Very Well.

Amber has decreed that I shall make the first post.

We have been married for a year and a half and have been more or less easing along because we were both to stressed and exhausted to do anything else. She was working on finishing her Master's degree and I...was helping her work on finishing her Master's degree. Well, she graduated on December seventeenth and now we are going to try to bring a little more awesome into our lives. We have thus set the following goals (thus far) as a couple for the coming trip round the sun:

• Get me graduated and into graduate school
• Get her thesis published
• Avoid turning her cat into tamales
• Get into better physical shape
• Cook at home more often
• Reduce clutter
• Spend time enjoying our city since we are paying significant rent to live where we do
• Spend less money
• Go for day/weekend hikes at least once per month, preferably twice

There are a lot of sub points to some of those points; for example, part of the getting into better physical shape means we are doing the couch to 5K thing and running in one race at least five thousand meters in length per month. Our first is on 30 January in Houston.

We also have personal goals as well since -- despite the rumours you have heard -- we are separate entities. Mine thus far include the following:

• Run my first marathon in November
• Graduate
• Gain some fluency in French
• Get into graduate school
• Get a job at least tangentially related to my field so that I can start paying off my student loans
• Have nice fingernails
• Avoid turning Amber's cat into tamales
• Attend the Sommerhochschule in at the University of Vienna -- which might be problematic due to a family wedding, but that's irrelevant at this exact moment

To wit: this evening we had to return some movies to Vulcan (and by movies, I mean Star Trek: Voyager and How I Met Your Mother) and since we did not feel like going out to Amber's gym, we decided to get our Couch to 5K on. I was in charge on account of having the watch and we therefore did a bastardised version of Week Two (We were meant to be doing Week One. Oops.): Amber told me to run for a minute and walk for a minute and a half. I got that backwards, so we ran for a minute and a half and walked for a minute (unless we were going uphill; then we ran/walked 60/90). The nice chart says that Week Two is run 90, walk 120. We therefore are more hardcore than C25K.

Also, running in the cold through our neighbourhood beats the treadmill any day.

For dinner we had pho at the pho establishment on the Drag with steak, tofu and broccoli. Amber had two egg rolls and I had an egg roll and a spring roll. Total with tip: fifteen bucks.

Thus ends Day One of our year of becoming awesome:

• Budgetary goals: met
• Exercise goals: met
• Cat: non-culinary
• Fingernails: awesome
• Neighbourhood enjoyment: moderate to high
• French: très mal

Success!