You may remember my first blog post on this site, where I talked about using this blog to catalogue my attempts to suck less every year. Well, now it’s the end of the first year of this blog, so I figured I’d do a little re-cap of my accomplishments for the year, and set some goals for the next.

Things I did that didn’t suck:

• Lost sixty pounds with The Hacker Diet
• Had my design launched across multiple departments for the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater School of Graduate Studies (now including one of the largest we maintain, Camps and Conferences)
• Played several acoustic open-mic shows with my band, recorded a 13 track demo CD, and now our first “real” concert, as an electrified four-piece will happen on the last day of the year
• Passed “Short Calculus” and “Operations Management”, two of the most difficult classes I’ve ever had to take
• Most importantly, spent as much time as possible with the love of my life. Seriously, she’s amazing

Still, that leaves plenty of room for sucking less next year. My goals (or ‘resolutions’, if you will) for twenty-ten:

• Complete my Bachelors with at least a 3.0 GPA
• Get my weight below 200 pounds and keep it there
• Play more shows with my band, and re-record the songs with as high production quality as possible (and, dare I say it, put out a CD)
• Finish writing “the next album”

I’m trying to keep things fairly modest here (and leave some room for 2011). Wish me luck!

You know how when you go visit your parents, they try to guilt you into coming with them to confession? And then there’s a crazy old church lady living with them who has to always look down because she just had eye surgery? And she keeps shutting off the lights on you when you’re trying to change the oil on your car? And then they bug you about going to church on Christmas with them, and try to get you to pray the rosary with the crazy lady?

THEN they guilt you about not visiting enough?

Parents, huh? It’s like they come from some robot factory!

“Clean your room!”

“Do the dishes!”

“No, you can’t go to the library because they have satanic books there!”

“You can’t go to public school because it’s communist! They should be teaching you about Jesus, not Greek mythology, which is Satanic!”

“Barack Obama is the antichrist!”

They’re all the same, right? Can I get a “what-what”?

Huh? Nobody?