Well, I can say that the Couch to 5K program definitely works, and according to my friend Megan, I’m now a runner. When I started out I was dying at the end of the one minute run intervals and the 90 second walk intervals to catch up just didn’t seem long enough. Now I’m running for 40+ minutes and feel great the entire time. I still think I’m slow, but after nine weeks of running three times per week I am now running 4.5 miles non-stop. My new goal is to get up to five miles non-stop and then add one day of running per week until I’m up to six days per week. After I’m running six days per week I’ll work on getting faster. That’s the plan anyway, unless my pesky left knee keeps acting up.

One thing that is a bit discouraging is that while I definitely feel better, after running for nine weeks I don’t look any different and I haven’t lost any weight. At all. Last year when I lost a bunch of weight it was solely due to eating less. A lot of people thought I was exercising too, but now that I’m actually exercising regularly, shouldn’t there be some weight loss? I mean, it has been over two months. “Oh, you’re building muscle,” is what I hear, but I’m not seeing it.

While hovering between 190 and 195 pounds is better than where I was back in January of 2011 when I was at 230ish, it’s not the 168 I was at the end of last summer. In the end my actual weight doesn’t matter to me as much as I want this belly gone, and if cardio isn’t the way to do it, then what the heck is?

I’ve never been a fan of starting anything on an arbitrary date. Oh, I’ve tried it in the past, many times, but unless I’m really passionate about it, I just don’t stick with it to fruition. When I decided to get out of debt a few years ago I started on October 6. When I realized that I wanted to lose weight last year that was on January 16. Neither of those dates were tied to anything particularly important in my life, but they did have something in common. It was at that point that I’d had it. I decided enough was enough and it was time to make a change.

I lost 60 pounds last year. 60 pounds! That was pretty incredible, and I did it solely through eating better. I felt better, I had to buy a lot of new clothes and overall things were looking pretty good. I knew I needed to exercise if I wanted to get to the next level, but I was doing OK and that complacency was a problem. Well, that, and stress.

Right at the same time that I was celebrating the milestone of losing 60 pounds I decided “hey, I think I’m ready to buy a house” and while I don’t regret that decision one bit, along with buying a house came all kinds stress and other emotional drama that led to me gaining 20 pounds in the six months I’ve been there.

I’m not obese, but when I stepped on the scale on Sunday and saw 190, I knew that I had to cut the crap and it was time to get serious. I’d been walking on my lunch breaks when I could find the time, but I wasn’t serious about it and my diet was pretty crappy as I was back to medicating my stress, boredom and loneliness with food. Back in January some friends of mine who are runners were kidding around saying that they were going to make me a runner and while I know they had good intentions, I knew from past experience that when I’d attempted to run on a false time table that after about a week of it, I’d quit. Not because I got injured, but because it’s a lot easier to come home and flop on the couch than it is to go run.

This time I have a feeling it’s going to be different. At the advice of some friends I went to Aardvark Sports Shop in Bethlehem and was fitted for some “real” running shoes. The person who helped me was excellent. She asked about past injuries (shin splints suck), looked at my feet, how I walk and helped me choose the proper shoe. I wish I’d had the sense of mind to ask her name because that kind of customer service deserves to be commended. After I decided on the shoes that were best for me, only then did I see the price tag. $104.95! Ouch! I sent out a tweet saying that I’d just bought some running shoes and that I hope I don’t end up regretting it.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a whole host of people respond publicly and privately showing their support. That kind of enthusiasm is inspiring and it’s what makes me think I can really do this and make it stick.

Since I’m essentially starting at nothing other than walking every day I looked into a good program to ease me back into shape and I ended up finding that the Couch to 5K program I tried a few years ago would probably suit me best. I programmed it into the RunKeeper app on my phone and I’m happy to say that yesterday I completed the first workout.

In an effort to track my progress and to let others see what I’m up to so they can hold me accountable I’m uploading my exercise to the RunKeeper website. If you’d like to be a part of my “Street Team” (what RunKeeper calls friends), head over to my profile.

I really appreciate all of the encouragement so far and can’t wait to look back on March 4 as another seemingly insignificant date that ended up becoming one where my world changed for the better.

Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional, so the following post should not be taken as advice, I’m just documenting my situation.

Just when I thought I had everything done with my move from Allentown to Bethlehem I came across a post this morning from local blogger, Bernie O’Hare. In it he mentions that Allentown’s Earned Income Tax (EIT) rate went up by .35% in 2011.

When it came time to file my 2011 EIT return I wasn’t sure how I should handle the split between municipalities. At the time I made a call to Keystone Collections Group which is the third party who handles EIT for both Allentown and Bethlehem. I asked them, since I never got a form in the mail for Allentown (my former residence), what should I do? They were very nice an said that on the back of the form I should fill out the partial residence section and just mail the one form in. Since they do Allentown and Bethlehem’s EIT it would be OK. I filled out the form and mailed it in. Easy.

The problem is, the line on the EIT form that showed my tax liability said 1%. Since that’s what my employer withheld and since that’s what it had been for as long as I could remember, I figured I was good to go. I never even gave it a second thought, and in any other year leading up to 2011 I would have been fine. Of course, since Allentown’s rate increased and that wasn’t withheld properly from my check, everything isn’t fine. Now what?

I called Keystone Collections again and asked what I should do to correct the situation since I’m pretty sure I owe money. The woman I spoke with confirmed that Allentown’s rate did go up on January 1, 2011 and I would be responsible for the difference, but since it’s not April 17 yet, I’m not late. She said that I could download the tax form from their website and write AMENDED at the top and just fill it out with the new dollar amounts. She asked for my social security number so she could make a note on my record. (Hopefully that means that whoever looks at my form will be lenient on any penalties, etc.) Her instructions made sense so I hung up with the customer service person at Keysotone and went to their website to download the form so I could fill it out.

In filling out the amended form I noticed that on the partial residence section of the form it has no place to denote the tax liability, just how much was withheld from your check. Since I know that was wrong, that wasn’t going to help. I called Keystone back to ask how I should handle it and the woman said that I should just write it in on the back of the form. She didn’t say how to write it in on the back, and when I asked how I should denote my tax liability on the front of the form because there’s only one line to put in a percentage she said just to write in the entire dollar amount. I asked again just to make sure that all of this “writing things in” stuff was OK and she said that “they’ll figure it out.” Awesome.

I asked about any potential penalties since on the form it mentions a penalty or interest amount being based on the number of months the tax was underpaid or late. Since I’m not sure how they determine late (From the date I was paid? From April 17?) I asked if it was OK to just leave the penalties and interest amount as $0, and if there was a penalty, what would happen? I was told that if there’s a penalty that it would have to come from their legal department (which of course worried me even more). I asked if/what that would mean and she said it would basically just be like a bill that would come in the mail and I would send them in the payment.

I really don’t like the idea of being delinquent in any bill, let alone taxes. I asked if there would be some kind of mark on my credit or any liens or something involved and the rep told me that it would be nothing of the sort. I hope she’s right.

Now I get to figure out the clearest way to indicate my tax liability to both Bethlehem and Allentown on a form that doesn’t have a provision for it and then mail them in a check, hoping that the person processing it understands it and that I don’t owe any fees. I try to be very precise when I do things, especially things involving money, so the fact that there isn’t a proper procedure to fix this really bothers me.

And just think, if I hadn’t been reading local blogs this morning I never would have known about any of this.

…or in this case, dinner.

I wouldn’t say that I travel extensively for work. I’m not out of town 300 days a year or anything, but I do travel enough that I have made more than my fair share of stops for food at restaurants I will likely never go to again, not because of the quality of their food or service, but because they’re four hours away.

On Wednesday February 15 I was traveling home from a business trip and needed a quick bite to eat so I stopped at a Taco Bell. In Altoona. Regardless of your thoughts on the quality of Taco Bell’s food, you pretty much know what you’re going to get when you go into one. That said, I paid for my meal with my debit card (processed as a credit card, yes there’s a difference but we won’t get into that here) so I’d have a receipt that would allow me to get reimbursed for the business expense.

The next day the $6.35 transaction showed up in my online banking as “PENDING” like most transactions do. In this case however, unlike most transactions, instead of posting to my checking account, it just disappeared. I’d seen that once or twice before, and they always showed up a day or two later. That’s not the case this time.

It’s now been two weeks and the transaction still hasn’t posted. I went to the local bank branch and they said “well, it looks like you got a free meal.” I asked them how long it normally takes for something to post and they said it should have by now, but it might show up in another week or two.

How long should I realistically wait for this transaction to post? Once that time passes, then what? Who do I call? Taco Bell? I want to pay for my meal. Heck, I’ve already been reimbursed for it. I realize this is “only $6.35″ but this kind of stuff bothers me.

I try to be an organized person. One thing I’m very good at is taking a complex goal and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable tasks. A problem I’ve been running into lately is that I seem to have too much to do. (I know, I know, we all have that problem)

I know that there are a ton of apps, websites and methodologies for maintaining to do lists. I’m a huge fan of Remember The Milk, it’s flexible, syncs with my iPhone (yes, I paid for a pro account) and does pretty much everything I could ask from to-do app (well, with the exception of tasks that are dependent on other tasks, but that’s for another time). The trouble that I’m having with to-do lists on paper, digitally or otherwise is that things keep coming up. I realize that the world isn’t going to stop so I can catch up, but at a certain point, the lists get to be too many, there seem to be too many tasks and I just give up.

At that point the tasks keep coming, but they don’t get added to lists and then things get missed, which is never good. The only solution I’ve found is to stop everything, take time to try to read through unanswered emails, sticky notes and my memory to reprioritize things and hope nothing got left out on the updated list. There’s got to be a better way. All of the tools in the world won’t help if I don’t actually use them (or use them properly).

What suggestions do you have for maintaining to-do lists for both professional and personal tasks? Do you have any tips to keep things from getting out of hand? How do you keep track of what needs to be done in your life?