New Year's resolutions

It's January 1, and my resolutions for today are as follows:

2 lb. 85% ground beef
2 green peppers
3 medium onions
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can kidney beans

Yes, I know that sounds more like a shopping list than a resolution. But I'm resolved to making chili tomorrow and that makes acquiring the ingredients a resolution.

Like many of you (I presume), I've always thought making New Year's resolutions is stupid. I mean, they're not any stupider than making resolutions on January 2 or March 11 or whenever. Making resolutions is always dumb unless you are actually resolved to doing something. It's not the same as saying you want to do something.

When I resolved to lose weight, I was ready to completely change the way I ate permanently. I had to be, or it would have been a wanna do and not a resolution. It was and still is an every day, every snack and meal project. I've lost 15 pounds and kept them off for nearly 2 years, but the food is still there.

So here are my New Year's resolutions. They're roughly in order of priority

1. Drink 33% less alcohol. I like to drink alcoholic beverages of many sorts. I have done so for the past 40 years. I don't like to and therefore virtually never get drunk and I don't let it interfere with my functioning, but according to the statistics, I am drinking 50% more than is good for my long term health. Fortunately, thanks to the way percentages work, changing that only requires that I drink 33% less. I've come to this because I've done virtually everything else possible to improve my health and this is what is left.
2. Read more, especially fiction. I've already started doing this and am pleased with how it takes me out of my own head. So also good for my health I think.
3. Write more. Either blogging or some other form.
4. Make my math tests way way harder. No, not really.

I think that's it for actual resolutions. Wanna do's are unchanged from the past- see more live music, go to New York more frequently, see friends and close family more often, get more sleep, that kind of thing.

I wouldn't say that 2014 was an especially good or bad year. It was eventful and quiet and happy and sad, like you'd expect a large collection of days to be. I'm looking forward to 2015.

Home today

For some reason, I didn't  really want to spend a lot of time walking in San Francisco. That may have to do with the fact that the only times available to me were late at night and very early (like 5AM early) in the morning. This is not quite the same as a leisurely stroll up Nob Hill on a sunny afternoon.

Just to refer back to an earlier post, the important thing about San Francisco is that it is very very very hilly. And not any of those wimpy-ass normal hills. These are real nasty buggers and I wasn't into the climbing thing.

We did have a pleasant enough stay, with one walk through the tackiest part of Chinatown. Then a good dinner at a place called Waterbar, which, in no real order of importance, had great food, sat below the Bay Bridge, which is now a light show as well as a crucial transportation link (when they were designing the thing, was the spec combined? "We want a great light show for the tourists, but let's use it to connect San Francisco to the East Bay"), had floor-to-ceiling fish tanks and was the first place to serve an alcoholic beverage to my 20 and 178/365 year-old daughter. It was a nice way to end.

As I originally stated, this wasn't a vacation of any sort. It was a visit, and a very successful one. I got to spend some good time with people I love, which sounds corny but is actually important. I could have done without the 400 miles of driving, but this is California, after all.

Our trip back was too easy to be called routine. We left right on time and arrived an hour early. And even though our destination was Philadelphia, we were able to park at our gate within a few minutes of arrival. Of course, it took almost 30 minutes for the baggage to show up (I always wonder if the people at PHL are surprised when these flights arrive or if they're just understaffed). Whatever. We were home 30 minutes after our scheduled arrival time. I even had time to go buy a mattress for my daughter's apartment.

The first half of today was devoted to getting whatever last-minute stuff needs to get done to move my daughter to New York on Friday. The second half was devoted to drinking wine and trying to stay upright.

Happy new year!