Resolution - Recycled...

Resolved not to Resolve – does that mean I did??

I’m not sure why it is that friends and family expect you’ll make a resolution at the beginning of each year. What is the purpose?

Folks often resolve loose weight, for instance, at the beginning of the year. They make an attempt at it for the first couple days, heck even a month, and then they forget or become to busy and *poof* gone is their resolve.

It’s that way with many things that people think they should do, but don’t want to, or don’t have the strength or will power to follow thru with. Over the years I’ve seen many a friend make a resolution only to watch it go down the toilet. As I’m writing I think hard to find ONE, my own from the past or even one belonging to someone else, I’m aware of that actually was seen through to the end. Not the frivolous mind you – but a heart felt resolution that was completed. Sad to say, I’m at a loss for an example.

Among the many resolutions tossed into the ring each year (see if you recognize any of these) are:

Loose – Weight, baggage (boy or girl friend), clutter, chocolate craving, drinking habit, smoking habit and all other bad habits
Find or Make more time – or family, to read, to write, lost friends, the garage (the inside – of course) and journals
Do’s - finish projects, exercise, correspond, organize, limit TV time to 4 hours per week, cook at home, begin Christmas shopping in July, find a new job, and clean house every week
Do No More – drink (so much), smoke, over eat, stalk the ex-boyfriend, eat out every week (night), spend all free time playing video games, charge all gifts to the credit cards next year, complain about the job and attend gatherings as the wall flower.

My biggest questions or complaints – call them what you will – with the concept of resolutions are:

• Why wait until the first of the year to resolve to do something you may have known about for the last 6 or 9 or even 12 months and should have been resolved to do all along?
• What is so damn special about the first of the year that makes folks want to ‘be a better person’? Shouldn’t we want to be that better person when we realize there is a problem, instead of waiting until the beginning of a new year.
• Do the many cocktails ingested during the celebration on the even of the new year make it that much easier to face the unpleasant task, therefore making it easier to resolve?

So this year (as I have done in the past) I resolved not to make any resolutions.. but again I have to ask, in doing so.. have I then made a resolution?

And would it be better stated, that I resolve not to make a “New Years Resolution” but resolve to make the changes during the year, as needed, instead of waiting 364 days to do something about it?

Food for thought? Happy New Year!!

This post (or most of it) was recycled from a now lost blog post in 2005.

Vacation Post Part I

I have much to tell, and little time so I'm putting up a place holder for my Vacation post.

Dub, Neeper and cousin Chicken went for week of fun in the 'sometimes sun' on the Oregon Coast. I have oodles of snaps to post and a few tales to tell.

I'll be back to fill this in when I'm back in the Emerald City.


We departed from Seattle around 2 PM on Sunday and drove to Portland, OR. Along the way we found a traffic jam just south of Chehalis because of an accident in the north bound lanes, with all the lookie-loo rubber neckers.
Just after that back up broke up there was another one around Centrailia because of a water park they're building on the west side of I-5.

The picture on the left I found on the net is from a Texas Water Park, and the funnel on I-5 is yellow and red, but you can imagine the folks driving by very slowly to take a look. If I head that way again any time soon, I'll be sure to have the camera ready, but we decided that this will be a hazard from now on, just one more reason to drive that stretch of road at night.
Here's a different shot of the Tornado in Darien Lake.

We traveled SW from Portland thru McMinville out to Lincoln City. By the time we made it to where we could see the ocean, it was quite dark. We made it to the cabin at the Waldport KOA around 1 AM, and crashed for the night. It rained quite a bit that night, I was very happy to be in a cabin.

Monday was typical of Oregon Coast weather, it wasn't really rainy, just low flying clouds, almost foggy. Dub and I put up a wind break on the cabin deck so I could make breakfast. We are very proud of our shelter. It was so well protected from the wind that we could sit a styrofoam cup on the bench and even with all the wind whipp'n around it didn't blow away. We stayed around camp, recovering from the long drive but when we ventured out late in the afternoon we headed north a bit to the Devil's Punch Bowl. The tide was in, so we didn't make it to the tide pools, but DID manage to have a late lunch at MO's. Good food and fun.

Tuesday was glorious and we headed south on this day to Florence, to the sand dunes. With Neeper's brokern arm in a cast, we were concerned about sand, so we wrapped her up in a plastic bag like she was headed to the shower, but told her not to try swimming. I'd hoped the girls would be able to climb the big dune like my Bordar and I did when we were kids, but the area has been taken over by ORV (off road vehicle) traffic and we decided it just was not safe for them to try it. The tide was just starting in when we made it to the beach at south jetty #2. The girls and Dub played in the surf, digging for clams and picking up shells. It was very nice to be back in my old stomping grounds, on the ocean where the sound of the wind and waves is very soothing. We BBQ'd dogs that night and made s'mores. Everyone was bushed from climbing around in the sand that day and we all had a solid sleep.

I'll add a few more snaps when I figure out how to download the remaining pictures from the camera, and will post part II (and maybe III) in the next day or four.