Resolved 2006

Recently I have encountered a few people violently opposed to new year resolutions. They say, what’s so special about January 1? If you want to change yourself just do. Or they say, resolutions set you up for failure. Change should be gradual and flexible.

OK, fine. But I like to make lists, especially those that I can cross stuff off of. So maybe what I really like is unmaking lists. Here’s the list to be undone for 2006.

1. Cook. I like to cook, but I have been cursed with a wife who is both more willing and more skilled at doing so. If only she’d let me do it more often. A few of the blogs I read are by cooks, amateur and professional, so I have resources and inspiration. Pass the olive oil!
2. Visit San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, or Santa Fe, all US cities I have never been to.
3. Rip DVD collection. A much more daunting task in practice (if not in volume) than the CD collection. Decryption, dumping of extraneous video material, figuring out the best format for playback, getting the video from the server to the TV, and of course the immense storage requirements. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but the final push was purely practical: our kids have already destroyed one DVD player and one CD player and we’re constantly washing their drool, half-chewed meals, and finger muck off of the actual discs. Ain’t nothing to touch on a video server.
4. Get to know the south side of Chicago. Lots of hidden architectural gems and great parks, not to mention restaurants and clubs, down there. If it was good enough for the 1893 Expo it is good enough for me.
5. Look into Italian dual-citizenship. My father and my siblings are all eligible. Still debating the merits of this, but I am sure it will smooth the path to my dream of owning a villa in southern Italy. Of course, it also opens up political possibilities.
6. Shave head. Or at least near-shaved. The cruel irony of male hair loss is that the more you lose the more often you have to get your haircut so as not to look like you are growing for the combover. There’s certainly maintenance involved in a shaved head, but at least there’s no mistaking my intentions.
7. Visit Xian, China. Should be easy given my travel to China. Gotta have some “safety” resolutions.
8. Find Jim LoBianco. My roommate from study in Rome in 1993. In the seminary at the time, most likely ordained now. Why can’t the interweb help me find him? May need to appeal to higher powers in the search.
9. Run a half-marathon. Once upon a time I regularly ran 25 miles a week. And then the midget squad arrived and my mileage plummeted. Time to ignore the kids.
10. Teach sons how to swim. One is terrified of the water, the other thinks he can swim, which is far more dangerous.
11. Call (not ping, not e-mail) my mother more often. Because “hi, mom, love u … brb” just doesn’t cut it.
12. Return to home winemaking. Made a batch of mostly-swill Mouvedre in 1996. It didn’t kill me, so I must be stronger. A decade later I’m ready to try again.

12 resolutions, 12 months. Begin.