In the course of a year, I've graduated, moved into an apartment with three roommates in a new city, played in an adult baseball league, been a principal in a commercial, started a job, traveled around the country, cheered on the Dawgs in the Pac12 'ship, and so much more. Needless to say, 2016 was a wild ride.
With the start of the new year, one of my driving goals is to experience San Francisco more. I started today by visiting the CityScape Bar above the HIlton (which happens to be the tallest hotel on the west coast!) and downing a glass of wine while blogging and collecting my thoughts. This is quite possibly the best view of the city, and is 360 degrees. I plan to come here MUCH more often.
Credit to Zagat on this pic. It's raining today, but I plan to come up here more often and grab some awesome shots.
Over the course of the next year, I hope to learn something new every week, enough that I can blog about it and write an expository piece that makes sense. At the same time, hopefully I can be able to look back at this time next year and see 52 things I've learned, accomplished, seen, tried, etc.
This year, I hope to get better at cooking and keeping track at what I spend on food, in a sustainable but fiscally responsible way. One of my roommates and I have decided to try cooking through Cooksmart, which helps align our grocery lists to recipes. Basically, it allows us to simply our shopping trips by consolidating the ingredients to buy, and converting them into a bunch of meals. Yesterday, my roommate made a spectacular soup with lentils, chard, Italian sausage, and other ingredients. I was honestly astonished at how delicious it was, how filling it was, and how easy it was to make (aka I was taking a nap while he made it). The soup was flavorful, had enough food to fill me up (which is a saying a lot!).
Financially, I'm trying to keep track of what I spend on food by charting in Excel and using PivotTables (thanks, OpMgmt major). It may not be the most efficient way or best visual display, but it's fun for me to apply some of the things I did in school and work to my personal life. For example, yesterday we went to the grocery store and spent a fair amount on groceries. Some of those are perishable, some can be kept forever. Some we'll use up quickly, and some we wont. Additionally, we've signed up for a service called Imperfect Produce, which delivers 'imperfect' fruits and veggies to your door. These are the ones that aren't sold in supermarkets because they're deemed 'ugly'. Imperfect produce for imperfect people sounded like a perfect match to me, and it also supplies my apartment with fresh fruits and veggies we can plug into our Cooksmarts meal plan, at a reasonable price!
Lastly, I hope to take more pictures of my life. I'm thinking this site might become more of a weekly blog (assuming I have time, which I really hope I do), of what I've done, what I've learned, and the person a postgraduate 22 year old millennial living in a metropolis is evolving into. By this time next year, it'll be interesting to look back and see who I've become.
No more plain chicken, rice, and green beans for a while (hopefully).