And now it’s time for the tra­di­tional look back at the year that’s been.

I set seven res­o­lu­tions for 2009 and for­got half of them just a few weeks later.

1. Learn how to make bread. Be able to make sour­dough and whole­meal high tin loaf.

Pass.

Call it lazi­ness or fear of the unknown or that I work best under pres­sure, but I didn’t attempt to make bread until just a few days before the year ended.

I’d been told that mak­ing bread with­out using a machine to knead the dough would be extremely dif­fi­cult, but I had no prob­lems with that or any part of the process. In a nut­shell throw flour, sugar and salt into a bowl, then  add a cup of beaten eggs, luke­warm water and yeast. Fol­low that up with two ses­sion of knead­ing ses­sions alter­nat­ing with two rest ses­sions. Bung it in the oven for 30 min­utes and you’ve got one crusty white bread loaf. Too easy.

2. Go on a mush­room picking tour.

Fail.

I remem­bered I had this down as a res­o­lu­tion about two days after mush­room­ing sea­son fin­ished. Whoops.

3. Con­vince the Ital­ian com­mu­nity to let me get involved in mak­ing sausages.

Pass.

I was all psy­ched up to make sausages this year, but then my con­tacts decided they’d much rather go on a holiday.

To make up for that I took a sausage mak­ing class through CAE back in Octo­ber, so I at least had some­thing of sausage mak­ing experience.

4. Sub­mit fic­tion to at least two short story competitions.

Fail.

Another res­o­lu­tion I com­pletely for­got about.

I did attempt NaNoW­riMo in Novem­ber and man­aged to write just over 19,000 words. So this year wasn’t a com­plete bust in terms of my writing.

5. Fin­ish a 100 page script for Script Frenzy in April.

Fail.

I started Script Frenzy. I fin­ished Script Frenzy.

Did I write 100 page? No.

6. Par­tic­i­pate in Dry July.

Fail.

Another res­o­lu­tion I com­pletely for­got about. (Are you sens­ing a theme yet?)

7. Loose 10 kilograms.

Fail.

I became a full mem­ber of my work gym at the start of 2009. I had my first pro­gram writ­ten up for me in mid-Jan with new iter­a­tions every 6 – 8 weeks.

From 14th Jan to 21st Dec I went from 93.3kg to 90.8kg and my body fat per­cent­age dropped from 26.6% to 25.5%. So I only ended up los­ing 2.5kg in weight. BUT, I lost cen­time­tres off my legs as bi-weekly ses­sions on the spin cycle began to tighten up my leg and hip mus­cles. On top of that I’m lift­ing over twice the weight was  was when I first started there. Mov­ing to the “big boy” free weights was prob­a­bly the high­light of my gym year.

In Con­clu­sion

Two Passes, five Fails.

It’s become very clear that New Year Res­o­lu­tions and I do not mix well. So there will be no res­o­lu­tions this year. They’re too easy to make and too easy to break.

I have a bet­ter idea for 2010. One that I’m really excited about and has the ben­e­fit of not need­ing year long man­age­ment like New Year god­damn Res­o­lu­tions. But I’ll save that for another post.

It’s that time of the year again, when America’s tele­vi­sion sched­ule cranks up and bums hit seats — ready and wait­ing to see what gems of enter­tain­ment await. Yours TRULY has had a go at putting together a list.

Here’s last year’s list for comparison.

In com­pil­ing this year’s list I’ve found a few shows that I’d omit­ted from the pre­vi­ous year. Con­sider them added.

What stays

• 30 Rock - One of the few tele­vi­sions shows I can watch with Ange.
  
• Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion - It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how Hank han­dles being a sin­gle father, espe­cially with a daugh­ter who is so close in per­son­al­ity and mannerisms.
• Doll­house - I come into the sec­ond sea­son being the only per­son in the world who hasn’t seen Epi­taph One (the “miss­ing” 13th episode).
• Entourage - Every­one watches this for Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold. And the show run­ners are well aware of this.
• Robot Chicken - Bite-sized com­edy. I don’t mind the look of their new show, Titan Max­i­mum either.
• South Park - Con­sis­tently good.
• Super­nat­ural - I’m lov­ing the steady growth of mythol­ogy in Supernatural.
• The Daily Show - Not sure what this wasn’t on last year’s list. The Daily Show has been a dear friend to me for many years now.
• The Simp­sons - Well into it’s twi­light years now and not nearly as funny as it used to be. But it’s bet­ter than most television.
• True Blood - I was late to the party on this one. But I still man­aged to The sec­ond sea­son fin­ished last week, but I’d be remiss includ­ing it on the list.

What’s In

• Flash For­ward - I saw a pre­view for this show a while back, but the con­cept really stuck with me. Every­one in the world sud­denly flashes for­ward six months in the future for 2 min­utes. Then they deal with that info dump. Sounds promising.
• V - I remem­ber watch­ing the orig­i­nal and being freaked out by the lizards in human skin. Admit­tedly I was five or six years old at the time.

What’s Out

• Bat­tlestar Galac­tica — The only show in this list that got to bow out grace­fully. And what an end­ing!
  
• Heroes - I was ready to give up on Heroes after the second-to-last arc,Villains. But like an idiot I stuck through Fugi­tives hop­ing for a glim­mer of the great­ness that was sea­son one. It was not to be. Fare thee well, Heroes.
• House - It’s not that I hate House,  I’ve  sim­ply fallen too far behind to watch it on a reg­u­lar basis. One for the off-season I think.
• My Name is Earl - Lost track of the show’s “goal”. Got can­celed for it.
• Prison Break - Put on hia­tus, then can­celed. With story gaps filled by an insult­ing two hour long mini.
• Reaper - Taken before it’s time.
• Smal­l­ville - See Heroes above. If I have to force myself to watch tele­vi­sion then it’s not worth it.
• Ugly Betty - Same as House. Ange seems to be enjoy­ing it though.

A final tally of 11 shows ( plus one that has already fin­ished it’s sea­son). Even though I’ve trimmed the list this still seems to be a hell of a lot of tele­vi­sion. Chalk that up to shift­ing priorities.

Before I get into the res­o­lu­tions for next year I think it’s best to do a final tally of the 2008 ones.

1. Start home brew­ing beer
2. Learn to bake bread and bread related products
3. Learn how to make my own sausages.
4. Increase exer­cise to coun­ter­act the effects of a beer/sausage/bread diet
5. Fin­ish writ­ing my novel
6. Get at least two short sto­ries published
7. Learn more Italian

I wrote up an update around Sep­tem­ber for my post a day and not much has changed since then.

I made beer and started learn­ing Ital­ian. Most impor­tantly I put a lot of effort towards increas­ing my daily exercise.

Way back at the begin­ning of the year I was given a free ses­sion card for the gym located in the same build­ing as I work. Given the heavy fees most gyms charge find­ing that lit­tle card was like find­ing a golden ticket to health­i­ness. It was only 10 ses­sions, and I only man­aged to use 9 of them, but for 30 min­utes I worked myself like a dog.

I also hit a sep­a­rate gym close by the house for a cou­ple of spin classes. If you’ve never been, spin class is hell. 45 min­utes of con­stant leg mov­ing, inter­sected with peri­ods of stand­ing, sit­ting and high ten­sion leg break­ing. After all that you get to nap, wait a week and do it all over again. Fun with a cap­i­tal F.

So thats 1, 4, half of 6 and part of 7. Although you could argue that 7 was vague enough that it would never ever be ‘com­pleted’. In fact all of those res­o­lu­tions weren’t as fleshed as they could’ve been. Three and a bit res­o­lu­tions out of seven com­pleted. Ter­ri­ble, just terrible.

I’m ram­bling again, so I’d bet­ter get to the list for 2009. I’ve tried to make it a lot more detailed so there’s actual goals to reach:

1. Learn how to make bread. Be able to make sour­dough and whole­meal high tin loaf.
2. Go on a mush­room pick­ing tour.
3. Con­vince the Ital­ian com­mu­nity to let me get involved in mak­ing sausages.
4. Sub­mit fic­tion to at least two short story competitions.
5. Fin­ish a 100 page script for Script Frenzy in April.
6. Par­tic­i­pate in Dry July.
7. Loose 10 kilograms.

So that’s seven mod­er­ately easy res­o­lu­tions. Same num­ber as last year. Now I just need to keep them.