Hello, 2014...almost two months late.

So, aside from my Throwback Thursday posts, I know I've basically dropped off the face of the earth. I'm sorry! Between the holidays and finishing up with the flight school things were a bit crazy for a while, and I spent a good part of January just trying to unwind. I think I swung a bit from one extreme to another - too crazy to too relaxed - so I finally feel like things are getting back to normal.

Most years I set a whole pile of goals for myself - stuff like visit this many new countries, this many new states, read this many new books, do this, do that, so on and so forth. This year, I'm trying something a little different. I'm not setting any goals as far as new places to visit or new books to read. I have only two goals. First, to get through the entire year of running and all of my planned races (including, finally, a full marathon) without getting hurt. And second, to try to fly more total time than I did in my previous best year of flying (which was 236 hours in 2007). Both of these will be fairly challenging and time consuming, but since running and flying are two of the things I enjoy most, it should work out pretty well.

Also, I have a whole pile of trips planned for this year (I'm actually writing this post from Sedona, Arizona!), so I didn't see the point of setting any financial goals since I'm going to be spending a fair amount of money on airfare and hotels. Whatever. For me, this year is going to be more about having fun and jumping at fun opportunities every chance I get. 

So! As of now I have 7, possibly 8 trips planned for this year:

February: Sedona, Arizona

March: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

April: Iceland and Amsterdam

Late May/early June: San Diego (plus a full marathon)

Late June/early July: London (to see Monty Python live!)

Late July: Oshkosh

September: Norway

December: a possible birthday trip, to be determined

Several of these trips are long weekends, a few are for full weeks. All of them will mean lots of pictures to post here. So to kick things off right, here's a view from my bedroom in Sedona:

It is ridiculously pretty out here. I'll have more pictures soon!