That is funny to me, as one song in one of our quartet’s music book is the Minuet that they parody in that play (and seemingly everywhere else.) Our 2d fiddle - a HS orchestra director - REFUSES to play that song! Just says he cab’t stand to hear it! 
Maybe supplement your system with osmosis - tucking a bow under your pillow at night! 
I always want to play the bass better. My wife and I play together in church and it always brings me joy when I can come up with fun bass lines that sound better than root/fifth/root/fifth and so on.
My wife is Brazilian, so I have been working on my Portuguese for over thirty years–we speak it at home, but there is never a point when learning a language is complete. It seems like she comes up with a random common word that I have never heard of on a weekly basis.
I’m constantly working on new techniques in my basement machine shop. I was recently getting involved in the geometry and trig needed to make certain parts on a rotary table on the mill.
Any hobby that involves expensive gear and new skills–sign me up!
The latest new hobby for me is 3D printing: I bought a printer a month ago and am enjoying designing parts in OpenSCAD. Some day I’ll start learning how to use Fusion360, the tool the cool kids use.
And fish is poison and salads crudities. And they claim to have the best cuisine in the world, so good that even the very word cuisine is French!
At least they don’t eat their tongue in their cheek (or was it my tongue in my cheek? All this french kissing thing has me confused too).
Mental health improvement and guitar
On the mental health front there is definitely something in my family (I have a first cousin who is certified bipolar) and many others of us seem normal but there appear to be low levels of disfunction, to the extent that I am actually getting a neuropsychological evaluation in the near future to determine if, to some extent, I’m either high functioning, on-the-spectrum, or simply had a sufficiently messed up upbringing.
On the guitar front my development has been fits and starts over several years, specifically from not finding instructors and processes that work for me. What I have been doing the last several months is practicing scales and improvising off of them and generally having a blast over half an hour or so each evening.
The violist in our quartet is a HS French teacher. Taught our 34 yr old as a matter of fact. She has 2 darts - aged 6, 10. In their home she speaks NOTHING but French to them. Strikes me as a tad weird, but the girls are definitely bilingual.
That is not weird at all, it is extremely usual for multilingual households to have one parent speak one language with the kids and the other the other language. I was raised like this too, and when once my mother spoke to me in Spanish (because she felt she had to in front of people who did not understand German) I started crying because I believed my mother did not love me anymore because she did not speak to me like she should. Of course I understood her, but it was not right.
That’s ‘poisson’ and ‘crudité’. 
‘Crudités’ literally means ‘raw things’. It’s interesting to see how the meanings diverge in different languages, because our word ‘crude’ comes from the same root (crude oil!) but had an overtone of uncouthness in many usages, where the French word doesn’t, and if anything in English it takes on the ‘fancy’ overtone that French food terms have.
Well spotted! 
Uechi Ryu, old school Okinawan.
I’ve gotten a bit dinged up from time to time; broke a toe and such. The healing is slower, but I enjoy it so much I keep coming back. Limping sometimes.
I think Cheeses are one of the things on my bucket list that will never happen. Growing mushrooms is another one. I actually get enjoyment hearing from others such as yourself sharing about hobbies I have interest in but never found the time to commit to.
That’s pretty much me @velomont. I had a banjo teacher, and a guitar teacher. Had to drive 100 miles each way to see them. Sure, they helped a bit, and while they where great players, they where lousy teachers. But I was a lousy student. So I guess we are even.
My time is better spent learning at home. And getting inspiration from some people I know including here on the SDMB like @Dinsdale.
There are A LOT of music resources available on line. Folk offer on-line lessons, and there are a bunch of tutorials available for free. Definitely take the dive.
Do you play lead or rhythm?
Oh yeah. One thing I do have is a good internet connection now.
Not laughing at you. Just trying to figure it out. I guess ‘lead’ would be the best way to put it, if I dare say anything at all.
Cottage cheese is fairly simple and can be made with ingredients bought at the grocery store. It’s fun to do because you get many of the standard cheese making steps, including the really fun part when the magic happens and the curds start happening snaps fingers just like that. It tastes much better than store bought and you can make small amounts.
Cream cheese is pretty boring but you get to experience hanging cheese in a drain bag for a day or so. It is also much better and can mostly be made with grocery store ingredients. Calcium Chloride is helpful but if you can’t get your hands on any, just plan to increase your curing time.
If you want, I could send you a couple of recipes and maybe offer advice if you have issues.
Remember, folks used to make cheeses by guess and by golly on a wood fire. We have amazing tools nowadays to de complicate the process. Give it a try, the worse that can happen is you throw away a gallon of milk.
I hear you! I can’t make my fingers contort sufficiently to play chords easily so, for me, lead it is😄
This is a wonderful thing to do as kids who are multi-lingual immediately have a leg up in the jobs world, and even in education.
Yes! I went to a cooking class where one of the things we made was mozzarella, and when it started coming together, the eyes of the guy I was working with lit up and he was all excited. “We just made cheese! Yesss!” It is fun.
Ripening time, not curing time, darn it. Calcium Chloride helps break the milk cell walls down during the ripening time which makes it easier for the rennet to work.
Sorry for the bad information.
I watch it happen all the time and it never gets old!
I’m 60 and the biggest thing I’m working on as a hobby is as a member of a dragon boat team. There are between 10 to 18 paddlers, depending on the boat and race, and it requires strength, endurance, technique and teamwork.
The team comprises fathers of students of my kids’ school so we are older than most of the other teams. I’m one of the oldest.
We workout on the water twice a week on the weekends and then have set up some weight lifting equipment in a warehouse where we work out two more mornings a week. The practices begin at 5:00 am so it’s quite a commitment.
After a year of participating then another year of a higher level of commitment, I’m in much better shape.
My friends think I’m crazy, though, especially when it’s cold and raining.