Project 18 - Morning Routines

My morning routine (or lack-thereof) has really been biting me in the butt this week. I used to be such a morning person - getting out of bed at the crack of dawn to workout, starting the day early with loads of energy, and still being able to stay up through to the wee hours of the morning. And seriously? It's only been two years, but I've apparently become well settled into "old lady"-dom. It's ridiculous!

Basically, I stopped having a morning routine when winter came around, and now my lack of routine has turned into a routine in and of itself - and not a good (or helpful) one! A typical morning for me these days looks something like this:

• 7AM - Matt gets up, I rearrange myself so I take up the entire bed, and fall back asleep
• 7:30AM - Matt wakes me up to tell me he's leaving, I debate whether or not to get out of bed
• 7:45AM - I bite the bullet and drag myself to the bathroom to brush my teeth/put in contacts
• 7:50AM - Still not awake, I decide to forgo a shower and check blogs/watch the morning news instead
• 8:05AM - I decide that I can still make the 8:06 bus, and sprint to the bedroom to get dressed
• 8:06AM - The bus goes by, and since I still don't have pants on, I decide it's time for a nap
• 8:15AM - Finish getting dressed and put make-up on
• 8:20AM - Start packing lunch for the day
• 8:29AM - Begin the frantic search for enough quarters to get the 8:36 bus
• 8:34AM - Sprint out to the bus stop, praying I'll make the bus the whole way
• 8:36AM - Either get on the bus, or watch it roll past me (in which case, I will have to walk the 1.75-ish miles to work) - more often than not this week it's been the latter.
  
• 8:45AM - If I caught the bus, roll into the office; if I didn't, lament about how I should be to work by now while still being far away, and on foot.

See what I mean? Not a great way to start the day. Especially when the rest of your coworkers show up at 8AM and schedule 8:30AM meetings that you're constantly being late to.


A little bit of blog research has shown me that morning routines are a pretty popular topic in blog-land, and that everyone likes to wake up in the 5am hour (good lord, really?). While my before-6AM-wakeup days are over for sure, it seems like everyone accomplishes a lot more in their mornings than I do - working out, fixing food, actually eating breakfast, and showering (ugh, I know). It'd nice to be able to do all (okay, maybe at least two?) of these things during my mornings as well.

So this is it. I'm giving myself a month. What is today, July 10th? August 10th it is. I am going to change my morning routine (for the better!) by August 10th. My tangible measurements of this change will be arriving at work before 8:30 and showering in the mornings (can you tell I'm really hung up on the fact that I don't do this anymore? Because i am).

Resources: There's a great article on Zen Habits entitled How I Became an Early Riser that outlines a gradual progression into morning activeness. Unclutterer also wrote an article a while ago called Streamlining Your Morning Routine to help you figure out where you're wasting time. And The Simple Dollar has an awesome article about starting new habits that should be pretty helpful. More productive morning, here I come!

Long Weekend Plans

I can't even tell you how excited I am to have a 3-day weekend here at home. I've done a lot of traveling in the last few months, and have a 4-day Portland weekend coming up later in July, so it's nice to not worry about going anywhere for once! Hooray!

But just because we're not going anywhere doesn't mean we're not doing anything! On the contrary, the weekend will hopefully include a few fun things. For example:

Strawberries!

There's a strawberry festival going on a few miles north of Spokane, and it includes U-Pick strawberries. I hope we get some juicy fresh strawberries like these, and turn them into strawberry shortcake!

It's supposed to be awful, but maybe IMAX will make up for it?

I really want to see some hard-core special effects on IMAX film this weekend, and figure Transformers 2 will come through in that regard. Plus, Matt can make Shia jokes the entire time. Everyone wins, right?

Fireworks!

There always has to be fireworks on the 4th, right? Spokane has a huge 4th of July celebration featuring fireworks on the Spokane river, and lots of music and festival food in the park at the center of town. Not sure how much of the rest of the festivities we'll take part in, but you can bet we'll have ourselves situated for the 10pm show tomorrow!

Alright, I'm off to run before it gets to 90 degrees today (ugh!). Hope everyone has a fantastic 4th of July weekend and enjoys a little extra time off!

Busy Weekend!

These past few days have been pretty hard on my psyche. Probably the biggest downer in my life that happened this week was my company's decision to cut a bunch of jobs and give the rest of us that are still (thankfully) employed a pay cut. The economy's tough, and my company is definitely feeling it. That, coupled with the celebrity deaths, and my mother's arrival in less than 36 hours, has made this NOT the most fun end of the week ever!

This weekend, I fully intend to keep myself busy busy busy to get my spirits back up! This morning Matt and I will be getting a delicious bagel breakfast, and then head here:

The Spokane Farmers Market

After all that, we'll be heading down to check out the action at Hoopfest! Despite the fact that I'm nearly 6'2", I'm not playing in it this year - I've been a volunteer referee in the past, but this year I'm ready to enjoy it as a spectator! Hopefully we'll see some friends play and meet up with other spectator-friends while there.

And then, it's back home to clean like crazy so my apartment will pass my mom's white-glove inspection! I'm not sure when she's arriving tomorrow, so it all has to be done tonight.

Summer Reading

While on my brief hiatus, I developed a pretty large literature appetite. I quickly devoured four popular books, and thought I'd share with you all how I enjoyed each one. A lot of people are looking for "summer reads" right now, so here you all go!

Everyone's heard of Wicked (the musical), right? Well, this is the book that started it all. I've never seen the musical, so I can't attest to how true it is to the book, but the story in this book is pretty interesting. Think of it as Harry Potter, but set in Oz. If you're looking for a read on the beach, I'd recommend this one, but with the caveat that the ending kind of drags on. And on.

The Secret Life of Bees is a movie starring Alicia Keys and Dakota Fanning. It's also a quick read with a lot of summer imagery of the rural South. Just because it's a quick read, don't pick it up thinking it's going to be light-hearted though... there are definitely some heavy issues discussed in these pages, from child abuse to segregation and civil rights. Additionally, the author really did her research on bee-keeping, though, making this fictional book a pretty informative read!

While this book is the only non-fiction one of the bunch, I think it is definitely my favorite. The Glass Castle is a memoir of Jeannette Walls' childhood with her crazy parents, and how they helped her grow into the woman she has become. It's heart-breaking, but almost uplifting at the same time. Again, a quick read, but not a light-hearted read. Apparently I like depressing books. Ha!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has gotten so much critical acclaim that it'd be ridkculous NOT to put it on your summer reading list, right? So I read it. Oscar's character reminded me so much of bits and pieces of people that I know, right down to the Star Trek references, that I was captivated the entire time. Alternating between the Dominican Republic and the United States, the author discusses Oscar's inability to fit in with his peers and his isolation and lonliness that results, while throwing in a few history lessons on the Domincan Republic. This one definitely lived up to the hype for me.

Also, if you're looking for an economical way to acquire some summer reading and don't feel like going the library route, I highly recommend PaperBackSwap.com. You can read more about my experiences with the service here and here. You'll notice that I got most of these books from PaperBackSwap; I'll be posting them for trading again soon!

Getting Back On Track With Work-Outs

Nothing side-tracks your health like an extended vacation/work trip. Add that to a whirlwind few weeks of amazing life-changing-ness, and you've got a food and lack of exercise bender for the entire month of April. Well, no more! This is the week to get back on track.

As with everything I do, it's go big or go home. So I've assembled a work-out plan to kick my butt and teach me a lesson - make time for exercise every day! So here's the plan:

• Monday: A morning run, and an after work spin class
• Tuesday: A morning run, and mid-day weights
• Wednesday: Mid-day yoga, and after work cardio (probably elliptical and stair thingy)
• Thursday: Flying Irish!
• Friday: Mid-day run, and after work yoga
• Saturday: Long yoga class and some light cardio
• Sunday: Bloomsday!

After this week, I think I'm going to start up on 30 Day Shred. I need a challenge, and I feel like Jillian Michaels is the one to provide that challenge. Plus, the blog world has been blowing up with how great this workout DVD is, so I've got to give it a try myself!

Lazy Sunday

This week has been a whirl-wind - lots of people to see, phone calls to make, stress at work, a new quarter starting up at school - I feel like I haven't gotten a break yet! So much stuff happens sometimes that you just have to kick back and relax to remind yourself why you're putting up with The Crazy, and that time is usually Sunday afternoons for me.

You know that I'm crazy for those cupcakes cousin!

So what's on my agenda for my "Lazy Sunday"?

• First up - LAUNDRY. I am in dire need of some clean socks.
  
• Cleaning (the bathroom and the kitchen) and dishes.
  
• I also need to go for a run - it looks like a beautiful day outside, so it's time to pull on that running skirt and hit the trails!
• I have some work stuff that I have to get done before tomorrow... boooooooo.
• I need to do some shopping - pick up the wedding scrapbook, figure out the food situation for the week, etc.
• Rachel is back from Puerto Rico, so a neighborhood coffee date might be in order!
• Matt and I need to celebrate my birthday (I know, right? Week of celebrations like whoa!) at one of Spokane's fine dining establishments.
• I want to get a preliminary list of potential wedding venues figured out!

Wow, on second thought, this Sunday might not be so lazy after all! How are you all spending your Sundays and preparing for the week to come?

Getting Rid of a DVD Collection

DVDs got me through college - on my good days I popped in Legally Blonde and thought of all the things I could accomplish against the odds; on my bad days I'd pop in Legally Blonde and yell "EFF YOU!" at the TV when Elle got dumped, and then turned Warner down at the end. Let's face it: Elle Woods is responsible for my college degree. And for driving every one of my roommates/housemates crazy in the past 6 years. HA!

Well, now that I've been out of college for almost 2 years, and I've discovered the joy of watching movies on my iPod (or on the TV when Matt sets it up), I decided it was time to get rid of the DVD collection. And let's be honest, not many people want a collection of teen- and 80s-movies into their late (post college) 20s.

Well folks, I have to tell you - the power of eBay and Half.com are wondrous things when it comes to getting rid of DVDs. I started posting them on Half.com in February, and have less than 10 left! I've made $107.01 (minus shipping costs) on 27 DVDs - which is way better than the $1 average they go for at garage sales. I'll be putting that extra money towards some California clothes (YES!) and that extra space towards some more effective storage of other media items. The only downside is that it's kind of time consuming to mail off 27 DVDs individually - not for people who are super busy or out of town a lot!

I used Half.com to sell of text books in college, and I'm happy to report that it's pretty cost-effective to use for selling off unused or unwanted DVDs these days, too! Give it a shot if you've got some extras!

Notebooks and To-Do Lists

I missed my bus to work this morning because I couldn't find my List Book. And then I realized - why does this silly little notebook matter so much to me? Are other people as dependent on notebooks as I am? I seriously cannot leave for work unless I have both of these in my purse/somewhere else easily accessible:

My two babies.

The one on the left is my food/exercise journal - I do write down everything that I eat/drink (except vitamins and water), as well as any exercise that I do. I also keep my Fritter Finder spreadsheet in it (weird combo, right? It just fits better in this one than the other one):

Fritter Finder (left) and food/exercise log (right).

The other one is my List Book. It has lists of phone numbers, to-do lists, grocery lists, menu plans, jotted down recipes, work-out plans, etc. in it. Seriously, I lose my marbles without this! It's without a doubt the most important of the two.

A sample page from my List Book.

I used to write lists of stuff I had to do or important numbers on scrap pieces of paper - which led to the problem of them either being unmanageable on a bulletin board, or lost in various bags and stacks. Notebooks are the key to my sanity.

Do you carry around a notebook or planner that you can't live without?

Weekend To-Do List, in Pictures

The end of the work day is fast approaching, and good lord do I have a lot of stuff to do this weekend! Here's what I'm set on accomplishing before heading off to work again on Monday:

1. Do all of my homework, for both of my classes.

2. Do laundry (*sigh*, every weekend!)

3. Plan all meals for this week (including breakfast and lunch!) and grocery shop if I need to.

4. Clean Mojo's bowl!

5. Hit the gym both days this weekend, including one yoga class.

6. Do my taxes!

7. Make (and send) some Valentine's Day cards. (this is the Love, Valentine card collection from Egg Press)

8. Clean the kitchen, and bathroom, and do the dishes.

9. List books and DVDs on eBay and PaperBackSwap.

What's on your plate this weekend?

A To-Do List, In Pictures

Let's face it, I've been quite the slacker this week. I haven't done my homework, I've slacked off on my house-hold chores, and I pretty hopelessly fell off the exercise- and diet-wagon. *sigh* I like making to-do lists, because I feel like they help me get stuff done. Even better, this to-do list has photographic evidence of how much I've been slacking. Here's what I want to accomplish this weekend:

1. Do all of my homework, for both of my classes.

2. I'm so far behind on filing, it's kind of ridiculous. So catch up on that.

3. Figure out the recycling/garbage/donating situation, cuz it's getting kind of crazy.

4. Do some laundry, because I like wearing clothes outside. :D


5. Return library materials before I get charged late fees.

6. Plan all meals for this week (including breakfast and lunch!) and grocery shop accordingly.

7. Hang out with Mojo da Betta Fish (and feed him).

8. Watch the Miss American pageant (what can I say? I live for this stuff.)!

9. Hit the gym both days this weekend, and stop being lazy in general.

I've got some other things on my calendar, like hitting up the Festival of Foodies, maybe signing up for a race or two, and finishing some stuff up for work.

What are you up to this weekend?

It's resolutions, baby!

I'm a firm believer in New Year's resolutions, and can't remember a year in the recent past where I haven't made at least one. In my pre-internet days, I'd scrawl them out in marker on a piece of notebook paper and tuck them away in a shoebox (where I also stored all of the notes my girlfriends had given me during the school year with our highly sensitive, *cough* boy gossip *cough*, during the year), and would pull them back out around New Year's to see how badly I've failed at keeping them. Now I tend to post them in my blog-of-the-moment - whichever one I spend more time on or relates most to the goals I've set for myself this year. Therefore, I give you my 2009 resolutions that I will hopefully meet and/or exceed during the next calendar year:

1. Read more books for pleasure. 50 this year, to be exact. And school books don't count.

2. Apply to PhD programs. Preferably after the masters degree is finished, so there's that caveat of this process. So basically, at least one application has to be submitted to a school by December. Lots of work, but doable.

3. Win the biggest loser competition at work. This starts on January 5, and ends on March 13. Prize money is $450, which will put a nice dent in my vacation costs (see below). I entered with my friend Rachel, who's going to give me a pretty good run for the money I think - so basically, if either of us wins, I'll consider this resolution achieved. :D

4. Get my passport. Now that my new project at work will be sending me to Texas and not freezing cold snowy Calgary (sorry, Canadians, but after Spokane's winter I'm just not in the mood for more!), this is a pretty high priority on my to-do list.

5. Make a budget and stick to it. I've been monitoring my spending habits for the past few months so that I can make smart estimates about what I need (or don't need), so I'm hoping to sit down sometime in January and draft out a plan that will work for this year. The main purpose of this will be to establish an emergency fund that is separate from my savings fund, as well as pay off my student loans entirely.

6. Meal Plan every week. It's so much better than constantly running to the store because I don't know what I have, and haven't planned what I'm making until that night.

7. Go on 2 mini-vacations (as in 3- or 4-day weekends. Both must be to places I've never been before - right now, Las Vegas, Colorado, and Southern California are pretty high on that list. Both must not include visiting relatives for a holiday. One must be without Matt.

8. Go on an extended vacation (as in a week) with Matt. We've been discussing Hawai'i next fall, or something else hot/tropical.

9. Set up a weekly volunteering activity again. I used to volunteer at the Women's and Children's Free Restaurant once a week, and I really enjoyed that - it's a great organization with a mission that I really believe in. Unfortunately, it now conflicts with all of my classes. So this year, my goal is to reorient my schedule enough to make a similar situation feasible for me.

10. And last but not least, make a better effort to keep in touch with all the people that I love that are far away from me now. I've always sucked at keeping in touch with people, and I need to get better at that. Also, I want to write people letters. They're so old-school that they're fun, and everyone loves getting mail, right?

What are your resolutions for the new year?

A new 5 weeks begins...

So, I don't know if anyone else just realized this, but in 5 weeks, the craziness that is the week of Thanksgiving begins. I have two words to describe how I feel about this: HOLY CRAP. How did this happen? Where did fall go? How the heck am I ever going to be ready??

This whole blog started as a 5 week project to get my apartment organized before I went back to school. And lets face it, I kinda failed. So now, with 5 weeks left before Thanksgiving crunch time, it's time to get back to business.

This 5 week session has one goal - to get my apartment ready for a holiday party after Thanksgiving. This means it has to be organized, I have to decorate for the holidays at least a little, and I have to get my stuff together enough to figure out party details. The conditions of this are simple - 1. I can't get behind on school work, and 2. I can't use this as an excuse to not work out or go to the gym.

This is totally do-able.

I've been doing some thinking...

...and I need a weekly schedule. And by schedule, I mean of chores and stuff around the apartment so that I'm not leaving everything for Sunday and getting totally bogged down for an entire day of my weekend with all this stuff I've left the entire week to do at the end. I'm really good at procrastinating, and then getting super frustrated when everything takes so long because I'm trying to do it all at once. I've talked to a couple of people recently who've mentioned either their personal household's schedule or someone else's schedule they're familiar with, and it seems to be pretty successful. I guess we'll give this one a go this coming week and see how I fare...

Sunday: General straightening/vacuuming

Monday: Bathroom

Tuesday: Kitchen

Wednesday: Class (night off)

Thursday: Class (but trash and recycling anyway)

Friday: Bills/mail/paper work for the week

Saturday: Laundry

Selling Back Books

One of my classes for this quarter had a pretty hefty list of books for a leadership seminar. We're talking 4 books, priced together at around $200 (which included me scouring the bookstore for 2 used copies of books... so yeah). So imagine my surprise when, on the first night of class, my leadership seminar somehow magically transforms into a climate change policy class! Not that I'm complaining, because the topic is definitely more interesting, but this means that half of the $200 worth of books must go back to the school bookstore, and Thomas Friedman's latest book Hot, Flat, and Crowded must be purchased and read immediately (which the school bookstore defnitely DID NOT have).

But hey! Hadn't I been meaning to try selling some books back to Auntie's Bookstore to get in store credit for more books? I had! So today, I came to work armed with 2 plastic bags full of books to trade in for credit, with which I could buy Thomas Friedman's latest. The only negative about the exchange was that Auntie's wouldn't take half of the books I brought in. BUT, here's the awesome part: for the 6 books (1 hardcover, 5 paperbacks) that they DID take, they gave me a whopping $18.00 credit!!! Isn't that fantastic?? I was totally expecting like, 50 cents per book, tops.

So, my $28 hardcover new book required for class, minus the $18 credit, and with 20% taken off because it's a current New York Times bestseller, came to $6.25. YES.

Weekend To-Do List

Well, my 5 weeks are officially up. Classes started two nights ago, so my time is even more limited than it was before. :( It's even more important to make sure I get done what I need to get done, and have some sort of way to hold myself accountable. That being said, here's what I need to get done this weekend:

1. Donate. I have 2 new bags of clothes (a lot of which are Matt's things that he went through as we organized closets and the dresser) to give to the thrift stores. The sooner the better!

2. Books. I need to return books that I bought from the campus bookstore that we're not actually going to use in class, buy books from Half.com or Amazon that we actually ARE going to use in class, and sell that stack of books back to Auntie's.

3. This is guestroom weekend. It's time to tackle the spare bedroom and make it presentable and usable.

4. Budget! I have a whole separate to-do list of budget-related things, like closing store-based credit cards that I don't use, totalling up receipts, balancing my checkbook, and making a long-term budget plan. This will be greatly helped by phase two of finishing Project #8.

That's about it for this weekend, other than the usual cooking, cleaning, and (now) homework!

Project 8: Decluttering Financial Paperwork

Well, I've officially started the process that I talked about awhile ago. I'm so lucky that Org Junkie just happened to post about office organization today! Basically, what I did was go through my current accordian folder to find things that could be shredded. Then I went through my stacks of paperwork to figure out what could be thrown away immediately, what needed to be acted upon, and what needed to be shredded. I came up with this pile of stuff for shredding:



After the shredding takes place, then it's time for filing! Unfortunately, my accordian file is already exploding even though I haven't filed any of the new stuff. I'll need to find something that better accomodates what I've got. Then it's on to consolidating credit cards and finally making a budget. Hooray!

I'm back!

We had a house guest, followed immediately by a 9 day trip to visit both my family and the boyfriend's family, and then another house guest that participated in the last part of the roadtrip for 3 days upon returning. Basically, it was a fun (but LONG) couple of weeks! And, unfortunately, my classes start again in a week and a half, so my 5 weeks are almost up. :(

We'll be receiving more guests on Thursday night (the boyfriends parents! Gotta impress!), so the apartment really needs to get picked up! I did the bathroom and kitchen cleaning yesterday, so that's all good. But I still don't feel comfortable presenting it to his parents as the home I've made for us (and he has, too, but let's be honest- mostly me! :D ).

I really am a list-person, in that I make lists and function a lot better with a list in the back of my mind of things I need to do. So, with the deadlines in mind, here is what I plan to do this week:

1. Clean up the clothes in our bedroom. This means finishing putting the clothes in the dresser (1 drawer left, for Matt's sweaters), fixing up the closets, donating all clothes we don't need anymore, and vacuuming/dusting.

2. Fix the paper clutter in the kitchen/dining room/living room. It's the first thing you see when you walk in the place, and it's not going to impress ANYONE with the way it is right now!

3. Rearrange the furniture. We kind of have tables, chairs, recliners, etc. all over the place and in various rooms and not in arrangements condusive to entertaining. Shouldn't be too hard to do, but just needs to be done.

4. SELL BACK BOOKS. Those piles I made in a previous post? Still in the middle of my living room.

5. Make a budget. This was actually the thing I wanted to do the most during this whole process, and the thing that's been put off to the last minute. Oops!