FYI, I posted a similar question under the

Cool Uses for Perl

section of PM.

All in all, I received some great ideas, and the best two for my situation were:

1. Small trial programs built around CPAN modules as I run through them to hone my skills (suggested by chromatic).
2. Diving into Open Source projects and trying to help out. More info can be found at SourceForge.Net.

-- Just another Perl slacker
Steampunk.