While it seemed like everyone was throwing up Year in Review posts at the end of December, I was too busy living those glorious holiday/time-off/traveling days. So, a few days behind (but this isn’t my real new year anyway), here is my first ever Year in Review blog post.

January I went to Toronto twice, once on the way back to Vancouver from spending Christmas in Halifax and once for Lil Sis’ graduation ceremony. I was in month 3 of being really restless about my future and over breakfast that Leo cooked and at the dining table in his condo overlooking Toronto’s financial district and CN Tower, he encouraged me and told me that “when you come to Toronto, things will happen.” In 2011, I was able to DineOut Vancouver and Winterlicious.

February We went on a small three “couples” road trip to Seattle. It doesn’t happen often so it was really nice because we were out of town and the three of us girls could go out for a drink while the guys stayed in the hotel playing video games and watching TV of course. I also discovered Zumba and the updated dance-inspired fitness classes work very well for me.

April We did not train well at all but since I paid for it, we were doing the Sun Run, damnit! We slid in just a little bit over an hour and I completely tanked half way through. NPY beat me by less than a minute and completed his longest race to date, a 10K. We started learning how to play guitar and that expanded my horizons. I also made my third trip to Toronto of the year over an extended Easter holiday.

May After 26 months working at UBC, my contract ended without further renewal and change was inevitable. Unemployment was nice for two weeks only. BiNK’s wedding was at the end of the month and I can safely say it was the party of the year–it has the funny effect of forever ingraining in my memory the association of 2011 songs (like Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, “No Speak Americano”, and DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win”) with that evening and summer.

June NPY and I started looking for somewhere to live together. NPY not being a proponent of renting, we looked at condos for sale and figured out quickly after one big condo-touring day what we wanted (none of what we saw). NPY and I celebrated five years together. In one particularly “cultured” week, we saw the traveling Broadway production of Wicked and a Rihanna concert. ;)

July We went on a “double date” roadtrip to Bellevue. Shopping was not the focus but eating still was! It was really blissful although I didn’t have that much stress to run away from.

August After a whole summer of deliberation and discussion, I/we decided that I would go to Toronto for a while. Reason: I really miss my sister and it doesn’t make a difference where I am if I’m just studying. We went back to Victoria to visit for the first time in five years. At the end of the month, I brought Daddy to visit his family in Vancouver for the first time in 11 years and I had packed up, given up my apartment (my first apartment) of six years, and relocated to Toronto.

September I made sure to stay busy during my first month hanging out with Vanna, checking out The Ex at CNE and TIFF. Lil Sis and I did a wine region tour of Niagara-on-the-Lake but according to my cousin Alan, we missed all the good (small) wineries.

October In a “birthday trip”, Lil Sis and I went to Detroit… and Ann Arbor. I can now cross Detroit off my list.

November NPY’s Toronto visit at the end of October rolled right into our NYC trip, second time in three years and now we have to move on to somewhere else! I started doing NaNoWriMo, a romance, but then I couldn’t face it any longer. I got a job at a really good company and started my new job at the end of the month. It was a stressful month of getting everything together after six months of under-employment!

December Settling into working downtown and a routine which was really welcome after so long. I leased my first grown-up apartment and jumped through all the hoops of a real, fancy downtown apartment. I went was back in Vancouver at the beginning of the month for a whirlwind trip and back again for an extended long weekend to celebrate Christmas. I’ve never spent Christmas away from my family but isn’t NPY my family by now? Then back to Toronto for a couple of days and Halifax for New Years!

I don’t go seeking my horoscope forecast for the year but sometimes it comes through to me anyhow. I think Lil Sis found my Chinese Zodiac for the lunar year that started 3 February 2011 and it was just an awful year for me in the work realm. I don’t have the link because you just don’t think about documenting that, you know? It may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy (e.g., not getting a new job so I was working without a break) but my contract not being renewed wasn’t my doing. And after the prophesized bad time for half the year, things seemed to fall in place again after some effort of my own. After this year, I really don’t want to hear next year’s forecast!

NYR

1. knock off some of those races: Toronto Yonge Street 10K (April 22), WWF CN Tower Climb (April ~14), Ottawa Marathon (May 27), Manitoba Marathon (June 27), Quebec City Staircase Challenge (June ~26), Marathon de Montreal (September 23), Detroit Free Press Marathon (October 21)
2. complete four courses and the second Level towards my designation
3. work work work (but that’s a given)
4. travel with MY in April (Europe)
5. be a super-duper long-distance girlfriend
6. travel with NPY in the fall (Asia, or Hawaii)

Some of this is really (really) ambitious, but — however inaccurate it is — you know what they say about setting your sights on the moon….