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A new year: 1/365

Okay, so my 43rd birthday was yesterday, and I have been trying to get things moving in other aspects of my life besides work.  I believe I have let it take over too much of my day, mostly because being at home, I can always do things because it's right there.  I do love what I do, which is really nice, but I need to keep hours to work on what they should be utilized for - being with the kids, being with Fae, doing things that allow my brain to shut down for a while and just relax.

It's been a pretty stressful year, so I want to leave 42 behind me and chronicle 43 to see if I can keep something like a daily log going.  I have several reasons for this, but in truth, I kind of like having a check on myself so I can list out accomplishments, failures, goals, and thoughts.  I think emptying my head on a regular basis will help.

Hence, the 1/365 in the title.  I'm going to try and do things on a daily basis, including pics, a post, and maybe even some other stuff.  I don't know.  I've seen a lot of blogs that take a pic a day and I always thought that was neat.

So what do I have planned?  Hell, I don't know.  But I'd like to keep this up as much as possible.

Latest Accomplishments:  Gillian and I have been doing 'workouts' together on a nightly basis for about a week now.  We didn't last night because we were out to dinner and Daddy ate too much  We've been doing some form of kicking/punching because she found that hitting balloons around her room helped with her frustration levels.   She's in 3 advanced classes, in band, and the school play.  She's stressing a little bit and she liked the idea of hitting the hand pads I have from when I used to teach TaeKwon Do.

So I started her off slow - 5 minutes of punching, some sit ups, and pushups - and we progressed from there.  We decided that we wanted to keep track of things, so I have an excel spreadsheet on my desktop at home.  I looked last night, and I have done more pushups and situps in the last week than I did all last year.  Made me want to do some this morning, but when I tried to do some situps, my abdomen say NO!  Going to take it easy on the situps for another day or so, but I'm going to continue with the pushups and start doing the punching and kicking drills I used to teach before using the bags.  I want to work on endurance (for both of us), as well as getting form a little cleaner.  Kicks are a lot more effective if you're stance is proper.

I also got a bonsai tree for my birthday from Fae  It's a flowering Serissa: http://www.bonsaiboy.com/catalog/product5829.html

It grows small white flowers several times during the year and it's cool as hell because the roots come above the soil. It's 7 yrs old and it's about the coolest thing I've gotten in a long time.  Hopefully I won't kill it  That's kind of another reason for the enhanced blog.  I'd like to chronicle how I'm caring for the tree to be able to look back and see what I did and what I did wrong.  Plus I'm hoping to be able to get advice on how to begin trimming, pruning, and training it.  It's funny because I had gotten a bunch of books from the library to begin reading on it, I didn't realize Fae was planning it based on all of the books I had.  I didn't realize but at one point, I had like 5 I was reading at the same time.

Anyway, here's to the first day of my new year.  Here's to new beginnings.  And here's to hopefully a nice start to improving my life, my outlook, and my sanity