I postpone the Mr. T's Birthday Letter to this weekend

I had a date with Tom Robbins tonight.

Something else interesting: I organized all the areas in my life that I want to make sure I'm making progress in. Of course it's a work in progress. But here's what it looks like now, no real order, with subgoals preceded by a - and notes about them or how to accomplish them by a ---.

Cooking
- master specific worldly cuisines
--- this will structure my cooking so that I am learning something definite.
--- Japanese or Indonesian first
--- make sure to cook dinner at home sun mon tue?
- make fine food
--- higher quality, smaller quantities?
--- this was spurred by Ram's friend Pat's ability/enthusiasm for the "5 dollar 50 dollar meal". I realized I always make food that would cost $10 in a restaurant. It'd be great to be able to make food that would cost $50.
- always be able to make something good, given any ingredients I happen to have around
--- this will come with structured learning
- develop my own recipes
--- so when someone asks me "what do you like to cook?" I'll have an answer

Food advocacy
- organize my theory of food
--- to do on a project day
- make it available online
--- another project day, future?
- help other people learn to cook
--- this is a long-term goal. this is also what my youtube cooking show idea was about.

Exploring Seattle
- get to know all the neighborhoods (or at least all the interesting ones)
--- along with bike rides?
- be an awesome tour guide
--- this will happen, as long as I make sure to get out often.

Languages
- get as good with Dutch as Spanish
--- 30 minutes, 3 days a week. "Language or meditation."
--- why Dutch? Because I've got the biggest jump on it.
- pick up a new language every few yrs
--- this will happen if I keep up.

Traveling
- go places with a purpose, many times each year.
--- this year (india and japan) has been a pretty good start. it'll be important to keep that up.
--- burningman, and then ...?
- ski at least 4x next year
--- make skiing friends, ask them.

Computing
- get good at making things happen
--- python, then what? make my own web app?
- regularly program for fun
--- I like programming! really, I do!

Enlightenment
- suffer less
- enjoy life more
- develop a meditative habit
- make progress towards enlightenment
--- Wednesday talks will probably help, I should keep going to those

Friends
- keep in touch with everyone I want to
--- this is going well. technology helps a lot.
- make 8-10 great friends in my new life
--- this is the awkwardest goal, because it makes it sound like I'm just making friends to satisfy a goal. I mean, this is really the least arbitrary of most of my goals, because I need these people to really succeed and be happy. but it's not even just "I need friends", I mean, it's just what you do, right? you make friends! that's a thing that you do!
- make cool casual friends too

Creativity
- keep making projects happen
- get in a creative group
--- project day monthly

Biking
- ride the STP
--- biweekly training rides, then weekly

End of list. You may have noticed me mentioning "project days". The idea would be, once a month, we all (who? anyone who wants to!) get together and you bring something you want to work on. We just hang out and each work on our own projects. At the end of the day, you display/demo what you have to show for the day. I also mentioned "languages or meditation". This is a plan I have. Every day except Sunday, work on languages or meditate for 30 minutes. Ideally alternate days.

So that's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it goes.