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. . . rubbing it in a little more:

(Just in case you don’t get it . . . with Ohio State’s loss to LSU in the National Championship game, they are now 0–9 against SEC teams in bowl games.)

To vote for the new title of my upcoming novel, click here.

This is the year of accountability for me. I haven’t always set goals for myself at the beginning of the year; sometimes, it’s more of a wishlist/prayer (Lord, please let this be the year that I meet my future husband.), while other times, it’s a longer-term goal (in 2000, I set a goal of being finished with school, in a career-path editorial job, and making strides in my writing career by the time I was 35. All of those things happened when I was 35).

This year, as I’ve already posted, I’m making my goals for the year public, because I want accountability. When I make goals but don’t tell anyone else about them, it’s easy to give up on them because no one else will be disappointed or think less of me because I’ve quit. So, in addition to my reading goals and writing/writing-career goals for 2008, here are goals for what I’d like to achieve in my personal life this year:

1. Become active in church again. Surprisingly, this is a difficult area of my life. I attend a relatively large church that doesn’t have a singles ministry. Even though I’ve enjoyed singing in the choir and the intellectual and spiritual stimulation I’ve gotten from the Sunday school class I’ve attended there (couples ages 50+), ever since my back went out this past fall, I’ve attended church only sporadically (though the weeks I don’t go, I do at least watch the worship service on TV). I know that my spiritual health is flagging because of this, but I also struggle with loneliness more when I’m at church than when I’m not. I know that God called me to this church, and I love the people there. But there’s definitely some spiritual warfare going on in my heart that I’m allowing to keep me away from the one place where I can overcome it.

2. Become a better housekeeper. “Clean up this pig sty!” was something I heard at least once a week growing up. I haven’t gotten much better since I’ve been an adult. Why? Pretty much because I’m lazy and a procrastinator. But I’ve recently volunteered my house for a monthly creative/brainstorming meeting for my local writing group, and I don’t want to have to spend all of the weekend prior to the meeting cleaning the house. So my goal is to spend at least thirty minutes a day cleaning/organizing, so that I’m not killing myself (nor putting my back out again) to make the house presentable when someone comes over. Which leads to . . .

3. Become more hospitable with inviting people over. Hospitality is always one of my lowest scores whenever I take a spiritual-gifts survey (along with giving and mercy—all three of which in my mind are tied together). I have already taken one step in offering my house as the place for this new monthly meeting. But I need to be better about inviting friends over for lunch/dinner before or after we go see a movie at the theater near my house, or having friends over to watch movies more often. Again, this is tied very closely to #2.

4. Lose weight. I know, it’s the oldest January cliche that exists. But I had set this goal before Christmas—and then had even more motivation thrown in my face nearly every day over the holiday as I was surrounded by aunts and cousins who’ve all lost weight (between 30–60 pounds!) and look fabulous. It made me very self-conscious . . . I meant to lose weight in 2007. I even tried to start low carb back last May. But I gave up really easily. (Again, lazy and procrastinator.) So Tuesday, I cut out the carbs—as well as caffeine to see if that will help bring my blood pressure down—and today I start back to the gym. My ideal goal is to lose between 80–90 pounds by the ACFW conference in September—but only if I can do it healthily. Aside from the motivation of wanting to lose the low self-esteem that comes from being morbidly obese—knowing I have no stamina to go out and do things, knowing that I’m the person everyone dreads having to sit next to on an airplane (and being uncomfortable on an airplane myself), wondering if a chair that has arms is going to be wide enough for me—my two main motivations for losing weight are to get my blood pressure down (it’s still around 140/80 even on two medications) and alleviate my back pain. Aside from the low-carb lifestyle, the most tangible part of this goal is that I commit to going to the YMCA down the street from the office to walk the treadmill/elliptical and do strength training twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays), and to the downtown location to swim for an hour at least twice a week (most likely Saturday and Sunday afternoons, though I might try the water aerobics class on Monday evenings).

5. Buy no new clothing this year. I’m talking about tops, jeans, skirts, slacks, etc. I am so bad about spending money on clothing, mainly because I’m not happy with the way the clothes I currently have fit me (or because they don’t fit me)—unless I lose enough weight that no clothes I currently own still fit me. I have a closet full of clothes that I haven’t been able to wear for several years because I’ve slowly been putting on pounds until I am now barely fitting into size 28W jeans and have been buying size 30/32W tops because they’re looser and more comfortable. At this size, it will take losing about 30 pounds to go down one size—but when I do, I’ll be able to “go shopping” in my own closet and get back into some items that were my favorites when I could wear them, as well as stuff that’s practically brand-new, because I bought it thinking, I’m going to lose weight and be able to wear this. This one is a precursor, and part of . . .

6. Set a budget and live by it. I’m an impulse buyer and not someone who has ever been able to effectively save money. Now that I have one book under contract and (prayerfully) more to come, it would be so easy for me to take that advance and just blow it on things I want (like a TV with a remote that actually works, every DVD I feel like is missing from my collection, a new bed, etc.). But there are things I need to do with some of it (get new shocks/struts and a tune-up for the car, put some extra money toward paying off my student loans, pay off a few smaller bills, set some aside for taxes) and then the rest needs to go toward promoting the release of the book. I took a financial planning class several years ago at church. I need to pull the books out and go through it again, because that was what helped me pay off all of my debts before I graduated . . . and then I got lazy and procrastinated and allowed myself to fall into old habit of allowing myself to ignore my bank balance and just purchase whatever I want whenever I want, which is a very destructive and stressful pattern and I’m tired of it. So that ends this year!

7. Spend my time wisely. I’ve set this goal over and over (and mentioned it several times on this blog before), but I’m a much happier, productive person when I live by a schedule. Since I’ve made the commitment to going to the gym (directly after work, which means I’ll still be home around six o’clock), I need to build the rest of my schedule, weighting it heavily toward writing time and limiting the amount of time I spend watching TV (which should be really easy to do with the writers’ strike now).

Update on other goals:
From my Reading Goals:
#2 under ABA Fiction: I started reading The Darkest Evening of the Year a couple of days ago. Should have it finished in about a week.

From my Writing Goals:
1. Send in four applications to teach at the ACFW conference: Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and either POV or Setting. I completed this goal yesterday, submitting applications for Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and Setting.

In what turned out to be the cleanest game LSU has played in years (considering we were the most penalized team in the SEC entering this contest), I’m barely able to sit down and write this . . .

My LSU Tigers are the NCAA Football National Champions!!!!!!!!!

Do you need a cup of coffee?

Tiredness can affect your reaction times. See how alert you are with this game, then test the impact of a cup of tea or coffee on your performance.

My Results:

I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you all know that I’ll have limited face-time with the computer over the next week, so this will be my last post for a few days.

But be sure to stop by on Christmas day for a very special post . . .

In the meantime, I wish you the merriest and most blessed of Christmases!

Last night on NPR, I heard one of their movie critics give his top-ten (eleven, since one place had a “tie”) list of his favorite movies he’s seen in 2007. Naturally, they were almost all artsy-fartsy, foreign-language, independent, dramatic, esoteric, incomprehensible . . . (I think you get my point). There was only one on his list that I’ve seen, and—amazingly enough—it is on my list too (#4).

I’m going to try to limit this to just movies I saw at the theater—and I’ve been to the movies more times this year than in the last three years combined. But I did have to mention one that actually released in 2006 that I saw for the first time on DVD in 2007, just because I enjoyed it so much.

[There are several movies that came out this year that I haven't yet had the opportunity to see, but really want to:
August Rush
Enchanted
Becoming Jane
3:10 to Yuma
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (going to see this Friday)
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep]

But now, without further ado, here are my favorite movies that I watched in 2007:

10. The Illusionist. I think this movie may have actually come out in 2006, but I watched it on DVD this year. This movie reminded me very much of the films of M. Night Shyamalan, complete with a twist at the end.

9. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. This was the summer of the sequels—Pirates, Bourne, Harry Potter, Shrek, Fantastic Four, etc. I greatly anticipated this “final” film in the trilogy, even took my parents to see it when they came to visit me over Memorial Day weekend. It would be higher on my list, except I think it was poorly edited and suffered a little from series fatigue in the storywriting. The scene with Captain Jack out in the desert could have been cut way down, apparently they cut out at least one key scene of dialogue that would have explained the ending better, and they kind of dropped the whole Calypso storyline down the drain (literally). But still, a great, fun movie.

8. Sicko. I know, I know. Most people don’t like Michael Moore nor his documentaries. But even though his bias is evident in how he put together this documentary on healthcare in America compared with overseas, it was an eye-opening look into an industry I previously knew (or thought) so little about. And it’s funny.

7. No Reservations. I’m not a big Catherine Zeta Jones fan. I find Abigail Breslin annoying (does she really have to be in every movie that calls for a pre-pubescent girl?). But this movie took me by surprise. It helps that when we went to see it, I was actively working on my novel that features a chef as the hero. But this was well written and well acted all the way around. Caveat: do not watch this movie on an empty stomach!

6. The Game Plan. This movie was worth the price of admission just from the first few minutes. Okay, I admit, I wanted to see it because I love Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I expected it to be cute. I didn’t expect it to be as good as it was. Both Johnson and Madison Pettis (who played his daughter, Peyton) brought not just humor but also a genuineness that is often missing from “cotton candy” movies like this one. Oh, and The Rock sings!

5. Amazing Grace. Again, going to see this film was a decision made more based on who was in it than the subject matter. Some actors are just born to play historical characters, and Ioan Gruffudd is one of them. This movie featured a who’s who of British actors (Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell) and introduced a new face, who will hopefully become one of that who’s who: Benedict Cumberbatch (as England’s youngest Prime Minister, William Pitt). Aside from the abundance of acting talent, it is a beautiful homage to William Wilburforce, the driving force behind the campaign to end England’s involvement in the slave trade in the late 18th/early 19th century. (Oh, and it more than makes up for the fiasco that was The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I was embarrassed for Ioan when I saw that one!)

4. Ratatouille. I don’t go see a lot of animated movies—mostly because I’ll be happier watching them on DVD at home without the stress of being in an enclosed space with a lot of kids. But this was one that I couldn’t miss. And I’m so glad I didn’t. The animation was the best I’ve ever seen (there were times it was hard to remember that what we were seeing was animated and not photographic). The story came to a point where it seemed like it was going to come to a nice, sweet, not very deep, but happy conclusion. But then the second half of the movie started—and things got much deeper and more interesting. Again, not a movie to see on an empty stomach!

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I wasn’t really sure how they were going to condense the longest of the seven books down into the shortest of the five (so far) films. But they did it. Seeing these movies as a fan of the books is like just checking in to make sure that as I read them, I’m imagining the characters and settings as looking correct. As expected, this movie took on a much darker atmosphere. They had to pare it down to the most basic and important plot and events that took place, changed a couple of little things, and consolidated a couple of characters’ actions (Neville, once again, got to be a more prominent/heroic character by doing what Dobby does in the book to help out; the complicated relationship/breakup between Harry and Cho was handled by having Cho be the one who turned them in). But with as much as they had to work with and fit in, they did a good job. I’m already anticipating the next installment.

2. The Bourne Ultimatum. I actually was more excited about the release of this movie than the HP movie . . . mostly because I haven’t read the books and I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen in this third and “final” installment in the Bourne series. And this movie did not disappoint at all. In fact, if my back hadn’t gone out and kept me nearly housebound for a month and a half, I would have seen this one several times while it was still in the theater. There’s just something about seeing the chases (especially the car chase through the streets of New York) on the big screen that seeing it on DVD can’t replicate. Yes, I have already watched all of the special features on the DVD when I got it from Netflix the day it released.

1. Stardust. Should be sitting in my mailbox in a little red envelope as I write this. (Can’t wait to get home and find out!) Not only is this the best movie I saw this year, it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen! Similar to The Princess Bride, this is a movie that will become an instant classic, one that should be in every movie lover’s library. The richness of the story and characters is unlike most movies being made these days. That, and the fact that I’ll never be able to listen to the “Can-Can” the same way again! If you haven’t seen it yet, go out and rent it tonight!