Goodbye!

It is the final day of 2013, and thus time to wrap up this blog. 10 out of the 13 core resolutions completed is not too bad, right? This was one heck of an experiment, and I am in disbelief I stuck through consistently updating this blog at least a few times a month throughout the year. Just a few moments ago, I wrapped up my annual New Year's Eve tradition of watching the cheesy, ensemble cast flick New Year's Eve. What can I say, it is a guilty pleasure of mine. I can thank the character Ingrid in that flick for inspiring me to come up with a list of resolutions for the year.

Thank you to whoever you are for coming here and taking the time to check up on my progress. I gave it my best shot, I wish I could have came through on all of them, but some are just not meant to be. I do believe, a quick resolution recap is in order. For you readers coming to this blog late to the party, feel free to click on one of the numbered resolution tags/labels on the right hand side navigation bar, and it will display all the appropriate blogs associated with each resolution! If you do not feel like sifting through the 50+ blogs I typed up over the years, I do not blame you, so here is a quick summary of how I fared on each resolution:

Resolution 1 - Run Half Marathon - Complete After going on a 100+ day diet/training regimen, I went in and ran my first ever half marathon race in Fargo! I also ended up running two more halfs later on in the year, and just a couple days ago I registered for my first ever full marathon this coming May in Fargo!

Resolution 2 - Drop 23 Pounds in 104 days - Only dropped 15 I wanted to get to 170, but I only ended up dropping 15 pounds to get to 178 come half marathon race time, but finished the year at 175! I have another 100 day diet plan set up in prep for the full marathon, and would like to be in tip top shape for my most ambitious race yet and weigh in at 165 come race time, so more aggressive training and dieting is in order!

Resolution 3 - Start Seeing Someone - Fail Rest assured, I will have my day in the sun, I will just let fate decide when that day is.

Resolution 4 - Learn to Dance - Fail? I danced a few times throughout the year, with actual people too, and tried to learn it somewhat properly via Just Dance 4, but I am certainly no competent dancer at this point, and I could have gave this resolution a better effort.

Resolution 5 - Go Back to College - Decided I went to the campus and talked to the advisor and gave this a lot of serious thought for a good week, but ultimately decided if I do go back for more schooling it is going to be for something I 100% want.

Resolution 6 - Catch up Printing Photos - Complete I gots me photo album all up to date! And not no Facebook album, but a real life, honest to goodness, tangible, real photo album!

Resolution 7 - End the Podcast - Complete After cranking out a few last episodes at the beginning of the year, we ended On Tap's seven year run with a four hour epic final episode. I would link it here but our archives went down a couple months ago.

Resolution 8 - Knock 6 Specific Games out of the Backlog - Epic Fail As you recall in the previous blog, I whiffed quite horribly at this goal and only finished one of the six games I was shooting for by the end of the year.

Resolution 9 - Watch all 10 Clint Eastwood box set movies - Complete Just knocked this one out yesterday, you film buffs make sure to check out the blogs under that resolution as I wrote a review for all 10 films in the collection, as well as a bonus 11th review too

Resolution 10 - Return to MGC - Complete I made my return to the annual video game convention in Milwaukee as part of my epic March vacation that also consisted of....

Resolution 11 - Go to DC - Complete ...I always wanted to vacation in Washington DC, and I had a blast there checking out the museums and other sites. Still so much more I want to see there, and I hope to one day return again.

Resolution 12 - Have an Amazing 30th Birthday - Complete A few awesome friends pulled through on this one in the final hour for me and made this day extra special for me!

Resolution 13 - Defeat Suppression - Complete Defeated!.

Bonus Resolution 1 - Live to see the 49ers Appear in Another Super Bowl - Complete Unfortunately the game ended in heartbreak and I went bipolar for a day.

Bonus Resolution 2 - Get Back into Baseball - Complete I reconnected with my sports pastime, and managed to average watching one Twins game a week and made it down to Target Field to watch their final game of the season!

Bonus Resolution 3 - #30daysofrunning - Complete A local running community encouraged everyone to run as many days as possible for month of June, and I did not do 30, but I think I will chalk up 26 as a win considering I was out of town for a few days.

Bonus Resolution 4 - Finish the Year Competing in 12 Races - Complete I participated in 14 by the year's end, and somehow, someway managed to win one of them too!

I know I hinted at possibly doing a 2014 resolutions quest blog, but I do not know if I have it in me to do all this regular updating again. I am glad this got me back into some form of writing again, as it was much different and a fresh change from what I was accustomed to what I described I use to do in the intro blog. Maybe I will take a year off from blogging, or maybe take a couple weeks off and return fully charged, who knows? I do know of at least a few goals I have in mind for 2014, and I will at least be trying my best for those, with or without a blog at my side.

Keep checking back here for future blogs and updates, but in case I do not return, well, as a wise man once said....

Resolution 8 - Beat 6 Specific Games - Super Epic Fail

Two years ago I would have guaranteed that this would have been at least the one resolution I knew I would have completed. My, how times change. As I stated in my previous blog under this resolution, I was just making a little headway when I finished the last DLC expansion for Fallout 3, making it the first of six games I crossed off from my massive backlog.

I made a decent amount of progress in two other games this year, and a little bit into another, but did not even touch the other two. I failed miserably at this resolution. What can I say? I guess I am just losing my drive at playing video games, but I think that is more of a good thing in the long run. I would rather be more active in having a social life and in sports than sitting at home by my lonesome on the couch with a controller in my hand. I think there will still be a place in my life to game, but just with nowhere near as much time as I use to dedicate to it.

I guess I shall recap what progress I did make in the games I was chipping away at. I did play a good chunk of Mass Effect 2 this year, the timer says I invested just over 25 hours last time I checked. I made it into disc two, and where I got the second set of dossiers of squad members to recruit for the be-all, end-all suicide mission. I also knocked out a few of the DLC missions for it as well. I am going to guess I was about 60% of the way through that game. This unfortunately meant I did not get a chance to start the campaign of Mass Effect 3, though for what it is worth, I did bust it out a couple of times to play the online multiplayer with a couple of friends.

The 4th Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice, saw me halt my progress at day two of the trial of the third case in the game. I still find myself enjoying that game in 15 minute chunks right before bed. Who knows when I will finish this game at the rate I am playing it, let alone start the 5th Ace Attorney game. Last month the 6th one was released in America for the 3DS. I cannot explain why I love being a videogame attorney with such an extraordinary cast of characters.

Finally, I only busted out Skyrim once this year, but that was when a friend was over and he showed me how to exploit several glitches and really improve my character in the game. I felt a little dirty in doing so though afterwards as it felt like it made all the time I invested into my character thus far a waste, but I did end up with far more better spells, weapons and armor at disposal as a result of it. I still do have a save right before he hooked me up with that stuff though, so we shall see where it takes me.

I want to give props to two other games I want to recognize, but we were not on my to beat list. I played a bit of Forza Horizon throughout the year and came close to finishing the single player portion of that game as I was on the final wristband level of events that were available to me. I also played a good chunk of the core Borderlands 2 campaign in online coop with a friend. I have no idea how far we are because I am sure a ton of time was spent on side quests and not the main storyline quests. But we were having a blast with it before we got sidetracked by the holidays.

That wraps it up for this resolution. A big 'ol epic fail, but at least I gave this one somewhat of an effort, as pitiful as it was.

Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - 100% Complete

With only a day to spare of 2013, I have finally vanquished the 10th and final film of the Clint Eastwood collection with the 2006 classic, Letters from Iwo Jima (trailer). This is the second film of the collection of which Eastwood only directs and not stars in, with the other being Mystic River. This is the third World War II movie of the collection. However this one was made a few decades after Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes, and takes place on the Japanese front.

Eastwood makes it pretty clear the Japanese are done for, as the first act of the movie is the troops preparing fortifications and defenses on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. The troops know it, the officers and commanders know it too, yet the film is also clear of them dying for honor of their country, and conveys this through various letters from the featured officers and soldiers throughout the film. The main soldier featured goes by Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), and I could not help but grieve for him throughout the film as island of Iwo Jima falls and the film fills out Saigo's backstory.

The other main featured Japanese actor is General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe). Him and Saigo have a few brief encounters sporadically throughout the film, but they are extremely well done exchanges for as brief as they are, especially in the film's closing moments. I did not see this as a politically driven "why did we invade here" movie, like Green Zone, but more of a empathetic look at what it is like to be from the soldier's perspective of going into a battle you know they are going to lose, and what they are laying on the line and why they are doing so. It reminded me a bit of the last battle in The Last Samurai, but this was far more well done.

This was probably one of the few movies I can think of only watching and having this emotion of nonstop sadness throughout from beginning to end. I know what is coming, it is bleak, and the film pulls no punches. I hate to recommend watching a heartbreaker of a film, but there is a part of me that loves powerful movies, and this one is incredibly powerful. As with all the Eastwood movies I have covered here, Netflix has the disc, but it is not up on streaming, but if you want to follow along on the Clint Eastwood collection fun with me, here is a link to the box set I have off Amazon.

Thanks again to everyone for joining me throughout the year as I reviewed almost one Clint Eastwood movie a month for 2013. Going by my traffic stats, this was the most popular resolution by far on the blog. Even one person recently got me two more Clint Eastwood DVDs for Christmas last week in the form of Blood Work and Paint Your Wagon (Thanks John!). I have no idea if I will review those ones, but I have been bouncing around the idea of reviewing one Star Trek film a month next year since there are exactly 12 of those in existence as of this writing, so we will see where 2014 takes me! Shoot me a tweet on Twitter @Gruel if you have any requests!

Past Eastwood Collection Blogs

Million Dollar Baby
Unforgiven
Trouble With the Curve
Mystic River
The Rookie
Absolute Power
Dirty Harry
Kelly's Heroes
Where Eagles Dare
Gran Torino

Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - 90% Complete

I originally bought the DVD for today's Eastwood Quest entry, Million Dollar Baby several years ago but it unfortunately sat in the backlog forever. I eventually sold it to the local used movie and game shop in town after I picked it up as part of the Eastwood BluRay collection last year. Today I finally got around to watching it. You can ask me a million times why I let the 2004 Oscar Winner for best picture and 175/250th ranked best movie of all time from IMDB.com sit in my collection forever without viewing and the best response I could muster would be to just stare at you blankly and state "I have no idea." I should KO myself for committing such a sin.

Million Dollar Baby features late boxing bloomer, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) trying to win the respect of and gain the tutelage of long time boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood). Dunn is adamant about not training girls, but after showing enough fortitude and determination, and after the encouragement of his associate Eddie Scrap (Morgan Freeman), Dunn takes her under his wings and works her up the ranks of the female boxing world to a prestigious WBA title fight where the unthinkable happens and the film takes on a whole new turn.

Swank is fantastic at portraying the good 'ol southern girl from Missouri who refuses to quit, and scrape and claw her way from the bottom rungs of life to become a top ranked contender. The whole time I was rooting for her to win over Eastwood's character. Eventually it happens, and Freeman and Eastwood are amazing at being the old wise guard that provide her the knowledge to make her an amazing fighter. The three of them just jive together perfectly.

I feel this blog about the film is going awful because I simply am at a loss of words at how to go about the unexpected turn this film takes about 70% in, and how it plays out following it. It plays out unbelievably well, and I love how the final act is pretty damn rare out of sports movies, and it just goes to show the risks Eastwood took with this film instead of going with the cookie cutter sports film ending. Do not be an idiot like me and wait nine years to watch this classic, it does not matter if you are a fan of boxing or not, you will undoubtedly love Million Dollar Baby. As with all the Eastwood movies I have covered here, Netflix has the disc, but it is not up on streaming, but if you want to follow along on the Clint Eastwood collection fun with me, here is a link to the box set I have off Amazon.

Past Eastwood Collection Blogs

Unforgiven
Trouble With the Curve
Mystic River
The Rookie
Absolute Power
Dirty Harry
Kelly's Heroes
Where Eagles Dare
Gran Torino

Bonus Resolution 4 - Finish 12 Races in a Year - 14 Down!

I just managed to squeeze in a race in November a couple days before the end of the month on Thanksgiving morning! It was a 5K and called the Turkey Trot which took place on a part of the greenway bike path by Riverside Park. Even better, I got to run the race with friends Adam and Justine. This race had a special gimmick to it where you predict how you finish ahead of time, and all smartphones, and GPS watches were banned from the race so you cannot tell how fast you were going. The three people who got the closest to their times would be declared the winners and awarded with a Pumpkin Pie.

It was a fairly chilly and brisk day with a race temp of around 15 degrees I believe so I made sure to rock extra layers and my face mask. I was thinking high hopes for this 5K and shooting for a new PR and thought I could beat my old UND 5K record of 26:22, so I forecasted myself with a 25:55. I ended up finishing just over four minutes off with a time of 29:58. I thought I had a pretty good pace going and shortly after the halfway mark I trailed about 50 feet behind a runner for the remainder who I felt was running about a solid 8:30-8:40 pace, but I presumed way wrong. For what it is worth, I did not bring my MP3 player out of fear of it being called out as a smartphone/GPS unit used to gauge time, so not having my usual running times I feel definitely hindered me in the grand scheme of things.

I feel a little guilty not running along with Adam and Justine for the race in hindsight. This would have been the perfect race to run with a group on a holiday that is all about coming together. I made sure to wait up for them at the finished line where we all shared high fives all around. Shortly after I finished my sister stopped by to congratulate me on the run, which was a nice surprise. It was still a fun time, and always great to run with friends. I believe there is one more local 5k/10k race later this year, so I may just finish the year with 15 race. Keep checking back here to stay posted!

5K

UND Autism - 4/20/13 - 26:22 - 23rd out of 74
Arthritis Foundation Zombie Run - 10/12/13 - 29:06 - 1st Place Survivor, 2nd out of 67 overall
Turkey Trot - 11/28/13 - 29:58 - 19th/64
Uffda Mud Run - 9/7/13 - ??:?? - Finished
Color Run - 9/21/13 - ??:?? - Finished

10k

Hillsboro Run - 6/13/13 - 50:17 - 23rd out of 55
Dewey Memorial - 6/1/13 - 50:21 - 15th out of 56
Firecracker - 7/4/13 - 53:13 - 42nd out of 92
Frozen Feat - 2/16/13 - 53:57 - 50th out of 108
TRF Pioneer - 9/14/13 - Disqualified

Half Marathon

Fargo Mini - 10/19/13 - 1:52:11 - 162nd out of 528
Grand Forks Wild Hog - 9/28/13 - 1:53:25 - 184th out of 649
Fargo Rocks - 5/18/13 - 2:02:48 - 2062nd out of 5526

MISC

ENDTRAILS 12 Hour Endurance Race - 10/27/13 - Finished four 6.1 mile laps in 7:13:00 - 23rd out of 36

Resolution 3 - Start Seeing Someone - Epic Fail (Most Likely)

This has been another blog I have not been looking forward to writing up, but I kept telling myself I am not holding anything back so here goes. It has been five years since the last girl I saw, and it would be a stretch to call it a relationship, we went on a few dates over the course of a month and that was it. I have lost track how many times I have heard from countless friends and family to get a girlfriend. They are 100% right, but for them to understand my position and why it is so difficult for me to make that change....well, I will now try put it into the right words.

I only have myself to blame because I am unbelievably shy and bashful when it comes to the dating game. There is a big part of me inside that really wants to start seeing someone again, and that is why I put this resolution on the list in high hopes that it would help provide me with that drive to overcome my worst fears. Those fears are another part of me that is a incredibly hard to overcome force that is absolutely petrified of turning into the same people I promised myself not to become and being an awful burden on a special someone. If I somehow manage to hurt someone the same way I saw many family and friends get hurt coming out of relationships, then I just do not know how I could have that on my conscience.

In the end I always like to go with my gut feeling, and my gut tells me that one day I will meet that girl where we will be perfect for each other, but I have no idea when that day will occur. Could be within a week or two to sneak in this resolution before the chime of the new year, or it could very well be a couple months, years or even decades out for all I know. Just getting this out in the open is a huge weight off my back, and now that it is out there for all to consume, well, I will just have to have faith in your judgment of me. Unless something magical happens by the end of the year in the next few weeks, consider this resolution as a big whopping fail.