Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Books and adult conversation

I went to my first book club meeting at OLLI Aquinas today. I tried to reread the book, The Color of Water by James McBride, but my reserved library copy did not come in on time. I decided to go anyway and give the club a test, i.e. would I like the set up, the people, would someone dominate the conversation and just the general aura. I had a good time. The professor that was running the group was extremely friendly and warm. The people were intelligent, polite and made good points about the books and about the writing we did. The book was a memoir so we had to write about something in our life that was inspired by the sentences she gave us from the book. Dennis was the eldest and the pioneer in our family. Momma could not cook to save her life. My brothers and sisters were my friends until it came to food. I chose the first one to write about and ended up telling the story of leaving home when I was a junior in college and essentially never returning but chosing to live 3 hours away. Out of the five of us, only my second brother, Dennis, did the same--living about 3 hours north of our childhood home. I always felt like the problem child, the oddball, but when Dennis and I were talking at the hospital the night Dad died, we discovered we both felt that way. Too bad that it took 30+ years to discover that about each other.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Keeping on toward those goals

I used WII Fit this morning. I bought it early last fall and like so many other things that are good for me, I had only used it a couple of times. Since I wanted a fresh start, I deleted my old information and started over. Balance is one thing I really need to work on. The game said I must be fidgeting too much because it couldn't get a read on me. Finally, I started to play some of the balance games. I had a hard time with putting the ball in the hole on the tray, skiing downhill (a good thing it was just a video game) and trouble with other things that needed balance. At one point, the game asked me if I tripped a lot because my balance was so bad. However, this afternoon Heidi told me that she knocked one of the feet off when she moved the balance board yesterday.
So maybe I am not so bad after all. I will test it out tomorrow morning.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Sunday Blahs

It seems in my family we suffer from the Sunday blahs. Steve is always very tired and likes to nap a lot on Sunday. When Heidi is home her preference is to sleep too. I get up late and usually take all morning waking up, reading the Sunday paper, using the computer, etc. I used to try very hard to get them interested in some sort of family activity but I have pretty much given up. I get through Sundays by doing a lot of scrapping and putzing around. Before retirement, I really hated Sundays because most of the time, I really did not like going back to work on Monday. Now that I have gotten over trying to be a social director, they are better. In fact, I usually look forward to having the house back to myself on Monday. Not this Monday though-the kid is home for another week:)

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Happy Anniversary!

Steve and I are having a quiet anniversary. Getting married during the holidays 22 years ago, seemed like a good idea but when you want to stay somewhere or eat out, sometimes your options are limited. We slept in today after having an early morning conversation around 4:00 a.m.
Johnny Carino's was Steve's choice for lunch. I don't particularly care for most of their menu because it is country Italian which is a heavier type of meal. But my fettuccine Alfredo was good and we had a relaxing lunch with some fun older music playing--like Frank Sinatra singing Fly Me to the Moon. We were going to attend the movie Blind Sided with Sandra Bullock but when driving home through the theater parking lot (Johnny Carino's is in the same area) we could tell the theater was packed. Since there we no parking spaces except two lots away, we came home and watched Alien on tv. I had rented it as well as it sequel Wednesday and since none of us had seen it, we enjoyed it--especially after the alien appeared. I think we are going to watch part 2 after my homemade (Chef Boyardee pizza mix) dinner. Tomorrow is January 3, I hope to get some scrapping done.

Friday, January 1, 2010

2010

After some discussion about how this year is pronounced-two thousand ten or twenty-ten, the second one twenty ten seems to be the most desired. Anyway, welcome to 2010. I, for one, am glad last year is over--there were a couple of big rough spots and I am glad they are behind me.

I have so many goals for this year that already I am feeling overwhelmed. I need to analyze my time better and make sure I get the things done that I want done and have peace about the rest.

Here is my hefty list--

1. Finish all my on-line classes. Believe me this is huge!!

2. Blog on a regular basis-at least once a week but I would like to do this daily.

3. Get serious about my health--exercise, eat right, control diabetes better.

4. Attempt to have a positive and happy attitude about life. It makes it so much easier to get out and accomplish these goals.

5. Join a Red Hat club in the area.

6. Organize my personal scrapbooks and decide what is important to scrapbook.

7. Organize my spaces--this may take all year and I am all right with that.

8. Love my family by showing them love in various non-food related ways.

9. Buy a headboard for our bed.

10. Get house painted?