2020 goals

2020.md

General:

• Save 20% of our income
• Take a family vacation
• Get a nice (professional) family photo taken
• Get passports for the kids
• Unsubscribe from at least half my current RSS feeds
• Find a better system for organizing and sharing family photos and videos

Cooking:

• Cook five new things, from at least three from different sources (cookbooks, websites, etc)
• Find a good dairy-free ice cream recipe

Projects:

• Launch at least one project from my brainstorm list
• Automate link updates on my personal site
• Build something involving physical computing (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc)

Exercise:

• 50 pushups a day (or 350 a week)
• 20 squats a day
• 60 minutes of cardio per week
• 60 minutes of stretching per week
• Find an indoor workout I can stick with

Books to read:

• Magic for Liars
• Fluid BJJ
• The Princess Bride
• Station 11
• Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
• The World at Night
• A River of Stars
• Artificial Unintelligence
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Alphabet Squadron
• Shadow Fall
• Batman vs Elmer Fudd

Books in consideration:

• Killers of the Flower Moon
• A Gentleman in Moscow
• Iraq + 100
• 1984
• Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
• The Fifth Season
• Battle Cry of Freedom
• Grant
• The Kid Stays in the Picture
• A Plague of Doves
• Moby Dick
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• The Great Gatsby
• Common Ground
• The Library Book
• The Inner Game of Tennis
• These Truths

Cooked:

• Made this on New Years Day: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020146-white-bean-and-avocado-salad-with-garlic-oil
• Second day of the year, second new recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020049-lemony-chicken-soup-with-fennel-and-dill (can't keep up this pace)
• Made this on short notice: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020733-tomato-and-white-bean-soup-with-lots-of-garlic That's three from NYT Cooking, so time to branch out.
• Did the first recipe in From the Oven to the Table and enjoyed it.
• Made a slightly modified version of this pasta e fagioli, using hot Italian sausage instead of a ham hock. Took Carla's advice and used a food processor to finely chop vegetables and slow cook the soffritto. It is excellent. And that's five.

Books:

Magic for Liars is great. I'd read more set in this magical world.

Fluid BJJ was OK, really just a list of techniques bound together by a general theory.

Finished The Princess Bride. Honestly, the movie is better.

Station 11 is amazing. And more timely than I ever could have realized when I started it.

Finished Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, after picking it up and putting it down twice, and it was fun enough.

The World at Night paints a good picture of Nazi-occupied Paris, but the plot is slow. Good enough, but Spies of the Balkans was better.

A River of Stars was both a great read and a nice change of pace from stories about war or pandemics.

Finally read To Kill a Mockingbird (or re-read, after 10th grade). Definitely got more of it than I did at 16.

Alphabet Squadron is the Star Wars space combat I missed from the old Expanded Universe. Shadow Fall was also good.

Finished Artificial Unintelligence in December after starting it earlier in the year and putting it down. It's a good corrective that's closer to mainstream opinion now than when it came out. Worth a read.

I don't know if Batman vs Elmer Fudd should count, but it's 2020 and I'm done. That's 12.

Bring on 2021.