2012 Resolutions

Remember my resolutions from last year?  I'm sad to report that I have only accomplished part of one of them.  I did collect nearly all my data for my dissertation (just not the plant extractions, which will happen in early January). The good news is that knitting and selling stuff on ebay doesn't actually contribute anything substantial to my life.  But dang, I wish I'd finished collecting data earlier in the year so I could have prepared those two manuscripts.  It was a lofty goal in the first place, though. I guess I'll just have to bump up the number of completed manuscripts from 2 to 5 for this coming year.

Last year I didn't even send out Christmas cards because things got so dang busy that I never had time. 

I remember standing at my back patio door last year after Thanksgiving, watching the leaves fall from the trees.  Tired and nervous that I would royally screw up my big research project (on which the entire dissertation hinged), I sighed and thought to myself, "Well, at least we got Thanksgiving and Christmas out of the way so I can just concentrate on my research."  And then I realized we hadn't even come close to December 25th yet. Yikes.

This year is a bit different, with the big project behind me. Now I have loads and loads and loads of data to massage into a story...and then I can write about it.

I'm writing this with my arms perched on a huge stack of Christmas letters that are stamped, addressed, and sealed.  We'll pop them through the slot at the post office on our way to a friend's birthday party this afternoon.  Woo!  I feel super accomplished, even for such a trite thing as mail.