2012 in numbers

After 4 years of blogging, it fell off my priority list.  I'm not sure how much I'll blog in 2013. My friend Christen did a great post last week where she measured her year in minutes. I've always tracked things from states visited, to books read, to miles on my bike so I thought I'd do something similar.

1 month spent commuting from Minneapolis to Rochester by bus. 4 hours a day! I've since met people who have done this commute for 10 years. Despite the amount of knitting and reading time I got in, I could never have done it long term. I was exhausted. The worst part was I only saw Penny for 45 mins a day.

37 books read in 2012. Chris mentioned this year how people reading my blog wouldn't know how I spend a great amount of free time. For people who know me well, they know reading has been my one constant past time. I've been keeping a book journal since 2001. You can see my whole list here http://www.librarything.com/profile/strandbooks. Here's the list of books I rated with 4-5 stars in 2012:

• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Harris
• The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
• Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherford
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• Drop City by Tom Coraghessan Boyle
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
• The Tortilla Curtain by Tom Coraghessan Boyle
• Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
• The Paris Wife Paula McLain
• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Home by Toni Morrison

I've found there are some years I can be more generous with my stars. I think this year was one of those. There are a few that I might go back to and bump down to a 3. I'm always willing to talk books. Not sure if book talk would bore everyone to death on the blog, but it might get me back in the swing of it.

The knitting craze continued this year: 13 knit hats, 4 washcloths, 1 cardigan, 1 scarf, 3 cowls, 2 booties, 1 pair of legwarmers, and 1 pair of boot cuffs. Almost all the pictures are on my Ravelry page http://www.ravelry.com/projects/lasmpls

4  trips: a long weekend to Kansas City for Easter, a week to Itasca/Crosslake, a long weekend to Omaha NE, and 5 days to VA for Christmas

2 new vegetables Through our CSA we tried garlic snapes and kohlrabi for the first time.

2 weeks to catch up on 2 seasons of Parenthood. I stayed up till 11:00 many nights in a row to do that. Unheard of for me. Then I missed the start of the current season so I'm going to do a marathon on that one when it comes out.

4 Disney Princess dresses in our house. Although Penny also loves her 9 Hot Wheels and deluxe Pirate ship toy

55 blog posts in 2012 Considering I stopped at the beginning of October that is a lot! Maybe that's why I burned out.

2015 emails in my work inbox  In 2009 I made a New Year's Resolution to have "Inbox Zero" at the end of each day. I did it through all of 2009 and part of 2010 and haven't done it since. It takes a lot of time and I'm skeptical that it made me that much more organized/efficient. But the inbox is getting out of control so I'm going to move all of the emails to a folder tomorrow and attempt Inbox Zero again.

Some more estimate numbers:

250 miles rode on my bike commute to work I want to do more in 2013. It does add up quickly at 8 miles a day, but there were many weeks where I only rode once a week. It's tough to pack business attire in a backpack. Plus, I only ride when it is 50 degrees to 80 degrees in the morning otherwise I'm too sweaty or Penny is too cold in the burley.

$500 the amount of money we'd have if Chris had a new quarter for every time Penny asked him to pull one out of her ear. He says he needs to learn new magic tricks pronto!

50 cans of black beans Penny loves these. She usually eats 1 can a week.

25 Halloween costumes the amount of costumes Penny would have for next Halloween if she could be everything she's come up with so far.

Hmmm...so that's all I can think of now. I could do some depressing ones like pounds gained, or how much we could list our Minneapolis house for if we wanted to sell, but I don't feel like adding those.

Looking at the list and how I spend my time makes the constant backup of 8 loads of laundry less mysterious!

2013 here we come.