Miss Carolyn Goes to Washington

Last week, I got to visit Washington DC courtesy of work. Well, technically it was the suburb of DC that houses the Dulles airport and my team only made it into the actual city for about four hours. And it was probably the most stressful work trip I've ever taken. Let's start at the beginning.

I flew out of Tucson on Monday. Since the Tucson airport is fairly small, I had a layover in Dallas. The Dallas-Fort Worth Airport had been good to me in the past; this was the trip that was to change my mind. The full list of things that went wrong were:

• The plane to DC arrived 45 minutes late from Ohio
• It had a flat tire which took another 45 minutes to repair
• Once the plane was airborne, the pilot announced the altimeter was broken and we would need to return to Dallas since there was weather in Virginia. And because we could not land with a full tank of fuel, we would have to remain in the air until we used it up. 
• When we were back on the ground, they announced they had another plane, so we all got off and moved to that gate. At this point, it was almost midnight. Also, at this point, the flight attendants hours had rolled over and they couldn't legally work anymore. They announced they were bringing in a new crew, but they never told us if they were in the airport or just somewhere in Dallas. 
• Once the crew got there, anyone who had an electronic boarding pass had to have a paper one printed because they were literally tearing tickets as they boarded us. And we were told to rush because the pilots hours rolled at 12:30. It was the closest I've come to seeing a full-blown mob scene. 
• We only had two more delays after that: there was no crew to push us back from the gate and there was no crew to fill out and file the paperwork necessary for us to take off. 

After all of that, my head finally hit the pillow of my hotel bed at 4:52AM. It was the longest night I've had in a long time, especially since I had to be ready to work at 9AM.

The work itself was its own brand of stressful. I'd done trips like this before, but usually I would work with three or four people. This time? Twenty. There were twenty people. It was like herding cats, but herding cats is actually fairly easy if you know what you're doing. This was herding sexist, old men who think they know best about a product they've never seen before.

It was a long day and things did not go well. We had to call it around 4PM to wait for unbroken parts to ship overnight. That's always a good sign. The rest of the day was a late lunch, willing myself to stay awake until the sun set, and a dinner of the leftover chips from lunch and some Reese's pieces.

Fortunately, only three guys showed up on the second day and we were able to get things to run the way they are supposed to.

Since I was out of my zombie state and we finished with a couple of hours to spare, my team headed into the city. It happened to be the day that the metro system was 100% closed so everyone was driving and traffic was insane. It only took 90 minutes to drive a distance Google said would take 30. The only things that were still open were the monuments so we saw as many as possible.

We started on the Lincoln Monument end of the mall...

...and then headed toward the opposite end, towards the Washington Monument.

We stopped and paid our respects at the Korean War Memorial along the way.

I imagine the springtime flowers in DC rival almost everywhere else. These are magnolias?

A beautiful sunset.

The running joke of the evening became why the Washington Monument had this creepy red blinking eyes. I still don't know why, my guess was it's a warning to aircraft. In our exhausted states, though, it was a hilarious inside joke.

We found a place for dinner near the White House. After a big dinner at finally the correct time to eat food, we spent some time starring at the White House, trying to figure out why Washington's creepy eyes kept following us.

We took a detour back to the car that was a bit dodgy, but we did get to admire the Jefferson Monument off in the distance.

And with that, we headed back to Tucson the next morning. Fortunately, there were absolutely no issues with my flights on the way back. Another stop in Dallas with another small pizza.

I've got another scheduled in the upcoming weeks, but this one burnt me out pretty badly. I may or may not have already started to come up with excuses to get out of it. If it ends up happening, I'm sure I'll find a way to have a good time, but it's still a lot to wrap my head around right now.

10 Essentials of a Lady Lair

Why it that men get man caves? Is there some twisted assumption that the women get the rest of the house? Yes, men get their own rooms with big screen TVs and pool tables while women get what...the kitchen?

Why is there no female equivalent? A space for ladies to kick back, relax, and have fun. I've only ever seen one female man cave on TV, in contrast to the dozens of the traditional variety. On 'The Cosby Show', there was an episode solely devoted to Claire getting her own 'room' (when reruns still aired before the Bill Cosby controversy). A room all to herself with a lock on the door for her own privacy. The whole episode focused on her family trying to get into the room and why would she want a room all to herself. Here's the word-for-word synopsis from IMDB:

Cliff builds a room just for Clair, her own special place for work and retreat. Everyone, except Cliff, is upset that she wants to be alone and not spend time with them. Cliff tries to explain the purpose of a special room.

At the end of the episode, the room was never mentioned again. Poof. The only instance of a female man cave was gone. I swear entire seasons of 'King of Queens' that have taken place in Doug's man cave, which no one ever questions the necessity of. Yet, the only instance of a female man cave and it only focuses on the why.

To be fair, there have been other shows that have given a woman her own space, but they all seem to be bathrooms or walk-in closets. How superficial is that? I want a space devoted to fun and unwinding, like a man cave. Sure, a spa bathroom could be fun, but I want more than that. I want a space I've deemed the 'lady lair'.

My ideal lady lair would be quite the room. It is a space where I can unwind with my girl friends. A calm, chill space where we can catch up, be ourselves, and be silly. At the same time, a place where I could crank up some terrible 80's music and dance with my cats. It doesn't have to be a space that screams "FEMININE!", but form and function can be equal. It would be Indiana Jones' library meets Emily Henderson meets 'The Mindy Project': vintage and suave, feminine and style, colorful and fun. I know that doesn't make much sense, but let me walk you through it.

1. A cozy place to relax and converse. I don't think I'd be able to keep a sofa like this one nice since I'm such a heathen, but it's just so gorgeous. This one from Joybird is a magical mix of vintage and cozy. Like something a 1940's movie star would lounge on with her romance novels after a long day of shooting elegant entrance scenes walking down giant staircases. Or, in a more practical universe, something I could sink into with my friend Bekah and gossip about how she ended up on yet another accidental date. It's a sofa that beckons me after a long, stressful day.
2. Classy shelving for books and beautiful little knick-knacks. Since my ideal relaxation space is a library, bookshelves are a must-have. This unit is way fancier than anything I would need with built-in lighting and hidden drawers, but it sure is beautiful. A nice frame to highlight the loveliness of anything special you put on it. 
3. Uplifting and inspirational art. Sometimes you just need word art to remind you that you can both be a thug and like flowers. #truth
4. A home for refreshments. I'm not a drinker, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate a bar cart, just maybe it isn't a bar anymore. It could house a crystal ice-bucket and glass-bottled sodas. Maybe a big, old-timey jar filled with goldfish crackers or jellybeans? You know, grown-up food.
5. Better lighting than over-head recessed sconces. It has been long established that I am a fan of lamps, but this one is somethin'. Oh lordy, this one. How sexy is that base? It's like a starlet at the Academy Awards; it's like a designer gown. I may now be coveting it until it goes on sale, assuming I can find another corner of the house that needs a lamp.
6. A place to perch and nibble. Sometimes when you catch up with someone, you want to be lazy and slouch on the sofa. Other times, when the conversation is fancy, you need to perch with your drinks by the bar on an elegant stool.
7. A plush rug to keep feet from getting cold. It's like art on your floor. Nice art that your friends can sit on when you've filled up the sofa. Or where you can bellyflop on tougher days. A rug like this goes a long way in making a room more cozy and snugly, especially one with a subtle floral pattern.
8. A surface for magazines, cats, and plates of cupcakes. A great coffee table doesn't have to be a star. It's like Judy Greer: an amazing, beautiful actress who's never really the star of the show, but man, does she make everything better. I think that's my new favorite analogy: this coffee table from Target is the Judy Greer of my lady lair. It's pretty and classic with some flair in the mid-century modern legs and drawers. Like something Cheryl on 'Archer' would have (I've got to get off this Judy Greer train...)
9. Something that smells better than I do. Candles are the definition of relaxing. You have to love this pretty little one from Target that not only smells deliciously fresh, but demands to you only be positive in your sacred space.
10. A cool way to play some tunes. Keeping with the subtle floral theme, how amazing is this phonograph? It's hard to imagine anything it plays sounding bad, no matter how terrible my choice in music.

All the essentials of my lady lair are like the lady lair itself: functional and luxurious. It's a space of curated pieces that speak deep to my soul. And honestly, asking for a lady lair isn't anymore ridiculous than a man asking for a man cave. Somehow, that's become a thing. It's about time we make the lady lair a thing, too.

Project House Update: Den of Desks

In the next step of our den redo (actually, it was Step 4, but why do step 2 when you can do step 4, right?), we bought a desk!

1. Replace the window. Done! 
2. Remove the built-in desks
3. Buy and install cabinets in place of the built-in desks
4. Buy a floating desk. Done!

Our new desk had several requirements. One, since we wanted to place the desk in the center of the room, it had to look good from all angles.

Two, the desk had to have a lot of computer storage. Since the desk would be in the center of the room, we wanted to be able to house all of the computer 'stuff' in the desk itself. This meant drawers and cabinets either meant for a desktop tower or one that could be modified to accommodate one. A nice place to hide all of the electronic crap. Wires stress me out. Clean and calm space, the opposite of the one below.

So when you cut out desks meant to be pushed up against walls and 'desks' that are really just expensive tables, you're left with the term "executive desk". Executive desks, oddly enough, are usually made for executives, therefore expensive. And to be honest, overcompensating.

Originally I had my eye on the Liatorp from Ikea. I was so convinced that it would work for us that I talked Dan into stopping at Ikea on the way home from visiting his parents at Christmas. While it's a nice desk, we couldn't picture it in our den. To be the centerpiece of the room, it just wasn't 'special' enough. It was a nice desk, but just a desk.

As much as I hate it, Dan found the one we fell in love with. This one from Sauder. It was simple, yet classy. Pretty from all angles. Seven drawers with the potential to fit a large desktop tower. We hunted around and found it on sale for roughly $400 with shipping. Not as cheap as Ikea, but pretty damn close. 

Image Source

A few weeks later, it arrived! And since Dan has no patience, unless it's something I'm asking him to do it, he got to work putting it together. Why wait to take out the old desk when you can see how many desks one room can hold?

Here's the finished desk! It's just so pretty. It's simple and pretty, yet the drawer fronts have just enough mid-century modern quirk. The beige drawers have a fabric-texture front. I was worried about it being cheap and poorly done, but the fronts are very well executed. And since the drawers face the window, not the doorway, it's like the quirks are my own little secret. You have to make an effort to get to see them. That and the cats can run back and forth under it to their hearts' content. They love it more than we do. 

Sam loves sitting on top of it. It's his new favorite thing, especially biting me when I try to pet him on it. While my husband is a sweetheart and assembled the desk as a surprise for me, it's so in the way right now. I have to walk around it to feed the cats and it's a feat on my part that I still have hip bones. Maybe Dan's plan was to make the desk inconvenient as motivation for us to make progress on the room. It hasn't been working, but it's a nice idea.

The only thing holding us back from tearing out the old built-in desks is figuring out what to do with our computers. Originally, Dan was on board with installing the desktop in one of the drawers of the new desk, but now he's changing his mind. He wants ALL THE TECH while I want it very streamlined and clean. I'll convince him. It'll just take me some time. 

Project House Update: Window Work

I'm going to real up front with you: we've somehow stumbled into about a dozen house projects. None of them are close to completion and we keep rotating between them. So, I'm just going to write about them as we go/as I feel like it and it's probably going to end up all over the place, but I don't really care.

Let's hop back to when I claimed the den for myself. In converting the den into a haven for me, the first thing on the list was replacing the window. We even had a window on order when I wrote that post.

Unlike the windows in the workout room, Dan got to installing the new window as soon as it arrived.

It's always a good day when we can pull down some of those terrible, terrible vertical blinds. Even Sam hates them.

Here's a clear image of the 'Before' of the window. While it's not a bad window, it's very energy inefficient and thin. It was just time for a new window.

Since the area outside of the window was cleared in the unexpected trench incident of the shop construction, there was plenty of space for the boys to work. The window came out no problem, but the sill gave them some issues. It was adhered down incredibly well. Nothing a little elbow grease and some crowbars couldn't fix, though.

The guys are just too quick for me. I'd assumed it would take them longer and by the time I came back to take 'In Progress' photos, they were done. So, let's just skip to the end.

By the end of the day, the old window was out, the new window was in and foam insulated.

We haven't made too much notable progress since. Dan caulked the outside seam and I painted it. Dan is slowly spackling the inside edge where the window meets the wall. We've purchased a piece of marble that matches the other windowsills in the house, but it remains uncut and unplaced.

Even though the window is still technically unfinished, it's such an upgrade. The pane slides smoothly. The glass is clear and crisp. I'm sure we'll do the final touches sometime soon, but we're in no rush.

Turning 29

My birthday was a few days ago. It was a good day. I was determined to make it a good day and my husband was determined to make it a good day and so it was. Sometimes my birthdays have a twinge of sadness so my whole goal was to fight it as much as possible.

My wonderful weekend started off with some beautiful peach roses. Which I promptly killed. Poor flowers don't stand a chance with me. I try, though.

You know how you can tell that your husband is trying really? When he makes cinnamon rolls from scratch. I don't know what came over him, but he brought his A game this year. He's setting the bar too high for next year.

Our original activity plan for the day was one of those drink wine and paint cheesy paintings class, but they cancelled the class I wanted, so we shifted the plan to mini-golf instead.

My hole-in-one on Hole 15. Oh yeah!

While I'm not a huge fan of arcade games, I do have my favorites. I hoped it would be the new Jurassic Park game they had installed, but it was a token eater. I survived a few minutes longer than Dan, but it was too difficult and short for the amount of tokens we paid.

You know what was a great value? This insane Pac-Man air hockey. I barely won, but it was so much fun. The machine randomly adds more pucks as you go until there are dozens of them on the board. I don't think a game has ever gotten my heart pumping that much before.

I didn't tell Dan, but I was looking forward to laser tag more than the mini-golf. It was just the two of us, running around screaming and shooting at each other in an inflatable arena. At one point, my strategy was to just sprint as fast as I could so he couldn't catch me. That must have been his strategy, too, and we collided very painfully. I was convinced my whole right side would be bruised the next day. Dan won since I'm terrible at laser tag, but I loved it.

Because Tucson is random and I love, right next door to the mini-golf place is a fake Western town. We popped next door for some lunch and were disappointed that their hours had changed so that everything was only open for dinner. This is my sad cowboy face.

Dan was happy to settle for Fuddruckers instead. We play a game where we mix random combinations of soda and have the other one guess. We're both terrible at it, but you can come up with some fun mixes.

After all the excitement of the morning, I was exhausted. We swung by Target on the way home and was seriously debating curling up in the cart while Dan pushed me around. Once home, I took a nap. I guess I should say 'tried' to nap since cats are, well, cats and made that difficult. Good thing they're cute.

I awoke to presents. Dan was so proud of himself for find this giant Lego brick. It's not a gift box, it's just a giant hollow Lego brick. He wrapped a set of beautiful necklaces and hid them inside. The other box housed a vintage-styled leather jacket. I'm Indiana Jones now. I love it.

The cherry on top of the day was a fondue dinner. If you aren't bursting at the seams afterward, you aren't doing it right. Cheese fondue, salad, bouillon fondue, and chocolate fondue. K had eaten so much food that I thought popping was a legitimate risk, and Dan decides to ask for more dessert. He can be unpredictable in the weirdest ways.

Like I said, it was a good day. A good day to start a new year.

Project House Update: The Birds and the Beach

You know how it takes me forever to finish a project? And like even longer to write about it? Well, today's your lucky day because not only did I finally get around to/finish two projects, but I'm going to brag about them now.

The first project was a shadowbox chock full of reminders from our trip to Hawaii in the summer of 2014 (see? It only took me 17 months to get around to it). The second was hanging a dove wall sconce that's probably been sitting in my closet for over three years.

I mentioned it in my list of tips for visiting Turtle Bay Resort, but we really expected to bring home a bag of shells as a souvenir. That was not the case. Every shell we found (minus a small piece of driftwood) is carefully arranged in this shadowbox. Maybe seven shells total.

Since I couldn't get as many shells as I wanted, I filled the void with beach sand. A lot of sand. This was only half of the sand. Dan's called dibs on the other half. Combine my sand, the shells, a great picture Dan took of me on the beach, and a high-quality shadowbox and you have something worthy of the term 'art'.

I say 'high-quality' shadowbox because this was not my first attempt at this project. Originally, I couldn't find a shadowbox I liked, so I bought a cheap one from Michael's and gave it a coat of paint. However, the back of it didn't seal well and I had to make a hanging mechanism because it didn't have a hook. Yeah, there was no way I trusted that on our wall. So, I found a pretty good one from Target and gave it two coats of spray paint. It even has a gasket around the end of the back to keep the sand in. Worth it.

Onto my unique choice in shelving...

Several years ago, I found this plastic dove shelf at the antique's fair. It's tied with my lamp for my favorite thing we've found out there. I didn't know what I would do with it, but it was vintage and birds and it called to me. Unfortunately, it was a gross 1970's color, but that could be easily fixed.

For a long time, I debated what color to paint it. Once I'd painted the sand shadowbox, it hit me that these might group well together so it got a matching coat of white paint. Someday I may change my mind, I could see it in an antique gold. Or a more matte white. Or even a weird painting project where I hand-paint it all the colors it should be, with brown branches and white doves with little orange beaks. If you've got ideas of your own, I've found one on etsy. It's part of a set even!

It was hard to find the right spot for them in the house, but I settled on the entryway. Here's the corner of the entryway before. It felt a little off-balance because only the left wall was decorated.

And now both walls are adorned. It felt a little awkward at first for displaying a picture of myself in a bikini in our entryway, but it's probably less creepy in the entryway than in the guest room.

I'm still styling and arranging things on the dove sconce. Since it's plastic and not even six inches in radius, I don't trust it yet to hold anything fragile or important. It hasn't earned my trust yet. We're still just acquaintances.

Project House Update: Sense of Shelf

In a first step to claim the den for myself, I staged a coup of the built-in shelves. About once a year, I attempt to reorganize and style them. However, in spite of all that effort, they always ended up looking something like this; crammed, cluttered, and Tetrised into place.

After reading Emily Henderson's Styled and Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, it was time to upgrade my shelves to 'vignettes'. So, everything came down, was evaluated, and organized and restyled.

It took several days and several attempts, but I'm really happy with the results. Over time, I developed a handful of rules that kept me on course. Hopefully, these rules will help me keep them nice in the future. My new rules are:

• Keep the space functional 
• Be aware of the shelves goals - Before the reset, this was a drop spot in our house. Have something that's kind of pretty without a home? Just put it on the shelves. A random book you haven't finished? Shelves. Basically anything that needs to be kept out of reach of the cats? Find a spot somewhere high. This turned out to be a recipe for disaster. Now, we've defined their functions and only certain things can be added without consideration. These serve three separate functions: 1) helping the den function as a home office, 2) housing books I love, and 3) displaying our pretty, delicate knick-knacks. Each shelf has at least one group of books and one pretty thing.

• Understand placement for usage - Because the shelves are mounted on the top half of the wall, anything on the top two shelves is out of reach to me without a step-stool. So, the shelves are less functional as you go up. Knowing that, here are some of the functional elements I made sure to keep low.
1. Paper organizers for Dan: it's where he stores receipts, papers to file, and papers to shred. They need to be at arm's reach when he's sitting at his computer. 
2. Cat spot: I left a spot my boys because they grew attached to being tall. And it keeps them out of our hair when we're working. 
3. Candles: They're on a low shelf so I can reach them, but they're on a tall, wide shelf so things don't catch fire. 
4. Record player and records: Because sometimes you just need to listen to hair metal when you're writing. 

• Spread out themes - In the past, I thought it would look/work best if I grouped all of Dan's car stuff together on one shelf. 

Turns out, that approach didn't really work. The shelf was crammed so full that it was impossible to add new items and it didn't show off any of his cool stuff (and some of mine, too). After reading this article, I learned how to spread it out and incorporate it in a manner that's more styled. Now, rather than a single shelf, our books and models live on almost every shelf.

• Be mindful of unintentional accent colors and their placements - Once I began placing and styling things, I became aware of how many white, porcelain knick-knacks I have and how they stood out. White may not seem like an accent color, but when I got going, any white pieces near each other seemed heavy. It was too much. To keep it balanced, only one white piece per shelf and not on adjacent shelves if I could help it. 

• Don't overcrowd - Let's take a look again at the 'Before'. They were filled to the brim. Waaaaaaay too much stuff. Books, knick-knacks, CDs and records, games, and all sorts of other random things. Once we set up the new Ikea shelves in the front room and moved the board games out of the den, it freed up a lot of space. However, we still did some editing.

After removing everything and carefully selecting what would go back on the shelves, I ended up with two big piles of stuff to house elsewhere or to donate.

• Minimize small objects - small objects can make things look cluttered very quickly. Previously, I had placed lots of small objects together and thought it visually equaled one larger object. It didn't. It just looked messy. So, when everything came off the shelves, all the little bits and bobs went into a large ziploc bag and only a few things migrated back onto the shelves. Like a tiny plastic tiger hidden in a Corvette model. 

A few other little tricks I used to style these shelves:

   1. Take all the dust jackets off and store them in a filing cabinet
   2. When in doubt, group things in threes.
   3. Stack similar books together, largest to smallest, and top with a knick-knack.

A lot of these styling tricks and tips bother me for high-use spaces with high-use items (like large illustrated books on coffee tables), but they work well for a curated space like my shelves. We'll see if all of this helps me keep it nice longer than before.

UPDATE: I completely forgot that I did a similar post about shelf styling and organizing in the first month of my blog. You can read it here. It's not good. I won't say this post is that great, but this old one is definitely cringe-worthy.

Goals for 2016

2015 was an odd year. I went into it knowing that it was going to be a big year for us. I could feel it in my bones. I would have guessed promotions and renovations and trips and life overhauls.

And when I first sat down to review my resolutions from last year, my gut instinct was something along the lines of disappointment. There really weren't those in-your-face stand-out moments like I thought there would be. It was kind of an ordinary year.

But once I began writing and really reviewing the past year, I think I misjudged it. 2015 was pretty big, just in small, subtle ways, if that makes any sense. Somehow along the way last year, I became happier with myself than I've ever been before. I feel more like me. I'm not afraid to say what I'm thinking or to be silly or vulnerable or loud or quiet. I don't pick on myself the way I used to. 

I am happy.

I guess you could call that a big year.

Now that I've gotten the philosophical mumbo-jumbo out of the way, let's break down my 2015 specific resolutions:

• Say 'Yes' more. This one was a big win for me. In the moment, it is sooooo easy to say yes to things. Turns out, the harder part is not moping around afterward when you just want to stay in yoga pants and watch a Criminal Minds marathon (I swear ION shows them three times a week now). However, I am a person of my word and if I said I will be there, I will be there. And then I do the thing and have a great time and regret none of it. I say yes to invitations. I say yes to projects at work. I say yes to almost any ridiculous request, deal with the fault-out, and simply call it an adventure (remember this one, it's going to ripple into 2016, there are stories coming people). A
• Be ready for my ten year high school reunion. So, my high school reunion is still pretty fresh in my mind given that it was ten days ago. Given that I am the girl who instantly avoids eye contact and hides when she sees anyone in public (basically doesn't matter how much I like you, unless you are a blood relative, I will hide from you if I see you in a Target), it went about as well as I could have hoped. I'm notorious for over-thinking and over-preparing for anything that could be considered remotely competitive and I tried to channel that energy productively. I designed an outfit that was cute, but not trying too hard. I thought up questions beforehand (my favorite being: How'd you get into that?) And I had a back-up plan of just hanging out with my trivia team if I didn't want to talk to anyone else and that's basically what happened. There were a few people from high school that I would have loved to have caught up with in person, but they couldn't make it, so it was just a lovely evening with a bunch of people I used to know. And with the power of facebook stalking, I know there were a bunch of people in town who just chose not to go, I'm calling this one a win for me. B

 

• Find a way to advance my career. At the beginning of last year, my manager and I sat down and had a conversation about how I was on track for a promotion. While my work load and responsibilities have definitely increased, I still won't know about that promotion for a few months. Here's hoping. B
• Find a doctor. Hahahahaha. Every year. Geez. F
• Eat more fresh food. This one was a weird one to do poorly on, but it got worse, not better. Somewhere along the lines, I just got really busy last year. Between Zumba after work twice a week and trivia and hanging out with friends and all sorts of other stuff, I had one night a week when I could shop and it was the last thing I want to do. Then, there was this weird drama with the grocery store by my house switching owners and becoming terrible and then closing completely. So, my routine for feeding us got really screwed up. It's truly amazing how many nights a week you can survive on pasta and sauce. It's one of my resolutions for this year, but it kind of became more of a mess than it originally was. I had no idea how much of a pain it is to fit grocery shopping into your life when the stores aren't convenient and you just have no good time to go. D
• Attempt a long race (5+ miles). I tried to get a jump on it back in January by training for a four mile race. While I happily completed it, I hurt myself pretty badly. I swore off running for a while and really didn't miss it. I took up Zumba instead and I love it. In the last couple of months, I've started incorporating running back into my life, but solely for fun. I go out in my neighborhood, walk to the other side of the block, and then run home as fast as possible. It's just fun and stress-relief, not so much exercise. C
• Make some more youtube videos. I thought about it. I honestly did. There were times and days I thought about recording and justifying it as 'preserving the moment', but that would have been a lie. It would have been to make a video for video's sake and that didn't feel right. I did enjoy editing the handful of videos I've made, but recording them, at least the ones with me, made me incredibly anxious and I can't even go back and watch them. For now, it isn't worth the headache to me, but that may change in the future. F
• Embrace being a nerd. This one really could have been summed up by my last resolution, to 'be me more' since I am a nerd, but I think this one went pretty well. Feel free to read my Jurassic World premier night or my Star Wars premier stories for evidence to this. My one disappointment was that I didn't make it to any sort of convention. Opportunities arose, but it just didn't work out. I should have pushed harder and made it more of a priority, though. B
• Take another vacation. It was the plan to take a vacation. After we loved Hawaii so much the year before, it was a big priority to me. However, then the shop happened and I had panic attacks over money. I did make Dan promise that we will take a nice, long vacation this year, especially since it will be our five year wedding anniversary. F
• Be me more often. This resolution has been so good for me. It's pretty abstract, but basically I've treated it as: trust your gut, don't over-think things, be true to yourself and don't focus on the potential consequences. Was it probably not a great career move to wear dinosaur t-shirts to work for a week? Yes. Did it let my coworkers get to know me better and was I happy? You betcha. I sing loudly in the car no matter how much traffic I am stuck in. Sometimes I dance in the lab while I'm working on something and am only slightly embarrassed when I get caught. I've tried to become more care-free. I try not to let myself get embarrassed by having fun and being myself. I don't have to act like I have a stick up my ass to be professional. I can high-five someone when I nail something. I just became so sick and tired of trying to wear all these different hats and be all these different people at various stages of the day. Screw that. That ship has sailed. A

If you were to sum it up, I definitely failed more than I passed. However, if you weighted the importance of the resolutions, it ends up looking much better. 

My resolutions for this year are a little more concrete, which is probably a recipe for failure, but let's start the year off optimistic. This could totally be an awesome year, too.

• Find two doctors: general and ob/gyn. Like, seriously though.
• Take a vacation. It will happen. Some place fun and sunny. 
• Be more proactive on home projects. I've learned in 4+ years of home projects that I have three roles: planning/initiating projects, handling the small, annoying things (like hours of edging) to free Dan up to handle the stuff that have simply can't, and motivating him to finish up that painful last 10% of a project. Those are my skills and I will put them to use more often this year. {Sidenote: some things have been set in motion already at the end of last year, but since I haven't blogged about them yet, I think they should qualify for 2016.}
• Blog a new recipe once a month. It was an unspoken goal of mine last year to update my recipe blog at least once a month last year and if I hadn't missed damn April, I would have done it. Argh. I'm going to pull it off this year. I already blogged one for January. Oh yeah, proactive.
• Get a promotion
• Disconnect from technology more. Most days, I'm on my computer for 7+ hours at work. It would probably do my brain and my eyes some good to cut the cord a little more often at home.
• Make grocery shopping a priority/routine. You know, so I can 'eat healthy' and stuff. Actually, it's probably along the lines of 'so I don't have to eat mac and cheese as often'. Maybe I'll just upgrade to fancy schmancy homemade mac and cheese, which would count as a step in the right direction.

It's gonna be a good one guys. Leap years always are.