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.

02009 New Year's Resolution #32: Failure Is Not An Option

Here we are in the 44th week of the year and I'm just now typing up my 32nd New Year's Resolution. At this point, there is no longer anything optional about failing to live up to my goal for New Year's Resolution #5. ["I resolve to try to make at least one New Year's Resolution for every week this year."] I have made an effort, so in that sense I have succeeded in satisfying the "try" aspect of the resolution. But it is now clear that failure to get to 52 is an inevitability.

There are other resolutions that I will also surely not succeed at. However, there are also those that I have succeeded at or that I am sure to succeed at.

For example, I am making steady progress in my attempt to learn to touch type (resolution #30), and I don't intend to give up until I have done it. Likewise, I have dropped more than 20 lbs. so far this year, putting me squarely into the "healthy" range on the BMI chart. In fact, as of this morning, I was 10 lbs. lighter than the target weight I set for myself in resolution #6. As far as I'm concerned, the weight loss is going to continue for the foreseeable future, as I'm still not quite as slender as I would like to be. I'm flossing daily (with only very rare exceptions) for the first time in my life. I've succeeded in training myself to clean the litter box every day (or very nearly so). I hardly ever drink soda any more.

All in all, I've been surprisingly successful in setting achievable goals that are (to varying degrees) meaningful to me. Likewise, I have been surprisingly successful in achieving those goals.

Have any of these things made me a better person? I doubt it. Even all added together, I don't really think that they make me a better person. However, they have made me more the person I would like to be, and that's what counts. There's still lots of room for improvement, but that's part of the opportunity afforded by the experience of living. Which brings me to New Year's Resolution #32:

I resolve to not wallow in my failures, but instead to take pride in my successes.

This applies specifically to my Year of Many Resolutions project. But it also applies more generally to life. I'm tired of being down on myself for not accomplishing anything noteworthy in this life. I'd rather just accept that while I may be an overall failure, at least I am one who has enough positive attributes to have not driven my darling wife away. That's success enough, right?

02009 New Year's Resolution #31: Grow My Own (Or Try, Anyway)

I carved a jack-o'-lantern last week to bring to the Keene Pumpkin Festival. I did my carving about three days earlier than I should have done. As a result, my pumpkin was starting to look a bit pathetic by the time it made its way to Keene.

Nonetheless, it got some compliments. Plus, it earned me a little certificate saying that I had contributed to this year's effort. The initial count said that we beat the city's previous record, with over 29,000 lit jack-o'-lanterns, but that we missed out on regaining the world record from Boston. However, it seems that there were some log sheets that had been skipped and were discovered after the initial count was done. So a recount is in the works, apparently scheduled for today. I tend to doubt that the world record will return to Keene. But I'll be sure to pay attention to the news, just to satisfy my curiosity.

Anyway, it occurred to me as I was about to buy my pumpkin that I could throw my seeds away, eat my seeds, or use my seeds. This year, I have decided to use them. More specifically, I have decided to save them for next year and try to use them next year to grow my own pumpkins. Which brings me to my thirty-first new year's resolution of 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.

If successful, I may try to do the same year after year. If unsuccessful, I think I will likely take this as evidence that cultivating plants simply is not my bag.

As of now, I have extracted something like 300 seeds. I have washed them. And I currently have them drying on a screen. In a few weeks (when I'm fairly confident that they have dried thoroughly), I will stash them away in a secure location to wait until next spring or summer, when it'll be time to try to get [at least some of] them to become fruiting plants.

02009 New Year's Resolution #30: Be More Like Everyone Else

So far, every one of the tens of thousands of words that I've typed in this blog has been typed using the old tried and true method of hunting and pecking. That's right, folks: I am likely the last of the non-touch typists. This means that I have reason to feel inferior to everyone else in the world. (You are all touch typists, right?) Well, with my thirtieth new year's resolution of 02009, I aim to finally play catch up!

I resolve to make a serious effort to become a fairly proficient touch typist within a year.

That ought to level the playing field a bit.