Checking In: Six Weeks

This is a check-in for New Year's Resolutions, but first things first.

If you were wondering how the knitting was going after my last post, I give you this:

One sock is finished and I'm nearly to the heel of the second.  I'm enjoying the pattern (Temperance).  The pattern shows up better in Temperance than the first pattern I tried, but it's still not great simply because there's a lot of color going on in this yarn.  I think this will work, but I think I'll probably reknit this pattern in something more monochromatic at some point.

On to Resolutions:
I'm still riding the Resolution Train.  I recently read that it takes 91 days to make a new habit, something that startled me because I always thought it was 14 or 21.  I'm keeping that in mind as I try to keep up my resolutions.

1.  Music:  I have a bunch of CDs that I carry in the car.  I am mildly successful listening to them.  I'm still working on this.  I have been startled to find that a CD that I thought I hadn't listened to much was very familiar to me.  It's not that I never listened to it; it's that I didn't like it when I did.

2.  Exercise:  Paying myself to exercise is working!  One week I only managed three workouts, but that was because I had a horrible headache on that Saturday.  I decided that if I worked out five times the following week, I could count it.  I did, and I did.  I've been walking on the treadmill while watching DVDs, and I've been enjoying not hating it.  The time is soon coming when I will accept that I have to ramp up the intensity of the workout, but right now I'm thrilled that I'm doing something that doesn't involve the couch and my ass.  My weight, however, has not moved.  I am disappointed by this and trying not to think too much about it.  The blame may lie with chocolate.  And pancakes.  And cheese.  Actually, there's really quite a lot of blame to go around.

3.  Yarn:  I have to admit a couple things.  My birthday is in January and I received yarn and a knitting store gift certificate as gifts, so I certainly haven't felt deprived in any way.  I also just placed a significant order for yarn, but all of it is being used for gifts.  I think this is okay, but I do need to keep thinking about what I can knit that will use up stash yarn.  The editor of The Knitter, a UK knitting magazine, has set a goal to only knit from her stash in 2011.  The thought makes me a little queasy, and I don't even consider myself an impulsive yarn-purchaser.  I'm trying to tell myself that if I work at using stash yarn now, I won't ever get to the point where I feel I have to limit myself for a year.  This may be a lie, but I've found that lying to myself is rarely as harmful as people make it out to be.

Feel free to utilize this when raising your children.

4.  Upholster:  The chairs are back, but there's a problem with one of them.  After playing phone tag, we've scheduled for someone to look at it on Wednesday.  I'm confident it will get fixed and we will live happily ever after with these chairs.

Posting these check-ins, while almost definitely boring to you, is really helpful to me.  This space is one part diary and one part public reckoning.  Even though I know very few people are reading, the fact that someone on the Internets might be reading makes me want to work hard to succeed so I can report success rather than failure.  Who knew the Internet could be a bodhisattva?