Happy New Year!

Ajax and Kali hope you have a very happy 2012! It's cold and snowy outside so they are snuggling on a throw on the couch. I don't blame them a bit!

While my hubby's been working, I've had a quiet and peaceful three day weekend. Till we went to the grocery store for our Monday Senior Discount shopping tonight, I hadn't left the house since Friday. I didn't have anything major to do, the snow was piled up, covering the outside steps coming up the hill, and the house was nice and warm. Why go out? I took this opportunity to try to get myself organized for the new year. I still have a few things to do but I think I am off to a good start. Of course, it's only January 2.

I'm not really making resolutions but I've come across a couple of things I want to do this year. I've long been an admirer of Colman McCarthy and his Center for Teaching Peace in DC. Years ago, he offered a correspondence course which required an application essay, after which you'd read a series of articles on the history of nonviolence, peacemakers, social justice, etc. and send in papers summarizing your thoughts about the readings. I worked on an application but never got around to submitting it. For some reason, I was thinking about the course the other night and decided to look online to see if it still existed. Yes, it does, and it's actually available on the web as a self study--no more application and no more essays, but the readings are all there, along with some questions for processing the info. There's an 8 week course and a 16 week university course. So one of the things I am going to do this year is take the 16 week course for my own benefit.

The other site I visited, thanks to a mention on the 49 Writers blog, is called 750words. It's a pretty cool writing site, especially for those of us who don't have much discipline. Basically, you sign up and write 750 words (or more) each day. You can get a reminder email each day at a time you specify, and you receive little reward badges for your accomplishments (750 words, writing several days in a row, writing every day for a month, and so on). It also tracks things like how fast you type, how many times you get distracted, what words you use most often, what your mood appears to be, and so on. Some of it you can take with a grain of salt but it's kinda fun. (I've done my two days' worth in January--woohoo!) Instead of a blog, it's private--more like a journal. It's designed to help "get the cobwebs out" by writing about anything you want, supposedly freeing your brain to then work on what you really want to write. I don't fancy myself a real writer but I thought it might be enjoyable to write about "whatever" without editing, thinking about who's going to read it, or trying to make it fit into certain parameters. And, who knows, maybe I will come up with some ideas that will make it onto the blog, which I feel could use a little zip (since we're talking about getting organized and beginning a new year...)

What do you want to do in 2012?