2012 in Review

Some of this I haven't blogged about but mean to, but since I've been so bad about updating lately I figured I'd just go ahead and do a review of the year, and hopefully get to the other stuff soon :) If you don't want to see a review of what happened this year... go ahead and skip this one!

I started off the year hoping to give my life more structure. I think, overall, I did. Volunteering more regularly helped during those months, and although there were many stressful weeks, and my sleep schedule is still unpredictable at times, I started to feel this year like everything was a little more pulled together.

In January, I vowed to work out more consistently . This, of course, did not last, but I think overall I might have worked out more than in 2011. I should keep working on this in 2013! We also decided that we wanted to bring a retired racing greyhound into our home, and started the application...

In February I slightly un-anonymized, and remembered my cousin's life. 

In March, we finally  adopted a dog! Greyhounds are seriously awesome, but oh my goodness, I thought he'd never learn how to go down the stairs. (Going up took a few days, and that was pretty brutal too!). Ryan also left his old lab.

In April I didn't write much, but I did post a cost analysis of adopting a retired racing greyhound. I felt like I was on autopilot at the time, but looking back, April was really somewhat of a turning point in my research project and grad student career (I think).

In May I decided that this was the hardest time of year to be a grad student, and tried to figure out how long we'd be able to live on one income if Ryan left school altogether.

In June we were having a hard time deciding whether we should keep funding our Roth IRAs when we weren't sure whether Ryan was going to stay in school. Intelligent commenters pointed out that letting the money sit for a little while in a savings account isn't a problem. I quit drinking Diet Coke! I was also pretty freaked out by reports of a purse snatcher in our neighborhood and took a look at ways to keep myself safe. And Ryan found a new lab!

In July we spent a ton of money, went to Michigan for my cousin's wedding (WHAT? I never blogged about this?).

In August, the talk craziness started, our PMI saga with Wells Fargo started (resolution to be blogged about soon!), and I finally really wrote out my thoughts the blatant lack of respect for women that was described at our department retreat.

In September, the PMI saga continued, and I wrote about the dangers women face that men don't generally have to think about.

In October, I described a run-in with Crazy Neighbor, and the talk craziness became REAL.

In November, I pretty much focused on getting ready for the talk, when I wasn't voting next to an NFL player.  

In December, Tiny the chinchilla passed away :( The TALK finally happened, and was sort of anti-climactic.

I'm actually surprised at how many of these things I had sort of forgotten about when I started this post. I thought 2012 was just another year of little changes, but...we adopted a dog, which is a huge change to our life. We both grew a lot in grad school, I think - Ryan changed labs and found an environment that suits him much better, and I realize now that my confidence in my work has grown tremendously this year. Even if I didn't feel like giving a talk at a conference was as exciting as I'd hoped, it will be a nice addition to my CV and I felt like (throughout the year) I had a lot of good chats with people and have a lot of new thoughts on my project. Financially, we went from MAX OUT ROTH IRAs to save ALL THE MONIES to give ALL THE MONIES to Wells Fargo to get rid of PMI, but overall we were moving in the right direction- no new debt, paying off debt, and saving for retirement.

Anyway, I hope that I will write more this year, but I think this post has become long enough as it is.

Here's to a(n even) better new year!