Did you Leap over Leap Day?

Because Leap Day graces our calendars only every four years, it serves as a special time to summarize the events of the past four years and to reflect on achievements done and crises averted. The extra day also postpones paychecks by 24 hours. You win some, you lose some. Here are the more interesting facts going back to February 29, 2008, a period of 1460 days.

In the past four years, I have:

• lived in 3 different states (Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma)
• taught at 4 universities (well, 3 universities and 1 mere college)
• taught 36 classes to a whole lot of students (12% of whom slept most of the time)
• earned 1 degree (Ph.D., long story there)
• completed a dissertation project (March 2008) - (yep, wrote a book about how to teach writing)
• published a novel (December 2011) - that would be the nearly invisible AFTER ILIUM
• driven more than 100,000 miles
• flown more than 20,000 miles
• visited no countries outside the US (I did go to China just before I started counting in February 2008)
• slept in 48 different beds (residences, visiting relatives, hotel, hospital)
• bought about 150 books (about 15 were ebooks) - I'm surprised how low the number is!
• read 56 books (about a third were fiction)
• attended 6 professional conferences and presented a paper at 3 of them
• finished writing a novel (The Dream Land, Book II)
• had my heart ripped out at the valves in the first round of the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition (stitched back, thankfully)
• had a novel accepted for publication (A Beautiful Chill)
• driven only one particular vehicle (not counting four rentals while traveling)
• attended 4 hockey games, 3 football games, 2 basketball games, and 0 games of other sports
• seen [only] 14 movies in theaters (but watched about 20 more via Blockbuster rental or Netflix by mail)
• seen 1 play in a theater
• attended 1 concert
• attended 3 lectures or speeches (outside of professional conferences)
• bought 5 computers (3 were for other people as gifts)
• downloaded 13,467 pictures from the internet, none of which would be classified as porn
• 25 haircuts (1 unintentional)
• bought 34 pizzas from pizza restaurants (another 60 or so bought frozen from groceries)
• visited a Mexican food restaurant (mostly "fast food") about 226 times ("Yo quiero burrito!")
• had Chinese take-out 6 times (all in the US)
• smiled about 2098 times
• frowned about 1450 times
• remained stoic and solemn 79 times (in 5 of those it was appropriate)
• gave exactly 662 hugs
• received about 470 hugs
• used up 131 reams of printer paper
• used up 246 pens
• drank about 500 lattes
• caught about 10,000 hours of sleep
• had 225 dreams (counting only those that could be remembered the next morning)
• re-entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition in 2012 and passed the first round with The Dream Land, Book I.

So...how was your Leap Day 4-Year Assessment? Did you measure up to your own expectations?

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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.