Project euler is awesome. Maybe the OP should try learning something close but not quite to her original skills - like FP or golang in hope that the new stuff will help unearth and reconcile with the old.

All my best wishes for her.

Talking about patterns - yesterday I saw the phrase "strong track record with MVC" in a job listing. My head almost explode ...

> Talking about patterns - yesterday I saw the phrase "strong track record with MVC" in a job listing. My head almost explode

Ha, I hesitated mentioning design patterns. So much of it is bogus and overblown, but there's definitely some skill at organizing an application that must be learned.

Also, I vote for learning JavaScript. I think your point on learning slightly different skills is great. It might be like trying to re-read a book you started and stopped and have no idea where you left off. Why not pick up a new book?

That is a really cool idea. Is there anything similar for submitting solutions to more general programming problems, like the kinds of things they ask you to in interviews with hashing/sorting/etc? I can't figure out how the assignments are "graded" as such without logging in, it's just looking for a correct output regardless of sloppy code, or what?

You might try TopCoder algorithm competitions? (Especially the practice rooms with previous problems). Many of the problems are kind of interesting, but everything is expected to be solved within a limited amount of time, so you won't spend a lot of time on it. (TopCoder algorithm competitions are graded on correct output, within a limited execution time)