Today is the 316th day of the year which means there are now fewer than fifty days until that night we leave our friend’s New Year’s Eve party and fall into that hydrangea bush again. What’s worse, this is the absolutely fastest fifty days on the calendar, so the year is, for all intents and purposes, now over. Which is grim news for folks like me still clinging to New Year’s Resolutions made in the heat of guilt the better part of a year ago.

In case you missed my post (how could you miss one of my posts?!) here’s a refresher for you. (The numbers in parentheses were the odds of the given resolution being kept past January 15.)

1. This is my “No Help Here” category which, despite its name, was actually intended to help people. I haven’t really done that. In 2009 I resolve to try and help people on this blog beyond just the usual entertainment and commiseration. (42%) Don’t worry, though. It’ll still be funny. (98%)
2. I resolve to lose more weight, exercise more often, and blah dee blah blah blah. (28%)
3. Remember the Alternate Reality #1 post last year? Well, I still have a strong interest in music. I should spend more time with it. In fact, I resolve to re-learn how to play the third movement of Moonlight Sonata by the end of this year. (17%)
4. I like to write. I’ve been trying to write, in one form or another, for nearly sixteen years now. I’m already working on my next book. (Actually, it’s a three-book series.) I resolve to finish the first pass of the first book by the time I re-learn how to play the third movement of Moonlight Sonata. (14%)
5. I resolve to finally get the garage cleaned out. (2%)

So how’s reality stacking up to the plan? Well, let’s take a look:

1. I know I helped one person because she sent me a lovely note about it a couple weeks ago, so I’ll count this one as done. And I think things are mostly still humorous around here.
2. Lose more weight? Well, yes, technically. I began 2009 at around 210 pounds and I made it all the way down to 193.5 on June 30, before everything sorta fell apart. But now I’m back around 205. Upside? Still technically less than where I started, and I shouldn’t complain about that. Downside, I’m up over 12 pounds from my low point. But don’t worry, next year I resolve to lose more weight, exercise more often, and blah dee blah blah blah.
3. No progress whatsoever. I hardly get to play at all.
4. When I wrote, “I resolve to finish the first pass of the first book by the time I re-learn how to play the third movement of Moonlight Sonata” I meant that to be a synonym for “by the end of this year.” Of course, now that I’m reading it 315 days later, the so-big-you-can-drive-a-truck-through-it loophole is definitely going to work in my favor. That said, I don’t want to wait that long. While there’s no way I’ll finish the first draft by year’s end, I’m definitely making progress, and that’s far more than I can say over the last sixteen years.
5. I took two days off last week to clean the garage. The garage is not clean. But it’s cleaner. Not a lot, mind you, but every little bit helps. At least I finally threw out (what used to be) $15,000 worth of computer equipment. Funny how something can go from shiny and exciting to worthless pile of metal and plastic in fifteen short years.

So there you go. How are your resolutions doing? There’s still time!

While I don’t watch television very much, I’m nonetheless quite aware of two dance-related “reality” shows. Oddly enough, they’d be just the kind of reality show I might try out for in the universe where I’m twenty-five years younger, in great shape, and, well, you know, actually possess the ability to dance. Which I don’t. My moves make Joey Tribbiani look like Gregory Hines.

The first of these two shows is, as you might expect, Dancing with the Stars. I’ve never watched an entire episode. In fact, I don’t think I’ve watched more than five minutes total, and that includes the time I spent searching youtube for Marie Osmond’s fainting episode. Now I like the basic premise of the show: take one famous person and one regular person, pair them off, and then see which one faints first. Or dances the best. Doesn’t really matter. But while the show is a great idea in concept what really bothers me about it is the fact that I can’t tell who’s the star and who’s the regular person. I think it was the season before last that they had the big, long-awaited reveal. I saw names go by like Jeffrey Ross, Maurice Greene, Lance Bass, Warren Sapp, and I thought exactly how oldamI? Further, why did I feel this sudden and compelling urge to tell those kids outside to get off my lawn? At last, they announced Ted McGinley and I didn’t feel like a complete zero. Of course, with his arrival, it meant Dancing with the Stars was about to jump the shark.

The second dance reality show is So You Think You Can Dance? This is an absolutely wonderful show, of which I’ve now watched upwards of fifteen minutes’ worth. Like other “talent contests”, hopeful contestants, many of whom actually do think they can dance, hop around on stage until the judges tell them to stop. At this point many of them are stunned to find out that they cannot, indeed, dance. Which is unfortunate for them, but good for ratings. As you would expect, a few shining stars turn out and wow can they put on some impressive moves. I couldn’t move like that even if you ran a few thousand volts through me. I’d definitely be in the group of people put before the cameras solely for humiliation purposes. Oh, I can dance in the technical sense: music plays and my limbs flail around in near 4/4 time. If my moves were bowling, I’d be the dance equivalent of setting the ball on the ground between my legs and giving it a shove straight into the gutter. The country would have a good laugh at my expense and I’d only get a ticket to Vegas if that’s where this year’s White and Nerdy convention were being held.

No, I’d need to find a reality show that fits my own particular talents. I’m thinking something more along the lines of So You Think You Can Drink?

Although we’re already a couple of days into November, I can’t let my favorite holiday just come and go without any mention of it whatsoever. That would be like winning a two brazillion dollar lottery and not telling anyone about it. Which I did once, so I’m not about to do that again.

I was very excited about having Halloween on a Saturday this year so I could actually spend some serious time on a pumpkin. Typically, the year involves an attempt to leave work early, failure at said attempt, arriving home about thirty minutes before trick-or-treating starts, then scrambling to get a good pumpkin carved.

I like carving pumpkins. (In case you missed it, here’s last year’s post on the very same topic.) As you can see, I like to at least try and be creative, which is hard to do given my lofty carving goals combined with the extremely limited amount of time involved. So imagine the heights of my anticipation, knowing I’d have an entire day to work on a pumpkin.

Ah, the best laid plans…

I actually ended up spending most of the day cleaning the house and performing other domestic type duties, such as washing dishes and ironing my underpants. Therefore, I didn’t get a-carving until around four in the afternoon. My goal was to do two pumpkins. One regular and one artificial. Now, I’d never tried one of those artificial punkies before, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect. On the upside, they are actually carvable. On the downside, there’s that pesky carpal tunnel issue.

Long story short, though, I got it carved. However I had not the strength to move on to Pumpkin #2 this year. So 2009 turned out to be a regular one-pumpkin year after all.

In case anyone’s wondering how I did it, I’ll walk you through a quick tutorial of sorts. The hardest part is just coming up with an idea. For some reason Harry Potter struck me this time around and I soon stumbled across this picture of Snape:

Once I find a candidate, I reduce it to three colors, since that’s all you get when carving: 1) all the way cut, 2) none of the way cut, 3) part of the way cut. I inspect the image to make sure there aren’t any physically impossible floaty pieces and make sure there aren’t any impossibly small strands holding up other massive pumpkin forms. If so, I make a few adjustments, where possible. Many images are simply unworkable. I got lucky on this one.

To help visualize, I change the colors to be more pumpkiny:

Now the MOST IMPORTANT part to remember is that, when carving, you’re creating a negative image. Backlighting it turns it into a positive image. So, using my trusty image editing software, I cast a color reversio spell and voila:

I print this out, tape it to the pumpkin, then take a knife to it. An X-acto knife, to be precise. First step is easy: cut out the black parts, which are the holes:

Second step is what caused my arm to suffer what’s likely to be permanent nerve damage. Next year, I’m buying a little power router to do this. Here’s how the half-way cuts turned out, and the final unlit carving:

After that, throw an electric light into it, which gives it an odd green cast to it.

I colored the initial image above orange, just to make it look normal.

Oh, and did I say just one pumpkin this year? Well, yes, for me that is. But Rachel did one too and I have to share it with you, since she got such a kick out of doing it:

And lastly, both of them together:

Can’t wait until next year!