So my intention to report on my goal progress really fell apart at the end of the year, but whatever.  Next year I’ll know that a strict goal-reporting requirement doesn’t work for me 🙂  Anyway, here is my last update on how I did with my goals this year.

1) Financial.  I’m happy to say that I’ve completed 3 big steps for my financial goals this year.  I paid off my smaller private student loan, and then I shifted gears and decided to bolster my emergency fund up to 3 months before returning to work on the big federal loan.  This I have succeeded in doing!  Finally today, after about a year of laziness and then a month or two of getting everything in order, I closed my Bank of America account and moved all my money dealings over to a credit union.  In 2012 it will be time to attack the rest of the student loans full-force, and my new goal will be to get it paid off before Christmas of 2014.

2) Free Thing in LA every month.  This sort of waned off towards the end of the year, too, since everyone is so busy with holiday events (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…).  Some of the latest attempts at adventure didn’t end up panning out (The Victorian Advent Fair was more of a small neighborhood community thing, for example) but whatevs.  I still think I did an enormous amount of exploring of Los Angeles this past year due to my free outings, and some of them were a huge hit.  I’ll definitely be returning to the Kite Festival, for example, and Shakespeare in the Park.  Keep your eyes on your facebook events next year, LA friends, and I will try and keep digging up interesting events!  Special thanks to Eye Spy LA’s free section, from which I get most of my inspiration.

3) Games.  This is another one that waned pretty quickly on its specificity, but I still feel like I did a good job of spending time with new and different games this year.  Since my last update, there has been Dragon Age: Origins, Uncharted 3, Driver: San Francisco, TripleTown, Trine, Spacechem, Innercube, and so on and so forth.  I do have on my list to get my hands on Batman: Arkham City, Skyward Sword, and Rayman Origins soon.  We’ll see.

4) Sewing.  Again, even though I accomplished my 3 things, I still have done a fair amount of mending and sewing stuff this year, keeping the sewing machine oiled and in use.  My latest project was cobbling together some thriftstore clothes to make my wild-west costume dress for our Christmas party.

In closing, I think my goals-for-the-year experiment turned out more or less a success.  Some of these things, like the free LA events and the sewing, I hope to turn into habits.  Stay tuned for 2012 wherein I think up some new and exciting year-long goals!

1) Free thing in LA every month. August’s free activity was the Independent Shakespeare Festival’s free performance of Hamlet in Griffith Park. It was really fun, and a fantastic performance! I’m glad lots of people came out and joined in on the picnic.

Also, Insomniac’s Wrap Party was at Six Flags yesterday, so I suppose that can also count as a free event. As part of the gift package they gave us all free passes to the water park to use in September, so at the very least that’ll be my September free-thing. I’ll try and scare up a good public event as well. Potential events include…

Chinatown Summer Nights on 9/10 (http://chinatownsummernights.com/). Seems to involve food and music.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy has lots of nature-related events throughout September: learning about snakes, stargazing hikes, wilderness survival skill lessons, etc. However, these are usually a bit of a drive and often parking is not free, so I’d want to get a bit more organized with a small group before doing any of them.

An Interfaith Choral Concert on 9/11

The Dubnoff Outdoor Festival on 9/24 in North Hollywood – food trucks, games, prizes, various bits of entertainment

Citywide Yard Sale in Santa Monica on 9/24

Vintage Paper Fair on 9/24 and 9/25 in Glendale (http://vintagepaperfair.com/) – old photography, pinups, brochures, post cards, stuff like that.

Redondo Pier Car Show, if you like cars, on 9/25

2) Games. Nick and I have been playing Deus Ex, and I like it very much! I’m actually doing more watching and back-seat gaming with this one, which leads me to question, does this count as playing? Perhaps I should explore back-seat gaming in an #AltDevBlogADay article

3) Sewing. I’m making things! With patterns! But I can’t say what they are because they are for presents.

1) Free Thing in LA Every Month. Since my parents were in town in July, we went down to El Pueblo and then on to Little Tokyo where a music and arts festival was going on. It mostly made me hungry for Japan, but was a nice walk, and I’d never been down near MOCA before to see all that artsy stuff, so it worked out well. The rest of July was filled with non-free events (NASL and MLG).

For August, I was thinking of hitting up the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival, because my parents’ visit made me homesick and it reminds me of Shakespeare in the Park in Louisville. I’m thinking of trying to catch either Love’s Labour’s Lost or Hamlet, either the weekend of the 13th or the 20th. If you want to come have a picnic with me, let me know!

2) Games. I have actually been playing a TON of games recently, but a lot of it has been research for work, so I don’t think it counts for this goal. Other than that, I’ve been enjoying Outland immensely. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a really fast and snappy platformer combined with color-switching bullet hell (like Ikaruga). Unlike Ikaruga, though, the platforming aspect of it lets you pace yourself, and learn more slowly, so you get less panicky and spammy.

The other game I’ve been playing a lot for fun is Sanctum, which is a first-person-shooter tower defense game. I really like the solutions they came up with for constructing defenses in a first person view. It’s also a very mild shooter, since once the defense starts, you usually just teleport to various locations in your map, and shoot from a stationary position. Running and gunning is entirely optional.

Meanwhile, there were a few re-releases (other than Stranger’s Wrath) that I was looking forward to, but I’ve completely forgotten which ones they were now, doh! I guess when they pop up in the PSN store, I will remember 🙂

1) Games. I’ve been doing pretty good on this front recently! Been playing a TON of Realm of the Mad God, which is a browser-based MMO fantasy-themed bullet hell shooter. It’s extremely easy to jump in and out of, and it’s not a grind to build up a character. Death is permanent, so if you die you just roll a new character. You unlock different classes as you level up the base ones, and it’s just a generally great time killer. I might do a more in depth post about this.

Racettear: An Item Shop’s Tale was on sale on Steam, so Nick and I have been playing that the past couple of days. It’s a game where you run an item shop in an RPG, and you have to acquire good items to sell and haggle prices with customers and stuff. I think it’s great!

2) Free things in LA. Still have an eye on that festival in Little Tokyo for this month, stay tuned.

3) Sewing: I am going to sew something for-reals! I’m assembling a pattern and everything! I really should acquire an iron for this, I think.

4) Plugging along. Contemplating selling my PS2 and all my games, we’ll see…

1) Free thing in LA every month: I went down to the Fiesta de las Flores at El Pueblo today, ate 2 churros (probably a mistake), watched some folkloric dances, wandered up and down Olvera Street, and took lots of photos – https://picasaweb.google.com/lisa.deanne.brown/FiestaDeLasFlores

This place is really one of my favorite spots in LA, I love it! So, free thing for June checked off, though I MAY consider going down to my CSA farm next weekend to pick blackberries. Only if I can get some folks to go with me, though.

Thinking ahead to July…
– FIFA Women’s World Cup. The Goethe-Institut is broadcasting select matches for this, and I’m considering wrangling up the Insomniac soccer crowd to go watch together. Matches run from 6/26 to 7/17, so it’s a little flexible. http://bit.ly/jZKpwW
– Obon Festival at the Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo. I am a big fan of these cultural festivals, may as well add another to the list! http://bit.ly/iBcoMO

2) Video Games: More LA Noire. Now that PSN is back up, I can get Outland, but I have to get around to it.

3) Financial: I’ve been having little mini stuff-sales that bring in bits of cash and help me de-clutter. It helps that I’m in another “stuff purge” mode. Otherwise, just plugging along!

1) Games: Nick and I played a fair ways into L.A. Noire on Monday, and I am really enjoying it. I feel like it’s a sort of love-it-or-hate-it game, as it is very much like Phoenix Wright. That is, it is a highly cinematic, low-impact sort of game that it is easy to play as a pair while lazing on a couch, finding clues and identifying liars together, trading the controller back and forth, and guessing the outcome of a case well before we solve it (which I find very gratifying). I am anxious to get back to it, but I would like to continue playing alongside Nick, and as it is crunch time for the programmers on R3, it may be a bit yet.

2) Financial: Today was a glorious day! I sent in the final payment for my small private student loan. GOAL ACHIEVED! Now all that money will in turn go towards the last big beast of a federal loan. I’m working on ways to break it down into short-term goals for myself, so that I can stay focused and pay it off as efficiently as possible. With my current budget, I can be debt-free by October of 2014, but I feel like I can keep pushing that further and further.

3) Free Thing in LA Every Month: When at the soap box race, we swung down to El Pueblo for a bite to eat, and I noticed banners for La Fiesta de Las Flores, which takes place June 18. I’m definitely going to hit this up, but am still perusing EyeSpyLA for other free events of interest in June.

1) Sew 3 things. 3 of 3 complete! I have reached my goal of sewing 3 things with the sewing machine this year! I decided to try and think of more things that I could use my scrap fabric for, and ended up making a sort of hanging pouch to keep my books and notepads in when taking a bath. Just because I’ve completed this goal doesn’t mean I’ll close up the sewing machine for good, but I will stop reporting on it unless I do another project.

2) Free thing in LA each month: Yesterday, Josh Noble and I went down to see the Redbull Soapbox Race, which was really fun. It was craaaaaaazy crowded. The entries were judged on speed, creativity, and showmanship, so all the cars were decorated in ridiculous ways. My favorites were a food truck soapbox car and one that was done up to look like a Mexican ice cream cart. There was even an Angry Birds entry, and feathers flew everywhere as it zoomed down the course. There were a few spectacular crashes, too! We didn’t end up seeing all the entries (there were 40!) but it was a fun time and we ended up grabbing lunch in Chinatown and eating at El Pueblo, which is fast becoming one of my favorite spots in LA.

3) Games. Still slacking on this, as I’ve been playing League of Legends pretty much exclusively all month. It’s going to be hard to re-focus until after Gold, but I do still intend to get Outland once the PSN store is back up.

4) Financial: Nothing exciting to report here, just plugging along.

This is what happens when the Gold deadline approaches, I fall off the wagon! Here’s an update all the same.

1) Free thing in LA Every Month: Alas, I fell off the wagon and missed an event for April. I had one lined up – a free pass to the Renn Faire, but when the day came Nick and I were so low-energy that we decided it was best to stay in. However, I am determined to make May count. Here are some ideas

Tomorrow – NASA/JPL open house. Science! http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/open-house.cfm

Friday, May 20 – Jazz and Steel Drums. I like steel drums. http://bit.ly/mErrAv

Memorial Day Weekend – DOG SHOW. I have a secret, guilty pleasure for watching dog shows. The genetic manipulation just utterly fascinates me! I need someone dog-nerdy as me to come, too http://bit.ly/ioKx4u

2) Sew 3 things. 2 of 3 complete. That’s right, I completed my second sewn thing! It’s a pretty simple project, a sachet I made as an apartment-warming gift for Josh when he moved. It’s filled with dried lavender leaves from last year’s herb garden, and dried thyme buds from this year’s. Simple enough that I need to buy another lavender plant and make more (last year’s plant didn’t make it). I also have an idea for project number 3, but it will actually require me to go buy fabric instead of using stuff from my scrap pile.

3) 20 minutes of games every other day. I’ve really fallen off the wagon with this one. Part of it was that my game plans were disrupted with the PSN outage – no Outland and no Portal 2 (I wanted to get it through steam to get a free PC copy), and no updates on HD Stranger’s Wrath. The other part is that Nick and I have been watching the NASL Starcraft II matches, which just makes us want to play Starcraft II. Oh, and League of Legends. Lots of League of Legends. Fortunately, PSN seems to be stirring with signs of life, so Outland may be soon within my grasp.

4) Financial. Lots of frugality for April. We had an easter egg hunt at work, and amidst all the candy, one of my eggs had a Target gift card (groceries!) and another had a free commissary lunch. I am super excited about paying off the private student loan next month, which I guess makes me a big ole nerd.

Missed a week. Oh well! Forging on…

1) One free thing in LA per month. I think I’m going to take a rest on the events and instead check out the California Science Center either this weekend or next.

2) Financial: Been stickin close to the budget, and as such I will pay off my small private student loan in June, which is a big deal to me. Otherwise, budgeting isn’t terribly exciting.

3) Sew 3 Things. 1 or 3 completed. Some mending, but no updates on the next project. I contemplated making a rain coat for Mr. Davis, but that might be crossing the line. Tips for good beginner sewing projects welcome!

4) 20 Minutes of Games Every Other Day: I’ve been a busy gamer, recently! Still charging through Okamiden and enjoying it immensely, and I’m dabbling about in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, plotting to try the multiplayer eventually. If I had the time to devote to games that I did in high school and college, I feel I would be the sort of person to just play the crap out of Assassin’s Creed. Meanwhile, I hadn’t played League of Legends or Starcraft II in awhile, so I took them off the “doesn’t count” list. Well, now they have to go right back on! The HD Stranger’s Wrath is supposed to come out this month, though I haven’t heard any updates on release dates or price. Still, that is the next game on my radar.

Switching up the order to keep things fresh

1) 20 Minutes of Games Every Other Day: I think I’ve reached my limit with Lost in Shadow, unfortunately. At first its slow and cautious pace seemed fitting with the mood and the teaching of mechanics, but it’s stretching on for too long. I’m certain there’s some sort of changing moment to be had, but I’m tired and anxious to move on to other games. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday. Meanwhile, Okamiden came and I’ve been playing the crap out of it! I enjoy it very much, and it warrants a post all to itself. More lunchtime Minecraft this week as well.

2) Financial: I did my annual credit report (which you can and should do once a year, here) to make sure my credit card was closed properly, which it was! I found another error on the report, though, so I submitted a dispute and it’s already been cleared and removed from my report. It was a way faster turnaround than what I was expecting!

3) Sew 3 Things. 1 or 3 completed. No updates here.

4) One free thing in LA per month: Starting to think ahead to April. I haven’t run across any events I’m interested in yet, but there are still several free museums I am interested in, so perhaps I’ll check one of those out in April. Ideas include the California Science Center, MOCA, and the Museum of Television and Radio. Sound interesting to anyone?