tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-181390202024-03-07T11:39:07.429-06:00It's All Just a Bunch of RhubarbOED DEFINITION: RHUBARB - 4. a. The word ‘rhubarb’ as repeated by actors to give the
impression of murmurous hubbub or conversation.
4. d. slang. Nonsense, worthless stuff.Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.comBlogger278125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-52131206540036940432024-01-01T15:46:00.000-06:002024-01-01T15:46:21.245-06:00Ready to tackle 2024!At least I had better be because the first ~4 months of the new year are going to be VERY busy!
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2023 ended up being a challenging year in a number of respects, particularly with my health (nothing ever too serious, just annoying). A lot of it really started at the winter solstice in 2022, beginning with a frigid cold snap that caused an outside (thankfully) pipe to burst, but of course getting a plumber to fix it on Christmas Eve was $$$$! And then, we plugged in one too many space heaters downstairs and blew a circuit that knocked out power to half of the kitchen on Christmas. So then we had to get that fixed a day or two later... and then the refrigerator died on New Years Eve, so 2023 started out with buying a new fridge. Not the best way to start out the year, even if I really like the new fridge!
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January also brought the first head cold I've had in about 3 or 4 years, followed by me getting a bad case of rashes and hives shortly after (possibly from poison ivy), which caused me to go on steroids. (Which I was delayed in getting by a few days thanks to a terrible ice storm.) All while working way too much thanks to way too many things coming at one time at work... and then interacting with ~20 people who had been on airplanes. Which was the perfect set-up for me to finally catch Covid in late February and miss my first winter board meeting since I started working them in 1996. Thankfully I had received the updated Covid jab just a few months before so I didn't have it too bad, although the lingering brain fog ("Swiss-cheese brain" as I nicknamed it) was very annoying. I also got my shingles vaccines this year and had a pretty rough time after the second shot, but as I point out to my coworkers approaching 50 - get the shot regardless since it's better than getting shingles!
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The biggest health thing for me this year though was dealing with my eyes. I hit the genetic jackpot of early-onset AND fast-growing cataracts, at least in my right eye. It had become so obviously worse between my summer 2022 and summer 2023 eye appointments that I was pretty sure my optomitrist was going to say that it was time for cataract surgery - which she did! And I just had that surgery a couple of weeks ago, which was fantastic. A few things I immediately noticed was that dark (especially black) colors were actually dark again, and that my left eye was further along with its cataract than I had realized. My right eye was so bad that my left eye was pretty good in comparison, but now that my right eye is clear again, I can really tell the state of the cataract in my left eye. I think it's still a couple of years away from needing surgery, but not as far as I originally thought. And, to be honest, there's really not much to the surgery other than the cost (even with insurance, it's going to be about $2500 out of pocket - thankfully I had been saving for it) so I'm looking forward to getting my left eye fixed too!
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But 2023 wasn't all bad! One definite highlight was that we managed to pull off a pretty good public viewing of the October 14 annular eclipse (most of the props for that go to the amazing CNS events team) and we had absolutely perfect weather in Austin - now I just hope we have the same on April 8, 2024.
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So, keeping all of these things in mind when I check on how I did with my 2023 goals, I need to give myself a little grace when I realize how many I didn't manage to accomplish. (More about 2023 stitching and 2024 plans are over at <a href="https://threads.larae.net/" target="new">Lara's Loose Threads</a>)
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For health goals, I did do Dry January (as usual) and my bloodwork numbers in early 2023 were improved over 2022, but I didn't manage to lose any weight this year and I've been eating pretty poorly over the past couple of months, so I'm not sure how good they will be when I go in for my physical in a few weeks. I really need to keep in mind that, at nearly 52 years old, I can't eat and drink like I did in college. :P
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I did a fair amount of yard work early in the year, but once I got the rashes and hives - most likely from poison ivy - I kind of stalled. Plus it started to get too hot, or was too wet, to do much. I was hoping that the awful summer we had would kill off more stuff than it did, but no luck. I did grow a few tomatoes and bell peppers in containers, but no start on a real veggie garden yet. I did plant some oregano and thyme in a little mini-plot, and they are still going good. And I planted some flowers and put a potted rosemary plant in a weird little square in the front of the house. But there is still a lot left to do!
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I did do a "new to me" movie a week this year, but I didn't make it on my Goodreads goal in 2023. Blame the podcasts for that! I ended up listening to more podcasts in the car than audiobooks, so that kept me from reading as many books as I normally would. I also continued going through my YouTube channels, but I did in fact subscribe to some more with large backlogs, so I think I kind of came out even on that one. Same with podcasts - I've started keeping a list of shows that I want to subscribe to, but not until I've caught up on the back catalogs of more of my current ones. I also didn't get as far on catching up with TV shows as I would have liked, but I think that's because I was spending too much time with other entertainment options. I did start sorting through my comic book backlog - I was somewhat forced into it when Amazon finaly killed the Comixology app and brought everything into the Kindle app, which I'm not a huge fan of since I liked keeping my comics and digital book libraries separate. But at least I did start hacking through that particular jungle!
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<b>Goals for 2024</b>
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If I'm being perfectly honest, for the first quarter (plus a few days) of 2024, my main goal is just to survive it without getting sick or too burned out since we have a very busy time at work - with prep for a total solar eclipse on top of it. But I'll do Dry January and I'm going to really try to not depend too much on quick fast food dinners when I get very busy. What I really need to do is get back to doing batch cooking on the weekends so I have healthier, quick options during the work week.
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I've optimistically set my Goodreads goal for 25 this year, which I think I can do if I get back to listening to more audiobooks in the car and continue trying to read a little in the evenings before going to sleep. I'll also try to get back to some comics collections, which I count as read books if they are volumes of 6+ issues. That probably means I'm going to have to be a bit more realistic about how many podcasts I can keep up with, even listening at 1.2X speed. And I'm going to take another stab at finishing up a number of TV shows that are completed but I still have a season or two left to watch. I'll also keep chugging along on the YouTube channels that I follow. Finally, I'm going to do a "new to me" movie a week again, but this time I'm going to add in (and count towards the goal) some things that I know I have seen but not since I was a kid. I'm thinking primarily of old Disney animated features, many of which I haven't seen in 40+ years, since that will also help me work on a longer-term goal of watching/re-watching all of the Disney animated features. I missed a bunch of them in the 1990s and 2000s so I have a lot to catch up on.
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I definitely want to get back to working on the yard, but finding the time and energy while the weather is mild is going to be a challenge. But I'm going to try to do at least a few hours each weekend (weather permitting) to tidying things up. The veggie garden is still TBD, but maybe I can get some of the junk hauled off this year so I can at least start planning out the spaces. Maybe I can even get started on the herb garden I'm planning to put next to the patio, something I've really wanted to do since moving back to the house.
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That's it for now - I might take a look at things at the middle of the year and add in some more goals or reevaluate the ones I have after I see how the first half of 2024 goes. Happy New Year!
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-21736715797407068092023-01-01T13:41:00.001-06:002023-01-01T13:41:25.685-06:00Hello 2023!Yes, it's that time again - my annual blog post since I can't be bothered to update more frequently. But honestly, my life isn't all that interesting enough to warrant it.
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Well, this past year was kind of all over the place - better than 2020 (that wasn't too hard) and an improvement on 2021, but still had its challenges. Even just personally it was up and down... in about a 24 hour period, my uncle died, I found out I got a promotion and very nice raise, and Russia invaded Ukraine. And a week later I turned 50. That last point wasn't necessarily good or bad - just a milestone that probably should have felt more significant than it ended up being given everything else going on.
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Let's check in with my 2022 goals! I did Dry January. Well, errr, technically I had a couple of mimosas on the last day of the month, but I'm still counting it as a success. I haven't actually made it into the doctor for my annual check up yet, so I don't know how my numbers are going to compare to late 2021, but I think I managed to be a little more healthy this year. I moved in the middle of the year and it's not quite as easy to stop for takeout now, so I think that's helping! After the move, I haven't been able to get back into an exercise routine, but at least I'm climbing more stairs now.
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And because of the move, I was able to declutter a little, at least the physical items... I could still stand to do some more digital organizing (but I'm managing some progress on that - it's just going to take more than one year). On my entertainment goals, I did hit my Goodreads goal, but I still have quite the backlog on podcasts. I actually unsubbed from some of the new ones I had picked up, but then others took their place. And I still have quite the comic book backlog, but I started making a little progress on that too.
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And even though I didn't put it down as an official goal, I always play the License Plate Game and I won this year! I was trying to get a Delaware as the last one I needed for ages and then I came out of Central Market one day and lo and behold, there was a minivan from Delaware next to me!
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<b>Goals for 2023</b>
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I think it's time to get back to some more quantitative goals, although some of those will have to wait until after I go to the doctor in a couple of weeks. But regardless of how my cholesterol, etc. come out, I know I'd like to lose some weight - at least 10 pounds - so my clothes get back to fitting more comfortably. I'm actually going in to 2023 a few pounds down from where I started 2022, so that's a good start. And I anticipate that I'll be doing a lot more work in the yard and finally get some gardening going, so I think I'll get more exercise through that. Although once the peak of the summer heat hits, that will probably go on pause, so I should try to work in some at-home exercise too! And I'll do Dry January again since that's pretty much a given for me now.
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On the yard/landscaping/gardening front - I'm going to set myself the goal of getting the back corner of the yard completely cleared out (I made a lot of progress during the break, so I've got a head start!) and deal with the weird section where a bunch of fences come together alongside the main road near our house. (We're on a strange-shaped lot because of the bend in our road and the back section is basically shaped like a slice of pizza.) My next yard goal is to clear out and break down the old garden structure my uncle had built in the middle of the backyard and finish breaking down the old deck and put in a semi-raised bed for herbs and flowers. I'd like to get a proper veggie garden going this year, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to end up doing some container tomatoes or something in the meantime since a lot of the other yard stuff needs to be a priority since it has been neglected for a few years.
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My stitching plans for 2023 are over on my crafty blog - <a href="https://threads.larae.net/">Lara's Loose Threads</a> - so I'll move on to my reading and other entertainment goals for the new year. I have SO many comic books, audiobooks, and digital books that I'd really like to make a bigger dent in, but unfortunately I also have a backlog of podcasts, TV shows, YouTube vids, and movies I'd like to get through. And even though I can listen to some of the podcasts at work, I still have to, you know, sleep and stuff. Since there just aren't enough hours in the day to read, watch, and listen to everything I'd like to get through in the new year, let's pick some things to concentrate on!
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First, I think getting through the back catalog of some of the newer YouTube channels I've picked up this year is pretty easily achievable (assuming I don't subscribe to any more with a substantial library - not necessarily a safe assumption) so that's one goal. Next, to try to catch up on some movies that I've fallen woefully behind on, I'm going to do another round of a "new to me movie" a week again. That's been a lot of fun in past years so I thought I'd do it again in 2023! And for TV shows, I've managed to end up with another batch of shows that have ended, but I haven't watched the final season of yet, so my goal is to get through those. This happened to me a few years ago and I ended up watching the final seasons of quite a few shows in a short period of time and it was pretty emotionally brutal (but mostly in a good way) so at least I'm going into it more prepared this time.
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For my Goodreads Book Challenge for 2023, I'm going to scale it back to 20 this year since I've noticed that it's getting harder for me to get full-length books into my schedule in recent years. And that's probably because I've been chosing to prioritize other things over reading time, so until I can get that evened out I'll keep that goal realistic. I'm also going to continue to go through my backlog of comic books and I'm going to be a bit more brutal about deleting things that I got in the big Marvel giveaway ~10 years ago that I'm probably never going to read. It probably doesn't help that I keep re-reading some old favorites while I'm trying to catch up on other story lines. :)
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And finally, the podcast "problem". I love podcasts and I'm probably subscribed to way too many of them. The real issue is that I'm a completionist and there are a number of podcasts that I came to after there were already hundreds of episodes, so I have a big back catalog for them that are going to be a multi-year project to get through. What I need to do is concentrate on some to try to listen to one or two extra episodes a week on, but that's not always easy to do when I'm subscribed to a bunch of semi-daily and weekly shows. I think my best strategy will be to tackle the shows that I have a relatively small number (under 50) back episodes for and see how many of those can get moved into my "current" folders on PocketCasts, which is my 'podcast player of choice' as all the shows like to say. I really love it, especially since I listen to podcasts on about 7 or 8 different devices and I need reliable syncing. And I listen to a lot of shows at 1.1X speed so that's helping. Maybe I'll be able to bump some of them to 1.2X (I still don't understand the people that can do 2X or 3X!)?
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The nice thing about a lot of these goals is that I can do several of them at once, like gardening and listening to podcasts or stitching and watching TV shows, YouTube, etc. Efficiency!
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Here's to a great 2023! I'm really hoping that it ends with a lot more peace in the world than it started with.
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-9592746208830286692022-01-02T15:59:00.000-06:002022-01-02T15:59:24.674-06:00Another year over... a new one just begunLet's hope it's a good one! We need a break. (And I hope anyone who reads this doesn't mind having that song stuck in their head.)
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2021 was definitely a very mixed bag of highs and lows for the world and me personally. The winter storm in February was definitely a low point, although I came out of it alive and without property damage, so I fared a lot better than many. But on the upside - I finally bought a new car! And that leads me into a re-cap of how I did on the 2021 goals.
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I did okay on my health goals for the most part and did keep up with walking and blood pressure measurements until I started going back into the office 4 days a week (I kept working from home on Friday - which I love!) and then I lost some of the exercise routine, but then I was getting in a fair amount of walking by going in to work. I went in for my regular physical and my numbers are not all that different from the year before, so I'll take it. I even managed to lose some weight - until the holidays hit. Same story as always.
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On the financial front, I actually managed to accomplish everything I had hoped to. I had a rough plan that once I had a loan and credit card paid off by the late spring, I would apply for one last consolidation loan and get all of my remaining revolving credit card debt off the cards, which I was able to do. Since I now, finally, understand more about how these things work, I knew that getting rid of that revolving debt would give me a stellar credit score, so I knew I would be able to get a good deal on a car loan and finally get a new wehicle. And the plan actually worked! While I still have the personal loan for a few years, and now a car payment, no longer having that weight of the credit card debt that I've been hauling around for so long feels pretty amazing. Not to mention the peace of mind of not having any surprise expensive car repairs in the next few years!
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For the various entertainment goals, I did pretty well there too! I did manage to watch a 'new to me' movie every week, including finally getting back into the Alamo Drafthouse (thank you vaccine science!!) and I hit my Goodreads goal for the year. I didn't read as many comics as I would have liked, but I did clear out my YouTube backlog. And I did have a couple of in-person happy hours again, which was great! I ended up not getting out to McDonald Observatory since they moved the summer board meeting to October and it was scaled back, so I just monitored the virtual portion from home. And I was able to keep doing quite a bit of stitchy and crafty things, although that fell off a bit once I was back in the office regularly.
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<b>Goals for 2022!</b>
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Trying to decide what my goals are for 2022 is interesting, because I also have A Major Birthday coming this year, so that does give me pause a bit. Mostly on the health goals, at least. For that arena, I'm going to do Dry January, since I think this year I do need a break from the wine and cider. (I really got into cider in 2021.) And I want to get back into walking on the days that I'm not physically going into the office since I kind of fell off on that in the latter half of 2021. Although the record heat in the fall and early winter didn't help. And I want to generically say "eat healthier" since I often focus on weight loss, but really I just need to cut back on the pizza. Once I started going back into the office 4 days a week, I started getting take-out more often, which isn't all that bad in and of itself - I just need to be a bit better about making healthier choices more often. But not always, since we all need to treat ourselves from time to time. :)
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For my entertainment goals - I set my Goodreads goal just a little lower this year since I now have a big podcast backlog to tackle because I went a little nuts with subscribing to them last year. Part of it were all the lists of "podcasts not to miss" that came out near the end of the year that turned me on to some that looked interesting. And part of it was finding a bunch of new "word nerd" shows that sounded like fun. Thankfully a number of these are limited and not on-going, but some are long-running and have a big back catalog - and I'm a completionist! And I could say basically the exact same thing with TV shows, although I don't have as many long-running things to watch back seasons of - mostly just things to keep up with or to binge the latest seasons of. And I could kind of say the same for comics as well, but that is almost all 'back catalog' of and not many new things to keep up with. But I'm really going to try to tackle some of those old runs in my stash, even though it will probably prompt me to pick up new things in the process. A few years ago I realized the brilliance of Marvel giving away all of those #1 issues on Comixology many years ago - if you like the first issue of a 4 or 6 issue series (or arc), you're likely to go buy the rest or subscribe to Unlimited.
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One last set of goals I have is to declutter - both my physical and digital spaces. I've already started a bit, but there is still a long way to go. Maybe I'll finally get more of my 2015 vacation photos of England on Flickr!
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Alright 2022 - let's see what you've got in store for us! And may you be a bit more gentle than your siblings 2020 and 2021.
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-13221362552014561802021-01-01T14:51:00.001-06:002021-08-15T10:19:10.288-05:00Happy Freakin' New Year!Hey everyone! We made it to 2021!! <div><br /></div><div>Taking a look back at the goals I made for 2020....well... most of that got thrown out the window about 2.5 months in, especially the health and fitness goals. Instead of losing 20 pounds, I ended up gaining 5. But given that I was essentially completely sedentary for about 6 months of working from home I'm actually kind of okay with that. What I'm a little more upset with myself for is that I started walking regularly and eating better in late September through November and managed to almost get back down to where I started 2020. And then the holidays came. Even without all of the parties and extra happy hours, I still managed to overdo it. Oh well! All things considered, I'm trying to be a bit easier on myself with all of this and I don't feel too bad about enjoying myself during this long, dark December. </div><div><br /></div><div>I did do a little work on my brain in the first part of the year and listened to the <i>Cognitive Behavioral Therapy</i> course. And then the world went pear-shaped. We were insanely busy for the 2.5 months we were physically in work and then the shift to work-from-home and finishing out the spring 2020 semester was stressful. Although from a technical standpoint, I was ready to go from Day 1... mentally maybe not so much. I did start getting more sleep though since my commute became about 5 seconds long, so that was a plus.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I was doing so well on the License Plate game this year until mid-March. That said, I managed to get 48 states and the District of Columbia before lockdowns and work from home... and to be honest, North Dakota and Wyoming are hard to get even in normal years. Well, Wyoming was easy for a couple of years since there was one in the parking lot at my apartment complex, but they either moved or finally got Texas plates. </div><div><br /></div><div>BUT! I did finish the Shakespeare 2020 Project! And I met my Goodreads goal, but I did end up counting some of the longer Shakespeare plays towards the goal since my audiobook listening fell off a cliff starting in March. And I did make some headway on organizing my digital photos and I even got a few sets uploaded to Flickr! Not as much as I would have liked, but at least it was *something*. I also made more progress on reducing my debt and since I'm barely driving I expect my car to make it to summer 2021 when I'll be in a good position to finally buy a new one. And I still have lots of crap sitting around my apartment that needs to go to Half Price, etc. but that got derailed by 2020 as so many things did. I can (and probably should) write more about how it felt to live through 2020, but to be honest, I'm just ready to kick it in the ass and move on.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Now on to goals for the new year... </div><div><br /></div><div>Health goals - I'm going to get back into the routine of walking at least 5K steps every day (with the occasional day off when the weather is crappy), doing my arm exercises, and measuring my blood pressure more regularly. I was doing pretty well with these for a few months at the end of 2020 so I think I should be able to pick them up again in 2021. Especially now that the days are starting to get longer again since sometimes I have to get the walking in at the end of the work day and in December it got dark so early! I think I'm going to skip Dry January in 2021 since I didn't really overdo the alcohol in the latter half of 2020... plus I really want some champagne on Inauguration Day! And I'm going to watch my added sugars in 2021 though since my bloodwork in late 2020 was a little concerning (although I think Halloween candy had something to do with that...).</div><div><br /></div><div>Other goals - on finances, I expect to keep making headway on getting my old debts paid down and I'm planning to finally buy a new car around summertime. And I'm going to keep working through my comic book backlog since I didn't get to as many as I would have liked in 2020 (my comic reading time ended up being Shakespeare reading time!). I think I'm going to keep my Goodreads goal at 30 since I'll probably be counting some comic book collected volumes and I'm going to try to listen to more audiobooks while I get my steps in since I don't expect to be regularly commuting to work again until at least the summer.</div><div><br /></div><div>I did this a couple of years ago and I've decided to do it again - watch a new (to me) movie every week. This will probably help me also start tackling my backlog of Disney and Pixar films that I haven't seen. I probably should also try to make a dent in all of the TV series that I've added to my watchlist over 2020. As we've all been stuck at home I've gotten lots of good recommendations! I also have a few new digital backlogs to work through, although not as much as a few years ago. Not surprisingly with the extra time at home I've picked up a few new podcasts and YouTube channel subscriptions. I'm also going to try to start making some headway on the <i>1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die</i> list since I didn't manage to get much done last year. I think the mistake I've been making is trying to do it in a particular order, but since I'm tracking it on a spreadsheet and I have the book on Kindle on my phone and tablet, it's not like it's all that hard to jump around. And I did quite a bit of stitching last year and I've got a few goals for 2021, which I've written more about on <a href="https://threads.larae.net/">Lara's Loose Threads</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I wanted to finish out with the things I'm looking forward to being able to do again sometime in 2021 (fingers crossed!) - happy hour with the gals, a Marvel movie at the Alamo Drafthouse, drive around Central Texas once I get a new car and maybe finally do the tour of the Spanish Missions. And I'm really hoping I'll be able to head back out to west Texas and McDonald Observatory in July!</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's hoping that 2021 is oh so much better for us all than 2020 was and that everyone is able to stay safe and healthy!</div>Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-47643414380312822362020-07-26T17:07:00.002-05:002021-08-15T10:20:47.376-05:00Seven-ish month check-inWhen I look back at the Three Month Check-in post I have to kind of laugh at the "At this point, I think we're expecting at least 3-4 more weeks of working from home." sentence as I sit here at FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS after the shut down, still working from home. And there doesn't seem to be much of a chance that will change in the near future since Texas is one of the current coronavirus hot zones right now. The dean of my college at the university sent out an email a couple of weeks ago that basically told us to keep working from home through the fall if we can and since we don't have visitors, star parties, and field trips, I can and will. But I am hoping to go up a couple of afternoons a week to work on the lab classroom that I'm in charge of since this is the best time to finally clean out old equipment and get our demo stuff in order since no one else can use the room.
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This continues to feel like some weird time-warp since almost everything I wrote three months ago is still pretty much how things are going. I haven't lost any weight - in fact, I gained a couple of pounds since I'm still not getting enough exercise. Now the weather is too hot instead of too wet and we had a bonus Saharan dust influx, which my lungs can't handle. Although I have been regularly getting in some arm weight exercises! I'm also still keeping up with the Shakespeare 2020 Project and I'm still getting in some more stitching time! I haven't done quite as much stitching in the past few months since I actually did some work on my Tudor History website. (My webhost is moving to new servers and so I had to do some work regardless because things would break if I didn't!)
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I've been on a "cooking things from scratch" kick for the past few weeks and have learned to make my own tzatziki after I discovered that my grocery store has gyro meat in the frozen foods section. Not as good as fresh from the Greek deli, but not bad at all! I also made a pot of Boston baked beans a couple of weeks ago to finally break in my Dutch oven that I bought for myself at the holidays. Of course, I picked a day that would get up to 106°F to cook beans in the oven all day... Next up will be some homemade charro beans and the restaurant-style Mexican rice that I like (I've done that one several times now, but not with my new Dutch oven!). And probably some cook-all-day marinara too. I kind of wish this had come over me earlier in the stay-at-home time when it wasn't so damn hot!
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That's it for now. I hope anyone who stumbles across this is doing well and staying safe!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-51274661657730944292020-04-06T18:41:00.002-05:002021-08-15T10:25:35.756-05:00Three month check-inHuh, yeah, so my life and pretty much everyone else's has now gone off the rails! <br />
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February ended up being just as busy as I had expected and that continued on into the first two weeks of March. We had our faculty candidate visits, our board meeting, and our grad student recruiting and then the university closed on March 13 when the first cases of the novel coronavirus were confirmed in Austin. Most of us have been working from home since, although I've popped up to campus a couple of time to grab things. I was lucky that I was pretty much ready to go with a set up for working from home - probably a sad statement on my life choices - since I have had to occasionally do some work while home on staycations.<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, with all of the free food around during all of our events, I have not been able to sustain any weight loss over the past two months. And I don't expect to really lose any while working from home. I'm actually mostly okay with that, as long as I don't have a huge gain. I'm not getting as much walking and stair climbing in right now, mostly because the weather hasn't been very cooperative (not really a complaint - we've gotten some much-needed rain). I also haven't been checking my blood pressure as frequently as I should, but when I have checked, the numbers were pretty good. <br />
<br />
But the good things - I've been keeping up with the Shakespeare 2020 project! I can stay up later reading since I don't have to get up as early to get ready for work and drive in. And I've gotten quite a bit more stitching done, not surprisingly. More on that over on <a href="http://threads.larae.net/">Lara's Loose Threads</a> soon!<br />
<br />
I keep thinking that I should write some about what it's like to be living through this time, but the main thing I keep thinking is just how WEIRD it all feels. I was shopping in the grocery store on March 10 when things were really starting to get... "interesting" and they were already starting to sell out of some things and limit purchases on items and while I was standing in line to check out, I was reading the news on my phone. And for one brief moment I had a wave come over me where I honestly felt like I was in the first 20 minutes of a post-apocalyptic movie (or the first episode of a post-apocalyptic TV show) as things are *just* starting to tip. I did a little shopping last week and it was just surreal going through a store with a bunch of empty shelves and few people, some already wearing masks. I'm probably going to head to the grocery store later this week and this time I'll be wearing some sort of face covering too. <br />
<br />
At this point, I think we're expecting at least 3-4 more weeks of working from home. I'm not really stir crazy yet since I've been working and chatting with people over Slack, Zoom, etc. but I think even I will have a breaking point eventually. I may be a homebody introvert, but even introverts need some in-person interaction with friends and family! With some good alone time to recover after. :)Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-24394192606558023302020-02-02T17:32:00.001-06:002021-08-15T10:26:00.041-05:00One month check-in!I have no idea if I'll actually be able to keep up with these (I'm almost certain I won't be able to at the end of February/early March), but I'll try!<br />
<br />
Here's where I am so far:<br />
<br />
* Did Dry January! (like I mentioned before, not really that hard for me these days...)<br />
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* Down a few pounds - always hard for me to tell a few pounds difference thanks to my water weight fluctuations due to a medication<br />
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* Measured my blood pressure four times this month, which was almost once a week<br />
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* I kept forgetting to do my arm exercises, so I only did a few. Still need to figure out a good time to work those into my schedule<br />
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* About half way through my "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" course (which has been really interesting)<br />
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* Finished the first section of the Wonders of Space stitchalong and another small project<br />
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* On track for the Shakespeare 2020 Project<br />
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All-in-all, so far so good!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-38007075185846455732020-01-01T14:11:00.002-06:002021-08-15T10:26:58.814-05:00Welcome 2020!Time for my annual blog post! Yeah, I probably should make a goal to post more - which I probably will, but mostly over on my <a href="http://threads.larae.net/">needlework blog</a>.<br />
<br />
Looking back at the goals for 2019 and how I did on those:<br />
<br />
Health goals - I *did* finally get an eye exam and my first pair of prescription glasses! And I did dry January, which really isn't all that hard for me anymore. As for the rest... kind of... meh. I didn't lose 15 more pounds and unfortunately I regained some of what I had lost in 2018 and ended 2019 about 5 pounds higher than where I started it. I'm still under my highest-ever weight though, so at least there's that. I did get at least 5,000 steps a lot of days, but that is one of the knock-on effects of being busy at work and doing a lot of running around! I was horribly inconsistent about measuring my blood pressure and doing some arm exercises. I think part of the problem with the exercises at least is finding the optimal time to work it into my schedule since trying to remember to do them when I got home from work hasn't been working. I'm thinking maybe adding them to my morning routine might be the best bet, but that might run into trouble with when I usually measure my blood pressure. But it might be worth giving it a shot in the new year.<br />
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Home, digital, and financial goals - Mixed bag, again. I did actually update all my passwords on my digital accounts, added 2FA where I could, and even closed some accounts (I really wish this was easier to do!). I didn't buy a new car in 2019 and I did finish the year with less debt than I started with, but not by as much as I would have liked. I also did get started on organizing my digital photos but I haven't managed to get them uploaded to Flickr. I also didn't get stuff over to Half Price, etc. and I still have some repairs that I need my complex to come do. <br />
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Entertainment - Because Disney+ ended up launching later in the year that I originally thought, I didn't get a chance to start into watching Star Wars Clone Wars and Rebels until fairly late. And I ended up not reading many of the backlogged Star Wars comics and books (although I did read some - just not many). So basically the second half of November and December ended up being the "month and a half" of Star Wars (and course seeing Episode IX twice in the theaters)! I keep poking along and reading through my backlog of comics but there are still lots left. I also managed to meet my Goodreads goal of 25 books, including some re-reads and some comics volumes. I did have some spurts or more cooking and stitching too, but it would have probably been better for me overall if I had done both with a little more regularity. I'll post a bit about the stitching in 2019 over on <a href="http://threads.larae.net/">Lara's Loose Threads</a>.<br />
<br />
And I did manage to write a little something down in the day planner everyday, which proved to be pretty helpful in writing up this re-cap of the year! I bought another one while I was out running errands a couple of days ago so I can do it again for 2020. And I did take a few days off here and there in the fall after having to take off nearly half the summer so I wouldn't lose vacation time. <br />
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<b>Goals for 2020!</b><br />
<br />
Looking back at the past few years and things that I've done well with and... not so well with... I think I need to get back to setting more clearly defined and measurable goals. So with that in mind:<br />
<br />
Health - Since 2020 is a nice round number, I'm setting the goal of being down at least 20 pounds by the end of the year. With my weight creeping back up and my clothes getting tighter, I'm getting back to the "lose weight or buy more clothes" area and I'm really too cheap to buy a bunch more clothes (although I really do need to get a few more pairs of blue jeans since spots are wearing thin on the two pair I'm currently wearing to death). And I wrote it that way on purpose since a couple of years ago I did lose the 15 pounds I wanted to, but then re-gained 5 of them by the end of the year. And I'm going to measure my blood pressure at least once a week. I probably should do it a bit more, but I think weekly is doable. I'm also going to do Dry January again, but that is the one thing that I'm actually quite good at doing. Since I'm going to monitor my calories closely to lose weight, I'm likely going to be going back to just having the occasional beer, wine, or cider when I'm out, but not keeping bottle of wine, etc. at home. As much as I love those things, they are a very easy way to consume too many calories. Once in a while when I'm out with friends or family is fine - or at my Happy Place, the Alamo Drafthouse - but that's about it. And finally, I'm going to try to get back into regularly doing some small weight exercises for my arms. As I mentioned above, finding a better time to work it into my routine is probably the key. I'm going to aim for doing them 5 times a week, at least.<br />
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Home, digital, and financial - Yeah, I still need to get some repairs done around the apartment and I still need to take stuff to Half Price, etc. so maybe 2020 will be the year those things finally happen. And I'm going to keep working on organizing and posting my digital photos. If nothing else, I'd like to get them organized and uploaded to where I'm backing them up in the cloud, but maybe I'll actually add a few things to Flickr this year! I have TONS of stuff that hasn't made it there yet that I'd really like to share. For financial goals - again, end the year with less debt than I started with. That's going to continue to depend on how much longer my car holds out, but if I can make it to mid-2021 I'll be in better shape financially to buy a new car. (Technically I could do it now, but the longer I can go the better loans I'll get!). I've also made some gradual improvements in the past few years of controlling my impulse purchased and scaling back the things I buy for my collections. I probably should be more in the "getting rid of things" mode instead of "acquiring things" mode anyway since my little apartment just can't hold all my nicknacks! <br />
<br />
<br />
Entertainment - One well-defined goal for the new year is to complete Ian Doescher's (of <i>William Shakespeare's Star Wars</i> fame) <a href="https://iandoescher.com/shakespeare/">Shakespeare 2020 Project</a>. I tried to read or watch productions of all of the plays and sonnets between 2014 and 2016 (the 450th anniversary of the Bard's birth and 400th anniversary of his death), but didn't make it, so I thought maybe I would succeed with a little peer pressure. (And for the record, in 2015 I did visit Stratford-upon-Avon for the second time, so that should count for something). I'm going to set my Goodreads goal for 30 this year and not include the Shakespeare unless I finish the challenge, in which case I'll pick a <i>Complete Works</i> to count as read. And I do have the sonnets as a separate book (purchased in Stratford!) so maybe I'll count that too. :) I'm also going to keep ploughing through the backlog of comic books. 2020 almost certainly won't be the year I get caught up, but I can at least make a dent! One other entertainment thing I'm going to start in 2020 is making my way through the <i>1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die</i> list. I don't plan to try to finish it for a few years, but I want to start on it finally! And of course, I'm going to keep working more cooking and stitching into my routine. I've signed up for a <b>Wonders of Space stitch-along</b> in 2020 so my one firm goal is to have it finished by the end of the year. And to keep me company while I'm stitching, I'm also slowly making my way through all of Disney's animated features. While I was looking through the list of the movies I realized that there are SO MANY I haven't seen from the past few decades. I mostly watched the older things while I was a kid and then never saw most of the new ones as they came out. <br />
<br />
<br />
And I'm going to throw in a few more vague things - I think the key to getting some of these other goals done is actually in my brain, so I'm going to work on that a little too. I've tried it learn to mediate a couple of times and I haven't kept with it, so I'm going to try a little different approach. Audible had a 2-for-1 credit sale at the end of 2019 and I got two Great Courses - one on "Practicing Mindfulness" and one on "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" and I'm going to listen to one lesson a night (outside of days that I have other evening commitments). I think I can learn a few things in those that will better help me with some of these other goals. Or at least that's my hope! And one of the other vague things I'm going to try in 2020 is to not get too discouraged with things either in the greater world or in my own life. I know it's going to be a busy year at work and heavily front-loaded, so if I can maintain goals through to the end of March then I'll really have no excuse for falling off later in the year.<br />
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Whew - I didn't think this was going to end up being such a long post! Okay, let's get started with 2020!<br />
<br />
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-14333169960459872312019-01-06T21:24:00.001-06:002021-08-15T10:33:10.906-05:00Happy New Year!Welcome 2019! While I can't say that 2018 was a cakewalk, at least compared to other recent years it wasn't all bad. (Some of the bad things in 2018 I just think of as continuations of bad things that happened a few years ago... namely in or around November 2016). <br />
<br />
Time to check in on how I did on my goals from last year!<br />
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Health goals:<br />
Another successful Dry January (these actually seem to get easier the older I get). On exercise - I did pretty good on the arm exercises for about 1/3 of the year (January, February, June, and parts of March and July) and I got 5000 steps in more often than not. I also naturally get a lot of stair climbing in at work, so that helps. And I did actually lose 15 lbs so that realistic goal was actually pretty spot-on! I gained a few pounds back at the end of the year, but still ended up at an overall loss for the year so I count that as a win. I didn't monitor my blood pressure as regularly as I should have, but for the most part it's been good (losing weight certainly helps!). I still didn't get an eye exam, but I did sign up for the vision insurance at the annual enrollment in 2018 so I at least made movement towards getting it done.<br />
<br />
Home stuff: <br />
Still some things that need tending to at the apartment that I haven't put in work orders for, but the big thing this year was that they finally replaced my air conditioner! I can't believe how much my electricity bills dropped after that... I also still need to take some stuff to Half Price and the creative reuse place. I did get a batch of stuff out to the charity shops though, but there is still more! And although I didn't put it down as a specific goal, I did finally put some shelving in my storage space and organized it a little better. <br />
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Digital stuff: <br />
I'm still working on updating old passwords and clearing out old accounts and adding 2FA, but I did get quite a bit done. It's just that I have a lot of old accounts around! (And who knows how many more may be out there from the days before I started using 1Password).<br />
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Financial goals:<br />
I ended the year with less debt than I started it with, so that's always good! I did reduce my monthly bills, especially right at the end of the year when I finally dumped my old cable/internet/phone plan and switched over to AT&T fiber internet which they installed in our complex over the summer. I'm not quite sure how much I'm going to save yet, but I know it will be cheaper than what I was paying. And oh sooooo much faster! I also did pretty good on reducing the impulse shopping, but I still could use a little more will power in that arena. <br />
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Entertainment:<br />
I set my Goodreads goal for 20 books since I was planning to clear out a huge backlog of other things and I did meet that goal (actually went over by a couple). And on the backlog - I completely caught up on reading BBC History magazine, cleared out the podcast backlog, and finally watched all of those final seasons of TV shows that I hadn't gotten around to. (Pro tip - watching a bunch of series finales in a short amount of time is a great way to put yourself through the emotional wringer). I didn't listen to the few non-Audible audiobooks, but I did mostly catch up on the backlog of most of the YouTube shows I subscribe to. (There are still a couple that I didn't finish.) About the only thing I didn't really make a dent in is all of the games in my Steam library and on my iPad. And I still have a bunch of unread comic books but I keep chipping away at the pile.<br />
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So, all-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the stuff I managed to accomplish in 2018! <br />
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<b>Now, on to the goals for 2019!</b><br />
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Health goals:<br />
Pretty much the same - Dry January, continue to monitor blood pressure, try for semi-regular arm exercises and step count goals and keep losing weight. If I could lose another 15 by the end of the year (for a total of 30 from the high that I started from on June 1, 2018), that would be good. I'd be happier with even more if I could actually keep it off! And I WILL get an eye exam this year!<br />
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Home, digital, and financial:<br />
Again, pretty much the same - get some lingering small repairs done, take stuff to Half Price, continue updating old digital accounts, and finish the year with less debt than I started with. (One possible exception to this last one will be if I end up buying a new car in 2019 - that will mostly depend on how long my current car holds out.) One new thing I'm going to add is to finally take a serious stab at properly organizing my digital photos and uploading more to Flickr. <br />
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Entertainment:<br />
I set my Goodreads challenge to 25 this year since I'll probably get more audiobook listening in. And overall I've decided this will be the year of Star Wars! Since Episode IX will be coming out this year, I figured it would be a good time to finally catch up with some unread expanded universe books (both new stuff and a few older, now non-canon, things), comic series, and the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series. And I'm going to continue chipping away at my comics backlog (which includes a fair amount of Star Wars, so that will cross off two things at once). I also hope to get back into stitching and cooking a bit more, which I had kind of started to do in the latter half of 2018. Now I've got to keep it going!<br />
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I got a nice paper daily calendar/journal from a co-worker for Christmas so I'm going to write down some of these things as I do them, even though most of them are also recorded digitally in a variety of places. But it will be kind of nice to have it all in one physical place as well. I anticipate a very busy year at work, so balancing all of the above things with that work is going to be tricky. I earn a whole lot of vacation time now because I've been at UT for so long, so I need to try to start taking the occasional day off here and there more instead of trying for larger chunks (which can be quite impractical in my current job). Although some of those individual days are hard to do too sometimes! <br />
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Those are the main things I can think of right now so.... 2019 - let's do this!<br />
<br />
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-63374605045630214942018-01-07T19:27:00.001-06:002021-08-15T10:33:24.036-05:00Goals for 2018! (And a recap of how 2017 went...)Happy New Year! Time to check in on how I did with my <a href="http://blog.larae.net/2017/01/goals-for-2017.html">goals for 2017</a> and set some goals for 2018.<br />
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<b>Recap of 2017</b>, starting out with the things I did well on -<br />
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* Writing a little about each day in my notebook - check! I actually did it! I had to catch up a day late every once in a while since I had a number of long work days last year (in addition to the usual Wednesday nights), but I did actually write something for every day. Given what a ridiculous year it was (both in the world at large and for me personally), it will be interesting to go back and read some of it in the future. Among other things I ended up doing in 2017 that I never imagined I would - attended the <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/sets/72157685807022516" target="new">Women's March</a> and the <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/sets/72157683760949570" target="new">March for Science</a>. Never attended an organized march in my life and then I go to two in 2017!<br />
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* Read 30 books for my Goodreads Challenge - check! Actually made it to 31 by the end of the year. <br />
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* Yes, I did get a haircut. Two of them actually. :)<br />
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* Dry January - check!<br />
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Now for the ones I did moderately well on or totally bombed - <br />
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* Digital security improvements - I did make some progress on this, but I still have some duplicate and old (weak-ish) passwords that need updating and there are still some things I need to add 2FA to.<br />
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* Health things - a had some stretches where I did eat much better and even managed to lose some weight... before blowing it all in the last month of the year. I was on and off with monitoring my blood pressure too, but for the most part it's been pretty good. I did okay with walking more, but that was mostly just a side-effect of how busy work was last year! I didn't get an eye exam, but I did get an abdominal scan which confirmed what I already was pretty sure of - I have gall stones and will need to eventually get my gall bladder removed. But as long as I'm eating moderately well and not drinking too much, I haven't had too many twinges (and I have never had a full-blown "oh my god I think I'm dying!" attack). I also didn't do too hot on the regular arm and core exercises. <br />
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* Clearing stuff out of the apartment - I didn't get stuff to Half Price, but I did do a thorough clear-out and reorganization and did take some stuff to charity shops. <br />
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* More stitching - nope. I think I did *some* stitching earlier in the year, but not much. Although I did build some 3-D puzzles and Lego kits, so at least I did have an outlet for making things in 2017! <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>And now for 2018!</b><br />
<br />
A lot of these are going to be re-dos of the things I didn't do in 2017 since they are things I really do need to accomplish! The overall theme for 2018 is going to be "clearing out the backlog" - whether it applies to digital and physical stuff, health, and money (i.e. debt).<br />
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* Health goals - Dry January again (pretty good track record on this one). Really get an eye exam this year. Eat better and actually try to lose a quantifiable number of pounds - realistically 15 lbs, but ambitiously 30 lbs. Tone some of the flab - arm and core exercises and get more cardio. My lungs have always been problematic, but I really shouldn't be huffing and puffing after a couple of flights of stairs. Keep monitoring my blood pressure regularly.<br />
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* Goodreads Challenge - I set the goal for only 20 books this year because the other entertainment backlogs will probably steal some of my reading (and audiobook listening) time. But some of the backlog is still comic books so if I count collected volumes again I might blow past 20 pretty easily so I might up the goal at the mid-point of the year.<br />
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* Home stuff - take books to Half Price and more stuff to charity shops/freecycle. Finally get a few minor repairs done that I've been lazy about putting in work requests for.<br />
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* Digital security - continue updating old passwords and continue to add two-factor authentication where possible.<br />
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* Financial - A couple of years ago I made a big step towards getting a lot of my debt paid and I'm continuing to work on that. But I need to cut back on the monthly expenses, including impulse shopping. It's amazing how 2-day shipping is as bad as walking into a store! <br />
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* Media backlog - back issues of BBC History Magazine, comic books, non-Audible audiobooks, back catalog on a couple of podcasts, YouTube channels (including the only four Crash Course subjects I haven't watched yet), final seasons of a surprisingly large number of TV shows that have ended that I didn't finish watching, and finally play more of the old video games that have been in my Steam library and on my iPad for way too long.<br />
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I'm not expecting 2018 to be quite as busy at work as 2017 was so I'm going to really try to not use work as an excuse for stuff this year, especially since last year I managed to survive some of the busiest stretches of work I've ever had. The first week back (all three days of it) was pretty nuts, so that might not bode well, but there aren't as many big things on the calendar this year so I am counting on it not to be nearly as bad as last year. I ended up taking a bunch of time off in the summer to avoid losing vacation time since I wasn't able to take much time during the rest of the year - and the time I did take off was often to use up comp time! <br />
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Well, let's see how 2018 shakes out!<br />
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-85138329523637203322017-01-01T14:06:00.004-06:002021-08-15T10:34:15.245-05:00Goals for 2017!Okay, now that we're in 2017 and 2016 has been kicked out the door (and not a moment too soon) time to set some goals for the new year!<br />
<br />
In the last couple of week so 2016 I started carrying around a little notebook that I use to jot down ideas, to-do lists (non-work related - those have their own notebook that STAYS AT WORK), etc. It's not really journalling per se, but I will try to write at least one sentence a day about something that happened that day.<br />
<br />
I've once again taken the Goodreads Book Challenge and I decided to go back down to 30 books this year. Although one of my other goals is to catch up with some of the backlog of comic books I have, including some graphic novels and collected volumes, which I'm totally going to count in my book numbers (the novels/volumes that is, not the individual issues). I've tried to hit 35 in the past few years and came up short, so maybe 30 is more realistic.<br />
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Get a haircut. Yes, really. I'm way overdue.<br />
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More stitching! Actually, almost any stitching would be "more stitching" at this point. I did a little last year, but I could stand to do more since I find it relaxing and enjoyable. And I really need to finish some of those old projects that are loitering in my craft bins and staring guiltily at me.<br />
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Digital security improvements - mainly this will be updating some very old, weak, and duplicate passwords. The majority of these are on old sites that I don't even go to much anymore, so when I can, I'm planning to just delete the account (although not nearly enough places give you that option!). I also discovered that there were a lot of places that I had accounts for newsletters, etc. that don't seem to let you login any more, so I'm just deleting those. If that old data pops up somewhere, it's no big deal since the passwords associated with those old accounts won't be used on anything else.<br />
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Around my apartment the big goal is to take a bunch of books to Half Price and get the boxes out of my living room! I also have a few boxes of old collectible things that I might try selling to specialty stores and/or on eBay.<br />
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<br />
The big thing that I'm going to work on this year is my health, specifically:<br />
<br />
* Generally speaking, I'm doing okay, but I know I can do better. I've been on blood pressure medication for a while now and I'm going to keep closer tabs on that this year. <br />
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* I'm also going to get a WAY WAY overdue eye exam. I'm turning 45 in a couple of months and I think I can count on one hand the number of real eye exams I've had.<br />
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* Eat better - I really slid back into some old bad habits in the past 18 months or so and my waistline is really showing it. I know that if I get back to cooking for myself and eating less processed food I will naturally lose weight because I've done it before. And when I do eat out, making healthier choices. Included with this - another dry January. I've been doing this for many years (even before I knew it was "a thing"... apparently it's the only thing I've been doing before I knew it was cool). This is one thing I actually manage to accomplish most years. I think of the years that I decided to do it, I only failed once. So, not bad!<br />
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* Walk more. I wrote down on in my notebook that I want to get to 5000 steps a day (yes, I realize that 10,000 is the recommended amount, but I'm trying to be realistic so I won't be disappointed when I fail miserably).<br />
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* Daily-ish arm and core exercises. I usually give myself Wednesday as a day off of these since I often have to work very long days and nights on Wednesdays. I'm going to give myself a pass on other days that I have to work at night and/or Saturdays. I usually get a LOT of steps on those days so I figure it kind of balances out.<br />
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That's it! Bring on 2017!<br />
<br />
<br />
Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-37260364243441652962016-12-31T21:43:00.002-06:002021-08-15T10:35:02.483-05:00Good riddance 2016...I know it has become a cliche over this year to yell invectives against 2016, but man, it really sucked in a lot of ways.<br />
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A lot of people have already been writing lists of all the horrible things in politics, terrorism, celebrity deaths, etc that have made 2016 just so depressing. There will be a lot of fallout from the politics alone that we'll be dealing with for years to come, but on the upside, it has motived a lot of people (myself included) to get more involved. We have come so far in recent years on many fronts and I'm going to fight like hell to keep us from sliding backwards. There were a lot of entertainers that we lost this year that I was a fan of, but the real kick in the teeth came in the last week of the year with the death of Carrie Fisher. I don't think I can begin to sum up the impact that Princess Leia had on me (starting when I was 5 and the first Star Wars movie came out) and how much I grew to admire Carrie Fisher as an adult. I'm lucky that I haven't had the struggles with addiction and mental illness that she did, but I really loved that she spoke out to de-stigmatize those things. Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Prince, Gene Wilder... so many good ones gone this year. On one hand, I know it's just the way these things go and that sometimes there will be clumps in the data, but DAMN, there were a lot of data points this year.<br />
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Even just selfishly thinking about my own life - I had two friends die of cancer, one a co-worker whose job duties ended up falling to me because we weren't able to refill the position. This caused a lot of changes for me at work that I haven't been terribly happy about (although the raise in salary was nice!). I know I'm lucky to have a job at all and to have worked in the same place for so long, but when the percentage of your time spent on the parts you really enjoy shrinks and shrinks... Unfortunately, the first few months of 2017 are going to be *crazy* busy at work, so keeping up with some of the goals I'm setting for 2017 might be extra challenging. There are more hectic times coming up later in the year but many should be enjoyable, including the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin in June and a solar eclipse in 2017. <br />
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Now on to looking at how I fared with my 2016 goals... Well, yeah, not too good on most. I only made it to 26 books of 35 on my Goodreads challenge (although that didn't include a few re-reads and a couple of cookbooks I read, so I probably shouldn't be too hard on myself for that one). I definitely didn't end the year weighing less than at the start, although overall I ended up close to where I started. The one area I did much better was in finances. I don't think I technically ended up with less debt, but I managed to get almost all of my revolving credit card debt on to consolidation loans at much lower interest rates this year, which puts me on a path towards being debt free much sooner than I would have been. That felt really good. I didn't get any farther on my Shakespeare Challenge and I didn't do a whole lot of stitching, although I did build a number of Lego kits and 3-D puzzles, which was a lot of fun. I definitely think I could have done better at stress management, but by the end of the year I had acclimated to the heightened stress levels to some extent. That's probably not actually a good thing in the long run, but at least I managed to keep up with getting a decent night's sleep most of the time, so hopefully that balanced out some of the stress. And blogging here more than once this year - yeah, not so much. :) I'll post the goals for 2017 (because I'm going to make some definite ones this time) in another post shortly.<br />
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Well, enough of that - I'm ready to face what 2017 brings. I know it isn't going to be an easy year, but bring it on!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-12232625040950938482016-03-02T17:22:00.001-06:002021-08-15T10:36:30.091-05:00Uuuuuhhh, Happy New Year?I guess if we still used March 25 as the start of the new year like they did back in Tudor times I would be early. Or if I used the Asian lunar calendar I wouldn't be as late? Oh wait, it's my birthday today, so it's the start of MY new year. Yes, that's what I meant!<br />
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While I was sitting in my office waiting to see if the clouds would clear so I could run the telescope tonight, I decided it was time to finally update this blog and check in with last year's goals and lay out the goals for 2016. Of last year's goals, the only one I 100% met was to take a real, honest-to-god vacation. I went to England for two weeks and had a great time! Eventually I'll process the thousands of photos I took and get them posted on Flickr.<br />
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Of the goals that I did decently on: <br />
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* Watch a 'new to me' movie every week -- not too bad. I skipped the two weeks I was on vacation and a week that I had to travel for work, but other than that, I did really well up to the last two months of the year when everything went totally nuts.<br />
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* Read 35 books as my Goodreads Challenge -- I think I finished with 32, so close, but not quite.<br />
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* Do six 30-day challenges -- I did 3 really well, and pretty good on a 4th one, but I didn't manage 6.<br />
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* Finish 10 video games -- I managed 5. Not great, but at least I did get a few done!<br />
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And the ones that I totally missed on: <br />
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* Shakespeare's plays... ironically since I spent several days in and around Stratford-upon-Avon, I didn't actually read any plays last year. <br />
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* Writing reviews for my Tudor history site - nope. I haven't been reading many Tudor books lately since I think I've been a little burned out on the subject.<br />
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* Weight goal - nope, not even close. The stress levels I had in the second half of last year actually caused me to gain weight to the point that I'm almost to the point I was when I started to lose the 15-20 pounds I shed a couple of years ago.<br />
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* Finish the year with less debt than I started with -- nope. Partly it was because of the vacation, but a lot was vet bills and car repairs that ended up eating the money that I had planned to use to pay for most of the vacation. <br />
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* Stitching and craft projects - I hardly touched any of my stitching stuff last year. Given the stress levels at the end of the year, I probably SHOULD have done more stitching, but I didn't manage it.<br />
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Looking back at everything, I can see that I was pretty energetic and optimistic at the beginning of 2015, but I sure didn't finish it that way. The two weeks off at the winter break was good for getting some of my energy back heading into 2016, but it didn't take too long for me to start feeling stressed again. As a result, I decided not to set any firm goals for this year but I do hope to have some general personal improvements in 2016. I'm still hoping to end this year weighing less and having less debt than I started the year with and to read some more Shakespeare, do more stitching, etc. I did set my Goodreads challenge at 35 books again to try achieve the goal that I barely missed in 2015. Better managing my stress this year is going to be one of my top priorities, and I think doing that will be wrapped up with everything else.<br />
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Oh, and maybe I'll actually blog a little more than the ONE time I updated this site last year. :)Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-78964281693895041022015-01-22T21:24:00.002-06:002021-08-15T10:38:10.078-05:00Welcome 2015!Given that we're already three weeks into the new year and I'm just now getting around to writing my "Happy New Year" post, any resolutions about not procrastinating have already gone out the window. (Thankfully, I didn't actually make any procrastination resolutions or goals, although I probably should have!)<br />
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So, it's time to check in on <a href="http://blog.larae.net/2014/01/happy-new-year.html">last year's goals</a>, see how I did, and write down my goals for 2015.<br />
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One goal that I didn't actually write about last year was something work-related that I was going to try as an experiment. We get a lot of requests for help at events and I was going to try to do more of them myself (in addition to the regular ones that I already do every year) instead of just soliciting volunteers. Well, I did, and it really wore me out. Early in my career I did most outreach events myself for a variety of reasons, but as I've gotten older and the climate has gotten a little friendlier for getting volunteers, I've backed off the number I do either by myself or with other volunteers. Well, by the end of the year, I was totally burned out, so this year I'll go back to doing fewer myself and mostly just stick with the usual events I've been doing. (And it will be easier to do since we had a number of extra events in 2014 that we won't have in 2015.)<br />
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Now on to the goals I did write about. The first one I mentioned was to read/watch/listen to all of Shakespeare's plays for the 450th anniversary of his birth. I only made it through one third of the plays and all of the Sonnets (partly thanks to the extra work I was doing, mentioned above), but I've decided to keep going on this one. It actually works out well that 2016 will be the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, so I'll do another third of the plays this year and finish them up next year (along with the other poems besides the sonnets).<br />
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Next up was a weight goal, which I didn't meet. I didn't really come close to the number or deadline I was aiming for, but I still ended up weighing less at the end of the year than I did at the start, so ultimately I'm happy with that. I also didn't really make much of a dent in reducing my credit card debt, largely in part to the extra income I get from Google ads on my Tudor history site was all over the place, which makes it really hard to budget. Plus I owed a bunch in taxes, had car repairs, my rent went up by a lot, etc. So that was pretty much just a wash, unfortunately.<br />
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For the craft projects, I did surprisingly well given the extra work I was doing. I did manage to meet the goal of framing or finishing 6 projects (I think I actually doubled that!), but I only managed to complete the stitching on 4 projects. I guess we can tell which one actually takes a lot more time! You can see what I did last year over on <a href="http://threads.larae.net/">my needlework blog</a>.<br />
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And finally, the book-related goals: I did make my Goodreads 30 book challenge, but I totally bombed the Tudor history book review goal. I started a few, but I didn't finish any of the reviews for books I had already read or finish reading any other books.<br />
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Now on to the goals of 2015!<br />
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* As mentioned above, I'm going to do another third of Shakespeare's plays this year, and finish them off in 2016.<br />
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* I've set my Goodreads book challenge at 35 this year, 5 over last year's goal.<br />
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* Continue to lose weight and hit [number redacted] by vacation.<br />
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* Actually take a vacation (the last real, honest-to-god, get-on-an-airplane vacation I took was in 2006).<br />
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* Watch at least one "new to me" movie every week. I have a whole slew of older movies I've never gotten around to that I need to catch up on.<br />
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* Finish 10 video games. I have a huge number of games that have piling up in my Steam library thanks to Humble Bundle sales and it's time to actually play some of them!<br />
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* Finish the stitching on 5 projects and frame/finish 5 stitched projects.<br />
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* Write 6 book reviews for my Tudor history site (and reviews that cover more than one book still only count as one).<br />
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* Finish the year with less revolving debt than I started with.<br />
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* Do six 30 day challenges. Right now I'm doing a no-alcohol January - which I often do anyway to give my liver a break after the holidays. :) (By the way, the idea of doing 30 day challenges came from <a href="https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/" target="new">Matt Cutts</a> of Google. I think they are a great idea!) I'll keep track of which ones I end up setting for myself and report back at the start of 2016. I *may* try NaNoWriMo this year as one of them. I've been wanting to do it for years, but it always seems to sneak up on me and I'm not prepared with any good ideas (or the research to do something with a few things I've already dabbled with), but if I can keep it in mind more this year - maybe set a 30 day research challenge? - I might be able to do it. <br />
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* Keep going on some near-daily tasks I'm already doing. I use a nifty little app called WonderfulDay that you can set up for keeping track of daily, weekly, etc. tasks. Right now I'm doing daily arm and core exercises and reading a comic book (in an attempt to keep working on the backlog of hundreds of free or cheap comics I've picked up in various promotions over the years). I give myself Wednesday off the exercises since that's the day I often work late at the telescope and is usually already my most active day of the week.<br />
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Most of these should be pretty easy to do if I can just keep nagging myself about them. I think some of the future 30 days challenges I've been contemplating might be harder, but we'll see!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-84664740066582692462014-03-23T20:45:00.000-05:002014-03-23T20:46:40.503-05:00Game of Thrones Exhibition at SXSW 2014<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/sets/72157642809321574/" target="new"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/thrones.jpg"></a><br />
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One of the great advantages to living in Austin is that, even if you don't get SXSW badges and/or wristbands, there are plenty of great free events that also happen in Austin during that time. Last year, it was the <a href="http://blog.larae.net/2013/03/jwst-and-nasa-at-sxsw.html">NASA tent and the JWST model</a>, this year, it was the Game of Thrones exhibition! They only allowed camera phones so these aren't the greatest photos ever, but I've uploaded the better ones to Flickr. The picture above goes to the full set. (Warning: there are spoilers in some of the photos!)Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-77758847472602183252014-01-01T15:10:00.003-06:002021-08-15T16:57:57.747-05:00Happy New Year!This is the obligatory Happy New Year post, but also another place for me to put some of my 2014 goals (note - not 'resolutions'!) to keep myself honest about them. I'll also be posting on twitter and a few other places.<br />
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The first thought I had for a goal is specifically connected to this being 2014, which is the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare. I have been on a bit of a Shakespeare kick lately anyway, so I don't expect this one will be TOO hard to achieve: to read/watch/listen to all of Shakespeare's plays. I'm going to read a sonnet a day too as a bonus. I'll mostly likely be tweeting and blogging about this particular goal through my Tudor history accounts, etc.<br />
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The next one is a typical "lose weight" - in this case to continue losing weight since I had already lost about 10 pounds in the last few months of 2013 once I decided to kick myself in the arse about it. No, you're not going to get my goal number here, but I will say the goal date is at the end of July when we have our summer board meeting out at the observatory.<br />
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Another, probably fairly typical, is to continue decreasing my credit card debit. Again, no numbers, but I'd like to get half of my revolving balance on one of my big cards paid off. (Sadly, I'll still have one other large one, but I hope to continue chipping away at it too.)<br />
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The next two are related to the vast pile of craft projects in various states of completion. My goal is to frame (or finish into ornaments or whatever) six projects that I've already completed the stitching on and to finish the stitching on 10 projects (small ones count!). I'll most likely just post about those on <a href="http://threads.larae.net/">Lara's Loose Threads</a>.<br />
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The rest are book related. I've got a huge stack of books that authors and publishers have so generously sent me over the years and I've been really bad about writing reviews of them. So I'm going to set the goal of writing 10 book reviews for my Tudor history blog. I've already read several of the books, but I just need to sit down and review them! And for reading in general, I've set my 2014 Reading Challenge at Goodreads to 30 books, which should be doable since it includes all the audiobooks that I listen to driving to and from work.<br />
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So, let's see how I do! I'll go over the list at the end of the year and tally them up. Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-25464504845892018072013-11-10T15:20:00.004-06:002013-11-10T15:20:53.717-06:00Another arbitrary milestone!Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of this blog, so it's another time for me to lament not blogging more here. I've figured out that part of the fall-off of posts is due to the fact that I started using Twitter and a lot of things that I would have posted here end up posted there. But I will still continue to try to post more!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-57907449345764703472013-10-24T11:29:00.001-05:002021-08-15T16:56:59.035-05:00Sherwood Forest Faire photo set finally up at Flickr!<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/sets/72157635694076024/" target="new"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/joust2013-sm.jpg"></a><br />
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Well, I posted the photos on Flickr a while back, I'm just now getting around to posting about it here too. Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-59550748093152715072013-06-09T12:32:00.003-05:002021-08-15T16:56:40.690-05:00More thoughts on educationI have posted before on some of my <a href="http://blog.larae.net/2012/10/a-few-thoughts-on-college-education.html">thoughts on college education</a> and a great post by Carl Zimmer over at his blog "The Loom": <a href="http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/31/an-open-letter-to-science-students-and-science-teachers/" target="new">An Open Letter to Science Students and Science Teachers</a> has prompted me to think on it some more. His post sounded *very* familiar to me, and after reading comments on Twitter, very familiar to a lot of other people working in popular science and outreach. And if you substitute "history" for "science" this is also what I see a lot of through my Tudor History site as well. The post is a good example of why Carl is such a great writer; he managed to describe and sum up something I've been struggling to put into a words for quite a while now. I don't really have much to add to what he said, but there are definitely conversations to be had between professionals and students and teachers.Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-79801072750582438792013-03-13T16:53:00.003-05:002021-08-15T16:55:49.669-05:00JWST and NASA at SXSW<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/sets/72157632978278307/"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/jwst.jpg"></a><br />
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Northrop Grumman and NASA brought the full-scale model of the <a href="http://webbtelescope.org/webb_telescope/" target="new">James Webb Space Telescope</a> to the annual craziness in Austin that is South By Southwest. (For the record, I twitch uncontrollably when people abbreviate it to "South By" - if for no other reason in that it breaks the reference to North By Northwest, one of my favorite movies!) Working with one of our professors, they asked for volunteers to come down and help talk about the telscope and work at some of the tables in the NASA Experience tent, so I was down there for a while on Friday and all day Sunday. At the last minute I decided to throw my DSLR and my little travel tripod into my backpack since I knew that they were lighting the model up colorfully at night and that I had to get some photos. And I'm glad I did since I'm really happy with the way the photos turned out! Click on the photo at the top to go to the full Flickr set.<br />
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I had a great time talking about the telescope for the first part of the day even if I did manage to sunburn the top of my head. I was a little surprised that a few people asked if the model was the actual telescope, although I think everyone who asked that prefaced it with "I don't think it is, but I have to ask...". At one of the tables in the tent there were parts of the actual materials of the telescope, mostly the left over ends of things that were cut for the structure. I played with the parts a little on Friday and they are quite light, but that isn't too surprising given that it will have to be launched in to space.<br />
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I spent the afternoon working at the table with the infrared camera (the JWST will be an infrared telescope), which was a lot of fun. Kids in particular had a blast sticking their hands into the bucket of ice water and seeing how it looked on the camera. The most interesting visitor was a man with a medical condition that caused poor circulation in two of his fingers on one hand and the difference was quite easily visible.<br />
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And at the end of the day, the JWST folks made a successful attempt for an official Guinness World Record for Largest Astronomy Lesson. (The Guinness people are often at SXSW for a variety of interesting attempts at official records.) I stayed to watch that, but took off as soon as it was over since a day of sun, wind, talking, and allergies caught up to me!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-48001627573545006522013-02-04T20:46:00.002-06:002021-08-15T16:55:31.727-05:00Richard III news round-up[I decided to cross post this from my Tudorhistory blog since the science is just as important as the history!]<br />
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As expected, the University of Leicester announced this morning that they have confirmed that the remains found last summer are indeed those of Richard III. (<a href="http://tudorhistory.org/blog/2012/09/16/richard-iii-dig-news-round-up/">You can see my initial round-up from September here.</a>)<br />
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Here is the re-launched site about the project from the university: <a href="http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/" target="new">The search for Richard III - completed</a>. <br />
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You will find photos and information about all of the lines of inquiry that went into the identification there. The video of the press conference is supposed to be uploaded at some point as well. <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/media-centre/richard-iii/press-conference-4-february/presentations-by-speakers-at-the-press-conference-monday-4-february-1" target="new">You can find the presentations by the speakers at the press conference here.</a> They also mentioned on their twitter account that all of the research will be submitted to academic journals for peer review. (I'll stay out of the discussion of public and media interest vs. academic procedure, since I honestly don't know what the proper answer is. I've seen in the sciences that "press conference before peer review" can have unfortunate results, but I've also seen conclusions validated once papers are published.) <br />
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Here are some other informative links:<br />
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* <a href="http://www.historyextra.com/news/leicester-car-park-skeleton-richard-iii" target="new">Leicester car park skeleton 'is that of Richard III'</a><br />
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* <a href="http://www.historyextra.com/gallery/richard-iii-pictures" target="new">Richard III discovery in pictures</a><br />
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* <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21063882" target="new">Richard III dig: DNA confirms bones are king's</a><br />
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* <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21282241" target="new">Richard III: The twisted bones that reveal a king</a><br />
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* <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/interactive/2013/feb/04/king-richard-iii-body-last-plantagenet-interactive" target="new">Richard III's remains found in Leicester</a> (nice diagram of the site on this one)<br />
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I've also seen some remarks about the DNA testing not being the "proof" that it is being presented as, and that is technically correct. There is a chance that it is coincidence that the Michael Ibsen and Richard III have the same mitochondrial DNA because of its nature (if it is rare or common will affect the significance of the match). They were also able to track down another maternal line relative who consented to testing (but wished to remain anonymous) and the mtDNA matched between Ibsen and the anonymous subject as well as matching to the skeleton. We'll know more once the academic paper comes out but <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/media-centre/richard-iii/press-conference-4-february/presentations-by-speakers-at-the-press-conference-monday-4-february-1/geneticist-dr-turi-king-and-genealogist-professor-kevin-schurer-give-key-evidence-on-the-dna-testing" target="new">in the text of the presentation</a> the scientist is quoted as saying <i>"The analysis showed that these two individuals shared the same relatively rare mitochondrial DNA sequence."</i> I would also point out that the DNA tests did not exclude positive identification of Richard III (either because the skeleton wasn't Richard's or from mistakes in the genealogy) so that is helpful information as well. There is also on-going work with testing the Y-chromosome against known male-only lines, but this is more difficult and may be inconclusive for a variety of reasons.<br />
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To me, the osteological evidence, the historical and archaeological evidence, and the fact that the DNA and carbon dating results do not rule it out, the identification of the bones as those of Richard III does seem to be the correct conclusion. But keep in mind my degree is in astronomy, not archaeology! Still, all-in-all, it was an exciting day for me as a fan of both science and history.Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-66034477286928032172013-01-30T18:37:00.003-06:002021-08-15T16:54:58.826-05:00Seeing a conspiracy around every corner... or at least I have to think that is how some people go through life. <br />
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This is something I've wondered about for a long time, especially when I see people like Alex Jones going on and on about FEMA camps, black helicopters, etc. - how do people end up with a mindset that they see conspiracy in EVERYTHING? And to narrow it down some, why are so many people either afraid or seeing conspiracy in everything in the night sky? Was is started by all the noise around 2012? No, these things have been around for a long, long time - from ominous portents to selling "comet pills" to prevent being poisoned by the tail of Halley's Comet in 1910. But I can't help thinking that the 2012 stuff has created a revival of sorts. <br />
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The latest thing that prompted this thought was an email that came in to one of our general addresses and was forwarded on to me. It was a question about the object next to the moon on Monday January 21, which is a common type of inquiry we get when something bright is near something else bright in the night sky. (In this case it was Jupiter, which <a href="http://spaceweather.com/gallery/index.php?title=conjunc&title2=jupiter" target="new">some lucky people got to see as an occultation</a> - very cool!) Again, this is a very common question we get, but what caught my eye at the end of the email was "Can you tell me or is it a secret?". As I said on twitter.... "sigh". Considering that looking at it with even a decent pair of binoculars would reveal it to be Jupiter, it would be a very hard secret to keep if we tried!<br />
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Since I had the name and email address of the submitter, I decided to break out the Google and poke around. Sure enough, I found both the name and address on some forums dedicated to, shall we say... less than scientific modes of thinking. (Really, it was some serious woo-woo stuff going on there.) I could have asked him why he would have asked the "secret" question, but I'm honestly not sure that would have helped a whole lot. Plus, I'm just not that confrontational (which is probably a good thing in my line of work, it keeps me out of trouble!). <br />
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I know that in some cases (and possibly in this case, based on what I found) there is something genuinely wrong with the person's brain - and I mean that in a clinical sense, not to be flippant. And in other cases, I think it stems from a general human reaction to fear what they don't understand. After all, that was a pretty advantageous trait when we were evolving in the African savanna. So is the solution, in these latter cases, more education? I hope so, since I think that is a problem that CAN be fixed. Yes, I'm an optimist. :)Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-64897305827670696572013-01-01T14:15:00.001-06:002021-08-15T16:54:40.981-05:00Happy New Year!<img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/HNY2013.jpg"><br />
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Here's hoping that 2013 turns out to have all of the awesome of 2012 and none of the crap. <br />
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Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-9159949360560820552012-12-31T15:28:00.001-06:002021-08-15T16:52:36.384-05:00Space Shuttle Endeavour visits Austin, Part DeuxOn September 20, the Space Shuttle <i>Endeavour</i> did a fly-over of Austin and I caught a really cool photo of it with the UT Tower. You can see <a href="http://blog.larae.net/2012/09/space-shuttle-endeavour-visits-austin.html">my original blog post about it here</a>. <br />
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<center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/8006015309/in/photostream" target="new"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/shuttle-tower-sm.jpg"></a><br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Shuttle <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Endeavour">#Endeavour</a> flying next to the UT Tower <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23spottheshuttle">#spottheshuttle</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23austin">#austin</a> <a href="http://t.co/Tr67VHnM" title="http://twitpic.com/awk6ky">twitpic.com/awk6ky</a></p>— Lara Eakins (@LaraEakins) <a href="https://twitter.com/LaraEakins/status/248766400020234240" data-datetime="2012-09-20T12:51:46+00:00">September 20, 2012</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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The weird thing was that for the next few months, after the initial rush of the first few days, I still saw a trickle of retweets, views, and comments. <br />
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Then, I got a tweet from someone at Twitter saying that they would like to use the tweet/photo as part of an official Twitter project. I was intrigued, but figured it would show up somewhere buried in a 2012 wrap-up. Well, I was partially correct, it was in a 2012 wrap-up, but buried it certainly wasn't! Imagine my surprise when it showed up here:<br />
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<center><a href="https://2012.twitter.com/en/only-on-twitter.html" target="new">Only on Twitter</a><br />
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And here: <br />
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<a href="http://larae.net/blogpics/twitter2012page.png"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/twitter2012page.jpg"></a><br />
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And here:<br />
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<a href="http://larae.net/blogpics/youtube1.png"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/youtube1.jpg"></a><br />
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And in the video itself:<br />
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<img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/youtube2.png"><br />
(Below the Curiosity rover and next to Barack and Michelle Obama. Seriously?!?!)<br />
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And here's the whole video:<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NoeMsc4QlAA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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And one of the more amusing places that the photo and tweet showed up was this blog entry from the TexasExes: <a href="http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2012/12/ut-tower-lands-on-twitters-most-popular-posts-of-2012/" target="new">UT Tower Lands on Twitter’s Most Popular Posts of 2012</a><br />
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Compared to <a href="https://2012.twitter.com/en/golden-tweets.html" target="new">Barack Obama's most re-tweeted tweet ever</a>, my little photo and tweet of the Space Shuttle <i>Endeavour</i> was nothing. But to an average person like me it was a big deal! <br />
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The stats as of today, the last day of 2012, are: on Flickr - over 5500 views, 100+ favorites and 39 comments. The actual tweet directly from my account was retweeted about 800 times, but I also sent it to several local news outlets and *their* tweets also got a lot of traffic so the twitpic is edging towards 35,000 views! There were also several shares and about 800 likes on Facebook (I think, it's hard to track stuff like that on Facebook) and there were shares on Google+ and on blogs. I did a search on the link to the Twitpic (http://twitpic.com/awk6ky) and saw all sorts of links that I didn't even know about before! And I've gained about 150 followers in the past few weeks - I'm sure most of them are people hunting for follow-backs or are spambots, but still, it's kind of cool. :)<br />
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I did post a couple more pictures of the fly-over, although they weren't as special as the Tower shot, I did like this one of it coming in:<br />
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<center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhubarble/8009690361/in/photostream/" target="new"><img src="http://larae.net/blogpics/comingin.jpg"></a><br />
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While I doubt 2013 will bring anything like this, I'm still excited to see what happens in the new year!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18139020.post-60407488126579798872012-12-30T16:33:00.002-06:002021-08-15T16:52:19.000-05:002012 was a pretty amazing yearI knew going in that 2012 was going to be a pretty busy year for me, and it was! Personally the highlights were the AAS meeting in January, successfully pulling off the very popular public viewing of the Venus transit in June, and seeing the Space Shuttle <i>Endeavour</i> in September (more about that later...). But in the broader world, there was some pretty incredible stuff this year. There were also some sad good-byes and heartbreaking tragedies, and I know it was a rough year for some of my friends and acquaintances, but I want to focus on the good things.<br />
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Humans literally went to the extremes - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_cameron" target="new">James Cameron</a> solo dived to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench" target="new">deepest part of the Earth's oceans</a>, while <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner" target="new">Felix Baumgartner</a> jumped from a balloon in the stratosphere. And we got to see both occur live on our computers.<br />
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Physicists have probably discovered the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson" target="new">Higgs boson</a>, one of the key points of modern <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model" target="new">Standard Model</a> of physics. (I'll refrain from grousing about how it could have been discovered 15 years sooner and here in Texas if the Congress hadn't been so short-sighted in canceling the Superconducting Supercollider in 1993.)<br />
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I saw a man run in the Olympics on two artificial legs. Wow. <br />
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Private spaceflight is becoming a reality and <a href="http://www.spacex.com/" target="new">SpaceX</a> is proved it can do the job of the low-earth orbit tasks and leave the big stuff, like going beyond Earth orbit, to NASA.<br />
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And the highlight, in my opinion, was the amazing landing of the <a href="http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/" target="new">Mars Science Laboratory</a> <i>Curiosity</i> rover on Mars. I *still* can't believe that worked...<br />
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On a more personal and far less scientific note, this was a great year for one of my favorite places on Earth - London. The Queen's <a href="http://www.thediamondjubilee.org/" target="new">Diamond Jubilee</a> was a great warm-up to their hosting the Olympics just a few weeks later and I loved every minute of watching both. I realized while watching the Olympics - in particular the cycling at Hampton Court Palace - that of all the cities that have hosted the Olympics, London is the one I've spent the most time in. (And I've only been in 2 other cities that have hosted - Rome, which hosted the games before I was born, and Atlanta. Well, technically I've been in St. Louis too, but only the airport!). <br />
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From my history side - the <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/media-centre/richard-iii" target="new">possible discovery of the remains of Richard III</a>. The historical detective work that went into if was amazing enough, but the fact that they have found remains that, circumstantially at this point, might be what they were looking for is astounding. It still gives me chills!<br />
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On my geeky side - "The Avengers" was amazing and I'm still so impressed that Marvel has been able to put together such a good string of movies and was able to bring it all together into a movie that was even better than the sum of its parts. The finale to the Batman trilogy was perfect as well. And we got to go back to Middle Earth! But the tops for me was the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney and the announcement that we would indeed get episodes VII, VIII, and IX. This is a kind of Holy Grail of my childhood, to see all 9 episodes of the Star Wars "Skywalker family" saga actually happen. And I'm looking forward to some of the other Star Wars projects that have been mentioned outside of the 9-part sage. Personally I'd love to see some stuff set in the Old Republic days.<br />
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I'm sure there are things I'm missing, but these are a few of the things that will make 2012 special in my memories!Larahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16630629272030282584noreply@blogger.com0