Six months on
I noticed this morning that it was July. I know, I’m a little slow 
But to be fair, the weather is so changeable that one might be forgiven for believing it was autumn. There are two implications of the fact that it is July. Number one, I need to turn over the pages on my wall calendar so that it no longer gives random visitors to my room the impression that it is still May. Number two, that it is now six months since January and therefore perhaps time to take stock of where I am up to with my new year resolutions. I know it is six months, because I counted it on my fingers 
My first new year resolution was that I am going to learn French. Hmmm. Yes. Well. I really intended to learn French, honest. I just don’t seem to have got very far yet. It was all the fault of my MP3 player, which broke. I bought myself a new one, but it doesn’t have the facilty to organise tracks in a sensible order, and so currently I have 198 bits of Michel Thomas organised at random and after every four minutes of listening I have to spend at least another four minutes trying to find the next chronological recording 
This problem could be solved by me deleting all the stuff off it and just putting a small amount back on. I may try that at lunch, if I can get sufficient privacy.
I did try listening to French this morning, but I encountered the further problem that my MP3 player is stuck on a loop and so it just wanted to play the same chapter over and over again. I now have a very firm grasp of the days of the week, but would hope to progress to another theme shortly, and can’t figure out how Babel, if you’ve got any ideas how to remove that setting, please let me know!
So essentially I have failed in this resolution so far. I did have a burst of activity in April when I was going to Geneva, but have slacked off again since and need to start again at the beginning. I’m a little bit lazy with learning languages. I didn’t exactly learn German or Esperanto, I just kept saying I was going to learn them and one morning woke up speaking them, but methinks that French is going to actually require some input on my part. We’ll see how far I get in the next six months!
My second objective was to lose weight. I have totally, utterly failed at this one. I weighed myself three weeks ago and was horrified to tip the scales at 9 stone 
I haven’t weighed that much since I was 16. In my defence, I would just like to point out that I have been depressed. The tablets I am taking have weight gain listed as one of their side effects, but probably more to the point,when I’m unhappy I tend to eat a lot of chocolate. There have been some days over the past few months where I’ve eaten as much as three bars of chocolate a day. Certainly, I was doing that when I was in Bolton As of three weeks ago, I have resolved afresh to stop that, so hopefully going forward I will stop expanding!
My third resolution was to save money. My success has been mixed, but this is probably the resolution where I have made the most progress I have transferred £500 to savings every month. Some months I’ve managed to transfer a bit more, some months I’ve had to transfer a bit back again, so on average £500. Sadly, this doesn’t mean I am now rich. There was something during the year which I had to pay out over £3k for, so the net result is that today I am pretty much back at the level of savings I started at when I decided I needed to save more. Hopefully going forward now, my savings should start to increase at a better pace
My last resolution was to learn to drive. I haven’t. I did briefly sit in my boyfriend’s car the other day, but I was a bit overwhelmed by it. The problem with this one is that I don’t actually want to drive, so motivation is somewhat lacking. But I know that I have to, and I will start. Soon. Ish 
Not the best track record in the world then; I’ve got another six months to compensate for a slow start
Tags: failure, resolutions
July 5th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Bring your MI5 player with you today and I’ll set to work on it.
Looks as though you’re catching me up :ninja:
In all seriousness, that’s not very much. You could probably stand to flesh out a little bit anyway.
That’s fewer than when I’m on a diet
Particularly the part where it started rolling forward but I’d neglected to tell you that I wanted you to apply the brake to bring the car to a halt
July 5th, 2008 at 8:48 am
It’s okay, I got so fed up of a patronising voice telling me that lundi was the day of the moon, on the bus home I remembered that there is actually a menu feature and managed to change the setting from repeat to normal
Though how it ended up on repeat in the first place I can’t imagine!
Well, it’s going up a dress size which would mean having to buy new jeans if it continued as a permanent state. I’ve stopped eating all that chocolate now anyway, it’s not healthy.
Oooh chocolate – Rackhams in Birmingham had a new delivery of RitterSport. Mom went in on Tuesday and bought the only two bars of peppermint…and ate most of them herself
Well, I got a couple of squares! If we end up in Brum today though we should have a look.
I didn’t like that bit at all
July 5th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I noticed
In case I forget to say it next time, here’s a reminder: “To get the car to stop, press the brake down and the clutch all the way down.”
July 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Is that both at the same time, or one after the other?
July 5th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
You’ll start hitting the brake to slow down. Before you come to a complete stop, your clutch will need to be pressed down to prevent the car from stalling.
(If the car is in gear and the engine is running, there needs to be movement. Pressing the clutch gets around this.
People, me as well, tend to drive with the clutch pressed down as they slow down, then progressively tap the brake until they come to a stop. After that, you put the car in neutral (so, out of gear) before you release the clutch.)