2010 in numbers

When I returned from school, my dad looked at the car for his usual inspection. He was ready to take my CRV for an oil change, car wash and more random things that help the car function that I can't even understand and would not do alone. But he noticed something alarming.

The Honda has 6,200 more miles on it than it did when I left for school in August. "You could have driven from New York to California, and back," my dad said. This shocks me even more because I do not lend my car to others. Due to its standard transmission, I am the only one that drives it, and it shocks me that I have spent 103.3 hours in the car (assuming I drive at 60 miles per hour, a good assumption considering street and highway driving combinations). "That's four straight days, plus some," Laura adds from my room right now. All of this lost time!

While some people believe in paying cabs, trains and airplanes for the time they receive by sitting on them and not driving, I evidently do not always vouch for this tactic. Where did I go in these 6,200 miles?

• From Chicago to Columbia and Columbia to Chicago two times each (beginning of the school year, winter break, back and forth in October)
• New Buffalo, Mich. to Chicago the day before I left for school to go to the Michigan Dunes
• Chicago to Cincinnati and back to pick up Yiayia for Christmas
• Columbia, Mo. to Ames, Ia. and back to visit Helen

That's at least half of it, and some travel at school. But I haven't taken any spontaneous rides to St. Louis or Kansas City to waste miles. Incidentals apparently take this much of my time. So I thought, how else can I define my year in numbers? It describes a variety of aspects of my life, but let's see!

14 states visited this year, of 16 vacation destinations

• Mexico and Washington D.C. as destinations
• States= Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia (cheater: only drove through it), Missouri, Iowa, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Kansas, California

6 one-way flights booked this year and 8 one-way tickets total

• Including flights from Chicago to Pittsburgh, San Diego, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Boston, and out of St. Louis
• Buses and trains from Cincinnati to Chicago and D.C. to Newark, New Jersey on the Amtrak

2000 minutes average I spend talking on the phone per month

4000 text messages sent in the month of November (this is pathetic, I know), a record

104 blog posts since Lent when I started this blog

1928 friends on Facebook

2379 tagged photos

6108 photos on my iPhoto library from 2010

97 Facebook photo albums, 23 of them published this year

73 followers on Twitter, with 96 pages I follow

5 school activities- Phi Mu, MSF, AAF, Relay For Life and OCF

2 conferences attended- College Conference and the Leadership Academy

I think this is pretty fun to keep track of so at the end of next year, I can compare them! I don't regret how I have spent my time, but seeing the numbers themselves definitely makes you think about things.