Last weekend of freedom, well of something, or welcome to your tenure review year

So, Alicia Billman is gone, having jetted back to Portland, OR yesterday, and I'm all alone with Missy, the compulsive paw licker. Today I am making resolutions that involve Missy, my career, relationships, you know the sort of stuff we do because change is on the cards, as Stuart Murdoch says in the song . . . can you name that tune Mikey?

Here are the things I want to do better:

1) pay more "real" attention to Missy. She knows that she is often competing for my attention with the computer, phone, etc. So I'm going to make an effort to have real quality time with her, whatever that means

2) pay better attention to my students' blog comments on my comp blog. I really didn't utilize the blog the way I wanted to last time, so this time it becomes a vigorous part of the class

3) for those of you who are already bored with my lame resolutions, here's one: get down and boogie. I'd like to take a movement-oriented class of some kind. It doesn't have to be dance, just something that's not walking that can get me in a room with some other people who are also tripping over their own feet

4) since I'm serving on a new committee at work, find time to devote to the other committees on which I serve. This will be tricky, but anyone in academe knows committees make the world go 'round

5) get a digital camera and take my own pictures for a change. Those pics I put up this morning? Yeah, I stole them off the Internet.

6) OMG, of course I have to add "keep up with my blog"!

7) this one's for later on: use my happy light every day in the morning. Vitamin D absorption is difficult to come by here, so pills and lights are a must for those who don't drink milch (there, you learned the German work for milk)

8) should I keep up with my German theme and say that I'll finally take that German class I've been talking about for four years? No. Why? Because I'm gonna buy a digital camera, and I'm too cheap to pay for a German class. Es tut mir Leid, but that's the way it is. Wouldn't it be cool if the government would give us all free language lessons? And new cars? And digital cameras?

9) call my mother when I say I'm going to call, not the next day. The thing is, I get busy on the weekends (I just realized how that sounded). My mom has caller ID and call waiting now, and her phone announces who is calling, so I can't use the "I tried to call but the line was busy" tactic I tried once, okay twice.

10) continue in my progress at being a good life partner. Unless you don't know me at all, you know that I'm a really uncompromising person sometimes. I'm going to be . . .jeez, I don't know what I'm going to be, but it's going to be better.

So, now I don't have to make any New Years' resolutions, but I should resolve to look at these on January 1st to see if I've progressed at all. How about you? Anything you'd like to resolve?