Completed Goals
18) Make a batch of freezer jam.
54) Visit the Pizza restaurant near Lake Michigan.
62) Visit a local winery.
69) Develop a successful composting system.
71) Grow a crop of corn (It is officially a crop. I have been warned that I may not get any corn due to squirrels, but I'm checking it off).
73) Clean and organize the contents of both desks
87) Train Odie to stay at doorways
101) Do not allow yourself to complain of boredom

Partially Completed Goals:
1) Earn a Masters Degree - I have finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Not only will I earn my Masters, I'm sticking it out for the PhD dammit!
11) Read 10 of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction (0/10) - Reading Thomas Sowell...
27) Take an advanced pilates class - I'm pushing myself really hard in my class and I can feel it!
28) Run a 5K - I have a plan and I'm running farther than ever.
41) Travel to Iowa - It is in the works
59) Bike to and around Saint Mary’s College - I'm biking to school and back, I'll get ambitious and go farther one of these days
74) Maintain organization of the desks - so far...
88) Take Odie to 90% of the pet-friendly parks in the county - I added a new one last weekend

This weeks goals:
1) Thomas Sowell
2) Code a hexagonal lattice (should be an extension of my current work) and start thinking about a make file for my geometry code.
3) Write Bianca an email (partially) in Portuguese
4) Make bread or crackers
5) Update my website

Life is busy!

So a power outage and large amounts of work have kept me away from the computer. I did complete my goals for last week (including two runs of 1.5 miles in about the same time as before). Dates estimated:

Date	5/22	5/31	6/5	6/9	6/11	6/16	6/23
Miles	1.5	1.3	2.2	1.5	1.3	1.5	2.4
Minutes	16	14	23	17	13	16	28

Also, I cleaned and organized both desks! Check! Now I just need to maintain it. Note the last run. Very slow, but distance and endurance matter more right now. I took Odie to Rum Village Park last weekend, picked up my library card, and generally stayed very busy.
I need to do a garden post so that next year I can have a better idea of what I did and when. I have been lame about record keeping thus far.

Sleepy Sunday

I spent today cooking, studying Spanish, reading, napping, and day-dreaming. I did spend a little time in the garden and I took the mutt to a new park. Actually, I went on THREE walks w/ her. I am a good pet owner.
This felt like a very unproductive weekend, but I think I needed that. I realized that I hadn't made a list of goals to work on for the week.

1) Run twice (for 1.5 miles or more)
2) Organize my desk upstairs. Avoiding it is sheer laziness.
3) Pick up my library card (I signed up for one!).
4) Finish the current chapter of Thomas Sowell's book.
5) Be sure to practice planks and throw in a couple of push-up attempts.
6) Work w/ Odie on things she SHOULD know how to do.

This is going to be a busy week, so I made the list simultaneously long and simple. During the day I'm teaching and researching. In the evenings, I have plans for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It is likely that I will be busy on Friday or Saturday as well.

Progress Report

Date	5/22	5/31	6/5	6/9	6/11
Miles	1.5	1.3	2.2	1.5	1.3
Minutes	16	14	23	17	13
Time	Early	Early	Early	Early
Rate (minutes/mile)	11(1)	11(1)	10.5(1.1)	11(1)	10(1)

I am one tired girl today, but I am heading off to the Greek Festival soon. I hope that the coffee and sugar and pastry will wake me up... I should mention that I should have made a goal about shell scripting since that has been my recent focus. Automation is a good thing.

Completed Goals
18) Make a batch of freezer jam
54) Visit the Pizza restaurant near Lake Michigan
62) Visit a local winery

Partially Completed Goals
1) I've been working hard on my research the past couple of weeks and the Masters degree is starting to seem possible!
2) I've started the chem book, and plan to work on it today or tomorrow
3) I continue to work on my webpage
9) 2/10
10) 1/10 I've identified a couple of Pulitzer winners that I plan to read
11) 0/10 I'm slowly reading on Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions.
13) I plan to read a couple of presidential biographies soon. This should help to lock in the names of those 19th century presidents.
17) I would really like to go the the APS March Meeting and I am going to work to make that happen this year.
19) My tomato plants are growing. Fried green tomatoes will be on the menu just as soon as possible.
25) The garden is coming along nicely.
27) My last pilates class was AWESOME. I am learning so much!
28) I've got a schedule that should get me to my first 5K by early this fall
32) I can now push up from my stomach into plank position. Can a tricep push-up be far behind?
41) I've identified enough reasons to go to Iowa that I may drive there this summer.
48) I'm going to COSTA RICA in October. I am SO SO SO excited. The tickets got so cheap I couldn't turn it down.
52) 1/10
53) It might involve some bus travel...
64) I use my school library regularly. I haven't been as good about the community one.
70) 1/3
71) The corn is sprouted and now I'm waiting for knee-high by the 4th of July.
72) I think I'm going to buy a plant for the big window in my office. It is much sunnier there than home. I think I'll count that.
73) My desk at school is clean and organized! In fact, I'm using the filing cabinet even!
74) So far, so organized. Vigilance is a must for me.
75) I'm working on organization. The hard drive on my work laptop is in pretty good shape right now.
80) I have one more student loan to pay off. I have a plan for it.
81) I'm chipping away at the car loan
88) I should be taking the mutt to a new park this weekend
101) I haven't been anywhere close to bored since I've started this list.

a slow morning...

... is better than nothing!

Date	5/22	5/31	6/5	6/9
Miles	1.5	1.3	2.2	1.5
Minutes	16	14	23	17
Time	Early	Early	Early	Early
Rate (minutes/mile)	11(1)	11(1)	10.5(1.1)	11(1)

Tracking Running

My goal for the week was to run twice. If you count a half run/half walk w/ Odie, I achieved this goal. Considering that I was a very busy scientist this week, I have decided that I can count the short run, but I won't bother to track it. This morning's run is exciting however. I felt awesome at about the mile mark and proceeded to run a total of 2.2 miles in 23 minutes. This feels like wonderful progress to me! It is listed in my slightly more compact table.

Date	5/22	5/31	6/5
Miles	1.5	1.3	2.2
Minutes	16	14	23
Time	Early	Early	Early
Rate (minutes/mile)	11(1)	11(1)	10.5(1.1)

Reading List

Reading books (and NOT news/blog articles) is very important. I was the student in school who always brought a book from home so that I could read when I finished my classwork. Even in college I would occasionally fill time between classes merely reading a book for fun. I definitely spent a few spring and winter breaks holed up on my sofa reading novel after novel. Over the last few years, much of my reading has shifted to Internet time. The quality of the content and my concentration has degraded steadily.

The Goals project has been doing me a lot of good. Even if I don't finish the list, my use of time and focus has greatly improved. I have been reading actual books, building websites, and shell scripting on weekends. I've been gardening, cleaning, playing tourist, and loving my life.

I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy about a week ago. It is a difficult book to put down. The story opens in the cold, dark reality of two survivors and demands complete attention. I found myself engrossed in the moments when the characters literally had no food and finding some was their entire focus. That is a concept that I have never even come close to experiencing.

While there are many stories that explore some post-apocalypse world, I have only read two: The Stand and The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. These books are among my favorites. While they have very dark moments, those books have light in them. I will probably re-read them. I cannot imagine reading The Road again. It simply is not that sort of book for me.