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At the end of 2006, I set a number of goals for myself to achieve in 2007. I failed to achieve almost all of them. So, at the end of 2007, I decided that instead of setting new goals for myself to fail at, I'd give all those other ones another shot to see if I could do better with another year to work on them. So what follows is an assessment of whether I passed or failed on those goals from two years ago. While I go through them, I'll also try to work in some Year in Review type stuff from my life. I've got a lot to catch up on since I didn't post very much this past year.
Buy a house.
Success! Brandi and I bought a house early in 2008. Finally getting that teaching job gave us enough income to where we could afford a house payment every month. We are now the proud owners of a three bedroom, two bath room brick home in a nice subdivision.
Get a dog.
Success! We got two dogs in fact. So double Success! The main thing stopping us from getting a dog was the fact that we did not own a home because our old apartment did not allow pets. So once we closed on our home, we went to the local pet shelter and fell in love with female lab/boxer/curr/who knows what else dog that we named Baylee. However, we thought that it would be about a week before we'd be able to take her home, which worked out good for us because we had not even moved our furniture into the new house yet. Instead, we found out that unless we wanted to risk someone else adopting her, we had to take her home that day. So we adopted her and then proceeded to sleep on an air mattress for a week in our brand new home, all so we could have a dumb dog. After getting Baylee, I called my mom to tell her that we got a dog. Her immediate reply was, "You know my dog is pregnant. I was planning on giving y'all on of her puppies." So a few weeks later, we ended up with our second dog, a little lab/some type of hound dog mix that we named Brody. And thus began out many adventures as dog owners...
Those two dogs chewed up the wood rack on my grill. They chewed up the framing around my backdoor. They chewed up the wooded posts on my back patio. They dug holes in my yard. Making that worse is the fact that my backyard is a downhill slope, so whenever it rains, the dirt runs down the hill, killing the rest of what little grass the dogs haven't already dug up. They figured out how to dig under my fence in the backyard. Lots of other dogs run free in our neighborhood, so we think that's not a big deal, except for the fact that they start tearing up stuff in our neighbors' yards and bring it all back to our yard. We have found shoes, gloves, yard decorations, a coffee mug, a tent, and all manner of other things strewn about in our yard. So we decide that what we need to do is spend a couple hundred dollars and buy one of those wireless electric fences to keep them in our yard. They get special collars, and if they get too far away from the house, then they get a shock until they come back home. That worked great for a few weeks until we realize that Baylee has chewed Brody's rather expensive collar off of him. A few days later, we discover that despite the fact that her collar is still on her, Baylee has found a way to get out of the yard as well. So now we've started keeping them inside the house most of the time, and while we are at work, we have to lock them up in a rather expensive kennel. So yeah, its been an adventure. In fact, Baylee's
But man, I still love those dang mutts.
Begin thinking about maybe having a kid one of these days sometime in the future.
Success! We totally thought about it. We will continue to think about it.
Pay off credit card debt.
Failure. I guess I've technically succeeded at this because I've been paying my bill and I haven't bought anything new on my credit cards. But I haven't put much of a dent in it either. A big goal for 2009 is paying off all kinds of debt, because I'm going to have to start paying off student loans here in a few months, and that is going to suck badly.
Start writing something. Anything. It could be a short story, comic book script, movie treatment, lyrics to a rock opera... ANYTHING. And after that, I need to finish it as well.
Failure. I didn't write anything. One of these days I'm going to crack out a novel or something, but it didn't happen this year.
Get as Master's degree.
Failure. But it is only a failure because I won't be graduating until May of 2009. So this time next year I'll be typing Success! underneath this one. I just need to finish this one last course I'm currently enrolled in and pass comprehensive exams.
See an Atlanta Braves baseball game.
Failure. I didn't make it out to a game this year either. But I'm alright with that because this was a horrible year for Atlanta Braves baseball. All of our starting pitchers got injured and ended up missing large portions of the season. Not only that, Skip Carey passed away. Worst year to be a Braves fan ever. Based on how poorly things are going so far in the off-season, the 2009 seasons not looking too great either. However, we are making plans to go see a game this year, even if they do suck. So far, we've got Brent, Meagan, and Heath signed on to go, and we're hoping that Kyle and his new fiance Danielle join us as well.
Go to a comic book convention.
Failure. I might as well go ahead and take this one off because it is not likely to happen any time soon. This is more of a Thing To Do Before I Die goal than it is a Thing To Do This Year goal. There's just nothing even remotely close to Mississippi that is worth my time and money to go to. Maybe one day.
Get a job as a teacher.
Success! I actually accomplished this last year. I just left this on here as an excuse to talk about my school year this year. So far, things are going much better than last year. Last year, I started in the middle of a school year, and by all accounts, that was just a horrible group of kids. This year, I got to start out at the beginning of the school year and establish the tone of my classroom. Things are much better now. That's not to say that this year is just a walk in the park, but I'm not coming home frustrated like I did last year. So that's certainly an improvement.
Write in my LiveJournal more. Convince more people that MySpace is dumb.
Failure. I updated LiveJournal ten times this year. That's right. I just barely cracked double digits. And that is why I'm retiring this blog.
My decision now is deciding where I am going to start blogging now. Most people I know blog on their MySpace pages, but I really don't want to do that for some reason. I'd rather blog on a blogging site than a social networking site with a blog feature attached to it. Plus, I just can't shake the feeling that in a year or two all the cool social networking places will be replaced by some new and awesome thing that everyone will be doing instead. And then I'd have to move my blog all over again.
And I guess this is an good a place as any to say that another big reason why I'm retiring this blog is because I don't like the ssgohan116 name anymore. However, there's a fee to change to name of your blog, so instead of paying that, I'm just going to start a new one. When I started this way back in 2001, naming myself after a Dragonball Z character seemed like such a really great idea.
Become more active in a church, preferably the one that I'm a member of right now, and along the way find a way to fulfill some purpose within the church other than being a guy who sits in the worship services and sometimes brings up interesting points in Sunday School class. Remember that the option of actually getting a job as a youth minister somewhere is still on the table.
Success! I suppose. Brandi and I are still just about as active in church as we have been for the last few years. I'm still not as involved as I was back in my high school/youth group days. We did start teaching Bible Drills though. That's a step in the right direction I suppose.
And so it ends. I would do a mushy goodbye to all my readers, but based on recent comments, I don't think anyone other than TerriG from Newsarama will actually be reading this.
Bye Terri!
Buy a house.
Success! Brandi and I bought a house early in 2008. Finally getting that teaching job gave us enough income to where we could afford a house payment every month. We are now the proud owners of a three bedroom, two bath room brick home in a nice subdivision.
Get a dog.
Success! We got two dogs in fact. So double Success! The main thing stopping us from getting a dog was the fact that we did not own a home because our old apartment did not allow pets. So once we closed on our home, we went to the local pet shelter and fell in love with female lab/boxer/curr/who knows what else dog that we named Baylee. However, we thought that it would be about a week before we'd be able to take her home, which worked out good for us because we had not even moved our furniture into the new house yet. Instead, we found out that unless we wanted to risk someone else adopting her, we had to take her home that day. So we adopted her and then proceeded to sleep on an air mattress for a week in our brand new home, all so we could have a dumb dog. After getting Baylee, I called my mom to tell her that we got a dog. Her immediate reply was, "You know my dog is pregnant. I was planning on giving y'all on of her puppies." So a few weeks later, we ended up with our second dog, a little lab/some type of hound dog mix that we named Brody. And thus began out many adventures as dog owners...
Those two dogs chewed up the wood rack on my grill. They chewed up the framing around my backdoor. They chewed up the wooded posts on my back patio. They dug holes in my yard. Making that worse is the fact that my backyard is a downhill slope, so whenever it rains, the dirt runs down the hill, killing the rest of what little grass the dogs haven't already dug up. They figured out how to dig under my fence in the backyard. Lots of other dogs run free in our neighborhood, so we think that's not a big deal, except for the fact that they start tearing up stuff in our neighbors' yards and bring it all back to our yard. We have found shoes, gloves, yard decorations, a coffee mug, a tent, and all manner of other things strewn about in our yard. So we decide that what we need to do is spend a couple hundred dollars and buy one of those wireless electric fences to keep them in our yard. They get special collars, and if they get too far away from the house, then they get a shock until they come back home. That worked great for a few weeks until we realize that Baylee has chewed Brody's rather expensive collar off of him. A few days later, we discover that despite the fact that her collar is still on her, Baylee has found a way to get out of the yard as well. So now we've started keeping them inside the house most of the time, and while we are at work, we have to lock them up in a rather expensive kennel. So yeah, its been an adventure. In fact, Baylee's
But man, I still love those dang mutts.
Begin thinking about maybe having a kid one of these days sometime in the future.
Success! We totally thought about it. We will continue to think about it.
Pay off credit card debt.
Failure. I guess I've technically succeeded at this because I've been paying my bill and I haven't bought anything new on my credit cards. But I haven't put much of a dent in it either. A big goal for 2009 is paying off all kinds of debt, because I'm going to have to start paying off student loans here in a few months, and that is going to suck badly.
Start writing something. Anything. It could be a short story, comic book script, movie treatment, lyrics to a rock opera... ANYTHING. And after that, I need to finish it as well.
Failure. I didn't write anything. One of these days I'm going to crack out a novel or something, but it didn't happen this year.
Get as Master's degree.
Failure. But it is only a failure because I won't be graduating until May of 2009. So this time next year I'll be typing Success! underneath this one. I just need to finish this one last course I'm currently enrolled in and pass comprehensive exams.
See an Atlanta Braves baseball game.
Failure. I didn't make it out to a game this year either. But I'm alright with that because this was a horrible year for Atlanta Braves baseball. All of our starting pitchers got injured and ended up missing large portions of the season. Not only that, Skip Carey passed away. Worst year to be a Braves fan ever. Based on how poorly things are going so far in the off-season, the 2009 seasons not looking too great either. However, we are making plans to go see a game this year, even if they do suck. So far, we've got Brent, Meagan, and Heath signed on to go, and we're hoping that Kyle and his new fiance Danielle join us as well.
Go to a comic book convention.
Failure. I might as well go ahead and take this one off because it is not likely to happen any time soon. This is more of a Thing To Do Before I Die goal than it is a Thing To Do This Year goal. There's just nothing even remotely close to Mississippi that is worth my time and money to go to. Maybe one day.
Get a job as a teacher.
Success! I actually accomplished this last year. I just left this on here as an excuse to talk about my school year this year. So far, things are going much better than last year. Last year, I started in the middle of a school year, and by all accounts, that was just a horrible group of kids. This year, I got to start out at the beginning of the school year and establish the tone of my classroom. Things are much better now. That's not to say that this year is just a walk in the park, but I'm not coming home frustrated like I did last year. So that's certainly an improvement.
Write in my LiveJournal more. Convince more people that MySpace is dumb.
Failure. I updated LiveJournal ten times this year. That's right. I just barely cracked double digits. And that is why I'm retiring this blog.
My decision now is deciding where I am going to start blogging now. Most people I know blog on their MySpace pages, but I really don't want to do that for some reason. I'd rather blog on a blogging site than a social networking site with a blog feature attached to it. Plus, I just can't shake the feeling that in a year or two all the cool social networking places will be replaced by some new and awesome thing that everyone will be doing instead. And then I'd have to move my blog all over again.
And I guess this is an good a place as any to say that another big reason why I'm retiring this blog is because I don't like the ssgohan116 name anymore. However, there's a fee to change to name of your blog, so instead of paying that, I'm just going to start a new one. When I started this way back in 2001, naming myself after a Dragonball Z character seemed like such a really great idea.
Become more active in a church, preferably the one that I'm a member of right now, and along the way find a way to fulfill some purpose within the church other than being a guy who sits in the worship services and sometimes brings up interesting points in Sunday School class. Remember that the option of actually getting a job as a youth minister somewhere is still on the table.
Success! I suppose. Brandi and I are still just about as active in church as we have been for the last few years. I'm still not as involved as I was back in my high school/youth group days. We did start teaching Bible Drills though. That's a step in the right direction I suppose.
And so it ends. I would do a mushy goodbye to all my readers, but based on recent comments, I don't think anyone other than TerriG from Newsarama will actually be reading this.
Bye Terri!
happy
good
awake
chipper
irritated
jubilant
contemplative
tired
okay
accomplished