New Year's Eve

There’s less than three hours left to the year 2008, and time to look forward to 2009

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My New Year’s Resolutions are always pretty much variations of the same issues which reflect basic deficiencies in my character, moral fiber and self-esteem:

1. Lose weight

2. Get organized.

Since I had a good dinner, when I got home from work (halibut, given to all the Chieftain’s employees by our new fearless leader, who doubles as an Alaskan fisherman), I’m luckily not very hungry for all the New Years Eve munchies I could dig up, which actually means a head start on resolution #1.

At different times I have been somewhat successful with the losing weight thing, but the syndrome that most people seem to go through -- lose, gain it back, plus a few -- has happened to me more than once. I did shed a few this summer again, but have been pretty stalled.

This new year I may have a jump start and a support group. Most employees of the newspaper could stand to lose some weight (everyone except Hector, five out of six), so we’re sponsoring a Biggest Loser challenge to other businesses and organizations in the county.

There will be a once-a-week weigh in, and everyone will see how much they can collectively lose in three months -- the businesses will pay $1 for each pound lost to the food bank. There's a few details to iron out, but that's the general idea.

A competitive element thrown in (along with way too much publicity) should give me some real incentive to actually drop some real pounds (again); my motivation, to look good with Lily and Addie without carefully posing us and directing the angle of every photograph.

The get-organized resolution, well, I don’t have much hope. But maybe I could break it down into smaller components, like keep the kitchen drawers or my computer desk organized or something. We’ll see. I’ll try to come up with some more concrete resolutions. After all, one year I did quit smoking, so miracles do happen.

Christmas didn’t quite work out as we’d planned. After absolutely crazy winter weather dumped a foot of snow in the Portland area (a white Christmas record!), periodically closed 1-84 and made trying to forecast driving conditions a nightmare, Jenny, Lawrence, Addie and Lily celebrated the holiday at home in Tigard (with Uncle Matt) instead of Joseph.

I missed seeing the joy and excitement of my little granddaughters on Christmas morning and the memory-building time, but wasn’t depressed or anything. It was just a quiet lazy day at home with my pretty Christmas tree, and a trip to Enterprise for the community Christmas dinner (a nice meal and photo op), plus a drive home through our annual real-life Christmas card on Hurricane Creek highway.

Ironically, most of the snow storms missed us here in the Wallowa Mountains and places like Portland and Pendleton had more snow than Joseph. On Saturday after Christmas I took photos of Ferguson Ridge ski area, and they said there was only 18 inches on top (5,800 ft elevation)

New Years Day morning tomorrow, I’m looking forward to taking photos of all the guys who work at the Chieftain (all three of them) jumping into Wallowa Lake for the Polar Bear dip with a bunch of other crazy locals. Last year the lake water temperature was 41 degrees, and the air temperature 14. Brrrr. No way I’d do it, but should be fun watching and taking photos!

Time to take the tree down tomorrow, too. I'll miss it.