The grand scheme for '08

What am I trying to do here today? What is the grand scheme of things?

I am trying to write some "new year's resolutions" for 2008, that, I hope, won't be traditional stuff.

It's untraditional already--it appears a few days after the start of the year. Well, I make 'em up as I go along. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

1. I'd like to be happier. Too many days are just a grind, without a lot of fun. Today, for instance. Well, today is a cloudy, coldish winter day, so it goes without saying.

2. I want to hold off getting a new car until 2009. My buggy now has 140,000 miles and is doing fairly well. But I would like something with a little more room. So maybe I ultimately won't be able/want to wait. We'll see what the money situation is like. A lot of uncertainty in this one, as you can see..

3. New widescreen TV by the time the Stanley Cup playoffs start in April. Hockey on a digital TV sounds pretty cool. So do all my widescreen movies. It won't be a huge one--it may not even be HD. But it will be a big step up over what sits in the living room now.

4. I want to get away more. Our of town. Road trips. Sometimes by myself, sometimes with my wife. That should be a lot easier than last year, since we won't have to clean all the stuff out of my mom's house again. Speaking of which...

5. Selling my mom's house. Or renting it out. It's costing me too much money, what with heating, taxes and insurance. Let some one else pay..

6. Finding a nude beach/lake I can visit fairly often. Once in a while, anyway. If that guy would ever write back, it should take care of it. Maybe I need to enlist S to help--she would be happy to.

7. Freedom Fest again this summer. Nuff said. Will need a new tent for that, I think. Must do research into that.

8. New upstairs windows on the house. Replace the crappy old stuff.

9. Go to bed earlier. Especially when I'm feeling horny. Blogs can wait.

10. More interesting blog entries. Fewer "day in the life" stories. More philosophical, more controversial topics, more stream of consciousness entries, which can take weird turns.

11. Let my wife be herself. Flip side: Let me be myself. Everyone is happier that way.

12. More sexy movies. More foreign movies. So what if she doesn't like subtitles? Tough. Take a chance!

13. Clean up household clutter. Get rid of stuff I don't want to keep. Sounds easy ... in theory. But I have to do some of that before I can get the new TV.

14. See a live hockey game. Not a kids game, either. If only my weekends weren't so crazy.

15. Get away from the prudes and the closed-minded people. Let's live life a little.

16. Find something else to cut out of my diet (following the trail blazed by white bread and 2% milk). Sugared soda could be next, except my wife likes them, David likes them, and I have this fondness for root beer. Meat? That's tough, with my wife around; most of her recipes involve meat somehow. But maybe a meatless day or two each week isn't out of the question.