2011 in Review

'Tis the season to read a lot of "Year in Review" posts, and I must join in.  So, time to review my 2011 goals and see how I did:

Personally

• Enjoy the remainder of this pregnancy. With Norah, I was so excited and eager to have her born, I feel as though I willed that pregnancy to just be done with, and it wasn't until she was born, that I realized how special pregnancy is. This time around, I'm trying to appreciate it.  I did appreciate it, but I still got impatient at the end.  Guess I'm just an impatient preggo!
• Make more time for dates with Jerry. As parents, it's easy to lose track of time, and at the end of the week, it's often just easiest to order Chinese, rent a movie On Demand, and call that a date. But as nice as nights like that are, I need to make the time and effort to get a babysitter and actually go sit across a table from Jerry and eat real food and have real conversations.  Success!  We've made an effort to get out for "date night" about once a month, and it's been worthwhile.
• Read more books. I got a Nook for Christmas this year, and I'm eager to give e-reading a go! Plus, several friends got Nooks, so hopefully, we can take advantage of the lend option and save ourselves some book buying.  Blended success here.  I read quite a bit in the first half of the year, and then...Caleb was born and the reading really sharply dropped off.  Right now, I read regularly, but it takes me about 1,000% longer to get through a book because my time spent reading is so greatly diminished.
• Financially, I want to pay off our car loan.  Success!  Now the only debt we have is our mortgage.

Professionally

• Serve on two committees, either departmental or college-wide. Success! 
• Put real effort into applying for either a Classroom Reasearch Award or the Endowed Teaching Chair. Both of these options offer professional recoginition and cash awards.  I put real effort into the Endowed Teaching Chair award, but was denied the opportunity to advance in the process.  This award is highly competition at my institution (there's a hefty monetary reward), so I'm not surprised I wasn't selected (again. this was my 3rd year in a row being nominated but not being selected to move forward to the interview portion).  I did, however, win Professor of the Year, which was an unexpected award for 2011.
• Publish another short story.  Success!  You can go here if you're interested.

Running

• Run consistently for as long as I'm able during this pregnancy.  Did my best here, but only ran until I was 27 weeks preggo, which fell short of my expectation to run until at least 32 weeks as I did with Norah.  Still, I feel satisfied with my effort.
• Run some preggo races.  Fail!  I ran ZERO preggo races.
• Run a fall or early winter HM.  Fail!  The only race I ran in 2011 was the 5K Turkey Trot.  All in all, running was a challenge for me this year.

As always a mixed bag of success and failure, and of course, unexpected deviations, challenges and joys.  Now to start pondering some 2012 goals.  Of those, I have NO clue.  Need to put my thinking cap on!