Ah, December 31st.  The end of an old year, the beginning of a new.  The time we all make lists and look back at the things we’ve accomplished or failed to accomplish and vow to do better next year.

As silly as it is, I love making New Years resolutions.  I don’t think I’ve ever successfully kept one for an entire year, but I still enjoy making them just the same.  There’s just something about a new year and the fresh start it can represent, even if nothing has really changed except the calendar (which reminds me, I need to buy a new calendar).

Last year was all about huge changes.  I was going to blog every week day and I was going to get healthy and change my life.  I did better with those things than I have with any other goals I’ve made in past years, but both of them fell by the way side before the new school year began in August.  As frustrating as it has been to fail, it’s actually incredibly encouraging to think about how well I did and how good I felt while I was succeeding.

And so I embark on a new year with a new set of goals.  This year I have 10 things I want to accomplish.  It sounds like a lot, but a number of them are things I already do, I’m just putting a specific number goal with them.  Others are starting small, with the hope that they will grow and increase as the year progresses.  A couple are just random things that I want to try.  None of them really require a huge overhaul of my life, which is probably a good thing.

All of these goals are listed in the sidebar to the left of my blog, which I hope will keep me motivated (and help me remember what they are!).  I’ll also (hopefully) do monthly update post to let you (and myself) know how things are going.

So without further ado, here are my goals for 2012:

1. Clear out my “To be read” shelf before rereading any books.

As of right now, I have 32 books on my shelf that I have purchased or been given and have not read. My goal is to either read or sell them (or both) before I reread something I have already read. The one exception to this is War and Peace, which I may attempt in the summer (but I don’t want to hold myself to that).

2. Read 50 books.

Over the past year I’ve been reading a lot of online content (articles, media criticism, etc.), but I’ve been slacking on reading actual books. For this goal, rereads count (assuming I finish #1), but abandoned books only count if I read at least 100 pages.

3. Pack at least one lunch a week.

We’re starting small here. I get free lunch in the cafeteria at school, but it’s not exactly the pinnacle of nutrition, so the goal is to start taking a salad or something along those lines. I’m starting with one, and we’ll see how that goes as the year progresses.

4. Cook at least one dinner a week.

Again, starting small. It’s really pathetic that I have gotten to the point where this has to be a goal, but the first step is acknowledging I have a problem, right? Hopefully I’ll increase this as the year goes on.

5. Track what I eat.

I say again, small steps this year. Rather than committing to huge changes, I just want to get back to actually paying attention.  I’ve continued paying for Weight Watchers Online (because apparently I’m an idiot who likes to waste money), so I’ll probably try using that to begin with.

6. Do something active 3 times a week.

Walking Lucy, riding my bike, something.  I have a gym membership through April, but it’ll take some effort to work up the courage to go back after being gone for so long (it’s a small gym, so quite a few people have probably noticed my absence).

7. Take a mini-vacation at least once each semester.

I need to actually take breaks from work. Summer and long breaks don’t count; long weekends do if I actually go somewhere fun.

8. Hang up my clothes or put them in the hamper.

I have a lovely red chair in my room that I can never actually see because it’s always covered in clothes.  Also, I end up wasting a lot of time trying to figure out what’s clean and what’s dirty and usually end up doing more laundry than I probably need to.

9. Pay at least $2000 on the principal of my school loans.

Since some glitch has kept my loans in deferment even though I’m not in school, I’ve gotten pretty lax about paying them.  I still have quite a ways to go to pay them off completely, so I want to be more purposeful about paying them off this year.

10. Spend at least 1 hour on Saturday mornings writing.

I have a number of projects that have fallen by the way side over the past few months (this blog included). I’d like to see what I can accomplish if I make writing a priority.

Bonus: Apply to graduate school (and all the mini-goals that entails – GRE, research, etc.)

This may end up being my summer vacation next year.  Holy crap, I’m excited.

MC would have been 18 today.  My heart was a little bit heavier than usual today.  It’s a good reminder of why I do what I do every day.

I ran into his friend QC the other day at Kroger.  He works there now and he was bringing in carts from the parking lot when I walked out to my car.  He gave me a big hug and told me about how he’s going to have to work really hard to balance work and school and basketball, but that he knows school has to be the most important.  He asked me why I didn’t come back this year and I explained how I wanted to be the best teacher I can possibly be and that wasn’t going to happen at my old school.  He nodded and said he understood.

He gets it now.  He understands how important education is, how it can change everything for him.  How it can open doors to opportunities so that he doesn’t have to resort to stealing or dealing drugs.  I just wished he and MC could have learned the lesson together, instead of QC having to learn it through pain and loss.

Friday afternoon, after I got back from my overnight trip to the mountains in Arkansas, I decided to go see Footloose.  Since I tend to love cheesy movies that involve dancing (Center Stage, Save the Last Dance, Step Up, etc.), I figured this would be right up my alley.  And I was totally right.  Here are a few specific things I loved about this version of Footloose:

1. The director/writer is from Memphis.  He lives here and works here and most of his movies are set in the South or in Memphis itself.  He loves the city, so you should go support him and see this movie  :)

2. The cast was super-diverse, and not just in a black-white sense.  Obviously, all the main characters are very pretty people (this is a movie), but if you look at the background people, they look, well, normal.  I noticed this particularly in the high school scenes and at the city council meeting.  The teenagers, for the most part, look like teenagers and the fat kids aren’t typical “fat kids” – they’re dressed in normal, cute clothes, acting like normal people.

3. The crazy religious people weren’t quite so crazy.  Dennis Quaid’s character isn’t upholding all these crazy laws because he’s a Bible-thumper; he’s doing it because he’s a grieving parent who doesn’t want to see anybody else get hurt.  That’s more realistic and more sympathetic than John Lithgow’s character in the original.  Plus, Ren isn’t painted as being anti-church, just anti-hypocrisy and anti-legalism.  Religion isn’t the punching bag in the movie, which was really refreshing.

4. Ren is a great character.  I never really realized it before, and I do have to give some credit for the realization to Craig Brewer’s comments in this interview, but Ren is a stand-up guy.  He’s not rebelling just for the sake of rebelling.  He sees something he thinks is wrong, and then he goes through the proper channels to try and change it.  He treats the people around him with respect, which is how he is able to get some of the adults on his side in the end.  Much as religion isn’t the punching bag, adults aren’t the punching bag either.  It’s more about adults and teenagers working together to do what’s best for a community.

5. The movie is just plain fun.  There’s good music, lots of dancing, and plenty of funny moments courtesy of the main characters’ friends, Willard and Rusty.

Yes, I know it’s cheesy.  Yes, I know, it doesn’t have Kevin Bacon.  But it’s an entertaining movie and as long as you’re not one of those people who takes themselves way too seriously, you should go see it.

In anticipation of the Blu-Ray release in a couple weeks, Disney has rereleased The Lion King in theaters in 3D.  I wasn’t planning on going because I didn’t really have any desire to see it in 3D (or pay the 3D charges), but after spending 4 hours of my Saturday grading papers, I decided to treat myself.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, and while I can still quote most of the movie, there were a few things that surprised me this time around.  Without further ado, things I’ve never noticed about The Lion King:

1. Simba = Hamlet, if Hamlet had been able to grow a pair and man up.  I think I’ve previously read somewhere about the similarities between The Lion King and the Prince of Denmark, but this was the first time I really noticed it while watching.  I mean, come on – the prince’s uncle kills the king, takes his throne, and the ghost of the original king appears to his son to tell him to put things right.  It’s essentially the same story, Disney just put a much more positive spin on it than Shakespeare did.  (Of course, Disney uses classic literature for their own purposes quite frequently.  Don’t even get me started on the butchering of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.)

2. The incredibly high level of vocabulary.  I was actually discussing with a couple of other teachers at lunch the other day how rigorous the vocabulary was in kid’s movies when we were younger.  Even if I didn’t completely understand what they all meant, I was at least exposed to words like “reprimand” and “provincial” by Disney movies.  Scar’s song alone uses the words retention, vacant, successions, unawares, sensational, era, sordid, quid pro quo, murkiest, meticulous, tenacity, and undisputed.

That rich vocabulary sticks with kids more than we necessarily think it might.  To this day, when I hear the phrase “impeccable timing,” I hear it the way Zazu says it when Mufasa saves him from being eaten by Scar.

3. When Pumbaa gets upset about the hyenas calling him a pig, it’s a direct reference to Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night.  I never understood why Pumbaa got so angry (he’s been called a pig before by Simba), but obviously somebody in the writer’s room really wanted to put that line in there.  Compare this:

to this (go to 3:11, although the other quotes are worth watching as well):

I knew the “You talkin’ to me?” part was a Robert de Niro reference, but I never got the Mr. Tibbs connection until today.

It just goes to show you – no matter how many times you’ve seen something, you can always find something new.