Things to come in 2011

I have lots of things planned for 2011, some bookish/blog related and others more personal.  I'm not one for doing new years resolutions so I won't call it that.  More, it's just some things I am going to be working on this year and for various reasons it felt best to wait until 2011 to start.

Book/Blog related
As a lot of you know, I tend to play around with my blog look a lot. I seem to pick something that I really like, then find I'm not satisfied with it after a couple of months.  I think part of that is that I just love change, so as much as I like it, I feel the need to change things after a bit.  This year I'll be participating in Bloggiesta.  I plan to revamp my blogs that weekend.  Well, honestly, I'll probably start the week leading up to it.  I've found there are several things I want to add to my blog posts yet I'm having trouble doing that since I used a template that somebody else designed and not a normal blogger template. So back to a normal blogger template I'll go.

I'm also going to be putting a disclaimer on the side bar of my blog stating that all books reviewed are either ones I own or I have borrowed (from friends/family or the library) unless I state otherwise.  If I review a book that I did receive in hopes I would review it, I'll state that in the review itself.

I'm also going to play around with the format of my reviews until I find something that I think works best for me. I like the layout of my reviews, for the most part, but might make some changes.  We'll see though, I have to come up with some ides to make it better first.

Runs & Working out
2010 was the year that I embraced a healthier lifestyle and started to eat healthier. I'm still working on that too, it's a long slow process for me.  Along with eating healthier I noticed my runs improving and I loved that.   Last year I signed up for a couple of hard (for me) races for early 2011.  I've officially begun training for those.  That also means that I might mention my workouts and running once in awhile on this blog.  I can't help it!  Running is such an important part of my life that it's hard not to talk about it sometimes.  First up, I have a 15k (9.3) trail run on February 26th.  Lucky for me it's at the park right by my house that I tend to run at on the weekends.  Unfortunately, that also means I know how hard the race is going to be because of the hills. I can run those hills now, but low mileage. I don't think there is any way I could go out today and run 15k on those hills tomorrow. So, I've begun training for that.   Shortly after I complete that race, I'll have the Go! St. Louis half marathon the 2nd weekend in April.  This is the first time I've ever attempted a half marathon.  I trained for a 10 mile race this past November, but that's the most I've ever trained for (in terms of mileage).  I'm nervous, but excited.   I have some health issues I'm working with dr's on now and I worry that will hinder my training (possibilities of some out-patient surgeries), but signed up for the 1/2 marathon anyway in hopes that it would be exactly what I need to not get depressed and to keep me active.

Last year I also got it in my head that I would like to do a short triathlon.  This comes from the girl who has an in-ground swimming pool..but didn't even swim 1 lap in it last year.  I also don't own a bike.  I talked to Husband about it and he doesn't think I can do it, since he knows how I don't swim.  He said that if I can do the mileage needed for a short triathlon (1/4 mile) in the pool, then I can get a bike.  We figured out it would be 53 laps (each direction counts as 1).  Yikes!  In the past when I've attempted to do laps in the pool I get in about 15 minutes of swimming and stop because I'm out of breath and tired.  This will surely be a challenge for me.  I've already started working on it though, I'm back to doing the p90x upper body workouts more frequently in hopes of building up some upper body strength so when we open the pool, I can maybe last more than 15 minutes.

All this training, both races and the swimming, will take me through the summer. I have no idea what races I'll decide to do towards the end of this year, but I do know I'll do some. I've found that racing helps me keep my joy of running alive and keeps me from getting in a rut.  I also love being part of something with other runners, it makes me feel like I'm not alone.

Personal - other
2010 brought me the realization that I wasn't too crazy about a career in IT support anymore. I realized that while I still like to work on pc's, I'm getting annoyed dealing with the people.  It's not that I'm not a people person, it's that IT support is treated so badly!  Sure, a lot of people appreciate us and what we do for them, but there are so many that get mad when we need to work on their pc's to fix an issue, they constantly talk down about pc's and how stupid they are, they won't return calls and then when you finally get them on the phone they complain that the issue hasn't been fixed yet, etc.  That's the part that I can't really handle any more.  I realized that I was starting to get annoyed with people when they didn't know something that I deem "simple" regarding pc's.  That's a huge indicator to me that I've had enough.  Because I know that things seem easier to me because I understand it better and in the past it hasn't bothered me that I would need to explain something. I don't mind people asking me questions, not on a personal level from friends and family, but find myself annoyed at work. Once I realized that, it was all I needed to start trying to think of a different career path.  So that being said, I'm going to focus on learning programing languages this year. I've learned HTML in the past and loved it.  Then I got away from it when I focused on learning the support side of pc's..   I attempted to learn java at one point and that didn't go well.   So this year I'm starting off with HTML again.   From there...I might attempt Java. That's a big MIGHT though. We'll see how well I do with HTML first.  This coincides with me planning to re-do my blogs too, so you might see changes periodically as I test something out.

So there you have it!  Some things to come in 2011 for this blog and my life.  I have my hopes up that it will be an awesome year.

(For those of you who read both my blogs, I'm posting this on both)