Category: Pix

Continuing the annual tradition on from Last Year.

2011 was a heck of a year, a highly stressful bundle for the whole family.  My job ramped up its work level about 70% from Busy Enough to Insanely Busy for most of the year, and that had a number of effects … that I propose to change with 2012:

1. Physical Fitness

My fitness / weight maintenance took a major hit this year.  In May, Kay and I stopped our karate training, between vacation travel, other commitments, her new middle school schedule, and my discovery that I kind of liked not losing two of my evenings. Between that and just a stress-related impulse to nosh more, my weight has crept up quite a bit (more figures to follow, once I’m home from the holidays, but essentially I’ve gone from  a 38 waist struggling to fit into 36 to a solid (heh) 40 again).

The obvious things to do are to reduce caloric intake and increase caloric outgo.  So two things I’m going to do related to that are

(a) yes, once again, take up the mantle of the Geek Diet (tracking calories with some online tools), with a goal of being down to 200 by the end of the year, and

(b) I’m going to do the Eowyn Challenge to track my walking, taking the walk from Bag End to Rivendell, and then to Lonely Mountain, with a goal to make it to Lorien by the end of the year (963 miles). I was going to do LoTR milestones, but given the new Hobbit movie coming next December (huzzah!), this makes the most sense.  I’ll figure out reporting back here as I go.

And, yes, that’s pretty much what I resolved last year, but let’s have another go at it.

2. Pictures, pictures, pictures

We took a lot of pictures this last year, especially on the Italy trip, and I simply flubbed getting them sorted, labeled, and posted, much to my chagrin (and unstated but understandable chagrin from my fellow-travelers).  I got a few days, but bogged down in Pompeii.

So I resolve to have the Italy pictures done by the time we get to the 1 year anniversary of the trip in late May.

3. Writing, writing, writing

I did in fact finish my NaNoWriMo novel.

Now I need to do some serious revisions.  I’m trying to get started with a regular writing group post-1/1, and my goal here is to have a “finished” version (at least three or four full revision passes) by the time November rolls around. (By “finished” I mean “able to be shared with folks with minimal embarrassment.)

Looking at the other resolutions from last year, I did get 3 of 5 done, which I pre-judged a win: finishing my NaNovel, staying in touch with my daughter, and supporting my lovely wife (who also had an insanely intense year).  I’m going to keep those last two in mind as the year progresses — without them, the rest don’t mean a lot to me.