Practice more. Socialise more. Smile more. Play more. Laugh more. Love more.

Spend less. Worry less. Eat less. Consume less. Procrastinate less. Hate less.

The ForbiddenCove.com Jolly Roger Contest

Proving once again that building for online Lego contests is a sport you just can't quit, FC kicks off 2010 with the biggest Pirate theme contest the interwebs have ever seen. Yep, say goodbye to January Richard- it's time to break out the bricks...again.

For my parents' Christmas I decided i'd go a little unorthodox and buy them a Lego set. Me buying a Lego set is nothing out of the ordinary, me buying one for someone else, is. Winter Toy Shop was the set in question- released by The Lego Group specifically for the holiday season, and presumably, in small numbers. One was also bought for myself- either for building, for the collection, or for the super secret Lego time-capsule -read: my wardrobe- a fate yet to be decided.

But anyway, it's always great seeing others build, especially those so umm..."out of the process". I've been building with Lego for fifteen years so it's obviously natural to me, but here was two people who hadn't actually played with the brick since Richard was a very little boy. What followed was arguing, dispute and a neatly organised table of bricks by colour as proposed by the opening page of the instructions. But more than that, what was clearly a 1x4 green plate became a "four studder", and radar dishes were "round things", the kinda incorrect trivialities that would only annoy actual trivial Lego fans. To make matters even worse, both of them had differing ideas for the names of each kind of piece.

Such a momentous task even prompted the usage of reading glasses, but two hours in, and the actual building was yet to be started, let alone finished. A small part of me is interested in sneaking down early tomorrow morning and building some more, but that would completely ruin the scientific investigation, and thus render the project as faulty.

Definitely a project worth watching.

There were others of course, but this is the only one with a photo, and thus, worth posting. In it's former life, this chair was once a bed.

A mystery of season finale proportions. No, it's not a castle, no, not a sandpit, and no, it won't be the holding cell of numerous man-eating rabbits. No, it's not a full-size replacement for my Lego addiction.

Yes, objectives, goals, aspirations, and a list of things i'd like to do this year. No, not the word that everyone else uses beginning with 'R'.

2008 was a bad year for me, littlered with personal knockdowns and another year of familial losses. For the first six months I had serious -and yet trivial- health problems, and by time things had gotten better, 2008 was already a write-off, a year that generally sucked and annoyed in equal measure. That's why against internet protocol i've decided not to bother with obligatory year-end lists, but also because frankly, 2008 isn't a year i'd rather not dwell on. That said, 2009 is here, and things are already considerably better.

I don't want to map out the rest of the year (well, maybe I do, but on another day) but I do have some loose goals or criteria i'd like to meet; things I want to get done, and then, you know, fail miserably and try again in 2010.

• First things first, i'm hoping to convert the attic, building it into a room for my ongoing not-so-secret geeky hobby. At the moment i've got bricks all over the place, so finally having a dedicated workspace for the interest is something i'm looking forward to a lot, a project i'm affectionately calling the "key to my happiness". That's right, you heard me.

• Obviously with that comes the actual sorting of the collection, but lets not shit ourselves, it's an idea i've been chasing for years now.

• The last thing Lego-wise is regarding the shop. Because of my ongoing studies i'm reluctant to get a full-time job, so if I can make some money off of the store to keep going for a while i'll be more than happy. Obviously achieving this is down to other people rather than me, but it's something i'm going to be concentrating more on as well.

• Again with the studies i've got a busy year ahead. There's an essay to send off before mid-January, and after that things really ramp themselves up as I enter the final two years in my BA(Hons) mission. The material is still pretty similar -and I thankfully get to revisit Philosophy- but workload is increased, deadlines tightened, and word-limits multiplied.

• As with last year there's a huge backlog of games I need to beat, a list that gets bigger with every passing month. There's DVDs too- hundreds of them that have never been watched. So I want to chip away at some of these, and as money's tight, spend less money on games I have no intention of playing. Being less of a bargain chaser is the hardest habit to break.

• I don't want exercise, but I do want to try and get out more, with the camera, with the bike, with both at the sametime. Maybe I can write about it too, because I want to try and update the site as much as possible too. I don't care if you want to hear about me or not, I want to try and make it so you've got no choice...

And well, that's it. No diets, no lovelife sorrows, generally none of the crap everyone else wants. While the number one reason 2008 sucked was largely because of me, myself and my attitudes, i'm really hoping 2009 is a good year, and one that I can truly enjoy. Time will tell.