Carole’s Ten on Tuesday prompt today left me feeling a little ambivalent, to be honest, but, frankly, I needed something to write about tonight, so I give you ten things I plan to do in 2015:

1. Find a volunteer gig.
2. Figure out the basics of playing the ukulele.
3. Get the storage bin out of my side of the closet that’s been in my way for three (or more) years.
4. Knit something for each of the small people in my life.
5. Learn the polite phrases of Hungarian.
6. Document our trip to Budapest.
7. Bake something different each month.
8. Read (or attempt, anyway) 10 of the unread books in my house that I think I won’t want to keep — and then donate the ones I’m right about.
9. Pare down my clothing until it fits into the space allotted to it again.
10. Eat at five new-to-me restaurants in D.C.

How about you? What are you planning to do this year?

Wishing you all luck in finding what you seek and a safe journey along the road.

I wasn’t feeling fantastic this weekend (although didn’t realize that at first), so laid low while Rudi was away coaching a ski race. I did accomplish a few things, which I’m citing to making myself feel less like a slug:

Yesterday, I intentionally did not get out of my pjs. (Well, that’s not totally true. When I got up, I put on clean pjs.) I did put on shoes briefly to go get the mail, because it was a drippy, grey weekend and I didn’t want to get my wool slippers wet, but that was it. I ate leftover soup and drank a lot of tea and polished off all the open bags of pretzels (so they didn’t go stale, of course).

I dealt with the bag of clementines I bought at Trader Joes on Tuesday. I’m used to losing one or two clementines out of a group, but this bag was ridiculous. A third were too rotten to do anything with, another third needed to be trimmed in some way, and only the final third are edible in their entirety. Ridiculous! I did some handwashing (all my handknit socks were dirty!). I catalogued the yarn I received for Christmas in Ravelry and spent far too much time there contemplating patterns for the neon(ish) skein I think needs to be knit up this month and mulling over hat patterns. I read a couple Christmassy short stories in My True Love Gave To Me, watched three episodes of SHIELD and a Disney Christmas special from the ’90s on Netflix, and lit candles to keep the darkness at bay.

Today, I thought, would be more productive, but it was not. I did get dressed and went to the farmers market. I did manage some more handwashing and the dishes before I took to my sickbed, but that’s where Rudi found me when he arrived back home tonight. I felt better after a nap and some drugs, so curled up in the living room to enjoy the premiere of Galavant, eat dinner, and watch Love, Actually.

I did succeed in signing up for some January activities over the weekend, including Bout of Books, which started at midnight (When I Was the Greatest ended up as the first pick, with library due dates winning out); Amanda’s journal-writing class, which begins in the morning; and a session of winter volleyball that won’t start for two weeks yet. I’d like to find something to do on the weekends, so I think I’ll look into a couple volunteer options and maybe a knitting class (although that didn’t work out so well for me last winter).

How about you? How was your weekend?

I’m in a bit of a reading lull at the moment as I attempt not to hurry through the short stories of My True Love Gave to Me, so I thought I’d sign up for next week’s Bout of Books 12.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, January 5th, and runs through Sunday, January 11th, in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 12 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

My 2013 reading output (input?) was nearly 1.25 books or more than 300 pages a week. So I’d say my goals for next week are:

1. To read every day;
2. To finish two books OR to read 400 pages; and
3. To blog about books at least twice next week. (The posts do not need to be long, and all topical posts do not have to relate to my current reading.)

I have two finalists from this year’s Cybils Award due back to the library this week, a shiny pile of literary Christmas presents, and a plethora of languishing titles in my To Be Read mountains to choose from. I look forward to seeing what I settle on as my starting read at midnight.

Feel like reading along, too? Goal-setting is optional and non-binding. You can sign up at the link above.

Leaving my folks’ place in mid-afternoon meant that we were driving pretty much due west along the Merritt Parkway through western Connecticut as the sun was setting:

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Rudi took the first leg of driving home from Connecticut so I could watch for Christmas light displays along the Garden State Parkway.

2. Last weekend was filled with visits with Karen and BW.

3. As we were driving home, I said to Rudi (who had to coach the next morning), “Tomorrow, I’m not getting up until I get up.” And I didn’t. I woke up enough to walk Rudi to the door and I woke up again a couple hours later when Jer nudged me to tell me that my weekday alarm hadn’t gone off and couldn’t I please get up because there was a hole in the food in his dish and therefore it was empty and he and the others were obviously starving, but I laid firm and returned to bed and didn’t get up for real until 11:30 when I was awake enough to play Words with Friends and read Twitter for 15 minutes without dozing off again.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week with the end of last year and the beginning of the new?