• Holidays,  Life

    November Wrap-Up and December Goals

    Once again, November has come and gone, and I’m left confused and dismayed about how it passed by so quickly. Like, seriously – I swear it was just the beginning of October the other day. How did this happen? How is Thanksgiving over already? How are we almost two weeks into December already and I’m JUST NOW posting my November update? Well, I know how that one happened… my photoshop updated and it took me until now to figure out how to get it to work properly again… but anyway… I guess time marches onwards, and while I haven’t been super active on the blog here, that’s not to say…

  • Blogging,  Life,  Lists

    October Wrap-Up and November Goals

    October was a whirlwind of a month, to put it lightly. Much of the first few weeks flew by as our days were consumed with moving, and unpacking… and setting up the house… and figuring out bills… and… and… and… That said, even with all the chaos, October ended up being a pretty good month in Magpie world. Let’s see what got accomplished. 1) Jim and I celebrated 7 years together. So yea, I think we kind of like each other. 2) We bought a house (HOLY SHIT WE BOUGHT A HOUSE) and moved into said house. Again, no small undertaking. So while most of my other personal projects and…

  • Life,  Lists,  Travel

    July/August Wrap-Up and September Goals

    The last two months have been just an absolute whirlwind. There’s some pretty big and significant life-changes that have been going on behind the scenes here at Magpie over the last few weeks that have been simultaneously super-exciting, and absolutely terrifying. I won’t say too much about it all on here until all is said and done, and everything is finalized, but it has certainly contributed to the overall chaos that has been the last two months. As a result of everything that’s been going on, many of the goals that I had originally set for July ended up put on the back-burner for much of the time since I…

  • Book Love,  Life,  Lists,  Travel

    June Wrap-Up and July Goals

    Ah, another month gone, another goals wrap-up post – and June did NOT go as smoothly in terms of goals as I hoped it would. That said, it wasn’t quite the total failure that it could have been. So how’d I do? Well, June was a strange one this year. I spent the first two and a half weeks rush rush rushing to clean, and prep classes, and run errands, and catch up on everything I always let go during the semester when I’m working 14-18 hour days all week. And then the last week and a half I did, well, nothing. Positively nothing but read, and eat, and travel.…

  • Life,  Lists,  Making Do

    May Wrap-up and June Goals

    Well, hot damned. It’s June. Already. I find myself saying that a lot these days. “Already!?” “It’s summer already!?” “It’s [insert month] already!?” And the busier I am from day to day, the more I seem to be saying it. And May was a VERY busy month. It always is. From wrapping up and ending the semester, grading final papers and exams, getting final grades in, and working graduations not just at my own institution, but at a couple others in the region as a musician… Then add in all the holidays and anniversaries – Mother’s Day, a major family member’s “cancer free” milestone anniversary, my birthday, trying to shop…

  • Life,  Lists

    April Misses and May Goals

    So it’s time for my monthly wrap-up! Who knew it was going to be May so soon? It completely snuck up on me, and unfortunately I didn’t really meet all my goals for April as a result. To recap what I wanted to do, you can find the full post here. I was able to control my spending on take-out even better this month, but pretty much all the other goals were either misses, or near-misses. I wasn’t able to get anything done in terms of knitting, and while I read more this month, I stalled out about 75% of the way through my second book. And keeping up with…

  • Life,  Lists,  Making Do

    March: The Good, The Bad, And the Goals.

    As part of my plan for getting more consistent around here, I’ve decided to make it my goal to post a wrap-up of each month – this way I can sort of look at each month in review, identify what I accomplished and what needs improvement. I feel like it’s also going to be nice to have a handy list of what I’ve accomplished for myself (in addition to everything I know I’ve gotten done for work) over the last month. Hopefully it’ll be a handy guard against my anxiety creeping in and telling me I’m unproductive and lazy. Now the shape this post takes may change as the year…