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Endings and Beginnings
I don't normally do the resolution thing, but there's a lull in the activities here -- there's a game of pinochle being played in the other room (a game I've never been able to understand) and a game of "Fable" on the Xbox in this room, while the kids are playing Sims2 on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rackham's laptop in the dining room. So, with three more hours to midnight in my current timezone and nothing better to do...
1. No more frantic late-night emergency drives to Idaho. Or anywhere for that matter. I did two of those this year and I've had my fill... so a word of the wise to everyone I know and love: No accidents or illnesses in 2005!
2. Learn to knit. I've been meaning to do this forever and I've got plenty of online friends who are into knitting, so I'll have people to talk to about it once I start. I've got a "Teach Yourself to Knit" book (complete with left-handed instructions, yay! I'm ambidextrous, but some things just work better with one hand than the other... and the trick with things like knitting and crochet is to pick a hand and stick with it, or your projects can get all mucked up) and Stitch 'N' Bitch which I bought oncousinjean's recommendation awhile back.
3. Learn to weave. Not as hard as you may think... I've done some weaving in the past on my mother-in-law's looms (yes, looms plural -- I think she has eight. She teaches weaving at a local university, even though her degrees are in mathematics (which actually makes sense if you know anything about weaving... she claims there are similarities to the mainframes she used to program)). I'm thinking of picking up an Inkle Loom... which means everyone may be getting handwoven bookmarks for birthdays this year. :-)
4. Enroll in and actually finish an Independent Study course from my old university. Oddly enough, the hardest part seems to be that they give me way too much time to complete the course. So, I'm going to try setting a tighter schedule for myself to see if it'll work.
5. Continue going to the gym three times a week. I've been pretty good about it this year (not that it seems to be helping, grrrrr), so the big trick now is to not stop. Ditto for...
6. Walking three times a week. Or, more generally, keep up my goal of staying over 5000 steps a day and working toward an average of 8000.
7. Actually work on making a dent in my Teetering Pile (of books to be read). This one is pretty much a lost cause, since books seem to get added as quickly as they're finished. Still, worth adding.
There are probably more I should add, but those are the best I could come up with off the top of my head.
I finally had a chance to finish A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey earlier today... Daughter of Time by the same author had been recommended by several friends over the past year (I believe one was my Local Buffy Friend and the other may have beenqueenofthorns or perhaps ww1614, I'm not sure. I stumbled across Shilling at a used bookstore not too long ago and it sounded interesting enough I figured I'd give it a try.
I've decided I quite like mystery novels from the era (this one was written in 1937), they're fun to read, if only to see the changes in culture and word usage. Shilling was enjoyable, if a bit meandering... I guessed who the killer was not long after the character was introduced, and some of the other points and characters in the story seemed randomly tossed in, almost as if there was more to the tale that we weren't getting. Also, there's the question of the "shilling for candles" that makes up the title... we never find out the significance of it in the victims will. Not really.
Despite all of that, I enjoyed the book... if only because the characters were fun and quirky.
rackham's laptop in the dining room. So, with three more hours to midnight in my current timezone and nothing better to do...1. No more frantic late-night emergency drives to Idaho. Or anywhere for that matter. I did two of those this year and I've had my fill... so a word of the wise to everyone I know and love: No accidents or illnesses in 2005!
2. Learn to knit. I've been meaning to do this forever and I've got plenty of online friends who are into knitting, so I'll have people to talk to about it once I start. I've got a "Teach Yourself to Knit" book (complete with left-handed instructions, yay! I'm ambidextrous, but some things just work better with one hand than the other... and the trick with things like knitting and crochet is to pick a hand and stick with it, or your projects can get all mucked up) and Stitch 'N' Bitch which I bought on
cousinjean's recommendation awhile back.3. Learn to weave. Not as hard as you may think... I've done some weaving in the past on my mother-in-law's looms (yes, looms plural -- I think she has eight. She teaches weaving at a local university, even though her degrees are in mathematics (which actually makes sense if you know anything about weaving... she claims there are similarities to the mainframes she used to program)). I'm thinking of picking up an Inkle Loom... which means everyone may be getting handwoven bookmarks for birthdays this year. :-)
4. Enroll in and actually finish an Independent Study course from my old university. Oddly enough, the hardest part seems to be that they give me way too much time to complete the course. So, I'm going to try setting a tighter schedule for myself to see if it'll work.
5. Continue going to the gym three times a week. I've been pretty good about it this year (not that it seems to be helping, grrrrr), so the big trick now is to not stop. Ditto for...
6. Walking three times a week. Or, more generally, keep up my goal of staying over 5000 steps a day and working toward an average of 8000.
7. Actually work on making a dent in my Teetering Pile (of books to be read). This one is pretty much a lost cause, since books seem to get added as quickly as they're finished. Still, worth adding.
There are probably more I should add, but those are the best I could come up with off the top of my head.
I finally had a chance to finish A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey earlier today... Daughter of Time by the same author had been recommended by several friends over the past year (I believe one was my Local Buffy Friend and the other may have been
queenofthorns or perhaps ww1614, I'm not sure. I stumbled across Shilling at a used bookstore not too long ago and it sounded interesting enough I figured I'd give it a try.I've decided I quite like mystery novels from the era (this one was written in 1937), they're fun to read, if only to see the changes in culture and word usage. Shilling was enjoyable, if a bit meandering... I guessed who the killer was not long after the character was introduced, and some of the other points and characters in the story seemed randomly tossed in, almost as if there was more to the tale that we weren't getting. Also, there's the question of the "shilling for candles" that makes up the title... we never find out the significance of it in the victims will. Not really.
Despite all of that, I enjoyed the book... if only because the characters were fun and quirky.
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I absolutely loved Daughter of Time, but have never been able to get into any other of Josephine Tey's novels. I too love the old mystery novels, just as I love film noir from the '40s
Good luck on your resolutions. :-)
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Next on the list, too, are more Lord Peter Wimsey books. I absolutely loved Strong Poison but haven't had a chance to read any more as of yet.
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http://knittinghelp.com/
Go nuts! :)
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And a belated Happy New Year!