2011, in retrospect

Best Song: “Someone Like You” by Adele

This was one of the “soundtrack” songs I played on repeat while I wrote Exactly Where They’d Fall this year, so maybe I have a more emotional reason for considering it my favorite. If anyone was ever curious to know how my book feels in song form – it feels like that. Ouch, huh?

Gorgeous song though. I couldn’t get enough of it, even as much as they splashed it all over the radio.

Best New Toy: my Canon Rebel t3i

Best Date: we didn’t have enough of them, but dinner along the Occoquan River on Not-Rapture day – do you remember Not-Rapture Day, lol! May 21st, 2011 – the air was abuzz with hilarity and we were child-free for four hours. 6:00pm rolled around and nobody dissipated into thin air. We wondered briefly if maybe we just didn’t make the list… but then it seemed nobody made the list.

Best TV Show: this was the year I fell in love with Shameless (UK version). It’s not new to most people, but it was new to me.

Best thing that would have been totally awesome had it actually panned out: I started to do an online boating course as novel research, with the plans to buy an actual boat this spring. After finding the info I needed for the book, I never did finish the course. I will though. Because I totally want a boat!

And yes, we’ll then own a boat before we own a house. But that’s okay. Maybe we’ll just live on the boat and float around the world and never have to pick a place to stay?

Best Movie: Biutiful. This is a 2010 film we rented on Netflix. OMG, bawl my eyes out! 🙁

Best Place We Visited: This was a close call. I went to some pretty amazing places for the first time this year – Bath, in England. Seeing the clouds sink down into the Shenandoah Valley! Truly spectacular places to see. But after all the hype I’ve been hearing from friends over the years, we finally made a trip up to Traverse City, MI.

Traverse City, MI

Fell in love, people!

Nevermind the fact that it’s hours away from almost everything (or well, maybe that’s *why* it’s such a treasure?) The charming town, the oil and vinegar shop, the popcorn, the little-bitty-almost mountains, the forests, the breakfast shop with the awesome omelets and the good coffee creamers, the farmer’s markets, the earthy people – there’s a lady with a coffee shop who gave a cookie with every cup of coffee, and she gave Dylan a toy with his orange juice! OMG.

And the water! The warm sand, and hot sun, and that icy, icy cold, royal blue water.

Love. That is all. <3

(I also kept thinking, it’s because we’re in tourist season, isn’t it? Maybe they all turn into frozen vampires once September rolls around. I’d like to believe not though.)

Best Book: Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

Best New Addiction: Tumblr. Tumblr is so fun! I started up about three of them in seven seconds, lol! Combine Tumblr and Sims and you get a Simblr = OMG indestructible. Many a great moment have been lost to Simblrs! 😉

Best Hippie Idea: Coloring hair with henna. I’ve been meaning to try it for a long time, but only got around to it this year. It’s fun to read about how to mix different colors for dyes.

Best New Pipe-Dream: indie authordom, for sure!

(Narrowly beating out my whimsical 5-year plan to buy a house in Traverse City?)

Best Accomplishment: finishing a whole novel! Beginning, middle, end, finished! Not 40% of a book. Not 85% of a first draft, with notes for an ending. A whole book.

I can finish things, people! I can!

And then I finished two more drafts of revisions on it too! 😉

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to a super awesome 2012!