Seems that The Universe is intent on keeping things interesting for me. The past two Years In Review have been full of major life events; this year, while just a smidge less hectic than 2011 and 2012, still smacked of change. The major events, in chronological order:
My step-Gary died in January. I got the call from Mom on a Saturday, just as Aaron and I were heading out the door to go house-hunting. I flew down to Texas solo for the funeral the first weekend in February, and was glad I went.
Connor started daycare in February, two days a week, and thus began the endless series of ear infections from his exposure to the unwashed mini-masses. Aaron appreciated having a couple days a week to get normal sleep and get things done, and Connor appreciated getting to be social and learn new things.
We bought a new house in March, with more space for Connor to run around (indoors and out) and in a better school system. And lots of plants and flowers. And lots of room for get-togethers. Moving to a new house also meant moving Connor to a new daycare, which he loves.
My Mom moved back up to Ohio from Texas in July. I’ve seen her more this year than probably in the last three years combined. It’s been awesome; Connor really loves his Grammy.
I got into my first car accident in September. Everyone involved was OK, but the car needed a new paint job and a new wheel. And now I have a phobia of being in another person’s blind spot.
We sold our old house in late September, but not without some major speedbumps, including electrocuted contractors and copper pipe theft. We hope the new owners agree that the tranquil neighborhood outweighs all the neighbors’ leaves blowing into the yard in autumn and the distinct lack of snowplows in winter.
Connor had his first surgery in November, to get tubes put in his ears after having six ear infections in less than one year. The procedure went well, and the tubes seem to be helping immensely. Unrelated to the tubes, but under the category of medical specialists, we also learned that Connor is allergic to eggs and to our cat.
I got promoted in November, after six years at my current job.
Now for the fun part: analysis of the everyday stuff — photos, workouts, doctor visits, etc.
Website Stuff
To begin: some website stats for 2013* that may be intriguing only to me.
More people have been referred to my blog via the search term “Tokyo Tower” than any other search term, beating out “Archibald Barasol” (and all its myriad variations), which has held the top spot in previous years since I posted this entry.
The most-viewed pages in 2013 were my genealogy database (which is sorely out-of-date) and Dear Connor: Month Twelve. The most-viewed posts that I actually wrote in 2013 were a smattering of tweets (I pull them all into my blog for archiving purposes, and for context against my long-form entries) and My Dietbet Epiphany. My most-read category pages were photos, tweets, and health & fitness.
From the graph above, it seems that I tend to write either several short blog entries or a few longer ones in any given month. That makes sense, since I generally write the longer ones over two or three evenings.
I take some kind of hipstery pride in the fact that my son has not completely overtaken my blog — which, by extension, means he has not overtaken my entire persona, since my blog is, first and foremost, for me. I love him, and he’s an awesome kid, but I’d already kind of figured out who I was before he came on the scene. It pleases me that I’m still me under all the Mommy-ness.
Health and Fitness
Thanks to this tutorial, I was able to analyze my Fitbit activity for the year, despite Fitbit themselves not providing any proper analysis tools. (Hooray for APIs.) In 2013, my feet carried me over nearly 735 miles — not quite as far as 2012’s 856 miles. The farthest I walked in one day in 2013 was 6.34 miles on July 6, which was during Mom’s first visit back from Texas — we took Connor to the park and took a three-plus-mile walk during Connor’s nap, and that somehow added up to over six miles.
I branched out this year and tried some new classes at the Fitness Center at my work, so the graph above includes lunch walks, stroller walks, treadmill walks, elliptical, yoga, and Core Fusion (strength/pilates). Stroller walks with Connor were a big thing from April through early October, and you can see that July spiked with the extra walks during Mom’s visit.
My weight fluctuated within a 6½-pound range this year, with a definite and steady uptick from September through December. I ended the year about a pound above where I started. Usually I post a graph, but it’s not even worth the effort to produce.
This year’s listing of visits to health care professionals includes the MRI to determine how bad my spondylo really is, a bunch of peds visits due to ear infections, specialist visits for Connor to identify his allergies and his need for ear tubes, ortho visits every seven weeks, and some standards like dentist and gyno. Not in the list again this year: general practitioner.
As with last year, I’ve continued to track my tardiness to work — but this time, I’ve contrasted it against my average bedtime. There seems to be a correlation (of course), but it’s still hard to force myself to turn everything off and go to bed at night. I used to be such a night owl — and probably still would be, if given the chance — plus, after my son goes to bed, I can actually get some things done without distraction, and I hate to have to wrap things up just to sleep.
I would have liked to have analyzed my length of sleep and my quality of sleep, too, if the Sleep Timer app I used last year hadn’t messed up my sleep durations when it updated a couple months ago. I’ve switched to a new app for 2014, one that also allows for exporting data, so perhaps I can do some mid-year analysis and draw some conclusions about how to maximize my sleep.
Photography
Usually, I’m all stoked to analyze my photos — where and when I took them, how many I took and with which camera — but I’m really not feeling it this year. I haven’t gotten a single roll of film developed — the roll that I loaded into my Ricoh 35mm to document our move back in March is still on frame 12 — and most of my pictures were taken with my iPhone. I busted out the D90 for a few occasions, like Connor’s birthday and Christmas, but I generally use the camera I have handy: my iPhone 5. Which, honestly, takes some damn fine pictures.
I took 255 photos last year that I posted to Flickr, and I posted 328 to Instagram (I laid off of Instagram in late 2012 / early 2013 due to the Terms of Service fiasco, and didn’t return to something resembling my previous posting frequency until July, and even then it wasn’t quite the same). I tend to post in-the-moment photos and snapshots to Instagram, and use Flickr as more of a repository for my “good” photos, hence why so many more went to the one than the other.
Somehow, I feel like this Year In Review isn’t as fleshed-out as previous ones, even though it’s still lengthy enough and hits all the high points. As I’ve said before, though, this blog is for me first and foremost, and for my family and friends next, and for strangers if you care to follow it. I think this will be a good review for me to look back on in years to come and say, “Oh, yeah, that happened.”
Which is really all I wanted.
* Website statistics courtesy of Logaholic Web Analytics