More Recap and Goals
The party broke up a little after 1am and I got a ride home with my friend Rodney – which was cool since I was getting kind of tired by then.
My Mom and I chit chatted for awhile and I fried up some mochi for New Year’s. Rayne apparently handled the night really well, which surprised me. I thought she was going to run and hide under a bed as soon as the firecrackers started going off and she could smell the gunpowder, but she pretty much hung out by the doors or windows all night. She did run away if there were any loud booms nearby, but she would come right back out after it was over. It makes me wonder about her hearing sometimes, but her hearing seems fine – I guess she’s just a little badass.
Our neighbor Mrs. Yamaguchi invited us over on New Year’s for some ozoni – which is a hot soup with mochi in it, and some homemade tempura. She invited us over at 11am, but we didn’t get up until 10:45, whoops. We were late, but her other guests arrived a little while after we did, so it was cool. I was just excited to go over to her house because she has an elevator. AN ELEVATOR! It’s the first private home elevator I’ve ever been in. It was neat.
We hung out for about an hour and then headed back down because our cousins downstairs also invited us over for a Southern New Year’s lunch. I took a nap and got down there after everyone just about finished eating. My cousin Dillard made some awesome collard greens, black eyed peas, corn bread and ham. They are such good people, it’s so nice hanging out with them – especially since Dillard loves to cook.
We finished pretty late so I didn’t get to go to Ben Franklin to use my 40% off coupon! Doh! I also wanted to go to the Shinto temple to make an offering and get some good luck charms/amulets, but they were closed by the time I would have gone out.
I am really hoping for a good year this year as I am not sure how much worse it could be from 2006. I do have some goals for the year too – I don’t want to call them resolutions since resolutions just seem doomed for failure.
Here are some of my goals -
- Work on loving myself more – I’ve always been insecure about myself and became even more self conscious of myself while I was with Tom. I would get so worried about what he thought of me that I stopped being myself and actually started hating myself because I didn’t feel like I was measuring up to the kind of person he thought I could be. I need work on appreciating who I am and try not to limit myself because of insecurities.
- Be more creative – I really developed a passion for photography and painting while I was in college. I thought I took some pretty good pictures with my ancient Canon AE-1 – even though it had a pretty bad light leak because it was so beat up. I also dabbled a bit in painting with watercolors, acrylics and oil pastels. My paintings weren’t the best, but I enjoyed it and liked creating stuff. I don’t know why, but I just kind of stopped taking pictures after awhile. I thought I was going to keep up with the painting, but I remember I painted a little desktop clock for Tom for his birthday after I moved to Arizona. He didn’t like it. It was too amateur and not cool enough for him. I kind of stopped painting stuff after that. This year, I will start creating again. I have slowly begun building up my supplies to start painting again and like I mentioned before my Mom got me that kick ass paint set for Christmas that I can’t wait to try out. I am also trying to think of ways of getting myself back into photography. I like to browse Flickr for some inspiration, but I do need something more structured. I think I might copy this thing I saw on some random blog once. This woman made a photoset of the alphabet – not like a gazillion pictures of letters, but pictures of things or ideas that start with the same letter. I think I shall start that this week.
- Take a trip to Europe – I’ve been wanting to go to Europe for a couple of years now, but things never seemed to work out. I am committing myself to taking a trip there this year – hopefully right before or right after my birthday. I have a bunch of links that I’ve amassed during my trip research and every once in awhile, I find myself just browsing through those pages, making mental notes of things I want to do and see while I am there. I even find myself perusing sites filled with nifty travel gadgets and clothes that are fast drying, semi classy, yet functional.
- Lose at least 40 pounds – Yea, I know, I’ve been working on this awhile, but I know that if I just believe in myself, eat better and workout smarter, yet harder, it will happen. I don’t like myself when I am fat. Yea, I know I mentioned working on loving myself more, but one way of doing that is by becoming healthy and I can’t consider myself healthy if I am so overweight.
- Update the look of the blog – I’ve had the same scheme for over a year now. I do like the look of the blog, but I am growing tired of this format and want to try something different. I am looking at other themes and trying to figure out how to get this thing to look the way I really want it to look. I also want to add a few things like a gallery and maybe finally do those movie reviews I keep thinking I’ll do.
- Finally get my room fixed up so I can have my own space – I am slowly working on the closet room and I am going to really kick things up into high gear this week. I will take out the old bed, a dresser, and boxes and boxes of crap that just needs to get thrown away. I really need to do this this week since our bulk trash pickup is this coming Saturday and because I know my Grandma will get upset if she sees me throw this stuff out – if she was here. In other words, I really need to get this done before she gets back.
Well, it’s bed time for me now. I am going to try to get to the temple today and there are a few other things that I need to take care of later today too.
January 2, 2007
