Things I'd like to do this year:

• Riding lessons. Rock Creek Park offers lessons, including, on the intermediate level, *dressage*!
  
  
• Learn to knit. I can knit, I think, I just can't cast on stitches
  
  
• Sell pro. Preferably repeatedly. This of course, requires that I finish up stories, polish them thoroughly, and send them out.
  
  
• Finish cross stitch designs I've already started. Start new ones.
  
  
• Learn to crochet. Again, my main problem is casting on, though at least with crocheting, I can cheat and fingerknit a strip, and work off of that. My problem is that basic stitches bore me, but until I master them (and turning) I can't work on anything more complicated.
  
  
• Redesign webpage. I've got a new submissions page gleefully stolen from a friend, now I just need to shop around till I find the base page I want to use, and revamp everything appropriately. I'll probably ponder actually getting a domain name as well. Crazymonkeyloveslave is still open. So's hotfishsex. If TOS(aka Salt) sells to Asimov's, I'll consider it. :)
  
  
• Leave DC. Maybe to Boston, if the bitchwhores move up there as well. Maybe to State College, if I panic at the idea of being in Boston by myself.
  
  
• Apply for Grad school. This means finding professors that teach what I want to study, taking the GREs, applying places, getting stellar letters of recommendation from everyone I know to make up for less than stellar grades in college.
  
  
• WorldCon in Toronto, Readercon in Boston, and WFC in DC. Of them, WFC I'm most sure I can do, as I'll have crashspace here, and it's not that expensive to get here, even if I move to Boston ($120 round trip plane), Readercon is second, especially if I move there, and then WorldCon. Which I *really* want to do, but if I move, will I be able to afford it? Selling pro would really help this.
  
  
• Learn to drive. Yes, despite 10 years of no interest in it, and for that matter, continued no interest, it would just make some things so much easier. Which probably means I'll be part of the whole car culture, with payments and insurance and gas and all. Well, not payments. I'll wheedle the Silver Bullet (1986 Volvo sedan) out of my dad's paws for cash.
  

There. I think those are enough things to work on for now.

(no subject)

Oh! And I got my SS presents! Kirsten made me the prettiest scarf I ever have seen. And to be really cool, she used the same yarn I'd been sighing over at the yarn store while I was home. The yarn that made me want to know how to knit. It's mostly blue, with tendrilly bits in dark and medium silky blue, black, and sparkly copper bits. And she gave me a signed copy of The Fall of Kings, so whee!

And Mousie gave me The Bends, I don't think I'd mentioned that before. Which I had all turned up for New Years. Now that I've got it again, I can make the Mix CD I want, with The Bends and Let Down, and some of the B sides, and Stop Whispering and all the rest.

(no subject)

I used the phrase "happy dance in honor of me" an awful lot this vacation.

Usually in public. Often with the accompanying happy dance.

Oh, and of course, I go and talk with Taken Boy here, and he tells me he's found my Radiohead CD. See, way back when he first started--ie, November or so of 2000, I lent him the Bends. And he lost it. He had the case, but he couldn't find the CD anywhere. And he looked everywhere, and defragged his CD collection several times (where you go through the CDs, and move them back into the appropriate cases, not the cases that were closest to the CD player when you changed CDs.), and couldn't find it anywhere. So after awhile I really missed the CD, but I'm lazy and hate spending full price on things, so I just put it on my amazon list to remind myself of that and kept looking for in second hand stores. And then Mousie got it for me. And I was all excited again, and meant to tease him that he didn't need to give it back anymore, but he was out of the office whenever I'd go by. So I couldn't. And I go in today, cause I knew he was there and it had been ages and ages since I'd talked to him (they moved his office, and I don't get to see him anymore), and we're talking for a bit, and then lo and behold he's like, "I had your CD all along." He'd thought it was a different one, one of his girlfriend's. So she put it in this weekend, and it wasn't it at all. :) I knew this would happen, it's why I didn't buy it for so long. :) He's now guilty, and says he'll have to think of something to do to make it up for me.

(no subject)

Andrea, baby, tell us the terminator theory of Christianity.