I haven’t really been big on new years’ resolutions historically, but this year I decided that I’m going to try some on for size. My style is usually to do a zillion things at once and accept that some will stick and some will not, and that it will just have to be okay. So, in no particular order, here are my resolutions for 2007, of which I would really be happy if I could accomplish 1/3.

1. Ride my bike to work 75 times.
2. Go low-carb until I reach my target weight, then figure out how to stay there.
3. Spend 1 hr./day with each of my girls¹.
4. Meet 50 new people.
5. Start each day by planning.
6. Sit twice/week.
7. Take one good photograph each month.
8. Start speaking Spanish conversationally.
9. Be happy at work.
10. Document my progress.

¹ This amounts to 3 hrs./day, which I don’t currently have during the week.

I got an Amazon Gift Certificate from Aunt Marcia for Christmas, which I used to buy Photoshop/Premiere Elements, which I used to put together this video. More details later. Let’s just say that Anna and Tara scored HUGE this year.

This was the Christmas of animatronic toys. Santa brought Lucky the Amazing Puppy and an “Knows Your Name” Winnie-the-Pooh. Tara received the equivalent Dora the Explorer doll and Grandpa Ken got her a mechatronic bear that reads stories. It’s all very cool, but sometimes odd to hear extra voices in the house. The girls just had an absolutely amazing haul of toys; all the relatives were very generous as always, but Santa was also extra-generous this year, and Jennifer made sure that Santa had an up to date list of what Anna wanted. As you can see in the video, Anna just about became unhinged with excitement; note Tara piping in “Happy Birthday to You!” with her usual tuneless cheer.

Tomorrow I’m aspiring to put together the Christmas letter and maybe even a little video to accompany it. This week has been very laid back with Jennifer and I both off work, the nanny on vacation, and Jen’s mom visiting. The girls love it, but I see a rough transition to the daily grind ahead once Grandma heads out and school starts back up.

Life is too short to blog. At least it has been lately. Things have been terribly busy at work, as usual, and our home has been in disarray for weeks. Every day there are one or two packages on our doorstep, and the pile at the door is now as tall as I am. I’m not complaining, but when you don’t have time to unbox Christmas presents, what does that say about how busy you are? Sending Christmas presents? Ha. This morning we’re sending the kids over to a friend’s house so that we can convert the big pile of boxes into a treeful of presents.

Further, I’m coming down with a cold. Tara has had it for a few days, and it doesn’t seem very pleasant. She and I haven’t been sick in a while.

Jennifer and I have independently been sorting through the years’ photos and video. There’s a lot of good stuff there and I hope to get some slideshows together during the week we have off. I’ve given up on the crashtastic Photodex Proshow for putting my photos on DVD. I just bought the Photoshop/Premiere Elements bundle, and it only crashes so far when you try to import 8 GB worth of MJPEG videos. I’m trying now to transcode them to MPEG2 first to see if that works better.

Finally, Happy Birthday to my niece Lily, who turned zero this week.

Winter’s over and we’re back to our regular 75 degree sunny days, though it has been getting cold at night. It certainly makes it difficult to think about Christmas even though it’s only three weeks away! I can’t believe it’s December already. I really need to take a picture to send out for our Christmas cards. I’m thinking it will just be the girls because I don’t see us all getting a good picture together without a lot of digital editing taking place; there’s just too much motion going on for that sort. It’s really unfortunate, too, because the girls are absolutely the cutest things ever, as demonstrated in the video to your right. Jennifer and I were poking through some videos from her camera the other day, and there’s a couple of real crack-ups in there. I really wish there was a decent camcorder on the market that recorded compressed video and which did not also cost a zillion dollars or suck. It seems that the < $600 camcorders that use DVD or hard disk or flash cards as media have nowhere near the quality of $299 mini-DV camera. I need to do downloading in faster than real time, because there is absolutely nothing cool about waiting. Maybe next year.

Speaking of gadgets, I’ve been keeping my eye out for the next cool phone. My trusty Nokia 6600 has been everything I’ve wanted in a phone, except that it could use a better screen and camera, and I would like an external media slot. Nokia’s Symbian smartphones are the only ones I have seen that don’t either have a horrible UI (ie. Motorola) or are horribly unstable and/or locked down (ie. Windows Mobile, Palm). Thus, I only really care about new Nokia phones like the N80, which is like my phone, but adds a 2-megapixel camera with flash, secondary video conferencing camera, Wi-Fi, external card slot, and kickass screen. Nokia will also introduce a couple smaller models as well before my Cingular contract is up. I’m aware the iPhone is supposed to come out soon too, so I will wait to see what that looks like as well.