I’ve done this the last few years on here and Facebook: get to the halfway point of the year, look back at any resolutions that I made at the beginning of the year, and analyze how they’re going:
- Get An Apartment. In this post, I had set April 1st as a tentative date to start apartment-searching. While I missed that date by about 6-7 weeks, the search is definitely on. I will make a few appointments for apartment tours on Tuesday or Wednesday, plus tour the Old Louisville neighborhood to find vacancies within the next week. My goal is to have a place by the end of the month, and a move-in date in place by August 15th.
- a. Start My Online Portfolio and b. Create Content for the Portfolio. I have not done nearly as much with this, during Summer Break, as I had planned. There’s still plenty of time left, though.
- Find an Internship, Co-Op, and/or a Full-Time Job in Computer-related Fields by July 1st. This actually happened! I learned quite a bit, including: learning the basic syntax of Perl, how to create RSS Feeds in Python, and how to efficiently translate from Perl to Python.
- Earn a 3.50+ GPA for the Spring Semester. This was a Swing And A Miss. I got a 2.50; I was on the border of two grades, in 3 of my 4 classes, but Finals Week nudged me to the lower grades in 2 of them. Of course you realise, this means Fall Semester War.
- Get the Right Foot Back Under Control.
This is still a work in progress but there have been some positive results. The Plantar Plate tear under my right 2nd and 3rd toes is pretty much healed. The Plantar Fasciitis has been calm for a few weeks, for which I am very grateful. I thank the Tri-Lok Brace for relaxing and supporting the Plantar ligament enough to go without the brace for a few days.The bone spurs pain in my heel has most certainty not calmed down. Neither has the Achilles Tendonitis in both feet. The rest of the pain is just a long, LONG lesson of pain management. Some days are better than others.
- Keep the Upward Momentum with Money Going.
I did not want to leave Kinetic but the money issues have turned around since I quit. Add to that the promotion at TRIMARC – double the hours, with a larger shift differential and more vacation/personal days – and, for one of the very rare times in my 21-year working career, I will not need to file for Earned Income Tax Credit on next year’s Tax Forms!
- Take Time For Myself; Treat Myself. This is also a work in progress. The former has happened a few times during Summer Break; the latter has maybe happened twice(?). There aren’t enough people at work to fill in for 3rd shift, so “time for myself” hasn’t happened often. However, going to a Reds game last week and a shopping day on Sunday were 2 of the bigger “treat myself” times (the Reds was a treat because we got some usually-out-of-price-range tickets). I am hoping to get out with friends a few times before school starts back, take some days off, and/or ‘end another years-long problem/streak’ by the end of August.
- Get Back Down to 230 lbs. by Spring Break; Get Down To 215 lbs. by the End of the Year. The former did not happen; the latter is still very possible. I think I am finally moving down off of the weight plateau I’ve been on for a few months.
Other items:
- Drum & Bugle Corps season has started! I haven’t been able to catch a show – yet – but it’s been fun following the DCI scores. DCA seems to be 2 steps behind DCI, regarding scores posting and descriptions of their bigger shows. There will probably be more on Drum Corps in a separate, upcoming blog post.
- The start of football season can’t get here fast enough! I like watching NHRA and some baseball during the summer, but there’s not much else going on that interests me, sports-wise!
- I had my lowest INR reading in probably 2 years, about 2 weeks ago, at 2.4. The short definition: INR is the ratio of the speed that my blood clots to the clotting speed of a “normal” sample. The higher the number, the slower my blood is clotting. Doctors want my INR between 3.0 and 3.5, although a reading between 2.5 and 2.9 isn’t horrible. The cause of the low reading was a probable missed dosage. If my reading stays below 2.5, I run the risk of blood clots; run for too long above 4.0, the stroke risk increases. Thankfully, it’s easier to raise an INR in the summer than it is to drop a high reading.
- “Ghostbusters (2016)”: better than I was led to believe. Not as funny as the original Ghostbusters, but it was much better than “Ghostbusters II”. More to come….
- I am waiting to see if I can sign up for 2 more classes On Demand (6 credit hours), bringing the Fall total up to 15 hours.
- “Icewind Dale II” remains one of my all-time favorite games; it was also the first game that I downloaded a mod for, many years ago. It sucks that Icewind Dale II won’t get an Enhanced version like Icewind Dale I and Baldur’s Gate. Oh well… I guess I can re-install it and see if I can beat ‘Nightmare’ mode.
The Nexus 