New Year's Eve

It wouldn't be a blog without a year-end post, now, would it?

I am spending the evening alone, but it's no big deal. The girlfriend is up in the northlands picking up her kid from her (kid's) dad's house. They will be back tomorrow night, I think. The realization that I would be on my own tonight initially bothered me a lot, but then I remembered that I (a) haven't stayed awake until midnight for several years now and (b) never quite understood what the big deal was about jumping up and down, honking horns and kissing people, to mark the flip of the calendar.

So I had an entire day and evening to myself, and managed to piss most of it away either doing nothing or running around in circles. I did get out to spend some of my Christmas money from my dad, and found a handful of books I'd been coveting, and stumbled onto a killer sale on a Moose Creek jacket I fell in love with. I had been hoping to accomplish some Major Project, like building an addition to the shed, or replacing some of the ugly fenceposts in the back yard with the nice cedar posts I got from my buddy in Pinetop, or replacing the bookcase with a huge built-in unit, but I couldn't quite muster the right combination of energy and creative ideas. I may take another crack at the bookcase tomorrow, but that's only if another Home Depot has better 1x lumber than the one I went to today. Their lumber sucks ass--everything was either cracked or cupped.

Okay, obligatory resolutions, in no particular order:

1. Well, this one actually should be the top of the list: I intend to have better relations with my family. In recent years I have too often taken the path of least resistance (my ex would call it avoidance) and chosen to not interact with some people rather than roll the dice on having an uncomfortable or painful encounter. It's an admittedly immature way to (not) deal with some situations that are either in the process of deteriorating or have already gone straight to hell. I intend to depersonalize as much crap as I can and be grateful that I still have a whole herd of relatives still alive, and to be in much more frequent contact with them, and accept that none of us are going to change appreciably.

2. I intend to be more productive at work. Way more.

3. I intend to (all chime in here) work out more regularly. Yeah, uh-huh. Me and 100 million other people. Hopefully I'll be one of the intrepid ones who follow through.

4. I intend to do something about my spiritual wasteland. But I don't think organized religion is going to play a part in that. Something, though, something.

5. I'd like to say I intend to have a much more passionate relationship, but it's no fair making resolutions for someone else too.

Guess that's it. Stay tuned and see how many of these come true.