I'm a day late, but I figured I'd take a look at my Goals for '05 and see how I did:

1. Be the best dad I can be for Drew, and the best husband I can be for Elizabeth. I think I did pretty darn good on this one, but you'll have to ask Lizzie and Drew to be sure... We had lots of fun in '05, marking Drew's milestones, from holding his head up to rolling over, then crawling and "cruising," and finally, just this past week, walking almost a dozen steps like a drunk before toppling over. He's also giggling like crazy now. And Lizzie and I had some lovely dates, at Second Empire for our ten-year meetaversary and at the excellent Coldplay concert in the late summer. Going on dates without the youngster was hard to do this past year, believe me.



2. Exercise daily and lose some serious weight. Didn't exercise daily, though at the least I did take a 15-20 minute walk with the dog every day. And thanks to this site, I've manage to lose 25 pounds so far, since September. About 30 more to go...



3. Finish revising The All Nations Team. Yup. This one's ready. (Well, okay, so I need to do one last copy-edit, but, well, it's done.)



4. Write a new novel. Got a third of the drafting done on the Sixteen Miles novel, which I'll finish in '06, on my Moleskine.



5. Write four new stories. Yup -- "This Divided Land," "The Brotherhood of Trees," "Meet the Madfeet," and "The World's All Nations" (an excerpt from The All Nations Team). Sold the first three stories, along with a collab with Tim and Greg, and tentatively sold a collab with Jay, pending revisions.
   
   
6. Learn Spanish. Uhh... Nope.
   
   
7. Take two to three trips with Elizabeth and Drew. We made it to the beach three or four times, to Iowa, and that was about it. Not bad -- Drew got to gon on all of the trips, so that made it worthwhile.
   
   
8. Learn to play guitar. Ummm... Nope. Hurt my hands too much (I think piano is a better fit for me, anyhoo).
   
   
9. Read 2 novels a month. Maybe did about 1.5 a month, though my reading has dropped off a lot in the past month or two.
   
   
10. Revamp The Taste of Pennies and Heart's Revenge. Didn't get to the former, but did a major revision to the latter, as it was sold to Five Star Books -- woo woo!

Not a bad year -- I made almost all of my resolutions... On top of all that, we also signed the contract for a new house, started fixing up our old house, saw the long-awaited but always-dreaded demise of the Esquart, got a new replacement vehicle, bought a new computer after the near-demise of my old Windows box, and lots more events I'm forgetting now. What a year.

Now, for 2006. Later!