New Year's Resolutions

Hello blogosphere! I'm back to blogging again! First I would like to apologize to all the people who left me nice comments the past year. I just moderated them all last night. About half my comments are spam so I have to moderate them. That's why they don't show up right away on the blog.

So why did I abandon my blog for the past year (and a few months....)? Well I think I mentioned in one of my last blog posts that I was previously using my work laptop to blog. Then my job tightened security on our computers so much that I couldn't even get to Blogger to do blogs. Then I tried using my husband's Mac laptop to blog and I just hated it. I couldn't figure out how to do pictures and I didn't have Word (usually I type my blogs in Word and then copy them over to Blogger) and I'm just not a Mac. I'm a PC. I was so frustrated that I just gave up. Then I got busy doing other things and never figured out a solution.

Until now. My Christmas present to myself this year was a new PC laptop for personal use. And it is fan-freaking-tastic. It is so nice to have a separate computer for personal stuff like pictures, budgeting, Facebook and blogging. I never have to use my work computer for personal stuff anymore and I'm no longer paranoid about the IT police coming to get me for too many personal files and Web use logged on my work computer.

I never really quit writing blogs really. I just quit posting them. I'm always writing them in my head and taking pictures of everything with the intention of posting a blog. That means I have a pretty big back log of stuff to post, which I'm hoping to do over the next couple of months.

But first, what I wanted to post today was my New Year's Resolutions. I have been thinking about them a lot and wanted to put them out there in the open so I can be held accountable. I like resolutions that are attainable and measurable. None of this "I want to be a better person" or "I want to get in shape". How do you measure that? That's why those resolutions never work.

Resolutions are really just goals when you think about it. So these are my goals for the year. The first one is a little embarassing but I'm just going to lay it out there:

1. Brush my teeth every night. I'm horribly lazy about brushing my teeth at night. I do brush them every single morning, but at night I usually just go to bed without brushing. It's terrible, I know! I never got into a good habit of brushing before bed. So during the month of January I'm going to focus on brushing my teeth every single night. I've read that it takes 21 days to develop a habit, so by focusing on this one thing for 30 days hopefully I'll develop a habit of it.

2. Take a Spanish class. My husband and I have talked about taking a Spanish class for years. Ever since we graduated from college. We both took French in college and neither of us know much Spanish at all. I see real value in learning Spanish these days and I think languages are really interesting. There is a community college in town where we can take a beginner's class. This is the year we're going to finally do it.

3. Run a mile under 6:00. Now this goal may be a stretch. I compete in corporate olympics with my company every year and last year in the track competition I ran the mile in 6:09. I'd really like to break 6:00 this year. However I don't have much control over whether I get to run that race or not. The company is only allowed 2 entries in each age group and there are three strong female runners at my company in my age group. So if I don't get to run that race then I want to break a personal best in another race, such as under 2 hours in the half marathon.

Those are my three goals! Not too much but still challenging. I honestly could've thrown up at least 20 goals but wanted to keep it simple. Can I accomplish them?

Happy New Year!