@Randem

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. They’re counterproductive. You start something new on the first day of the year — lose weight, quit smoking, etc — and hope it will stick. In the majority of cases, the first time that new thing meets a setback, it gets marked as a complete failure, and the whole plan gets abandoned. Why waste the time?

It makes more sense to quantify progress and set target dates. For instance, instead of setting a vague goal of saying you want to “get in shape”, only to give up after you’ve had a week or two where you couldn’t get to the gym, why not set real, tangible goals with numbers and dates? Why not plan to lose 20 pounds by June 1? At least then, if you have a setback, there’s no reason to give up!

This year, I am setting real goals. Instead of imagining my life as I want it right now, and then giving up when I realize that’s impossible, I’ve put a lot of thought into where I expect to be in one year, and I will spend 2008 working toward reaching that place.

These are my goals for 2008:

1. Be 100% free of all credit card debt by November.
   After this year, I never want to carry another balance on any revolving credit account. Without debt, I will have financial freedom to do whatever I want. I have chosen November as my target because I also want to have a debt-free Christmas.
2. Move to the city by summer.
   I’m not a suburban kind of person. My heart is in the urban lifestyle. Living in the city will be better for my photography, as well as more convenient for commuting, traveling, and meeting new people. I have chosen summer as my target because there is so much happening in the city during summer.
3. Relocate my father by summer
   My father is one of the unfortunate victims of the high cost of medical care. His prescriptions alone cost more than his income. Without my help he would have to choose each month between a roof over his head, or being (somewhat) healthy, and eating isn’t much of an option. And this is in a poor, southern town in a $40,000 house! Bringing him to a city would give him access to better medical care as well as many aid programs that could reduce his costs and give him access to the care he needs, while also giving him the chance to spend his later years near family.
4. Form a corporation
   Making investments and building assets makes more sense when you have the protections of a corporation. I don’t have a specific target date for this goal because there are many other implications to consider, but I do know that I need to do it, rather than talk or think about it, so I’ve made it a goal for this year.
5. Add 100 lbs to my benchpress
   Specifically, I want to raise my benchpress 50 lbs by summer and another 50 lbs by Christmas, but these increases need to be marked by similar improvements in other strength training areas too, including squats, curls, deadlifts, etc. In other words, I want to increase all my weights, I have simply chosen the benchpress as the measure for reaching my goal.
6. Travel out of state at least once every month
   This is pretty self-explanatory. I want to travel out of the state, whether visiting friends I’ve left behind or going someplace I’ve never been, at least once every month this year. I also want at least one of those trips to be out of the country.

So there it is. Those are my goals for 2008. I look forward to writing about their completion!

One afternoon as I was flipping through the channels — you know the routine, hundreds of channels and nothing is on — I landed on the Food Network. They were showing a program called Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but the only reason I turned it on was because this episode would be featuring a place in Kenosha, WI.

Kenosha is the farthest you can travel north on Chicago’s commuter train system. Always interested in getting out and exploring the world around me, I wondered what there might be to see in Kenosha. I still didn’t know much, but at the very least, I now knew where in Kenosha to get a good breakfast: Frank’s Diner.

A little research online, and I discovered that Kenosha has a streetcar system running in a loop between the train station and Laka Michigan, with service to downtown stores as well as Kenosha’s free public museum along the way. Their five PCC streetcars are painted to represent the historic streetcars of Toronto, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Johnstown. And it only costs a quarter to ride.

The train ride is about two hours each way between Kenosha and Chicago, which for me is apparently just about enough time to read a 170-page book. And since I didn’t eat before I left, there was no doubt that I was ready to find Frank’s Diner. And that’s the first thing I did.

It didn’t take much work to find it. Text “franks diner kenosha wi” to Google SMS (466453) and moments later you get a text message back telling you it’s at 508 58th street. The streetcar runs along 56th street, so a cord pull at 6th avenue put me two blocks away — where, apparently, there was a classic car show going on.

I was really hungry, so I went straight to Frank’s without dilly-dallying, and I’m glad I did because they locked the door while I was eating, so they’re apparently not open very late.

Well, either way, it didn’t bother me because I was in hog heaven with my “garbage plate”. Even the bread is made from scratch. Everything on the plate was delicious.

And so, belly full and face smiling, my mission was accomplished. Ways I found to spend an afternoon in Kenosha included: walking along the lake front, visiting the free museum, riding the streetcar, browsing in some really neat stores downtown, looking at the classic car show. And, of course, you can’t leave Wisconsin without getting a bratwurst.

Rockafeller Center

I couldn’t have had a better vacation. It was an easy, low-traffic drive to New Jersey for the Christmas Eve party. That was followed by a party Christmas day in Staten Island. We left Staten Island for Manhattan and got there just in time to see the tree in Rockafeller Center before they shut it off until next year.

As if everything hadn’t already been nearly perfect, a fog dropped over NYC Christmas night, making for some of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever taken. The photos can’t compare to real life, though… NYC in the fog is breathtaking.

From NYC (America’s first capitol) we headed for Philadelphia (the second capitol) in hopes of seeing some American history, and we got to see some, but Philadelphia is a serious fucking slum and we decided to haul ass.

From one slum to another, we headed for Washington DC after a short stay overnight in Delaware. Our nation’s third capitol is certainly beautiful — that is, if you’re downtown… in the day time… and standing in the right place. Everything that’s not downtown is more slum. But all the landmarks are nice to look at. And from there, it was a relatively pleasant drive home.

Tennessee Farm Country

Sometimes all you need is the right subject. With a little attention to composition, no special photographic skill was necessary to take a few great photos of my vacation.