Melting my resolutions away.

One of my resolutions this past year was to get in shape.

“I’m going to run,” I told my brother. “I want to do a race.”

“You know you actually have to run those,” he told me. “Wait. Do you even know how to run?”

And when he saw how upset I got, he said, “Well seriously. Do you?”

Undeterred, my mother and I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods later that day and tried on the cheapest pair of running sneakers we could find. They were neon orange and for the first time in my life I said, “I don’t care what they look like, I just want them to fit,” to the sales clerk.

On our way out the door, we ran into my father and my brother, who were supposed to be clear across town picking out a new refrigerator, but somehow ended up at Dick’s looking for us.

“Hey! What you got there?” my dad asked and pointed at my bag.

“Running sneakers,” I told him.

“Running sneakers?!” he screeched. “You run?! Oh I gotta see this.”

Motivated by aggravation and pure spite I ran for miles each day over the next two weeks and I stopped only when my knee swelled so much that I couldn’t walk down stairs and part of the sole of my foot rubbed off and I had to limp.

But long story short - I kept the resolution. I even ran a 4 mile race in April and managed to get on the 11 o’clock local news. I was the girl who nearly ran into the camera man as I tried to avoid plowing over the person in front of me who tripped over a curb.

I was distracted because seconds before the race started my brother said to me, “Does your head ever pop?”

And I said, “What the heck are you talking about?”

And he said, “You know - like popping your knuckles, but in your head.”

“No, I don’t know.”

He shrugged. “Happens to me all the time.”

And then he took off sprinting while I shouted, “No seriously, you should get that checked out! That shit aint right!”

And that’s when someone else fell in my path, and I hopped over him - all while the news anchor taunted us with something like, “Oh watch, don’t trip!” on television.

But luckily I won’t have to put myself through that trauma again, thanks to a helpful New Year’s resolution suggestion from The Melting Pot.

“Rather than falling into the annual trap of resolving (and then failing) to lose weight, get out of debt or start to exercise, The Melting Pot agrees with recent polls conducted by General Nutrition Centers, Quicken and others that show that more than 50 percent of Americans vow to appreciate loved ones and spend more time with family and friends this year.”

Precisely. Who needs to pay their student loans when there’s a vat of cheese needing attention?

In keeping with this suggestion, I lugged out a fondue pot from the back of my closet, bought six types of vegetables and a Sterno can.

My girlfriends are coming over on Dec. 31 and this year’s theme is “New Year’s Cheese.”

Running can wait until 2009.

What rhymes with "super-fast?"

Like any child whose parents owned a camcorder, I know the meaning of embarrassment. In fact, there are approximately 80 miniature tapes in a shoe box in my parents' downstairs closet documenting it well.

For instance, there is an hour's worth of footage of me reciting poems in rapid fire in my driveway while my brother jumps rope in the background. And there's another tape of me chopping onions for a meat loaf while wearing swimming goggles.

But by the grace of God, the device that allows camcorder-sized tapes to be played in the household VCR is broken.

Coincidentally, I found this out when I asked to borrow the camcorder to film a casting tape for the upcoming season of The Amazing Race. And while that plot was foiled by the broken adapter, I saved myself from having my parents show my potential Amazing Race partner hours worth of dance recitals and an entire Monopoly game that was taped during Christmas of 1992. What can I say - it was a slow year.

Anyway, I thought I made a graceful escape - until I read this message from Mitch Goldstone, one of the founders of ScanMyPhotos.com: “Analog is dead. Now, the race is on to digitally convert generations of favorite memories super-fast and inexpensively.”

Super-fast memory conversion? You don't say.

"If you are plugged-in to the lightning-fast changes in technology," the release reads, "You know your collection of vinyl albums, VHS cassettes and printed pictures must be digitally converted before it fades away."

There are a lot of things wrong with that sentence - and the fact that our family's VHS cassettes could be digitally converted is just one of them. The possibility that my father's music collection could be salvaged is another.

But hopefully my parents won't send in the mini-tapes and stockpile them to be played at my wedding. And seeing as how I'll need to find an alternate route for the casting tape, there's really no need. It seems I haven't learned my lesson about avoiding home videos and there will be tons of fresh material available.

2008: I'm taking my embarrassment global.

At dinner tonight, my four year old cousin explained how Santa Claus brings gifts to houses that don't have chimneys.

"He comes in through the toilet," she told me.

AirTran Airways may consider incorporating this development into the headline of their news release "Santa Descends Chimneys from China to Sudan."

Or maybe my cousin could help AirTran write next year's Christmas press releases - all three of them.

Their hypothetical Santa visits could use a little more punch, and a lot more toilet:

"Military intelligence confirmed that Santa and his squad stopped in Iraq to visit with U.S. troops. As the world's most experienced aviator, Captain Claus dazzled the country's finest pilots by performing six consecutive barrel rolls and then going from zero to 800 mph in two seconds."

Merry Christmas. And shit.

I once thought it was a good idea to threaten my boyfriend with the line, "I'm done calling you. When you want to talk to me, you can call me."

Apparently, he was done calling me too because I only heard from him once after that outburst and it was because his conscience forced him to return my copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

I was living alone at the time and wasn't bothered too much by the break-up until later in the week when I tried to change a light bulb in my bathroom and ended up putting my arm right through the light fixture.

"I was trying to snap it into place!" I told my father over the phone.

"Oh, those don't snap on," he told me. "They might pop off, but they usually don't snap on."

Helpful advice like that is exactly why I called. Because while the damage in my bathroom was done, afterwards I tried to boil water and I noticed that the pilot light on my stove was out.

"Oh, you just have to re-light it," my father told me - and then explained in great detail how to take apart my oven range and get the burners back in working order.

But seeing as how my arm was already covered in band-aids, I decided not to risk doing anything that involved matches and just made the ravioli in the microwave - which might not have been too bad except that ten minutes later I couldn't get the jar of sauce open no matter how much hot water I poured over the lid.

"Don't you have a grippy thing?" my mother asked me.

No, I didn't. Because I never needed one until I got all hot-headed and broke up with myself.

But whatever - I made do with what I had and as I was sitting down at my coffee table to a delightful meal of cheese ravioli and margarine, I thought I deserved a glass of wine.

And in case you haven't picked up on the pattern yet, I couldn't really follow through on that idea because I didn't know how to open the bottle.

And sadly, I still don't know.

But I'll tell you what I do know, thanks to the good folks at Korbel Champagne Cellars: "Five Steps to Pop the Cork - Not Your Eye Out."

It's like the five easy steps in the release were written specifically for me - they even anticipated how I could possibly hurt myself in the process and addressed those concerns.

Maybe they can follow this release up with something like, "How to change a light bulb - And not end up in the Emergency Room."

While growing up, my father would regularly warn me not to bother bears.

“If you see a cub, don’t think, ‘Oh, it’s a cute little teddy bear’ and try to pick it up,” he explained. “The mother is liable to be around the corner and get you!”

This advice, of course, did not apply to him, as one morning on his way to work, he happened upon a large bear eating popcorn out of our garbage can. Being sensible, he clapped at it furiously and chased it into the woods.

But there must be plenty of people like that in the world because CSX Transportation issued a press release today titled “Residents Urged to Stay off Railroad Tracks, Reminded to Always Expect a Train.”

“That means walk, sit, ski or snowmobile somewhere other than railroad tracks and property…” the release warns.

In other words, the train is liable to be right around the corner and get you.

I hope my father is reading.

On one of my parents’ recent trips to the city, my father insisted that we go to Starbucks and get “those fancy chocolate coffees.”

While in line at the register, he twice announced, “Someone’s cell phone is ringing!” to the entire dining room.

He was preparing to make a third announcement, when the woman behind him tapped him on the shoulder, pointed to the phone clipped to his belt and said, “It’s yours.”

In similar fashion, Celine Dion’s troop issued the news release “Celine Dion and A New Day… Cast Make Final Curtain Call in Las Vegas,” not once, but twice – at both 10:55 a.m. on Dec. 15 and again at 10:45 a.m. on Dec. 16.

I can only assume that as she was preparing a third round, someone from the AP tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Enough. We’ll run it.”

Every family has traditions.

For instance, on Christmas Eve, my family moves dinner tables to polka music to clear the room for the rest of the night’s festivities, which include a live reenactment of the nativity, complete with costumes and props.

On Easter, we buy a half-pound of butter that has been sculpted into the shape of a lamb and no one is allowed to eat it.

And on the 4th of July, we pair up and have a “sudden death egg toss” competition in the parking lot across the street from my aunt’s house.

“Eggs!?” my friends always say. “Why can’t you just throw water balloons?”

Um, because we don’t have time for filling up balloons. We have mock bocce courts to set up with picnic table benches and 2x4’s in the neighbor’s yard. And there are at least 30 boxes of sparklers to use before it gets dark. And at some point, someone - usually an adult - has to spill something on me.

These things take time. Civilization and water balloons, take note.

Plus, we’re busy enjoying each other’s company – as evidenced by this real conversation I had with my cousin at the egg toss line two years ago:

My cousin: So are you seeing any hot guys?
Me: No, not so much.
My cousin: Oh. I just met the hottest guy the other night. He was like, "Hey Sexy, you want to feed me one of those gravy fries and put a little sugar on the side for me?"

At the time, I was just glad she was speaking to me because a few minutes before she heard my mother and me laughing and shouted at the back of my head, "Hello to you too! Don't think I can't hear you two laughing! I have ears like a hawk!"

To which my mother responded under her breath, "Doesn't she know it's 'eyes like a hawk'? At least doesn't she know hawks don't have ears?"

I don’t know if hawks have ears or not, but we laughed again, this time actually at my cousin’s expense and she didn’t seem to notice, so I don’t think the hawk-like ears assertion was accurate.

Perhaps the United Egg Producers would be interested in taking on these issues. It seems they have time on their hands since they recently issued a press release with the headline “Are Free Range Birds Happier? Maybe Not!”

While the pressures of free range hens vs. modern caged hens and the measurement of “corticosterone, a hormone produced in response to stress or fear,” in eggs must certainly be an enthralling topic, I think an anthropological field trip to my family’s picnic next July would yield much more interesting results.

For instance, they could measure my stress level as my cousin approaches, especially while holding an egg.

It would be like their existing study, but with people. And the eggs would be thrown.

It would be fun.

Then again, “Maybe Not!”

Word Processing Y2K

When I got my first writing assignment in college, I sat in front of my computer for at least five minutes before I turned to my roommate and said, “Do I just type this up in WordPad, or what?”

In case you were wondering, this event took place in September 2000 – and the ridiculousness of it can be directly attributed to my Catholic high school, which did not have a computer lab equipped with the Internet, Microsoft Word, or color-display monitors.

Apparently, the Computer Club was concerned with more important things – such as organizing their annual Valentine Gram program, where the entire student body filled out a questionnaire – on paper – the answers of which were manually entered by the Club into a computer program that matched respondents with like answers.

From a pool of at least 500 people, I was compatible with a total of three - one of whom, I kid you not, is now serving a life sentence for murdering his boyfriend.

But I’ve been lead to believe that things are improving technologically at Catholic schools around the country because GodTube.com, “the World's First Virtual Video Bible and Virtual Video Prayer Wall” is apparently the “#1 fastest growing website in the U.S.” according to a Dec. 18 news release.

“GodTube.com…today brought the Bible into the digital age with the launch of the first Virtual Video Bible and the world's first Virtual Video Prayer Wall, offering the 2.1 billion Christians around the world a whole new way to experience their faith this Christmas season.”

Might I recommend the video “Baby Got Book.”

SOURCE: GodTube.com