Movies:
Burn After Reading – A comedy written by Joel and Ethan Coen of No Country for Old Men and The Ladykillers fame. A rather entertaining offering from the brothers which definitely draws from several of their past works and well as some of the works of others, like The Departed. I’m hardly a movie reviewer (plus it’s been a week since I’ve seen the movie and I didn’t exactly take notes … It’d have been kind of weird since I wasn’t alone) so I’m not going to try and write too much about it. Overall, if you like thrillers (and this one is definitely thrilling whilst fun) you should give it a viewing.

The Getaway – I recently signed up for Netflix and the first two months or so was watching seasons 1 through 4 of Entourage since I never had the opportunity to watch it when they were on television since I don’t have any desire to pay for HBO. I’ve gone through and added a bunch of movies that are related either to actors I like, or directors I like, or franchises that I like. I’ll probably chronicle what I watch as I go. Part of my motivation for doing this is that I would like to make a hobby/part-time career out of video production and I want to soak up as much great directing/acting/production as I can. I’d like to think of my self as a semi-cinephile in that I’m not an obsessive devotee to the art. I’m planning on getting a Panasonic DVX100 at some point, but that probably won’t be until next year at best.

Anyway, back to the movie, The Getaway (1972) staring Steve McQueen as ‘Doc’ McCoy and Ali McGraw as Carol McCoy, chronicles the adventures of Doc and Carol as they escape a crime boss, who gets Doc out of prison and tasks him with robbing a bank, a backstabbing cohort, and the law. An excellent flick all around. One of the things that I like the movie is that overall there is relatively little dialogue, but you don’t ever feel underwhelmed by it because there is generally always something going on when the characters aren’t directly relating to each other.

Toastmasters:
I was supposed to give a speech this past Wednesday, but I have had a hard time coming to grips with a topic that I really want to speak on.

Aside from that, I’ve mostly just been going to work and slowly putting my stuff away. I’ll be glad to get some kind of order to my apartment.

I’ll get a DVD with my speech on it at the next meeting in two weeks. I’ll rip it and put it online for all to see when I receive it.

As we all know, it is traditional to present resolutions for the new year. A nice list of all the fun things that we want to do this year to better ourselves and so I give you mine.

What I’d Like to do in 2008:

• Bicycle 100 Miles
  The Problem: I don’t do nearly enough athletic things and it bothers me. A sedentary lifestyle is just begging for problems.
  Proposed Solution: Well, I have a bike so that’s a good start. I got it in September or October of last year and I’ve ridden in here and there. I think my longest trip was about 3 miles. I haven’t ridden it much lately due to the fact that it’s been rainy and snowy and what have you and I don’t have any interest in busting my ass out on the open road. However, once the weather breaks, I want to try and ride at least two times a week steadily increasing my ride length and by mid to late Summer I’d like to participate in some charitable rides like the Pan Mass Challenge.
• Learn to Sail and to achieve the Helmsman rating
  The Problem: See above
  Proposed Solution: I’m going to try my damnedest to learn to sail this year. It’s kind of hard because I work so far from the city so I can’t really do it during the week unless I leave work early, but I’m going to try and go at least every weekend once the sailing season starts. I learned to swim (somewhat) last year and definitely need to improve, but I hopefully shouldn’t be too far away from being good enough at it to pass the swimming test (though I don’t think they actually make you take a swimming test at Community Boating, though I’d like to be better at it for my own benefit regardless).
• Read 50 Books
  The Problem: I don’t feel that I read enough.
  Proposed Solution: I had given myself a similar but vaguer resolution in a previous January and I read a few books but I didn’t read all that many over the course of the year. This time I’m giving myself a definite measurable number.
• Deliver 6 Toastmasters Speeches
  The Problem: I’ve been in Toastmasters off and on for 18 or so months. I’ve yet to deliver my icebreaker speech. They say that this is the easiest speech that one writes, but for me that is extremely far from the truth.
  Proposed Solution: I’d been putting it off for as long as I can remember and in an effort to stop putting things off I signed myself to give my icebreaker next week. I still don’t have the speech conceived though. I’ll upload it to Youtube or something since the club president provides us with a recording of our presentation afterwards.

That’s everything that I could think of for the moment. I had a few that I wanted to write, but one important aspect of motivating oneself to accomplish goals is to set goals with measurable results. Being able to see your progress helps you to maintain your motivation. The other things, may or may not get done, but I would like to think that the ones outlined above definitely will.

And once again, Happy New Year.