Time to review the resolutions from 2006. Last year I went 7-for-12 with two partials. And this year?

1. Cook.
   Done. Not every night, not even every week. But a few dozen times is more than zero. And no reports of foodborne illness.
2. Visit San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, or Santa Fe, all US cities I have never been to.
   Thank goodness for the or. Got to Santa Fe in March. (But Los Alamos was cooler.)
3. Rip DVD collection.
   I’m going to call this complete. I didn’t do the whole thing. In fact, not even close. But I did rip several dozen. I did all the children DVD’s in the house. (These have been uploaded to TiVo for easy access. No more ruined DVD players from kid-smarm.) I also ripped anything that I knew I’d want to watch while traveling and any I wanted to send back to Neflix immediately to plow deeper into my queue, usually to stock up for travel.
4. Get to know the south side of Chicago.
   Uh, no. Apart from a few trips to the University of Chicago and Pilsen and some bike routes I barely stepped foot south of Congress.
5. Look into Italian dual-citizenship.
   I have the link. Does that count?
6. Shave head.
   Well, not completely. But I’ve gone quite short. Call it a partial.
7. Visit Xian, China.
   Nope. You’d think with four trips to China this year I could have done it. I even called this a “safety” resolution last year. Jeez.
8. Find Jim LoBianco.
   Task complete. Took barely three months. God bless The Google.
9. Run a half-marathon.
   Ha! No. Worst fitness year ever.
10. Teach sons how to swim.
    Gonna go for the stretch on this and say complete. Could I thrown them in a lake and walk away? No. (Well, not without pulling a Susan Smith.) But they can wear floaties and putter around the pool and that’s all I was going for.
11. Call (not ping, not e-mail) my mother more often.
    Um. She reads my blog. Ruling?
12. Return to home winemaking.
    Yes, though we made no wine. Our brew this year was cider. Same gear, same principals.

Yikes. 6-for-12 with one partial. At this rate I’ll be 0-12 by 2012. Now that’s a goal!

A few trinkets for your stocking.

After over a year shuttered, the Division Street Russian Baths are back open. The “renovation” is somewhat underwhelming. The classic, mildewy old entrance is gone, replaced by a brokerage or something. I sauntered into a room full of cubicles and thought “can’t be.” Indeed, it wasn’t. The entrance is now through what used to be the women’s spa. The new upper floor is a vast, soul-free community era decorated in stunning what-do-you-do-for-style-after-communism Russian cheese. The sauna benches have been rebuilt and enlarged. Yes, the charm of worrying about hooking an appendage (ok, the appendage) on a rusty nail popping through the slats is gone. As is the old tiled Russian and Turkish Baths sign. The eucalyptus steam room ain’t working and the cold bath looks like the holding area for the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Granted, I visited two weeks ago, so maybe things have improved, but Russian Baths 2.0 is definitely still in beta.

On a recent ground stop in SFO (weather in Chicago, imagine that) I had a few hours to talk to the pilot. He told me about all the shit that’s hit his plane’s windshield during flight. Birds, obviously. But also fish over Cleveland that had been sucked up in some Great Lakes equivalent of a waterspout. He’s also had a snake smashed into the glass, dropped from a bird of prey presumably. Snakes on a plane, indeed. Then there are the animals in the plane. The pilot told me about all the legally-permissible guide animals — animals that are not required to be caged. Dogs, obviously. But also guide pigs (small) and even a guide falcon, which sat (hooded) on his owner’s shoulder the whole flight. I suggest that the person behind the falconer was not about to complain about a too-reclined seat.

The ‘tubes have been good to me this year. I’ve reconnected with my roommate from Rome in 1993 (one resolution, complete), my best friend from high school who I haven’t seen in 20 years, and a student I taught freshman composition to in 1996. Is anyone still saying the Internet makes you antisocial?

The shooting at a law office in the Chicago Loop last week over a patent misunderstanding has gotten me thinking about the value of ideas these days. The business of patents — creating them, licensing them, suing for them — is gigantic, billions of dollars annually. And yet, they are only ideas, most never to receive material or methodological implementation. It’s no wonder — though certainly tragic — that a sociopathic gunman didn’t understand that just because a truckers’ toilet hadn’t been built didn’t mean it hadn’t been patented. The patent system clearly needs an overhaul, but so do people’s expectations of the value of a single idea. Innovation ain’t worth much if it isn’t paired with insight and implementation. And for those of you who think your life has been ruined because of a stolen idea, perhaps check Google’s new patent search first?

A view of our holiday track layout. Complete with derailment.

Music: ’76 aka The Slow Train, Lemon Jelly