100 Day Challenge

My friend Courtney put out a 100 day challenge to all of her friends. Basically the challenge has 2 rules/guidelines: 1) challenge yourself to better yourself in some way 2) complete your challenge within 100 days. And... you have the support of lots of other people who have challenged themselves to be better in some way as well... or something. I don't know, read what she said about the 100 Day Challenge, she probably explains it better than me.
Anywho, I decided to participate and so I am posting here for you my goals. I have a couple different goals I am working on... and they have actually changed slightly from what I originally posted on Courtney's site, but I have explained in detail about each of them below...
1) Complete P90X in 100 days Okay, I know that P90X is a 90 day program. I also know that Valeries are not as ambitious as Tony Whats-his-bucket who designed the 90 day program. So I figure if I can stick with it and have 10 free passes in the next 100 days I can feel good about that. Z's fam bought us P90X for our b-days, so it's perfect timing. I do better with quantitative goals than qualitative... so instead of 'get in shape' or 'lose weight' my first goal is two fold, complete P90X and be able to do an unassisted pull up (Which i have never before even come close to doing--don't judge me) by Dec. 1.
2) Learn/Try something new every day I know I just made my qualitative/quantitative speech... and this one hardly falls into the latter category. But i was sitting around my place of employment the other day looking at my dreary bored co-workers and I thought to myself, I am not going to be here forever. Meaning in this place, this job, this stage of life... whatever. But the only way to move yourself out of dreary bored-ness is to keep moving and keep learning and sometimes trying things and learning by error... learning and trying. I am currently teaching myself to sew. I like trying new cooking techniques, the other day I refinished a bedside table, and since recently getting married I am attempting to speak a new language--MALE. Sooo... Learn/try something every day, easy enough to accomplish. I think it will be interesting to record. ha!
3) Don't go to bed with Dirty dishes this seems simplistic enough, but I am not a tidy person by nature. And the kitchen... well the kitchen messes quickly overwhelm me. I can create more dishes than any person I know making dinner for 2. It's out of control. But if I can get each day's dishes out of the way before starting a new day, I can re-gain control of my kitchen... slowly but surely... this is going to be the toughest for me, I am afraid.
4) The Three R's. I live in lovely Johnson County Kansas, which is a backwards part of the world where they charge you to recycle. If you want to recycle your paper products, cans, and glass... you have to pay a monthly fee for recycling pick up service. Drop off centers for such resources are few and far from here... it's just silly. That will not, however, keep me from my attempts to reduce my carbon footprint... or whatever that lingo is. Here are a few things I am implementing:
a) buckets in the basement for aluminum and paper. (I know of local-ish drops for those items that i can make a trip to weekly)
b) Freecycle.org--I make fun of my mom because she is a little out of control with her free-cycling, but it's a better way to get larger items to someone who can use/fix stuff that would otherwise sit in a landfill. Likewise, I have saved a couple items from landfill status by taking them off the hands of others... and saved $$$ at the same time. woot.
c) Light switches. There is a switch for a reason-- so you can turn it off. This is more of a challenge for my dear husband than it is personally... but we will work to be better about unnecessary energy consumption...
So there's our few things we will doooooo... not world changing, but world helping, right? right.

So there are my goals, my friends. I hope you will... participate with me in encouraging and keeping me accountable to the challenges i have put myself to. Should be fun. As my friend Sara would say... it will be Life Changing! :) yay!

***Challenge runs Aug 23, 2010 through Dec 1, 2010****