40, 24, 47, 72

Finish five video games (3/5).

Just finished the alternate ending to Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within, which wasn't nearly as good as the first one. It was, in fact, annoying enough that I almost stopped playing it completely two or three times. I'm pretty stubborn, though, and I have this list for motivation, which is the point of having the list, I guess, and now it's done, and I win.

I have it on good authority that the third one is even better than the first, so I'll be making a trip to EB soon to pick that one up.

Collect and read all of John Barth's work.

I've found most of his stuff used, and am about halfway through it. I just started The Friday Book, which is a collection of essays and other nonfictiony things. I can't read too much of him at once, mainly because he's dense and incredibly well-read and, well, very post-modern. The essays are most about literature and writing, which is interesting in small bits but not terribly compelling. His pseudo-autobiographical novel, Once Upon a Time, is still my favorite of his works, though I like his earlier stuff better now than when I was in college.

Read 5 books about English and/or European history.

While reading a book about Spanish cooking, I realized I know nothing about Spanish history. So I'm working through The Civil War in Spain, edited by Robert Payne. Published in 1962, it's a collection of first hand reports of the war, from participants and observers, in the form of diaries, articles, journals, essays, et al. The preface was slow going: I didn't have any context for the socio-political environment, so I wonder if I should have started with something that was more fact-recounting, but the various sections have pulled me in quickly.

Go to the gym 4+ times a week for three months straight.

This is ridiculously hard, or I have a ridiculously inconsistent schedule. I can do this for a week, but then I fall short two weeks in a row, and have to start the count over again. I may have to institute some sort of alternate way of meeting this goal.