Max 10 hours per week of TV – Over this week.  I’m tracking this by the episodes I record on the DVR, not necessarily what I watch.  For example I watched last week’s Dirty Jobs earlier this week, but have not watched this week’s 4 hours of 24.

• Double Shot at Love (1 hr) – Its like a train wreck, you can’t help but look!  Down to 3 people left and 2 will be chosen, so there is only one or two more episodes left.
• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Still worth watching just to see Deanna Russo, though previews make it look like its going to be covered in (even more) cheese soon.
• Stargate Atlantis (1 hr) – This one is now over.  Its too bad, they finally seemed to be expanding beyond the “non-stop battle with the Wraith” storyline and were exploring some interesting subjects such as Ancient technology.  I caught mention of a new series coming this summer, Stargate Universe.  Based on the Wikipedia article linked, I’m skeptic that it may be another Star Trek: Voyager rip-off based in the Stargate mythology set.  I hope they do more with it than that.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – I’m using this as inspiration for my weight loss goal.
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) -Entertaining and informative… What more can I say?
• Grey’s Anatomy (1 hr) – Used to hate it, but kind of got into watching it with the wife.
• ER (1 hr) – Same as Grey’s.  This one also has a couple of episodes left and it is done for good.  No spin-off or movie is necessary for this one though.
• 24 (4 hrs) – This put me over my TV goal for the week since they had two 2-hour premier episodes.  This puts me 2 hours over my goal, but there wasn’t much choice in this if I wanted to be able to watch the rest of the season.  From here out it will only be 1 hour per week, so this is really an exception to the rule.  I was 4 hours under budget last week so I’m not going to beat myself up over this.  I’m still making a conscious effort to cut back on my TV viewing and it is working.
• Non-tracked viewing: a partial episode of The Doctors, and a partial episode of The Tyra Banks Show my wife recorded for me to watch.   I probably should count the last one since it was entertainment and not necessarily educational, but it was under a half-hour by the time I skipped commercials so I’m going to let this one slide.

At least 2 books per month – On track.

• Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams – 100 pages to go.
• The Real America by Glenn Beck – 40% of the way through it.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Met.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – 3.1 pounds down direct weight, .46 pounds down on the averaged trend.  This means I’m over the hump and my trend line is moving down, so I think maybe next week I can use the trend to report my results.  Over the weekend I had too much Chinese food at the local buffet.  I was almost sick to my stomach afterward.  The sad thing is I used to eat the amount of food that I did on a regular basis and would feel fine.  I guess since I’ve now been watching what I eat in general it makes it obvious how much I was overeating in the past.  Also related to this is I’ve started going to the gym every morning before work.  I’m ready to kick butts and take names on this goal!

Budget – We’ve done much better on the food expendature this week, but we’ve found some killer deals on “stuff” we’ve wanted to pick up for a while, and have allowed ourselves to go ahead and get it.  Since we don’t have credit cards any more we can only spend cash to get things.  This prevents us from going into any further debt, but does slow down the progress on getting out of debt a little.  We’ll try harder next time.  We’ve also decided to figure out our bi-weekly budget ahead of time and get the cash from the bank rather than the (no fee) ATM.  This way we can get the proper denominations and split the money properly between our envelopes from the start.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Met with room to spare.  I am averaging this going forward, as I may record something one week and watch it the next, so I may not watch an episode of Show A one week, but may watch 2 episodes the next.

• Double Shot at Love (1 hr) – Yes I know this is complete empty viewing, but I have to have some guilty pleasures…
• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Worth watching just to see Deanna Russo.
• Stargate Atlantis (1 hr) – One more episode then this series is unfortunately over.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – I’m using this is inspiration for my weight loss goal.
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – Its interesting seeing how some of the jobs are done, even if Mike Rowe sometimes acts more incompetent than I’m sure he is.
• Non-tracked viewing: Watched the news a few times and a couple of episodes of the Suze Orman show, and an episode of The Doctors.  Also watched Dangerous Minds, but I’m not counting it since it was a movie.

At least 2 books per month – On track.

• Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams – 3/4 of the way through.
• The Real America by Glenn Beck – 1/4 of the way through it.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Met, and I’m not counting my initial goal posting or the updates.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – This one is a little tough to tell.  The method of measurement I am using is a weighted average, which removes the daily ups and downs and shows my true progress.  If I take last Wednesday’s weight (which could be artificially high) and compare it to today, I’m down 2.7 lbs, but my average shows I’m up .52 pounds.  The average is due to me being a little higher than I was last month, skewing the average.  I don’t want to delete my history in order to change the average, so I think I’ll just use the difference in actual weight for now and start using the weighted average once it catches up.

Budget – Sat down and updated our budget, including some allocated spending money so that we don’t have to use the grocery budget if we want to buy something extra.  So far we’re sticking to it fully, but we’ve got a week and a half to go.

Rather than setting 10 goals that have all year to complete, I’m going to set some short-term goals and revisit them on a regular basis.  This should help keep me motivated and prevent me from abandoning them.  With a regular review I’ll be better able to track progress, as well as adjust the goal if it proves to be unrealistic.

To start with, I’m going to set the following goals, all to be reviewed in one week.  After the goals have been “proven” I’ll adjust the review frequency.

• Maximum of 10 hours of TV per week.  This excludes news and non-entertainment related shows, such as business and financial shows.  I’m also going to add an exception for what I call background shows such as “Cops” that I may “watch” while I’m working on something else.  As long as it doesn’t interfere with the task at hand it doesn’t count against the allotment.  Most of what I watch is semi-educational anyway, but I’m hoping to free up more time to do more constructive activities.
• Read at least 2 books per month, one fiction and one non-fiction.
• Make a minimum of 3 blog postings per week. 
• Weight loss: I’m hoping to lose 100 lbs over the next year.  In order to meet that goal I’ll need to average 2 per week.  As long as I’m careful with my eating this should be “easy” to do.
• Financial: We’ve been a little too relaxed in sticking to our budget during the holiday season.  We overspent some (we underspent on some budget areas and did not put that surplus into savings, and actually dipped into the savings a little too much) but that is behind us.  Now we want to tighten down and make sure we’re following our budget.

Depending on how those initial goals work out, I may replace some with similar goals, or I may add additional goals as time goes on.  The important part is to make sure I am realistic with the goals and that I don’t bite off more than I can chew and wind up forgetting about the whole thing.