New Day Rising

Two weeks into the new year and everything's up in the air. One thing for sure, 2017 should be interesting. And I'm not even talking about our president-to-be.

Celebrity deaths and election chaos aside, 2016 was an okay year for me. The family's doing well--everybody's healthy, the girls are excelling in school and at sports, and our jobs are good. Hard to believe we're going to have two teenagers in a few months when Lily turns 13. We spent a lot of time last year driving the girls to various sporting events and I don't expect that to change anytime soon...nor would I want it to.

Health-wise, I was able to run two half marathons, a bunch of 5Ks and do Reach the Beach for the eighth year in a row. However, I tweaked something in my left heel while running the last half in November and ended the year on a bit of a sour note. I didn't run much the last six weeks of the year and ended up adding a few more unwanted pounds. As a result, I've been diligent about diet and exercise since the start of the year and have already lost 10 pounds. Hoping to drop another 15 or so and get back into the running shape I was in a few years back.

As far as extracurricular activities go, I was busier than ever last year, writing my running column for the Salem News and a column for New England Soccer Journal. The hockey blog suffered a bit over the last few months, but I'm hoping to get back on track with that. And I've continued to do the podcast and the radio show, which are fun as always. I'm still going to rock shows, although trying to space them out a bit more. I've got shows from Bash & Pop, Drive-By Truckers and Los Campesinos coming up in the next few months, so that should be fun.

And yeah, I want to try and post here more often but I'm not making any promises. In fact, I decided not to make any official resolutions because those always seem to fall by the wayside. I know what I want to do and I'll try to do it. If I don't, oh well. But here's hoping for the best.