Back to School, Lots of Free Time

Well, yesterday was my first day of school. I only have one class this semester, a 2 hour, 50 minute class on Friday. Yes, my spring break this semester will be missing one class. I've decided I'll major in Medical Assisting, which I hope I can earn enough money in to provide for myself.

Needless to say, since I have no job right now, I have more free time than I know what to do with. I've been trying to think what I want to do. I found a group on meetup.com that plays board and card games twice a month, one on Monday and one on Wednesday. I'll be going to the Monday meetings for as long as I can.

I've been thinking of getting a membership to the YMCA so I can go swimming regularly. As I mentioned on my last post, I've got to lose weight, and I really enjoy swimming. Plus swimming is supposed to be one of the best activities you can do for your body, since it works the entire body.

I've also been thinking of going hiking, since I like taking walks and being in the woods. I found a few state parks in the area that allow fishing & archery and have hiking trails, so I'll be sure to visit them regularly during the summer when I have time. I've liked fishing since I first did it in sixth grade, but I've never had a license and only fished in campgrounds. This year I'll look into getting a license and accompanying experienced anglers to learn more before setting out on my own. I've never filleted a fish, and I'm really clumsy so I'll have to wear a protective glove when I do it and hope I won't make a mess of the fish, but I think it will be OK. I first tried archery in seventh grade at summer camp, and would like to try it again. The only problem is bows seem really expensive.

I've also thought about coin and stamp collecting. If I collect coins, I want to collect silver, and collect 1/10th ounce eagles yearly. I don't think buying one silver coin once a month will be too hard once I get a regular job, since you can save about $30-35 a month easliy by brownbagging your lunch and taking your own coffee. Stamp collecting to me seems much more interesting since you can get a lot of stamps for $30 if you know what you're doing (for example, 500 worldwide stamps from kenmorestamp.com costs $8, and you can buy some stamps for 15 cents).

Well, the world's a big place, and there are plenty of activities out there that I can do to keep from getting bored, so I'll try to do some of them.