I am now booked in for acupuncture, for this weekend. All the gory pictures coming soon!

Live performances have never really been my thing.

Not because I don’t enjoy them when I go, but just because I seem to prefer a nice movie at home, or a quiet night with friends, to the hustle and bustle of a night at the theatre, or the noise of a live concert.

(plus I have been known to be a bit tight in the wallet department in the past)

So goal 78 aimed to make me go out and see more. This covers anything live that isn’t sport, so this could be band gigs, theatre productions or even Carols by Candlelight!

Moving to London made the goal much easier, with the abundance of live theatre to see, at relatively cheap rates if you look hard enough.

So here are the ten performances I have been to. I plan to go to many more before I turn 30, and have just become a member of the Barbican Arts Centre, which has monthly film, live theatre and classical musical performances.

1. The Phantom of the Opera (Princess Theatre, Melbourne)
This was one of the best things I have ever seen. The singing was amazing, the set design even better and I would recommend it to anyone. And no, most of the singing wasn’t opera!

2. Spamalot (Her Majesty’s theatre, Melbourne)
Classic must-see for any Monty Python fan. Should-see for everyone else. Very good.

3. The 39 Steps (The Playhouse at the Arts Centre, Melbourne)
A murder mystery comedy based loosely on the work of Alfred Hitchcock. 4 actors played the roles of 130 different characters remarkably well. Laugh out loud funny.

4. Gotan Project (The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London)
Not really my scene, but really impressive musician-ship. Their style is tango with some jazz, funk and pop. Actually, their style can’t be defined. The band played with a random selection of movie scenes playing throughout, and tango dancers dancing at the front. Very weird, but I liked the fact that it was different to anything I had heard before. But for me, the music was ‘background music’ for me.

5. We Will Rock You! (Dominion Theatre, London)
Great show, great cast, standing ovation at the end. Only let-down was that the cut off my favourite Queen song, Don’t Stop Me Now, halfway through (it was meant to happen, but I was just getting into the song).

6. Les Miserables (Queen’s Theatre, London)
Good show, but Nat tricked me into going by saying that it wasn’t all singing. Yes it was, but it was well worth seeing anyway. We had bad seats, so I sprung 50p for a hire of some binoculars.

7. Dylan Moran (Hammersmith Apollo, London)
Famous for his role in Black Books, Dylan Moran played a good set, but for me he had lots of smile moments, but very few laugh out loud moments.

8. Amateur Comedy at the 99 Club (Oxford Circus, London)
Amateur comedy was just that. Had a few laughs, but there was nothing memorable. MC was the funniest, which is a sign of the quality of the night.

9. Amateur Comedy at  Hardimans Hotel (Kensington, Melbourne)
Four acts – three were no good, but a musical duo called Elbowskin were unbelievable. I definitely would pay to see them again. MC’d by the Fabulous Adam Richard from Fox FM, who was pretty funny too.

10. Cinderella – the Pantomime (Wimbledom, London)
Have to say, even though this is meant for children, I laughed the whole way through. Loved it, and will definitely be doing more pantomimes next year – even if it does embarass Nat a little that I turned into a big kid.

My favourite – We Will Rock You!

Month completed: January 2009

The purpose of this goal was just to be a little bit crazy.

And if wearing pyjamas in a public place wasn’t crazy enough, I decided to up the crazy a little, and achieved this goal yesterday wearing pyjama shorts in minus 5 degree (yes, that is 5 degrees BELOW zero) weather. It was the coldest I have ever been!

The public place chosen, as you can see in the photos below, was Piccadilly Circus in central London. Can’t get much more public than that.

I won’t say much more about this goal, other than I am glad it is done. As is Nat, who almost died of embarassment in being associated with me yesterday.

Check out the sexy legs!

I even managed to rope a couple of fellow Aussies in to a photo. They may have been awestruck in my presence. Perhaps.

Good friend Mark, originally there to take the photos for me, couldn’t help being part of the fun. Neither could Nat, who took this photo.

If, like me, you have been caught up in the buzz and excitement of Twitter, you can follow me here.

If you aren’t on Twitter yet don’t worry, you will be on soon…my prediction for 2009 is that at the end of this year Twitter will be where Facebook is now. Time will tell.

With the New Year comes New Year’s resolutions. Not all are kept, but it is still fun to hear what people wish they would achieve during the coming year.

So, do you have any resolutions?

Mine is to wear orange socks as often as I can. One, because orange is my favourite colour. And two, to act as a simple reminder to me to stand out, be different, be creative, and don’t follow the crowd.

I bought myself 12 pairs of orange socks on-line, and just received them yesterday. Very funky, don’t you think?

First of all, Happy New Year! Hope you had a great night on NYE, and are ready to take on 2009 with plenty of gusto.

Secondly, thank you to everyone who commented and emailed me suggestions for what I should try and complete in January. I have now developed a new plan, for how to tackle the remaining goals. And I am confident that it will help me get this project back on track.

I took a step back and thought ‘I have 140-odd goals to go, and 50 months to do them’. So really, if I can complete three a month here on out, I will be successful.

So at the start of each month, from here on out, I will pick four goals from the list (three plus a back-up), and put all of my focus on them.

On top of this, I will work on half a dozen ‘progress goals’, which require more than a month to complete (for example, I have on this list that I need to read the first Harry Potter book, for goal 103).

This list then gets printed off, and stuck to my wall, for me to cross off during the month.

So, what is on January’s list?

- Goal 167 – Have acupuncture

- Goal 68 – Drink two litres of water every day for a month

- Goal 114 – Go to a public place in my pyjamas (this will be done on Jan 10 at Piccadilly Circus, for anyone interested)

- Goal 78 – See 10 live performances (I have seen nine so far, so one live gig this month would make it ten)

Feel free to make nominations for February – some of the nominations already in will be in my February list, but feel free to keep suggesting away.