When I was 21 years old, I had blue hair. To be honest, I had greenish tinted light brown hair - I didn’t bleach my hair first, I just dyed over it, so it didn’t “stick” very well and after a couple of washes it was way more green than blue. I felt so darn cool with that blue hair though! I find it incredibly sad that I don’t have a single photo from that experiment. I didn’t get my first digital camera until the next year, and I never bothered trying to master the self-portrait on my manual Nikon FM2. (I’m too cheap to develop film most of the time.)

As I’m almost in my last year of my 20-somethings I’m finding myself very tempted to dye my hair a bright color again. It seems like the “acceptable” window for funky hair is far too short, and I’m almost at the end of mine! After my early 30’s are over, I probably won’t get to have a wild color again until it’s time for “grandma purple!” I haven’t completely decided if I’ll do it yet, but if I do I’ll select something more professional looking than the blue hair I had eight years ago, and something easier to get rid of if/when I need “normal” hair back again.

I’ve been contemplating heading back to college for a while now. I almost took a class this summer, but I wasn’t convinced I’d get tuition reimbursement for it, so I decided to pass at the time. After looking at the classes offered this fall, I think I may have found one to try, one that has at least a 90% chance of being covered by tuition reimbursement. So exciting!

This is straight from the course description:

Additional topics include understanding of self, communication styles, the Myers-Briggs Inventory, diversity, workplace bias and equal opportunity.

What’s that?? Understanding of Self?? AND Myers-Briggs?? *grins* Sign me up! No seriously, register me for that baby already! Heh heh heh. I’m SUCH an incredibly huge dork. Anyway, I’m planning to just take one or maybe two classes to make sure I’m really interested in the school thing. Then, if I am into it, the class is part of either a Business Admin. degree or a degree called “Office Information Processing Specialist” which sounds more like something I’d do, and, with any luck, like a degree work might pay for me to acquire. Ahh, but there’s always the lure of finance or economics… so tough to choose.

It is now only one month until my birthday! Hooray! There have been a few snags in the goals, but the results are mostly positive. I haven’t tracked my calories for a week or so now, partly due to the stress over the car loan/car shopping/etc., and partly due to laziness. I’m not worried though, because I’m officially “normal/healthy” according to BMI standards! *does a happy dance* Now I just have to maintain it, which will probably be the hardest part, heh.

As for the money goal, well, I haven’t spent any more of my own money on non-necessity items (just that $4 from before), but Jon and I did use up the rest of our shared “fun money” on a new toy. We have a Wii! It is the greatest video game system man has ever known. Or something. Considering we’ve been trying to buy one since Christmas, when we found one in stock we had to pounce. So, in light of all that, I’m not sure if I can consider my goal “well under way” or not, but I do feel pretty good about how much I saved last month that usually would have disappeared on silly things.

In relatively unrelated news, I won a contest at work and will soon receive of a free copy of the IKEA Home Stuff pack for The Sims 2! I’m super excited about it. I’m almost too geeky for words at times, and this is one of those times. I’m doubly excited because I get a new toy, just for me, right while I’m trying not to buy non-necessities! This is the type of silly thing my money usually disappears on. *grin*

Bri has already posted about our last car’s tragic demise, so I won’t rehash that, but that bad news turned out to have had a silver lining in the end. We got really lucky and found a vehicle that fit us very well and that had actually been near the top of my want list! Bri and I usually don’t see quite eye to eye when choosing vehicles. She tends to look first at gas mileage, reliability, and how soccer-mommish it looks. I tend to take those things into account, but put less weight on them than four wheel drive, engine type, utility features (i.e. traction control, towing package, storage), and comfort. In the end, what we found was perfect for us. Our new car is a 2005 Pontiac Aztek! It has 68000 miles, is dark red, has AWD, and rides smoother than our 8000 mile rental car did. I may be particularly geeky and post a pic, but it’s gonna have to wait until after work :)

Our car, the first car Jon and I bought as a couple, has officially died. It’s not sad because we’ll miss the thing, it’s sad because we weren’t financially ready to have it die. That’s the hazard of being a “Pizza Guy” though - Jon put a lot of miles on that puppy. It did serve us well, mostly. It got us to our first vacation together and it got Jon to our wedding. It got us to our “Honey Meteor” at Nordic Inn: Medieval Brew & Bed.

We’re not sure what we want to get as a replacement yet, but Jon’s got his fingers crossed for 4-wheel drive so it’s easier to deliver pizza in the snow this winter. It’ll be a fine line between fuel efficiency and drive-ability, and then even tougher when you factor in budget constraints. My dad is being very heroic and helping us with what was left on the Focus’s loan, which is a big relief. At least we don’t have to worry about rolling that into the new loan, which should make our payments more affordable. *cheer*

We did test drive a GMC Jimmy tonight. I had to twist Jon’s arm a tiny bit, but once he drove it he didn’t think I was completely nuts for being interested in it. It’s certainly not the most fuel efficient vehicle we could get, but the price seemed reasonable for what I estimated as it’s quality level. It’s on our short list, though we don’t really have much of a list yet, heh. Finally deciding on something should be an interesting adventure!

Jon and I picked up a bag of “Quest” Doritos last night at the grocery store. That, folks, is a brilliant bit of marketing. If you like the majority of Doritos flavors, it’s intensely tempting to buy a bag of “mystery” chips and try to guess the flavor. The thing is? The flavor inside the bag isn’t a masterpiece. Frankly? I don’t like them very much, which is sad since most of their flavors are borderline addicting. So, save your $3 and just go to the website and figure out what the flavor is (they make it pretty easy). I have a feeling our bag may end up in the trash can well before they’re gone, unless I can make them into tolerable nachos somehow.

The most interesting part of my birthday goals is trying to weigh what a true “need” is versus something being a “want.” I get the feeling that I’m stricter about this than a lot of people might be. I mean, personal hygiene is vital, but to me that doesn’t include professional hair cuts. It’s possible that my opinion is biased slightly since I got so many free cuts from my mother as a child. (She attended beautician school in the 70’s, so she basically knew what she was doing.)

I’m having this struggle with clothing right now. Some of my undergarments are… too big. They *used* to be “bikini-cut” but now… not so much. It’s not a vital necessity to replace them, because they still function in the intended fashion, but (for me at least) the item itself is a “need.” So, do I buy properly fitted garments now? Or wait until after my birthday so I don’t have my goal taunting me? It’s hard to choose.

Alas, I am cheating a tiny bit… I increased my Netflix plan because trying to share the 2-at-a-time plan with Jon is not all that easy. We have rather different taste when it comes to rentals. (In my ((very lame)) defense, we’ve only been sharing for the past month or so. If I had known ahead of time that sharing wouldn’t be so great, I’d have planned for it in my goals!) That’s the only thing I’ve spent additional money on though! $4.00 in three weeks isn’t sooo bad… :P

I’m not entirely sure whether it’s boredom, lack of direction, or the fact that I’ve been re-watching the whole two seasons of Heroes, but recently I’ve refound my interest in learning Japanese. I’ve been going through various sites looking at various dictionaries and other references and have so far been a bit surprised at how much I still remember.

I took three years of Japanese at the high school level and two years in community college. At the time I thought it was a great move since technology was becoming such a huge career market. In hindsight, I think I mostly chose Japanese over other, more practical languages (Spanish would have been a great choice) out the sheer uniqueness of it. I was one of less than ten kids in my high school who studied Japanese, and was probably one of only two or three who actually took it somewhat seriously.

I admit that it’s likely that this will end up like so many of my other hobbies, a 2 month fling and then on to the next distraction… but the dreamer in me can’t help but think of the possibility of becoming fluent and becoming a professional translator. Far-fetched, I know, but hey… stranger things have happened… Barack Obama told people he’d cure the sick and make the ocean level go down, and people believed him! :)

So I bought this puzzle a month or so ago. It’s 1000 pieces, and the picture has a chess board on part of it. It also shows a mirror with a reflection of the chess board in it. I’ve gotten all of the easy parts done and now I just have the two chess boards and a bunch of nondescript brown pieces left. It’s been sitting like that, with the easy parts done, for well over a week. This is almost like a metaphor for my life, I sometimes lose interest when things get hard, if the project is 100% mine that is - it’s rare that I shirk responsibility when other people are counting on me.

Anyway, I’m not proud of of my lack of follow-through on certain things, but it’s a hard habit to break. I’m not hurting anyone by not finishing a puzzle, you know? I probably will finish it, but it could be a very slow process. Well, unless posting this makes something click in my brain to motivate me. We’ll see.

So far the goals are going… ok. Not fantastic, but they certainly could be worse. I’m surprised at how much I want to buy really dumb little things now that I’m focusing on NOT doing so. I looked longingly at a $1.99 bottle of nail polish today, and I can’t even remember the last time I painted my nails! I’m certain it was sometime before I got married, so it’s been well over three years. Fortunately, I hadn’t brought any money with me, so temptation was averted.

As usual, sugar has been my main weakness. I have such a sweet tooth! I got a bit carried away with some ice cream tonight, but the weekend went well so hopefully it’ll all balance out in the end. Here’s hoping!