Thursday Thirteen

I am a person who tends to see the negative more so than the positive sometimes, so I thought I might take one of my Thursday Thirteens each month and recount the good things that happened in the previous month. So here are the 13 good things from January!

1. I registered for two classes at Hollins University and will work this year to complete my master of arts in liberal studies degree! Classes begin this week and I am very happy to be going back to school.

2. I did not have mono even though I had all the symptoms. The sore throat finally went away this past weekend, and my energy level seems to be slowly returning. This is very good news because I'd been ill since Christmas.

3. My husband is doing very well with his job as battalion chief for the city fire department. He has been in this position for a year and has settled in nicely. I am very proud of him.

4. I walked on the treadmill 16 out of 31 days in January (I keep an exercise and blood pressure log at my doctor's request). My goal was to walk at least every other day and I succeeded at this statistically. When I add in the fact that I was ill, I am pleased with this.

5. I finished watching every episode in Season 2 of Star Trek: Voyager.

6. I have read (or listened to) these books: 1) Still Procrastinating, the No-Regrets Guide to Getting Things Done, by Joseph Ferrari 2) Mosaic (Star Trek: Voyager) (audio), by Jeri Taylor 3) True Blue, by David Baldacci (audio), 4) Heart's Blood, by Juliet Marillier, and 5) The Good Daughter, by Jasmin Darznik.

7. I did a little writing for one of my Internet clients!

8. My brother called me a few times during the month to check on me while I wasn't feeling well. I appreciated this because he is busy running a company and has a wife, two kids, two puppies, and bunch of chickens and peacocks to keep up with.

9. I had a massage early in January and felt a lot better for it.

10. I went to lunch or breakfast with a friend three times during the month (two different friends). Friends are good.

11. The results from my mammogram (also taken in January) came back negative. No problems detected. Every woman should have a mammogram (at whatever time frame they now recommend; I know they keep changing that.). It's an important part of taking care of yourself.

12. My book club read The Blueberry Years, by Jim Minick (which I read in September so didn't count in my January reading), and the club held a phone conference with the author. I had written a review of his book that was published in The Roanoke Times and I was happy to be able to tell the author I was there and hear him praise me for praising him. Plus our book club meetings are always lots of fun. What a great group of women.

13. Three citizen input meetings held this month by the county in preparation for its upcoming fiscal year budget (two of which I attended) were my idea. A year ago I asked the Board of Supervisors to make changes in their process so that the citizenry might be more aware of potential changes (particularly cuts to services) before the changes were done deals. The supervisors agreed that the process was flawed and as a result implemented changes. See, a single voice can make a difference!



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 176th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.