Progress on my yearly goals

Well it has been a long time since I thought about the goals I made for myself this year.  I have accomplished quite a few things on my list, started a few of the things on my list, and abandoned a few of the things on my list.  I guess that’s why I have a lot of goals – so the odds of meeting at least one of them are increased.

With respect to labwork:

• I have been in lab at least 45 hours every week, but at least twice a month I work on the weekends, so I think I’ve been sporadically meeting my goal of working 50 hours/week.  I guess it doesn’t necessarily matter the amount of time that I’m at work but the quality of work I’m doing well I’m there
•  Submitted abstracts to 3ICSHM and BMES 2011; both accepted, one for a talk (which I already gave on our England trip!) and one for a poster, which is in October in Hartford, CT
•  Successfully defended a Master’s thesis, woo!  Now I need to actually hang the diploma somewhere
•  I wrote a research paper which I gave to Monty a week ago to get his first round of feedback (which I'm waiting for now but will hopefully arrive soon so we can get a bulk of the revisions finished before he starts teaching again); it took me longer than I wanted and I’m still waiting on data for part of a figure from my undergrad; my new revised goal is to submit by September 30

With respect to finances:

• I’ve been able to save at least 20% on our weekly groceries every week at the store with the exception of 3 weeks; however, I’ve saved more than 30% on numerous occasions, so in my mind that balances.  I’ve averaged more than 20% savings every month, so that’s good.  I don’t think we’ll be able to save a month’s rent at the grocery store, but maybe.  I’ll have to see how the stars align with stuff going on sale when I need it and that will probably determine what we save.  Right now we’re at about $500 saved with MVP and coupons (I think) so maybe we can squeeze another $300 in savings by Dec 31.
•  I've started using online coupons -- maybe this will be a way for me to find more useful coupons for things I actually buy
• I haven’t been making regular monthly contributions to my mutual funds, but I have made several large contributions that almost even out to what I would have put in otherwise.  It’s been a little slow because I opened another checking account and was moving my direct deposit so the past few months have been weird setting that up and I haven’t been able to set up an automatic withdrawal yet.  I did however buy a fair amount of shares in the mutual fund for our house last week when the market opened after the US credit downgrade so hopefully we’ll make some money on that purchase in the long run.
•  I have opened two individual mutual funds in addition to our joint one to make more use of my money than letting it sit in a money market account  

With respect to health/wellness:

• I didn’t make it to the target weight I wanted to be at before our England trip (the trip itself definitely messed with my weight loss plans haha) but I have been hovering around that target weight (130) for a few weeks now.  My ultimate goal is 125 but honestly I haven’t been trying too hard to reach it.  I need to be more serious if I want to lose the other 5-7 pounds because I still eat pretty much whatever I want, I just exercise a little more.  I do eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, but not a large variety.  For example, last week I ate an apple, a banana, cucumber, spinach, and watermelon every day.  But maybe I need to shake things up a bit and eat the foods I don’t usually eat.  But still, I’m 15 pounds down, so that’s something!
•  I’ve made about 8 new recipes this year, so I’m keeping track with that.  They’re pretty lame recipes though, so I should keep working to improve this goal.  Not that they aren’t tasty, they just aren’t really grown-up foods hah
•  I’ve given up weight training.  Once classes start again maybe I’ll try to make more use of Duke’s gym.  I do lift weights in our living room, but nothing nearly as involved was what I was doing last fall.  I also do the ab workout for P90X twice a week, so I’m trying to strengthen my core.
•  I’m doing well limiting my caffeine intake
• I go on the treadmill every day, or at least 13/14 days and going for at least 40 minutes each time (sometimes running the whole time, sometimes a combination of running and walking at a really steep incline)

Other random goals:

• I have been reading up a storm, probably 25 books this summer alone (if you count all the ones I’ve reread, like HP before the movie came out)
•  Campout is in 4 weeks (only 4????) and I’m definitely going
• Attended Jazz Fest in New Orleans (still need to get my poster framed though…)
• Put pictures from our Costa Rica and England/Wales trips in albums (still need to put the rest of our wedding pictures in an album though…)
• I won’t get to run the Turkey Trot this year because we’re having Thanksgiving with my stepdad’s parents this year, and they live out of town, so we’ll have to leave early-ish in the day.  I can still get up and run 5 miles though, so I will aim to just beat my time from last year on my own this year

All-in-all I think I'm on track to accomplishing a lot of the things I wanted to do this year, although maybe not by the deadlines I had originally set for myself; better late than never I guess :)  I'm really mainly hoping to get this paper submitted by the end of September so I can set a prelim date.  Monty won't let his students prelim until they have a first author research paper published, so I'd like to try to aim for the November - February time frame to prelim, which means I need to publish soon!  Hopefully preliming then will keep me on track to finish in 2013 (fingers crossed).  I guess there's really no HURRY to finish because at least I'm getting paid, but I'd like to finish in 5-5.5 years.  We'll see... it all depends on how successful I am at figuring out all my little problems hah