Highlights of 2008

I've decided to give some thought to the highlights of the past year, since I'm thinking about my 2009 goals in the mean time. Here are some that come to mind....

1) I trained for and finished my first half marathon, the City of Oaks Half Marathon on November 2. To do this, I signed up to train with the Raleigh Galloway group, which turned out to be a huge plus. I met a lot of new people with a common interest in running, and that was a lot of fun and very motivating.

2) Although I missed a few road races to early-year injuries and longer-distance training for the half, I did do new (for me) distance races in the 1-mile and 4-mile.

3) I branched out, Web 2.0-wise, and have made some new acquaintances there. In addition to Facebook and BuckeyeOutdoors.com, which I believe I joined last year, I'm now on Twitter, Goodreads, Athlinks, DailyMile, RunningAhead, and LinkedIn. Facebook and Twitter have allowed me to learn a bit more about my co-workers, fellow Junior Leaguers, and other runners, and that's been fun. Goodreads has been the latest social community I've joined, and it's inspired me to take the time to read more. In the mean time, a few co-workers are on Goodreads now too. Since we work with books, it's nice to learn about what books they like to read as well.

4) My department at work moved to a different building. It was an interesting process, moving to a place where I'm working for a library, but not in a library. I'd been looking forward to the move, but I've been more pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy the new location. It's a nice building, and although I'm not on the main campus anymore, I really like the location. I get to take periodic walks in a neat Durham neighborhood, and I've gotten to try several restaurants I've never been to before for lunch during the week. Amazing what a change of scenery with a coworker for lunch can do to refresh the brain! It's been nice!

5) I finished up my time on the Rice Diet Program back in January. While I've struggled a little bit with the weight since then, I've managed to keep most of it off, and have also stayed off of diabetes and high blood pressure meds since then, which has been a big plus.

6) I've visited several more North Carolina counties for the North Carolina Odyssey Project, the name for my mission to visit, photograph, and blog about all 100 counties in North Carolina. It's been fun seeing and learning more about this state I live in.

7) George and I celebrated 6 years together with a trip to western North Carolina. It was a fun trip, one of the best we've taken. Here's to many more years together!