Temptation: An Interesting Take

I recently finished reading "The Devil and Miss Prym" by Paulo Coelho. I had read “The Alchemist” by him and I liked his writing style. I saw this new book and it caught my eye because on the cover it said “A Novel of Temptation”. It turns out that it is a really interesting take on temptation.

If you have plans to read this book, stop reading this post here.

Basically, it is about a stranger that comes to a small town, where everyone knows everyone, with 11 bars of gold and a question. Are people good or evil? He finds a young woman and he offers her an interesting proposition. He tells her that he wants to see if he can make someone break the commandment Thou Shall Not Kill. He tells her that he wants her to tell the villagers his proposition. He will give the villagers 7 days to kill someone, it could be anyone, someone old or sick, anyone they choose. If they decide to kill someone he will give the villagers the bars of gold. Then he will know that people are in essence evil. However if no one dies in the 7days, he leaves town with his 11 bars of gold and he knows people are in essence good.

There are other twists and turns along the way, but it all boils down to whether or not the villagers will “sacrifice” one of their own for the good of the rest  of the village. It is a real interesting question. What would you do in that situation? Would you be willing to end someone’s life for the betterment of the whole village? 11 bars of gold could bring you immense riches, would you try to take your chances and kill the stranger instead of one of your own? Or would you not be able to go through with it and lose a tremendous opportunity to save your village? Or would you go through with it because you are afraid you would be the one selected to be killed if you went against the majority?

Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting way to look at temptation, because most stories of temptation are about forbidden love or adultery, not murder. So if you are looking for something to read, this is worth picking up.

A Bird: Queen of Bedtime Stalling

I’m sure all kids are great at stalling before bedtime, but A Bird seems to be the queen of it. I don’t know where she learned it, or where any kids learn to do it, but it definitely happens. A Bird’s bedtime routine used to be simple, in and out in like 5-7 minutes. We would go in read a short book and she would be asleep before the light was out. Now, through her skill at stalling, it has morphed into a 15-20 minute ordeal, which includes many various goings on before she is asleep. Let me walk through her routine:


It’s between 8 – 8:30, her television show ends signaling it’s time to go to bed. Then she fights brushing her teeth for about five minutes with L Bird. While this is going on I get her a small cup of water, her blanket and whatever stuffed toy she is attached to at the moment. Currently, it is “Tracker” a small stuffed beagle. By the time I round up all of this and get into her room she is done brushing her teeth. So now A Bird comes bounding into her bedroom, first she demands that her vaporizer be plugged in and her blue night light be turned on, then she turns to her book shelf in search of a book she wants to have read before bed. She normally picks the biggest/longest book she can find and jumps into bed with it. Now the bargaining starts:

Me: A Bird this book is way too long, how about we pick a new book?

A Bird: NO, I want to read this one!

Me: Are you sure? You don’t want to read the poky little puppy or Gossie?

A Bird: No, I want this one!

Me: Fine, but we are only going to read 5 pages. (There is a ton to read on each page)

A Bird: Dad, how about 10 pages?

Me: No, how about 6 pages?

And this goes back and forth until we settle in around 7 pages. We read her book and shut out her light, now we have to sing a song. Now part of the stalling is my fault, I have always sung her one song. So I’ll tease her and start singing a different song, like “Oh Suzanna” or something like that and A Bird pitches a fit until I tell her I will sing her song.

***Ever since she was a baby I have sung her the same song. It may not be the most appropriate but it was the one that always worked to get her to sleep. So I sing her “Show Me The Way To Go Home”. It goes:

Show me the way to go home,

‘cuz I’m tired and I want to go to bed.

I had a little drink about an hour ago,

And it’s gone right to my head.

Where ever I may roam,

By Land, Air, Sea, or Foam,

You can always hear me singing this song,

Show me the way to go home.

Then she is finally satisfied. I give A Bird a big kiss and tell her I love her and head out the door. L Bird now normally gets held up drawing a family picture on the glow doodle. A Bird asks for one of us, normally L Bird to draw Me, A Bird and L Bird on the glow doodle. Then once they are drawn, she kisses the glow doodle and settles in for bed.

Now L Bird and I are both out of her room and free to do what we want, until…. The calls start. A Bird will be quiet for about 5 minutes, then begin calling and calling until one of us answer her. We have tried to ignore her and tell her to go to bed, but she gets so worked up that she almost pukes. So for the sake of the laundry and floor, it’s easier to go in and see what she wants. Then normally its, “Dad, I have to tell you something, or dad, I have to tell you a secret” I go in and she leans into my ear and whispers things like “Tomorrow when we get up we can have popsicles together”.

Or there is my other personal favorite, I go walk in and she is buried in more stuffed animals than we put her to bed with. She gets up and grabs everyone she owns and tucks them in then settles in the middle of them. Now she realizes that she is uncomfortable and doesn’t have any room to sleep. She calls one of us in and says something like “Dad, can you please take out sock monkey and Uni and take them to bed with you? I don’t have any room” So I grab them up and take them out with me. Unfortunately for sock monkey and Uni, they don’t make it to my bed. They make it as far as the toy box until the next day when A Bird finds them again.

After all of that she finally drifts off to sleep and L Bird and I can relax. This happens every night like clockwork. Some nights I walk out of there so frustrated that it takes that long to get her to bed, then other nights I am so thankful for every moment I have with her. I am so grateful that she is such a smart and inventive kid that never ceases to amaze me.

I guess, for all the frustration with her stalling and stress that it causes some nights, I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. I am so blessed to have A Bird, L Bird and our simple routines.

Defective

I have gone back and forth a lot on posting this. I am a very private person and most of the time I would much rather keep my thoughts and things like this to myself, but blogging is all about expressing yourself. So I’m hoping by writing this I can get these thoughts out of my head and maybe come to terms with it. I’m hoping that maybe I’ll find some peace by getting it off my chest. Maybe, I’ll find someone else who has gone through this and can offer some insight, or maybe, just maybe by me posting this I can help someone else feel like they are not alone if they are going through a similar thing. All, I know is, right or wrong, this is what I am feeling right now.

WARNING: Pity Party Ahead!! Although I am throwing myself a big pity party, I don’t want to sound whiny. I know that there are so many things that are much worse and I will be fine in the end. I am grateful for all that I have, my family most of all, but I feel entitled to my anger. So take this for what it’s worth, it’s just me venting.

I feel defective. Lately it seems like I just keep getting dealt a bad hand. Maybe it’s the fact that I was born on Friday the 13^th, I really just don’t know. I was born with Hemophilia and a mild case of cerebral palsy. I couldn’t breathe on my own for awhile after I was born, so they bagged me to help me breathe and called me a miracle baby because I shouldn’t be here. It was like the world was already trying to kick me out and send me back. Those things have caused me a lot of hassle and trouble over the years. I got picked on constantly and the hemophilia ruled me out of a lot of sports, so any chances I had to increase my “fitting in” were ruled out as well. Fine, whatever! I can deal with that. Those experiences made me stronger, meaner, tougher and better able to cope with the world that was presented to me.

Fast forward to when a few years ago, L Bird and I are trying to have a baby. Our diagnosis is infertility, ok fine how can we treat it? We both go and get checked out and of course, it’s me. It’s my fault that we can’t get pregnant. I just feel like I can’t catch a break sometimes. I get diagnosed with a large varicocele. So I have the surgery and go through all of the fertility treatments with L Bird and we still get nothing. Finally, our luck changes and we get blessed with A Bird, who is the best daughter a father could ask for. So my life isn’t bad, we did get a beautiful child, but it’s the point that because of me we had to work so much harder at it and go through so much more to get what is so easy to other people. Again, I want to state I don’t have it bad, I do have a daughter that I am eternally grateful for.

Fast forward to last week. So last week, I found a lump on my left testicle. It really freaked me out, so I made L Bird double check and sure enough she felt it too. I made an appointment with my doctor, and it was a couple of days before I could get in to see him. That was the longest two days of my life, the not knowing if I have testicular cancer was driving me crazy. I just kept seeing me having it and having my life cut short, it made me a wreck with worry. I was worried I wouldn’t see A Bird go to prom, graduate, walk down the aisle, and have kids of her own. It was eating me up inside then finally, the day of the Dr.’s appointment came and I went to see what my fate was. He had me drop my pants and he did his inspection under the hood so to speak and he said he felt the lump and some swelling. He told me he would set me up with an ultrasound but not to worry. He said lumps in the testicles is not that uncommon and it could be a number of other harmless things.

OK, that helped. I could handle something other than cancer. Just don’t let it be cancer. I convinced myself that it was jut something harmless and waited another two days for the ultrasound. Then comes yesterday, the day of the ultrasound which was its own debacle. It is the exact same procedure that pregnant women have to determine how the baby is doing. So without going into the details, there I was laying on a bed with a gel coated wand wandering its way over my two bits by an older woman ultrasound tech. Yeah, it was real pleasant! She pointed out a medium lump on the screen and said that she would “take measurements” and point that out in the report. She finished up and sent me on my way and told me I should hear from the doctor with my results next week.

Great, I just have to sweat through the weekend and then I’ll get my results. I go home and I’m fixing dinner for A Bird when the phone rings. It’s the doctor’s office on the caller id, I completely panicked. If they were calling that soon, then it must be cancer and they want to get me right in for treatment. I answered the phone but I could hardly speak. Then I heard the doctor say “your results came back and it doesn’t look like cancer.” WHEW! I started breathing again and listening to him again and then I heard him say “but,…..”. Ok I thought it’s not cancer, its probably just another varicocele. I can deal with that. Then he proceeded to tell me that I had a varicocele on the right side, a hydrocele on both sides and then numerous cysts on each.

C’MON man! Seriously?? OK, I’m ecstatic that I don’t have cancer, but of course I have to have a ton of other things wrong. I’m seriously defective. Nature has a way weeding out defective, damaged creatures. When I was a kid we had a dog that had a litter of puppies, one of the puppies wasn’t quite right, and that dog would pick that pup up and put it outside the dog house. I would put it back in and she would just push it out. She eventually kept it in with her and she nursed it, but that pup was never right and died within a couple of weeks. That dog knew that the pup wouldn’t make it, even when I couldn’t accept it. I feel like that pup. Nature has deemed me to be defective and is slowly trying to get rid of me. At least that’s how I feel right about now. Nature couldn’t finish the job when I was born, so now it’s taking advantage in the only way it knows how by damaging my ability to reproduce and keep my genes in the pool. What can I do?

But anyway, so now I have to have an appointment with a urologist to see how bad everything is. With my luck, I’m preparing for the worst. I guess we’ll see…

The Great Hot Water Debacle

So, by now I’m sure EVERYONE has heard me bitch about the hot water heater and the nice big leak in the hot water pipe that we found after the hot water heater. Well, here are just a few photos of the repair, just so you can see the mess I was left with.

My Brother getting into the floor with the sawsall. Look at how wet it was under the laminate.

Can you see the problem? I couldn’t either until I turned the water supply to the water heater on and then water from one of the connections shot up and out of the hole.

That nasty connection was the culprit.  If you look real close you can see some kind of sealant (the goopy dark yellow stuff) that someone tried to “fix the leak” with. Yeah, it worked out real well.

PVC with red shuts offs (at the top) behind the drywall. Nice

New PEX connections to the washer.

New hot and cold PEX lines. It is awesome how flexible and great this stuff is to work with.

Thanks to all of my brother’s hard work, I have a new hot water heater installed, new hot and cold water lines from the crawl space to the laundry room, new hot and cold water lines to the hot water heater and the washer, but most importantly I have HOT WATER again.

I’ll never take that for granted again. A Nice hot shower seems to cure just about everything. Thanks again to my brother.

Temporary Escape & A Sense of Belonging

This past month has been a very trying month for Ol’ Naps and family as we have been dealing with multiple issues with the house and it continues with our new found hot water pipe leak which is conveniently buried under the floor with no crawl space access. But in the midst of all of this chaos, I try to find a temporary escape to take my mind off this money pit for awhile so I don’t explode and let this house reduce me to rubble.

My escape has always been reading.  If I need to close out the world for awhile, I jump into a book and lose myself for awhile. As I read and picture the story, it takes me away and I forget about my troubles for awhile. I’ll read just about anything, but my two favorite genres are Science Fiction/Fantasy (I know, I’m a sci-fi dork) and True Crime. I love true crime books, because I’m the type of guy who roots for the bad guy. I have a skewed  view of “good guys” a.k.a the cops, the government, or any type of authority because of my own run ins when I was younger. I saw how quickly your name labeled you and how crooked the cops, DA’s, and judges can be whether or not you were guilty. I was always drawn towards the bad guys, because, yeah they were doing stupid things, but they always had honor amongst thieves, their own sense of honor and loyalty, and they handled things in house rather than running to a corrupt judicial system.

That brings me to my latest escape. I just finished up reading “Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club”. This was a great read, it is written first person by Sonny Barger, the founder of the Hell’s Angels. I like it because, he pulls no punches and tells the truth about everything, the good times, the bad times and all the things that they were guilty of. I’m sure it’s biased because he wrote it, but I feel more connected to his side of the story than the other books I’ve read by the informants and lawyers and cops.

But what struck me the most was the main theme of the book was that the Hell’s Angels MC was not a criminal enterprise, it was a brotherhood. It was a brotherhood of guys who just wanted to be free to ride motorcycles and party, yeah they had members who were involved in some devious stuff, but it wasn’t sanctioned by the club.

It just really connected with me, I miss that sense of belonging. I miss having a group/slash club that I belonged to, where everyone was there for everyone no matter what. Everyone hanging out almost every night, and doing things as a group. Just knowing that you had people that were down with you for whatever the world wanted to throw at you.

But anyway, it was a very good read if you are into that sort of thing and it served it’s purpose for me by distracting me. Now I’m on to my next read once I decide which book it is.

Sabotaged…… then VICTORY!!!

The Ol’ Naps VS. Whirlpool continues. I bought that stupid hot water heater less than six months ago and it worked great up until Christmas Eve, then everything went haywire. It started flashing codes and saying that the lower element is shot. After numerous tests, talks with whirlpool, and one service tech, it was supposed to be fixed. Big surprise, it wasn’t fixed.

Now, I call Whirlpool, again. They send me another new control board, and I schedule another service call with A&E Factory service, who also sucks at times. (Their techs are good techs, but getting them to not overbook their techs and reschedule your call a million times is the issue). They were supposed to show up Monday, I talk a half day off and get home to get a call saying that there are not enough techs to service my area today, so they’ll reschedule for Friday. Fine, whatever, I just what the damn thing fixed.

So Friday comes and it is supposed to be a good day.  My Mom is taking A Bird overnight, the service repairman is supposed to come and fix all of our problems, and L Bird and I were supposed to go out to dinner, a movie and possibly one or two drinks. So My Mom, picks A Bird up and they’re out the door, the service repairman is in the laundry room and he checks everything, he checks the electric coming into the water heater from the panel, he tests the upper and lower elements, he tests the temperature sensors, he replaces the control board. He checks everything once more and everything is checking out great. He gives it a clean bill of health, flips the breaker, hangs out for 15 minutes to make sure everything is good and is out the door.

Great, things are moving along nicely. Now L Bird gets home and we are both in good moods because we know we got a night out and more importantly hot water. She goes to jump in the shower and whammo no hot water, its ice cold. I run in to check the water heater and sure enough its flashing the same code. The tech has been gone less than and hour and its already acting up. I’m so pissed I can’t speak, so L Bird calls  Whirlpool and complains, they tell us to call call A&E and have the tech call them. She calls A&E and gets the run around “the tech is out on another call and he will call as soon as he’s available”, yeah right. I call A&E back and get the same run around only, I get “well, there are no guarantees that the tech will call you tonight”.

Great, our night out is sabotaged. We have to sit around and wait for a call that  may never come. Screw that noise, I had L Bird change the answering machine, and we went out for a quick dinner. The rest of the night was blown, no movie and no drinks, even though I could definitely used a keg at that point.

So this morning comes, I wake up and I am determined and livid, so I call Whirlpool and I am ready to breathe fire at whoever answers my call. Then this nice gentleman answers the call and he is instantly pleasant. My mind and my mouth mellow a bit, and I explain what has happened, how long its been going on and that I would just like the unit replaced. He puts me on hold for 15 minutes and comes back to me with a glorious string of numbers. That string of numbers is my return code to take to Lowe’s to get a whole new unit. I thanked him profusely and even thought about asking for his address to send him a thank you card. I’m ecstatic. Then comes the catch, I have to unhook the old (new) water heater and take it to lowe’s with me to get the new one. What a pain in the ass, but whatever, I’m getting a new unit.

So for those of you keeping score at home, the fight card reads as follows: Rounds 1 & 2 go to Whirlpool for dicking me around, Round 3 is a clear cut victory for me as I get a new water heater. So now we are heading into the final round with me trailing, if the replacement is installed and it works great, then I win by decision. If it is installed and does the same thing, I lose by TKO and peel myself off the mat and go home and cry.

DING!!! There the bell, let’s get it on….

IT’S ALIVE!!!!! Muh-ha-ha

It’s alive, it’s alive….. Frankenblower lives!!! I can hardly believe it, but Frankenblower has made it through for another season of blowing snow. Frankenblower is lovingly called so, because he is a hand me down, mix ‘n match parts snow blower that Dinker was nice enough to hand down to me because I’m too cheap to spend money on one when I can shovel. For pictures of Frankenblower and a little of his storied history, you can click here to see what a son of a bitch he really can be at times.

So today is the first real snow we have had all winter and the first real chance I have had to use Frankenblower. At the end of last season, Frankenblower was running real well, he was all tuned up and really throwing some serious snow, right up until the last time I used him. That last time he was really starting to get cranky, his transmission was starting to stick in gear and the throttle was really touchy. So I made it threw the last snow, drained his gas, covered him up and put him to rest for the summer and fall.

Cue today: We got like 10” of snow, alright the actual measurement is like 6-7”, I’m not really good at estimating inches. That is also why I’m so pleased with my manhood, 6” looks like 10” to me, but I digress.

I go out and uncover Frankenblower, I haven’t even touched him yet and he looks pissed. I try to sweeten his disposition with some nice fresh new gas and oil and then I hook up his electric start. I give him full choke and try to start him and I get??? That’s right a whole lot of dimp, nothing, nada. So I keep trying and he’s not even turning over, so now I’m getting pissed. As I am trying to turn him over I notice that the throttle cable is unhooked and stuck in the stop position. I re-hook the cable and push the throttle all the way up, as I do it I notice that it isn’t pulling the throttle cable, it’s just bending the cable. DAMN IT!!! Alright, you ornery son of a bitch, if you don’t want to work, I’ll make you work. So I grab the cable with my fingers and force it to move to the full throttle position and a few  good tries later Frankenblower is off and running in a glorious cloud of blue grey smoke. I wait a full two minutes before I unhook the electric start, just to make sure that he isn’t going to crap out on me, and to my surprise he didn’t.

Great I think to myself, I’m going to get this done quick. I position myself behind him and go to put him in gear to go, and I can’t even budge the clutch to put it in gear. I push it hard, I swear at it, I even dropped the people’s elbow on it and nothing. Frankenblower is running, but not moving an inch. He’s just sitting there laughing his ass off at me because I can’t make him move. Ok, tough love it is Frankenblower, I grab a rubber mallet from the shed and give the clutch a good rap, and Frankenblower takes off like a bullet. One problem, I’m not behind him and he is aimlessly wandering through the backyard while I’m dropping the mallet and running after him.

I finally catch up with him, and turn him towards the driveway. Now he’s all warmed up and running like a champ. I snow blow the driveway and the walk and then take Frankenblower down to his resting spot. Before I turned him off, I lubed up the clutch and the reattached the throttle cable, so hopefully I won’t be running into his crankiness the next time I have to fire him up.

Frankenblower, I love you, you cranky bastard!

Not yet, Pleeeeeeease not yet!

So normally about 3 times out of 5, I pick A Bird up from daycare. I go in to get her, she runs into my arms, and its like a slow motion cheesy movie clip. But it’s those 30 seconds that make my day. I can see how happy she is to see me and any stress I have just fades away. I pack up her things and check with Miss Debbie or Krista to see how she ate, if she napped, and how well she was that day. Then we’re off and rolling for home.

The car ride is when we really connect. I ask her how her day was and what she did, and she tells me what games she played and what she learned. She rattles off what she had for snack and what all the other kids had, she tells me who was in time out and for what. She just rattles away until she hears a song on the radio she likes, then everything stops until she sings along with the song and it ends. These are my favorite times.

Then today she hits me with this out of the blue:

A Bird: Dad, you know J.W.?

Me: Yeah, I know J.W.

A Bird: J.W. is my boyfriend

Me: Right, because he is a boy and he’s you’re friend right?

A Bird: No Dad, he’s my boyfriend.

Me: Uh ok, but why is he your boyfriend?

A Bird: Because you remember in the summer, J.W. pushed me on the swings and that’s what boyfriends do.

Me: Oh ok A Bird.

During that whole conversation, it felt like someone was stabbing me in the heart. I kept picturing moments that I know are coming in the future. Her first date, her first dance, high school boyfriends, and then finally me giving her away at a wedding. I just kept thinking, she can’t be thinking about boys already, she’s still my baby. I just kept thinking no, not yet, please not yet.

As we were almost home, I had come back to my senses and realize that she is just a little girl with a lot of life in front of her. Her and JW’s friendship is totally innocent and I’m happy she has a best friend at daycare. As for the future, it scares the hell out of me, but I’ll deal with that when it shows up.

It can’t be that bad, right?

Yeah right, Lord give me strength.

Stressing over the to-do list

It seems that lately my to do list just keeps growing and growing. It all starts with our house, we bought it two years ago from a real estate agent and her husband who had flipped it. That should have been my first clue to the big mistake I was about to make. I won’t name names due to the legalities of slander/libel, but I will say that she is a real estate agent and her husband is a “contractor”. I would really like to know how many jobs he has been kicked off of for shoddy work. Since, we have bought this house, we have had the “new roof in 2005” leak in multiple areas because he lined up all the seams of the shingles, found dangerous electrical wiring, found buried electrical boxes and water shut offs behind drywall just to name a few things. If you do want to know who this lovely local duo is, just send me a message and I’ll tell you in private.

But anyway, my newest headache has been the new hot water heater I just bought. We bought an EnergySmart Electric Hot Water Heater and on Christmas Eve it blew the control board, so a technician came and replaced the control board and the very next day the new control board was blown and I heard a buzzing sound coming from the panel box. After some careful inspection, I found that the panel box in the laundry room wasn’t wired correctly and was overloaded and as an added bonus there was no insulation in the wall that the panel box was located in. So because of that mess, I have one more project to add to my spring/summer to do list.

My list starts like this:

1. Tear off roof over laundry room and replace it.

2. Tear out two walls in the spare bedroom, find  the leak in the corner, fix the leak, replace insulation and drywall and replace the baseboard heater.

3. Tear down back laundry room wall, put in a new panel box and re do the wiring with the help of my Pop, insulate that wall and replace the drywall.

These things are stressing me the hell out, one I don’t have a lot of knowledge in any of these projects. I really can’t afford to hire anyone to do these projects, which means I have to rely on the help I get from family and friends. Now don’t get me wrong, without my family and friends I would be lost. I am eternally thankful for all of the help and time they give me. It’s just because I have a lack of knowledge, they end up doing the majority of the work while I stand there and do the easy grunt work. So because I know I am pretty much useless for some jobs I hate to ask people for help.

The whole thing is just bugging me out right now. I know that these things will get done and I will have learned some new skills along the way, its just I’m always afraid of what is coming down the pipe. It seems like every time I fix one problem I find three more and two of the three are due to someone’s incompetence. But anyway, I’ve rambled and ranted long enough, thanks for letting me vent.

So Here We Go Again, New Year’s Resolutions

So, its January 1st, 2011 and like every other person on the face of the planet I have taken a long hard look at who I am and what I want to change and have made some New Year’s Resolutions.

So here they are in no particular order:

1. Talk more to the people that mean the most to me.

People who know me, know that I am incredibly private. I don’t talk about anything because I don’t want people to know my business. One of my most used phrases is “Mind your business”. I digest every conversation and every action in silence and I typically keep my thoughts to myself. Because of that, I never really let the ones I love know how I feel or what I’m thinking. So this year my plan is to let them know how much they mean to me and to say I love you more and to actually have a conversation when someone asks me “What are you thinking?” instead of saying nothing and brushing it off.

2. Get back into shape.

Like just about everyone else in this super sized world, I just want to get back into shape and lose my beer gut. All through high school and college I was thin but I was ripped. When I graduated college I had 4% body fat, I was completely in shape, then over the years I became to busy with life, and other things and just stopped working out. I cancelled my YMCA membership with the thought I’ll just buy free weights and lift at home, well I can’t remember the last time I lifted a weight. So my plan is to start small and see how it goes. I’m trying to cut back on soda to only 1 per day and then cut back on drinking beer. As for working out, I know approximately where to start, so I found a routine that I can do at home with the weights I have. It claims that you can see results in 9 days, so we’ll see. I’m pretty sure I have the will power to last nine days, then hopefully I’ll see some small change that will keep me motivated and I’ll keep working out.

I figured I would only have two resolutions, any more than that and it’s easy to throw in the towel on the whole lot of then when you screw up one.

So, what are your resolutions?