Not Buying Books (and other NY resolutions)

I decided to take a look at my New Year’s resolutions for a reality check today. It’s not looking too bad so far.

I succeeded in my first resolution, which was not to buy a single book during the month of January. It wasn’t even that hard to do. I have so much to read, and, in addition, have been checking books out from the library and using Inter Library Loan. I haven’t missed book buying at all. Elly has been expecting me to buy a bunch of books on February 1, but I have no plans to go shopping today. An advantage of this experience has been to make me think carefully about what book I want to buy next. And, actually, to think more carefully about buying books in general. What are the criteria for actually owning a book, versus, say, checking it out from the library? Is it worth while to buy a book you may read once and then not read again? Or to buy a book that can easily be checked out? It’s one thing if you don’t have many books, but we already have thousands. So many, in fact, that having to winnow the collection is starting to be a real concern.

Number 2. I have lost weight, but am no where near my goal. (Enough on that subject.)

I have been cooking some quiches from the Julia Childe Art of French cooking. The onion quiche is to-die-for. Elly ate two pieces at one sitting (an unheard of thing).

I have been doing 30 minutes every morning on the exercise bike, and reading at the same time. I have also been tracking my heart-rate, etc., and the numbers have been steadily improving.

We have been devoting Tuesday and Thursday evenings to reading, and they have become my favorite evenings of the week. Elly's too.

I have been writing in my journal every day, and have started including sketches as well, so that covers two more resolutions.

Major work on our laundry room and dayroom is also underway. I installed crown molding in the laundry room last weekend, and have all our tile and supplies to lay tile in the laundry and day rooms. Our new washer and dryer have been ordered and are scheduled for delivery on Valentine’s Day. We may push that delivery back by a few weeks to have time to get all the finish work done in the laundry room, but we are off to a fast start in 2008 on our home improvement projects.

I have fallen a bit behind in my Dangerous Reading Challenge. I’m a bit over 3 quarters through Rob Roy, and have been enjoying the book quite a lot, but I was supposed to start Spenser’s Faerie Queen today. I also need to make a few more posts about it. I haven’t been keeping up with my blog posts as well as I would like, either. So, room for improvement!