First Check in of 2025
Week 1.28571428571
Here we are nine days into the year of 2025. That is 2.46575342466% of the new year finished for those of you that appreciate statistics like that. I just want to check in with y’all about how my first week and change has gone so far.
Here are my resolutions the things I would like to do in 2025:
Read 100 books.
Write a blog post every week.
Practice guitar 15 minutes a day.
Get on the treadmill or walk five days a week.
Write and complete something that is not a blog post.
Perfect a New York Style pizza at home.
Read at a live lit event.
Read 100 books.
I have read about 2 ½ books so far which puts me on track to complete my 100 books by the end of the year. I have at least two books going at the same time. I am compiling a list of all of the books that I finish reading and will publish it when I finish one hundred books or when the year ends—whichever comes first. One of the books I read is a cookbook, but I did read literally every recipe in the book and all of the appendices etc. I know a great deal more about how making soup in the UK is done than I did before. The book is, The Basic Basics Soups Handbook: All You Need to Know to Make Delicious Soups and Broths by Marguerite Patten. There were far too many soups with aubergines (eggplant) and courgettes (zucchini) than I care for, but that is personal taste. I assume that they are delicious provided you like said vegetables. I do not list eggplant and zucchini as food enemies, but they are surely not food friends. C’est la vie. I do find it strange that the English use the French words for these particular vegetables. I will have to read up on why that is. My hypothesis is that it was begun in the mid-20th century as a way of making fancy two relatively humble, uncommon, and polarizing garden vegetables, but I could be wrong. Prior to being called courgettes, zucchini in Britain (and I believe in the United States) was the ever-appealing term marrows. Eggplant or egg-plant sounds like a perfectly blunt English word that describes how the earliest cultivars looked like so I wonder why the change to aubergine.
I suppose when the giant purple monstrosity became common, it was better to use the French word aubergine derived from the Catalan word alberginera derived from the Arabic word al-badinjan which in turn came from the Persian badin-gan derived from the Sanskrit word vatigagama. I did not intend to go into a deep dive into the etymology of the word aubergine, but here we are. I learned this from the always excellent Online Etymology Dictionary. Here is the link: Aubergine etymology As a small aside about myself—the color eggplant is one of my favorite colors even if I find the vegetable mostly unappealing. I will eat eggplant in the form of baba ghanoush, provided that it is smooth, smoky, and full of olive oil, tahini, garlic, and lemon juice. In other words, if it does not taste too much like eggplant. I did eat a sublime vegetarian tagine that prominently featured eggplant at Chez Panisse when I was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area in the late summer of 2019. I suspect that Alice Waters could make shirt cardboards taste sublime if challenged to do so. It was definitely the only time I ever ate eggplant and wished for more.
Write a blog post every week.
Technically I am two days past writing a post for the first week, but as long as I write another one within the next five days, I will be on track for fifty-two posts this year. Mind you, I set this as a minimum goal—I may write more than one post a week. I am also flirting with audio or even video posts. But for now I am concentrating on writing at least one post a week. Who knows what the future brings? I certainly don’t, but I have a feeling that I will be at my desk writing and avoiding current events as much as humanly possible for the foreseeable future. After all, angrying up the blood is not good for my body or soul, but writing is.
Practice guitar for fifteen minutes a day.
I have been practicing at least fifteen minutes a day without fail since I wrote this goal down. As I type this, the fingers on my left hand are hurting a little bit, but I can feel calluses starting to form on my first three fingers—the pinky does not get used as often, so it is still pretty smooth. I have tended to death grip my guitar necks in the past, but I am being very mindful of this and am seeking to fret the strings just hard enough to make a clear and true note. Strings of a thinner gauge are helping me in this. I just restrung my main guitar with Ernie Ball Extra Slinky Strings in the 8-38 gauge. I had tried Dunlop RWN0738 Rev. Willy's Lottery Brand Electric Guitar Strings 7-38 Gauge Super Fine strings, but it turns out that they were a bit too fine—the high E string broke seemingly on its own, but I suspect a game of 4 a.m. living room cat chase zoomies was the true culprit. I occasionally fret chords with my thumb hanging loose from the neck just to re-iterate that I don’t need to strangle my guitar every time I make a chord. I’ve also started teaching myself how to do barre or bar chords. I know that I am not ready to play them yet, but I am using them to strengthen my hand and fingers for my cowboy chords. I have an app to practice with and after fifteen minutes of rigorous practice, I find a little riff or bit of a song to play around with until my fingers start to hurt too much. Some days it is just for another five minutes and some days I pick the guitar up for five or ten minute little jams several times a day. I have also been trying to figure out how to use my Spark 40 modeling amplifier to create a tone to sound more like the mighty John McGeoch of Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Visage, and Public Image Ltd. fame. It is going slowly, but I am having fun doing it. Which is all that matters. I still cannot play any recognizable songs from beginning to end, but I am working toward that slowly but surely. Mostly slowly. Until then I make a joyful noise unto the lord on my geetar. If anyone wants to buy me a vintage Yamaha SG1000 like John McGeoch is playing in the picture below, I would not complain.
Get on the treadmill or walk five days a week.
Sigh. I have been doing this, but it has been brutal. I hate being on the treadmill and it’s too cold out for me to make myself go walk right now. The longest I have been on the treadmill is just shy of ten minutes and one day I was on it for barely a minute. I have shoes for walking on the treadmill right next to it to remind me to walk and I have every day since the beginning of the year save Saturday and Sunday, but these were planned days off. If I miss a planned day of walking on the treadmill and don’t use a Saturday or Sunday for a make-up day I will punish myself by eating a hot dog-flavored candy cane.
For Christmas one of my good friends and fellow Hot Dog University Class of 2023 alum Wally sent me a package of Archie McPhee’s Hot Dog Candy Canes.
Wally and I constantly send each other hot dog-related memes and whatnot by text and Facebook Messenger, so it was a great present, but a present that I was using entirely for novelty/seasonal decorative purposes. I truly fear what a hot dog candy cane tastes like. Another friend came over for dinner soon after I got the candy canes and said that they wished to try one. I refused them twice, as is the custom in Buddhist monasteries to test the mettle and sincerity of potential monks and nuns and for those who wish to convert to Judaism for similar reasons, but they insisted. My words were along the lines of: “It’s your funeral. Don’t feel compelled to do this. The only peer pressure is from yourself etc.” They began to eat the hot dog candy cane. Jennifer posted about it on BlueSky:
They ate the whole thing. I am equal parts impressed and horrified. They are a champion.
People may ask, “Are you such a masochist that you would punish yourself by making yourself eat a hot dog candy cane if you don’t get on the treadmill or go for a walk at least five days a week?” To which I reply, “I am not a masochist. I am a sadist, but a very lazy one. I mean, I’m a piece of shit and I’m right here.” Will I actually eat a hot dog candy cane if I fail to do my treadmill time? Probably not. I darn near puke every time I think about having to eat one. I would actually puke if I did eat one, and it’s been quite a while since I had to do that, so I’m not about to start. Unless I don’t get on the treadmill at least five days a week. I should probably learn how to reward myself for good behavior instead of punishing myself for perceived failings. You can take the boy out of the Church of Christ, but it’s hard to take the Church of Christ out of the boy.
Write and complete something that is not a blog post.
I have not completed a piece of writing yet, but the year is young. I have started writing down any and all ideas that I have for material in a small notebook—a commonplace book. A commonplace book is not as rigorous as a journal. It is more of a place to jot down quotes, bits of dialogue, books that I might want to read—anything that I find interesting. It was described by my writing teacher as an “outboard motor for your brain”. I was told to write down any and all thoughts that come to me and to carry this book with me always. Even next to my bed or outside of the shower. I am not quite there yet. Right now it is sitting on my desk next to me and there is a clickable pen with it at all times because the act of taking off a pen cap may slow one down when writing down an idea. There are just a couple of pages filled out and there is no rhyme or reason to any of my notes, but I have a terrible habit of never writing down my ideas, so it is a beginning.
Perfect a New York Style pizza at home.
On January 25th, we are hosting our good friend and her son for another homemade pizza night to celebrate his and Jennifer’s January birthdays. I continue to read books and online articles about pizza, watch pizza making videos on YouTube, and I just purchased a pizza cutter that a professional pizzaiolo of Jennifer’s acquaintance recommended. It is the Dexter-Russell 4" Pizza Cutter P177A-4PCP. He has been making pizzas professionally for decades and knows his stuff. The OXO Good Grips 4” pizza cutter that I currently have gets good reviews for home rotary pizza cutters, but it is really not up to the task, and I have mangled many a pie with it. The P177A cutter is not cheap, but I had some Amazon gift cards and credit card cash back offers that made the purchase affordable. I cannot wait to use it. In other pizza adjacent news, this weekend I am planning to try my hand at khachapuri for the first time. Wish me luck.
Read at a live lit event.
I have not begun to decide where I want to read at. Or what I would even read. Part of taking this writing class is to get into a daily writing habit. Of the things that I am writing right now, nothing is really showing itself to be a piece to be read aloud in front of an audience, but I have confidence that something will appear soon. Again, the year is young. I have to remind myself that I am not actually making resolutions, but that I am doing things that I want to do this year. Except for the treadmill. I am doing that because my blood pressure is too high and while I am watching my sodium, I really need to walk more to help lower the old hypertension. My new job will require a lot of walking and standing, so it behooves me to do as much walking as possible to build up the stamina for the new position. There is so much standing and walking at the new job that even though it is business casual with an emphasis on business (jeans are not allowed) I can wear any comfortable shoes I choose—even sneakers. I have a few pairs of pretty casual Skechers that I can rotate through every day, so that is good news for my feet. I’ll leave the cowboy boots for date night.
I am feeling pretty optimistic about my progress so far. 2025 is going to be a shitshow no matter what I do, but I will do my best to do what I can to serve my fellow man and to tend my little gardens of thought, music, art, writing, cooking for pleasure, keeping up with care tasks etc. I cannot let the bastards grind me down. And neither can you. We have eleven more days of semi-normalcy, so let’s enjoy it while we can. Until next time, I love all of y’all.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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