Bob Dylan’s 72nd birthday was yesterday, and yet again (remember this?) people have come up with a creative way to celebrate it and honour my favourite lyricist. This time it’s the good people at Slate, who created this interactive map that shows every place he has ever wrote about in a song – complete with the lyrics featuring the location, along with the song name and album it was featured on. Just click on each location dot on the map for that info.

No Canadian mentions, but to me, “Girl From The North Country” has always been about a Canadian girl.

I’ve always wanted to visit so many of these places purely because Bob mentioned them in a song. There’s gotta be some obsessive rich fans who are gonna take this map as a guide to do a Dylan inspired tour of the world (you know I would if I could).

As always, one of my goals this year is to travel more (hoping to get outside North America this time!) and this incredible photo spread I came across on Pinterest is very inspiring. Please, take me to all of these places. The use of graphic design on these beautiful photos is perfection. I wish I had the skills to make the photos I post here so pretty (another goal, perhaps!).

Where are you planning on traveling to this year? January and February make me long to be anywhere but Canada. Where is the nicest place to visit during these crappy months? I’m in desperate need of reminders of warmer places, so do tell.

Rarely do I think Canadian tourism boards market this country to tourists successfully. Canada on screen can seem like a whole lot of flatlands and nothingness if not handled with care, so when this video popped up last week I was pretty excited. Not only is it not boring, but they asked one of my favourite Canadian bands – Yukon Blonde  (who I filmed/interviewed this summer, check that video out if you missed it) to write a song for it.

What’s fun is they actually rewrote their best song off their latest album, “My Girl,” for it, changing it to “My Home,” and even singing parts in French.

What’s even cooler is that this video is a compilation of footage shot by a whole bunch of Canadians, showing off all the great things we love about the country (seasons, food, adventures, animals, cities, beaches, mountains, sports, art, etc) – rather than what some marketing firm thinks tourists would like about the country – so it actually shows you why it’s fun to live here/come here.

Watching it filled me with pride (despite knowing there’s nothing stupider than being proud of something as arbitrary and out of your control as where you were born, thanks George!) and made me want to travel around Canada and do and see all these things that I’m so lucky I have the privilege of experiencing all the time just because I was lucky enough to be born here. I’ve always wanted to move south for the warm weather, but when I see Canada like this I realize just how much I would be giving up.

The concept of Canada explored by Canadians is spot on. Not only did they make an interesting, much more shareable video than usual, but they made it for free! Super smart idea, kudos to whoever came up with this social media winner:

Hey! Happy Friday all. I am in Montreal right now, for the first time in MY LIFE! I am sooo excited. I have plans to eat bagels, visit Schwartz’s for their famous smoked meat, taste some real poutine, buy some records, and see as much of the city as I can in the few short days I’ll be here. If you have any suggestions for places I must see/things I must do, please let me know! I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how Montreal does St. Patty’s Day compared to Toronto.

But for now, here are the links I found worthy this week:

• Girls Don’t Like Metal Interviews Lisa Christiansen I love this interview, especially how she notes being a woman actually gives you an advantage in music.

• The Future of the Singles Club – Teenage Kicks I’m gonna win that contest, so don’t even try to beat me.

• Rufus Wainwright, K’naan and Einstein included in Luminato line up Luminato is a great festival, too bad it also happens during Bonnaroo/NXNE craziness!

• Win The Darcy’ self-titled debut plus ‘Aja’ on vinyl!

• Homeless People Are Being Used as WiFi Hotspots at SXSW This is so strange. I get that it’s helping them make some extra money, but talk about using a human as an object, jeez.

• iPhone App Proves Your Musical Coolness If you need an app to tell you how cool your music taste is, you probably have terrible taste.

• Pinterest to Release New Profile Pages This Week Hmm.

• Dear Pinterest, Change Your Terms or We’re Leaving I just posted about how much I love Pinterest, but found this incredibly alarming. I think I’m going to stick to repinning images only to keep me out of trouble.

• Steak & BJ Day Really?

So at the end of 2010 I wrote a post –  Twelve Things in Twelve Months – with twelve goals for the year (plus a bonus so thirteen). The year is over and I’ve just returned to the list to see which of them I actually pulled off.

Five out of thirteen isn’t good but it isn’t bad either, and to be fair to myself I accomplished many more important things that weren’t on the list.

Here are the ones I did make happen:

Quit Sugar for a Month – I went on a cleanse that required I quit sugar, dairy and carbs for a few months, and I somehow pulled it off. Quite proud of myself on this one. Let it go for the month of December (I am human) but I am getting back on track for January. Healthy (and mostly gluten free) carbs are back in but keeping sugar and dairy (and most meat) as far away from me as I can, after seeing how positively it affected my body to remove them.

Learn To Cook – After I went on the cleanse which required eating real, unprocessed food, I was forced to learn how to cook a few staples if I wanted to eat at all. I still find cooking tediously boring and I can’t see it ever being something I enjoy, but it feels good to be able to make something that doesn’t come from a box. My friend and I also tried taking a cooking class but it ended up being the most ghetto experience ever. It was taught by a legitimately insane Italian woman – in a legion – where she encouraged us to go downstairs and drink instead of participate in the class, and it was far from sanitary as she wiped off the tables with a dirty cloth and started cutting and prepping food directly on it. The food also tasted like absolute garbage (we had to spit out the ‘cake’ she made), so that kind of soured my interest in learning this skill. Avoid Chilli and Fennel classes at all costs.

Travel Somewhere New – Bonnaroo.  I had been to Tennessee before – but to Nashville and Memphis – not Manchester, so it counts. Definitely wish I could have traveled a lot more than that, but something is better than nothing. It was my first vacation in four years.

Read More – Love Is A Mixtape, A Freewheelin’ Time (certainly need to try harder on this in 2012)

Get Published In Print - Static Zine, Shameless Magazine (just went to print last week!)

And a recap on the ones I didn’t pull off that won’t be on my 2012 list:

Volunteer at Animal Shelter – As much as this is something I genuinely wanted to do, I now realize it’s something I can’t just do once and call it a day. It is a long term commitment that I unfortunately do not have the time to commit to between what amounts to three jobs. When life is a little less crazy and I don’t have to work my ass off as much, this will be coming back on the list.

Learn French – This is actually a huge task that I would probably need to dedicate at least six months of living in France to actually accomplish, but it is something I want to do if only to make my dad happy that I can converse with him in his first language.

Go see The Oprah Show – Who was I kidding, that was a shot in the dark. Didn’t have the cash or the time off to make it happen even if I would have lucked out on landing the coveted tickets.

My updated list for 2012:

1. Finally get that Bob Dylan tattoo

2. Travel – really need to make it to Montreal this year. Dying to go back to NYC and Austin. Definitely going back to Bonnaroo. Would love to finally go overseas.

3. Get back on stage

4. Pilates/yoga 6 days a week for a month

5. Trapeze class

6. Learn to make my own jewellery

7. Start podcast

8. Start video series

9. Write that screenplay

10. Pick up the guitar again/legitimately learn it this time (anyone want to teach me?)

11. Learn to code (Ladies Learning Code is gonna be seeing a lot of me this year)

12. Get myself in a position to work for myself

What are your goals for 2012?