Foto Friday

In my 29 by 29 list, I actually started one of my goals a bit early. I have been taking a picture a day since the beginning of April. You can follow my flickr feed here, but I will also post the last week's worth of photos each Friday. Occasionally, you may see a photo that popped up in the regular posts that I loved so much that it was also my photo of the day, but not often.

Saturday April 16: Homeward Bound

Sunday April 17: From Geoff

Monday April 18: Freshly Painted Toes and Yoga are the Best Way to Lift Spirits

Tuesday April 19: Parking Lot in Bloom

Wednesday April 20: Timing Myself to Stay on Task

Thursday April 21: I Love Swim Class

Friday April 22: Couch Time

To the Land of Prince and Posters

Last Wednesday I got up too early and took off for Minneapolis to attend the annual conference of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.  I presented a poster based on the final results of my dissertation research.

I added a qr (quick response) code to my poster.  With the proper app on your smart phone, you can take a picture of it and be redirected to an online version of the poster and my CV.

http://goo.gl/lq6Ng

I was pretty smug about this until I got home and checked the google analytics.  Two people accessed the link - and one was a coworker who didn't so much care about the poster as enjoyed the technology.  Oh well, at least once everyone else starts using them, I can say "oh yeah, I had a qr code on my poster in 2011."

My undergraduate advisor, Michael Crawford (right), was awarded the Boas Award for Distinguished Achievement from the Human Biology Association. 

We had a "family dinner" with a great many of his former students in addition to the official reception.  Dr. Crawford pointed out that he has outlived several students, seen others retire, and is still accepting new students.  He is a force to be reckoned with and I'm honored to be among his "intellectual children."

For the second year in a row, my birthday fell during the conference so I got to spend it with my Penn State and KU friends!!!

I volunteered to judge the student awards presentation for the American Association of Anthropological Genetics and spent a lot of time tracking people down for a project that I'm working on (more in a couple months).  I also heard some really great presentations (including a potentially paradigm-breaking one from my friend Holly) so the academic/professional aspects of the conference went really well.  But honestly, what I always remember once the conference is over is the dinners catching up with friends.

All too quickly, it was Saturday afternoon and time to leave too cold Minneapolis for much, much to hot San Antonio.

At the airport, I picked up some Minnesota blueberry gummy bears for Geoff and this guy - perhaps the tackiest magnet in a pretty spectacularly tacky collection.

29 by 29

When I started my 28 by 28 goal-setting, a lot of people immediately pointed out that I was creating a dangerous precedent and would someday be trying to complete 60 goals by the time I turned 60.  That may be true, but for now, I have 29 goals for my 29^th year.  For me,  this goal setting is about publically committing myself to do things that I really want to do but would fall by the wayside if I didn’t feel some accountability  all of you.   So thank you for reading and commenting and participating in my sometimes random goals. 

I decided to group my 29 by 29 goals into things in my life that give me joy: cooking, creating, work, physical challenges, and home life.  I tried to make the goals concrete and achievable so I know when I have met them.  Without further ado, my 29 by 29 list is:

Cooking

1.    Master 10 Indian Dishes

2.    Master 10 Mexican Dishes

3.    Master 10 Chinese Dishes

4.    Monthly Baking Challenge

5.    Pick my own Berries, Apples and Pumpkins

6.    Take a Charcuterie Class

Creating

7.    Sew 1 Item of Clothing/Month

8.    Make a Quilt

9.    Make Seasonal Decorations

10.  Blog 50 times

11.  Learn to Knit Continental

12.  Knit 3 Things for Myself

13.  Decorate the House

14.  Take One Photo a Day

Work

15.  Create 3, 5, 10 year plans

16.  Improve My Web Presence

17.  Actively Maintain Network

18.  Publish 3 papers

19.  Start San Antonio Chapter of AWIS

Friends and Family and Home

20.  See a play, opera, ballet, and/or musical

21.  2 day trips around San Antonio

22.  Visit 3 museums in San Antonio

23.  Organize Finances & Save More

24.  Read a Book a Month

Physical Challenges

25.  Climb a Rock Wall

26.  Run Entire Fourth of July 4-Miler

27.  4 Hikes

28.  Weekly Yoga

29.  Begin Swim and Bike Training

I’m so excited to get started.  Please pipe in if you have any thoughts or suggestions or if you have done some of these things yourself.  I’d love any recommendations of favorite recipes, vacation destinations, great books you have read, yoga plans you follow – anything!

28 by 28 Final Tally

So you might have noticed that I have been posting a lot lately. Partly this is to make up for the months I neglected, but I bet a few of you figured out that it was also a rush to finish up as many of my 28 by 28 goals as possible before my birthday tomorrow! So let's see how I did.

1. Pass my Dissertation Defense DONE!


2. Find a Post-Doc Position And loving it!

3. Make a Dress for Myself that I love and wear I feel pretty

4. Get back in my 18 year old Shape I'm not quite there, but I am getting close.

5. Publish all the work I did in Graduate School I have had one paper accepted for publication and I've got three more in preparation.  Not quite where I wanted to be - focusing on writing up my work is definitely something I need to keep working on.

6. Learn to Crochet Well, I made this.

7. Run a 10k race Run, not quite accurate.  Completed, yes.

8. Bake 2 loaves of Bread a Month My every week multigrain (above), hamburger buns, everything bread, tortillas, pita.  I did this one for sure!

9. Learn to Can/Make Marmalade Grapefruit jam so far, but more to come!

10. Improve my Photography Skills  Not much progress here, which I regret.  I want one of those blogs with staggeringly beautiful photos!

11. Take a Statistics Class No.  Trying to learn more, but not formally.

12. Take Two Weekend Trips with Geoff  We didn't do this - but we did spend four whole days driving from PA to Texas.  That's pretty much the same.

13. Volunteer monthly Not every month, but 9 of 12 is pretty good.

14. Reorganize and purge books, craft supplies, and clothes Did it with the move in August and again for the move in December.

15. Repurpose clothes and Housewares from Thrift Stores Two skirts so far.

16. Learn to Draw In one of the blogs that I follow, the author mused "if there's one thing that adulthood teaches you, it's that you can't be good at everything you'd like to be good at."  This is pretty much where I came down on learning to draw.  I'm as good as I am motivated to be - for now.

17. Learn About Wine (But Don't be a Snob) Um.  Nope.  

18. Cook More Seafood Made progress, but an ongoing process!

19. Use up all my yarn I was clearly overly optimistic about this one. I have way, way too much yarn. But I do have plans to use it up - eventually.

20. Make my own yogurt and cheese Did both, one was success and one was a failure.

21. Be vegetarian for a month and vegan for a week Vegetarian was pretty easy, but vegan was more of a challenge. Both ended up broadening the way we eat and our meals are now more than half vegetarian.

22. Fill and flood cookies You might say I went crazy with graduation cookies, birthday cookies, thank you cookies, Halloween cookies, and there were even some I didn't post!

23. Go to two national parks  Actually, I did visit a National Historic Site - the Brown v. Board of Education school in Topeka.  They recently renovated the exhibit and it was really excellent, I recommend it if you ever get the chance!

24. Read two of Shakespeare's plays and two Historical Biographies I read Eleanor Roosevelt's autobiography, but that's all.

25. Visit California (recommended by Craig) I'm pushing this off until later this year - we'll get their soon, though. And now we're only half as far away!

26. Internet-Free Saturdays Who am I kidding, I'll stay off the internet when you pry my iPhone from my cold, dead hands.

27. Take (and print) photos Blogging is really helping me to take more photos. I have them printed out, but keep watching the blog for a display piece in the works.

28. Buy 50% Local Going to the farmer's market with Veronica is my Saturday morning ritual. I'm trying to find locally own shops to patronize for things like fabric, but I haven't found many yet.

Watermelon Trivets

I saw the pattern for Purl Bee's Fruity Trivets and decided they were so cute that I had to finally learn to crochet.  For some reason, I had it in my head that crochet was going to be difficult to learn and my first few attempts at this pattern bore that out.  I kept ending up with a cone instead of a nice flat piece, until I realized I misread the pattern!  Number 1 way that crochet is like knitting.

The second way is that proper tension is key.  I started with this mini-version of the trivet so that I could get a feel for the pattern.  The result is a little wonkey due to my tension issues.  Nevertheless, it came out so cute that instead of frogging it to reuse the yarn, I took it to work to use as a mug rug.  I can't wait to finish the full size versions.