Thursday, January 01, 2015

New Year, New Day

My goals this year are pretty undefined in the specifics.  I have a  general idea of where I'd like to end up on many issues, and a basic idea of how to start the process to get there.  It involves a lot of getting off my ass and doing things, moderation in all things, and just doing the next right thing.  Forward progress is the plan.

At 4am on New Year's Day there isn't a lot of activity in the park here, other than me and my cats.  I walked down to get a gallon of water from the 25 cent dispenser and most mobile homes and rv's were dark, except for the ones that usually leave some kind of light on all the time.  It is damp and chilly and no good reason for walking around so I came home and took off the coat and got sedentary again.  Remembering my above goal I am now updating here.  I did finish dishes earlier, and put away the laundry finally.  If I can get motivated I'll cook the last of the frozen salmon from Costco, along with some potatoes and either yams or brocolli, I have both.  Probably, though, I'll just keep eating the cookies Mom sent and end up taking bean and cheese wrapped in the tortillas I got yesterday to work tomorrow night.  A goal is to take my supper more often.

I have begun work on a new expense tracking template.  I am wondering where my money goes and where I need to back off of spending (other than the obvious...) and my 10 year old template has been reworked so much as my categories have changed that I decided to start fresh.  It will be a work in progress, done in Open Office 4's version of excel, called calc.  I also want to download the Pimsleur lessons to my new phone now that I have room.  May as well kill the down time at work working on my Spanish as well as knitting.

I did end up with a new phone.  I am being totally assimilated into US culture.  I ended up with the top of the line Consumer Cellular smart phone (not counting the i-stuff).  I'm sort of happy with it, but some things I need to tweek.  It would be the same with any current phone as 'they' like to change the basic stuff that worked just fine in prior versions.  It is nice to have the maps function work correctly.  I am not too happy that everything wants access to my location, including games.  Big Brother has arrived and knows where I am at all times.  That is, when I remember my phone, which is still an issue as it just isn't that big a deal to me.  I use email and Skype mostly and got the smart phone more as a game/e-reader/podcast & music machine.  It just also happens to have a phone and messaging on it.  With the 4G data I blew past my normal $2.50/mo allotment and ended up 2 levels up at $10/mo in the first hour of playing with it.  I have moderated my excitement with data and will hopefully level out someplace in between.

And so my resolution to post more frequently gets off to a good start.  I'm going for quantity, not particularly quality, as is obvious.

2 comments:

  1. Best of luck with the New Year's resolutions.

    I had to smile when you said you were getting water at 4:00 a.m. when everyone else was sleeping...reminded me of myself when I lived in Houston. Since I hate crowds (a bad thing when you live in a big city) I would run my errands at that time to avoid them.

    I do not know how to use those new smart phones everyone has. More than for talking people use them for other things that I would not have a clue about. It brings to mind Ben in Texas...he used to get so mad and say is it a phone or is it a computer!

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  2. I don't like to give my location for most things, and often I can't access a web site or whatever because I won't give it. There is nothing in my life that would interest NSA, CIA, FBI, or anyone else, but it rankles me to even be asked. I have a Mac and use iPhoto, and darned if they aren't always wanting me to name the faces in my photos. Well, I'm not going to do it! That's like people tagging others on Facebook - what an invasion of privacy! But I'm old fashioned and don't like to see things changed when they are working perfectly well as they are - on my computer, my phone, web sites I visit, etc.

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