Resolutions 2009: January review

So - one month gone by, and how have I done with my vaunted New Year's resolutions? You may recall that I had quite a few of them. ;-) Not to toot my own horn, or anything, but I'd say that I've done pretty well so far. Here, I'll show you. :-)

I was supposed to send out a letter or a card at least once a week. Done! Admittedly, I haven't really sent any letters as such. Not what I would call letters. Just postcards and double cards. But it's better than nothing. Certainly a vast improvement on my efforts in 2008. :-) Pretty soon a real letter will be going out ... ! and James, it'll have your name on it!

Look at the gorgeous cards I've been sending ... I bought them at Tronsmo and I plan to send out every single one this year. :-)

The box:

I was supposed to do something creative. Make something, or whatever. I haven't made anything, but I have written something ... and had fun with it along with my writers' group. I am head of the group, apparently :-) and I made it our assignment for the January meeting to write one or more nanotale. It was fun, it really was ... I will definitely be writing more of these ... and I even started a separate blog for them. It's here if you want to take a look.

I was going to do something new, try something I'd never done before. I did that. :-) I kind of did one thing and a half, because the first thing was a matter of definition. :-) I went to a performance of Die Fledermaus at the still relatively new Opera House here in Oslo - it was the first time I'd seen a real performance there, but I'm not sure it counts, because I have been to the old Opera House, several times. So this wasn't really new, as such. :-) I went with my friend CH and her parents; they got tickets cheap for all of us since the bank they work for (her father's retired though) are one of the Opera's biggest sponsors. It was fun, although to be honest I had a hard time following the plot. If it hadn't been for those little subtitle thingys they've got on the front of the seats, I would have been totally lost. :-D But it was fun. :-)

This is CH and me on the 'top floor' of the ... what ... the top mezzanine? Or whatever they call it. We went out there in the intermission to see if we could figure out the plot by putting all our heads together. :-D

It's a pretty big place. A fantastic stage.

So, although this was kind of a new thing, I couldn't really let it count as my new experience for January. I had to figure out something else. :-) Something completely different - making marshmallows from scratch!! :-D I got this idea because I just totally randomly came across a recipe on a blog somewhere. I don't remember where now. I was just surfing around and came across it. You can get the recipe for yourself, here. I suggested to Anne Ida that we try to make some and she was game - thank you for being a sport! :-) We couldn't find all the ingredients, so we had to be a bit inventive, and as we were going along we made some mistakes in measuring and what have you ... but the results came out fantastically well. Seriously. Texture, color and taste - professional level. I kid you not. We were really impressed with ourselves. :-) The interesting thing here is that I don't actually like marshmallows. :-D But it was fun to try! And we figure that come December we can make up a much bigger batch and give our friends boxes of homemade marshmallows. :-D So some of you should consider yourselves warned ... ;-)

We took lots of pictures while we were messing about with the sugar and pots and pans ... Anne Ida made this great collage out of some of them. I stole it from her blog, shame on me. Click to enlarge it if you want to see every glorious detail. :-D I can really recommend trying this, it was lots of fun and the results were wonderful. :-)

OK, next ... I was supposed to try one new dinner recipe per month. I did that yesterday. ;-) Hey, it was still January. I made the deadline. :-) KAS and I made - at my suggestion! - a chicken jambalaya with lots of vegetables last night. It turned out absolutely delicious, if I do say so myself. I'll definitely be making this again ... and that's exactly my plan, to teach myself or to develop more recipes that I can make for dinner and that I really will make for dinner. I feel like I need more variation in my cooking, such as it is. This was a good start. This is a great recipe to cook up a huge batch of and freeze in portions. That makes it even better IMO. :-)

Various ingredients ... who says I never eat vegetables voluntarily??

Serve with rice. :-)

What next ... I was going to wild release one BookCrossing book every week. And I totally have! Five books so far this year. Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Fay Weldon, etc ... at the Opera House, Oslo Central Station, the Holberg statue downtown, Tveita mall, etc ... I've been such a good BookCrosser this month! :-D

I was going to read at least one book from the list of 1001 Book You Must Read Before You Die ... I have read one, The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. It was OK, nothing special IMO. Just not my type of book. I could appreciate technically that it was a good book, well written and so on, but it just didn't touch me. Quality literature, but it didn't do it for me.

I've been quite diligently updating my LiveJournal; well, compared to last year, anyway. I've been adding updates once a week; contents of varying meaningfulness ... but at least I'm making an effort. :-)

I was going to blog about Oslo, show off the city ... I've definitely done that, twice over in fact. I've posted about the Stock Exchange that I visited in September and also a bunch of pictures of Youngstorget square downtown. I've got a couple more posts already lined up for February ... I've been out taking pictures a couple of times and I have some good ones ready to post. :-)

The one thing I haven't done is to mail off a book to some foreign country. :-( I've been totally forgetting about it till it was too late ... for this month, anyway. I'll try to send two this month, to make up for it.

All in all I have to say I think I've done good ... !! :-D Fingers crossed for February ... ! :-)