New Year Hodgepodge

Questions:
1. Are you ready for new? Is 2016 likely to be very different than 2015? Do you want it to be? 
I really am ready for the new year.  2015 had some very good times and some very bad times.  I am ready to move forward. With having lost my mother last year, 2016 has got to be better.

2. January 6th is National Technology Day. Currently, what is your single biggest struggle or frustration when it comes to technology?
The constant changing of it.  It's so hard to keep up with it. And if you don't you can get completely lost.

3. It's that time again...time for Lake Superior University to present a list of words (or phrases) they'd like to see banished (for over-use, mis-use, and general uselessness) in 2016. You can read more about the decision making process here, but this year's top vote getters are-

So (at the start of every single sentence), conversation (as in hotly debated topics where we're invited to 'join the conversation'), problematic, stakeholder, price point, secret sauce, break the Internet, walk it back, presser, manspreading (common in larger cities where some men take up the entire bus or train seat by sitting wide), vape, giving me life (refers to anything that may excite a person or make them laugh), and physicality

Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word not on the list you'd like to add?
I would have to go with Stakeholder, only because it's been bandied about work with increasing frequency of late. When a word can hit our little podunk part of the world it truly is over used.

4. Share one of your current health related goals.
I got an Exercise Bike/Elliptical for Christmas.  My goal is to use it regularly. As in 3 times a week. Come on motivation!

5. Let's talk fifty shades of gray. As in the color. Gray is currently a popular color in home decor, paint, wardrobes, hair, wedding party attire, and more. Are you a fan? Do you have the color in some variation in your home or wardrobe?  Gray hair, the old gray mare, gray matter, gray area...which gray idiom can you most relate to right now?
I have several gray sweaters.  I like wearing it but also like jazzing it up with splashes of color.



Gray Matter--I keep telling Turbo he needs to use his for more than video games--like putting it toward school work and such.

6. Certain foods are considered 'lucky' if eaten on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Cooked greens to bring economic fortune, black-eyed peas or lentils also symbolize money, pork which symbolizes progress, fish for good luck, and if you're in Spain 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight. Did you eat any lucky foods on the first day of the year? Is that a tradition in your home? Of the foods listed, which most appeals to you?
We started a tradition for us the year I was pregnant with Bruiser.  We wanted to do a huge seafood feast, but I knew there was no way I would be able to eat that much food in one go, I was 8 months pregnant after all. So we spread out the bounty and had several courses through out the day.  It was so nice that we still do our New Years Eve feast that way. Although some times the feast spills into the next day.
We ate shrimp with our steaks New Years day, does that count toward the fish?

7. What's the single biggest time waster in your life and what, if anything, will you do about it this year?
I am addicted to reading.  I waste a lot of time reading, but find that I feel better and am happier if I have been reading. Maybe I need to get a bit better at getting what I have to get done finished before diving into my books. How about less using books to procrastinate.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.
Christmas was wonderful at our house this year.  Everyone got just what they wanted and then some.

Wearing the hat from the Christmas Popper

I got one too!

Bruiser loves Batman

Turbo likes his new hat

Santa hit our house!

Merry Christmas!

 Have a great week!