New Years

Well good morning everybody.  Been a couple of weeks now, so I figured I give you a few words to take you into the New Year.  My Christmas was spent in the great state of Alabama.  I got to see family and friends, get some gifts, give some gifts, drank a few cocktails, and I ate real bar-b-que.  Now I say real bar-b-que because if you live above the Mason Dixon line then you have only had imitation “Southern style” bbq.  I don’t know what it is but it seems if someone up here in the north decides to open a bbq joint they can’t get it right. For some reason they don’t have the ability to make it correctly.  It just doesn’t taste the same.  Well I guess all you can do is give them yanks an A for effort. Another thing the north can’t seem to grasp is sweet tea.  Sure you can go to McDonalds and get a big ol’ sweet tea and it might taste good until you get in the south and drink the real thing. Again, I am baffled why the north can’t get it right. Oh well, I'm sure there is things in the north that the south can’t get right.  Anyway, I love Alabama; it is a beautiful state that has mountains in north Alabama and a beach on the south end.  My sister lives on top of a mountain down yonder and there is nothing like waking up in the early morning and walking onto the front porch and seeing valleys and mountains in front of you.  Here in Ohio when I get up all I see is houses and buildings, ain’t no mountains off my front porch.

If you are not familiar with some of the words above then you are not from the south so here are a few definitions to help you better understand the above paragraph;

1. yonder- somewhere other than where you are;
2. yank or yankee- someone who lives above the mason Dixon line
3. ain’t- if “isn’t” and “aren’t” had a baby you would get the word ain’t

I have been thinking about New Years resolutions and how everyone comes up with them but hardly anyone actually follows through, so this year I decided on trying a different approach.  My new approach is to claim the opposite that way if I don’t do it I go in the right direction.  For example; if my new years resolution was to loose weight I’m going to make it to gain weight, that way if when I don’t keep to my new plan I actually loose weight.  Or I could just not make a resolution that way I wouldn’t be disappointed in myself for not keeping up with a plan.

Speaking of plans, my fruit cake challenge was a bust.  I didn’t realize it takes weeks to actually make a good fruit cake.  Apparently to make a good cake they fruit has to soak in alcohol for days or even weeks and around my house alcohol is lucky to be there for more than 24 hours.  No sense on wasting alcohol on fruit or cake for that matter, so I didn’t bake or mail a fruit cake.  However, I did try some fruit cake, well fruit cake cookies, and they were delicious.  I need to research my challenge a little better before making them. 

Moving on, my blog has a stats page that allows me to see how many page views I get per day, where they are viewing them and what device they view them on or through.  I mostly enjoy seeing where people are viewing my blog from. I get occasional views from the UK, Germany, Singapore, China, Turkey, Russia, Canada (eh), India, and my favorite Denmark.  Now I don’t know if these are real people viewing them or spammers or the company that I do my blog through or what but I like to say thanks for taking a peak, and to the people in Denmark, how am I doing when I talk about Denmark?

Well I think that’s about enough for this week, I don’t really have a challenge for myself right now but I’m open to suggestions.  So until next time, happy New Year.   

“New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.”

                                                                                    -Mark Twain