my eyes are bigger than my stomach

Lately I've been trying to do more reading and creative projects and less vegging out watching movies or tv shows. I've also been cooking more instead of buying frozen meals or fast food. It's much more satisfying to use my free time to work on my ever-growing reading list or make something new, and it's cheaper and healthier to make my food from scratch (usually). My only problem is, I get a little overly ambitious in my projects, which in the past has caused me to get overwhelmed and burnt-out and give up.

For example, I'm currently reading 4 books. One is my read-while-I'm-on-break-at-work book, one is my read-before-bed book, one is my read-while-eating-dinner book, and one is a book I started months and months ago that I can only read a little at a time of because it makes my brain hurt. I have this entire weekend off from work, and I've barely read at all. I spent today in Austin, visiting my sister and a friend, and shopping. And guess what I bought. 2 more books! AAAHHH!!! It's a disease! For fear of burning out to the point that I stop reading all together, I've decided to put my 2 new books away on my shelf, and I'm not allowed to start reading them until I finish one of the ones I'm reading now. We'll see how that goes.

As far as projects go, I have fabric draped over my ironing board in the living room, calling out to me to begin working on the messenger bag I want to make. I have been doing pretty well at "stash-busting" my collection of yarn. But on the way home from Austin, I almost stopped at Hobby Lobby to buy more yarn, when I had 2 unfinished knitting projects waiting for me at home! Thankfully, I stopped myself before it was too late. Once I see the rows and rows of beautiful yarn, it's all over for me.

I recently took a trip up to Arkansas to visit my brothers and new sister-in-law. After eating Janna's yummy homemade meals, I became more motivated to start trying out new recipes myself. The problem here is that I'm cooking for just one person. Most recipes make at least 4 servings, usually more - if they didn't make lots of servings, it wouldn't feel like they were worth making anyway. I've already found lots of recipes I want to try, but it takes me forever to finish eating just one of them, even if I freeze half. My freezer is quickly filling up, and I've had to stop cooking for awhile.

Well, all that to say, now that the craziness of summer is over, I can focus on other things. The list of things I want to do goes on and on, far beyond reading and cooking - like finally get involved in a church here in Temple, start exercising again, write letters to people more often, dust off my guitar and try to re-teach myself some cords....too much to do, too little time. And before I know it it'll be time for me to start looking for another travel assignment. *sigh*

I'm going to go read a book now.

random picture, just for fun