For me, though, the new year always begins at the end of August. When a new school year begins, so do I. I have been living according to the August-to-August year for as long as I can remember. I started Kindergarten in August, 1983, and since then I have been governed by the school year. Thirteen years of primary education (counting Kindergarten), four years of college, seven years of graduate school, and three years of college teaching — this is year four. That’s a lot of years, now that I list it out like that. Twenty-seven years. Damn.

Well, to steer back in the direction of my point: I don’t begin the year anew in January, but now. Now is the time for me to think about goals, hopes, plans, plots, and schemes.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about trying to accomplish this school year:

Stay Organized: Between my campus office, my home office, my teaching, and my research, things can get crazy. I always find myself wishing I had brought home a book or folder that I left at school, or frantically looking for my flash drive. I am attempting to solve this problem by syncing my work-related files with dropbox (AMAZING, simply amazing tool), keeping up with my schedule on iCal and my tasks with teuxdeux.com. My home office will be used mostly for research and writing; my campus office will be prep, teaching, and grading central.

Plan Ahead, Grade Ahead: Hopefully staying organized will help here. My goal is really to avoid last-minute class prep and weekends full of grading hundreds of essays. Do a little at a time until it’s done. SO much easier said, though.

Pack Lunch: My office mate and I are going in together on a mini fridge to use in the office, which will make this easy and convenient. Any lunch I pack, no matter how hasty, will be cheaper and better balanced nutritionally than anything I can find on campus. Period.

Maintain Weight: I am really happy with where I am right now weight-wise. My fitness goals are always growing and changing (with my marathon focus right now and maybe more triathlons in the spring), but I don’t need or want to lose any more pounds. My newest Sports & Wine post over at the Bodies site explains my plans for the food aspect of weight maintenance, should you want to read about it in any more detail.

Bike Commute: I am committing to get to campus by bike instead of by car on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Those are my non-teaching days, where I might go in to grade or prep and thus I’ll be dressed in more casual, bike-friendly clothes. I may also try biking in on Tuesdays and Thursdays if I am wearing trousers, but my road bike with horizontal top bar isn’t ideally suited to biking in skirts (which I wear frequently). I have biked to campus once last week and twice so far this week, and it has made a trip in to the office on my “off” day much more enjoyable!

Dress Nicely: I still run into the problem of looking a little too young for my job, so I’m trying to cultivate a more professional appearance on teaching days so I can feel more confident and authoritative. I think it’s also going to help me to project more professionalism around the halls in general. Plus, clothes shopping is so much more fun now that I can wear standard sizes and therefore can shop in any store (uh, any not-too-expensive store, anyway — I still do have that enviable teacher’s salary). I’m currently finding inspiration from a few academic fashion blogs. See here, here, and here.

Job Market: The academic job market runs concurrent with the school year, meaning that postings for tenure-track assistant-professorships will start appearing soon. I don’t want to talk about this too much because it is an AWFUL topic, but here are my thoughts: I am not going to waste a ton of time and energy throwing myself at any halfway appropriate job just because one “should” go for the tenure-track openings. If something truly great appears on the job list, I will attack it with purpose. Expect not many updates on this one, ’cause, like I said, AWFUL topic.

Open Windows: I am going to try to be open minded about relationships and new people. Not just romantic relationships, but new friendships and social opportunities, too. Even though the guy and I split up, I still believe everything I said in this post. Just because that relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean I have to be like Clooney in Up in the Air, and shit, you know?

What about you guys? Though your lives may not be Ruled by School like mine is, do you have any goals or plans cookin’ right now?

Cocktails

And people happily gathered ’round a table (or two):

Campus views (and a less-humid, clear-blue sky):

Guilty pleasure reading in bed:

Puppydog eyes:

More friends gathered to celebrate two friends’ soon-to-arrive baby, beautiful gifts:

A glass of wine at the end of a long week:

Fun gifts in the mail – a happy mixtape:

As usual, click on the photo to go through to flickr.com for more information.

What good things have you got going on?

Well! Without further ado (yes, it really is “ado” and not “adieu“):

Paris when It Sizzles – I loved this movie. It was a great mix of witty banter, post-modern meta-fiction, and romance. The view of Paris and the great fashion just made me love it more. I had already seen the contemporary remake of it (Alex & Emma), which I didn’t think was so bad, really, but in comparison the original is approximately forty-seven times better. Truth.

The Omen – Another creepy kid movie in the vein of The Exorcist (which I also saw recently). It’s a good thing I have already seen Rosemary’s Baby or I’m sure that would be coming up soon in my queue, too! Anyway, I liked this one, I think especially because I hadn’t known the story ahead of time so it really was all new to me. Definitely creepy, suspenseful, and intriguing.

Psycho – This is one of those movies that I never bothered seeing because I felt like I already had “seen” enough of it via clips, parodies, and cultural references. What I found out when I finally watched the whole thing was that I had already known what happened at The Bates Motel, but I hadn’t known anything else about the plot at all! That added another level of intrigue that I hadn’t been expecting. Even though I was prepared for the shower scene and the reveal of the Bates family secret, I still enjoyed the hell out of this movie. A classic for a reason!

North by Northwest - Oh mah gah. WHY HAD I NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE? I loved it just beyond description. I have seen tons of Hitckcock films in my time (I think Psycho and North by Northwest are on a VERY short list of his movies that I had never seen), so I don’t know how this one escaped my attention for so long. It is nearly 2.5 hours, but I never even noticed the time going by. I loved the intrigue, the frustrating Kafkaesque set-up to the plot, the cases of mistaken identity, the espionnage, the stylish femme fatale, the gorgeous furniture and architecture, the witty banter, and the rugged western landscape in the second half. This hit pretty much every one of my pleasure buttons. Five stars for sure.

The White Ribbon – Another contemporary film that made it into my queue in the midst of the classic movie project. This one received so many accolades I figured I could declare it a modern classic and include it here. Plus, it echoes a lot of the creepy-kid qualities of The Omen and The Exorcist (though in a very different context, to be sure). I always enjoy watching German movies because I find it so comforting that even though I don’t speak the language much anymore (I mainly read things like Heidegger and Nietzsche in German for work – don’t be jealous of my exciting life), I can still comfortably listen to the language in a film without having to rely on the subtitles. All that said, I wasn’t wowed with the film. It sort of seemed like something a German version of Paul Thomas Anderson would make. Good quality, well written, and well made, but not my cup of tea. (And way too long!) Still, I’d recommend seeing it because I feel I may be being picky about this. It is definitely a fine film.

August 2009: I ran my first ever 5K at the Watermelon Carnival in Mississippi. I ran/walked it in 42:xx. So proud.

October 2009: I ran my next 5K, at the Covered Bridges Festival in Oneonta, AL, and this time without stopping to walk! I finished in 36:20 and was ecstatic with the result.

December 2009: I ran a 12K race on my birthday in Wetumpka, AL. I had wanted to train for a 10K next, but found the 12K on 12/12 to be too irresistible. I finished in 1:19:25.

February 2010: I ran a half-marathon! The Mercedes Half in Birmingham, AL. I finished in 2:29:31, just 29 seconds under my goal, to the cheers of my friends at the finish line. A wonderful day.

April 2010: I started the month in Auburn setting a new PR of 30:40 at the Junior League Art Run, and I went on to beat that time at the end of the month at the Double Decker 5K in Oxford, MS with a time of 28:07. A good month for getting speedy!

June 2010: My First Triathlon in Atlanta. I swam (400 m), biked (20K), and ran (5K) my way to a total time of 1:45:55 and had the time of my life.

August 2010: The one year anniversary of my first ever road race, I set a new PR of 26:38 at the Watermelon Carnival. So hot I almost died but a great race nonetheless.

And now, I have two more big races on my schedule for Fall/Winter 2010: My main goal is to run the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL on 12/11/10, which is the day before my birthday and seems numerically to be an auspicious date. About halfway through the training period, I have a half marathon on the schedule: The Montgomery Half in (duh) Montgomery, AL on 10/02/10.

So how does one do this? How does one go from being a person too overweight & out of shape to run all three miles a year ago, to a person getting ready to run 26.2 in just a few months? Well, I have used online training plans quite faithfully. I built slowly up to running 3 miles with Couch-to-5K, and from there I used training plans found online to build up to 12K, 13.1 miles, and beyond. I am using the popular Hal Higdon’s marathon training plan to get ready for my big (26.2 mile!) race in December. I’m in the middle of week three in this plan as I write this post – only about 15 more weeks to go.

The plan is made up of four runs a week plus a day of cross-training (where I might do yoga, weights, bike or swim). Mondays I run a mid-distance run: these start at 3 miles and eventually will be as long as 10 miles. Wednesdays and Sundays I’ll run shorter distances of 3-5 miles. The big day is Friday. Every Friday I’ll have a long run, which will get longer and longer throughout the training period, starting at 5 miles and eventually getting up to 20 miles. There are a few “step-back” weeks where I’ll back off and run fewer miles to help my body gradually adjust, but the general gist is that the runs just get longer and longer and longer until I either die or run a marathon. Hopefully the latter.

This is why people tell you that the race you are training for is just a “victory lap.” The hardest part of running a marathon, they say, isn’t running the 26.2 miles on race day. It’s running the 435 miles you run in training before race day ever rolls around.

Oh, hang on. Four hundred thirty five miles? Or, to put that in numbers again, 435 miles?! Holy crap, y’all. I just added up all the miles in the training plan and that is the number I got. Holy motherfucking CRAP.

So yeah. That 26.2 will most definitely be my victory lap. A victory over the steaming hot and humid hundred-degree Alabama August temperatures in which I have started my training. A victory over the 110 pounds of body fat I have lost since I started Couch-to-5K (and calorie counting) in June 2009. A victory over everyone, including myself, who ever said I wasn’t athletic.

And if you’d like to read more about fitting in strength training and cross training while training for a marathon, please to go check out my new post at Sports & Wine and leave a comment if you have any ideas!

It’s going to be a busy weekend, too: my friends Golightly and Deebeecoooper are both in town this weekend, there’s a wedding to attend, and the social functions have been piling up as well.

Last night I met my friend Brunbec at the local hippy grocery store for a wine tasting and to shop for snacks for our happy-hour-at-the-pool evening. Of all the people gathered around the wine guy quaffing samples, I was the only one to get asked for ID. My friend’s mom even joked about it, going, “What? This professor at the university gets ID-ed and no one else does?!” But in defense of the wine guy, I did roll up wearing a tee shirt and a denim miniskirt and looking a little unkempt.

As you can see, I also clearly had no idea what I was doing and got behind on my tastings, winding up with two samples at one time. Oops! Drinking problem!

(Can we also note the sheer size of my forehead there? Don’t get too close to me lest you get sucked into its orbit, never to escape!)

We ladies from the department + out-of-town guests spent the evening snacking, drinking, and floating around the pool, as we love to do in summer and as you have heard about countless times if you are a regular reader ’round these parts. What can I say? It’s the perfect way to relax, cool down, and shed the stresses of the week.

This morning I am about to head off to Saturday morning yoga with the girls, and then lunch, and then the wedding, reception, and post-reception cocktails. Busy, busy, busy!

I do owe the blog a post about my fall marathon training plans, so maybe I will get around to that later this weekend. I should also have a new post at the Sports & Wine blog coming up soon, so I’ll link to that when it happens. I know y’all are on the edges of your seats there.

Hope you’re having a lovely weekend, friends!