Goodbye 2015, and hello 2016! I swore I’d write one of these retrospective posts a year ago, so here it goes.

I did some traveling this year, largely for either work or weddings. In 2015, I attended the weddings of Rica & Jon, Tim & Roz, Jazz & Dom and Siena & Andy. My mom also cashed in on taking a big birthday trip and we went to the Galapagos as a family. I apparently took 22 days off from work. Yay unlimited vacation policy.

Places I’ve Been:
Manila (ish), Philippines
Boracay, Philippines
Hong Kong
Las Vegas, NV* (two trips, one work and one for GP Vegas)
Portland, OR*
Quito, Ecuador
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Dallas, TX*
Austin, TX*
Sacramento, CA
Pasadena, CA
New York, NY*
Boston, MA*
* Work trips

In 2015, I resolved (whatever that really means) to do a couple things:

• Sleep more: I’m a much nicer person with enough sleep. Also more functional. This one took me a while to figure out — I was totally fine on 5 hours of sleep a couple years ago, but I’m not anymore. I think it’s because I do more work at work, not old age.
• Exercise more regularly: With lots of help from Shamiq, I now have a regular workout schedule — MWF are lifting days, TTh are cardio days. Unfortunately, I’ve done less climbing this year than I’d like. Something’s gotta give.
• Dress like an adult: Less dinosaur t-shirts & hoodies to work. I’ve mostly succeeded. I’m not even sure where my dinosaur hoodie is anymore…
  Read more books — I started to notice that my already short attention span was deteriorating from reading Facebook posts and Buzzfeed lists.

Books I’ve Read: (55, assuming I can count)
Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrenzvani
Bangkok Daze by William Sparrow
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida, K.A. Yoshida
Go It Alone! by Bruce Judson
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Divergent Series (all the books… 1-4.5?) by Veronica Roth
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Mortal Instruments Series (1-6) by Cassandra Clare
Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley & David Kelley
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman
Maze Runner Series (1-3) by James Dashner
The Idealist: Jefferey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk
The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon
Heads in Beds by Tomsky Jacob
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
Heather Wells Series (1-4) by Meg Cabot
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
The Collector by John Fowles
Every Day Is For the Thief by Teju Cole
Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Station Eleven by Emily St.John Mandel
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu & Ken Liu

Another exercise in concentration — finishing by knit & crochet projects (without buying more yarn)
Finished Objects – Knit + Crochet: (17)
3 Bicycle Wheels hats (gifts for Jonny, Yama and Shamiq)
Orzhov gloves for Shamiq (my own pattern)
Crochet hexagon baby blanket (gift, made up a pattern)
freeform-ish Triangle shawl (gift)
3 crochet pot holders
grey knit hat (color block, no pattern) for me
grey knit hat (triangles, no pattern) for Shamiq
shades of grey (ha) crochet shawl (no pattern)
Habu lace scarf (no pattern)
black and brown Cupido Cowl (adapted)
Herringbone Cowl (adapted)
short-row hat for shamiq (no pattern)
Song of the Sea Cowl (merry christmas, mom)

Annnnd that’s 2015. I’m sure there’s other stuff worth that may be notable, but this feels awkward enough so I’ll stop here.