Welcome and Happy 2009!

Welcome to my blog, Tim’s Adventures! I have a lot of interests that I will likely blog including running, traveling, digital photography, gadgets, finance/rewards and current events. I’m going to use this as a place to write down thoughts on those topics and make major announcements. In fact, I’ll be making a major announcement next week, so stay tuned.

I do want to wish everyone a belated Happy 2009. I meant to launch my blog on New Year’s day, but my intentions were scuttled by other priorities such as cleaning and trying to recover from an illness.

Briefly, looking back at 2008, I was able to accomplish some significant things -

• Running my first full marathon in San Diego
• Getting my first professional promotion
• Getting another professional certification
• Paying off more student loans in full
• Taking a trip to India and Experiencing an Indian/Hindu wedding
• Staying connected with friends and family.

I am very excited about 2009. I have a few things that I would like to accomplish -

• Learning a foreign language (preferably Chinese)
• Running my second marathon
• Paying off more loans (car and student loans)
• Taking another overseas trip
• Joining a soccer league
• Eating healthy more often
• Learning how to use a digital SLR camera.

These are only a few things that I want to do in 2009. I know 2009 is going to be infinitely better than 2008. Whatever your goals for 2009 may be, good luck in the pursuit of those achievements.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will find my future posts informative and enjoyable.

Tim

• On Debt and Making Choices Today is an important personal milestone. This day marks the final payment made to Wellsfargo on my remaining private student loans. With this payment I have no more private student loans to pay back and only a little over $15,000 in federal loans left. In July 2005, I made a committment......
• The value of Starwoods SPG points part 1 NOTE: I've decided to split this into two posts. Part 1 of my response is long enough as it is. The second part of my response will address the calculations made in Chua's second post "Travel Cards Part II". My friend Chua over at THINKchua.com and I share common interests......
• Chinese Life outside Shanghai After buying a train ticket to Xi'an, my friend from Shanghai wanted to take me outside the city to get a different perspective on Chinese life. We headed for an adventure in the town of Tongli which is about 90KM from Shanghai. Tongli is such a sharp contrast from Shanghai.......
• My Trek 7.5 Fx - Purchasing my newest toy! No, this toy is not an iPod, iPhone, X-BOX, PlayStation3, Wii, laptop, or anything to do with computers and games at all! My newest toy is the Trek 7.5 FX Fitness Hybrid bike. A fitness hybrid bike has the wheels and speed of a road bike, but the flat handle......
• Completing my 4th Half Marathon - Reviewing The Minneapolis Marathon (Half Marathon Route) - Part 1 /caption] Things that need improvement As with any race, there is some room for improvement. I can think of two things that could be improved namely - replace the sports drink and have a gel station for one part of the half marathon. The sports drink during the race was......

• Reduce Mortgage Payment: 3 Loan Modification Scenarios Refinancing Under New Housing Plan can be confusing. Below examples provided by the US Treasury Department will help you understand the new Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan (HASP). Find out if you can refinance or lower your mortgage under the new plan. Family A: Access to Refinancing In 2006: Family......
• What’s Yours Is Mine: Consolidating Your Debts After Marriage The phrase "What's yours is mine" is especially true when you get married. Not only are you joining together two separate lives, merging two households and sharing one another's hopes and dreams, you're also becoming the proud co-owners of each other's debts. From here on in, your spouse's debt is......
• New Loan Funded — really want to get out of debt — $25,000 at 25.00% — C Credit — DTI 131% A new loan funded (really want to get out of debt — $25,000 at 25.00%).  I participated via my standing order: Any DTI — AF.  Which is this loan was funded as a any debt to income ratio and was an auto-funding loan.  The borrow had C credit and 131% DTI. ......
• 10k "PR" on a tempo run - 45:14 #running #twit2fit My 10k PR is 46:26, which is a 7:29 pace, and my target tempo pace for today was a 7:21 pace.  I had tossed around the idea of running a 10k race this weekend, but decided that I didn't want to reduce my miles enough to make a strong showing......
• Prosper in May Set a New Monthly Loan Origination Volume High Water Mark (sql to produce statistics at the end of post)  In May, Prosper originated more loan volume than in any previous month roughly 9.6M loans the vast majority were credit grades AA-C.  This is great news for Prosper on 2 fronts: total volume and loan quality. Here is the breakdown... May......

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under regular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.