Hey! Over here!

Happy New Year! Now I’m doing cartwheels. Find me here.

“Being My Best” Badge project

For Donnell‘s Badge project, here is my entry for Badge #3, “Being My Best (aka Being my procrastinating self)”

My self-portrait: (Ok, so my face is mostly hidden, but I love that my one eye and cheek are giving away that I was smiling.)

Five things that are wonderful about myself:

1) I care. About people, about animals (both real and unreal), about your feelings, about his feelings, about their feelings, about the weather in Paris, about the lawn in front of my office, about the pothole in front of Starbucks. I care and if something doesn’t seem right, I will usually try to fix it (except for that weather part.)  2) I like and try to make people laugh. Via stories, bad one-liners, cartwheels or crossing my eyes, I will try to get you to chuckle. 3) I am adventurous. Whether it’s a new city or a genre of music I’m not familiar with, I will dive right in. The idea of never knowing what it’s like is so frustrating to me that I will risk security and being uncomfortable until all of my questions and curiosities are answered. 4) I’m a really great aunt. Yes, I said it. I love my niece and nephew more than words can express and I’ve made it a priority to be a consistent part of their lives. Through phone-calls, letter-writing, mailing a “book of inspiration” back and forth while I was overseas and just simply hanging out with them, I treasure our relationship and I am so excited about watching them grow up. 5) I’m modest. It was really difficult and uncomfortable for me to think of 5 things. In fact, it took me 30 extra days.

Two talents:

1) I have a good singing voice. I started taking voice lessons this year and it’s been wonderful. I’ve always wanted to sing and I’ve finally gotten to a place where I can do that and not feel dumb about it.

2) I’m a good story-teller. Or so I’ve been told. I’ll tell you a story sometime.

Five goals for this month (December for me since I’m so late):

1. Lose 4 pounds. What would a goal list be without weight involved?

2. Start an Ancestry page…I have no idea where my family comes from and it’s bothering me.

3. Start writing in my journal again.

4. Get a good portion of my extra pictures uploaded on flickr from the past few years.

5. Embroider something

Five goals for the year:

1. Stop watching so much mindless tv.

2. Taking “I’m sorry” out of my automatic vocabulary.

3. Travel outside of the U.S.

4. Run another 5K.

5. Take a photograph a day.

My award:

Thanks for reading this far.

SAY: “Ha det bra”

“Ha det” means “goodbye.” (Sounds like “ha deh bra”)

Oslo has been surprising and fun and restless and cold (um…12 degrees tonight). I’m sad to go but happy to see family and friends…will put up some last-minute pictures in the next few days.

Thanks for reading and for being part of the adventure! Ha det!