My New Year’s resolution was to cut out alcohol as of January 1st. I’m doing fine so far, which is what I was hoping for, and also maybe a little bit expecting (knock on wood), given past experience: I quit smoking on my 30th birthday after having had a pack-a-day Camel filters habit for fourteen years, and I’ve never had the desire to go back. Which isn’t to say it’s easy, exactly: just like when I ditched the nicotine, I’ve had a terrible sweet tooth for the past three weeks. Today, it was an ice cream bar, picked up on my way home from campus and saved for after dinner. So I’m sitting there at my desk, with my ice cream bar, and Zeugma decides that this is very interesting. No dice when she stretches out a paw for it (maybe it’s the food on a stick thing that does it for her?), so she quickly dashes into the other room, and comes trotting back with a Post-It note in her teeth. Deposits it in front of me, looks at me expectantly, and then — when I don’t do what she clearly expects of me — stretches out a paw for the ice cream again. Post-it note, ice cream: that’s a good trade, right?
A Fair Exchange
Hey Mike, good for you. I don’t find that New Year’s resolutions work for me but that’s awesome. I’m with you, man.
It depends. What was written on the Post-It note? “Turn over the ice cream and no one gets hurt?”
I guess the post-it is a good alternative to say… a dead mouse or something. Good luck with your resolution. Now your friends will no longer ask you if you want to go out because your fun to be around when your drunk. Instead, they will ask you to go out so you can drive their drunk arses around. A worthwile trade-off in my book. Glad to see you posting again. I was having vitia withdrawals!
Me: “Where am I going to get my daily dose of rhetoric and composition?”
Wife: “Honey, you know I don’t speak Spanish.”
Good luck, bro.
Love the image of Zeugma with Post-It note. Our cats have brought me many things, but never a gloss on what they’d been reading. :-}
And good luck with the resolution. Nice to see you back here again, too.
New Year’s resolutions don’t usually work for me, either, Michelle — but what worked with quitting smoking was the long talking-myself-into-it lead-up to the cutoff date, which was a big and easy-to-remember day, and that was the same thing this time. Like, it wasn’t so much the New Year’s thing as it was an easy ne plus ultra. (How’s that for Spanish?)
And Rob, you know I got some stories about you too, bro; I’m remembering a certain minor biohazard incident ten years ago in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — it sounded like you were calling Cohan’s name, if I remember things right? But, yeah, I do recall being a bit of a spectacle at times. (George: “Oh, look. Mike’s talking like Chewbacca from ‘Star Wars.'”)
And I’m glad to be working back into the habit of writing here regularly. I’ve gotten a good bit of dissertation work since early December; the latest thing on the agenda is going to be whipping Chapter 2 into shape, and then doing two different things with Chapter 5 — one, expanding the draft I’ve got more into a full-size chapter, and two, turning that chapter draft into my CCCC presentation. Which should definitely keep Zeugma in Post-It notes for a good long while.
Good on you, man. 🙂