2011 Resolutions

It's a bit early, I shouldn't be doing this until next Friday or Saturday but never mind.

These are my resolutions for 2011.
 

• Read more. I have read twenty-something books this year which is disgusting. I want to devour stories and lots of them.
• Hike more. I said this last year. I did maybe two walks plus the mountain climb.
• Have my hair cut. I tried last year and all I succeeded in doing was being ripped off for a slight trim and comb. It may have to be done in stages so as not to feel too sudden.
• Use my left hand more - I am very dependent on my right hand and my left is fairly useless.
• Go snowboarding at least twice a month. I used to go regularly. I went in the middle of July and since then I've only been once, in the middle of September. I have boxes for this in my diary - two tick boxes per month.
• Make some plans for New Zealand 2012. I have a guidebook and I've ordered a map. I intend to mark interesting places on it and then I can begin to plan how to link them together, what needs to be missed out and what is best done at what time of year, etc. I must also open some kind of savings account for this. It's only going to be 2-3 weeks but I suspect it's going to be considerably more expensive than, say, Bucharest was.
• Finish off Draft Zero of The Sequel by the end of March and get a complete Draft One of the original Big Book Project done by 31st December. It doesn't have to be good but I'd like to eliminate the twenty-odd sudden abysses when my "this would be good!" doesn't go anywhere. Just a complete, linear story to give me a base to try and make good.
• Be ok. Don't get unreasonably upset about things, don't catch things, treat sugar with the caution it apparently merits and feel joy. Be happy 2/3 of the time.

I think that's a reasonable set of resolutions.

(no subject)

I think even if I haven't mentioned it, you may be able to guess that I'm a big Three Men... fan. They've done five trips so far and frankly, five years of post-Christmas boys-in-a-boat is more than enough to make it a tradition. The sad fact is that one day there won't be a new boat trip at Christmas and that will confuse my brain so much. But for now...

Three Men... is one of the rare things that my entire family sits down to watch. We all love Dara and Rory - God, Rory's been a part of my consciousness for so long! My mate Tank was in manlove with him from the age of about thirteen and I have little doodles of him and somone called David and Martin (no idea who they are) drawn in my Year 11 leaving book. Actually, they may have been Tank's people but it's Annie's now-husband who actually drew them. Tank wrote me a full page of a message in song titles and added a drawing of him at the bottom. So yeah, Rory is a part of my life. And the point of that was that I love the Three Men and my sister likes them and my mum likes them and my dad likes them and we all sit there and watch.

However, the high point of the episode today was the preview for Thursday's episode - four voices all at once go "Is that-?!" and I try not to sound too excited or start jumping up and down and say "... is that my mate Ed?" Oh yes. On Thursday Three Men become Four Men. Dara's best mate Ed is appearing on the boat!

I knew he was in Scotland over the summer, he's practically lived there this year, up in the Highlands and Islands every other week practically. I've said several times "Maybe they'll run into Oz and Hugh" because I knew those two were doing some drinking up in the Highlands and maybe I was silently hoping Ed would turn up but I never thought he actually would. Oh, 2010, I'm warming to you after all!