525,600 minutes
For some reason Seasons of Love from Rent has been running through my head a lot this season as I think back over the year.
The first measure that comes to mind is miles. Brian has been logging his miles on the road (950 miles biked, 575 miles on foot) and meters in the pool (60km) this year. I’ve run over 370 miles since June, when I started logging miles in my new running shoes, and “miles” is the third most used word in my facebook posts in the last year. This training was motivated by 5 races each – a 12K, a half marathon and a 10 miler before Brian’s two triathlons (sprint and international distances) and my 25K and marathon. We also have driven quite a lot of miles, between our July trip to the midwest and our holiday four-state tour (about 2000 miles per trip) and my 38 mile commute each way to work (I put on about 20,000 miles a year on my car). The number of days carpooling was lower than it probably should be – a good reminder to make a better effort to share rides in 2010.
We ate local for 27 weeks this year courtesy of our farm share, with some additional support from our garden, our family’s gardens and Tendercrop farm. I’m sure I can’t count how many bunches of Chinese cabbage we ate – too many! We’ve eaten out less, have spent less money, and have eaten healthier than in many past years, plus we know where more of our food originates.
Dollars recovered comes to mind when I think about my year at work. When I took over a new project in April, it was projecting a $1M overrun by the end of this year. I’m very proud to say that we are now on budget, we’ve got some excellent results from our recent flight test, and we’re expecting our next phase to start in January. While there have been plenty of challenges, in many ways this year has seemed very easy from a work perspective. I couldn’t ask for a better team of colleagues at BAE Systems, on the government team or with our subcontractors, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know and work with them despite a fairly rough business environment overall.
We could count hours volunteered. Brian has continued as a legal advocate at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, spending a few days each month at court, and also volunteering at the office to set up a database, work on files and do legal intakes. My work at MIT continues at a lower level – I’m on the IRDF board, am serving as a Community Catalyst Leadership coach and president of the WILG corporation board. Then we’d add on hours spent by Brian as our church treasurer and by Susan on grant applications and meetings and newsletter articles… perhaps we shouldn’t count.
House guests at the Juddmansee B&B is a fun metric! Dan Sheldon is in the lead for naming rights to the guest room at this point, but Mary Obelnicki is a close second. Isaac Sheldon came to visit us for the first time for Brian’s birthday, which was great fun. Brian’s Mom and Grandma drove out and stayed with us for almost a week. These are just a few of the folks who have stopped by. We love having friends and family visit! There is no way to measure the joy and love of our friends and family.
How do you measure a year?
Posted: December 30th, 2009 under Church, Family, Fitness, Food, Friends, Newburyport, Us.
Comments: 2
Comments
Comment from Dan Dunn
Time: December 31, 2009, 7:16 pm
That’s a nice round up. Happy New Year!
Comment from Eric Brown
Time: January 2, 2010, 9:04 am
At some point we’ll get out that way – and of course, should you ever want to hit Oklahoma, just let us know.
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