Victory Is Mine!

I went to see the doctor this morning to get my latest cholesterol test results. He said my numbers are all good! This is a big victory. [The only number he was at all concerned about was a slightly low CBC, but when I explained that I regularly donate blood products and had just donated two units of platelets and a unit of plasma a few days before my blood draw, that concern was completely dismissed.]

I read him a list of all the various things I have been doing to improve my health and he said at multiple times that what I've done is "huge". He said he would give me 4 gold stars if he had them. He was very encouraged and thinks that I seem to be on a path to long term and sustainable goodness. He said it's very rare for anybody to take his advice as I have done. And he said he doesn't need to see me again for a year.

I'm posting these numbers partly in case they might be inspirational to someone else out there who is aware of a need to do something to bring his/her cholesterol under control. I'm not saying that these results can be replicated by everyone. Genetics can definitely make it impossible for some people to lower their cholesterol without medication. But in my case, I'm thrilled to know that's not the situation. Mostly, I'm posting my numbers so that I know right where I can find them, so that I can look at them and feel proud of myself.
If you see a great big gap here, I don't know why it exists. Please scroll down.

Date:	HDL	LDL	Notes:
4/12/02007	44	145	Very high LDL inspired doctor #1 to put me on medication.
8/17/02007	41	76	On lowest available dosage of Lipitor.
1/12/02009	26	109	Off meds. Unhappy scores. Doctor #2.
7/13/02009	35	131	Still off meds. Unhappy scores.
1/19/02010	45	97	Still off meds, but having changed my dieting and exercise habits.
n/a	39–60	<100	Desired Range

I started by telling him that I have lost 35 lbs. in the last 13 months. He asked how I have done it and that's when I broke out my list:

• Started taking a multivitamin daily. [He thinks this is unnecessary, as I should be able to get all the nutrients I need from food. So I may stop this practice.]
• Started eating an apple a day. [He was thrilled with this.]
  
• Continuing to eat 12 oz. of yogurt per day — a practice I had started on his recommendation after the January 02009 visit, I think. [He was happy about this.]
  
• Daily push ups starting with 20 in late November and adding one each day. Today was 83. Tomorrow will be 84. [He was thrilled with this.]
• Stationary bicycling (admittedly not as much as I should be doing), with intention of being able to ride real bikes with Beth when the weather turns nice. [He's a big proponent of getting out and doing fun exercise. So as long as Beth and I both enjoy biking, this is wonderful. His theory: if you enjoy doing it, you're going to do it. And having a partner greatly increased that likelihood.]
• Eating less red meat. [Good, and he's completely tolerant of the fact that I will never abandon red meat entirely.]
• No longer eating fast food. ["Huge!"]
• No potato chips in months. [Good.]
• Less potatoes altogether. [Good.]
  
• Switched to wheat bread rather than white. [Good.]
• Eating breakfast daily. [Very happy about this. While he would like me to start throwing in some good oatmeal and also to add some fruit, he wasn't critical (much to my surprise) of my current choice of a sandwich consisting of wheat toast and peanut butter.]
• Taking digestive enzymes daily. [He takes the view that I already have all the digestive enzymes I need. So I'll probably discontinue this practice. He didn't say it's harmful in any way, just unnecessary.]
• Eliminating soda from my diet except on the rare occasions when we go to the movies. ["Huge!"]
• Reducing my intake of orange juice. [Happy about this. Everything in moderation.]
• Eating ice cream only rarely, and choosing light ice cream when I do have some. [He actually thinks that if I'm using ice cream as a treat rather than a daily part of my diet, I might as well go for "the real stuff" rather than the light. But mostly he just really wants me to make sure that whatever I'm eating, it doesn't include artificial sweeteners. I assured him that this is already a point of near-obsession with me. I am convinced that all artificial sweeteners are carcinogenic and I make a point of staying away.]
  
• Not buying candy or cookies. Really only eating them on the rare occasions when Beth buys them for me (in the case of candy) or bakes them for me (in the case of cookies). [He's happy about this.]

The last major bit I want to share about this visit is that I told my doctor that the last time I visited, we had been discussing exercise and he had advised me that if I take up running, I should run trails instead of roads because I'm not exactly "built like a gazelle". This had stuck with me and provided me with inspiration. "Why shouldn't I be built like a gazelle?", I thought. I'm fairly tall and I have reasonably long legs. Besides that, as far as I can tell, I have a fairly small frame for someone of my height. Well, it turns out he agrees. And better still, having lost all that weight I now am built like a gazelle! Hooray!

And now the real last bit, which is much more minor: I had the nurse measure my height to see whether I'm as tall as I think I am. Sadly, I'm 3/4 of an inch shorter than I have believed myself to be for the last twenty years or so. That's the only sad news to have come from my visit to the doctors' office today. I can live with that.

02009 New Year's Resolution #40: No More Resolutions

Back in January, I resolved to try to average at least one New Year's Resolution for every week of this year. I fell short of my goal. However, I did get three quarters of the way there. I figure that's reasonably respectable and something I can extract some pride from. Now that my Year of Many Resolutions is coming to a close, I am going to make one final resolution that should carry me through 02010:

I resolve to make no New Year's Resolutions in the coming year.

I've enjoyed making all these resolutions. It's been good to have real goals to try to meet. And I've been pleasantly surprised at just how successful I've managed to be. But I've had enough for now. From now on, instead of making straightforward resolutions, I'm just going to try doing those things that make sense. I'll try to behave well, to do as little harm as possible, to improve where I see that it would be good to do so. That's generally been my approach to life all along, and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

Besides, because I didn't make all of my 02009 New Year's Resolutions at the start of the year (and because I looked at each one as a yearlong goal starting on the date that I made the resolution), I still have a lot of existing resolutions to keep me company throughout the next several months at least.

If you're interested in a fun mental exercise, I suggest trying your own hand at coming up with at least as many New Year's Resolutions in 02010 as I came up with in 02009. You'll probably find it very difficult, especially if you take it seriously.

One final comment that's worth making: I did not actually make every resolution that occurred to me over the course of the year. I could, for example, have resolved to make an effort towards being better at remembering people's names or resolved to try to teach myself to speed read or resolved to make a serious effort at learning a second language. These would all have been worthwhile resolutions. I would really like to do each. But I just knew that my likelihood of success would be terribly low during my Year of Many Resolutions. I picked my battles. Those other goals will have to wait for another time.

-----

What follows is a list of the resolutions I made in 02009, along with the dates on which they were made. I'm not providing a status report for each one. Suffice it to say that some will end up fulfilled, some partially so, and some were a bust…although there were probably fewer in this last category than a reasonable person would expect.

1. 1/6/02009 — Whenever somebody makes a request of me, particularly if it is something that will cost me nothing but perhaps a little bit of time and effort, I resolve to try to ask myself the following question: "How would I respond to this request if it were being asked by a woman who told me that her son had been killed before his time and that this was his dying wish?"

2. 1/7/02009 — No matter how insipid I may think someone's music is [here I am thinking of acts ranging from Creed, Live, and Smashing Pumpkins (and The Smashing Pumpkins (why the nonsensical addition of "The", I will likely never comprehend)) to Steely Dan, Britney Spears and Celine Dion], I resolve that I will try to keep in mind that everyone who has ever been signed to a recording contract [even William Hung and Wesley Willis (don't get me wrong: I love what I've heard from Wesley Willis)] has a kind of talent that I simply do not possess and has developed a skill that I would likely never be able to achieve.

3. 1/9/02009 — If I get a new full time job in 02009, my new employer's main phone number will not end in "0330".

4. 1/14/02009 — I will finish typing and formatting my non-fiction book proposal and I will try to get at least one suitable publisher to entertain it. [The first publisher on my list is Oxford University Press.]

5. 1/17/02009 — I resolve to try to make at least one New Year's Resolution for every week this year.

6. 1/22/02009 — I resolve to get my weight down at least as low as 175 lbs. and to try to keep it that low.

7. 1/26/02009 — I resolve that no matter how sensible they may seem at the time, I will keep in mind that certain "experiments" ought never to be repeated. [Cinnamon and steak are two great tastes that do not go great together! Lemon Pledge is not, even in a pinch, suitable for cleaning spills on the Pergo floor!]

8. 1/27/02009 — I resolve to get more on top and to stay more on top of our household recycling. Specifically, I will make the trip to drop our recyclables off at least once a month.

9. 1/31/02009 — I resolve that I will not make efforts to become a shameless "friend accumulator" on Facebook. Anyone I invite to be my Facebook friend will be someone who I remember and for whom I have sincerely fond feelings. I won't indiscriminately invite random people who just happened to be in my high school class, or who just happen to live in my town, or who just happen to work for the same company as me.

10. 2/3/02009 — I resolve to stop putting up resistance to having my face photographed.

11. 2/10/02009 — I resolve to take a genuine stab at reading Holy Bible, by assorted dead guys.

12. 2/11/02009 — I resolve to try to produce at least 5 photographs, in the next year, of which I am unjustifiably proud.

13. 2/25/02009 — I resolve to try to reduce the amount of junk mail that ends up coming in our door, which eventually ends up going to the recyclers. Specifically, I am going to make an effort to get all of the unwanted catalogs to stop visiting our mailbox.

14. 3/5/02009 — I resolve that I will significantly cut back on my own consumption of soda and opt for water instead, most of the time.

15. 3/23/02009 — I resolve to try to improve my handwriting.

16. 3/23/02009 — I resolve to start writing letters again.

17. 4/4/02009 — I resolve to undertake some sort of new art project.

18. 4/18/02009 — I resolve to not be so senselessly protective of my bright ideas.

19. 4/22/02009 — I resolve to try to be better prepared for spontaneity!

20. 4/23/02009 — I resolve to...

* try to keep in mind that I am probably not always the ugliest guy in the room.

* try to remind myself that the IQ tests and SAT scores and school grades, while no guarantee, have been consistently high enough that "stupid" very likely does not truly apply.

* try to be encouraged (by the friends I have and by Beth's persistence in sticking around) that I may not be as boring as I have for so long believed. Perhaps there is something interesting about me after all.

* try to be less dismissive of compliments; try to accept them at face value as being sincere instead of questioning the motives behind them.

21. 5/7/02009 — I resolve to be more optimistic than is my natural tendency.

22. 5/7/02009 — I resolve that if/when it becomes a reality, I will be filled with gratitude for something that may seem strange to others: The blessed opportunity to have serious thought be strictly a leisure activity.

23. 8/28/02009 — I resolve to buy a pair of shoes to replace [my old, worn out pair].

24. 8/29/02009 — I have resolved to treat [our dog] Sherman more as one of our children than as a long-term house guest.

25. 9/1/02009 — I have resolved to make flossing a regular, lifelong, habitual part of my daily routine.

26. 9/3/02009 — I resolve to train myself to scoop the clumps from [our cat] Willow's litter boxes on a daily basis instead of just when I remember to get around to it.

27. 9/15/02009 — I resolve to consistently wear protective ear plugs whenever I am running either the lawnmower or the snow thrower.

28. 9/15/02009 — I resolve that I will learn to ride a unicycle by this time next year.

29. 9/22/02009 — I resolve to try to remember to use "aught" in speaking the name of this year (or any year since 02001), should the opportunity arise.

30. 10/13/02009 — I resolve to make a serious effort to become a fairly proficient touch typist within a year.

31. 10/20/02009 — I resolve to try to grow my own pumpkin(s) in the following year so that I can carve a jack-o'-lantern in 02010 without having to pay for it.

32. 10/30/02009 — I resolve to not wallow in my failures, but instead to take pride in my successes.

33. 10/30/02009 — I resolve to become a coupon clipper, a comparison shopper, an anti-spendthrift (at least as far as grocery shopping is concerned).

34. 10/31/02009 — I resolve to fit regular visits to the American Red Cross into my schedule. I will not merely wait for a blood drive to come conveniently close to home on a day when I don't have to work. Instead, I will make a point of scheduling appointments and making the trip to Manchester to give away my platelets.

36. 11/28/02009 — I resolve to exercise much more regularly than I ever have before.

37. 12/10/02009 — I resolve to get around to formatting and self-publishing my 02005 novella, in hopes that it might find an audience.

38. 12/12/02009 — I resolve to learn how to operate comfortably and competently in the InDesign environment.

39. 12/26/02009 — I resolved to finally learn how to skate backwards.

40. 12/29/02009 — I resolve to make no New Year's Resolutions in the coming year.

02009 New Year's Resolution #39: Backwards Progress is Progress

Our lovely town (Newport, NH) has one of the largest town commons in the state. So the promotional material says. It does not specify whether that's one of the five largest, one of the ten largest, or one of the fifty largest. Anyway, I guess the implication is that it's pretty big and that should be a point of civic pride.

What's more interesting to me is what the town does with this asset. Specifically, the northern end, and specifically during winter: Every year, after some snow has fallen, they bring in a plow and push back the snow so that there is a cleared area surrounded by a low containing wall of snow. Then they turn a hose on and flood the cleared area with water. The water then freezes to become a public outdoor ice skating rink. At the northwestern corner of the rink, they bring in a wooden shed with lots of ice skates. These skates are available for the public to "rent", free of charge.

This is our fifth winter living in Newport. While I had always intended to take advantage of this wonderful amenity, I hadn't ever gotten around to doing so until today.

This afternoon, I finally went skating on the town common. I spent well over an hour out on the ice and it wasn't until I had passed the hour mark that I finally made my only fall of the day. Quite a surprising accomplishment, considering that a) I hadn't been ice skating in a few years, b) I never was very good at it, and c) the condition of the ice in this rink really leaves quite a lot to be desired. There is, of course, no Zamboni out there, so the ice is uneven and scarred.

Anyway, when I got out there, I made a spur of the moment New Year's Resolution:

I resolved to finally learn how to skate backwards.

Until today, I had never managed to do this. Why? It always seemed quite enough of a challenge to stay upright while going forwards. I didn't feel as if I had sufficiently mastered that part of the operation to warrant taking on anything any more difficult. But today was different, and today I taught myself to skate backwards. I am slow and shaky. I am not at all skilled and there is no elegance or nuance to my technique. But I now know that I can skate backwards, however amateurishly. Progress!

The Latest Evidence (It's All in My Head)

I present here argument number 5,279 (approx.) in favor of having a solipsistic worldview. What follows is, of course, a completely true story. I promise, plus I can't make this stuff up (unless I am making everything up).

A few nights ago, I decided to watch Love Actually on DVD. A fine motion picture. I highly recommend it, in case you haven't seen it. Anyway, I've watched it a bunch of times and I don't get tired of it.

However, I do get tired, and so I did not make it all the way through this viewing on Thursday night. I fell asleep.

On Friday night, I resumed my viewing when I went to bed. Again, I fell asleep.

Yesterday, I watched a bit more while I was hanging laundry in the early afternoon. Again, I didn't get all the way through to the end of the movie, as I stopped watching when the laundry was all hung.

At some point a little later in the afternoon, Beth was watching the teevee and a commercial for Aciphex came on. Without really paying attention to what the drug is designed to treat, Beth asked me whether I wanted some Aciphex. [This was asked solely for the comedic value, as somehow this drug company decided that it made sense to give a drug a name that sounds like "ass effects".]

I, of course, declined, but this did provide me with a golden opportunity to tell Beth that I had been thinking about the following idea recently: Shouldn't there be some sort of food that you could eat that would color your burps and farts? That would be worthy of the "ass effects" name! You could have green ass effects and pink ass effects and swirly ass effects.

So this was yesterday.

Last night, I went to bed and finished watching Love Actually. When it was over, I was still not quite sleepy. So, I decided to watch the Deleted Scenes section of the DVD. Despite having watched the movie a bunch of times, I had never before watched any of the deleted scenes on the disc.

Lo and behold, what do I discover in the deleted scenes?

You guessed it: There's a kid who gets in trouble at school because he wrote an essay about what he wants for Christmas, and what he wants is for farts to become visible! There's this whole funny sequence of showing how great it would be if people's farts were visible, including Queen Elizabeth II's farts.

Again, I repeat, I had never seen these deleted scenes before. I can also assure you that I had never heard these scenes described. I had never read about them. And there is absolutely nothing in the final cut of the movie that would suggest in any way that this scene was ever shot. In the final version of the movie, the kid was close to a nonentity. Emma Thompson's character made a brief reference to "my horrid son, Bernard". He might've had a line or two otherwise, but really he amounted to no more than an extra.

If this story suggests anything at all about the nature of the universe, here it is: It's all in my head.

02009 New Year's Resolution #38: Learn Something

After making my last New Year's Resolution, I decided to get to work on formatting for the printed version of my novella. I figured the most reliable way to ensure that it ends up looking like I want it to is to make a PDF to upload to Lulu. I figured I might as well try doing it in InDesign. A good idea, in theory. In practice, I was unable to get anywhere in my first half hour (or thereabouts) of trying. It turns out that my desktop publishing skills have really deteriorated in the last couple of years. Either that or InDesign (which, truth be told, is an application that I never really did use very much) is much less intuitive than I expected.

I'm fine with defining and applying styles. I'm not really quite as impressed with how Adobe has set up their styles as I would like to be, but it's a tolerable system and overall I think the software is terrific. But I can't figure out what should be the most basic and completely intuitive part of the process: making new pages appear automatically (with the proper formatting) when the text overflows the last page of the document.

This is horribly frustrating!

Which brings me to my thirty-eighth New Year's Resolution of the year:

I resolve to learn how to operate comfortably and competently in the InDesign environment.

Just typing that makes me feel like a bit of an imbecile. Oh well! I suppose that's good for me.

02009 New Year's Resolution #37: Swallow the Self-Publishing Pill

I spent some time today doing a bit of research on various tools for self-publishing. The reason: My thirty-seventh New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to get around to formatting and self-publishing my 02005 novella, in hopes that it might find an audience.

I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 02005. I was not a "winner" because instead of ending up with a 50,000 word "short novel", I only managed to write a 40,000 word novella.

I suppose it's fair to say that I didn't really fully embrace the "reckless abandon" aspect of the activity. Instead of throwing in a random plot line to continue my story (and thus increase my word count) beyond what felt like a reasonable stopping point, I stopped typing. The result was a cohesive piece of fiction that I am proud to have written. Had I gone the other route, I might've gotten a certain satisfaction from "winning" NaNoWriMo, but I am sure that it would not have really compared to the satisfaction I got from "being true to my vision". I am sure of this because I am familiar with my own nature.

Being familiar with my own nature, I am also quite sure that I'm terribly unlikely ever to seek out a literary agent or to go to the trouble (and through the inevitable frustration) of submitting my manuscript to publisher after publisher in hopes that one of them might like my story enough to want to publish it.

Nonetheless, I do think that it's a decent (if not great) piece of fiction. I think that it's the sort of thing that can likely find an appreciative audience if given an opportunity. (My sister liked it plenty, anyway.)

When I wrote the thing, just over four years ago, self publishing was about the last thing I would have expected to ever consider doing with it. "Self publishing" was, in my mind, exactly the same as "vanity publishing" and it carried an immense stigma. If I were to try to explain this stigma, it would probably come across as arrogant and mean spirited. Perhaps it's best to avoid that.

Anyway, over the course of these four years, my mind has changed (I think in response to a change in the publishing universe) and now I am at the point of being mentally prepared to do it without any reservations.

I expect I'll probably go with Lulu for making hard copies available (partly because they'll give me a free copy and partly because they throw in a free ISBN and a listing on Amazon). As for e-book distribution, I'm thinking I'll likely go through Feedbooks. If you have self-published or if you have looked into it yourself, I'd be happy to entertain suggestions for alternatives, particularly if you can make compelling arguments in favor of some other outlet or in opposition to these.

02009 New Year's Resolution #36: Exercise My Demons, Exorcise My Muscles, Something…

Yesterday, before I got into the shower, I did 20 push ups. I don't know why, exactly, I decided to do so. I guess I looked in the mirror and saw that my gut is smaller than it used to be and it really struck me that the loss of 27 lbs. this year is a substantial reduction in my weight. Ergo, doing push ups should be significantly easier than it would have been if I had tried it a year ago.

It was fairly easy. I didn't feel any pain. I didn't get winded. I didn't feel like I put any undue strain on my cardiovascular system. It seemed like an okay thing to do. And intellectually, I know that it's better to get exercise than to not.

I did not choose 20 because that's all I could manage. I didn't push myself to the limit. I just decided that 20 was what I would do, so I did 20.

This morning, before I got into the shower, I did 21 push ups. It felt not unlike yesterday's exercise. Good for me.

I'm not necessarily aiming to add one push up every day until I end up at this time next year doing 385 push ups in a day. But I am making my thirty-sixth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to exercise much more regularly than I ever have before.

Ideally, I will fit in some exercise every day so that it becomes a habit. I'm not sure whether push ups will be an everyday exercise. I suppose that might get kind of tiresome. But maybe not. I might add in some sit ups. And I really want to be able to keep up with Beth on a bike when springtime comes around, so I'll probably put in more time on the exercise bike as we get into the winter months than I have done through the end of the summer and into the fall.

The simple truth about me is that I am not at all predisposed to being a health nut. This is the reason why so many of my resolutions have had something to do with improving aspects of my health. I have, for too many years, relied on a functioning metabolism and a fair amount of luck to keep me from falling into a high risk group for cardiac failure or diabetes. Well, I'm approximately at the midpoint of my life expectancy (based on actuarial tables). I figure it's about time to start putting a little effort into staying reasonably healthy for the second half.

I do have a coupon on the refrigerator for a free trial membership at a health club. I will have to check, but I don't believe it has an expiration date. Who knows, maybe I'll get around to taking advantage of that offer sometime in the next year. What could it hurt?

02009 New Year's Resolution #35: The Non-Resolutions

This particular resolution isn't really a resolution at all. Instead, it is a way for me to sort of take credit for some "positive" things that I've been doing without having really ever resolved to do them. They're the sorts of things that could have been resolutions on their own merits. In fact, I could have just declared them to be resolutions and nobody would have been any wiser. However, I would have felt (in some strange way) as if I were cheating. So, I've decided to let the group count together as a single "Non-Resolution" New Year's Resolution.

Here they are:

I have largely stopped eating potatoes. My doctor told me that they are "empty calories". I'm not sure what that means, exactly. But he said in such a way as to indicate that he thinks that I get no benefit from eating them. I'm not completely off potatoes, but I'm eating a whole lot less of them. I haven't had a single potato chip in months (and I am a big big fan of potato chips!). I miss them sometimes, especially after eating a peanut butter sandwich. But I'm doing fine without them, and I figure that there's some chance that their disappearance from my diet has been a contributing factor to my weight loss.

I have largely stopped eating fast food. Again, not cold turkey, but significant. This has been partly a financial decision and partly a matter of wanting to increase my chances of continued enjoyment of reasonably good health and the benefits of weight loss.

Generally speaking, I have curtailed my ingestion of "junk food". I haven't bought a package of cookies in I don't know how long. I haven't been eating candy (except the little bit of chocolate that Beth gave me as a gift). Ice cream has become an occasional treat instead of a regular snack. (Although I must admit that I firmly believe that calling ice cream "junk food" is really quite unfair. Ice cream is nutritious and you'll not convince me otherwise!) When I have splurged on ice cream in recent months, it's almost always been light ice cream instead of full fat.

I have been eating yogurt. This is not exactly an ice cream replacement, as such. It's something that my doctor recommended for my health. I started eating the yogurt before I cut out so much of the junk food and ice cream. But I've learned to start thinking of the yogurt as a yummy treat instead of as a nasty necessity. My ability to do so is, I am sure, entirely thanks to having found a particular flavor of yogurt that tastes a lot like a dreamsicle. After trying a variety of different yogurt flavors by a variety of manufacturers, and finding most of them unpleasant (especially the goat's milk one (YUCK!)), I settled on one that I really like and I generally eat 1-2 cups per day.

I have lately been trimming my finger nails with a tool designed for the purpose instead of using my teeth. I can't explain why I have finally made such strides in breaking this lifelong "bad habit". Whatever the reason, I figure it's a good thing (or at least not a bad one).

There may be a few other such "good" non-resolutions that I've implemented in my life recently, but none that I can think of now.

02009 New Year's Resolution #34: Feed the Vampires

I used to donate blood very frequently. I went in for apheresis donations (platelets) quite regularly. I have lost count of how many pints of blood product I have donated over the course of my lifetime, but I know that it's somewhere well north of ten gallons. The skin in the crooks of my elbows is a mess of scar tissue from all of those Red Cross needles.

I view blood donation as my civic duty. I have all of this extra blood that I'm not using and I know that there are people who can benefit from it. I have never done anything to put my blood at risk for causing anyone harm. And I am somehow a member of the minority of people who are not infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV), which makes my blood products particularly valuable for certain types of recipients.

Sadly, I have not been quite as diligent in my donation schedule in recent days as I used to be. I donated whole blood last week and 9 weeks before that and I think about 8 or 9 weeks before that. But I have not been in for a platelet donation since December of 02007.

In January of 02008, I started a job that made it impossible to spend very many waking hours with my darling wife. I was working evenings while she was working days. So basically, we saw each other on weekends and during her 1/2 hour lunch breaks during the work week. I missed her desperately. Because her lunch breaks were about the only time we got to spend together (awake) during the week, that was my priority rather than devoting 4-5 hours to making the trip to Manchester and getting hooked up to the apheresis machine.

In July, I was laid off from that job. My work schedule is now much kinder, as Beth and I now get to spend every evening together. Plus, my current schedule has me off from work on Tuesdays and Fridays. Which means that I can now make my thirty-fourth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to fit regular visits to the American Red Cross into my schedule. I will not merely wait for a blood drive to come conveniently close to home on a day when I don't have to work. Instead, I will make a point of scheduling appointments and making the trip to Manchester to give away my platelets.

This may end up meaning that I will essentially give up on whole blood donations in favor of the apheresis appointments. That may not be quite so good for the whole blood supply. But because I won't have to wait 8 weeks between donations, I will be able to greatly increase the total amount of blood product that I put into the system. I may not make the maximum of 24 platelet donations per year, but I'm certainly aiming to donate a whole lot more often than I have done in the last year (which I think probably amounts to a pitiful 5 or 6 donations).

If I can help save more lives, that's generally good, right?

02009 New Year's Resolution #33: Join the Coupon Moms of the World

Money is scarce. There, I said it.

I have always looked at myself (at least from a frugality standpoint) as a millionaire who doesn't have his millions. That is, I have never been particularly thrifty.

These two things are at odds, and something must change.

Hence, New Year's Resolution #33:

I resolve to become a coupon clipper, a comparison shopper, an anti-spendthrift (at least as far as grocery shopping is concerned).

I have recently discovered the Coupon Mom web site. If you join the site (which is free), you get access to an 8-page PDF that contains useful advice for how to get the most out of your grocery store dollar. I am going to follow the advice given (at least a good amount of it, if not all of it). I have confidence that this will result in me spending less money than I otherwise would if left to my own tendencies. If nothing else, it will teach me which stores offer better deals on which of the products I regularly buy and will improve my dollars per goods ratio based solely on that. I have never been a comparison shopper and have instead shopped either wherever is most convenient or wherever I like the atmosphere rather than based on where I can get the best bargain. This is stupid, and should end. Likewise, the "buy it when you run out" approach that I have always used is wasteful, compared to the "buy it when it's on sale" approach. The latter takes some planning, but is definitely worth the little bit of effort it requires.

So there.