Resolved

I'm not generally one for New Year's resolutions. For one thing, my willpower is not the best, so getting motivated to keep a resolution usually has nothing to do with the time of year.

That said, I came up with a few things I'd like to accomplish this year:

1. Lose weight. About two-and-a-half years ago, I'd gotten down to nearly 20 pounds less than I weigh now. I put on a lot of weight when I was buying my house because I mostly stopped exercising. Actually, I don't know how much I really "put on" since I'm wearing the same size jeans I was then. I've also been slacking this winter and can tell. So I've been to the gym three times in the past week and hope to keep it up. Ideally, through eating less and exercising more, it'd be nice to lose about 25 pounds this year. That seems achievable for a whole year.

2. Write. I haven't done a whole lot to overcome the issues I wrote about a year ago - or, for that matter, the issues on writing I wrote about half a year ago - but I've done a little. I also received some nice comments from various quarters during 2003 that made me feel better about myself. That said, I have started writing something that may turn out to be a novel. It's going slowly; I have about 4000 words written (after a false start), and the framework is coming together slowly. But I'm pretty excited about it. I just need to do more actual writing, and less screwing around on Wikipedia (for instance).

3. Use fewer weasel words. I tend to use words like "seems", "apparently", and "basically" a lot when I speak and write. They're words I use to try to indicate that I don't really know, but I don't want to get caught being wrong. But it's not really bad to be wrong a lot of the time; I'm just a perfectionist and hate being trapped like that. But I'm coming around to feel that there's also value in appearing more confident in what I'm saying, even if I turn out to be wrong. There's always room for me to have some doubt in what I'm saying, but often that room is small enough that I might as well just put my mouth where my money is, or something like that.

   Or at least I should not use weaselly little words to get around it, I should just come out and say that I don't know, but this is my best guess.

Debbi's cats got neutered on Wednesday. Blackjack, of course, was up and around almost immediately (modulo his reaction to his final round of immunity shots). Roulette, though, was pretty floored by her surgery, and is also wearing a collar to keep her from licking or pulling at her stitches.

Debbi stayed at her place this weekend to watch them. I went up on Thursday to visit, and then last night for the night, and stayed up there today. Roulette is going much better. Her cut is healing up nicely, and we've been able to give her some supervised time without the collar so she can clean herself and play a bit. She likes that, and is learning not to worry at the stitches. With luck, they'll be out next Saturday.

This morning around 8 I woke up and Roulette had just jumped on the bed on top of me. Debbi sleepily asked, "Is that Roulette?" I replied, "Yes. Did you know she's not wearing her collar?" "NO, I DIDN'T!" said Debbi, sitting upright immediately. Roulette looked perfectly pleased with herself - she could have eaten a bird and not looked any happier. I checked her out but she hadn't worried at the stitches that I could tell, and Debbi found the collar (which she'd just pulled off of her head, apparently) and put it back on. Rou was not happy, but them's the breaks. It was funny in retrospect.

I watched a bunch of football this weekend. The Patriots won, which made me happy. Debbi's brother-in-law was at the game, which had a game-time temperature of 4 degrees F. The Panthers/Rams game was just stunning, with 8 field goals, a fourth-quarter comeback by the Rams from 11 points down (including a surrender by the Rams' coach - who I think is not a good coach - by just kicking the tying field goal rather than trying for the winning touchdown), 2 missed field goals in overtime, and a 69-yard pass play by the Panthers for the winning touchdown. I imagine this must be similar to what Game 6 of the 1975 World Series must have been like.

We also went for a lengthy walk today. My mom gave me a pedometer for Christmas, and it seems to work pretty well. It says we walked about 4 miles in about an hour and three quarters, including a stop at Jamba Juice and a brief scare that I twisted my ankle (it feels fine). It was cool but not too cool, and I think the exercise helped both of us fight the illnesses we've felt today (Debbi thinks she's getting a cold; I think I ate something last night that didn't agree with me; hopefully not Mad Cow Disease - especially not from pork!).

Then I went to the Keplers book discussion (Coraline), had dinner with Cliff, and came home. My own cats are very glad to see me!

This coming Friday I turn 35 years old. My Mom says to just imagine how she feels!