Three years later (plus a little)

It's been three years (plus a few extra days) since we got married... where do we stand?  We have a house... we're still awesome... I guess that about sums it up.  Ha.  In all seriousness, it's been such a whirlwind and I had no idea how quickly time would pass. 

Six years ago (yeah... weirds me out a little too) we decided to join some friends for dinner... it's crazy how even with so much time can go by without talking to someone it can turn into such an easy conversation.... So we started over...

John helping me drive across the country to start a new chapter in Chicago in the summer of 2006.

Bringing in 2007 -- No judgement with the bottle of champagne.. it was a lovely night.

From that dinner in 2005, to my move to Chicago, to many trips to Cincinnati, to John's graduation and finally getting to Chicago... we made our way to this:

October 12, 2008

You know you love someone when you both wear tights for Halloween (2009):

Sam Adams Oktoberfest and Robin Hood Men in Tights - Classic.

2010 brought big Texas hair... and a new home! 

So, I know it looks like I got caught in a hurricane while having aqua net hairspray.  I promise you that's not the case - this is what is described as "a bun to the side" and "natural make-up".

I just wanted to prove that I looked like myself while in Texas, while posing a gas station with longhorns in the background.

Now here we are... 3 years after our wedding day... and I'm still amazed by how "easy" it's all been.  Getting married didn't mean a huge "change" where we seemed like different people.  It was just a natural progression.  The big joke around our house now is that every time John starts doing something in the house, be it cleaning, or cooking, or something seemingly random.. I end up gravitating to his side and when he asks what I'm doing - the inevitable response "I don't know - I just want to do what you're doing".  We're like that.  I feel lucky that I truly just love being a part of what he's doing and I know that he feels the same.  I look forward to many years of enjoying being a part of each other's lives.

Our friend's wedding this past weekend - October 15, 2011

So here we start year number four... three years went by so quickly, I think I've got this "for-e-ver" thing in the bag.

(Disclaimer - you must read the "for-e-ver" as though you are watching Sandlot and then it sounds a lot less haughty and a lot more funny....)

(And as a shameless plug - I'm still updating our travel blog (www.m-plus-j-plus-theworld.blogspot.com)... although not as quickly as I would like.  I'm slowly adding the rest of our trip.  To be fair, I think I was overly ambitious to start the blog with such an intense travel experience - and honestly it would have been great if Europe's Internet was more reliable.)

Medal-ed

Sorry... another post without pictures.... I forgot to take one when I finished, but I figured I would let the results be known.. I'm still alive from my half marathon debut. It took me 2:59:24... which means that I made it within my personal goal by 36 seconds... Woohoo! I mean, I would have liked to be done faster than that, but I'll take it! I ran with Al Roker for about 5 miles. I mean, I didn't run "with", but I definitely ran behind and next to and in front of him for quite a while, and it took me about 3 miles to figure out who the guy was running with an in-shape person and a person on a bicycle. Best news though, I beat him by about 3 minutes. Woohoo!

Next time (if there is one..) I would like to be faster than 2:45... we'll see if that happens. John and I might end up running a 10 mile in November. I hope to get in better shape for that one, and train more than 6 weeks and run more than 5 miles during said training. We'll see how it goes though. :)

Now the countdown begins for our trip to Europe. We have booked hotels, plane tickets, and train tickets... I can't believe we are almost there. I've told my office that if I get any sort of job while on vacation, I will not be returning to my current position.... I don't know that they believe me, but I would do bike tours, I would sell cheese (my friend's sister sells cheese in the Netherlands and she always has delicious cheese when she visits).... I would hmmm.... I don't know my limit... but I love visiting and it's always so hard for me to come home.

We are starting a travel blog for our experience .... I'm trying to get John into blogging so that people don't have to listen to me all the time. :) It will also show our trip and pictures and the likes which will hopefully be good? We'll see how it works out. (Ohhhh... and the blog will be up soon, but it's still in progress so I won't post it just yet...)

We are still looking to find Sheeba a home. We are also looking forward to having a dog-free home. Call that heartless, what have you, but it's been such an eye-opening experience about how UN-ready we are for a dog! She's so wonderful, but she needs a yard... she needs a suburb! All things that we cannot offer. We are hoping that she finds something before we leave so that we can come home to a dog-hair-free zone. (Crossing fingers)

Otherwise we are gearing up for the next couple of weekends. Lifehouse at Ravinia (yes, we are reliving the late 90's and early 00's).... Dubuque, Iowa (every one's favorite vacation spot).... and then the most ridiculously full Labor Day weekend ever.... Fantasy football draft, Guster at Ravinia, Beer Olympics, and a Cubs game... Phew... all to take it easy so that we can get pack and get ready to be gone for 15 days... Yeah, we might be dirty Americans in Europe... I hate laundry........

What have I gotten myself into?

The time has come... one of my "resolutions" is coming to fruition.... My half marathon is SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!! When I signed up back in February, it seemed as though I had ages to train, get ready, get in shape, etc etc etc. Weird how quickly that times passes. My biggest problem is that I may have (okay, I most defnitely did) stopped my training about a month ago... Mainly because I didn't so much get the runners high at 6 miles and from then on motivation was severely lacking. The one thing it did is teach me that if I really want to, I can in fact get up at 6:15 in the morning to go for a run. I didn't think that was possible. It also showed me that if I were to keep at it, I would actually like running again like I did in college. I just have to work a little bit harder so that I'm not out of breath before I even reach the lakefront path (0.75 miles away from my door)... With that in mind (the out of breath part) this Sunday should be interesting as I only need to go approximately 17.5 times that distance to complete the race.

It is the Rock 'N' Roll Half Marathon though, which means that bands will be playing, people will be excited, or at least as excited as they can be with a race that starts at 6:30 in the morning... so I'm really hoping the adrenaline and the excitement of everything will at least get me through the first 5 miles. The good news is that the max time limit for the race is 3.5 hours, which equates out to a 16 minute mile. That means that if I at least run part of it, I will be golden since I usually walk a 15 minute mile so I could probably stop and listen to a band for a few minutes and still at least finish in the time limit (assuming I don't enter a running/exercise induced stupor that requries medical attention).... So that keeps me going.

I started freaking out about 2 days ago since it's just right around the corner. I have about 6 people I know running in the race too, all of which have been diligent in their training.... So I started wondering if I was going to make an ass of myself. I don't particularly like making an ass of myself (although I think I do it with relative frequency - I just don't like to walk in knowing it's going to happen). My freakout caused me to google phrases like "what's the average time for a first timer's half marathon"... "is it embarrassing to finish a half marathon in over 3 hours"... "is it worth running a half marathon in over 3 hours or should I just give up"..... Strangely enough there were actually things that pop up with some of those searches. I came to realize that even the 1 hr 30 min half marathoners were encouraging and saying that you should just go through with it because who else can really say that they ran for 3 hours on a Sunday morning. I guess that makes sense, but I'm still pretty sure I'm going to have a hard time dealing with the feeling of humiliation (warranted or not, I still am feeling it right now).... We'll see how it goes.

So with that, I am calling upon my avid reader(s?) to think of me on Sunday morning and send me thoughts of athleticism and quick feet so that hopefully I can make it through for the medal at the end of the race!

Soon to come - udpates on our European vacation planning (just around the corner!), updates on Sheeba - seriously does anyone know someone in a place somewhere that has a high fence and no other pets that wants a 4 yo dog ? No? Too many disclaimers?......

Bridge Inspections Gone Wild!!

Let me preface with - I look absolutely ridiculous in a hard hat, safety vests are impossible to look cool in, and fall protection harnesses are incredibly uncomfortable - and apparently one of my thighs is bigger than the other and it changes based on the day. Haha.. Otherwise, my bridge inspection tour (errr - 2 bridges) has been mildly successful. I guess if you look at it in the fact that I never had to test my fall protection harness, then it was extremely successful.

All in all, I have spent about 2.5 weeks inspecting bridges. The first one, I mostly sat under the bridge on the catwalk (and yes, I spent about 90% of my time trying to not sing "I do my little turn on the catwalk/yeah on the catwalk...") while my coworkers were inside inspecting.

Took a little bit of time to get comfortable walking along the catwalk when you can see straight through the walk. It gives a slight feeling of vertigo, but it went away after a few hours.

I was only there the first 4 days to make sure that in the confined space (i.e. the 10'x7' to 15'x7' box beams) the air quality didn't make them pass out. Luckily, everyone was safe and I got in some good guide book reading for our Europe trip.

This is the door opening to the box beams. There were 4 for each line of beams, and there were 4 beams. So, I sat at these holes for 4 days while my coworkers were inside. I had bruises in places I had never had bruises.

When I showed up to the first bridge inspection, I got my first look at the snooper. It's essentially a cherry-picker/man-lift, except instead of going up, it goes off the side of the bridge, down, and then around and under. It was terrifying to think that I was going to be getting in that basket, but what they didn't tell me, is that to get on the catwalk, I would need to leave the relative "safety" of the snooper, climb up and over the catwalk railing, and then just be there about 40'-50' in the air. If they had told me that before getting me under the bridge though, I probably would have said "I'm good guys... I think I'll just stay up here on the deck". As it was, I was already there and didn't have much of a choice.

Here is the snooper before we got in.

This is the snooper in action, to give an idea of how it operates. It's pretty jerky, and after you get off, you kind of have the feeling of sea-legs.

On Thursday, once I was feeling pretty comfortable walking along the catwalk and generally being a troll under the bridge, we needed to be picked up. The problem: there is only room for 3 people in the snooper. That meant, the 3 of us under the bridge needed to be picked up in shifts. We had to climb down a 10' ladder to the top of the pier (yeah, as in the top of the pier.... however many 10's of feet in the air... and we can't tie off since our lanyards aren't big enough for it). I was super nervous. We had to go up in shifts. Since Linda (another inspector) was actually going to stay in the snooper and keep inspecting, Dennis and I got to go up first. I felt so bad leaving her at the top of the pier while we went top side. If that had been me, I would definitely be freaking out. We left her tied off to the ladder, sitting the middle of the pier.

So glad that's not me! But it could have been. I just got the first pick up.

The second bridge that we worked on was just down the river. This time, I was actually in the lift, on the truss above the bridge. That means that I was going to be 60' in the air... I was a little nervous about how it was going to go. I have a little bit of nervousness with heights, but I wasn't going to be sure of how I would react until I was up there. Turns out, I'm much more comfortable in the air, than under. Who knew?

The bridge. The through truss is what I was working on this time.

The view from one of the higher points of the bridge. It's the Illinois River below us. Lots of barge traffic, but other than the main channel, it's only a couple of feet deep.

The deck below, just to give an idea of how high we were up. We had to look at each of those steel members of the truss. I think I might have found one of the more monotonous jobs of my life. W.O.W. 5 full days of going up, down, across.. up, down, across...

This is the last day in the 60' lift. I was finally relaxed in the lift, hence I am not holding tightly onto the edge of the basket with white knuckles, so that was definitely an improvement.

We were able to get to most of the bridge with the 60' lift, but for the highest peaks we needed to use a 125' lift. I went up the first time, but with all the bracing and everything else made it a tough squeeze. So, they decided to put someone on the ground to act as a bit of a traffic calming measure and to just have an extra set of eyes on the ground to make sure the wheels didn't go over the line... luckily that was me! The tall lift wasn't making me nervous with the height, it was the fact that we needed to thread it through the holes in the bracing and going back and forth to make it to the crest of the truss. I was not about to get stuck up at the top of this bridge. At one point, when they were checking one of the higher members, the basket spazzed out and tried to dump my coworker and the operator. It was siting at a 30 degree angle, with them just bracing themselves against the railing. It took about 20 minutes for them to get the lift to get moving again and finally put them back on solid ground. Needless to say, I did not get back in the lifts after that. Ha.

One of the hardest parts of the inspection for me is that we don't take a lunch break so that we can get in a solid 8-9 hours of work. There aren't any nearby bathrooms (unless your a guy, which on things like this is SOOO not fair) so I don't want to be the one to make everyone take a break so that I can go to a gas station. That means that I don't drink much water. I was lucky for the first inspection that it was 60-70 degrees, but the second inspection had heat indices in the 90's and 100's which made it much more intense. You know it's a problem when you drink 2 gatorades, 2 small waters, and 1 large water, and you don't need to go to the bathroom for 15 hours. Ha. I definitely drank more after that so that I wasn't at risk of passing out.

So - that's my story of how I became a bridge inspector. Hopefully the rest are few and far between. But I'm not going to lie - aside from the fashion disaster that construction work is for me, I still feel like a bad ass. :)

Home Improvements and other randomness

It's been a while since I've provided any sort of updates to this blog. I've been busy with work, life, miscellaneous things that I have nothing to show for, and clearly not busy with providing my loyal (+/- 3) readers with what we have been up to for the last month.One thing I have found is a place to make random collages... haha, so you get to be the first to look at my fairly terrible skills in putting together photos. (Whenever I type "skills" I find it hard to keep myself from writing skillz and singing All-4-One in my head). Although as you will soon see, I do NOT so much have these skillZ.

One fun project I had been super excited about trying was chalkboard paint. I had seen a couple of awesome examples of how to use it, and I had been wanting a place to try it for a long time. Luckily John is just as excited about "art" projects too, so on a cold March weekend we decided to test it out in our bedroom. We thought it would be best to try it in a room we hadn't painted yet, so in case we didn't like it, we weren't really wasting time already spent with fresh paint. So below is our before and after... plus a little m+j action to test it out!


Then, just for the fun sake of collages, I put one together of the Sheebs. :) We are hoping that she will be on the website for PAWS soon so that we can find her a really happy and loving home... I like the one on the bottom left because apparently it was taken by John when he came home one night.. I like to lay down, and try to leave enough room for Sheebs to share the couch... I'm happy to know that she totally uses it, and she does NOT eat our pillows while I'm snoozing. :)


Now to showcase some of the fun projects we've been doing around the house (aside from the chalkboard paint). In our spare room we have been trying to figure out what we can do to get some better use of space. We are going to be getting rid of the wardrobe that we have in there currently. (hopefully we can sell it on craigslist soon!) So, we made a trip to The Container Store a while back on a whim. We were wanting to get rid of John's broken dresser so we were getting some wire shelves to put in our closet for the few things that he keeps in there. It turns out they were having a pretty ridiculous sale on Elfa systems so we decided to get a few shelves to line one of our walls in order to get some space to put the immense number of random objects from our wardrobe. Then we decided we should absolutely put them up! I was so proud of us for actually installing them so soon after buying them. No procrastination there! They were totally worth it, and we do love them.. Although we need to get some serious organization on to make them look uncluttered and not so full. We also need to get some of the junk in our spare room cleared out so that it doesn't look so cluttered in general. Any suggestions? I thnk the #1 suggestion should be to eliminate how much we own... that would be true.

John using the laser-level for us to make sure our penciled holes are going to be level. We did a pretty good job. (Note: The green walls will be painted one of these days... I'm excited for that day)

Martinis do make the job go better... We waited to drink them until after our leveling.

Our final product on the wall!!!

Yes, the shelves are currently very bottom heavy, but we are working on pairing some of that down and reorganizing. It just shows how much they can hold.. It's amazing!

The expanded shelves for our pantry. I'm so excited to be able to put all of our small appliances in there!!

So those are some of the fun things that we've done lately. This weekend has been pretty laid back for us and it was awesome. John had a fun beer tasting at a friends house, I was lucky enough to hang out with the Sheebs for the evening and watch really high quality tv (NCIS, Fried Green Tomatoes, Criminal Minds). Then this morning I made these:

Crepes a la Frenchy!

While looking at this:

The view from our front window...

So that's about all that's going on over this way. Work is busy, life is pretty busy, and the summer is supposedly getting started. I'll believe it when it doesn't keep dipping to 30 degrees outside. On a random note, we were able to take advantage of one of the best parts of living by Wrigley Field yesterday - as John and I left brunch yesterday morning, we walked by a guy on the corner selling tickets for 1/2 price. We ended up walking into the game for a total of $30 in the 2nd inning and watching the Cubs get their first win of the season! It was a great time. :)

How do you manage stress? I cry at FedEx...

Have you ever had a moment when you have a very public (and embarrassing) meltdown and you have NO idea where it came from? Even if you haven't, I hope that you will at least nod your head in a very apologetic and sincere way so that I feel I'm not alone... I apologize in advance for the probably lengthy post this will turn into.

It happened to me... yesterday... in FedEx. I feel terrible for the woman behind the counter who had to put up with this humiliating moment in my life - but in all fairness, she started it. What took me over the edge was packing peanuts. I know it doesn't seem like those innocent packing pieces should create such a problem... but they are the catalyst which made me sob, yell, and just overall have a breakdown at my local FedEx. It went a little something like this..

I walked into the FedEx at 6:15 with my box fully packed, with my FedEx label affixed to the top - all by the book. Pick up for next day delivery is at 7pm, and I had to meet Jennifer at 6:35 to get a ride to our hair appointment. Apparently the box I was using (a supply shipping box that FedEx actually uses to ship their supplies??) was not allowed -- even though I had seen the FedEx label to the person who originally had this box because I had covered it up so as to not confuse the FedEx delivery truck with 2 delivery labels.... Following so far - it's confusing, I know. I apparently used the wrong box - even though it had been used to ship something at some point in time... To give you a general idea of what happened - I'll supply an abbreviated version of our conversation...

I wanted to send the package, it was the wrong box. What happened next was a drawn out conversation (this word is used loosely, it was really me ranting and crying) about how I should have come downstairs to buy a new box (but I didn't know this box wouldn't work)... what the account number was (I had a pre-printed FedEx slip, shouldn't it be on there somewhere?? Isn't it her job to find that out for me?).... not finding the account so me volunteering to buy a box, repack my items, and be reimbursed by my company... That's when the trouble started.

I was informed that in order to package my reports I had to buy packing peanuts. Up to this point, I was just annoyed, when she said it was policy that I buy packing peanuts if I was going to repack my box but I wasn't wanting packing peanuts... that's when I lost it. I went over to the boxes, started pulling them up and throwing them down because they weren't big enough, all the while yelling "This is so frustrating!!! I don't want packing peanuts!!! I just want to mail my reports!! They are paper reports and they can't be damaged!!" All the while she's telling me it's policy and that it's required to have packing peanuts... Then I said, "well the box that's in front of you doesn't have packing peanuts inside, does that mean you can't mail it because I told you that??!!" She didn't think that was very nice... Eventually she did find my account number, while I had my head in my hands on the desk, sobbing uncontrollably, and apologizing and saying that I wasn't actually mad at her.... And then I ran out of the FedEx once she said she would take care of it and it would be delivered tomorrow....

Moral of the story? Don't ever talk to me about packing peanuts....

Why did I have a breakdown at FedEx you ask? I have absolutely no idea. I mean, the woman wasn't very pleasant in the beginning (only after I started sobbing and apologizing for yelling did she finally show any sort of compassion or understanding)... so I was definitely frustrated... but mainly? I have absolutely no idea...

A number of things (good, and overwhelming) have happened over the last few days, so I could probably use some of those things as an excuse... I haven't been feeling well since last Sunday, subsequently I've had horrible dreams (nightmares ranging from creepy people to waking up hours late for work and freaking out - this one happened about 3 times last night alone).... Frenchy and Lisa (while ok) just survived a horrible earthquake in Christchurch. I thought it was fine, but I started looking more into it, hearing their stories of how their house is completely split in two and they've lost almost everything, how Lisa is stuck on the North Island because she was trying to get home and her plane was diverted.. and it's so overwhelming to think how any of those people who didn't survive could have been them.

My boss has told me that while I shouldn't worry "hard" about my job, I should worry "appropriately" - which I don't know what that actually means. It means that for now I still have work to do I guess.. But I really hope it also means that we get some of this work to finally trickle down so that I can stay billable and busy.

I'm totally stressing about the Sheebs. I love her.. and I don't want to give her back - ever. But we really aren't equipped to own a dog. It's stressful to us, I'm sure it's stressful to her, and it's so hard to completely change our lives. We aren't really used to coming home right after work, or not being able to do certain things because we either can't take Sheebs with us or we can't leave her alone. Our house is covered in dog hair and I have lost countless shirts to her obsession with my deodorant (which makes her chew out the armpits of my shirts... it's awesome). But I still do love her. :) I just know that she can also probably find a family that doesn't live in a neighborhood that is swarming with dogs, that doesn't have to leave her in her crate for 10+ hours a day, and that can really just do a better job that we can. I know she loves us, but she loves everyone, so I really hope that she can find a family she can love more!! (So if you know of anyone that wants a wonderful dog????? We would really like to be able to deliver her straight to her adoptive family without a stop at the shelter) I've been putting off emailing the woman at PAWS for a month now because I just don't have the heart to tell her that Sheebs once again is going to have to move to another home... :(

On the good side, I have some fun news. John's parents were lucky enough to win 2 round trip tickets and 3 night stay to anywhere in Europe. This means that they have decided to extend those 3 nights and make a 2 week vacation of Europe and have invited all of us to join them! So, we are in the throws of planning a 2 week vacation to Europe in September for all 6 of us. It's super exciting. I just got my new passport back yesterday in the mail. It's a little weird looking, but it's great to have it back! (Hopefully John's gets here soon since I did mail them on the same day...hmmm) Right now the plan is London, Paris, Tuscany (Florence, various small towns), Rome, Venice, and Dublin.... It's going to be a full trip for sure.

So maybe it's all of those things.. Maybe it's just a random week that had a lot of stress that I didn't realize it.. But I wish I could have realized it, as I could have avoided the complete mortification of yelling, sobbing, and blubbering just trying to mail a box at FedEx. Worst part was? I didn't even care that much if it was delivered or not. It wasn't a deadline, it wasn't life or death - it was just me not wanting to carry it back to my office because it was 11 copies of a report that was really heavy, and because I had committed myself to mailing it yesterday... Ha... Oh well, we all need a moment to reset ourselves, right?

I guess that's my story - sorry it took so long. I should probably write more often so that I don't create these novellas... I do have some fun posts coming with pictures of our new shelves and hopefully some other fun pictures and house things.

Ohh - and it's John's birthday tomorrow!!! he's going to be 28 and we're going to see Les Miserables downtown on Sunday. I'm really excited!!

Blizzard 2011!!!!! (snOMG)

You will be happy to know that we survived the Chicago February 2011 Blizzard. John and my offices didn't shut down, so we went in since we didn't want to "waste" the vacation day. Upon reflection - probably a good call - but it would have been AWESOME to take a snow day as an adult person. :) I took some pictures of our morning experience and I am posting them here (in my first ever movie, so please bear with me).

I hope everyone stayed safe in the crazy winter storms that have been doing through the nation. One of the strangest things we experienced - Thundersnow.... yes... thunder AND lightening in snow. It was totally bizarre and I kind of hope to not see it again, mainly because it just trips you out. (PS I highly recommend seeing Jim Cantore's reaction to thundersnow, it's pretty fantastic).

Without further ado - here are our Blizzard 2011 pictures (the 3rd snowiest in Chicago record at 20+").

2011 begins...

2011 is here - 2010 has flown by... It's pretty ridiculous how quickly time can go by without me even realizing it's over. I figured I would post a quick picture from Christmas and get straight to the nitty-gritty of new years... :)

We were in KC again this year for Christmas Eve with my family. It's turned into quite the free-for-all since my older cousins now have a million kids - okay, there are 4 all under the age of I think 5 plus girlfriends/fiancee kids (3 more), but that's a LOT of little kids.

After celebrating the new year we drove up to Wisconsin. A while back (June) we decided that we should go to the Bears vs. Packers game.... that game just happened to be January 2... Yeah, what better time to go up to northern Wisconsin than the beginning of January, right? Luckily our friends' family has a lake house just north of Milwaukee, so we were able to stay there and then just drive up to the game. We wore a lot of layers, and honestly, dressed like snowmen the game wasn't that bad (cold wise) and since we weren't playing for anything other than keeping the Packers out of the playoffs it was even okay that we didn't win.

One word - frozen sand is weird... You think it should sink like sand, and you mentally think that it should feel like sand... but it's hard and frozen... ha. It was kind of a trip.

Either way, the holidays treated us well. We had a wonderful time with our families, a wonderful time with our friends. Now we are just looking to get our lives back together and clean up our house to recover from the holidays.. Ha. :)

I started thinking about the new year after I got back from Wisconsin. I'm not one for new year's resolutions, as I feel it's either setting myself to be disappointed in myself, or just too cliche for me to want to do it. But, then I started realizing - if I post them hopefully it will 1) hold me accountable and 2) it will inspire me throughout 2011. So here are my resolutions for what I want to accomplish not just in the new year - but to generally inspire throughout the years to come.. :)

I resolve to...

...better myself by eating healthier, drinking less, and exercising more.

...take the GRE and at least apply to grad school.

...be more kind to myself, but more importantly to my friends.

...raise $600 for PAWS Chicago for the Chicago Rock and Roll Half Marathon (yeah, I think I'm going to run... I might be crazy).

...remember to send my nieces presents for Christmas and birthdays (as close to the actual day as possible). (I still need to send Christmas presents... ugh... I might need to have that be for next Christmas)

...learn how to take better photos with our Canon SLR.

...finish putting photos into my photo book (from my first anniversary.. yikes!).

...keep up with my LEED certification.

...calm myself down when I get frustrated at work.

...calm myself down when I get frustrated at life.

...have an inner filter.

...throw something out every month to try and get rid of my clutter problem.

I feel like I could so keep going with all the things that I know I want to do this year.. but I don't want to get overambitious, especially since some of these things are a little intense (i.e. running the 1/2 marathon)....

I hope that everyone had a wonderful, safe, and happy holiday and new year. I can't wait to see what 2011 has in store for you all!