2012 in Review

What a year! Especially the last month-ish. Here's the recap from a personal level:

• January I was in full hibernation mode. I went nowhere and did nothing.
• February I turned, well, the corner into the downhill slide to 40. Had the one and only snow day of the year and painted the laundry room.
• March The Spawn turned ten. My department at work doubled in size - going from one (me) to two (Mexinese). This guy is my hero!
• April I took my first vacation in... a long time... and went to Las Vegas.
• May the first bat appeared in the house.
• June The calm before the storm...
• July The month of insanity. The Spawn went to camp for the first time. Both kids had swimming lessons and VBS. Summer Conference for work. The Spawn had pink eye. Bats #2 through 7 were in the house.
• August Tried to keep this month as simple as possible. I attended a bachelorette party. The CofC went to the fair. Work took on a whole new level of challenge.
• September Sent The Diva off to school.
• October The Diva's daycare closed and we had to find a new daycare. The Diva turned five. Boyfriend and I broke up.
• November Had a minor fender bender the end of the month. I took on a second job. The Diva's school switched teachers. Bat #8 came out of hiding. Completed an essay for a writing contest.
• December The busiest month.ever. The Winter Conference for work, The Spawn's orchestra concert, making gingerbread houses with The Diva, and an offer to write a newspaper column were a few highlights. A car accident that totalled out the car was not a favorite highlight, but thankfully no one was hurt. Bats #9 and 10 were also not on my top ten list.

So that was my personal life in a nutshell. Probably explains why reading was put on a back burner. Well, that and this little thing called Pinterest... So let's wrap up what happened on the book front this year:

• I made up my own little book challenge to try to move things off the TBR shelf. It was a good effort, but the "restriction" of my normal reading habits became tiresome. Sometime around the halfway mark I gave up completely.
• Goal of  47 books for the year: failed. Finished the year with 37 books, and 2 books that I'm still trying to finish up going into 2013.
• Reducing the TBR shelf: failed. Even though I did some serious culling in the last few months, I just didn't read enough to keep up with the new books.

So what's up for 2013? I have no idea. I don't know if I'm going to set a To Read goal this year. This may be the year where I eliminate the TBR shelf. Ideally I'd like to have that shelf around 20 books - 10 "real" books and 10 e-books, but I don't know that would ever happen. I'll keep y'all posted!