New Year

Categories: random

Tags: photos, York, friends, resolutions, New Year, 2009, family, PhD

Date: 05 January 2009 22:06:57

We had a really lovely new year which we spent with some friends in York. After an amazing meal cooked by one friend we walked up to York Minster with a bottle of champagne and saw in the New Year with several thousand drunk people! One of our friends there is a bell ringer who has rung before at the Minster for New Year, so she was really looking forward to hearing the bells, but once the first "Bong" of midnight sounded the cheering and whatnot was so loud you couldn't hear a thing!

A couple of days later we headed further south, firstly to see my parents and then to see HD's parents and pick up the last of our stuff. My mum is recovering really well from her op - she showed me her war wounds and they are healing really nicely. We got back to Glasgow yesterday, and today the early alarm so that I could get a good amount of work done at work was a bit of a shock to the system, though not as bad as it could have been I guess (I'm expecting it to get cumulatively worse as the week progresses. Groan). One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to do at least a 9-5 day Monday to Friday at work as I really need to get my act together for a much more important resolution, which is to finish the thesis in 2009! I arrived at work at exactly the same time as the guy who shares my office (well, I suppose I should say I share his office as he was there before me!), it turns out that we have exactly the same resolution! (the 9-5 one anyway, he's still got 3 years of his PhD to go). He reckons he'll last till Wednesday, I'm at least giving myself till the end of the week! Talking of resolutions, my various ones this year are (in no particular order): * Finish and submit my thesis in 2009. * 9-5 Monday to Friday working (at least) in order to achieve that. * Lose weight. Having weighed myself this morning I am the heaviest I have ever been in my whole life, and I want to lose 24kg. Which is mathematically rather handy, as that makes 2kg a month (or about a pound a week in old money). I intend to do this through not snacking between meals, not buying chocolate (though I'm not going to be precious and if anyone gives me chocolate I'm not going to refuse it or make a big deal of it), having smaller portions and no seconds, and only having a glass of wine with a meal (usually if we have wine I tend to have 2 glasses). I reckon that will at least arrest the upward (and outward!) direction of the weight, and if I have to do more then it won't be too difficult. I'll also try to go to the gym a couple of times a week. * Read the Bible daily. I don't think there's any point saying "Have a daily quiet time" as that just won't happen, but having gone through (still am there really) a really dry patch I think that daily reading will at least be a step in the right direction. * Try to reduce my overdraft and not spend money frivolously. We'll see. I think most of these are reasonably manageable. Anyway - happy new year everyone!