- I resolve to have a great time with the year of Ancestry census subscription my dad gave me for Christmas.
- I resolve to pull together enough text on the ancestry of my mom’s family that I can make a PDF file to send to everyone in time for what would have been my grandparents’ 75th anniversary.
29 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: Genealogy
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28 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: Religion
- I resolve to finish my slow Qu’ran slog in 2006.
- I resolve to muddle through some verses of John in Greek at least once every month or so, because that’s why I was was taking Greek in the first place!
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27 December 2005
New Year’s Resolution: Writing
I’ve been on formal writing hiatus for not quite two years now. I’ve written a few pieces of fanfic, but haven’t written anything in my original universes. I’ve reread parts of my novels and still find a lot of stuff I like, but I’m not sure they’re publishable, and my past submissions and agent queries seem to agree.
Honestly, I don’t mind not being published; after all, I work in publishing, so I’m helping make and sell books, and I have a blog, so if I ever get desperate to have my fiction read I can always post some of it.
But I still have these damn characters rustling in my head. With cultures attached. (Why couldn’t they come with plots instead?) And I’m not writing them down into stories, and that’s starting to get annoying.
Resolved: I will carve me out some quiet time to use for writing, and see if butt-in-chair fingers-on-keyboard/pen is any more productive now than it was two years ago.
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26 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: House Stuff
1. I think it’s overly ambitious for me to resolve to be clutter-free by the end of 2006. But I resolve that by the end of 2006, I will have handled each and every thing I own and asked myself, “Do I really need this? Do I really want this?” Even if I don’t get rid of all the things that I answer “no, and no” to (and I probably won’t; I can think of at least ten things off the top of my head that I don’t want or need but can’t bring myself to unload yet), I’ll at least know what and where they are, and I can start preparing to unload them later.
2. Financially, this is the year of the house. I resolve to spend more of my discretionary money on home improvements (including hiring someone else to do them, if necessary) and less on purchasing other random stuff.
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23 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: Movies
- I resolve to watch at least four classic movies that I’ve never seen.
- I resolve to see at least one movie in the theater in 2006. (Unless there really is absolutely nothing that looks remotely interesting, in which case I’ll just watch another classic movie on video.)
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22 December 2005
New Year’s Resolution: Music
I resolve that by the end of 2006, I will either move the piano to a room where it’s accessible and play it regularly, or I’ll get rid of the thing.
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21 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: Reading
- I’ve long had a list of books that looked like they’d be interesting to read; now, through the magic of library hold requests, I’m actually reading more of them! I resolve to continue reading books off my “wanna read” list.
- By the end of 2006, I resolve to either read or unload every fiction book I own that I haven’t already read.
- I resolve to read at least one non-fiction book a month that isn’t about decluttering or craft techniques.
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20 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: Food
- I resolve to never eat bad chocolate.
- I resolve to make a list of recipes before the veggie box season starts, so that when the food hits I’ll have something in mind to make with it.
- I resolve to visit a farmer’s market or other store selling locally produced food at least once every couple months.
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19 December 2005
New Year’s Resolutions: Crafts
- 1. I resolve to hold more firmly to the policy of “finish one craft project before buying supplies for another”.
- 1a. If I nonetheless absolutely must buy yarn X or fabric Y before finishing a project, I will get rid of the equivalent amount of stash first. I need space and time more than I need stash that I’m not enthusiastic about.
- 2. I will go through all my UFOs and either do some work on each or give up and get rid of them.
- 3. I will go through the fabric stash I accumulated for specific projects and either cut them out or get rid of the fabric.
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16 December 2005
Recent Reading: Locked Rooms
Laurie R. King, Locked Rooms. In the early chapters of the book, I read the stuff about repressed memories and thought “come on, this is trite.” And then I was utterly sucked in to the rest of the book. I’ll have to see what I think on reread later, but on first read, I like it almost as much as Beekeeper’s Apprentice. I still love Russell and King’s take on Holmes; the side characters are great; the background and setting are very interesting (especially reading about the 1906 SF earthquake post-Katrina….); the story gripped me. My one gripe — well, okay, it’d be a spoiler if I said it. Is it too much of a spoiler to say that it shares a flaw with Spider Robinson’s Callahans stories? (And no, the flaw is not “everyone turns into superbeings”.)
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