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December 31st, 2008:

My 2009 Plan File

2008 was Not My Favorite Year. Too many deaths, too many illnesses, too many trips to the dentist, and too many financial collapses. I have high hopes for 2009, but that’s part & parcel of being a Pollyanic Old Catholic. Hey, when you’re down this far, every direction is up, right?

So in this, the last (I sincerely hope) Contra entry that I will ever edit by hand, I present my plan file for the coming year:

  • Get Contra settled in to its new home on contrapositivediary.com under the WordPress platform. Easy one, though we’ll know more tomorrow.
  • Begin and complete the rewrite of Assembly Language Step By Step for the Third Edition, and hopefully see it into print by the spring of 2010. This is a big-un, and the top priority, as there is considerable money riding on it.
  • Finish and publish Cold Hands and Other Stories, my second SF collection. Richard Bartrop has already sent me sketches for the cover art, and they look great. As soon as I can get “Drumlin Wheel” completed and cleaned up, I have enough material for a book, and after that, finishing it the book is just a few days of focused work.
  • Finish Old Catholics, or at least get another 50,000 words into it. (I have about 27,000 words down now.) This has been fun, and it’s certainly the quirkiest thing I’ve ever attempted to write.
  • Build a couple of radios. I have the schematic for John Baumann KB7NRN’s 2-tube FM BCB receiver, and that’s tops on the list.
  • Get my 40M dipole out of my alarm system’s hair and do some hamming on the low bands.
  • Get a 6M vertical of some sort situated in the attic.
  • Get the last crown installed in my mouth. (This should happen in early February.) That’s the end of a miserably massive piece of oral rehab that begin in January 2008, and (mercifully) this last step involves no cutting.
  • Finish and launch a couple of model rockets with the local club.
  • Read Many Books.
  • Eat Less Sugar. Eat More Meat. Lose More Weight. (More on this shortly.)
  • Enjoy the immediate presence of my wife, my dogs, and this extravagantly beautiful world.

Other things will certainly happen along the way, and maybe half of the above list will not happen, though I have great faith in the second item and complete faith in the last.

As for tonight, well, Carol and I will remain at home, watch a movie, brush dogs, and maybe have a glass of wine. There’s a decent conjunction of the Moon and Venus just after sunset, and I intend to gawk at that a little. Come midnight, I may jump up and yell “Bang!” in honor of fireworks, if I’m still awake. (If I’m not still awake, the kids down on Villegreen will handle it for me, and I’ll be awake one way or another.)

Happy New Year from both of us; like, how hard could that be?