It's a new year, and it's time to start our first look back of 2018. After spending a couple of days working through our year-in-review for 2017, it feels really odd to just be recapping the month of January. But here we go, the first month of 2018 is done, and it's time to do a look back.

RECAP OF THE MONTH

After an insanely busy end to 2017, it was nice to slow things down for the first month of 2018. Originally we were going to be heading to Switzerland in mid-January but decided to postpone our trip. The idea of going on another journey so quickly after our month long Asia adventure and a very busy December sounded daunting. On the first weekend of January, we held our annual Golden Globes party. We ordered Red-O to be delivered to the house (which arrived after the award ceremony). Luckily it was still delicious. Jenn took home the victory this year, in what was a powerful Golden Globes.

The following weekend we had a three day weekend for MLK, and spent most of it at home. However, we did make our way down for an amazing walk to Balboa. It's something we do every once in a while and love it every time. We actually walked all the way down to the ferry, took it across the channel and walked to the beach. Only in Southern California can you do that on January day. The next day we went back out to Crystal Cove and completed an amazing 4-mile hike without stopping, a first for Jenn and I.

Although we're still about six months away from completing our first lease in our new apartment, we were offered an early extension of our lease to keep our rent the same. It came as a shock, and we took them up on the offer. We're now going to be staying put until at least the summer of 2019, which is really exciting. We were a little stressed our rent might get a big bump. We went out to celebrate the news by trying a new breakfast spot called Pandor Bakery which was phenomenal. It has definitely moved into the running as our new go-to breakfast spot.

We had a busy last weekend in January. We had a play which meant it was time to try a new restaurant. It also happened to be Newport Restaurant Week. We finally tried Rothschild's and got a great table in the front looking out on PCH. Jenn adored her spaghetti and we got to try out their "world famous" garlic bread. It was a really nice meal and I'm glad we got to give it a shot. We got a quick cupcake at Sprinkles before heading to South Coast Repertory to watch Shakespeare in Love a play that we both adored.

The next day the improbable happened, Roger Federer won his 20th grand slam final. I have never watched as much Australian Open as I did this year. The women's matches were some of the best I've ever seen. But the highlight was watching Roger Federer at the age of 36 capture another major. Go Fed Go!

And thus ended our January. It was a great albeit quiet month. 2018 has started out well and I can't wait to see what the remaining eleven months have in store for us.

TV WE WATCHED

There are two things I would like to mention about the start of 2018 TV.

1. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel may end up at the end of 2018 as my favorite show of the year. It's amazing.

2. We started and finished the first season of Will and Grace. We plan to go start to finish on the series (like we just did with Friends, Frasier, and Seinfeld). So get used to seeing Will and Grace on the monthly TV updates.

BOOKS I READ (OR LISTENED TO)

I have a big goal in 2018 to read 32 books. That's two more books then last year and about ten more then a couple of years ago. I started the year off reading three really good books. None of them rose to "great" but I really enjoyed the first three and it gave me momentum to keep reading a lot to start out February.

MOVIES WE WATCHED

I'm sad to say we only watched one movie so far in 2018, and that was the 2017 movie Battle of the Sexes. It was a solid movie, nothing amazing, but a good solid tennis movie. Both Emma Stone and Steve Carell put in great performances.

GAMES I'VE BEEN PLAYING

Although there are three games on my "what I've been playing" list. Really only one game should be on the list because 95% of my time has been playing Assassin's Creed Origins. At the time of this writing I'm about 40 hours in and have about 10-20 left. I love this game so much.

SHOWS WE SAW

We only saw one performance in 2018 and that was Shakespeare's in Love at South Coast Repertory. We adored this one. A beautiful romantic comedy about William Shakespeare sort of stumbling into the writing of Romeo and Juliet. We had another incredible evening at SCR.

PERSONAL STATS

Avg Daily Steps for the Month: 13,919

Avg Hours Slept for the Month: 6h 37 minutes

Avg Miles Run per Day: 2.92 miles

Avg Weight: 136.35 lbs

Total Miles Run for the Month: 88.98 miles

A Look Back - January 2018