I suppose the first one is always the hardest to write. Is there any way not to feel somewhat self conscious about what you write here. I suppose that the feeling is some what ubiquitous, but what the heck, I'll give it a shot.
Since it's the first post, here's a manifesto of what you might find here...a dumping ground of ideas, perhaps? As an avid gamer, runner, and scientist, I figure there needs to be some sort of dumping ground for thoughts that I have. Whether or not this goes anywhere, I guess we'll have to see.
I'm feeling pretty thankful today. I've had a good vacation. I reached most of my goals this past year, and I feel that 2002 has been the most successful year in my life in a while. I mean, I have a loving wife, I got a pretty big raise in a year when hardly anyone else did, I started running for the first time in 10 years for longer than 4 weeks at atime, put in about 250 miles on the ground, and I finished my Dungeons and Dragons game of about 18 months just before the year ended. Yeah, the last one seems kind of lame, but you know, like most projects, it started out small, and took on a life of its own. Total game time was 52 sessions of at least 4 hours each (some took 5 and 6 hours). Add to that about 5-6 hours of planning and writing per session, and that was a lot of my life for those 18 months. I'm pleased yet disappointed it finished. There's some conflicting emotions on the absolute success of the game, but by most accounts, people enjoyed themselves.
There are things to be improved, however. The most important is my relationship with my wife. I'm happy with her, and I think she's happy with me, but, as always, there is room for manuvering there. At the year's end, I definitely frustrated her when I invited my parents out for part of Christmas break (we get the week of Christmas off completely from work. We live in a two bedroom apt, and it is pretty tight with five people and two cats for 5 days and 4 nights. She felt that I didn't consult her on the matter, which is pretty true, I asked them without talking to her about it--in Sept--but I gave her plenty of time to say no, by telling her in October that I had asked them. Don't get me wrong, it is a problem that I didn't act as a team in this matter, but I don't know that it was as big a deal as it became as November became December. So, this leads into my first, and most important New Years resolution....Just Make an Effort to Be With My Wife More. Let her know she's appreciated, and generally pay more attention to her, and do more things with her. I'm sure that there will be more related to this subject later, so you, Gentle Reader, will have to be patient, I guess.
My other New Years Resolution is to run a Marathon somewhere in 2k3. I'd sure like it to be Twin Cities, since my brother lives there, and my family can come up and cheer me on, but if things don't work out, there is always Detroit, which is the same weekend in October. It will be a pretty rigorous training process, one that I have been looking at for about 4 weeks now, but it should be fun. I'm currently running about 20 miles a week now, and sometimes it is staggering that I'll be running 20 miles in one day in September, and 26 miles in one day sometime in October. I have a training schedule that I've looked at, which involves more cross training than I would want, but I think it will be good. biking might be something to look into as the spring begins to start showing. Weight training would be good too, but as we move out of our apartment in March, I hesitate to think about paying for it. , as our complex has a weight room.
Lastly, I'd like for us to buy a house this year. It's Ann Arbor, and we might be house poor for a while, but why not? It will be a risk, but I don't want to keep tossing money down a well, like we do now.
Interspersed, will be other stream of consciousness things, but I hope its something you find joy in reading. Til next.
posted by Jeremy at 12:19 PM
