Today marks the start of a new budget month for me, as I get paid today. Let’s just say that last month didn’t work out too well where budgeting is concerned! I spent about £150 at the weekend on food, going out, wii games and various other fun things, which means I spent about £500 on food and non-essentials for the month, and that’s with my dad spending about £100 on food shopping for me. Oops. This month will be a better month though!

I’m also failing on the weightloss front because after a good start, I’ve put on a pound. I think I got too complacent, because I had a big chicken meal on Friday and a pizza on Saturday. Plus, although I’ve completed 10/20 workouts on EA Active (woohoo!), I should be moving around more during the day, and at least be going for a walk every lunchtime. I think the problem is that saving money and losing weight are conflicting with each other quite a lot. If I want healthy options, they often cost more. If I don’t bring a sandwich for lunch so I have to walk to the shops and get one, then I’m spending more than making sandwiches at home and bringing them in. Those are just small examples, but they build up. I think the key is not giving up, and making changes I can stick to. So from today I’m going to be doing a 45 minute morning exercise routine, walking every lunchtime, and maybe doing some yoga or similar in the evening. I’m not giving up!
In the good news category, I signed up for organ donation, and I’m meeting up with a woman this weekend to talk about volunteering with a web and marketing project, so my charity work and good deed goals are succeeding at least.

I’ve also been doing a lot of work and planning for Blossom. I signed up for Remember The Milk, and I’ve already completed or mostly completed several tasks. I’ve installed plugins, added Gravatars to comments (though the comment boxes still need a bit of tweaking), created new email addresses and a feedback form (which I must remember to add to the sidebar) and added CommentLuv. It’s a nice way for me and visitors to keep track of what’s going on, and if you add me as a contact you can even add things to my list. That might not work out so well! But seriously, I’m looking a lot more into pages – what’s broken, what’s popular, what needs updating, so any feedback is good. I’ll be adding this page to the sidebar soon, but for now you can contact me here.

So yeah it’s crazy busy, and with adding other goals and projects into my life, I’m pretty much going to be busy constantly. But I feel very productive, if a little tired, and I don’t think I’ll get this time of my life again – young(ish)!, no one to support, no real restrictions or constraints – so I’m going to try and use it as well as I can.

In other news, and to explain this blog title, I was randomly Googling the other day when I came across a website I made in 2001. It’s so bad it’s hilarious! I look back and go ‘Aww’, and I have to laugh at the ‘blog’ entries, especially the one that talks about coloured scrollbars being ‘illegal’ lol!! And me with crappy frames all over the place as well. Still, I guess it shows how much I’ve learned over the past ten years?!

One of my most important new year’s resolutions this year was to do something for charity every month.
I already had a charity in mind for January, but when the Haiti earthquake struck I decided I would concentrate my efforts on that.

I’m sure all of you have seen it on the news, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. I find it so emotional, particularly the miracles of people, including children, surviving for days trapped under rubble. One story I saw on the news followed a man whose wife worked at a bank. He never stopped looking for her and eventually found her still alive under the building’s remains. LA firemen were enlisted to help get her out, and although it took hours it was successful. Obviously I had tears running down my face, but I had to laugh when she was being carried off on a stretcher and a reporter asked her, ‘Did you think you would die?’ and she answered ‘No, why would I?!’ as it were the most stupid question she’d ever been asked.

One of the most amazing things for me within this tragedy is the fact that the rest of the world has done so
much to help. Disaster really does bring nations together, and in a time when all we see on the news is violence and hate, it’s a lovely change to see different cultures working together for the good of all, whether that’s donating time, skills or money. Unfortunately, due to living so far away, the only thing I can donate is money. I donated through Unicef UK (US version is here). If you haven’t already donated and can spare some money, then they take Paypal, debit cards and a range of other payment types. If you work you can also add Gift Aid on top of that. I recommend you use those links or Google a reputable charity or company (a national newspaper, Google, Save the Children etc.) so you don’t get scammed and so your money goes where it’s needed. I think at last count I saw that the UK had raised over £230 million, which whilst it won’t bring back the hundreds of thousands of loved ones that have been lost, it can help people to rebuild their lives and find some hope amongst the destruction. There are people who need food and water out there.

If even one more person donates something to the cause because of this blog entry, then it will be worth it.

Ouch…I haven’t blogged in ages! I’ve been pretty busy with work, going home for the weekend and general catching up. And yet after all the catching up I’m still behind! Sometimes I really do feel like I’m going round in circles.

I’ve been getting up earlier to do a workout every day. I’ve been following the EA Active 30 Day Challenge (on my Wii) for the past week, and it’s a pretty good workout to start the day with. I definitely needed to up my exercise levels since I spend five days out of seven sitting at a desk for eight hours or more. Getting up earlier is not fun, but I feel good after a half hour workout and I want to at least complete the 30 day challenge.

A few of you were asking about Wii Fit Plus – if you have Wii Fit, it’s not too dissimilar. It adds some more activities and allows you to create custom workouts. But I read something recently which mentioned that Wii Fit and Plus both follow a more Eastern attitude to exercise (i.e thinking about stretching, posture and balance), whilst EA Active is based on Western thinking of being active. This is completely true, but then again there’s an ultimately fun aspect to Wii Fit which you don’t get with EA Active. You’d ‘play’ Wii Fit, you’d work out on EA Active. Having said that, if you’d the kind of person that prefers fun ways of exercising then Wii Fit is going to be more your cup of tea. It’s something you might play with friends, whereas if I invited one of my friends round to play EA Active, they’d probably take it as me calling them fat or something. Or just be very confused.

I just feel that Wii Fit and Plus, though they are more fun, don’t really count as exercise and so you might be fooled into thinking you can eat more crap than you can. I guess both games have certain advantages and disadvantages.

In other news…thank God the snow is over!! We had a day of black ice to round it off, and it was horrible. A two mile journey took me nearly an hour and a half, and it was so slippery in places I physically couldn’t walk uphill without the aid of a well-situated fence or hedge. Crazy. The only reminder of the snow I have left is a small scab on my knee from where I ripped my jeans (and part of my leg) open last week. Fingers crossed the weather starts to get better. It’s already getting darker later, which I love. I’ll be complaining again once it starts to get hot though!

I’ve installed Google Analytics for WordPress, and I’m going to delete CyStat because it’s just too buggy. Google Analytics has a lot of useful information, though I’d prefer an overview of general stats as well. It also seems to be missing the (very basic) full referral URLs of visitors, though there’s a hack I can implement so I might try that.

I’ve also signed up to Delicious, so if you’re interested in what I’m bookmarking or have an account, feel free to add me. If you’re interested in stalking me all over the Internet, then check out my lifestream (but I only add people I know on Facebook).

The Haiti earthquake is all over the news, and it’s pretty emotional stuff to watch. For all the hate and war there is in the world, it’s pretty amazing to see how much people can achieve when they actually work together. I’ll definitely be donating to the cause in a few days when I have more money, and then I intend to blog all about it. Until then, I’ll just count my blessings that I live in a non-extreme country (however boring it may be), and realise that I should stop complaining about the snow.

So, to round off – if you made any new year’s resolutions, how are they going? Have you broken any yet? If you didn’t make any, why didn’t you? I’m finding that mine are actually pretty tough going, but I haven’t given up yet