The last 48 hours have been spectacular! On Tuesday after work, I went to my friend Maria's house. She and I were best friends in high school, and even though she went to Notre Dame University while I stayed in California, and even though she's teaching English in Korea while I'm living at home, we are still very close. Anyway, I stayed overnight on Tuesday, skipped out on work yesterday, and then spent New Year's Eve with her and her family. I absolutely adore her family, you guys. She has two beautiful and incredibly wonderful sisters, and they had another friend over, whom I know pretty well. New Years Eve consisted of several episodes of "The West Wing," an absolutely amazing four-course meal, a Korean card game, champagne and raspberry red wine at midnight, and a two hour dance party in the kitchen with the 5 of us girls. I was a bit sad to leave them today, since Maria is going back to Korea until September, one of her sisters is returning to school at NYU, and the other sister is going to grad school in Vermont in a couple of months. I'm going to miss them all terribly!!

So that was my New Year's Eve. And even though it sort of sucks that I have to work longer hours next week to make up for playing hookie yesterday, but it was absolutely and completely worth it.

So...

2008 was a really good year for me. I've listed my top ten moments of the last year (complete with pictures) under this first cut as a way to look back on the year and remember how wonderful and amazing it was. Sure, not everything was peachy keen all the time, but I tend to be an optimist, so I'd rather remember the good things.

Enjoy the list and the pictures!

( Top Ten Moments of 2008Collapse )

Okay, I haven't made resolutions in ages. I've always thought that the idea of waiting until January 1st to decide to change aspects of your life was a bit silly. And I'm generally very happy with my life, so I never really felt the need to resolve to make things better. But, for whatever reason, I feel like making them this year. They are mostly serious, but there are some sillier ones in there, too.

( Ten Resolutions for 2009Collapse )

I haven't decided yet, but I might post monthly updates about how my resolutions are going, just to keep me on track with what I want to achieve in the next twelve months.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, safe, blessed, amazing 2009. I love you all! *HUGS*

I hosted a NaNoWriMo write-in today (where people come to a coffee shop or laptop-friendly restaurant and all write together). I was there for 3 hours and wrote about 3500 words. It was a lot of fun! There were only five of us, but it was nice to get out of the house and dedicate some time to writing. I know that if I stayed home, I wouldn't have written that long or that much.

But I am now at 5500 words altogether, so I'm catching up! I think I'm going to try to write on my lunch hour at work some more. I tend to just be so tired when I get home from work that I don't feel like writing, so I'll try to do more during the day.

Hmm... what else? I had more to mention.

Oh, I'm going to make bread from scratch tomorrow. I'm setting up a pre-ferment tonight, which is a combination of yeast, water, and flour that you let sit for 8-12 hours before you do the rest of it. So that's the plan for tomorrow. I might make some soup, too. Mmm... lentil soup and homemade bread. That sounds awesome for a rainy weekend like this.

I think there was more I was going to say, but I forget. Oh well.

How is your Saturday going? Have any plans for tomorrow?