2013....What shall I do with you?

I have no review to post because I'm reading "A Trip To The Beach" by Robert and Melinda Blanchard for book club and I posted on that almost a year ago. Then I'll be reading "Sophie's World" which is going to take a while. I will say that if you haven't read the Blanchard book, this is the perfect time for it to transport you from the frozen white world of January to warm sand, turquoise waters and palm trees. It's the cheapest vacation you'll ever take.

It seems a bit slack to let the new year pass without a post of some kind so I'll just ramble a bit. I saw Les Miserables yesterday and loved it...mostly. The story and music are wonderful of course and I thought Ann Hathaway and Hugh Jackson were very good. Hathaway's scene where she sings "I Dreamed A Dream" is Oscar worthy. I found Russel Crowe as Javert awkward at times. He's a good actor and a good singer but I'm not sure he can do them both at the same time. There were moments when he seemed to be concentrating so hard on singing "right" that Javert disappeared. I thought the choral music was spectacular and the closing scene absolutely epic. Can't wait to see it again.

I took my granddaughter to see The Hobbit just before Christmas and we both loved it. I didn't think it was quite as good as the first movie in The Lord Of The Rings series but I'm so hooked on those that nothing will ever compare. This was her first experience with hobbits, dwarves and elves and her reaction was exactly what I hoped it would be. She adored Bilbo. And Fili and Kili. We will both be waiting impatiently for the next installment which seems an eternity away at this point.

Well it's a new year and that means resolutions for a lot of people. I like to think of it more as a re-evaluating and setting new goals. Resolutions are easy to forget in a few weeks, and I say that from a lot of experience, whereas goals have steps and set points for evaluating how you're progressing. This seems to work better for me.

One of my goals for this year is to read more of what I want to read and not what I have to just because I committed to something, so I didn't sign up for the Canadian Book Challenge this year and I'm going to stop looking at others challenges that I've been thinking about.

I'm also going to get back to walking a few times a week as soon as I've recovered from Christmas and the pain level is back to workable again. That should be within another week or so hopefully.

Another thing I plan to do is reconnect with some people that I've lost touch with. Because I wasn't able to do a lot of socializing I gave up and didn't do any, but I know there's a happy medium in there somewhere. For now I'm going to put one visit per month in my schedule and see how that goes.

A big and rather reluctant goal I've set myself for this year is to decide if I can continue with photography. I sell a few photos on stock sites and it's something I love to do but it's getting harder and harder physically to get into the positions a good shot requires. I'm starting a course soon and by the time I'm done I think I should know if it's even reasonable to attempt it anymore. If it isn't, I'm going to have to concentrate more on finding a new way to create art.

And last, I've got to find an easier way to do Christmas. My memories of Christmas 2012 are going to be of exhaustion, frustration and pain. I have to look at each aspect - shopping, wrapping, decorating, baking, cards - and see how to do it smarter than I'm doing it now. There are simple changes I can make, like using gift bags instead of wrapping presents. Like baking in September and October and freezing it instead of rushing though it in the few weeks before Christmas. Like taking advantage of the times I am in the stores and making the choice to pick up at least one Christmas present while I'm there. All of this will require me being satisfied with less than perfection - that will be the biggest hurdle - but I think I may be ready. I already have my 2013 Christmas organizing plan set up and I've ordered my cards and have one stocking stuffer for next year, so I hope that I may really change things this year. I'll see how I'm doing with that by the end of January. I know none of us can see the future and we can't know what 2013 will bring, but as much as it is up to me, I want to do better.

Guess I'd better stop rambling and wish you all a healthy and contented 2013. A wise woman once told me that life is not filled with wonderful days or weeks, but wonderful moments. Let's not miss any of them this year, even the ones that come on bad days. Let's enjoy the wonderful moments, big and small, and tell each other about them in these blogs. God bless us every one!