Investment in sight

The best money I ever spent was getting my eyes done last year. It's been a full year since Lasik and I can't tell you how wonderful it has been.

My first pair of glasses came sometime in about the first or second grade. Mom is legally blind because she's so nearsided; I inherited that from her. By the time I reached high school, I would wear contacts all the time. I even went into basic training with extended wear lenses and didn't take them out for the entire six weeks. It was tough, but sure beat wearing those birth-control glasses, as they are affectionately called. Believe me, you weren't getting any booty wearing those suckers. They were ugly.

Since moving to the Dallas area, I've become much more involved in sports and outdoor stuff. I can't tell you how many times I had to stop and fix contacts or just pull them out and put on glasses, just to get through events. If I cried during a sappy movie (a frequent event), the contacts would be toast and all fogged over. It sucked.

So last year, I bit the bullet and got the Lasik. Scared the ever-livin' poo out of me, but I did it. No regrets. I went from 20/700+ (legally blind) to 20/15 in a matter of 20 minutes. Best money I ever spent.

For the first time this year, I got to go tubing behind a ski boat. Before, I was afraid of losing either the glasses or contacts into the water. I got to do a triathlon without worry. I started riding bikes without worrying about the contacts drying out. I can cry and still see. The best part is waking up in the middle of the night and not only being able to see the clock, but being able to see enough to not hallucinate that someone is looking at me. It's amazing.

If you haven't done it and are considering it. Just do it. It'll be the best money you ever spent.

Monthly status update

One of the best way to make sure you're working on goals is to revisit them occasionally. Since I posted my real-solutions for the year in January, I thought I'd check them out again to see how the first month went. Some were good, others not so much. I'll hit some of the highlights.

Exercise 5x/week - Whoops. Forgot I put this one in there so I'm glad it's being checked. Last month I was in a bit of a funk because of work, so I, at best, got in about 3x/week. The work crap is still there, but I'll have to start working on this one a bit more. So far, I've exercised both days in February and plan to keep the momentum going.

Lose the 10lbs. Hide from them - I'm down about 4 right now overall, and the pants are fitting more nicely. I'm in a fat club at work that has only 2 more weeks to go. Might as well power down to get a few more off when a payout is possible.

Save some money - Check. The savings is up a bit. Not much, but a bit.

Pay off 2 cards. Hide them - Check. I sucked it up in Jan and paid one off. The next one will be a few months away, but still possible.

Finish at least 15 credits - 3 are in progress, 3 more will be started Feb 15th. I plotted out my plan of action for the year on a spreadsheet (I'm sure some of you are surprised - LOL!) and it looks like I might be able to get 21 in this year if all goes well. Yay!

Run 750 miles this year - Well, I only got about 32 in last month. Not a good way to start the year, but it'll pick up. It's still very do-able.

Ride at least 2000 miles this year - Again, none for this month (not counting spin miles), but once it warms up, I'm looking forward to commuting to work and getting ready for RAGBRAI. Whee!

So it's off to a start. Can't wait to see how the year turns out!

Sometimes I have to laugh at myself that actually I enjoy writing now.

When I was a kid, I would've rather been beaten to a pulp than have to sit at the dining room table and forced to write a paper for school. I would resort to tears of frustration getting started each time. It never just flowed.

I mentioned that to my mom after she read one of my blog entries recently and she was surprised. She reminded me that in the second or third grade I won a plaque in a writing contest about "What My Country Means to Me". I didn't remember that, but sure enough, I dug around in a box of treasures I've kept of my school years and there it was. Strange.

It wasn't until I did some reporting for a TV station in Rapid City, SD, that I realized how much fun it was. Maybe it was because I wasn't being forced to write about Shakespere or something I didn't care about. Because I did mainly feature reporting, I was able to go find fun and interesting stories about things that were interesting.

I once did an entire 60-second segment using alliteration while in Greenville, MS. Miss Mississippi lived nearby the town we were in and we were told that she was bringing in her standard poodles into the local dog beauty shop for cuts. Yeah, it was a slow news day. So I had a lot of fun with it, using alliteration around "P". It actually turned out fairly well, even though I had little video and not much story to work with.

Another of my favorite stories, also in Mississippi, was about a group of Italian ladies who got together every few weeks to make pasta. They were hilarious and they made it so easy to put together a funny piece. I don't think I laughed so hard the whole time I lived there. The difficult part of that one was the editing.

So a few years ago, I decided to capture the writing bug again and channel it in with my other favorite passion, reality TV. Oh c'mon! I know everyone out there has at least one show they'll watch, even if they don't tell anyone. I wrote into a website I read regularly and offered up my services. They gave me a crap show to start with, then I moved up from there to the one Survivor column I wanted more than any other, which allows me to analyze the editing and figure out who will be sent home next.

Now I get to practice on you all as well though the blog. Though it feels like a diary, it also feels like a way to see if something is working or not. I enjoy reading other people's blogs to get a feel for their rhythm and styles; hopefully pick up a few tricks along the way.

I can't believe this used to bring me to tears.

Hope

I'm not really into politics, but the events of the past few weeks or so surrounding President Obama's innauguration give me the urge to just bust open a blog. Just one though, then it's back to the usual semi-mindless chatter.

To give you a little background, I'm about as middle-of-the road as they come. I lean mainly left when it comes to issues surrounding the environment, women's choices, and gay marriage. I lean mainly to the right when it comes to free enterprise with business, finances and the military, in general.

My dad and brother lean as far right as Atilla the Hun and you can't tell them anything. So I don't bother trying. My mom is pretty middle-of-the-road with a conservative lean. But what I think she and I have in common is the ability to see the grey areas. People like my dad and brother, to me, have their views so distorted, that they don't take into account the outside edges. And I have friends who swing so far left, they too are on the outside edges. There's a big area of grey in the middle.

But let's dig into the elections a bit. I was really torn last year when it came down to who to vote for. Both parties have had their pendulums swing so far to the right or left, that it's difficult to really make a sound decision for who will do the best job for this country, which is what it's supposed to be about in the first place. Nearly every leader, no matter if it's the President or just a general manager at your office, comes into the job thinking that they will do something that makes a difference. Nobody goes into a job with the intent of doing a bad job.

That said, it was a tough decision on who to vote for, but I voted. Both candidates had qualities I liked and both had negatives which I didn't. I struggled to figure out who I thought would be best for our country.

After living in the south for most of my adult years, I've found that there still is a separation of white vs. black in many places. When I lived a short six months in Greenville, Missisippi there was never a bigger gap than I saw there. Literally, there was a white and black side of town, with train tracks separating the two. I grew up in California and was absolutely floored that this kind of divide still existed.

Today, I'm proud of our country that the population was able to see a man instead of a black man. Or at least I hope they did. I'm happy to see that there was a large increase in the number of black voters who turned out to vote. I'm thrilled to see that a lot of white folks were able to do the same. It really shouldn't be an issue from here out, because now we, as a nation know that we can see past that.

But in saying all of this, I have to wonder if there were a vast majority of people who were caught up in the fervor of being able to say that they voted for the first black president or being able to say they were a part of history, no matter how small. I wonder that once this tide got started, it just couldn't be slowed down.

Last week, in the events leading up to the innauguration, the media continued to play to the frenzy, interviewing people off the streets who thought that President Obama will be the savior of the free world or the person who will make their lives good again. I fear that these same people are going to be so let down once he digs in and gets to work. There are many folks out there who think that change will happen quickly and that it will all be for the better. The honeymoon will wear off and they will see that the government is more than just the president.

If these people understand our system, they will need to open their eyes to the rest of the Senate and House. They will need to keep an eye out for what is happening locally that they can do something about. They can only change their own positions in life; they can't wait for someone from up above to come change things for them.

I only hope that this country, conservatives, liberals, and moderates alike, can just take their views, not skew them with vile hatred and support our country and our president to the best of their ability. I hope that President Obama is able to make the changes he wants to with the support of Congress and I hope that they are the right decisions for the country, not the political party. I hope that people will be able to see the mistakes for what they are. And I hope that those who oppose him can find some good in what he does do well. I hope we can get past the political diatribes on both sides to see the grey area which resides in the middle; the grey area which most of the population probably truely resides.

It's going to be a very interesting four years.

Back to School

I've been procrastinating for a long time. Too long, in fact. But now, I'm thrilled to be getting back into the groove.

When I graduated from high school, I was burnt out on school and ready for a change for a while. I joined the Air Force thinking I'd use it as a tool to get myself into the Air Force Academy through a back door, just so I could go to college in Colorado (flawed thinking, right?) Though I tried for 2 years, I didn't make it in, but it probably ended up being a blessing in disguise. I like how my life turned out, even with out it.

So I picked up a few classes along the way at each of the bases I was stationed. Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a math and science geek. The universities overseas only had lower level credits for Chemistry, Calculus and the sort. I racked up nearly 120 credits, but nothing added up to a degree.

Which brings us to the present.

Two weeks ago I started back to school and I love it! It's all online, so it may end up taking a bit of extra effort to stay diligent to studying, especially when warm weather beckons me outside. I felt like a kid the day the class opened up online for me to start digging in. I almost wanted to go out to buy a new outfit to wear, despite nobody being able to see it online.

There's just something wonderful about the smell of a new textbook and the sound it makes as you flip the corners to make that bbbrrrriiiip noise with the pages. There's magic in learning, even at the ripe age of 40. (Notice I left out the word "old"?)

Despite warnings from nearly everyone I talked to, I'm diving in head first with Statistics as my first course. As I said, I'm a bit of a math geek, so it hasn't been as awful as the dire warnings that have come unsolicited. Actually, it might have been a good thing to wait so long because through this online course, the angle is actually towards using a practical application of statistics. The course was developed in a way where all the homework and tests point the student towards using Excel effectively, rather than memorizing formulas and going through the math. Genius!

So now I'm working through my plan of action over the next 2-3 years so I can finish up in Aviation Technical Management, which is the path of least resistance. Other than a basic English class, all the credits I have are upper level management classes. I have this year planned out so that I can finish about 21 credits. We'll see how that pans out.

Yay! I'm so excited!

Kari Kennedy

Embry-Riddle University 2011