Happy New Year's Eve's Eve

Don't tell her parents but I saw Yuan Yuan today. We synced up our trips to the local supermarket, though I gave her a head start of course.

New Year's Eve starts in about 15 minutes here. I guess it's resolutions time:

1. Eat less sweets. Yasha the dentist is going to retire early if I continue my current habits.
2. Practice singing more. I've only scared half the people in my building so far with rock screams in the elevator (an effective 0.5 second elevator pitch by the way), so it's time to initiate the rest. If that elevator doesn't reek of urine by next year then I'll have failed.
3. Be more tolerant. I think I'm becoming more and more cranky by the day, it's a little scary. I'd attribute it to Pissy Male Syndrome but it seems a little too chronic. If I live to be old, I'm going to be the crotch in crotchety...whatever that means.
4. Lucid dream more than this year. Shouldn't be too hard as I've had 0.0 lucid dreams in the last 364 days. Maybe I can make the job a little harder for myself tonight. Reality check!...damn, that would have been a nice New Year's present.
5. Learn to draw better. I've been avoiding improving this skill my whole life, not including the last 30 days, but the more it irritates me to practice it the more it seems like a worthwhile skill to have.
6. Get better at guitar accompaniment. I haven't actually practiced guitar in over a year. Time to learn a 2nd strumming pattern.
7. Learn my own songs.
8. Say yes more. I've been becoming more of a no person by the minute since 1986.
9. Write more happy songs. My lyrics are currently set to cynical by default.
10. Exercise more. Run in the spring. I'm going to wish I didn't write this. I wish I didn't write that. Oof, that was quick.
11. Read more books, watch less shows. It'd be nice if they had some books in English in Chinese libraries, currently I can only read on my computer.
12. Do a bit of programming. Here's to setting the bar high.
13. Run more experiments on people.
14. Run more experiments on myself.
15. Finish my novel.
16. Visit America. I hear it's pretty different from China.
17. Lie more. I've been pissing people off a bit too much with the truth.
18. Blog more. This way I don't have to do all the lying to people's faces. Lower that psychological barrier a bit.
...I'm sure more'll come up during the next few days.

Steve Pavlina would roll over in his grave if he could see my list...and if he were dead...or just doing a test trial burial. None of the resolutions are specific in terms of time or quantity or anything. But my balls just aren't big enough for a 365 day trial. I'll think of these as guidelines for choosing my 30-day trials during the year.

The Surgeon Knot/Join:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

The crazy thing is, being able to tie this knot is the only requirement for legally practicing surgery in 47 of the 48 states in the contiguous United States.