And, the Real (read: non-athletic) Year in Review

Without further rambling, here are some of the things that happened in 2012 that reminded me life is so much more than being a triathlete.

One of the biggest ones involves a friend. Her name is Colétte-Elizabeth. We met online - wait, I'm not exactly sure how we met, it's like I've known her forever. Seriously, I'm drawing a complete blank about how we met. I do know that we've determined that more than once in London, England, we have been in the same place at the same time and yet, we never met face to face. That all changed this year when I managed to get to New York while she was in New York. Hurricane Sandy also hit New York that week. It was like someone else was pulling the strings to get us together and it finally happened. And all I have to say is that it was one of the best 20-hour-stretches I ever spent with another human being. In that time, I smiled and laughed enough to make up for all the ills of the year, and the memories will keep me going for some time.

I've managed to reconnect with several old friends this year. Especially in England - I had fallen out of touch because it's been so long since I've visited England (this explains why getting my slot on Team USA for the ITU World Championship in London was so important to me). Two of my races, although disasters in the race category, were marked by reunions with my good friend Ron who lives on the opposite side of the US. I'm glad when things work out that way - it makes the bad "race" memories easier to bear.

Yes that's green sand

I have had several opportunities to travel this year, and they've provided some lasting great moments for my husband Jim and me. The one I will never forget is driving our rented jeep to

Louisville Slugger Museum

Hoover Dam

San Diego's Sunset Cliffs

After the "Rocky" run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

James Mercer of The Shins

• John Gorka
• Josh Ritter (best show yet we've seen of his)
• Radiohead (best RH show ever for me)
• Decemberists
• Bruce Hornsby (SOLO!)
• Colin Hay

We were also introduced to some amazing "new" musicians:

• Bhi Bhiman (opened for Josh Ritter, beautiful voice and guitar, amazing songwriter, keep an eye on this guy)
• Sonny and the Sunsets (my newest favorite band)

a piece of music history

Continuing the music front, Jim and I bought a bunch of scrapbooking materials to put together a scrapbook of all our experience as music lovers and concert goers over the years. We've been very fortunate to collect some interesting autographs (one of which was obtained by a friend and consisted of a unique message to me from the band Turin Brakes written on a styrofoam container in which curry chips were served at a festival in England).

In the realm of art, I was fortunate enough to be able to exhibit one of my drawings in the Staff Art Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Talking to others about it gave me faith to start drawing again, and I launched my Daily Drawing blog subcategory (if you've read my blog you already know about it, but there's a link at top to see all of them).

This year, I also witnessed a great act of karma that gave me faith. My good friend, Chris Kuhar, was named the new Director of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Chris is a great choice because of his wisdom and that he is very much respected and loved by his staff at the Zoo.

And finally, in the highly personal realm:

• I finally finished the 1079-page book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (almost two years after I started it). I was so sick of reading that I only finished one more book this year: The Rook by Daniel O'Malley.
• At work, I have greatly expanded my skills to include technologies I've either never heard of or never used before such as XSLT and SASS, and I have successfully helped my employer migrate from the mind-bogglingly difficult-to-use-or-develop-for Sitecore content management system to most museums' favorite web content management system, Drupal. This involved many months of kicking and screaming (re: Sitecore's lock on our data), followed by many days of 24/7 development work to meet a very optimistic deadline. The cleanup continues, but the site is operational (http://www.clevelandart.org).