Sarah Sunday – A Year in Review…

Well good morning my lovely readers, and welcome to 2012! So, I wanted to do a bit of a reflection over the past year, both personal and bookish.

Sarah’s 2011…

This was the year of constancy. With the exception of the birth of my nephew L, there were no huge major changes in life. We stayed in the same apartment, no one has died, me and the honeyman both have the same cars as the year before. I’m still at my ACO job (the one where I’m basically a security guard), and the honeyman left a crappy job and now has a much, much better one. I picked up a second part-time job, that I may or may not stay at now that the holidays are over. The honeyman and I celebrated 4 years together over the summer, and we’re still crazy happy. Life has been pretty good.

So, let’s take a look at some of the more interesting stuff then, shall we?

In December of 2010 we learned that my little sister Amanda was pregnant! Woo hoo! We had her baby shower in June, which was kind of fun and my first real time helping in planning a baby shower.

Mom, preggo Amanda, big sis Heather, and me.

And in July, I finally got to meet my little baby nephew! Now for almost her entire pregnancy, Amanda said she was naming in Luis, which I thought was awful and decided I would just call him L for short. And then on the day that she had to take him home from the hospital, she changed her mind and named him Jariel. Which is so, so, so much worse, and since “el” is at the end of it, I decided to just keep on calling him L.

L looked like this when he was born

and now…

... and now 5 months later he looks like this. FATSO BABY

In August, I unwisely decided to give red hair a try. It did not last.

Faded in about a week or two, went right back to blonde.

In October, I got my second tattoo!

LOVE IT.

And then the holidays hit, and life has been crazy busy.

Sooooo, looking back on 2011, here are some of the Sarah-things I want to work on in 2012:

~ Be less busy. Not off to a great start, since I just signed up to do a 72-hour work week at the end of January… But basically I need to find a way to be healthier. Since my job require me to basically sit in a chair for 36 -48 hours a week, I am soooo out of shape. And lately I’ve had the urge to go out and take walks, go to the gym, dance around, etc… except it always hits me at inopportune times, like when I’m at work or it’s late at night. It’s frustrating. So I need to find ways to be even a little bit more active. And for me, that directly correlates to how much more free time I have. Also, I need to SLEEP more before work!

~ TAKE MORE PICTURES! I have sadly realized that only a couple pictures of me and the honeyman together have been taken, and they’re not even great ones. Hopefully having an awesome camera on my new phone will help this.

~ Maintain weekly date nights. The honeyman and I have just recently started doing this again, since starting his new job we don’t have a lot of spare time together and want to make it a point to leave some time for romance. It can be hard though – considering that my job gets in the way of half of the week, and we already have a game night once a week, sometimes date night gets pushed aside and that sucks. So we’re going to try for at least 52 date nights this year! And if we can fit in more, even better!

~ Even though I’m already annoyingly busy… try to work on a social life. I hardly ever get to hang out with my sister Heather anymore, when we used to hang out several times a month. And I’m trying to forge more girl friendships… I feel like I’ve gotten out of my shell a little bit this year, and hopefully I can find those spare days or nights for more socializing. I’m a homebody by nature, and kind of a lazy friend, so this in particular will be hardest.

Sarah’s Bookish 2011…

So, I feel disappointed in my reading this year. Obviously I’m a little bummed that I wasn’t able to read more than I had in 2010, but I don’t think it’s just that. I decided not to partake in any challenges in 2011, because I wanted to focus more on re-reads. So I re-read the Harry Potter series, half of the Outlander series, some of the Fearless series, and a couple random novels throughout… But I didn’t get all of the re-reading that I wanted to do, because I started to feel a little guilty re-reading. Especially with the Outlander novels - those are my FAVORITE books, but they’re like 1000- 1500 pages each – they take about a week or more to read, especially if I’m busy. So instead I’d read other, shorter books in the interests of having some reviews to post more often.

Also, in February I started doing the monthly polls, in which I would post a list of like 4 to 6 books, and you guys would vote on which one you wanted to see me read and review. And while that was fun and led to me reading some great books… sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes I slogged through a book I totally would have DNF’d because I wanted to give you guys the review you asked for. So even though the polls were of my own design, I think I started to feel trapped by them. Sometimes I pick a book to put on a poll because I think I should finally get around to reading it, and then I end up disappointed that it won, or I don’t feel in the mood for it anymore…. anyways, WHINE.

On the flip side, I did discover quite a few new authors that I enjoy and will be keeping an eye on for future releases. And I’ve realized that I really enjoy challenges, because they urge me to try new books and expand my reading, but kind of at my own pace, ya know?

So, there are really two changes I’ll be making to the blog this year:

1.  The February poll will be the last monthly poll for a while. The honeyman and I started reading 1 book together a month, and I think that’s really all of the “required” reading I can handle. Reading a year of poll winners was fun and different, but I’m putting it on the back burner for now.

2. I’m going to try to make my review format look a little neater… Maybe include IN the post the title, author’s name, year it came out, publisher, pages, etc… I’m not quite sure yet. I may also occasionally borrow the book descriptions from Amazon or Goodreads, because I often suck at trying to descibe a book in my own words, without giving too many spoilers.

And here are my BOOKISH goals for 2012…

~ Read what I want, when I want. I’m going to try not to fret over reading a really long book because it’ll mean less wonderful reviews here. I’ll just have to post random babbling posts instead

~ Try to read every single day. Even if it’s only 10 pages, or for 10 minutes. I hate that sometimes two or three days can go by and I’ve just been too busy to pick up the book I’m reading.

~ Start a quotes journal. It’ll be quotes from books and authors, as well as from tv, movies, people, etc… I just want someplace to physically write them down so I can look at them later.

~ Take more baths. Doesn’t sound reading-related, but I love to read in the tub. Hence more baths = more reading. Plus more relaxing. And maybe more wine…

~ Comment on blogs more. I’m a lazy blog reader. I MUST be less lazy about commenting, because I love getting comments, and you know. Karma.

~ Post more reviews to Amazon. Especially if it’s a newer, relatively unheard of author and I like their book.

So, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Bring it, 2012.

~Sarah