Happy Crew Year, 2012!

I'm back! Kinda. After re-reading last year's posts around this time, I thought maybe I'd give this another shot. To say I haven't felt like it lately ("lately" being since about April of last year) would be an understatement. I don't know about you, but I'm quite glad to see 2011 go into the archives. Not that it was bad, necessarily. But I'm glad it's over.

So, since I was absent for most of the year - let's recap!

January: Watched my brother and sister-in-law's dog and her parents' dog while they traveled to California. Overcame the flu.

Februrary: Can't remember. Pretty sure nothing happened in February. Let's move on.

March: Spoke at SXSWi again, this time on a panel with two friends. Hung out at a number of journalism parties (because I'm a total glommer-onner) – I think I secretly have a thing for journalists.

April: Company I worked for went on the auction block. Things happened. I stuck it out. Bygones.

May: Can't remember. Nothing must've happened in May either. My husband says "we were living life! Does everything have to be an event?" No, I suppose not. But for real, nothing happened in May. Just don't tell him I said that.

June: Went on a week-long vacation to visit my husband's parents in Treasure Island, Florida, and stayed in the iconic Sands of the Treasure Island. It's about as far from a luxury hotel as they come, but at least now I can say we've been. I believe it's also currently on the market for a cool $6 mil., if anyone's interested in a run-down 50s-era beachfront motor-court. Oh, and we also drove up to see WeekiWachee while we were there!

July: Over the course of three weeks, I completed three red-eye overnight trips to Los Gatos, CA, then to Seattle, WA, then to Austin, TX. I also learned how not to negotiate. I'm working on that one as a resolution for 2012.

August: Changed health insurance policies for the second time in two months. Yeah. I got nuthin'.

September: Drove out to Indianapolis to see my Dad do three laps in an Indy Car at the Indianapolis 500 race track. That was fun.

October: Took off a few days to fly up to Boston to speak at the Geekend Roadshow, which was part of the DMA conference. Turned it into a 2-day tour of historic Boston and Harvard with my awesome friend who was also speaking on the panel with me at the conference.

November: Flew to Washington, DC to speak on a panel for DCWEEK. Walked all the way around the outside of the White House in my brand-new, never before worn Mona pumps (and got the blisters to prove it!)

December: Drove up to New York City (road trip!) to meet up with my Dad and his wife for a whirlwind escapade to New York City. It was my Dad's first-ever time in NYC, so we did all the usual touristy fare, and since it was New York City at Christmastime everything was two-hundred times more fun.

We also realized (just two days ago while watching 'Big' for the umpteenth time) that the seedy and not-really-affordable, but darn close(!) hotel we stayed at was the very same seedy hotel from the movie! I like to fancy myself a movie location buff, at least when I think of it, but this was totally unplanned. My husband and I stayed an extra few days and ran smack-dab into Santacon at Grand Central Terminal, and then saw 'Book of Mormon' on Broadway before heading for home.

The following week it was year seven of attending the Cleveland Orchestra's Holiday Concert, where my husband, my Dad and I got up to sing 'Five gold rings' during 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.' We each won a free CD for embarrassing ourselves in front of all of Cleveland. I thought it was totally worth it.

And now here we are! Like I said, nothing particularly bad happened. Working 80+ hours will wear a person out, but I really have no one to blame but my.....yeah well. Nevermind. I also gained 20 pounds. But on the up side, I did get a good handle on how to use my crockpot in 2011, so there's that.

I've made a number of J.Crew purchases over the past month that I hope to review in the coming days, and I've got more (almost finished) 'Who's that model' posts that I never got to share from last year.

Bring on 2012!