January 2, 2005  

Resolved

OK, I’ve given these a lot of thought. Here are the tasks I resolve to accomplish in 2005.

  1. Learn how to conjugate Italian verbs in a tense other than the present. This will help me formulate the sentence “Would you be interested in being my wife in an alternate reality?” when I finally meet Sylvia Poggioli, which, I suppose, is another resolution for this year.
  2. Get a goddamn backhand. I’m done performing acrobatics to be able to hit every ball as a forehand. Left-side muscles atrophying, I’m starting to look lopsided.
  3. Fall in love with NASA again. C’mon, people, seduce me. I’m easy.
  4. Be nice to political bloggers. That is, I resolve not be so condescending to the legions of “Olde Media Killers” whose contributions to the global dialogue mostly include copying scads of text from other sites and appending small comments like “Awesome” or “Devastating” or “Go read this”. Hint: you don’t need a site for this. It is a called an RSS Reader. (Crap, guess I need to resolve harder.)
  5. Learn to match beats when remixing. Currently my efforts sound like a session of “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore” gone tragically askew.
  6. When home, watch only high-definition television programming. This might be difficult since I rarely watch live television (‘cept when the Cubs play) and my TiVo don’t do high-def. I must be strong-willed for this one.
  7. Convert all old mix tapes to MP3. Not a technical problem but a problem of data scarcity. Much of this music is obscure, unlabelled, and basically un-Googleable. Damnit, tune-recognizing search tool — where are you?
  8. Become able to change my son’s diaper with one hand. Not sure what I will do with the other hand, but this will surely be impressive to onlookers.
  9. Avoid LAX like the Black Death.
  10. Avoid the Black Death.
  11. Get to know my nephews better. It is one thing to be fatherly, quite another to actively participate in avuncular kookiness and crazy relative hijinks. I am looking forward to this one.
  12. Figure out how to make my own oak switches for the Russian Baths. Come on, it isn’t that bad. (Hmm, this’ll pair nicely with #11.)

That’ll do for now. Twelve resolutions, twelve months. Wish me luck.