the rest of it

Mixed success for last year's resolutions: "Add weekly yoga or Pilates to my online fitness class regime." Failure. I just found it way too boring to spend a whole 45 minutes on such classes and found some of them too advanced for me, so it just didn't go far.  "have my hearing tested." Minor success . I did an online test that said I probably didn't need a full test. "make a spreadsheet of all my regular outgoings, including charity donations, subscriptions, direct debit bills": Success . I saved hundreds of pounds in cancelling subscriptions I no longer used and getting rid of duplicates. try to use the adjective  grand  more often. Minor success . I made it my Wordle starting word, until it paid out and I got Wordle in 1. I then switched to GRIND. ____________________________________________________ Other stuff Doing the Zoe programme has been super interesting. My weight has gone down a tad, but I can't say I've been trying to los...

[updated 30 Dec] Books Not a great reading year. During the autumn term from Hell, I gave up entirely. So, I ended on 13 finished books, two of which were graphic novels and six of which were linguistics. (It was better than last year, though! ) The only fiction was for work: Station Eleven , which I enjoyed but had some quibbles with.  Sticking with me months later: Pyongyang by Guy Delisle (2004) Most inspiring : Ten Lectures on Diachronic Construction Grammar by Martin Hilpert (2021) Honorable mentions Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (2007) Why Is This a Question? by Paul Anthony Jones (excellent lay linguistics book; 2022) Written  by Bec Evans and Chris Smith (2023) and The Reader's Brain  by Yellowlees Douglas (2015) (both useful books for writers) Films 38 films this year (down on last year), many excellent ones. If I have to pick a Best Picture, I'm going to go with Past Lives (Celine Song), mostly because I find Greta Lee absolutely mesmerising, wherever she ap...