Happy New Year Everyone!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday...whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, Festivus, or a season-end non-religious celebratory holiday.
This year has been about beginnings and endings for me. The biggest news is that I completed my Masters Degree in Public Policy at George Washington University!
Woo hoo - now to figure out what to do with all my free time? Guess I'll have to change the byline on my blog now...

For other endings, I have started leaning more toward veganism...and stopped buying milk and eggs (although I'm not strict about them in things other people make). Thanks Heather for introducing me to rice milk! And here's to keeping my New Years resolution from 1998 to go vegetarian - it's really been 12 years?!

For beginnings, I started a new job at EPA in the Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water. Once my graduation is finalized, I can start the paperwork to become a permanent federal employee!

And for being a student, I sure traveled a lot and found time to squeeze in a lot of other activities! Check out my blog over the past year to see what I've been up to. Here's Dilly trying to prevent me from packing my suitcase on one of my many trips:
And Lisa trying to be cute so I don't leave:Of course, I can't forget Ginger...here's a short video of her being lazy while eating:


Hope this note finds everyone happy and healthy. Wishing you and yours a great 2010 (so is that "two thousand and ten", or "twenty ten"...)

A few other happenings

This post is all about the athletic events I attended or participated in...

I'm still volunteering with Water For People. I helped organize a hike-a-thon in October at one of WSSC's reservoirs:
The hikers:Me addressing the crowd:
I'm also still running with the DC Capital Striders Running Group every Mon-Wed-Fri and sometimes Saturday. Here's our cheering squad at the Marine Corps Marathon:
DC's Mayor Fenty (in the hat). I think it's cool that we have a running mayor who runs all the big races!
I also volunteered at the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (check out blog post here) in April, so that I got an automatic entry into the race for 2010!

I ran some races too. I did two half marathons - the first was the National Marathon in DC in March. It was the day before World Water Day, so my brother made a shirt for me since I was running because my friend made a donation to a water project on my behalf (to talk me into running...it worked).
The second one was the Philly Distance Run in September. I don't have any pics of the race, but our hotel had this cool water dispenser with empty water bottles that you filled yourself. I had never seen anything like it before:
I ran two other shorter races, which were both for good causes. In May, I did the Run for the Animals 5k to benefit the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary. I ran on the Vegetarian Society of DC's team. The race had all vegan food afterwards.
The other was the Earth Day 5k in April to benefit the Nature Conservancy. Bernie from the Biggest Loser Season 5, the at home winner, was there and I got to meet him. No pics of that either, but here is a pic I stole from the website (Bernie is #1):

I attended several college and professional sporting events as well. I went to two Nationals baseball games, one with classmates and the other with former coworkers:
My friend invited me to one of the Frozen Four ice hockey matches at the Verizon Center:
In November, I went to the Redskins/Broncos game...and the 'skins actually won! Check out my blog post here.

And of course, I started 2009 at the Rose Bowl watching USC defeat PSU. Check out that blog post here.