“You’re invited Daddy, but no cats are to steal the chocolate cake!”
— Lucy invites me to her playtime birthday party with one caveat

Short and sweet, here are my 2011 new year resolutions. I’m trying to be much more specific this year. Hence, I have “lose 25 pounds” and “do 200 hours of Krav Maga classes” rather than “lose weight” and “exercise more”.

Next year I’ll dig this post back out to see how successful I was.

1. Lose 25 more pounds
(that’d be 60 pounds in 3 years!)
2. 200 hours of Krav Maga classes
(and test for my orange belt)
3. 100 trips to the gym
(this by itself would be easy, but will be much harder when done in conjunction with #2 above)
4. Finish family history project
5. Get better at CSS
6. Get better with Photoshop
7. Learn how to use my Wacom Pad
(and maybe a little bit of Illustrator)
8. Learn how to use my Canon 60D
(especially for video)
9. Be more creative
(not very specific, but important)

This being inauguration day, I thought I’d post a few pics (above) that I never got around to posting back during the Nov. 4, 2008 election.

I remember Jill taking pics of the tv screen as soon as news started breaking that Obama had won the election. I also remember the kid playing in her “diaper mobile” while mom and dad channel-surfed all the news channels for election info. It was a fun night.

Here’s a screencap of the whitehouse web site today.

Simon’s Cat ‘Let Me In!’

Simon’s Cat ‘TV Dinner’

Simon’s Cat ‘Cat Man Do’

This is a Ted talk from earlier this year. Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who experienced a massive stroke in 1996. It took her nearly a decade to fully recover. Her description of the stroke, along with the insight she provides is amazing. I never thought a talk like this would have me both howling in laughter and getting a little teary eyed (darn allergies!) at the same time. For more information (and to test out my Amazon Associate account), here’s a link to her book:

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

BTW, though the above video is great, I have to admit that whenever issues of the brain come up (and they do pop up frequently when trying to explain the actions of babies and cats) the following bit always seems to make an obligatory appearance in my head. Yep, 1970s PBS programming has scarred me for life. Now please excuse me while I zoom, zoom, zoomah, zoom.

This is definitely cool. This is a video taken at the LA Museum of Natural History, Wouldn’t it be neat to see Wubert’s reaction if he rounded a corner and met this guy?

Here’s something that’s along the same lines: Walking with Dinosaurs.

Lucy got a new table and chairs the other day, and they have racing stripes! She thinks they are super-cool. So do we!