Last Post This Round

This will be my last post for this Round of Words in 80 Days. I don't have too many Christmas preparations left to do, mostly wrapping presents, but I want to spend whatever time I can this week just chilling out. 

I've done fantastic on my meager list of goals for this Round and previously shared them so I won't list them again. The last goal was directing and surviving our church's Children's Christmas program. It went off last night without a hitch. It came together so amazingly that I was stunned, tearful even. None of it was my doing. Everything just plain fell into place. 

The only negative was how few people attended. 99, according to our freshman usher, Raleigh on the far right below. I'm so proud of Raleigh for taking charge of the other kids who were ushering for the first time. That's his sister Lily on the far right, followed by Noah, Bethany and Payton. I'm just a softy for all these kids. Noah and Payton also had reading parts in the program, along with four high school girls. 

And then there's our entire Sunday school class of five kids. Five kids who pulled it together and did their parts like veterans. CJ, Ethan, Catherine, Scarlett and Maddie. Aren't the two littlest girls absolutely adorable?

In addition to our spattering of kids, the Creative Ministry group below performed three songs. They are so cool. My daughter was in this troop for a couple years when she was in middle school and she had such a good time doing it.

So, that's it for this year. I look forward to hearing from everyone in the New Year, with our lists of goals ready to be tackled.

Merry Christmas to you all.

I promise . . .

It was a busy week, but I got through. On Friday I gave my presentation on my trip to Africa to my co-workers. Considering I had to be at the clinic by 11 and I was still working on my slides at nine and started cooking chapati at 9:30, I think I did pretty good. Thirteen people attended my first talk (seven of them were kids, all from one family, if you can believe it) and seven at my second talk right after the first. They had lots of question, which I think is good. I must have held their interest and I had questions for the kids (how fast can a cheetah run?). One straggler came in  after I had finished and was packing up, so I gave her the elevator speech, whipping through the slides on my laptop. After she left and I had already closed down my computer, another coworker came in and I couldn’t get rid of her, so it was 2:00 before I got out of there. I stopped at my mom’s and then checked some stores in town looking for a Christmas present for my hubby. It is something that needs to be ordered and I don’t know why I wait until the last minute. Needless to say, I didn’t get anything else done on Friday.

Yesterday, I worked at the clinic in the morning, went from there straight to my daughter’s for a meeting of Tumaini. Had hoped to do some shopping after that, but Hubby said the stores were packed so don’t even bother. I do not know when I will get the rest of his presents. Anyway, got home in time to go to church, where I did hand out some copies of the Christmas program to some of the participants. Oh, I didn’t mention that 6:00 that morning I was printing off copies of the program, so that I would have them ready for any kids I saw. As soon as I finish posting this I need to run into church to catch more of them going in for the 9:00 service.

It has been quite the weekend. Not over yet. This afternoon I am taking my Kinship kid to the Kinship Christmas party. And I absolutely positively have to do Christmas cards today. I also need to make Christmas cookies since I signed up to bring them to the clinic Christmas party next Saturday night, which is right after the Christmas program at church.

Why does there have to be so much going on this time of year???

My goals for the week were to finish the program, finish the presentation and do some writing on my memoir. So I got two out of three done. I think I can live with myself.

I promise as soon as the New Year rolls around I will get at my memoir, and all the other writing projects I have on my plate. 

And still editing the 1400 pictures from the trip. 

exciting week

Let’s start with that wonderful list of accomplishments this Round.

  

• Blogged about my trip to Africa.
• Wrote a summary of my trip to Kenya and financial prospectus.  
• Set up dates to do my presentation. The first talk is this Friday, then I have one in January and two in February.  
• Had two sales of my Kenyan merchandise. Have had three, at which I made a total of over $700.
• Wrote a newsletter for the nonprofit.
• Finished reading “Shantaram”.

I don’t know where to put this accomplishment, but click on this link for an exciting article.

I have a lot going on yet this month, in addition to the list below, but I think that I can get it done, along with decorating the tree, writing and mailing out Christmas cards, baking Christmas cookies, etc., etc.

• My church’s Christmas program. I have the first real draft finished. I will talk to our Sunday School teacher and our organist today to see if there are any changes they think need to be made. Then I will try to finalize everything else on Wednesday night. I still don’t know if we can pull this off, but whatever. It is what it is.
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip. I really haven’t worked on it this week. I do not know what I am thinking. My first talk is this Friday. Oh, well, just like the Christmas program, somehow it will come together.
• On the writing end of things… So I started my second memoir about Kenya last week. I am up to 2000 words. Pretty stoked. 

Hopefully my last sale for a while. Tired of dragging this stuff around. 

Yikes!

As I blogged about on Sunday, I have made a serious dent in the goals for this Round, but three of them have been hanging out there, causing me undo stress.

• My church’s Christmas program. This is the biggest stressor because it is not just about me failing myself, it is about letting down the people at church. I don’t even think it is the kids – there are so few of them and I don’t think that the Christmas Program means as much to them as it did when my generation were kids. But it is what it is. Somehow it will all come together, even though there is such a small handful of people and boys and girls helping with it.   
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip. I started it and even though I only have four slides done, I think I can pull it together. The presentation I do on the 11^th is going to be my practice, and I will just get better from there.
• On the writing end of things… Yikes! I started it! My second memoir about Kenya. Ok, so it is only like 420 words, but every journey begins with a single step. I will just see where the next couple steps take me and keep going.

 And that’s about it for now. I have a busy week yet. I have to nail down the rest of the Christmas program at church tonight, I work the day job Friday morning, Hubby and I want to go Christmas shopping Friday afternoon and I have a craft show for our Kenyan merchandise all day Saturday. What am I thinking????? And the rest of the month doesn’t get any better than that!

How about your month? Are you going to get everything done in December that you need to? 

My daughter and I in Kenya in 2013.
We had taken a thousand steps to get to the top of the hill, and returned with sunburns, but it was a beautiful day.  

Goals in spite of Thanksgiving

We had our family Thanksgiving dinner at my house yesterday. Of the over twenty-some who I invited, we ended up with 13 (ok, unless you count the two dogs, then 15). Everything went okay. Actually rather uneventful, but the way my life has gone this entire year, uneventful is good.

And what of my goals? First, let me rearrange them so I can better concentrate on those I have to work on.

Goals Accomplished:

  

• Blog about my trip to Africa.
• Write a summary of my trip to Kenya and financial prospectus.  
• Set up dates to do my presentation.
• Have two sales of my Kenyan merchandise.
• Write a newsletter for the nonprofit.
• Finish reading “Shantaram”. This the latest goal accomplished. At nearly 1,000 pages, the longest book I have ever read. But so worth it. I thought it was great and would highly recommend it to anyone who has traveled to other and very different countries, or has an interest in learning more about other cultures.

And these goals are still hanging out:

• My church’s Christmas program. Yes, I finished putting together the main parts of the program, now I need to fill in lots of holes. And get lots of help with it. 
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip. I pretty much have my pictures from the trip edited and organized. I really need to get this together though as my first talk is eleven days away. 
• On the writing end of things… I think I am ready to start writing that second memoir, the one about my last two trips to Kenya. I just need some quiet time to dive into it. I know how and where I want to start it and have journal entries to rely on to keep me going. Just need the time.

 And I think it is reasonable to say that – plus all the preparations to take care of for Christmas – will take me to the start of the next ROW80.

 How about you? Getting caught up in the holiday frenzy? Or having your own personal frenzy? And did anyone reading this complete NaNoWriMo? 

coming up green

I think it is time to start adding some color to these goals.

  

• Blog about my trip to Africa. I have blogged about it enough. I think I am going to make a Tumaini Tuesday and blog once a week, on Tuesdays (duh), about the nonprofit and anything new that’s going on or anything I left out about the trip or whatever. So, I’m gonna call this one a wrap. 

• Write a summary of my trip to Kenya and financial prospectus. Done, printed and shared. 

• Work on a power point presentation of the trip.  Still working on those pictures. 

• Set up dates to do my presentation. I have three dates set up – December 11 at the clinic where I work, January 31 at my church and February 27 at an educational seminar for my profession as a certified medical assistant. I would say that is enough dates. 

• Have two sales of my Kenyan merchandise. I had one sale at the clinic in October and the second sale yesterday. I still have a bunch of stuff left, so have signed up for another sale on December 5, because why bother to have a life when Christmas is a month away. 

• My church’s Christmas program. I’ve got it written as much as I can at this point. I need to see what our Sunday School teacher comes up with for her class and what songs our puppet troop is going to do. I also have five older kids lined up to do readings and only need three more kids for that. Maybe we can pull it off yet. 

• Write a newsletter for the nonprofit. I finished that early in the week and even printed a few copies to hand out at yesterday’s sale. Will print some more and start distributing them this week.   

• Finish reading “Shantaram”. I thought I had a shot at finishing it this week, but no luck. Maybe this week, with an extra day off work for Thanksgiving.   

• On the writing end of things, I still have not done any of the things I had hoped to, but have resigned myself to the fact that it will all have to wait until the first of the year. 

• Sewing. Because I like to add goals after I do them, I finally sewed the piece of fabric my son brought back from Ghana in 2009 into a shirt which I wore at the sale yesterday. I sewed it in a couple hours Friday afternoon. I decided I had hemmed and hawed about it long enough. 

Nothing like a page full of greened goals to perk a person right up! What about the upcoming week? Looking at this list, I would say that the power point presentation is all I have to work on. That and Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday (coz Hubby works on Thanksgiving day, but I am going to a friend’s house for dinner Thursday and having the family over on Saturday, which not everyone has RSVP’ed to yet, so we will have between 13 and 19). 

(Though we just got our first snow last week, and it is covering my yard in a thin layer, seeing that picture above, I already miss the green grass.)

change

I’ve started using the desk top computer in my living room more and more. Even though my son checked out my laptop last week and said it is running as well as it can, it is still so painfully slow at times that I cannot stand it. Also I have about run out of patience with Microsoft Word. I just hate – I mean HATE – the thought of learning a new word processing program, but I may have to give in sooner than later. Change is not a friend of mine.

The answer would be to invest in a new laptop all together, but I do not see that in the budget. I asked the hubby if I could ask for a new one for Christmas, and he gave me the Look. So I guess I am stuck with what I got.

Here is the list of goals I started this Round with:

  

• Blog about my trip to Africa. I have blogged about most of our days in Kenya, I still want to share a few thoughts and stories, but I think I should wind it up this week.
• Write a summary of my trip to Kenya and financial prospectus. Done, printed and shared.
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip.  Haven’t worked on it, but still am editing pictures, so I want to finish that first anyway.
• Set up dates to do my presentation. I have one date for a talk – December 11, at the clinic where I work. And I think I will speak at church after the nine a.m. service on January 31. That is the week before the Super Bowl, so people won’t have anything else to do that Sunday. I will verify it with Pastor this week and get it in the newsletter. The friend who went with me is also working on getting us on the schedule for a CEU seminar the end of February.  
• Have two sales of my Kenyan merchandise. The second sale is coming up next Saturday, so I need to get ready for it and promote it.
• My church’s Christmas program. I’ve written the “bones” of the program and have a few kids lined up. I need to call more kids tonight and finish writing the program, as much as I can. My organist will help fill in the songs.
• Write a newsletter for the nonprofit. I hope to work on that this afternoon.
• Finish reading “Shantaram”. The longest book I have ever read – nearly one thousand pages. I am getting there though, only two chapters left. I hope to finish it this week.
• On the writing end of things, I still have not done any of the things I had hoped to, but have resigned myself to the fact that it will all have to wait until the first of the year.

I have to work this Friday all day (my usual day off and most productive most weeks), but I have off Tuesday afternoon instead. I need to get a lot done that afternoon. Today is an unusually beautiful mid-November day here and I may have to go outside and play, so I may not get done as much as I had hoped. 

How is your upcoming week shaping up? 

My yard one year ago. Glad to still have green grass this year. 

Maybe Not So Lazy

I wasn't going to post a blog tonight because I didn't have anything to say, so I will make this quick.

This morning I was ready to cancel our church's children's Christmas program. We just have so few kids and though I know that I said several years ago when I took on the task of writing the program, that we would do it even there was just one kid, this morning it seemed so futile. Some time during the day I decided that I would stick with it and some how make it work. So  I sat down at the computer and churned out the "bones" of the program - the Bible verses and a template for adding everything else. I will talk to our organist tomorrow for help plugging in songs and then wait to hear from our puppet troop to see what songs they are doing. And this weekend call all of my slacker parents and force them to rope their middle schoolers and high schoolers into this.

I can get this done. What made me panic this morning was looking at the date - I have a month and a week to pull this together! How did I let time get away from me like this?

Ok, but I was going to keep this short and get to bed.

Besides the Christmas program, I have been working on more edits of my pictures from Kenya, have posted to my other blog on schedule and have done some promoting of my two devotionals on social media. Oh, and posted a picture on Facebook for the upcoming craft sale I will be at. I guess that is enough. Oh, and one more thing. My daughter was up Monday and all evening we worked on stuff for the nonprofit.

Yeah, see, no matter how lazy I say that I am, I guess I still get stuff done.  

See I can do it! 

So says Little Eddie, the house kitten at the volunteer house where we stayed in Kenya. 

Busyness

I have decided that with the long list of things I have to get done before the end of the year, I really need to write a specific list of what and when I need to get stuff done. But I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to even look at my list.

I was at a seminar for work yesterday, and every time I asked anyone how they were, they would tell me how busy they were. Finally, at the end of the day, when the last woman I talked to started on with her list of busyness, I held up my hand and said, “Talk to the hand. I am tired of hearing how busy everyone is, coz this is what I have going on.”

After thinking about it, though, I am going to try a different tact. It is almost like a contest to see who can be the busiest. Why is that?

Instead of trying to up everyone else’s list, I’m going to try to answer with something witty, like, “I feel blessed that there are enough hours in each day to do the things I need to do, because if there isn’t any more time in the day, I don’t have anything else to do.” Or something to that effect.

What about you? Getting as tired doing too much every day as you are in telling people about it?

Here is the list of things I am looking at:

  

• Blog about my trip to Africa. Have been whittling away on it, and I think only have two more posts to write and share.
• Write a summary of my trip and financial prospectus. Done, printed and shared.
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip.  Haven’t started on the pictures yet, but wrote an outline and have a title: “Poverty in Kenya: the good, the bad and the ugly.”
• Set up dates to do my presentation. I have one date for a talk – December 11, at the clinic where I work. I also talked to a few people at church and they agree that sometime in January or February, maybe after football season, after church Sunday morning. I need to get a 2016 calendar and pick a date.
• Have two sales of my Kenyan merchandise. Have had one and the second is November 21. I need to promote it yet.
• Decide on this year’s Christmas program for church. After talking to our pastor and our Sunday school teacher, the program is a go, even though there are only three kids in her class. THREE! But I said it years ago, when our numbers were dropping, that we need to have a program even if there is only one kid. I just have to rope more confirmation class and high school kids into participating. The puppet team from town is going to get back to me, but they have always performed in the program before. The congregation singing Christmas carols will just have to fill in the rest of the time.
• On the writing end of things, I have not gotten to any of these things.  
• Edit my third devotional
• Edit my novel about Kenya now that it is fresh in my mind again
• Start pulling together notes for a potential second memoir
• I also need to add to this list writing a newsletter for the nonprofit. I need to get it put together and out to everyone who has supported us so far as soon as possible. We need to raise $4000 by the end of the year to get chicken production started at the school shortly after the first of the year. $4000 shouldn’t be that much money to come up; it would just be nice to get one corporate sponsor willing to foot the bill We will just have to see what happens.

 Have a good week and don’t be so busy!

Why the pics are taking so long....

Are your goals flabby?

Ah, here we are, the first day of NaNoWriMo. Hope that those of you who are participating are off to a great start. Maybe I will call this month GeItToMo (get it together month). I like that, maybe I will start a movement with that.

So here’s what I have done in the last week out of the long list of stuff I have for the month:

• Blog about my trip to Africa. Written and posted three, which is my goal for the week. Have three more, or so to do yet. I also am still working on posting pictures to Facebook and have a few (a few hundred) left to do.  
• Write a summary of my trip and financial prospectus. Done and emailed to the chairman of the board and the volunteer I had taken with. Later today I will probably email it to the rest of the board.
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip. No, not yet. I have, after all 1400 pictures that I am still weeding through.  
• Set up dates to do my presentation. I have one date for a talk – December 11, at the clinic where I work. I think I will wait until after the first of the year to do a talk at church. With Christmas coming up way too fast, I don’t think that our parishioners will take the time to attend yet this year.  
• Have two sales of my Kenyan merchandise. Had one this week, which went over well, I think. Made nearly $400. I have the second sale November 21.
• Decide on this year’s Christmas program for church. Speaking of Christmas. I really did not want to do this again this year, and with only five kids (yes, Five!) in Sunday School, I was hoping their teacher would be like, no, not worth it. But she thought she could get them to do at least a few songs and it is up to me to find older kids (the confirmation class and high schoolers) to fill in the gaps. So I really need to start working on that.
• On the writing end of things, I hope to do some of these things, but have not even thought much about them this week.
• Edit my third devotional
• Edit my novel about Kenya now that it is fresh in my mind again
• Start pulling together notes for a potential second memoir

 The only other thing I can think of that I have going on is taking care of my hip pain once and for all. I started seeing a chiropractor on Friday and have my first real appointment (i.e. when the action starts) tomorrow. I am going to remain confident that this will work. I already love the chiropractor because she kept saying how fit I seemed to be as she was checking me out. I wanted to tell her that the constant pain has derailed any fitness program I had been attempting, but I guess I did not get all flabby as fast as I thought I would.

Speaking of flabby….

 And more random pictures from Kenya.

 

Why I Do What I Do

It is with some regret that I have decided to forego NaNoWriMo this year, again. With all that is looming on my horizon, there is no way that I can take on another project. I will just have to come up with my own novel writing month after the first of the year, when I actually have a month to myself. Coz, yea, that will happen, said this woman never.

So these are my goals for the next few weeks, as I can only take life a few weeks at a time.

• Blog about my trip to Africa. I have started and have two posted already. I have an outline for the next seven posts, so that takes me to November 8.
• Finish posting pictures from the trip on Facebook and other social media.
• Write a summary of my trip and financial prospectus (is that the word I want?)
• Work on a power point presentation of the trip.
• I have one date for a talk – December 11. I need to try to line up some more, I suppose.
• Decide on this year’s Christmas program for church. Yikes! If we are going to do it, I really need it together within a week or so. It is almost November! And those kids need time to practice. Man, I don’t know if I can pull that off this year.
• And because I have all kinds of spare time:
• Edit my third devotional
• Edit my novel about Kenya now that it is fresh in my mind again
• Start pulling together notes for a potential second memoir

 Ok, maybe all of that should take me until the end of the year. This is why people need a vacation after they come home from vacation. Not that the trip to Kenya was a vacation, but if I would have worked harder while I was there, I would have a few less things to do now. Oh, well.

I did this week update my website and had a sale of Kenya goods at my work, so I have been doing a little bit. That above list is just pretty big though.

Enough. Here are a few pictures of why I do what I do. And now you can see why I do it. 

Getting Back in the Saddle

I arrived home a week ago from my trip to Kenya. It was an amazing two weeks, and you will have to follow those stories on my other blog.

As you can imagine, I am having a hard time getting back in the swing of things. Plus I have a monstrous mess in my office and on my dining room table. Things from the trip and things already accumulated for the next trip. Tomorrow at work, I am having a sale of my Kenyan purchases and need to get my inventory inventoried before that. I have my expense report from the trip written up and managed to even make my outgo match up with the money I took from the ATM throughout the trip. I do need to write up a report though with what I accomplished over those two weeks and what my recommendations are – raising $4,000 to implement the chicken project at the school at the SIDP (previously the IDP camp or internally displaced persons camp, but now that they are settled in this community, they are now, just since I got to Kenya, Settled Internally Displaced Persons, kind of an oxymoron, if you ask me, but whatever).

Ok, so what of my writing goals this Round? I was going to jump into NaNoWriMo and write my second novel, but having just returned from Kenya, I can see all the changes I need to make in my first novel. Also, I had mentioned to my publisher back in August that maybe another memoir would come from this trip, and it may have, so perhaps I should write that. Or finish that final edit on my third devotional and get it published early next year.

I don’t know. I need to figure this out soon. Or not. As they say in Kenya, hakuna matata.

Warthog!

Meerkats!

Simba!

a failed finish

I believe there are a few more days left in this Round, but I am calling it quits today. I leave for Kenya in two weeks, and the list of things I have to do between then and now is so ridiculously long that I have no idea how I even sleep at night. So that needs to be my entire focus for the next two weeks – no writing, no blogging, reading only what is necessary (chicken books so I can help my Kenyan friends to raise chickens) and catching up on sleep (even banking some extra sleep for the trip!).

So here are the goals I started with and how I finished. Not much green on this list, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

1.    READING

a.    Read and comment on my weekly assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor. Yes, pretty much as scheduled.

b.    Finish reading “Shantarm”.  I am somewhere around page 740 out of 936 pages. I need to finish the chapter I am on and just put it away til I get home.

c.    Finish reading “Twelve Extraordinary Women”. This is for my Tuesday morning Bible study, and considering we average about three weeks per chapter, and skip some weeks altogether, and even though there are only twelve chapters, I don’t know how I ever thought we would finish this. We just finished chapter three!

2.    WRITING

a.    Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles” every week. I was pretty good posting here two a week, but averaged less than twice a week on “The Dino Chronicles”.

b.    Finish writing “The Early Ministry of Jesus in 40 Days” and do one quick edit of the whole manuscript. Yes, I finished writing it, but no, I only edited half of it. (This list of goals is starting to look pretty bad.)

c.    Write a proposal for my novel. And name my novel! No, did not, as I decided instead to do some editing, but since I didn’t get through an edit of the whole thing, I will say epic-fail.

d.    Write 10,000 words in my new novel and come up with at least a working title for it.  As mentioned previously, I changed this to doing research and writing the bios for the main characters and a loose outline in preparation for NaNoWriMo in November. I don’t know that I can say I accomplished that even.  

3.    REACHING

a.    Have submitted three pieces somewhere. Submitted one thing – a poem to Wilda Morris’s poetry challenge.  

b.    Have posted weekly updates to one of my social media. I still just have to go with a big “no” on this one.

4.    PERSONAL

a.    Nonprofit organization

                                         i.    Get enough donations to pay for my trip in October. I have reached one-third of that goal, which I guess is okay, as my goal was set intentionally high. Let’s say I have enough money to pay my expenses while I am there. I do need to write up a budget for myself though so that I can be accountable to the organization.

                                       ii.    Finalize some sort of itinerary for my trip. No, not so much. All I have is the October 12 date with my Compassion child.

                                      iii.    Host a friend-raiser to get awareness out in the community. No, not at all.

b.    Physical

                                         i.    Work out–seriously- three times a week, in addition to my morning exercises. This was pretty hit or miss. I would do okay for a couple weeks, then fall off the wagon. And then my bursitis would flare up again. All in all I would have to say, another fail.

c.    Church

                                         i.    Get addresses and mentors for our college kids. Since I have the best start to this that I have in five years, I will say I finally accomplished something. I have addresses for nine of our ten college kids and mentors for eight of them.  

                                        ii.    Get addresses and mentors for our military kids. I thought this might be a challenge, as both of our boys just finished basic and last I talked to their parents, they even didn’t have their addresses. I will keep working on it. I have one woman who wants to mentor one of the boys, so that’s a positive note too. So, I’m saying neither a success nor a fail on this one.

And that is where I bid you all adieu until sometime after I get home from Kenya on October 18. I will try to post updates on my trip to my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”, so follow along there. Or you can like Tumaini Volunteers on Facebook, as I will post there as well.

Hoping you all have a good, strong finish to this Round of ROW80 and look forward to catching up with everyone next month.

The beautiful Kenyan wilderness - see why I can't wait til I get back there? 

and that's how the day job goes

I have had a bad week at work so far. I get tired of feeling like I am the only one working, and I know that is just my perception. Certainly my co-workers are working just as hard, but more efficiently, and that’s why they have the time to sit around and visit and laugh, while I am inefficiently getting further behind on my work. Ok, so I work in a medical clinic, for a physician who averages at least 20 patients a day. Several of my co-workers work with providers who average 8 to 12 patients a day. So, they do as much work as I do, right? There’s certainly no reason why they shouldn’t get to sit around and tell jokes and be on Facebook, while I am still trying to catch up on my 20 plus patients. Or maybe I am just slower than they are. Which is why, when I complained to my manager and showed her a pile of papers that no one else took care of, she addressed the pile instead of asking the rest of the staff to do it – which is their job and not hers. Like I said, it’s been a bad week at the day job.

Did I do any work on my goals?

I’ve kept up on my ROW80 sponsor duties and have blogged here and on my other blog. I didn’t edit anything on my novel and I haven’t read too much of “Shantaram”. I haven’t visited anyone’s chickens, but I did order two books on raising chickens. I don’t remember doing anything with social media. I did get another $110 in donations for my trip to Kenya. I also have not worked out or walked on the treadmill. My Achilles is finally feeling somewhat better, but I woke up Monday morning with bursitis in my hip again. Can you believe it??

So I guess the only productive area has been in getting mentors for my church’s college kids. Of 14 kids, I have addresses for eight of them and have nine of them matched up with mentors. I even managed to talk my son into taking one of the boys, just because he lives near where the boy is going to school, and maybe that will be a bonding thing. Plus I think they have a lot in common. Not that I have a hidden agenda, but it would be good for my son to get involved in stuff outside of his work (which even though he is an engineer, it’s interesting that his complaints about work parallel mine).

And that’s all I got. I haven’t gotten much sleep the last four or five days, so since I am writing this Tuesday night to post in the morning, I think I need to get to bed.

Are you crossing all your goals for the Round off of your list?  

Why I do what I do - coz when these kids go off to college, I don't want them to lose their way. 

powering through

When does this Round of ROW80 end? I probably should figure that out, huh? So I know when I have to cut these goals off.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this Round the first of July, I leave for Kenya the day before the next Round starts, so I won’t be starting that Round until sometime after October 20 – I think I should at least give myself a couple days to get over jetlag before I worry about writing anything intelligent here.

In the meantime, what did I get done last week?

1. READING

a. Read and comment on my weekly assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor. Done.

b. Read 100 pages of “Shantarm”. Read about 80 pages, so that was close.

2. WRITING

a. Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”. Done.

b. Edit 13 chapters of my novel, Jenny’s Story. . I edited I believe 15 chapters. Yeah!

c. Give my novel a better name than Jenny’s Story. So far I have “The Way Home”, “Finding the Way Home”, and “Family Matters Most.” Any of those catch anyone’s eye?  

d. Not do anything on my new novel, the working name of which is The Abbey. I sure hope I can make this goal! I just think I have too much going on right now, so this needs to wait until I get back.  Hey, I got this one!

3. REACHING

a. How about if I post one update on each of my social media. And that’s it. I need to take a break from this I think. I did one update. Again, yeah, me!

4. PERSONAL

a. Nonprofit organization (which right now is all about my trip to Kenya in October)

            1) Visit one more friend who raises chickens. Did not.

2) Read a couple chapters in the book I just downloaded to my Kindle on raising chickens. Read two and a half chapters. The book I have (because it was free) is pretty dry, not exciting reading. We’ll see how it goes.

3) Post a go-fund-me page update. Done. Read it here.

4) Message our Kenyan contact Izzo just to say, hey, can’t wait to see ya. Done. And he says that he can tote me and my friend wherever we need to go, as long as we pay for gas. I also heard from Compassion regarding visiting the Compassion child I sponsor and that trip is all ready to go.

b. Physical

1) Work out three times. I walked on the treadmill once, walked down my road once, and walked a half mile in town, so I think I got it.

c. Church

1) Get mentors for the college kids and military enlistees from our church. I have four of our 12 kids lined up. That’s not a bad start compared to other years.

And that’s all I got. I’m actually writing this Friday night (which means, I really powered through all these goals!). I have a wedding out of town Saturday night and have made the responsible decision to not take my laptop with. There just is not going to be time to bother getting it out until I get back home around noon on Sunday. My goals for the coming week will just pop up as they come.

Have a great week! And power through those goals!

From the wedding last October, which started my marathon of four out-of-town weddings in a year. The one this weekend is the last one. "sigh". Have one last wedding in two weeks which isn't technically out-of-town, just about 15 miles up the road.