Getting Resolved

Christmas hasn't come yet, but here in aircraft engine nozzle-land, the year closes with a weeklong shutdown, so the final days before Christmas end up feeling like they're the end of the year.  You still have to work, but things are slow, half the people you need are out, and any plans you make are for next year.  In fact, I've gotten so used to saying we'll do something "after the start of the year" that it almost feels like Thursday is the real end of 2010, not just work-2010.  If not for Christmas shopping and carols on the radio, this season might have totally snuck up on me.

So I might yet get to writing about Christmas; or I might not and just end up enjoying it without writing a thing about it.  But since I'm focused on next year of work, it's also started to enter the back of my mind that there's a whole new year of life outside work coming soon, too.  And if you know me at all, you know what that means: perfect time to set some goals and make some plans.  As has been well documented here, I'm significantly better at making plans than I am at following through on them and keeping them going.  But amongst all the starts and stops I've made, there have been some real changes as well.

For example, at this time last year I set a few goals - mostly cooking-related - and did surprisingly better than I expected.  Here are the results.

Meal planning - not a perfect result, but pretty darn good for all the "normal" weeks (weeks where we were leaving or arriving from a trip usually involved more scrambling for ideas and ending up dining out, but I figure that's forgivable).
New ideas/top restaurants - We haven't made a point to go to the Des Moines "Top 100" but every time we do go out, I thoughtfully look at the menu for ideas that we could try to replicate or build off of at home.  Keeping my eyes open for new ideas is a mindset that I've been fairly good about keeping.
Learn new techniques - Kicked butt at this one!  I signed up for the Des Moines Area Community College's Food and Wine Seminar.  Although it didn't fully live up to my (probably overly high) expectations, it was a great experience and I do feel I learned quite a bit.
Gain knowledge - I wanted to have the ability to make something "right," rather than having to follow a recipe.  I didn't do a ton of this, but just by cooking more and more, there are some things I know how to do the right way.  I'd go into more depth, but I think I want to make it its own post.  So for now, let's just say there are a handful of items I can make by myself and "properly"

I didn't necessarily remember each of these ideas all year long as I got better at some of them, but looking back now, I see that I did pretty well.  I'm sure there's some famous saying to this effect, but I find that I never fully appreciate how far I've come until I stop to look back at where I was.  And though I don't feel satisfied with where I am (particularly with my cooking), I have to admit I've come a long ways.

Which is all really cool, but wasn't even what I wanted to write about today.  I wanted to focus on what I want to achieve in the next year, but got so busy patting myself on the back that I haven't even gotten to it yet.  I'm not necessarily big on making resolutions on New Year's Day or whatever, but there's some tradition to it, and it's as good a time as any to start fresh.  Right now I can think of lots of areas of my life where I might want to make changes, but don't have any specifics as yet.  What say I start brainstorming now, and maybe by the first of the year, I'll have some real goals to shoot for?  Here are the blanks I hope to fill in by next week sometime:

Fitness - We're members of a gym, and I realized recently that I want to do more yoga.  Should there be a concrete goal here, like number of visits per week or a big event to be in shape for?
Cooking - Now I've been through DMACC's class - what next?  It will likely have to be self-taught, but should I aim to learn specific techniques?  Particular dishes?  I also want to focus on cooking healthy and local; does this need to be an explicit goal, or do I do it enough already?  Can I incorporate more vegetarian and/or Mediterranean diet meals into the weekly plan?
Movies - Following a re-reboot, I'm back to the AFI top 100, and I've seen 10 (haven't blogged the second 5 yet, but will soon).  Since I'm not rewatching unless I feel I need to for a second chance, this could actually be finished this coming year, but would that make it too much of a chore for something that's ostensibly fun?
Books - I once had a plan to read more classic literature, but it's really fallen off.  If I'm going to read, I need to properly dedicate time to it, which I haven't lately.  Maybe I could find a book club somewhere to motivate me?
Blog - How often, what content, should I focus on something worthwhile for side money or just ramble for the hell of it - the usual questions.
Work - A higher-up position just opened at work.  Should I go for it, and get paid more for more responsibility?  Am I happy enough at my current role?  In this climate, I should probably just be happy to have a job, but I am 5 years in, should I be looking upward, to stability or to fantasy?
Finances - The subject that exposed me to blogs in the first place.  Are we saving enough?  Conversely are we spending enough, or maybe we're too stingy?  Can we ever get our condo refinanced?  What should be the focus of our savings - paying down the mortgage, investing, etc?
House - Some of our condo needs upgrading, since it's more and more apparent that we'll be there for a while.  What should we improve?  Also, we need to be better at just keeping the place clean - I'm not a kid who can just keep a messy room anymore.  But how to actually make that change?
Happiness - I loved the idea of Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project, and realize that I can do a lot more to be happier in my life.  Should I start a focused project like hers, maybe just incorporate some of her ideas every day?
Garden - Last year's garden was a moderate success, but there were too many lazy days where I simply didn't want to water, and a lack of knowledge of plants that kept us from our full potential.  What should we change (crops/methods/etc) to make this year better?

And that's just what I thought of today.  Obviously, it's unlikely that I'll be able to make and keep resolutions in all of these areas.  I don't even know yet if I'll take a shotgun approach and make a resolution for each and hope to keep a few of them as lasting habits, or just focus on one overarching theme which might encompass several of them.  In any case, it's a lot for a guy to think about.  Hopefully by the first I'll know where I want to go with it all and make some real resolutions goals (sorry, sounds cooler that way).  In the meantime, any suggestions?  Are you making changes, and if so, how are they going?

Focusing my Chi

Today is going to be a good day.  I feel confident in saying this, despite the fact that my work simulations are taking about an hour each to run, leaving me with nothing to do in the meantime, and despite the unkempt house I'm going to return to after work and despite the fact that I'll likely hardly see Stacia tonight as she's busy studying.  But before we get ahead of ourselves, this isn't going to be a post about the importance of thinking positively or anything like that.  No, today is going to be a good day because I'm going back to yoga.

I don't know when or how I exactly became interested in yoga.  I know I started with a bikram class in a heated room (think 95 F) where we mostly moved from one static pose to another, holding each for about a minute.  I didn't get much out of that except a lot of sweat, so I started following along with the program on FitTV, called Namaste Yoga.  I worked through the half-hour programs, found myself limbered up a bit, and discovered that it was relaxing and enjoyable.

Which was fine for a while.  Yoga was light activity, a brief thing to energize or stretch myself, and a peaceful retreat at the end of the day.  But I never was sure I was holding the poses correctly, making the proper movements, so I decided I needed to try another class.  The hourlong introductory class pushed me well beyond what I was used to, into new poses I never thought I could do and feeling exhausted into the fibers of my muscles after class was over.  That first time, I'll admit, I didn't have a lot of peaceful thoughts.  But I decided to keep coming back, and in time I was not only keeping up with the others in the class, but the teacher recommended I try a more advanced one - vinyasa.

The year or so that I was in the vinyasa class was fantastic.  Each day followed a similar routine, with a smooth flow from pose to pose.  Forward-fold to plank to chaturanga to upward dog to downward-facing dog.  Repeat.  And as our instructor mercilessly held us in downward dog, hamstrings stretching and arms straining, I realized that through the discomfort I was truly enjoying myself, and found it far more peaceful than the gentle TV classes had been.  Focusing intently on the pose, on the flowing motion from one pose to the next, and the interaction between mental effort and bodily movement freed my mind far beyond the now-dull TV motions.  Pushing the mind and body, stretching and exercising simultaneously gave an hour free of distraction and diversion.  It was great.

So why the past tense?  Well, it's not terribly interesting, but the instructor changed, so the course changed a lot, and it became less enjoyable, less worth the expense, so I let it drop.  I figured I could do routines at home, but the effect wasn't the same, and the motivation quickly lapsed.  I kept saying I needed to try another school but I never followed through.

Then the other day I was at a routine progress exam at my chiropractor and my typically acceptable back scan showed significant stressors.  As we puzzled over this, and as the chiropractor adjusted my tight middle back (which never had been a problem before but was increasingly), I decided that it was time.  I can't say for sure that my back was better during the time I was taking yoga classes, but anecdotally, my stiffer mid-back and my dropping yoga class sure lined up well.  And if it's something I wanted to do anyway, why put it off any longer?

So tonight I'm trying a new school, with a new yoga instructor.  I don't know yet how I'll like this class, since I've had mixed results in Des Moines thus far, but I do know that unless I get out and try a class, I'll never get back to the peaceful enjoyment I had at the first school.  I think it's time to give that a try.

Filmfest 1915-1927 - History

I never much cared for History class in school, but I'm starting to think I like the subject more than I realized.  Whenever I travel, I seek out the local attractions of historical interest - from the pioneers' windswept plains of Nebraska to the dark damp cells of peeling paint and cold concrete of Alcatraz (on my honeymoon, no less), from a week amongst the imposing marble and living breathing corridors of Washington D.C. to childhood afternoons at the Field Museum, breathing the musty incense of the mummy wing.  Those places are incredible for the sensation of history coming alive; where you can close your eyes and just for a moment feel yourself amongst the lives of days gone by.

I don't think anyone would find the history of this blog to be of anywhere near as interesting as any of these places, and nor do I, but I happened to look back at an older post a few days ago.  It was previewing my first film post, and it definitely brings to mind the concept of history repeating itself.

It became pretty apparent that my random recording method wouldn’t make very quick progress of the list, or ensure that I saw the best movies out there.  Sometimes I’d find myself recognizing a film name in the guide, and recording/watching it, only to find that its only claim to fame was having the 98^th best film score, or something.  While I might want to see that movie sometime, it shouldn’t take precedence over the ones that are best overall.  So I drafted a new list and started a new plan.

In December of 2009, I set off on a quest to have a more organized approach to movie-watching, and in 12 short months I have come full circle to a helter-skelter shotgun approach, only now I have a field of thousands of films rather than the hundreds I had last year.  So it's time for a re-reboot, back to the AFI top 100 list again.  I'm now taking a "history of movies" approach, going from the oldest to newest.  Every five films I'll post an update, whether it's on the month or not.  And don't worry, though some will be repeats, I'm not rewatching everything.  Some merit another view, if I feel I've been overly harsh or kind, but those should be rare.

Movies 1-5

1915 - The Birth of a Nation (#44) - I hate to start on a negative, but this is one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Originally titled the Klansman, as you might infer from the movie poster, this is about as racist as it gets.  So why is it on the list of 100 movies?  History.  Though it's not the first movie ever made, this is widely considered the first to take film to a real artform, with thought given to visuals in ways that hadn't been considered before, as well as technical innovations in the method.  That's great, but the director of this film had a very skewed version of civil war history and decided to make a three-hour epic from his point-of-view. In this movie, the KKK is portrayed as a group of heroes, protecting the South from black people in the Reconstruction era.  One scene in particular stands out to me, where the klan catches a black "criminal," and an intertitle is shown that reads "giving him a fair trial," or something like that.  Naively, I thought, okay, so they're going to take him to town and put him in jail.  It then cuts to them dumping his dead body on the porch of a local black leader, while triumphant music plays.  It's really messed up, which is a shame, since the first half of the movie was surprisingly okay, kind of a Romeo and Juliet story between the North and South. And though there's a pro-South tint to the whole film, the second act digs into a whole new low that can't be forgiven, regardless of how innovative it is.

1 Srsly? owl out of 5

1916 - Intolerance (#49) - Another epic of the silent era, directed by D.W. Griffith of Birth of a Nation fame. As far as I can tell, the story is that public opinion of Birth of a Nation was overwhelmingly negative, and Intolerance was a response of sorts.  Whether it was an apology or a defense of the earlier film can be debated, but the premise of this movie is that intolerance has lead to many horrible events throughout history.  Over the course of three plus hours, Griffith weaves together four stories that he feels embody the effects of intolerance, cutting back and forth between the four.  I fully expected to hate it, given my feelings for Mr. Griffith after seeing Birth of a Nation, but it was really interesting actually.  Two of the storylines were not very well fleshed out, and could probably have been dropped from the movie to make it more watchable, but the other two were really well done.  The "main" story surrounds a young couple in what was the modern era, trying to get by while dealing with the temperance movement dictating morality to everyone and the man's prior involvement with a mafia-type organization which has its claws deeply hooked into him.  There's double-crosses, revenge, a really cool car chase (in 1916!) and intrigue along the way.  The other good story is based in Babylonian times, and follows the "Mountain Girl" attempting to save her country from the invading army of Cyrus.  This part is great, if for nothing else than the incredible sets.  The filmmakers built gigantic city walls, siege towers, and palaces, and then staged giant battles amongst it all.  Think Lord of the Rings scale, but at the turn of the century, all real, no CGI.  It looks awesome.  As I said before, the story jumps from story to story, and as the movie gets into its final act, the jumps come quicker and quicker, building up the suspense as each individual plot moves toward its climax.  It was very well done, and maybe made me hate Mr. Griffith a little bit less.

3 Babylonian warriors out of 5

1925 - The Gold Rush (#74 or #58, also #25 in comedies) - I've mentioned before that I liked Charlie Chaplin's films more than I anticipated.  That was definitely true for Modern Times, which I'll re-review a little later on.  Perhaps that built up my expectations for his other movies, but I found The Gold Rush just a bit disappointing.  It was fine; the Little Tramp was lovable, it had some fairly funny moments, and there were some serious parts that were packed with some good emotion.  But for some reason, this didn't really pull me in the way Modern Times did, and I found myself feeling neither under nor overwhelmed by it.  Nothing really wrong with it, but I didn't find it to be one of the greats of movie history.  The storyline is simple - Chaplin plays his tramp character, who heads up to Alaska in the height of the Klondike Gold Rush to make his fortune.  After numerous misadventures, he falls for a local saloon girl and tries to win her heart.  It should be really cute, but there were a couple of issues.  First, the action was a bit repetitive; almost all of it takes place while the characters are snowed in during a blizzard.  There's some chasing around, the classic scene where Chaplin eats his boot, but it starts to get old after a bit.  The other problem is the love interest.  For various reasons that I won't get into for spoilers sake, I disliked her throughout the film.  The Tramp is constantly seeking her approval and love, and I just kept thinking about what a crummy person she was and how he shouldn't be chasing after her.  There were some chuckles, but even those were more scarce than in Modern Times, but this is the movie with the classic "Roll Dance."  That is clever and funny, and really showcases Chaplin's quirky appeal.  Otherwise the movie's so-so, but I kinda loved that part.

3 Gold nuggets out of 5

1927 - The General (#18, also #18 in comedies) - If you read this blog regularly (and who doesn't) you know I've already reviewed The General, and pretty much hated it.  Well, for this month I didn't rewatch it, but I did track down some of the more memorable bits and reconsider my review.  It's still not going to be one of my favorites, but giving it my lowest rating was probably a bit excessive.  This is the one set during the Civil War, where Buster Keaton's character is a Southern train engineer who ends up on a crazy train chase with some Northern soldiers.  I disliked it for its Southern bias, but I'm realizing now (especially when compared to Birth of a Nation) that it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.  It's still a bit weird to have a Confederate protagonist, but apparently this was loosely based on an actual train chase so that would be hard to change.  And though there is some cheering when the South prevails in the battle, there's little in here to paint the North as the "bad guys" per se.  There's still not a heck of a lot that's funny in the movie, but there are moments here and there.  I suppose my favorite is a brief scene where Keaton's love interest tries to help load firewood in the train.  Keaton always deadpans his scenes, as opposed to Chaplin's expressiveness, which works in some areas but leaves the humor just short of what it could be at times.  Better than I thought, but still not a fave.

2 Steam engines out of 5

1927 - The Jazz Singer (#90, also #71 in movie quotes) - Another film I've reviewed before, another I disliked, but this time not really reconsidering my opinion.  This is a film like The Birth of a Nation, that I think gets onto the list for its historical significance, but is really not a great movie.  Not that I'm saying it's racist, quite the opposite really, even though Al Jolson does perform in blackface for one scene.  My disappointment with The Jazz Singer comes in the conclusion of the movie.  Throughout the entire film, Jolson's character Jakie fights with his father the cantor about his direction in life.  Jakie wants to be a contemporary ("jazz") singer, while his father wants him to follow in his footsteps and sing in the church.  It's a good enough conflict to drive a movie, but at the end, after so long of both of them digging their heels in, one of them simply "wins" and gets his way, without any compromise.  I don't want to give it away, and I realize that after the climactic scene it looks as though both are satisfied, but the driving conflict throughout the whole movie is essentially settled by one character saying "okay, I'll do it your way," without the other really coming to respect his viewpoint.  That's how I read it anyway - I know many people like this movie so I could be overreacting, but I couldn't get past that in terms of liking it.  Oh, and the history?  This is the first movie to have recorded speech.  Kinda neat, probably mind-blowing if you'd witnessed it.  I wanted to like this movie, but man, that ending really killed it for me.

1 Jazz hands kitteh out of 5

Stay tuned for the next batch of five, coming out, well, whenever I finish five more movies!