Failure Is the Best Teacher

It's December.  Time to check in and see how the ol' New Year's Resolutions are coming along.  Isn't it a little late in the game to check my progress?  Why yes it is.  I have no idea what I even resolved.  Well, let's take a look...

1. Use protection.  
- Um, OK. I mean who can really say what is and isn't protection, anyway, right? Darwin's still the baby of the family, so let's just leave it at that.
2. Stop drinking soda. Unless there is rum or ice cream in it. Or both.
- Didn't give it up entirely, but cut back drastically. Really only have it when I need a pick me up and I don't have a Red Bull handy. Cuba Libre is still the over-the-bar medication of choice.
3. Only use that toilet paper with lotion in it. My ass deserves only the best.
- Kept a roll of the good stuff with me at all times. Had to use the sandpaper variety that one time. My ass and I agreed never to talk about that day again.
4. Become literate again -- finish at least twelve books. Harold and the Purple Crayon and such do not count.
- Epic fail. I haven't even finished one book. Unless you count The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. It's not that I haven't read at all, but I started with The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. It's a good book, but not exactly a page turner. And 736 is a lot of pages. Le sigh.
5. At any given time, limit the DVR to recording no more than eight shows that I will never, ever, ever watch.
- This was easy. We moved in with my wife's parents and I never even hooked up the DVR. Success by default!
6. Only eat bacon on odd days or days that are divisible by two.
- I ate loads of bacon while still falling short.  My doctor rejoices at my failure on this one.
7. Find out what it's like to go to bed before midnight.
- Meh. I tried it. Life is boring when you don't need a Red Bull by 10:00 AM
8. Redesign this ugly ass standard blog template.
- Done and done.
9. Create the sweetest iPhone app ever and sell it on iTunes and make billions of dollars and buy the Chicago Bears and fire everyone from Jerry Angelo on down.
- Well, the Bears are having a good season. This no longer seemed prudent.
10. Find one redeeming quality about Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. There's got to be something.
- Fail, but totally not my fault.
11. Face the fact that McDonald's is not a healthy lunch just because I got the Apple Dippers.
- I faced the fact. But I still don't care.
12. Find out what it's like to eat a vegetable more than once in one day.
- I'll tell you what it's like. It's like SUCK.
13. Go un-bald.
- Efforting. Efforting. Efforting.
14. Beat Julie at something. Ideally soccer, but anything will do.
- I totally pwned Julie this year. You KNOW it.
15. Build something that can actually be used/displayed somewhere in the house besides a dark corner of our unfinished basement.
- Nope. But there's still time.
16. Potty train the twins. Or teach them to change their own diapers. (And Darwin's diaper while they're at it.)
- Amelia: check. Truman? Close. I mean, I wouldn't let him sleep on your new leather sofa or anything, but that could be said about some of my college buddies, too...
17. Finish painting that friggin' Sponge Bob project that I started for Jameson ages ago.
- Done.  Like really, I did this one.
18. Either get in shape or get my own mini-series on the Discovery Health channel. No more of this spare tire purgatory. Shit or get off the pot, so to speak.
- I'm 12 pounds lighter than when I started. I still have a spare tire, but it's more like the space saver variety rather than a full size spare.
19. Appreciate my wife and kids at least enough so that when I'm ninety and I wander out of the house and get lost that they'll come looking for me in a matter of hours, not a matter of days or weeks.
- You'll have to ask them.
20. Use protection.
- No announcements. Yet.