Summation: January

• New Thing Learned for 31 January: Sidney Sheldon created I Dream of Jeannie. So now we all know who's to blame for that little episode of Cultural Depravity. [Source: obituary coverage of same.]
  
  
• New Thing Learned for 1 February: In the film Logan's Run, the blocks of cycling lights on the giant Lifeclock panels in the computer's interrogation room are meant to represent birth-cohorts moving in lockstep from one stage to the next, each red light blinking out at Carousel being replaced by a white light added to Nursery. I'd noticed the synchronicity before, but never connected it directly with the symbolism, so it's maybe not quite as obvious as the filmmakers thought it would be. [Source: DVD commentary track.]
  
  
• New Thing Learned for 2 February: It wasn't just the Old Place, Weasel really can't find her ass with both paws, and we must never never never push the catbox up flush against the wall again. Stupid, stupid animal. [Source: and now we have to clean that up...]

Progress on Resolutions for the month of January:

Media Consumption List: 15 books and 7 films for the month, which is on-pace with last year's reading and somewhat ahead of the film average. Not bad so far, although to the extent that I'm capable of forming any ambitions anymore I really was hoping to outdo last year's reading performance and mere parity with the overall average seems like a letdown somehow.

Learning New Things every day: some of them have been thinner than others, but 31 New Things logged for the 31 days of January. Favorite err, Most Memorable entry would have to be the infamous "Escargot Pizza" incident from 23 January. And I'm sure you're all just so glad I brought that up again, aren't you.

Cooking: Happened occasionally, at least for sufficiently small values of the concept "to cook", which is still progress for me compared to recent standards. February, however, I've already got a massive head-start on, viz yesterday's effort:

( mmm, bread? )

Not strictly a new skill for me, granted, but one I haven't had the resources to play around with for years and years, and I'm surprised it came out as well as it did right off the bat with the new equipment setup. Next time I'll try to be more patient about giving it a second rise.

Getting out more: Happened to have events scheduled in each of the qualifying weeks, so big checkmark there. Be glad that I found something better than "Where not to bite un_fathomable" for the 31 January Thing Learned...

Finishing Things: A couple of FO's to my credit, including a hat that I found while I was organizing the stash and decided that the quickest way to get the needle back was to just knit the rest of it already; also, finally got to the end of the Long Pink Scarf that's been my take-along project lately, shown here laid out to dry:

( I do finish things EVENTUALLY... )

9 feet long, this turned out -- no wonder it seemed to be going on forever! For February, my goal is to finish the lace shawl I'm working on in time to show it off at the next Guild meeting, February 20th. I have 13 pattern repeats to go, but as each repeat is 4 rounds and each round is 500+ stitches and only getting longer, this will be a stretch.