And one of them was a graphic novel that I read in one sitting. So, no. Darnit.
- Research Austin, Texas before we go, places to eat and things to see, because I have wanted to go there for forever. Although we will only be there for a very, very limited amount of time, make sure to squeeze in as much as possible.
You know, I got the names of some places to check out from a girl I know who used to live there, but that's about it. Kathy and I were both generally very busy leading up to this trip [I know, I have to quit whining about being busy] and I didn't do any of my normal travel-researching at all. I do blame the fact that this weekend on the whole was kind of kooky and weird on this. We did, however, get to see the bats on the Congress Street Bridge which was super cool, and walk around and grab a beer on Sixth Street during the Old Pecan Street Festival, which was WAY cool. I also enjoyed our eating experiences at Shady Grove and the Magnolia Cafe. So yeah, essentially there still was a lot of awesomeness in between some of the weird stuff that happened (like getting lost a lot, oh, and missing the wedding ceremony, and stuff). But we didn't see any live music, and there still wasn't enough of the Austin food for me, so, I guess we'll just have to go back.