Assorted Thoughts to Start 2009

> The older I get, the easier I find it to put on weight in November and December. All of that good food and drink, combined with enough snow on the ground to keep me miles away from the gym has proved to be a very bad combination. Go figure. There’s such a thing as having too many Swedish Fish candies in one sitting?

>Having a big yard filled with fir trees is really cool to look at and enjoy in the spring and summer. But it’s not so fun to look at and deal with when it becomes really windy or when it snows a lot. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that when their branches freeze and become loaded with snow, they tend to become brittle and fall like dominoes to the ground. And they don’t walk themselves to a recycle center or a landfill either. The day in which we downsize to a small place or a condo is drawing nearer.

>Mainstream society seems to all of a sudden be talking about living within our financial means these days in light of all the subprime lending, bailout talk, and utterly ridiculous credit practices that were allowed to take place over the last twenty years or so (ain’t deregulation great!). I used to hear that “financial responsibility” stuff 30-40 years ago from my grandmother, though. She wasn’t the easiest old cuss to get along with for a lot of people, but she was right about living within your means. The modified mortgage default rate in 2008 was 37%. Granted, job losses and health care costs are responsible for much of that, but it still represents a lot of people who ultimately never listened to people like my grandmother.

>The NCAA really needs to adopt a playoff system – and soon – for college football games. There are more than 30 bowl games during the holiday season, some featuring teams that have lost as many games as they’ve won. And the final game of the season (dubbed the “Championship Game”) arguably does not feature the best two teams. Yeah, I know, it’s all about the cash. But as a sports fan, it would be nice to seed the top 16 teams and let them go at it for four weeks just as they do in college basketball.

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>As we enter another new year and the War on Christmas is on hiatus until next November, my thoughts turn toward the inevitable “end of the world” predictions that show up every year. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of these doomsday predictions over time, yet we never hold the incorrect sooth sayer accountable for his or her words. Hallelujah Artists such as Hal Lindsey have even gotten rich making erroneous predictions over and over again. Here is a site that lists over 200 such prognostications: http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm. If I’m wrong, and the world DOES happen to end this year I’ll be the first one to stand up and admit it, too.

>This just in from Muffinheadedboy in Bellingham: Western Washington University has just dropped its football program, and nobody on campus has noticed.

>Finally, I want to wish my good friend Bowlingagent all of the best as he gets ready to embark on his new adventure living in Canada. I'm glad for his opportunity but at the same time I'll sure miss our monthly (or so) lunches in which we indulge in Thai food, Pho or whatever we think is appropriate, have a lot of laughs and generally solve all of the world's problems in an hour. The silver lining to this is that BowlingWidow and I now know someone who lives in British Columbia and can just sort of drop by for around a week or so. I have absolutely no idea how receptive his soon-to-be wife will be to this but I'll cross that bridge when we get there.