A little new sophistication...

Be patient with the mildly heinous combination of colours, while I try to engender un peu de sophistication to this here blog.

Cheers....

In Progress: let's take a look... Part 2

... from previously. Where am I actually at with all this "in progress" rubbish...?

#22. French books (1 / 5)

There are just so many good books to read in english! And then there was the whole 'learning spanish' escapade, during which any exposure to french sent me back about 18 lessons in spanish. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'd like to read something in its original French ideally, rather than a translation from english. Light and fun is ideal... And short would be helpful.

#28. Self-portraits (24/33)

This is actually truly 'in progress'. I'm on track for the timeframe and look like finishing at the end of the list. To be fair, they're not all technically 'self' portraits. But my goal was to track what I kind of looked like, so mission accomplished. In the process of being accomplished. And no, they're not online. I'm shy.

#35. Laser (7/?)

I'm close, I think, to being less hairy. Forever. Cool. Just a leeetle more patience and pain and I'll tick it off as done. Too much information? Sorry. Deal.

#49. Cycling

Again with the not-very-specific goal. Do you think it's done? I took the velib' bikes in Paris on three occasions. And didn't die. Or even fall. Touch wood. The last trip was at night from one side of central paris to the other. But that was ages ago and it would be a bit anti-climatic to tick it off now. Let's say one more decent bike ride and it's done. I even have a 'cycling new york' map to use. As long as it's nowhere near another moving vehicle, or pedestrian, we should be fine.

#50. the Big Swim

I think this might have to register as my first Epic Fail. (I just wanted to say Epic Fail). Sad really. I did the swim for the first time about 4 years ago and loved it. Apart from getting sea-sick at about 2.2km and feeling like death for the last 500m or so. I really wanted to do it again with some decent sea-sick pills, but unless I'm back in Sydney for the Australia-Day long weekend next January, it's not going to happen. But let's not chalk it up as a fail yet. Don't think my ego's up to it.

#80. Home addresses (5/10)

My friends keep moving. Like, seriously, do not stay put for more than a few months. I'm sure I've collected at least 10 addresses over the last couple of years, but I'd be doubtful if more than one was still valid. At least I've now sorted out my Entourage/iPhone address book in a nice tidy way so that whenever I do collect an address or two I can keep it.

#95. Gimme Your Stuff

Cool concept, but this site has been down forever. It has occasional peeps of life, but never for long. I'll keep checking in, but it's looking shaky.

Et voila, the incompletes.

In summary, we have:

2 x could probably be considered done, will polish them off (new 76, 49)

3 x will be done in good time (new41, 28, 35)

4 x will show them some love and probably make it (22, new2, new52, new71)

1 x looking shaky, but will renew the effort (new44)

3 x epic fails (likely to be) (50, 80, 95)

In Progress: let's take a look... Part 1

Status: In Progress

It appears I have 13 tasks that I've had the genius to mark as In Progress. I thought it worth time to check out how prospective they were all looking...

New2. Travel A-Z. 10 out of 26.

This one is fun - nice and flexible. I feel like 10 isn't too bad. But then, I don't exactly have a strategy for the remaining 16. X and Z are looking hard. Keen to check out DC, so that should catch W. Quite fustratingly, many places seem to start with the same letters - I've been to at least 3 each of B, C, M and P...

New41. Project 365

This has gone better than I thought when I first began - I thought maybe I'd only make it a couple of months. But. September was truly abysmal. I'm trying to figure out how to punish myself before I put together the monthly mosaic. Think I missed 10 all up. AND I was traveling for half the month. Great Barrier Reef: no, nothing worth a daily photo there... Current thinking is that I'll figure out the date/number of each day I missed and take a highly skillful and creative photo of that number to repent. All up though, I am up to Day 250. Enough good pics to use in my next set of Moo cards. And a maaarginally improved 'eye'. I think.

New44. Freerice

This one is worse than the last. I've donated 15,290 on my mac and 8,170 on my iPhone. From memory, there were at least 5,000 on my work computer before it was vaporised... So let's say 28,460. I think it's not sitting at a desk with a boring job all day that killed my momentum. Donating grains of rice and improving my vocabulary used to often be the most productive way I could spend half my time. Now I have a life. But I do still believe in the cause. And I've downloaded MobileRice for my iPhone, so let's target using that more in my new dead time: waiting at traffic lights, the queue to buy groceries...

New52. Comments

Bad blogger. Yes, I'm a bad contributor to the general blogosphere in terms of sharing the love with my fellow bloggers. Although I think I'm better than it may appear - my primary weakness my be recording my good deeds, rather than actually committing them. I have to say, it is all a bit more fun when I'm commenting everywhere and - horror - people talk back.

New71. Galleries

New York is great for visiting galleries. Having the goal gives me just that extra little push needed to actually use my museum memberships and drop in on the Met and the MoMA. Still a bit of a way off 50, but have faith.

New 76. Spanish

And here I've come close to breaking one of the golden 101 rules: make sure the goal is specific. I'm not sure how I planned to measure Intermediate. I could happily claim beginner at the moment. And some would say finishing all 3 levels of Rosetta Stone would grant me intermediate. I think I'd like to test it out more first. Possibly a combined surf/spanish school in Central America for a few weeks. I must get back to a bit of Rosetta Stone revision in the meantime. Such elation at finishing the last lesson and don't think I've opened it since. Tut tut.

To be continued... (yep, that's what the 'part 1' was meant to signify)