You say you want a resolution

I am going to keep with tradition and post my New Year’s Resolutions. It worked out rather well last year. There is something about posting your goals for everyone to see that makes you feel required to do everything possible to accomplish them. Plus, it just makes me feel better to know that I am starting the year with a list of ten things that I must accomplish. Here we go.

Resolution # 1: Get my weight down to under 190 pounds: Ok, I had this resolution last year and I failed. But this year I really need to accomplish it. For one thing, I’m not getting any younger and carrying excess weight is just going to get worse and worse for me healthwise. But more importantly I have a wedding to prepare for and I have to do something to make all in attendance not wonder exactly how I ended up with someone as amazing as Kim. Well, they’ll all be thinking that anyway but at least my weight will not be a factor. In a perfect world I’ll be walking down the aisle lifting up my shirt to show off my six pack abs. (Ok, maybe I’m watching a few too many episodes of Jersey Shore.)

Resolution # 2: Be more attentive: I used to be the king of multi-tasking. I could watch TV, surf the web, run equations and hold a conversation all at the same time. Now I can barely do one thing at a time yet I haven’t done anything in my day to day operations to account for this. The perfect example is that I will be talking to Kim on the phone and surfing the web at the same time and it becomes readily apparent that I am not listening to anything she says. This is made all the more worse by the fact that I have the horrible habit of saying “Yes” and “Uh huh” during any lull in a conversation when I haven’t been paying attention or even understand a single world that has been said over the past minute. This is one of those habits that I just simply need to break. So I vow to be more attentive in conversations this year.

Resolution # 3: Complete a 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle by myself: I have one sitting in my living room at this moment and it has been taunting me for the past year. I just feel the urge to try something extremely complex, time consuming and utterly meaningless just to see if I can do it. Plus, it will help me relax in what I assume is going to be an extremely busy year.

Resolution # 4: Have breakfast every day: And I mean a real breakfast. A granola bar or a bagel will not count. Everything I have ever read about staying healthy and losing weight emphasizes how important it is to have breakfast. I pretty much never have breakfast and have been living this way for most of my life. Well, at some point we all have to grow up and become adults and start our day with a good healthy breakfast. And speaking of starting your day…

Resolution # 5: Get to work earlier: It is nice that I work in an office where I have some flexibility in my start time as I am simply not an early riser. Or at least I am not a morning person. It takes me a while to get going and I have set my schedule to take advantage of that so I don’t start my workday in a state where typing in my password is about all I can accomplish for the first half hour. But, I still think I can shift my schedule forward if just by getting out of bed when my alarm goes off instead of hitting snooze time after time. I really feel that this slight change in schedule will make my life so much better.

Resolution # 6: Learn to cook to the point that I can make dinner for Kim: Every year I say that I am going to learn to cook but I never quite get there. Mainly because I am cooking for me and, well, when you have spent so many years eating processed foods due to convenience it is tough to break the habit. Now I have someone in my life who makes me want to improve myself in every way and this is one of those ways. Kim does the cooking when we are together and while that is awesome I feel the need to help. My big goal is to be able to cook for her, single handedly, one of the meals in John Besh’s cookbook “My New Orleans” and have her enjoy it. Tall order but it should be fun trying.

Resolution # 7: Reader’s Choice: This worked out well last year so I am trying it again. What do you want me to accomplish in 2010? What lofty goal or comedic endeavor should I undertake? The only limit is your imagination. Post your ideas in the comments and I will choose the best, or quite possibly only, suggestion.

Resolution # 8: Have 100 people read the blog in one day: Usually I have a writing related goal with regards to completing a book such as writing a novel or a collection of short pieces or the best of the blog. The thing is that takes a lot of time and with work and wedding planning and losing weight and everything else in my day to day existence I just don’t know if I have enough time for something that big this year. But, I certainly plan to keep blogging and if this is going to be my creative outlet I might as well make it the best I can be. Last year I aimed for 50 people and reached it several times. This time I’m going for 100 unique hits in a single day. For that to happen someone must read the post and link it or email it to their friends. I will have to write something clever enough so that people who have never met me will read it. Big challenge but I might be able to pull it off.

Resolution # 9: Expand my musical tastes: For someone with a CD collection the size of mine my tastes are really, really narrow. For the past few years I have picked up nothing outside of the Alt-Country genre and I have some huge gaps. No jazz or blues really, even those by the classics. No Miles Davis or John Coltrane or any of the other legends. If what is being released now doesn’t speak to me (and I’ve reached the age where popular music is not aimed for my target market) I think I might as well explore the past. Hell, I might as well pick up some old school punk while I am at it and listen to the stuff that scared me when I was a kid growing up.

Resolution # 10: Prepare to be the best husband that I can be: It is so strange to think of myself in that term. Husband. All my life I have searched for the woman of my dreams but I have never really focused on what it will mean to be a husband. That is what this last resolution is about. Searching myself to realize what I must do in order to be the best that I can possibly be for Kim. We’ll work to have the wedding we want and the life that we want but I will have to realize that I will be changing from an I to a we. And trust me, I can’t wait for that day.

13th Best Album of the Decade: Rufus Wainwright “Want One” (2003): I became a Rufus fan in a real roundabout way. People who knew that I was a huge Jeff Buckley fan kept on telling me to listen to Rufus because he also sung a version of Halleluiah and was using Jeff’s rhythm section for his band. I also knew enough of his background (the son of Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle) to know that he was worth a listen. I don’t think that I ever anticipated to hear a baroque pop masterpiece like Want One. Really, really stunning.

Knock Loud I'm Home

(Hey, the video worked so the Wednesday Night Music Club is in full effect. See, it’s just like Sheryl Crow except that this is based on talent and skill and ability as opposed to solely good hair. I know people don’t like the fact that I rip on Sheryl Crow all the time but after what she did to Lance Armstrong I feel she deserves it. She really busted his ball….

[Crickets]

Oh, give me a break. It’s late.)

Yep, it’s a very late night post as I just got back from seeing Rufus Wainwright and the lovely and talented Neko Case. It was a casino show, which even made Neko comment on how a) this was her first performance in a casino and b) the free turkey buffet was mighty satisfying. To be honest, this was one of the best shows I’ve seen at Harrah’s. Sound was good, as it typically is, but I was also able to get a beet in a timely fashion and the crowd was really cool. There was a minimum number of refugees from the slot machines making their way to see the performance carting their bottle of oxygen and carton of menthol lights with them. In fact, it was more of a trivia night out on the town as I ran into four other regulars at the show. See, we can do more than just answer questions on celebrity gossip.

(Though did you hear the rumor that My Beloved Lindsay may be preggers? Who’s the father? And what are the odds that the baby would be born with either a tail or gills?)

Anyway, it was a great show. You can never really fault Rufus Wainwright for his performances because he will just go all out every time. It’s not just that he decides to do some Judy Garland songs in his performance. It’s that he’ll also cover them while dressed as Judy Garland, complete with high heels and a fedora. He had a slightly different band than I’ve seen with him before but the horn section was a very nice addition. Made for a different and much fuller sound. Not sure if it matches when he had Shannon McNally and Jane Wasser singing backup but just a really solid performance.

Neko was awesome as always. It’s not like I’ll ever say anything different; I pretty much adore everything that she does. There’s something about her voice that just hits me the right way. I could listen to it all night and it truly does sound better late at night in a dark smoky club. It needs that dangerous edge to bring out the sultriness. That ties in with the fact that her music is pretty simple. I’m not sure if simple is the right word (since Jon Rauhouse does some incredible pedal steel guitar for her), maybe clean is more of what I’m going for. There’s very little artifice going on. She takes the stage wearing jeans, the banter between the band and the crowd is natural, and the focus is really on Neko and her voice. There’s no bling to the show and that’s what makes it so cool.

So tonight was Neko Case (ranked 4th on my Perfect Mate list) and next week is Kelly Willis (ranked 3rd on my Perfect Mate list). Now all I need to do is run into Natalie Portman while grocery shopping and have Julie Delpy stop by because the mailman delivered a letter to the wrong address and my month will be perfect. Hey, if you dream it it will come true, right? Isn’t that what that book they keep on pushing on me at Border’s says? At some point the universe will have to come around to my point of view.

Until then, have a great weekend everyone.