communication breakdown

Projects

Pretty standard weekend for me. I trained for about 3 hours in the park at Lake Harriet with Christy, a fellow TaeKwon-Do student. It was the first time I've trained outdoors in a long while, and it was very refreshing. You can see where all the tax dollars go - the park areas around the Chain of Lakes are beautiful. For me it was a good mix of teaching and training, both of which are going to be very important for me as I approach my next black belt test in November. By the way, for those unfamiliar with the art of TKD - there are a ton of (very difficult) requirements for my upcoming test. I sat down last week to look at them all, and was just amazed at how much I've already learned and how much I still need to perfect. It's going to be a hard 6 months, but I'm looking forward to the journey...

I guess I decided that I've got too much free time on my hands, because I've pretty much started up three projects simultaneously. The first and foremost of these is the preparation for my test, for obvious reasons.

Secondly, I've been making a halfhearted effort for the last few years at trying to see some of the Top 100 Movies according to AFI. I've decided to make this a more conscious effort, and hopefully complete this list within a year or so. I've already seen about 30 of them, and another 15 or so are already in my Netflix queue, so I've got a good start there.

Finally, something which is more of a long-term project: tackling The Modern Library's list of the Top 100 Novels. Corey, one of my co-workers at Medtronic, tipped me off to this list, and I think it's a worthwhile project. It gives me an incentive to be more consistent with my reading (which has been very sporadic as of late), and the list is a good combination of titles I've always wanted to read but hadn't, and others which sound interesting and/or have historic importance. I'm not going to even suggest a time when I think I might be finished with this - we'll just see how it goes. I've made much less progress on this list (only 3 read so far!!) so I've got a long way to go.

In order to give these projects visibility (and to hold me accountable), I'm keeping track of the progress here and here.

Well, I'm going to go train for awhile, then do some jogging, and then probably chill for the rest of the evening. I'm hoping the storms hold off for awhile - after about 2 straight weeks of raining, the weekend here has been a God-send of warm 70s sunshine. Eat your hearts out, Florida...